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mystery-fic-anon · 2 years

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I met God and He’s a Bonehead

Summary: While dragging his injured brother through the woods after an ambush, Red runs into a mysterious skeleton called Sans. (yes, this is a first meet story.)

Warnings: some semi-graphic descriptions of Edge being injured, including broken bones.

This is inspired by days 5 and 6 fantasy prompt for Kustard week, Fairy King/Queen and Forest God. I had a lot of fun with it, I hope y’all do too :) Also note that despite the lighthearted title, this fic is a bit heavy in some places. I tried to balance it.

Thank you to @nugget4550 for beta reading, I appreciate it.

Read it on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41623497

Red wasn’t strong enough for this. He wasn’t in shape enough to jog through the forest on his own, let alone when he was pulling so much dead weight. He shifted his grip on Edge’s breastplate, pulling Edge higher up on his back. His legs dragged on the ground behind Red, catching on every tree root in their path. Red was getting yanked off balance with every step, and he almost dropped Edge again as Edge’s pants got hooked on a low-hanging branch.

“Motherfucker!” Red jerked to the side, the pants tore. Edge groaned as he was jostled, and Red felt him tense up. “Shit, sorry boss.”

Red reached up with one hand, patting Edge’s right shoulder. He ran his hand down Edge’s arm, and sighed in relief. Edge’s scarf was still holding his arm in place. Red felt the place where Edge’s bone was out of place, and quickly pulled his hand back. He wiped it on his jacket, and then reached up again to tap Edge’s skull. The wound on his head had stopped bleeding, but Edge still wasn’t waking up.

He had wasted too much time, he needed to move his bony ass. His adrenaline was wearing off, and Red wasn’t really running any more. He was trying to move as fast as he could, but his legs were shaking, and the joints in his fingers ached. He looked behind him as best he could with his brother lying on his back, but he didn’t see anyone.

There was no way he wasn’t being followed, though. It wasn’t easy to ambush a royal guard, and Red had seen at least six monsters jump out of the trees before he and Edge had been buried in attacks. If Red didn’t find a safe place to hide and heal, he and Edge would be taken or dusted. Red wasn’t sure which option was worse.

Hell, he wasn’t even sure where he was going any more. This wasn’t their usual patrol route, and the snowy forest was unfamiliar. Red was just pushing through trees at this point, trying to get further away from where they’d been attacked. He couldn’t hunker down too close by, or they would be found.

Suddenly, Red felt a prickle in his spine. He was being watched. He could feel it.

Red carefully laid Edge down against a tree trunk, and summoned a sharpened bone attack. He held it underneath his hand close to his body, so it would be hidden until someone tried to lunge at him. He stepped in front of Edge, looking around.

“Is that any way to greet a new pal?”

Red whirled around, swinging his bone at the voice behind his shoulder. A few sparkles of blue magic danced over the bone, but it didn’t make contact with anything. The wild swing made him stumble, and Red took a step forward to balance again.

“Show yourself you fucking coward!” Red yelled, looking frantically around. Whoever this monster was, they were either incredibly fast or they could take shortcuts like he did. Neither option was promising.

“Well, since you asked so nicely…” A skeleton popped into existence right in front of him, standing right by Edge’s boots. He was wearing the kind of baggy blue hoodie Red would wear on a lazy day at home, and he had some kind of weird flower crown on his head.

Red swung his bone again, aiming for the side of the weirdo’s skull.

The skeleton caught it like it was nothing, holding the clubbed top of the bone between two fingers. He looked at it, hummed, then looked back at Red. “Hey, that’s a pretty nice bone buddy, but this is getting old. Let’s try a new bit. You like knock knock jokes?”

Red stared at him in shock. He leaned back a bit, trying to pull the bone back to himself. The skeleton didn’t let go.

“Knock knock.” The skeleton grinned. Red wasn’t sure if he liked that smile. It was too mischievous, and entirely too light-hearted for what was going on.

After a minute, the skeleton leaned in and raised his other hand over his mouth, like he was stage whispering to Red. “This is the part where you say ‘who’s there’.”

Red clearly wasn’t getting out of this another way, so he decided to play along. “Who’s there.”

“Broken pencil.”

“Broken pencil who?” Red asked, trying to pry his bone attack loose from Sans’ grip again.

“Ah forget it, it’s point-less.”

The punchline caught Red off guard, and he actually laughed a bit. He quickly caught himself, glaring at Sans. Sans just kept smiling back, but the look in his eyelights seemed more amused than before.

“Who are you?” Red demanded.

“Sans.” The skeleton—Sans—held out his hand. “Sans the skeleton.”

“Red.” Red stuffed his free hand into the pocket of his shorts. “Also skeleton.”

“Heh, yeah, I got that part.”

“Look, I don’t know what your deal is, but I need to get going. If the fuckers coming after me find you here, they’re gonna—”

“Are you sure about that?” Sans asked, tilting his head a bit.

“What?”

“Are you sure they’re going to find me? Look around.”

Red didn’t usually take orders from anyone but his brother, but this time, he did what Sans told him to do. He shut his mouth and looked around again, listening intently.

The forest was quiet. Totally quiet. No screams in the distance, no taunting laughter of another monster closing in on him… Nothing, not even the sounds of animals.

“What the fuck?” Red asked, his tone suddenly far more hushed. He wasn’t an idiot. There was either something fundamentally wrong with this part of the forest, or a big predator on the move. Red couldn’t risk being caught if it was the second option.

“Yeah, you aren’t in Kansas any more Toto.” Sans waved his hand, and the forest around them shifted.

Suddenly, the wintry forest around them changed into something Red had never seen before. The trees all had leaves, vibrant shades of red and orange and yellow surrounding them. The pine trees were still green, but the shade was softer and more alive. A breeze rustled the leaves on the tops of the trees, and Red could swear he smelled cinnamon in the air.

“This is my place you walked into,” Sans said, sounding way too casual for Red’s comfort. “No one will find you or me here. They can’t get into this exclusive club.” He looked down at Edge, who was still unconscious. “I can heal that guy if you want.”

Red blinked. “Huh?”

“That guy.” Sans pointed at Edge. “The one you were dragging here. I can heal him up. He needs to wake up on his own, but I can at least close those cracks.”

Red let go of his bone and stepped back. “No fucking way am I letting you get near him.”

“Why not?” Sans stepped closer, and Red felt a prickling sensation run over him, from his hands down to his feet. “You’ve seen what I can do. Come on, let me at him. He’ll be good in no time.”

Red didn’t care what Sans was; he got up in Sans’ face and shook his clawed phalange right in front of Sans’ eye socket. “Do you think I’m still in stripes? I’m not going to let you do anything when I don’t know what you want in exchange! So come on, spit out your terms before I beat them out of you.”

Sans looked at Red for a few seconds, clearly thinking his words over. “Okay, then be my champion.”

More fucking riddles. Great. “The fuck does that mean?”

“I dunno.” Sans shrugged, and Red had to remind himself that trying to strangle this guy was probably a bad idea. “The only other being like me is my brother, and he hasn’t had a champion before. I know that old gods used to have tons of champions but nothing is really clear about what they do besides fight in your name. But I’m not really a fighting kind of guy. Why don’t you just come back, and we’ll chill out?”

“That’s it? No other tricks? You just want to hang out with someone? Fucking desperate.” Red snorted derisively.

Sans just shrugged again. “Eh, maybe. I’ve always been a lazybones, and you’re the first person to stumble across my place in a while. It’s easier for me to get you to come back.”

“Is there something else that could kill me in here?”

Sans sighed, but he spoke before Red could yell at him for being a condescending asswipe. “No harm will come to you when you’re in my part of the forest. Not from me, or from my brother.”

“Now, let me hold up my end of the deal.” Sans rolled his shoulders, the bones cracking a bit. He closed his eyes, and took a step back.

Suddenly, Red’s head began spinning. His vision blurred, and he felt like he’d just been rolled through the entire underground in a barrel. He closed his eyes and knelt down, grabbing on to Edge for stability. The feeling just got worse and worse. Red felt like he was going to dust from the pressure. Fuck, this was why you didn’t make deals with random strangers—

Everything stopped. Red sat up, rubbing his eyes. He somehow felt both like he’d run a marathon, and that he’d been asleep for fifty years. There was a sour aftertaste in his mouth, and he spat on the ground next to him.

“Nuuurgh.”

Red looked over at Edge. His eyes widened. The top of Edge’s skull was totally smooth; only the three scars that had been there for years remained. His arm had clearly been healed too, all of the bones were back in place. Even the superficial cuts and bruises on other parts of Edge’s body had been healed.

Red glanced at his own hands, and noticed the mark from where he’d grabbed an enemy’s attack was gone.

“What happened…” Edge sat up, rubbing his face.

Red moved back, giving him some space. “Uh…”

“Red?” Edge’s focus instantly sharpened, turning to him. “What’s going on? Are you hurt? Where are we?”

“Relax, boss.” Red put up his hands, his brain scrambling to think of a lie. It wasn’t usually this hard, but he was still tired and confused by what had just happened. “We’re safe. I was getting us both back to Snowdin the long way, but you weren’t doing so hot. Lucky for me, I found… a stash of healing supplies.” Red kept his poker face up, even as Edge’s glare bored into his soul. “Probably from one of the smugglers out here or something. Anyways, I fed you all of their stuff, then popped a couple of candies myself just before you woke up.”

Edge looked Red over, then looked at the trees around them. “Where was it hidden?”

“Up in one of the trees, but they had set up a branch so that if you pulled it, the stuff would fall down. Heh, probably didn’t want to try to climb a tree while they were bleeding.” Red stood up, ignoring his bones’ creaking protest. “We should probably get going, boss. Gotta get back home.”

Their height difference meant that even when Edge was sitting on the ground, Red was still barely taller than him. Red held on to that feeling of being taller though, doing his best to protect assurance, confidence, anything that would make Edge believe him. Or at least not ask any questions right now.

Edge nodded, and grabbed Red’s shoulder. He ignored Red’s yelp, using Red as a grip to pull himself up.

“We have to make a report to Undyne first, but I suppose I can do that while you go home. Straight home, not to Grillby’s.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Red was longing for some mustard, but he knew better than to argue right now.

He kept quiet, letting Edge lead the way through the woods. Neither of them really knew where they were going, but Edge had always liked puzzles and maps, so Red figured he could find their way out. Red glanced back a few times, but he didn’t see anything, and the trees where he’d met Sans quickly disappeared behind others.

Once they were about five minutes away, Red subtly scratched a line on one of the trees, angled so it was pointing back at the group of trees. If he was going to need to find his way back here, the least he could do was leave himself a clue.

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