/Okay, so. Honesty time: I'm enough of a nerd that since the first genocide playthrough I ever watched, I started looking into quantum mechanics as best as I could and trying to see if there was a way they would fit into the canon without it just being a fourth wall breaking piece of shit. Toby Fox doesn't do things without reason, and there's no way that Sans is a fourth-wall breaking headache for the sake of it considering the layered development - and how much thought and time toby put into the game overall. And... I found out two things: (a) there actually is if I am understanding the material I am reading correctly (Which I think I am, but who knows because the other thing I found out is-) (b) I literally get a migraine from quantum mechanics. Also, my headcanon (briefly touched upon in the last chapter) is that he uses gravity magic to bend the fabric of space-time, but it uses a lot of energy and he cannot muster enough to do more than move through quantum layers to move from one area to another. Any more than that puts too much strain on his magic and soul - he's already tried.
I am not a theoretical physist in any means, but I am always open to discussions and personal theories also, especially if anyone has any personal takes from a more informed standpoint.

TL;DR - Quantum physics makes my brain literally hurt and any errors in this bit of the story are my own hahaha. (also dammit toby, we need answers! XD) Thanks for keeping reading, I will stop rambling now :D \\

Frisk hasn't left the side of the bed for an hour, keeping a hand over his and biting their lip. They cry out for Alphys excitedly when they feel the bony hand twitch under theirs. The eye sockets closed and open a couple of times, desperately trying to catch up to where he was around the fog. He can't make out all the words yet, Alphys' rambling and Frisk's concern jumble into a mess of sound. His head hurts. He goes to move, but feels hands on him.

Man, he's tired. It feels like he hasn't got an ounce of magic left in his body.

He lets his eye sockets drift close, and lapses into sleep. Chara sits themselves down by his feet, and lets him be. They look at Frisk, then back to where their legs would be if they had an actual body rather than a spiritual one. They wonder if, once he's awake, he will let them apologize. But for now, they let him sleep, settling in to wait patiently. Well, as patiently as they can manage.

Frisk ended up having to bring Papyrus to see his brother at the end of the first day after the whole incident - they couldn't keep lying about where he was or that he was fine. And they thought that Sans would appreciate waking up in anywhere but the lab. Alphys had to explain to him and Undyne what the lab was, where it was, and what happened. And now, with Undyne's help, she was preparing to tell the families of the amalgamations what happened to their family. Papyrus hasn't been so easy to settle, but Frisk keeps him as calm as possible and neither of them have left Sans alone for long - leaving him in shifts if either needs to leave the house for any reason. Despite it all, Frisk allows themself a small smile. It might not be all happening in the same way, but this timeline still has the pieces, and were falling into the places they needed to be to get the good ending. What they have come to realise is the best ending, even if there is no Asriel. And they were determined that this one was going to be it, no matter what.

No more resets.

"HUMAN-FRISK! HE'S AWAKE!"
The holler comes three days later, thick with relief and excitement. They take the stairs two at a time with a glass of water for him in hand. Sans yawns and stretches, realigning the bones through his body to try and unstiffen as he's been laid on his side since being put down there. "not s'loud pap…" he mumbles sleepily before falling back over onto his side.
"SORRY." it's an inside voice, so Frisk shoots him a thumbs up before setting the glass down beside Sans' head.
how long was i out of it? he asks, letting the water refresh him.
Three days. Everyone's been worried.
jeez, no wonder papyrus sounds like he's about to climb out of his skin. Then he rubs the sleep out of his eye sockets and takes a proper look at his brother. The expression on his face is ready to break at any minute. "...don't cry, pap. c'mere." He grabs his brother's hand and pulls him down to his level before wrapping him in a hug. He would normally tease him about it, but after being asleep for three days, he was gonna let him have it for now.
"I'M NOT CRYING! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, DO NOT CRY AND ALSO NEVER ONCE DOUBTED THAT MY L-LAZYBONES BROTHER WAS GOING TO W-WAKE UP." Sans chuckles softly at the voice muffled in his rumpled hoodie. "I HAVE SOMETHING IN MY EYES, THAT'S ALL."
"is that so? and what's that then?"
"TEARS!" his little brother exclaims, and Sans just pats his back with a quiet chuckle. As soon as Papyrus has let it out of his system and moved away, he's then met with a tackle of arms around him again, this time more fleshy.
"sorry kiddo."
"You slept a skele-ton." He laughs, quick but genuine, and Frisk lets him go with a grin.
Frisk, no!
"SANS NO!"
"he he he, sleeping that long is the stuff of dreams."
"I thought you would get tired of sleeping!"
"PLEASE STOP."
I'm with the tall one on this one.
"nah, it comes naturally. i can do it with my eyes closed." both Frisk and Sans share a laugh, and the nervous tension in the room dissipates as Papyrus grumbles something to himself and goes downstairs to find them something to eat. "what did I miss?"
"Nothing, really. I couldn't go on to new home without you about… and I didn't want to anyway. Undyne and Alphys are talking to the families of the amalgamates, and Alphys wants to get you in for another round of readings when you're feeling up to it. Oh! And Mom stopped by yesterday and will probably be in later, but that's about it."
"...who?"
"Oh! Toriel. Sorry. I called her when… you wouldn't wake up. Nobody knew what to do, so I thought I would give her a call and see if she had any ideas. She wasn't able to stay because of her duties in the ruins, but she came and visited for a couple of hours in the evening. She said that she normally has a couple of hours free in that time anyway and she was going to feel bonely if she was sat around doing nothing."
Those were her exact words. She's only got worse since I knew her. But Sans notes the fondness and humour, rather than venom, to the statement.
"did alph have any ideas on how to put chara back?" He's met with silence on bother sides, and he shrugs. "'kay. i'm gonna shower in that case."

Frisk nods and leaves him to give Sans time pull himself together after being out of it for so long.

I've been thinking.
uh oh. He turns the water off, he'd pretty much just stood under the hot water letting it loosen his sleep stiff joints. He steps out and grabs a towel.
No, hear me out before you say anything.
i'm all ears
You don't have ears. Sans laughs, making his way back to his room. He grabs clothes from the drawer and starts pulling them on. Should we hold off?
Sans pauses, halfway through pulling on shorts. ...what do you mean?
Well. I mean, I don't know what your theory was behind this whole idea, but… I… kind of… enjoy being myself again. Sitting and listening to mom tell her bad jokes, the way she laughed when you were talking through the door, feeling things other than hate and anger. He goes back to pulling on clothes, but slowly as he listens. And other than that, I don't know if or how being attached to Frisk's determination is going to affect how I'm feeling right now. Especially with the power to reset, and that temptation.
you're free of LOVE right now, as is frisk so it might not be a problem.
But it might.
don't know until we talk to alph, so it's not worth worrying about yet. He shrugs, shoving his feet in his slippers, grabbing a notepad from the drawer, and starting to make his way downstairs.
You make everything sound so easy.
it's not easy, it's prioritising and right now i am prioritising 'i have been asleep for 3 days and i could even manage a plate of pap's cooking'. Chara's laugh is the only response he gets. It still doesn't sit right with him, but he can do amicable. He might not ever be ready to actually be friends, but he can definitely manage amicable for now.

The morning passes in a pleasant blur to a backing track of Papyrus enthusiastically catching him up on everything that had been going on while he had been sleeping, him sat with his back against the arm of the couch, notepad on his knees as a prop and Frisk sat by his feet chiming in with the odd detail and joke every now and again, sending a few texts through the morning. Breakfast, surprisingly, is actually some pie apparently left by "clone Asgore" as his brother has seems to have dubbed Toriel, and his stomach is very grateful for that. And his sense of tastes - it is amazing. He's happy to just take the morning lazily, jotting the odd thing down on the pad in his preferred font, wing dings being the way he prefers to do anything for thinking over later. Old habits dying hard and all that. It's about lunchtime when Papyrus decided he's going to go tell Undyne (and no doubt the whole town on his way) the good news. As soon as he's gone, Chara gives Sans a mental poke.

Hey. Can I ask a favour?
shoot.
I wanna speak to Frisk. Just quickly. He pauses, debating with himself. I... want to apologize to them.

"Frisk?" Frisk's head whips around, and they narrow their eyes at them. Chara sets aside the notepad and tucks Sans' feet up under his pelvis, sitting more comfortably. "I asked first, don't look at me like that." The look stays the same. They sigh, and drop their gaze to their currently boney hands. "I need to apologize. I can understand if you can't forgive me, but… I needed to say it. I've gained some… perspective. And no matter what happens or how this ends, I wanted you to know that I'm sorry.." red fades to white before frisk replies, and San's shakes his head, straightening himself out.
not even going to wait to see what they say? and i told you you could speak to them, not throw my spine out of alignment - i haven't got fleshy parts to keep them in place.
Sorry, I forgot. And as for Frisk... I can hear it anyway. But I know them, and they're going to want to think on it for a bit.
Frisk nods for now, and they sit looking thoughtful.
"kid, think about it for a while. for now, we should probably think about speaking to alphys."
"Yeah, I want answers too."

They enter the lab in the same way, this time Alphys is sat at her desk upstairs making a phone call. Frisk watches Sans quietly walk round to the up elevator, then look back at them and nod. They SAVE, and then he walks up and around behind her. They don't know how he does it, but the last step into her personal space coincides with her hanging up.
"what'cha doin' alph?" And again, without fail, she shrieks, phone clattering to the floor and nearly jumping out of her skin. She whirls around and'
"SANS!" she throws her arms around him as he laughs, then realises that she'd done so and quickly steps back and moves away. "I-I-I've- I mean, we've all b-been worried!"
"heh, it's been a long time since i've run that low. sorry."
"Well… a-as long as y-you're o-okay…."
"i had a good power nap." He's given a worried look as he hears Chara scoff. "that's not gonna stop you from putting me in the machine, is it?"
"N-no. A-and you've got some e-e-explaining to do. Y-you lied about w-why you wanted to have the sc-scans and made me th-think I-I'd done something… this i-is like wh-when you left your p-position, all over again! Y-You keep d-d-doing this!" she rants at him, throwing her hands up. She takes a breath, then finishes quietly. "...you had the same l-look about you too…"

He rubs the back of his skull, ashamed. "sorry, alph, i had no idea that was going to happen. but yeah, i guess an explanation is the least i owe you."

She points an angry claw at him, then drops it along with whatever she was about to say. She instead huffs, then gives him a smile. "W-well, until i-it went haywire, it was nice w-working with y-you again."
"...was it…"
"D-don't say it, i know that t-tone-"
"sansational?"

"W-we'll meet you downstairs."

He's sat on the waiting couch with Frisk next to him, looking at his soul in the jar in the smaller version of the scanner. There's nothing but relief that the fractures seem to be gone - Frisk's thinking the same thing by the look on their face. You know, it's weird when you monsters just put them on display like that.
it's not like it feels great either, but it's better than being sat in the machine.
Why do you hate it so much? He just shrugs, and they drop it knowing that it's probably also filed under 'nunya'. At this moment, Alphys starts the scan, turning to him.
"So, I-I'm doing my bit. Y-your turn."
"gee, alph, you getting all assertive on me now?" He receives two unimpressed looks and a mental unimpressed grumble. "fine, fine. you know when i left the dt project, i told you i was going to focus on the quantum thing i was working on." It doesn't even take effort to say 'I' instead of 'we' any more when talking to her, he notices with a small twinge of sadness.
"The effects of quantum layers, possible links in integral pathways and alternate universes, and the effects on monsters and the increase in deja vu among the citizens, r-right? St-still can't believe you called it a 'passion project'." Just that sentence made Frisk's head hurt.
The what now? Chara sounds just as puzzled as Frisk looks.
"that's the one."
"S-so you made a breakthrough after all?"

He takes a breath, and Frisk sees science mode go into overdrive in his eye lights.

"kind of. you might want to get that scan printed, because it's gonna be so far from what you were expecting. even by the normal standard, you are not going to believe this." It takes a few moments, but the printer spits out the information and without moving he grabs both the paper and the soul containment jar with blue magic. His levels were his usual level of odd, and his soul is back where it's supposed to be. And now, he officially has nothing to stall this with anymore. He pushes it out because if he stops, he's not going to get the courage to start again. "well, i found evidence of timelines looping back on themselves, fracturing and jumping away from their start point, away from their end points. they would stop and start, curves became spirals, they folded back on themselves, sometimes over and over. i theorised that this was the cause of deja vu, timelines and the fabrics of space-time touching where they shouldn't be, that kind of thing. looking into it further, at any one point, there can only be one point of origin, existing both inside and outside of the timeline at the same time. something that can and can't exist at the same time… an anomaly. i traced the timelines back, kept my ear out for instances of deja vu and predictions of small events from monsters who have no previous evidence of precognition. i found it, tried appeasing it in the first place, tried hunting it when it got bored of playing nice-" he is not mentioning what the first anomaly is, Alphys is working past one lot of guilt already "-but it was pointless in the end. nothing i did changed it, and i noticed every time i caused it to die, the timeline would be consumed and would go back to another start point. think of these start points like a SAVE in a video game. a point in time in which the anomaly decided on a course of action and was determined to see it through no matter what, so whatever 'progress' they've made up until that point gets stored outside of time, and they can return to that point if they die or make a mistake… or get bored and decide they want to change thing up a bit - for better or worse. i used to keep track of everything, what happened to us all before i would cause a LOAD, to keep the video game analogy, or a reset. sometimes it would reset completely, i finally noticed, with no feelings of deja vu but they were a lot harder to keep track of and predict, so i stopped trying to track them specifically. a 'true reset' if you will, like they had never been in the first place. not even with knowing it was happening could make me remember; but between the findings and my observations of the underground, and learning to read into and trust both the deja vu - if it felt like it had happened before it probably had done - and the data stored on other paths or touching threads looping back. so yeah, nothing worked. then all of a sudden, the feelings of deja vu settled, the time lines straightened out… well, they stopped looping and fracturing at least, and for a while, everything settled down. then, all of a sudden, it started happening again except this time, at the end, several timelines merged and came to a dead end. i went straight to what i thought was the source, but it became readily apparent that it wasn't them. hunt number two was on…. And i found them. again, I tried the same things, again it seemed as pointless as the first time, but hey. i'm always being told i'm stubborn." He shrugs and for the first time since he started explaining, he looks at the audience of two.

I was wrong. I don't want to know any of this. My head hurts. Sorry, three. Frisk is sat wide-eyed, just staring at him silently. Alphys looks like she's ready to pass out, but is slowly digesting the information as best as she can.

think i might have got carried away a bit. oops.
You 'think'?
i could go into the actual quantum science behind it if you really like? after all, we've pretty much got all the time in the world considering past present and future probably exist simultaneously-
Bleugh, please stop before i make you vomit. Sans laughs quietly to himself.

"So… what d-does that have to d-d-do with the scan?" Alphys puts her hands on either side of her head and tries to start massaging out the headache that probably all but him had right now. To be fair, he's had a whole lot longer than most to wrap his head around it.
"sorry, i got carried away on the context, huh? so, long story short, when the anomaly-"
"Me." Frisk says quietly, then looks at him with a smile. "If she's knowing everything, then it's only fair she knows that too."
Alphys jerks her head towards Frisk with a startled squeak. "Wh-WHAT?!"
"I'm the second anon- anomon- I'm the second one."
"when frisk," he continues, drawing Alphys attention before the freaking out gets into full swing otherwise they were never going to get there. "made the last reset, the conditions were… dramatically different. normally, a reset causes all the conditions to reset to the initial 'world SAVE' point - in this case, when they fell - which is just a common point for the majority of timelines to merge and branch from. The 'new game' button, if we're sticking to the video game analogy. and this is where it gets messy."

"...M-messy." Alphys repeats.

"My determination, which is how I do all the resets and the loads and saves, woke another person up when I fell. They didn't have their own soul, but they were also determined."
Can I-
...you know what? sure. i'm getting tired of talking for now anyway. He mentally shrugs and lets Chara take over.

"Uhh… that would be me."

"Sa… oh god." Alphys slides off her chair, looking a very pale shade of yellow. Frisk runs and fetches some water while Chara helps her up and over to the couch. They wait for her to indicate that she's ready to continue.
"That's Chara. Through most of the timelines, they were attached to my determination."
"Th-Then… h-how… w-w-why…" Frisk pauses, looking down at their hands quietly as Alphys tries to fram the question. Chara takes up the explanation.
"We made some bad choices. Frisk… and I… we were getting bored. We'd reset hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times trying to save everyone. Frisk kept resetting, and someone would always be sacrificed or left behind. It didn't matter how we did it. Frisk… took her frustration out on some monsters in the ruins on my advice. They regretted it and made their way to the reset point, but… I… didn't want to. We would end up arguing and bickering. I wanted the feeling of power back - for a while I had felt like a person tied down to a chair and forced to watch a movie on repeat and that feeling of power in Frisk's soul… I liked it. So in the end, after enough pushing, I managed to figure out how to influence them."
"A-and now y-you're…"
"No! I mean, no. This isn't the same. Sans is… very good at keeping a damper on me, I found."
aww, was that a compliment? i'm flattered.
Yeah, yeah. "He's letting me speak to you, and I'm not really in the mood for a hostile takeover. We don't share thoughts and memories. We can communicate, sometimes sense… feelings… but it's not a sharing thing."
"O-oh. Okay… so… you influenced Frisk?"
"We killed everyone." Frisk speaks softly, Chara takes their hand.
"Mostly it was me. I… I took control, fueled by LOVE. And there, in the hall, was Sans to meet us. He was always in the hall to meet us. Normally, it was… well, I'm going to be honest, and you-" they tap their forehead to make sure Sans knows exactly who they mean by the 'you' "-will say nothing. Not a damned word. Sans is not easy to fight; it got to the point where he was the only real obstacle anymore." not saying a word. So much smug. So much. "Yeah, yeah, can it. But anyway, he was an obstacle, but one we could normally overcome in the end. This time, however… not so much, and I got desperate. I was determined to force us to the end of the road so I could… i guess 'consume the timeline', as he put it, is the best phrase… and I got desperate. Next thing I know, I wake up next to him."

Chara steps back into his mind, and Sans is back to being himself with red fading to white as Frisk speaks up. "I think… I think he injected himself with determination."

Sans looks away from Alphys as she looks at him in horror. "don't ask me why, beyond thinking that it was going to be reset so it didn't matter, because i don't remember what i was thinking in that timeline."
"That's why we came to find you. To see if there's a way we can disconnect them."

"I… I need a-a m-m-minute."

They wait as Alphys takes a minute to process the info dump she had received. It was a bit like watching a computer blue-screen and reboot, Sans thought to himself with an odd sense of amusement. odd, because he definitely shouldn't be amused right now, and Chara's not. Welp, chalk it up to an odd sense of humour.

"This is… l-l-l-like something r-right out of an anime!" She eventually cried when brain caught up.
...she's kidding, right? Frisk looks at her, between amusement and confused exasperation. Sans just shrugs.
"whatever helps you process it, i guess."
"Why haven't you told anyone, Sans? Can you imagine the implications? The-"
"no." he interrupts her, sockets dark and deadly serious. She freezes. The pupils blink back in. "quantum mechanics and theories are delicate and impermanent at best anyway, but beyond that… do you want to be the one to tell everyone that at any minute their lives could go back god knows how long because someone felt like it? or that their deja vu is not actually that but memories they don't remember from who knows when?" Alphys shakes her head after thinking about it for a moment. "this isn't some missing family members, alph. this is… mass panic, at very best." He knew how the knowledge made him feel, let alone spreading that across the underground. "everyone has hope still. we can't destroy that."
She sighs, deflating. "Y-yeah, I know. B-but I d-don't want t-t-to have to keep k-keeping s-secrets, either."
"i know, alph. i know. and i know that it's not fair to ask, either, but that's the trouble with the truth - it can make everything better and it can make everything worse. but that's why i'm gonna tell you now… i had frisk make a save when we came in. once you've heard us out, and got your answers, you have a choice. if you don't feel like it's a secret you can or want to keep… they can load to before you knew all this." Frisk nods. "i'm not going to be the one to tell you that you have to sit on this world changing secret… not when you just started getting to being your old self again."

"...I… I d-don't…"

"You don't have to answer now. one thing at a time."

"O-one thing at a…? o-oh, right. I-I f-f-forgot." She looks around to find the paper that Chara had put aside when they helped her to the couch and found that she had been leaning on it on top of the arm. She looks at the readings, and he watches her pale again. "N-no, this can't be right. They're st-still so high…"
"that's my baseline."
She looks up at him, jaw dropped open. "Th-th-that's not-"
"yup."
"B-But these are…. I mean, they're n-not quite as high as the h-h-human souls, b-but these are almost h-human levels, Sans. O-or, near enough. N-No m-m-monster soul should b-be able to s-sustain these. N-n-not in a way that k-keeps them upright and…"
"not a puddle?" Alphys flinches, but he doesn't offer an apology for the blunt phrasing. "either way, that's what they've always been."

...What?

"Uhm… can I see?" Frisk speaks up. Alphys hands them the paper distractedly, staring at him like he was going to break at any moment. They don't understand much of it at all, but they can recognise the colours on the graph near the bottom of the paper. Most of them are fairly low, the red bar is slightly higher but they assume that is Chara's spirit doing that. No, there were two bars that stood out on the page like sore spots. The light blue and the yellow ones. "Why are they that much higher?"
Sans shrugs, starting to look uncomfortable under Alphys' unblinking clinical gaze. It looks like she's on the verge of an epiphany.
What do the blue and yellow mean?
what?
Well, Alphys is freaking out that you should be like the amalgamates, and the high bars were light blue and yellow. In that… void, the lights that held me were always blue and yellow. I can add two and two and make a link to four.
just wait. i need to get her to finish helping me and i can tell you for sure.
Well, it's taki- they take a breath. Okay. okay I'll wait.
"i'm not gonna grow a second head, alphys. they've read like that since forever, i assume, because every scan i've done has turned out the same." Or the ones Gaster did...
"But they- wait. Why were you doing scans on y-yourself?"
"because… i was trying to figure out why my magic was 'broken'. or, that's what I thought when i first realised it worked differently, that i wasn't doing more than 1 damage. i... kinda... snuck down here and did a few scans under different conditions but nothing changed them that i could find beyond the standard of the readings being slightly higher whilst channeling magic."
"D-Different how?"
"it's really, really hard to explain, not least because i don't understand it. karma is the best way i can describe it."
"...I don't… understand… and I c-can't even begin to understand until I at least see-"
"no. it's something that i can only show, not tell, and you don't need that right now."

You're going to have to.
i didn't ask you. alph's just started-

"Sans." She levels him with a look which cuts into his line of thought. "Y-you came to me f-for help… y-you've dumped all this information o-on me th-that I can't t-tell anyone… and now you're going to th-throw all of i-it away b-because y-you don't f-feel like it?"
"..." She has a point. If you want us to solve this, we need ALL the information. You can't just hold out now. She knows the worst of things anyway.
but-
She's gonna feel bad, yes, but you… you need to do this. And, also, it's her choice. Beside's, it's about time you got your own answers about your magic, so you can put your own doubts at ease. I haven't forgotten our little chat… have you?

He holds out his hand, and a bone materialises just above his palm, blue and ethereal. Heh, blue stop signs.

"you need to be sure before you pass through it, alph. it's… not going to feel good." He takes a moment to look through her, and isn't surprised. The DT mistakes took a pretty large toll on her soul, not enough that she started to distance, but enough that things were probably just about to take a very large nosedive south. "it's really not going to feel good." She brings her hand up, touching his arm lightly and taking a moment to really pull herself together and speak firmly.
"I need to know to be able to help. You… you never ask anyone for help, you've carried all this information that would have driven anyone mad... alone. I need to do this, because you deserve helping as much as anyone else does." And with that, she passed a claw through the bone.

She comes to, throat sore from crying and with Sans holding each side of her face. He looks terrified, and Frisk over his shoulder is looking equally worried. She sees half a bisicle in his hand, then tastes the sweetness on her teeth and feels the food converting to energy which transfers to HP to fill the void.
"you're okay, alph. you're okay. please be okay."
"..." her eyes focus more and he notices that she's actually looking into his eye sockets.
"thank god. eat the rest of this, it'll help. i can't… i can't heal you."

She takes it and starts eating it quietly. He's right, as the HP is restored, it feels like hooks are being slowly removed out of her back. Not hooks, claws. Claws and weights. As soon as she feels better, she thinks of the chart's readings. Patience. Justice. Ha, justice. So, so, so fitting for how that's just done a number on her and how things are running through her head. She starts laughing, and it feels like she'll never stop. Both Frisk and Sans look at each other, waiting nervously for it to pass. As soon as she can breathe, she makes an effort to wipe the tears out of her eyes. They weren't happy laughs - she could still feel herself teetering on the edge of hysteria.

"Well. Your m-magic definitely isn't b-broken."

"don't worry about-"

"No. let me just…" She takes a breath, and gathers herself together, making an effort not to stammer to sound firm. "Sans… I know you. Or, a-at least how you work when you're in the lab and how you attack a problem. You're going to have your own theory a-already, and you're just looking for someone to back it up or disprove it. I d-don't appreciate being used like that, you might not have intended it to be like that but that's how it feels. I'm just… I'm going to tell you what you want to hear without you interrupting and you're going to leave." She's tired and hurting. She's going to regret talking to him like this later, she knows it but right now, she can't find it in her to care about his feelings and just wants to push him away as far as possible. It feels like after everything first went wrong. "Your magic feeds from the high levels of justice in your soul, probably, and to a lesser extent the patience. They probably keep each other in check enough that your body can hold itself together, but only barely. My guess without tests is that the levels counteract each other and from that you are still alive without your soul tearing itself apart, but with one single hit point." She chuckles harshly. "If we'd known about this, maybe the DT experiments might have gone differently. Maybe we could have actually saved everyone. But because you can't ever ask for help, they failed and we failed. Your magic attacks the essence of a monster, it makes wounds on the soul based on how much they 'deserve' it. Hope that tells you what you need because I'm going to go… anywhere that's not here."

She stands and walks off, and Frisk watches Sans closely.

He gives she's right of course, yet another thing you've gone and fucked up, Sans no indication that the words had more dust on your hands but I suppose in this case it's not technically dust, just goop of monsters that had fallen down any effect on him, standing as casual as always. Frisk hated trying to read the skeleton, they still failed miserably at it. However, Sans could still read them like a book. "i can see what you're thinking. do what you will kiddo, you will anyways. make sure you do it for the right reasons, though. she didn't say anything untrue." He looks after where Alphys went, and shoves his hands in his pockets. "and if you do, just… tell the other sans that we have the right idea; it's linked. he'll explain, i'm sure." and he blinks out. Frisk chews their lip, trying to decide. They nearly don't, but... he left them down here without taking them with him. That worries Frisk for a reason they can't put their finger on, and even worse - they are 1000 percent sure they won't find him if they tried.

Sans nods at Frisk from the bottom of the escalator, and Frisk shakes their head sadly. Sans pauses then backs off from the escalator. He opens a shortcut and they head back to the house. Together.