Chapter Nine

But She Died

Pikachulover55 here, so there's another trigger warning in this chapter, the next few are gonna be rough so good luck guys!

Once they got home Sans took Shadow his room. Then he went downstairs to grab her new clothes and quickly brought them to her. "I don't know if you want to shower or just change but you can stay in here tonight."

"I need the shower, I need like twenty showers." Shadow looked disgusted.

Sans nodded and helped her to the bathroom. "Take your time Shadow. I'm so sorry I couldn't save you sooner."

Shadow waved him off with an, "it's not your fault", and shut the door. Soon enough Sans could hear the water running. Shadow was a mess as soon as the door closed. It was easy putting up a front for your friends but alone she crumbled. She was trying to think about how to make the stop tears running down her face. The big fat hot tears dripped onto the floor in front of her as she leaned on the door trying to hold herself up. She didn't wanna be alone, but she didn't feel safe sleeping next to Sans or something. She just got rapped, now's not the time for romance. Shadow was shaking, she didn't even wanna be in here alone. Gathering all her courage she called out, "Sans! Can you please stay outside the door? I'm scared…"

Shadow heard him running up the stairs, "Yeah, I can do that Shad. Just shower and wash away those assholes."

Shadow shakily undressed and got into the shower. She felt slightly safer knowing Sans was guarding the door. She let all the blood and cum wash off of her. It was gross. The cum was dried and sticky and practically refused to come off. After scrubbing for what seemed like forever her skin was finally clean it a little raw and red but clean. A long sigh left her lips as she hugged herself. She felt relieved that it was all over. She dried off and pulled on the pajamas Sans had gotten her then opened to the door. When she did Sans fell in. He was dead asleep. Shadow giggled a little and knelt in front of him.

"Hey sleepyhead lets go to bed", her gentle voice seemed to do the trick because Sans opened his eyes and started to groggily get up. Shadow helped him onto the couch. With that, she went to his room and crawled into his bed. The fact it smelled like him was amazing. He smelled like pine trees and ketchup. Soon even she was lulled to sleep by the comfort his room brought her. Thankfully she had a dreamless sleep.

Shadow found herself awakened by Papyrus ironically telling Sans to shut up. Shadow rolled over trying to sleep but Papyrus kept getting louder and louder and Shadow figured that sleep wasn't going to come back to her. With a long yawn, Shadow slid out of bed. Her hair was messy and tangled and her eyes were sunken in and blank as she wandered down the stairs.

"Hey Shad, see you're trying to be a zombie. Not a good look for you bud." Sans's smooth voice called out.

Papyrus started with the yelling again, "SEE SANS YOU WOKE HER UP!"

Sans simply shrugged and winked at Shadow. He knew Papyrus woke her up but out of his love of Papyrus he didn't say anything.

Shadow tried putting on a bright smile but it looked very forced. Her smiled looked almost painful. "Morning everyone."

Papyrus happily greeted her back and hugged her. At least he was fooled, Sans however knew and went over to her.

"Alphys scheduled you an appointment with our resident therapist Toriel. She should be able to help you. You can go over there anytime today." Sans walked over to her and put an arm around her.

Shadow looked at what she was wearing, a large white T-shirt with small black pajama shorts. She just shrugged her voice filled with the pain she was originally trying to hide, "I can care less about how I look right now. Just get me help. Look at me! And I mean really look at me."

Her tone told Sans to bring out her soul, still grey, it was starting to crack as well now. The glow was only getting dimmer as she started withering away to nothingness. As soon as he saw her soul he threw it back in her and teleported them. A shocked man with horns, white fluffy hair and a blonde beard jumped. A woman with much smaller horns came out. Her white hair looked a lot neater and her pretty red eyes sparkled with a motherly touch. Shadow let go of Sans and practically flung herself at the woman. She quickly grabbed the girl and held her tightly, loud muffled sobs could be heard.

"Sans what have you done to this poor child?" Her voice was soft, it was very sweet but could be stern if needed.

"Nothing Tori, well nothing that wasn't already done to her by those assholes", Sans spat his eyes going dark.

Toriel patted the poor girl's back and hummed a gentle tune to soothe her. Soon Shadow let go giving Toriel a chance to look at her hopeless soul and deadened eyes. What she saw scared her. Toriel always radiated life and warmth from her, it was no wonder this broken soul was so easily attached to her. Soon Toriel started petting the girl's head.

"It's okay sweetheart, can you tell me your name?"

"Shadow", she barely got out through the hiccups that have now started.

"Child come with me", Toriel led Shadow into another room with a couch, desk, and chair. Toriel took a seat in the chair and gestured for the girl to sit.

Shadow sat down on the couch and looked to gentle women in front of her, "Tell me about what happened, or whatever you'd like to talk about."

Shadow took a deep breath and started her story. She told Toriel everything from the beginning, from starting her job to Papyrus waking her up this morning. Toriel's eyes looked heartbroken. She felt for this poor girl. She got up to sit next to Shadow and hugged her close to her. Shadow let out a content sigh.

"My child, can I look into your soul?"

A simple nod was Shadow's only response. Soon Toriel was staring at a soul that was turning white again. The cracks were gone and life seemed to be coming back into her eyes. Talking could be magical. She smiled and brought her back out to Sans. Soon enough Shadow jumped on him. She looked pretty happy. "I want to see you back tomorrow dear."

Shadow nodded at Toriel and left with Sans. When Shadow got home she went back upstairs and slept. No one was going to stop her from trying to sleep off her depression and pain. Sans wasn't sure how he felt about her trying to sleep it off when every hour on the hour she'd wake up screaming for someone to stop. It made sense to Sans that Shadow would get nightmares, he just didn't think it would bother him so much.

The days of her going to therapy and waking up screaming became weeks. Soon the weeks were months, at the end of the third month was when Shadow went back to work, it was also when the nightmares finally stopped. She wasn't the same though. She rarely smiled anymore, and she rarely talked to anyone but Toriel. Toriel became like a mother to Shadow and she found that she relied on her a lot. Sadly when Shadow's life started to get better shit had to happen.

One day when Shadow was driving to Toriel's house she got into an accident. While trying to swerve to dodge the other car her car flipped. Toriel and Asgore heard this and ran out of the house.

"My child!" Toriel looked worried and hurried over to Shadow's car.

"L-look out…" Shadow weakly said trying to stop Toriel from being hit by the car coming at her head on.

Toriel looked at the car, but before she could move it was too late. Her ashes were raining down on Shadow. It seems she died on impact. Shadow let out a choked sob when Toriel's dust started to rain down on her. She was reaching out trying to grab the ash, despite being upside down in her car with blood running from her head from a rather large gash. Asgore looked broken but looked at the poor girl and made his way over. He looked both ways before crossing though. The driver that hit Toriel got out of her car and started stuttering out apologies that fell on deaf ears.

Asgore made sure to get Shadow to the hospital and assured the girl she did all she could to save Toriel. That sadly didn't do anything, Shadow blamed herself. Claiming if she wasn't alive that wouldn't have happened. That scared everyone. They took another look at her soul. It was a dim gray, cracks were everywhere. This time they didn't know what to do. They had a horrible feeling that she wasn't going to last much longer.

Shadow stopped smiling or talking after that. Sans and Papyrus would take turns watching her. Sadly they couldn't really watch her at night, they needed sleep too. Everyone was doing their best trying to cheer up Shadow. For a while, everything was fine till Shadow got up while they were sleeping. She couldn't bare all this guilt and decided it was time. What Sans found in the morning broke his heart.

She was hanging from the ceiling fan. Her body limp and dead. Her eyes empty, her hands covered in blood and her arms lined with cuts. Her neck had marks on it, it looked like she choked to death instead of breaking her neck right away. She killed herself. She was gone. Dead, no more. Sans didn't know what to do.

Sans stared at the little floating gray soul. He grabbed it and did the unthinkable. He adsorbed her soul. He absorbed it to keep her in his heart, to keep her close. He couldn't live a life where she wasn't there. This was the best that he could do.

Light flooded the room and he found himself staring at her ghost, "No, no I was free! I was free and you forced me back! I wanted peace, Sans! Why couldn't you let me have it?! I didn't kill myself for laughs! I wanted freedom you asshole!"

Sans looked at the enraged ghost in front of him and sighed, "Because I love you."

"I don't know how I feel about you Sans. You fell in love with a broken soul like a fool. How could you be so selfish as to bring me back to this realm? I wanted to die for a reason. Now, I'm dead, let me go!" Shadow's voice was firm and angry.

Sans shook his head and refused to listen to her pleads, "I just want to go back and save you. If I could go back to the night I yelled at you and do something different maybe it'd go better. Or back to when you were drunk. Yeah, that's the night. I want to save you Shadow! Let me! Let me save you!"

His soul turned from light blue to red, he was determined to save her. He felt the unthinkable, the power to reset. It shouldn't exist this wasn't a game and yet there it was, a way to save Shadow. He thought about that night, pictured the moment and the emotions he was feeling. It was the first night he realized that he had real feelings for Shadow. She was stunning that night and had the brightest smile he's ever seen. He wanted to protect that smile with all of his being.

With that, he was back at the bar sitting with Shadow in her awe-inspiring dress watching her down her first drink. He knew that any more than that and bad things were going to happen. He had no idea why though. Sans grabbed her hand and it was like the world stopped.