WARNING: Very heavy chapter ahead. Potential triggers are as follows: dehumanizing language, medical torture of children, child molestation. Please take care of yourself and take breaks if you need to.

Chapter 56 – Truth

"Papyrus…"

"No, Sans. No more excuses. I want to know, and I'm going to know. Right now."

"That's not what I was going to say," Sans said in the most defeated voice Papyrus had ever heard. "I—I'm sorry."

"I'll bet you are. But I don't care right now. Show me the truth."

"Alright." The word was so quiet, Papyrus barely heard it.

Sans knelt in front of the boxes on the floor—all of which were marked CORE.

"I supposed you labeled them that way to keep me out of them?" Papyrus griped.

"No, actually. They were labeled this way when I found them."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Someone else was trying to hide them, I think," Sans explained. "Considering the contents… can understand why."

"Where did you find them?"

Sans' shoulders hunched, then fell with a sigh. "True Lab, a hidden part of it even Alphys didn't use. She said it gave her the creeps when she found it. She asked me to help her clean things up out of there—she'd never read the documents in these boxes. And I'm glad she didn't."

"What's in them?" Papyrus asked breathlessly.

Sans slowly searched through one of the boxes and eventually handed Papyrus a piece of paper as his answer.

Papyrus took one look at it and rolled his eyes. "Sans, this is covered in text. You know it's going to take me forever to get through it."

"Right, right. Sorry," Sans murmured. He took the paper back. "You… you want me to read it to you?"

Papyrus huffed. "What other option do we have?"

"Right." Sans took a deep breath. "Okay." Another deep breath. "Pap, I can't do this."

"Sans, don't you dare—"

"This isn't about—look, Papyrus, this stuff gives me nightmares. I actually threw up the first time I started reading it and realized—realized—augh." Sans rubbed his head. "I can barely handle it myself. And—I'm sorry you've been under the impression I think you're not strong enough for this just by virtue of who you are—"

"That's just an underhanded way of saying 'sorry you felt that way.' You—and everyone else for that matter—have been giving more than an impression." Papyrus held out his hand. "Just give me that. I'll read it myself, even if it takes me hours."

Sans hesitated, so Papyrus snatched the paper back himself.

His hands shook as he focused on the first line. It took him a while, but he eventually got through the front page.

June 4, 2099

I have acquired the subjects.

Information known:

The older subject was created January 16, 2091. Mentally, very capable. Physically, extremely weak and at times sickly.

The younger subject was created July 7, 2095. Physically strong. Appears to be very mentally deficient in many areas.

Both subjects are deeply attached to their creator and to each other.

The older one's weak constitution will only be good for a few experiments. The younger one's stronger constitution makes it the prime subject for the experiments I wish to undertake. I will do all I can to keep it functioning while I experiment. I have not yet decided whether the other one will be put down or will be kept for other purposes. Either way, I plan on marking the younger subject as mine, and perhaps the other one if I decide to keep it.

After this section was a list of different experiments the writer intended to undertake, most of which Papyrus did not really understand.

However, he had a horrifyingly good idea of who these "subjects" were.

He looked up at Sans. "What else is there?"

Sans gestured to the boxes. "Everything they documented that I know of is in here."

So Papyrus spent a long time searching through the boxes, poring over the papers despite a steadily growing headache.

By the time he got to the end of it all, shadows were starting to fall outside the house.

"Pap… dinner's happening at Toriel's soon," Sans said quietly.

Papyrus was silent.

"We should probably get ready to go…"

"I'm not going."

"…Oh. Well, uh—"

"Don't you dare leave," Papyrus hissed.

Sans sighed. "Okay…"

Papyrus didn't think he could stand to be alone, with all this awfulness in front of him.

Virtually all of the papers were filled, front and back, with appallingly detailed descriptions of experiments that must have been extraordinarily painful for the subjects to undergo. Most of them involved the younger subject, the one with the "stronger constitution." The papers described each and every act done to them—injections to the soul and other areas of the body, breaking bones, biopsies and even larger parts taken from their body… and more.

The descriptions alone had nearly made Papyrus sick. But there were more things in the boxes.

This time, they were pictures.

Papyrus had hoped against hope that maybe this was all some misunderstanding, that these experiments were just fake horror stories, or at least that the subjects were people they didn't know.

But as he looked at the pictures, there was no doubt.

The "younger subject" was him.

In nearly all of the pictures was a skeleton, first a tiny, toddler-sized one, who appeared to grow as the dates on the backs of the photos got more recent. Sometimes the skeleton wore a white hospital-like gown, other times he wore nothing. In every photo, he was strapped to a table or a chair, and he was clearly fighting to escape, his mouth opened in screams of terror and pain that Papyrus barely had to imagine. He saw the plate in the skeleton's arm, and could match each of the cracks in the skeleton's body in the most recent photo to the ones that covered his body now.

Occasionally, the pictures were of a different skeleton, one that was clearly older than the other, and bore Sans' trademark permanent smile. Similarly, he was almost always strapped to a table or chair, and wore either a white hospital gown or nothing. He could not open his mouth to scream, but Papyrus knew he was suffering like the other skeleton.

There were other people in the pictures sometimes, but all of their faces were blotted out, as if someone had spilled ink, black as night, on them. Papyrus got the feeling that Sans wasn't the one who had done that, but he couldn't explain why.

All in all, everything made a sickening amount of sense… except…

"There's more than just… just this," Sans said heavily.

Papyrus turned to Sans, who held a small, pink book in his hands. There was a small stack of small, pink books just like it next to him. Papyrus held out his hand for the one Sans had. When Sans gave it to him, Papyrus realized it was a diary, and the handwriting inside it was too hard for him to read. He handed it back. "You'll have to read it for me."

"Pap—"

"Please, Sans."

Sans exhaled. "Alright."

He turned to the first page of the diary and began to read.

The diary was from the perspective of someone who was involved with the experiments, but seemed very reluctant to participate. She (Papyrus had a strange feeling it was a "she") had apparently been the caretaker of the skeletons. She had begged and begged for the writer of the papers not to euthanize the older skeleton, saying it might keep the younger one calmer if they kept him around. It seemed to Papyrus that really, she couldn't see a child be senselessly killed like that.

She seemed to believe in the personhood of the skeletons, but was too afraid of the ringleader of the experiments to do much to help them. The skeletons were kept in a dark room together when they were not being experimented on, and their caretaker provided them primarily with food and bedding, and occasionally toys.

Sans skipped over several of the diaries, saying they only held documentation of the experimenter's cruelty, which Papyrus now already knew. He picked up the last book. "This one only has about a fourth of it filled out," he said. "I think it was the last year of… of all that."

"Read it."

Sans inhaled and turned to what must have been the last entry in the diary.

"This is it. I can't stand by and let [NAME REDACTED 1] hurt these children anymore. I never should have let the experiments go on in the first place, but after what I have seen tonight… I have failed as a scientist, as a mother, as a person.

"I must document this very carefully. I had left something behind in the laboratory earlier tonight, so I went back to retrieve it. I decided to check on the children one last time before I left… and what I found… I can barely give words to. But I must. If I write it here, then I can bring it to [NAME REDACTED 2] and I can help him rescue his children.

"When I went to check on the children tonight, I found [NAME REDACTED 3] and [NAME REDACTED 4] in the room with them. One of them was holding Sans, and the other was… it is so hard to write… but the other was…"

Sans broke off, eyes closed.

Papyrus knew what the next part must say, but he couldn't believe it until he heard it said aloud. "Sans…"

Sans began again, and now his voice was hard as steel.

"…the other was molesting Papyrus. He had torn off his gown and was touching him the way a child should never be touched. I couldn't stand it and I chased them off. I called [NAME REDACTED 1] and tried to tell him about it, but he didn't care, because they weren't people so they couldn't be harmed. I went back to the room with the children. Sans and Papyrus were huddling in the corner, and Papyrus wasn't even crying; he was almost catatonic. That was when I knew this wasn't the first time. I asked Sans how long, and he said ever since they came here.

"That was when I made my decision. These children's lives have been ruined by my cowardice. Tonight I will go to [NAME REDACTED 2] and to King Asgore, and we will rescue the children and bring everyone involved in this horrid mess, including myself, to justice.

"I don't know what will happen to me. I don't expect to be let off for blowing the whistle, not after staying quiet for eight years. I just want to apologize to Sans and Papyrus for sitting by as they suffered, to [NAME REDACTED 2] for keeping quiet as he grieved what he thought was the permanent loss of his sons, and to my husband John and my son Bryce for failing them. All of them deserved better than me.

"I am going now to [NAME REDACTED 2]. I will bring all the diaries I have written in to him so he can know what has been going on. I just hope we can get the children out of there before it's too late."

Sans finally stopped reading and looked up at his brother.

Papyrus's face was colorless, his hands clenched tightly into fists. "You knew about this before now?"

Sans slowly set down the diary. "Yeah," he admitted.

"And… and you didn't tell me."

"Papyrus, I was afraid—"

"YOU WERE AFRAID? I WAS AFRAID!" Papyrus roared, standing up, sending papers scattering. "IT HAPPENED TO ME, SANS! ALL THAT STUFF YOU READ, ALL THAT STUFF I READ, I SUFFERED THROUGH ALL THAT, BUT I DON'T GET TO KNOW ANYTHING. BUT YOU, YOU GET TO KNOW I WAS FUCKING MOLESTED… AND…" Papyrus broke over, hyperventilating.

"Papyrus, please!" Sans stood up and tried to take his hands. "Look, you don't know how hard it is, having to tell you that—"

Papyrus wrenched his hands away and backed up against the wall. He caught his breath. "Yeah, well, I'd say it's a lot fucking harder to have it happen to you and dream about it and never know what's going on!"

"Pap, I know—"

"Don't you 'Pap' me! You've lost that privilege, along with every ounce of trust I ever had in you!" Papyrus stormed out of the room.

"Papyrus—"

Papyrus whirled around in the hallway to face his brother, who had followed him. "EIGHT YEARS, SANS!"

"I know."

Papyrus realized with a shock that there were tears on Sans' face. But he would not let himself be manipulated. "I can't believe you. You're just like everyone else!" He ran to his room and slammed the door closed, locking it. Then he threw himself down on his bed and sobbed like he had never done before.

Sans didn't try to come in.

oooooooooo

So we finally got here.

We now know the truth, and so does Papyrus. Well, we know the basics, anyway. Papyrus may never learn who exactly was responsible for everything... at least not in this story.

This is the shortest chapter of the fic so far, but I felt like with everything going on, it didn't need to be any longer, and I wasn't going to drag it out.

Things are still not looking good for Papyrus, and they won't be good for a while. But things will be okay, I promise.

Let me know if I missed something I should have warned for, or anything like that. Got questions, my inbox on tumblr is always open.

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