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Flowey Is Not a Good Life Coach

Chapter 25: epilogue: boyz in the wood

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Checking over his tools to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything, Papyrus slung the pack over his shoulder, and together he and Sans set out for the woods. Everyone they passed on their way through town waved and greeted them warmly, but didn't flag them down to chat. Papyrus was careful to walk a little too fast for conversation to be anything but difficult and awkward. It wasn't that he didn't like being well liked! But...well...it was tiring.


Maybe after a while, when the town calmed down, when everyone could talk about something else…


“Hey, wait up!”


He'd been unconsciously picking up speed, but slowed down at his brother's call. “Sorry,” he said, as Sans hustled to catch up.


Sans grinned. “Heh. You know, the puzzle's not going anywhere.”


“We'd be remiss in our duty as guardsmen,” Papyrus tutted, “if we didn't return this puzzle to working order as quickly as possible. What if a human were to pass through here?” The sentence sent an uncomfortable hiccup through his mind, and he hurried to push past it. “Why, they'd go completely un-befuddled!”


If Sans noticed the brief hitch, he let it pass without comment. “Yeah, can't have that.”


They crossed the suspension bridge into the quiet of the woods. Papyrus hadn't been outside of town much in the last month. As the official Clerk of the Royal Guard, regular patrols weren't part of his duties. Instead, he'd spent most of his time either at the dining table or his desk. Where some people liked to make soup or send a thoughtful card, Undyne's method of soothing the sick and the troubled seemed to mostly rely on paperwork, and lots of it.


Papyrus was immeasurably grateful to her for that. It was harder to spend all day sleeping, crying, or staring off into space when there was work to do, tedious as it was.


“Has Undyne found a replacement for you yet?” Papyrus asked, once the silence stretched out from companionable to awkward.


“Hmm?” Sans blinked up at him, as if he'd been lost in thought. That was nothing new. Though the worst of his malaise had lifted over the past month, he was still prone to long spells of quiet rumination. “Yeah, as a matter of fact. Remember that snowdrake girl? What's-her-name?”


As the official Assistant to the Clerk of the Royal Guard (a post that came with a generous raise in his stipend, Undyne's indirect way of apologizing), these days Sans only ventured into the western reaches of the forest to speak with his friend. He gestured westward. “Saw her manning...birding? Saw her birding my old station last time I was out that way.”


“Chilldrake,” Papyrus supplied, idly. It was hard not to remember her. Sweet girl, but very...persistent. Papyrus had avoided standing in view of any of the windows for several days while she was camped out in front of the house.


Papyrus adjusted the pack on his shoulder, which was tense after a long morning of writing. “Anyway,” he said, “I have to admit I was glad to get Doggo's phone call. If I spend any more more time today staring at those reports, my eyes-- metaphorically speaking-- are going to fall right out of my head.”


Papyrus' own report was coming along slowly, too. Undyne had given King Asgore an extremely brief and largely fictitious account of the creature that had menaced the Snowdin forest, and Papyrus' gallant efforts to hold it at bay and finally subdue it. But as the principal guardsman involved, it fell to Papyrus himself to provide a more detailed account.


He was having trouble putting it all into words, even if half those words were evasions or outright lies.


That picture on the king's mantle… What could Papyrus possibly say? He had no children of his own, but it was no great stretch to imagine how learning of Asriel's second death would affect Asgore. For the king's sake as well as his own, Papyrus couldn't tell the whole truth.


There was no point in opening such an old wound when it no longer mattered, was there? No, far kinder to just keep his silence as much as possible.


Such an awful, awful thing.


Sans nodded his agreement. “Right? I've been sitting still way too much this week.”


Tripping over his own feet, Papyrus stumbled to a halt and out of his reverie. “What was that?” His jaw hung open in honest shock, though he made sure to play it up a bit.


“Oh, shut up,” Sans said, rolling his eyes though a smile tugged at his mouth. “I'm not lazy all the time.” He kept walking, leaving Papyrus behind. “Shake a leg; I thought you wanted to get started on this puzzle.”


Catching up to his brother in a few bounding strides, Papyrus turned to face Sans, walking the path backward. He knew the route well enough not to run into anything. “We could race!” The urge to move was strong after being cooped up in the house and his own thoughts. A run might help him feel more like himself.


What was that saying? Fake it 'til you make it. He was doing a lot of faking, so the making couldn't be far off.


Sans shuffled along through the snow at the same leisurely pace. “Heh, one step at a time, bro. You can run,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I'll catch up.”


That idea didn't appeal at all. It was strange-- as much as Papyrus wanted to be left alone, he didn't want to be by himself. Ever. That went double in the forest. Enthusiasm dampened, Papyrus turned forward again. “No, walking is fine.”


“You okay?” Sans asked, grin fading.


“Fine.”


Beside him, Sans sighed.


They hadn't done a great deal of talking about the last few months. Not for lack of trying, but Papyrus ended up doing more crying than speaking when he didn't simply lock up. Sans would sit with him until he calmed down, and then they would go back to whatever they'd been doing. After a few days of that routine, Sans stopped asking questions.


As much as they could, they tried to go back to their old routine. Papyrus was keeping up on the housework again, Sans was back to finding interesting things to read in the evenings. Despite their best efforts, they still found themselves avoiding one another, each leery of cutting the other on his own sharp edges.


When they reached the broken puzzle, Papyrus' spirits began to lift again. He put his gloomy thoughts aside.


As he'd suspected, the mechanisms underneath the switches' pressure plates were iced over. A common problem, it would be time consuming but easy to remedy.


Kneeling in the snow, Papyrus dug through the pack. He'd rigged a salvaged hair dryer to a power drill battery for just such eventualities. He'd also brought a small blowtorch, some machine grease, screwdrivers of various sizes, and a mallet. A mallet was always handy.


“Here,” he said, handing the hair dryer to Sans. “Get to it!”


Sans saluted, and set about prying up one of the pressure plates.


Papyrus did the same, and fired up the blowtorch. It was trickier to use than the hair dryer, so he kept it for himself. He didn't relish the idea of melted puzzle wiring or putting out a brother-shaped inferno if Sans dozed off.


God, he'd missed this. How long had it been since he'd worked on a puzzle? That was probably why this one was iced over-- he'd been maintaining Snowdin's puzzles and traps for so long that no one else had thought to check on them.


If not for the likelihood of burning his glove, he would have reached out to pet the neglected mechanism he was thawing by way of apology.


A brief flash caught his attention, and Papyrus looked up to see Sans texting someone, the camera lens on the phone angled in his direction.


Papyrus frowned. He used to like having his picture taken. He didn't really like it anymore. “You're not sending that to anyone, are you?”


“Just Undyne and Al,” Sans said, shrugging. “For someone holding a blowtorch, you're grinning a little too big, bro. Couldn't resist.”


Papyrus grumbled, but let the matter drop. Alphys and Undyne knew what he looked like. They weren't as bothered by his marred appearance as he was.


Sans got back to work, dutifully moving the hair dryer back and forth over the icy switch. “You're not still weird about the tooth, are you?”


It had been too late to do anything about his missing tooth with healing magic. A smith in New Home had made a replacement out of gold, which...stood out.


“No,” Papyrus said, absolutely not sulking. “...Maybe a bit.”


Undyne had spray-painted her eyepatch gold in solidarity. It suited her, though the paint tended to rub off on her scales. As nice as the gesture was, it didn't make Papyrus feel any less ambivalent about his own looks.


“It looks fine,” Sans said, spreading some grease along the pressure plate edges to keep the moisture out. “I don't know why you're so self-conscious about it.”


Papyrus didn't know, either, truthfully. Even with a normal tooth, he wouldn't look like he had before. Healing magic could fix a lot of things, but severe damage still left traces behind. Permanent reminders waiting in every mirror, every picture.


Sans lost his grip on the next plate he was prying open. It fell back down with a crash.


Papyrus jumped, his blaster materializing above him in an instant.


“Heh, my bad.” Sans grimaced apologetically.


“No, it's fine,” Papyrus said, irritated at himself. He glared upward, waiting for the agitated frisson of magic to die down. If he'd had a heart, it would be hammering out of his chest. “I wish it would stop doing that.” He raised a hand to dispel the blaster, only for Sans to interrupt him with a little cough.


“Uh, you know, it wouldn't really hurt anything to just leave it for a while,” Sans said, studiously not looking at the evidence of Papyrus' minor panic attack looming overhead. “Here, mine could use some fresh air, too.” Sans summoned his own blaster, letting it hover over him while he got back to his task.


Attacks didn't need fresh air, and the blasters weren't pets, but Papyrus appreciated the attempt to make him feel better. Or maybe not better, but less like a rattling bundle of nerves. Less weird.


He hated to admit it, but he was more relaxed this way. He couldn't very well walk around Snowdin with his blaster trailing along behind him, but out here in the woods there was no harm.


Papyrus sighed, turning his attention back to the iced-over mechanism. Switching the torch back on, he set about carefully melting the ice without also melting the wiring.


“You're not as jumpy as you were,” Sans said. He'd managed to successfully pry up the panel of his next pressure plate, prodding disinterestedly at the mechanism inside.


“I hate that it still happens at all. It's been a month.” It was embarrassing, how twitchy he was. He tried to keep the anxiety under control, holding it tight like wild magic. And, like wild magic, it slipped out anyway, generally at the most inopportune times.


Some days it felt as though Papyrus was just the vehicle carrying his collection of scars around, with nothing of importance underneath. Most of the time he could ignore that feeling and carry on, but it was always just a step behind him, waiting for an unguarded moment or a sudden noise.


Sans gave him a look. “A month isn't that long, bro. You're getting better.” He grinned, brandishing a screwdriver. “If any punks give you crap about it, I'll have Grillby pay them a visit, scare 'em straight. You've got street cred with those old boys now.”


Despite himself, Papyrus laughed. What was the quiet bartender meant to do, glare disapprovingly? He didn't even have visible eyes, glasses notwithstanding. “He's not very scary.”


“Ah, you've clearly never seen him on the first of the month when he calls all the tabs in.” Sans shivered. “It's bone-chilling, bro.” He blinked, brow knitted as he mulled over his own pun. “...Ironically enough.”


Papyrus had to remind himself to groan, but he did it. “Ugh. Well,” he said, “I can hardly blame the man, with the kind of tab you run up.”


His comment earned him a snowball to the head. A week ago, the sharp paf of packed snow against his skull would have resulted in more than a momentary flinch. Maybe Sans had a point. Papyrus was making progress; it was just slower than he'd like.


Sans huffed in mock affrontery. “Hey! I don't even have a tab running this month, thank you very much.”


Papyrus gave his brother an apologetic half-smile. “That is true. Sorry.” Sans hadn't spent nearly as much time at Grillby's as he used to. When he did go, no one let him pay for anything. Whether that was out of gratitude or guilt, Papyrus didn't know. Maybe both. It should be both.


But that was unkind. Mistakes had been made, and gossip was just part of monster nature.


They worked in silence for a few minutes.


“Everyone has been very patient with me,” Papyrus said, still chewing over Sans' joking offer.


Sans sat back, scratching his face and leaving a smudge of grease. “Yeah, they better be. You're the hero of Snowdin. Heh.” He grinned a knowing grin.


Papyrus couldn't keep the grimace from his face. He hated that title. The whole idea was tainted for him now. He wasn't that story Undyne had told them all, wasn't some dashing, battle-scarred guardian. Truth be told, he was a mess.


The truth wouldn't be told. Not the full truth, anyway. And so Papyrus fidgeted on his pedestal.


He and Sans lapsed back into comfortable quiet. The longer his blaster hovered over him as he worked, the more the tight knot of anxiety loosened in Papyrus' chest. It was funny, how little he noticed the tension he always carried now. He let it go, little by little, while he thawed the puzzle mechanisms.


It was nice until it wasn't.


Sans looked up when Papyrus sniffled a little too loud. “You okay?”


Papyrus nodded. When had he started crying? He was having a good day. Nothing bad was happening.


“Didn't burn yourself, did you?”


Papyrus shook his head.


Sans frowned. “Alright. Just, um, checking.”


He couldn't have a few hours of normalcy, it seemed. Loosening the knot meant all the mess came spilling out in tangles. It took a minute for Papyrus to decide what to do, for the stuck pages in his head to flutter open. Maybe it was something about being outside instead of in the house that made it a little easier to think about him. Or maybe he really was just getting better with time. Slowly.


“He kept me company when I did things like this, sometimes,” he said, just above a whisper.


“Oh.” Sans switched off the hair dryer and walked over, ready to pack up the gear. “Do you wanna go home, then? We can if you want.” All traces of levity gone, he stood by, patient and watchful.


Papyrus shook his head. “I can't just...not do things.”


“Okay. Just say the word if you change your mind,” Sans said. He reached up to give Papyrus' blaster a quick scritch on the jaw before heading back to his share of the work.


A feeling of safety and peace bloomed in Papyrus' soul, passed along through his connection with his blaster. It crowded out some of the sorrow, grounded him in the here and now.


“I think...I think I miss him.” Papyrus switched off the blowtorch before he lost track of the flame and set himself on fire. He stared hard at the frozen puzzle innards in front of him. “Is that insane?”


Sans was back at his side in an instant, literally. The puff of displaced air blew a layer of snow into the mechanism. “No,” Sans said, slinging an arm around Papyrus' shoulders. “You're not insane; you're you. I don't think you have it in you to really hate anyone.”


Rubbing at his eye sockets, Papyrus couldn't help a slight, rueful smile. Weak and stupid, just like Flowey said he was. A silly idiot.


Flowey would have been disgusted to know that he was missed. That Papyrus was mourning him, despite everything.


“It's fine,” Sans said, forcing a grin. “I can hate for both of us.” His anger radiated from him, almost palpable, not directed at Papyrus but at someone a month dead.


“It'd be easier if I could hate him, I think.” Any rational person would. The things Flowey had done and threatened to do were unpardonable. An innocent monster was dead, his friends had been put in terrible danger, and Papyrus had memories and scars and a new level of violence that he would never be rid of.


Flowey was gone now, but Papyrus couldn't go back.


“I feel like I'll wake up and these last few weeks will all have been a dream, and he'll be outside waiting for me.” Papyrus regretted saying that aloud as soon as the words were out. His brother's arm tightened around his shoulders.


“He's dead.” Sans pronounced this like the words were blocks of granite. “But in the unlikely event of a zombie plant, we'll just kill him again. Right?”


Papyrus wondered how unlikely that truly was. Flowey...Asriel had been dead already, hadn't he? Who was to say…? No. No, they'd burned everything that was left. He wouldn't let paranoia get a toehold. He was getting better.


Asriel was gone for good.


More words he didn't really want to say but couldn't really stop trickled out, giving voice to a thought that had worn deep ruts in his mind over the last month. “I wish there had been something...if I could have...”


How many lives was one life worth? It depended on the life, didn't it?


“That thing made his choices, just like the rest of us,” Sans snapped, grin falling into a scowl. “There's always a choice.” His expression softened. “You did the right thing, bro.”


It didn't feel like the right thing. If Flowey was on the hook for his choices, then Papyrus was, too. He'd chosen whose life was worth more, whose life had to end. What's more, he knew he'd make the same choice again without a second thought.


There at the end, at the moment of the final blow, he had brought all his remaining strength to bear with the single, suicidal goal of making sure Flowey did not survive. It had been an execution, not self defense.


His friends and his neighbors were worth more. Sans was worth more. Papyrus would do it again.


Spent magic drifted down around them as Papyrus' blaster dissipated.


“Are you sure you don't want to go home?”


Papyrus shook his head. “I'll be fine,” he said, turning the blowtorch over in his hands. He looked down into the partially-thawed switch mechanism. This job was going to take a lot of time still. “Maybe we could just sit here a little longer?”


“Sure, bro.” Sans leaned against him, solid and comforting. The shadow of his own blaster, still present, lay over them. “Take all the time you need.”


Minutes ticked by, silent, unraveling like an untied knot. A chill breeze shook the trees. The pine needles rustled a soothing whisper.


Every minute that passed took him farther away from Flowey. Farther away from everything that had happened. He was getting better. He'd keep getting better. He had Sans and all his friends nearby to help him. He just needed time, surely.


At last, Papyrus nodded and re-lit the blowtorch.


They got back to work.


Notes:

And that's all she wrote! We'll leave them here for the time being. :)

Thank you again for reading, and for making me feel welcome in the fandom. This has been a great experience, and I'm not done yet. (Maybe sticking to shorter works for a good long while, though!) Take care!