His sockets blinked open numbly. The sight and smells were nothing like what they should have been. He stared at the foreign ceiling for a few drawn out moments, comprehension not quite dawning on him. It felt like he was apart from his body, even as it felt the comfiness of the mattress below it and drew in the completely alien room. Warning bells signaled in his mind, a distinct sense of wrong settling on his bones like ash rain after a catastrophic disaster.
His limbs refused to move, even in their newly healed form. He didn't know if it was something physical or mental that kept him there, locked in some sort of paralysis. It broke when he heard something moving.
"Who's there?" He called, springing up.
"Oh my!" A familiar voice spoke, sounding startled. Toriel.
Sans blinked. How unlikely. So he'd managed to get out of that one, although not unscathed.
"You're awake?"
"Yes." Sans nodded, reasonably sure that indeed that was the case here.
"Good." She purred warmly, and immediately she was on him, fretting over him. "I am Toriel, I take care of the ruins." Sans, baffled, tried to roll with it as she began to lead him into the kitchen, puppeteering him down the hall and up the stairs, murmuring encouragingly all the while. She steered him into a chair, patted him on the shoulder as if he were some lost child, and wandered off into the kitchen.
"I'll just fix you something to eat. Is pasta alright? I have some leftover butterscotch pie, how does that sound?"
Sans's heart ached at the mention of pasta. He slumped against the table, sighing deeply. "Whatever." He responded glumly. Toriel went suspiciously quiet after that.
He took in the world around him dully, listening to the clang of pots and pans and the soft hissing of bubbling water from the other room. The knots of the wooden table became his entire existence as all else seemed to fade away.
Toriel set a plate heaping with food in front of him. He gazed up at her, his eyes vaguely haunted. Why is she alive? How is he still here, either?
"Bone Appétit." She smiled in what seemed to be a comforting gesture.
"I've heard that before." Sans commented, turning her smile indignant.
He figures the polite thing to do is to sit up properly, so he manages it. He takes the fork, swirling the noodles around, uninterested. He can feel her soft gaze on him, sense all the fawning and fretting racing through her mind but not out her mouth. He's grateful, it was becoming too much for him to handle.
His appetite is a swirling pit, a nebulous void, a cascade of neverending nothingness.
He was aware he was being dramatic, so he ate the spaghetti anyway. He didn't have the heart to muster up any small talk. He chewed in silence and she watched from across the table, oddly quiet herself.
"Am I ever to know your name?" She asked finally.
Sans paused, returning to pushing the food around. "Sans." He said, voice soft. She nodded happily, overly pleased by such a standard gesture. But she doesn't truly understand the weight of it. For Sans, telling her his name was still special, rare, significant even now after all he'd been through. He didn't have the courage to bring up the fact they already knew each other.
"Are you feeling well, Sans?"
"Yes, thanks."
"Good to hear. Now- em. Is it entirely polite to ask how exactly you acquired such a wound?"
"It's a reasonable question," Sans admitted.
A pause.
"You won't tell me."
"Nope."
She looked faintly affronted but covered it by adjusting her glasses. "Well then." She breathed out sharply, laying her paws flat on the table. "As soon as you're well, I'm afraid you have to leave."
"I'll save you the trouble, then," Sans announced tiredly, raising from the chair.
"W-Wait- you aren't going to stay a few days?" Toriel asked, rising from her own chair.
"Why bother? If you don't want me here, I'll leave." Sans reasoned. But nonetheless, Toriel pawed at him, guiding him back into his chair and plopping him back down.
"Stay right where you are, young man." She commanded sternly, hands coming to rest on her hips.
"You're giving me mixed signals here lady." He complained, feeling vaguely scolded as he resigned himself to the chair and the still heaping plate of pasta in front of him.
"You're not well. In fact, you won't be well enough to go out for several days yet." Sans fidgeted under her gaze, a lump forming in his throat. Nowhere to go, anyways.
"Yeah, okay. Lay off, will you?" At his words she gave a small smile of satisfaction, but there was still that odd look in her eye.
"What is it?" He asked after a moment.
" I- don't know why, but - I feel there is something familiar about you. I can't seem to put my finger on it." Toriel said, and Sans suddenly becomes supremely interested in his pasta, poking at it intently and avoiding eye contact.
"Oh?"
Toriel laughed dismissively. "Just a funny thought I had. Ignore this silly old lady." She chuckled. Sans smiled fondly at her antics: Toriel was exactly how he'd imagined her to be in his head.
After the meal, Toriel helped him back downstairs, performing a small tour of the inside of her home. "I'm afraid the spare room is in somewhat disrepair. I hope you don't mind staying here for the time being." Toriel admitted guiltily as they stood in the doorway of a small, children's bedroom. Sans regarded it with mounting horror, turning
around with wide eyes.
"I couldn't-" He began, the rest of his sentence getting stuck in his throat.
"It is alright." She assured calmly, a faint note of wistfulness in her tone. "The room was only collecting dust."
Sans remained quiet, ducking his head. "If you're sure."
"I am." She smiled, patting him on the shoulder. Sans shriveled under the touch, a feeling not unlike hot tar and icky goo crawling into his heart and taking residence there. Then she left him. He stood there in the doorway, holding his breath for longer than he would like to admit.
He exhaled slowly, berating himself.
The room was alive with memories. In his head, he began to construct an idea of what it had been like to live here. He imagined grubby hands, dirt between fingernails from playing in the garden - with the flowers. The flowers that seemed to bloom from every vase in the house, their crudely drawn likenesses appearing in many of the pinned drawings. He reached out to rifle through the drawers, hungry for more information, then stopped himself. It felt wrong: like he was defiling something sacred.
Sans struggled to recall his own childhood room. As he could remember, it had consisted of a single twin sized bed, surrounded by four barren white walls. He mapped it out to himself, looking to the right. There would be his desk, where he would sit alone for hours, studying. Instead though, he was met with the beaming form of Asgore, hand in hand with a smaller scribble he assumed was the young prince. Above them in messy handwriting read: Love you dad. He stared at it for several minutes, then collapsed onto his back into the bed with a sigh.
This has officially exceeded the ten page mark on my google doc. This is a good sign? I'll keep you posted on this strange motivation. I'll have you know I actually have an outline for this, and I have never, not once, ever had an outline before. This is the start of a beautiful relationship between me and this mysterious dame they call 'organization'