perseverance

ENTRY █████

Gaster asked me to tend to paperwork today while he took Sans to the testing room to see how well the serum has enhanced his powers.  I’m done with the paperwork and I’m bored; been playing dumb games on the computer.  You can only beat Solitaire so many times.  I can’t go down and keep Papyrus company, either; it would look too weird if Gaster came, returning Sans to the cell, and found me there.  Maybe he wouldn’t mind if I went and watched him and Sans

Did I just hear a crash?

---

ENTRY █████

things went so wrong oh my god so wrong his skull has been blasted open and there’s a third of it missing and cracks everywhere else and

oh god sans no please no; don’t die

please don’t die

---

ENTRY █████

HOW COULD YOU HOW COULD YOU HOW COULD YOU

---

ENTRY █████

gaster is working at fixing sans.  i told pap his brother was badly injured and held him when he cried.

i assured him that sans would be okay.  i spent the rest of the time distracting him with games and puzzles, and i read him to sleep.

went back upstairs and hid in a bathroom

never cried so hard in my life

---

ENTRY █████

i wanted to help monitor sans, but he sent me to oversee papyrus’s test for the day.

what actually happened was me inventing content within the span of an hour and the rest of the time was spent trying not to fall apart as i kept him distracted with other things.

i can’t tell him, i cant.  and why bother?  this is going to be okay.  he doesnt ever need to know exactly how bad it was.  bliss is such a rare thing for him and i intend to guard it where i can, even if he has to stay ignorant for that to happen

also left him the rubix cube when i had to return him to his cell; bite me, gaster. the least you owe him is that stupid cube.

---

ENTRY █████

gaster’s left me in charge of sans. i have no idea what the doctor is up to.

---

ENTRY █████

been five days

he’s not healing

he’s hanging onto life at 0.08 hp and every once in a while will try to drop by another tenth of a percent

i can stop it by injecting more magic into the gel in the tank when the magic already in there gets stale but it needs constant monitoring and i dont dare leave his side for even a second

haven’t slept in three days

pretty sure my blood is 90% coffee by now

---

ENTRY █████

six days

his soul is cracked down the middle like a broken heart; huge split that stops just short of the tip

for his body to mend, his soul has to heal

once the crack is fixed, his natural healing magic, what binds his bones together, will kick in, and along with the magic-infused gel in the tank, will regenerate what he’s lost

but his soul hasn’t healed

please live

because someone here really loves you, sans

two in fact

---

ENTRY █████

gaster gave up

i knew he had after the second day but now he finally voiced it to me, trying to persuade me to let sans go already

he tried to tell me wed done all we could and thats bullshit

there has to be something else

anything else

---

ENTRY █████

day eight

nodded off for four hours and somehow sans is still alive thank god

also that asshole had better be feeding pap

---

ENTRY █████

nine

his persuasion is firmer now

but push me and i push harder

i refuse to give up on sans

why did he?  his fault this even happened

i cant even point that out because if he suspects i value them as more than tools to free us

if he knows i love them as people

i dont wanna speculate on that right now

---

ENTRY █████

he approached me again and i roped him into the craziest fucking idea ive ever had

im actually really proud of the performance i spun even though im so sleep deprived i could drop dead

all that garbage about willing to go through this to free monsterkind and atone for what humankind had done by helping to bring down the barrier, how i wanted to go through with using a piece of my soul to stitch sans’s back together because our test subject dying could mean decades more that monsters are trapped down here

in reality i just want my fucking friends back

i want sans
i want pap

this is my best shot at that very simple endgame

at keeping us all alive

---

ENTRY █████

he started setting up right away.  im sitting here in the corner by the tank sans is in, watching him

this is going to hurt, he emphasizes, this is going to be torture

it can be done, he admits, but there will be pain beyond anything you can imagine; tearing pieces off souls is nothing he has experience with but if anything can survive it, its a human soul
little else is as potent as a human soul, something so powerful it can linger after the death of its meat shell host for long periods, so i should survive and it should stitch sans’s soul back together and infuse it with the power it needs to heal; in theory this should work

in practice, maybe not so much

i told him i didnt care

do it

i will endure

---

ENTRY █████

i told Gaster if i didn’t survive the procedure after all, to give my soul to pap.  he quietly told
me he’d planned on doing so anyway.

i hope he took it to mean that our work wouldn’t go to waste this way, but thats not why I want him to have my soul.  if papyrus has my soul, it means he hosts the very culmination of my being inside his body.  it means i can be his protector, his provider, his guardian even from beyond the grave.  it means i won’t fail him the way i failed sans.

and maybe i can even carry my body home to my brother, so he has something for a funeral.

i dont think id mind my body being laid to rest near the fairy hovel

pap, its spring up there, and the fairies are out

id like to show them to you

i hope not like that, though

---

ENTRY █████

i just realized if SANS survives the operation and i don’t, gaster will give one of them my soul and send him through the barrier to collect more human souls and they’ll be separated oh god oh god

i hope i haven’t just made a colossal mistake

---

ENTRY █████

can’t even slip away downstairs to tell pap the truth

gaster is watching me as he sets everything up

guys, whatever might go wrong, forgive me

im so sorry

i tried

---

ENTRY █████

pAIN FirE BUrNiNg

---

ENTRY █████

I literally do not remember writing that last one.  Wow, I must have been out of it.  How did I even manage to press all those different keys…?

Whatever; it worked.  It was a complete success.  We both survived.  

I remember pain, so much pain; I thought I was dying.  Apparently I’ve been unconscious for a week?

I woke up and saw Sans staring at me from the status tube in the corner.  Remember when I said I’d never cried so hard in my life?  I have to amend that now; I sobbed so hard I dry heaved.

Gross, but who cares?  Not me.

We’re alive.

We survived.

I took Sans downstairs to see Pap.  He’s been all alone for a week and a half; apparently Gaster handed him ration bars, so he had food, but the doctor refused to speak to him.  He was a broken shell when we got there, and the two brothers clung to one another and cried like they’d been halved and were now whole.  I left them alone for a while and dozed, but was woken up when they swept me into a hug.

But to do that, Sans lifted me over with blue magic, and his Soul flared into view, and…
There’s a deep hued dotted line, like stitches, down the length of his Soul.

So, needless to say, I had to explain that.  Gaster was gone for the night, so I took them upstairs to the break room and we got comfortable on our couch-bed, and I told them the whole story.

I left out details about Sans’s injuries, though.  They don’t need to have that image in their heads; god knows I don’t and I have to live with it anyway.

They were horrified.  There were tears.  Lots of clinging.  But I think they were touched by just how far I was willing to go for them.

I’M kind of surprised how far I was willing to go for them.  The only person I’d ever cared that much about before was my brother… and my sister… and my father…

And given my track record with my father and sister, I’ve only felt so strongly for my brother.  For a very long time now.  Or maybe not so long.  My perception of time has always been off.
I have to go put them back now, before Gaster comes into work.

---

ENTRY █████

Sans and I pretended to be asleep, and we both made a show of waking up.  He must have bought it; he didn’t call me out on it.

But he stares at me, now.

It’s unnerving

He knows I’m human.  He doesn’t hand me over because he claims he likes me, that he believes together we can find a solution to the barrier.

But if he knows where my true loyalties lie…

Sans and Papyrus will be alone again.

---

ENTRY █████

I’ve given up on the barrier.  That’s just not going to happen.  Besides, even if it did by some miracle, then I’d have to figure out how to smuggle the twins away from him during the mass exodus of monsters without anyone noticing.  Gaster would likely be one of the first people to leave as a thanks for being the main scientist behind the project, which means I couldn’t even hide the twins among the crowd.  He’d spirit them away somehow.  Maybe even murder them.  Their existence and the evil that was done to them is a secret, and three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.
He’s told me he intends to keep them in case war ever breaks out again so they could be used as weapons, but the need to not be found out for his atrocities–and he knows they’re atrocities and no one else would buy that “just experiments” garbage–could outweigh any potential use they could be to him later.  Even if he didn’t kill them, he’d be bringing them out into the sunlight only to lock them away in a cage in the dark.  What a miserable fate, and it’s not one I plan to let happen.

It makes me wonder what his plan for me is, if the barrier came down.

Not that it’ll matter; it’s not going to.

But I wonder.

And I should probably stop wondering because it’s just freaking me out.

---

ENTRY █████

If the barrier is not an option for escape, then I have to return to my original plan; locate the hole.

If one can fall INTO the world beneath Mt. Ebott, then surely one could LEAVE the same way.  I recall the fall not being very far; traditional climbing may not be possible, but I bet I could devise a grappling hook, something to get us out...

If only I hadn’t gotten lost!  Then I’d know where the damn hole is!

At least Gaster is so preoccupied with… whatever he’s been doing that he lets me tinker all day.  I should have functional spy-bots within the next couple days, and I can send them out to look for the hole.

The twins have been doing simple magic tests, to see if the recent trauma has affected their magic lately.  I pray he doesn’t make them kill something to ensure they’re still capable of it, but that’s probably what this is leading to.  It doesn’t matter that so far he’s had them kill rabbits and rats; he’s going to upgrade, eventually; beyond that, it breaks them both a little more each time.  Especially Pap.

I have to get them out of here.

---

ENTRY █████

I didn’t see him all today.  Neither did the twins.  That’s weird.  I don’t think I like that.  I prefer to know what he’s up to.

---

ENTRY █████

He doesn’t look like he sleeps much.  He never did, but now he looks sick.

His tests on the twins have been very light.  Some endurance tests–-running–-and a few more IQ tests; Sans and I didn’t even have to scrape together something to comfort Pap afterwards.  Gaster threw no snide comments towards him this time about his intelligence.  He has me doing work again, fixing machinery, but that’s it.  He’s very... gray.  Emotionless.  Everything is a nervous tension.  It lives in the very walls while we wait for the other shoe to drop.  I continue playing the diligent, devoted lab hand, the double agent who tends to my true friends by night, secretly searching for a way out of this hellhole, praying the doctor doesn’t find me out.

All that secret agent nonsense as a kid didn’t actually prepare me for this.

---

ENTRY █████
His voice has gotten colder.  His patience is dropping.  He doesn’t smile at me anymore.

Go back to being emotionless please; I liked that more.

---

ENTRY █████

he struck me

---

ENTRY █████

i am afraid again

i just want to take my friends and go home

gaster... what is your deal?

what are you thinking?

do i even want to know?