When you come to, you're on your back on the hard ground, and you realize he must have decided to break the connection on his own and pull you both out of it, taking you out of the shared memories and back into reality. He must be a really fast learner at mental techniques, you think. He managed to make a mental connection with you and then pull you out of your stasis state, all without prior training.

You look for Sans and find him. Fortunately, Gaster Blasters are still standing guard and you can see him nearby as they surround the two of you within their island of light in this dark world.

He's sitting tensely nearby, watching you come awake. He's trying to hide his expression and doing pretty good job of it, but you've seen that expression in your own eyes and felt it in your soul too many times not to recognize it.

It's the expression of someone who's been hit too many times. Whether they're a dog, a rabbit, or a human, or a monster, it's the flinching expression of fear and anger and desperation, of searching with a primal instinct to find a way...any way...to stop being hit.

It's how you feel sometimes, even now, after something reminds you of bad times in the past. Even if the other person doesn't mean any harm, if they do something even slightly resembling what people did who hurt you before, sometimes it makes your entire nervous system ramp up with alarm, causing your breath to quicken and shorten.

You've gotten good at hiding it too.

You groan softly as you sit up, clutching your wounded chest with one arm and grimacing.

"still hurts bad, huh?" he asks, his eye lights sharp with concern as he watches you.

"Yes." Your breath is short and it's hard to talk through the pain.

"i'll heal ya again."

"Thanks."

He moves over to you on his hands and knees, sits in front of you, and extends his hands near your chest wounds, and you feel that green healing energy again.

As he's healing you, you sense he has more compassion this time, perhaps sensing with magic the damage he really did to your organs and tissues inside with his bone spear.

"i wasn't really seeing this before...this is awful."

Tell me about it, your expression says.

He does a better job at healing this time. It's still a long way from being completely healed, but you feel considerably more whole when he's done.

"That's a lot better."

"sorry i don't have enough to heal it all in one go," he explains apologetically.

"I'll be ok. It hurts a lot less now."

He nods. He still looks tense, like he's coping, but barely.

After he finishes healing you he sits back again near you and holds his knees, looking down.

You think carefully about what to say, and then speak slowly. Your mind is still full of memories of a silent, snowy village, and running footprint trails that end in dust remains.

"I am sorry, Sans. Those memories were horrifying, and you didn't even show me the worst of it. No one should have to go through that."

He looks up into your eyes and carefully and slowly searches your expression. You gaze back unflinchingly.

He seems to make a decision, accepting your words, and he changes as sympathy softens his eye lights. He nods at your partly-healed wounds.

"i'm sorry too."

There's a more mellow and introspective tone in his voice than you've heard from him so far. You tilt your head with a question in your eyes, puzzled by what he means exactly.

"You already apologized before though."

"i know."

Judging by his quiet demeanor, he's pondering deeply.

"it's hard to explain."

You wait patiently for him to go on.

"why did i just attack you like that? i knew that things had gotten bad, but have i really fallen so far as to try to kill someone who didn't do anything wrong? now that i think back, the thought of actually killing an innocent person is terrifying. what if you hadn't had an inner shield to reduce the damage from my attack? has my own defensiveness grown so strong i'd hurt someone so badly who didn't deserve it?"

He's silent for awhile, looking like he's thinking hard, and then he continues.

"i justified it earlier as i thought you might have bad intentions, and it was just my mistake, or i was sensing the malice from the other soul that was possessing you until we came here. but now that i think back to what i was feeling at the time, that doesn't really explain it. that's not the real reason i attacked you. those were excuses my mind came up with after the fact in order to explain it to myself."

"i had a flash of suspicion, and that caused my mind to suddenly transform you into all the different iterations of frisk and the other humans who hurt all of us. i wasn't really seeing you as a person anymore, just like i wasn't really seeing you in the hall. if i had, it would've been easy to read your expression and know what you're really like inside. it was my own bad memories from the past that caused me to blind myself and not see you for who you are. you became a symbol for all the humans who've hurt us before."

* and all i felt when i attacked was pure rage...

"but if that's true, if that's really why i attacked you and hurt you so badly, if my own post traumatic stress has gotten so bad i'll hurt people just out of conditioning from the violence i've experienced...that's something i can't forgive myself for. what can i do about it? if i wasn't in a time loop maybe i could ask to be checked in somewhere so i can't hurt anyone. if i didn't just come back every time, maybe i could destroy myself before i hurt anyone else."

He glances at you.

"i guess all of that's pretty dark. maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense."

There's an edge of fear in his voice, as though he's wondering if he went too far, and revealed too much. Maybe he thinks you might reject what he said, not understand it, or worst of all, use the information against him later. All of those possibilities could lead to pain.

"No. Actually, it sounds pretty familiar." There's a sad, but accepting tone in your voice.

His expression shows surprise that you didn't flinch at what he said, and as he thinks it through you get the sense he's re-analyzing everything he knows about you so far, until he comes to a conclusion.

"it was that bad huh? the reason you were in the forest, alone, barefoot in the cold?"

"Yeah. Even now, when someone reminds me too much of them - if they have some of their mannerisms or even just their general appearance...I feel deeply afraid. I know sometimes I've hurt people's feelings for judging them harshly when they didn't deserve it, just because they reminded me of someone else."

"you probably didn't physically hurt them though."

"No, but I wasn't hurt as badly or as often as you were, from what I know of the timelines. Your reaction is proportional to how much you've been hurt."

"still doesn't mean i'm not responsible. there's no excuse to hurt someone else, no matter how badly we've been hurt."

He pauses for a long moment and his voice becomes stronger and deeper.

"i know i hurt you a lot, and i'm sorry. i don't know how to make up for it, but if there's anything i can do, i'll try. "

Something about the way he says it this time catches at your heartstrings, so much so that it takes awhile for you to form words for a reply.

"Thank you. I accept your apology. It sounds like this was the real one."

He draws inward, hugging his bones tighter. "alrite. i don't really deserve forgiveness, but i appreciate it. i owe you a full healing, and some kind of a serious favor after this. make it a big one if you want. least i can do to try to make it up to you, after what i did."

"Ok, I'll have to think about what to ask for," you say, grinning slightly but seriously. "Maybe that will give me some motivation to try to live through this. Let's see if we can get out of here first."

He attempts a grin back at you but mostly fails at it. Looking at him closer you notice him shivering, and realize you can hear it in the quiet rustling of his bones. He hugs his jacket tighter around him, and stays that way for several moments. You don't say anything, not sure how to interpret his body language.

He looks down at his feet and turns his skull partly away from you, almost hidden by the darkness, but the blue light from the Blasters catches his face. His expression has more stress and tiredness than you've ever seen on anyone.

It's in the bags under his eye sockets, and the fuzziness of his eye lights. Even more than that, it's in the heaviness of the aura around him, his control temporarily slipping to allow his usual masking expressions to drop.

Maybe his energy is really low after all he went through in the memories. You know how thinking about your emotions and the past can mentally exhaust you. Given the trauma behind his memories, it's probably far worse for him. Plus, he just healed you, and that probably took a lot out of him too.

You decide maybe it would be a good thing to give yourselves a break from heavy discussions, and maybe from each other too.

"I'm gonna try to sleep for awhile," you announce. "A normal sleep this time. I'm sure it'll go better after being healed again. How about let's talk about what to do next after that?"

"ok. don't worry, i'll keep watch over ya," he replies, and you hear relief in his voice. He sounds like he needs some time to think in peace.

You curl up and drift off as best you can, eventually falling into a deep and relaxing slumber.