Chapter 1: Grounding

Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Something was tapping against the window.

Sans tensed up, slowly looking around the darkened room he was stood in. Faster, he needed to think faster, but it was difficult these days as his injured skull left him unsure of where he was at times, until survival instincts swung him to hyper-focus with sharp clarity on whatever threat was there each time.

Something at the window was tapping, no, testing the defenses, trying to break in. Coming for him and his brother. Dammit had he fallen asleep on his feet again? He used to only really pretend to sleep around the place but now genuinely couldn't help it at times. Papyrus! He needed to get to Papyrus. He could see something was moving out there in the darkness, a vague shape but who was it this time?

The monsters they had been able to help keep alive and fed, if only just enough to hold together, hadn't given in to their hunger and attacked the brothers yet; everyone was still looking out for each other as much as they could afford in Snowdin at least. But that didn't stop strays from further in the underground and the city levels reaching the little town, mostly mindless by that point in their starvation and driven to hunt anything and anyone they could in a desperation with pity for their victims long abandoned in a final effort to save themselves.

He was frozen staring at the window but the shape had gone and left darkness and the faint glow of snow in its place. But the danger was still there, so he finally moved to reach into his jacket and pull out the cleaver he kept on himself at all times now. It's not there. He clawed at the fabric deeper in the pocket hoping he had missed it but it wasn't there. No no no.

A shape moved to his right on the edge of his vision. It was in the room.

No no no no no! He needed to get to Papyrus. It was going to hurt his brother where was he? He was so weak, not enough magic to teleport. Move. He needed to move his feet. Run.

"Sans?"

Papyrus. He was stood in the room near the doorway, head on one side slightly as he held his gloved hands together worriedly. The creature had seen him now and was turning, jaws opening wide spilling jagged teeth from its happy face filling the room. Run! "run pap get outta here we cant fight this thing."

Pat pat pat. Something was patting the bottom of his foot… "Sans." Papyrus wasn't moving but was looking at him and calling his name. Please no you need to move don't stay here.

Pat pat pat. Something was wiggling his toe? He looked down at his feet but nothing was there. That wasn't right. What is- ?

"SANS."

He opened his eyes as the voice changed. One red eye light focused on the ceiling as his sockets took in the brighter room. Something was still wiggling his toe. Stop that it's annoying. He sits up to look at the source, gasping breathing calming a little as the nightmare no longer makes sense and no-one else is there in the room but him and the static sound and…

It's you.

She was looking up at him from the foot (heh) of the bed with a wide-eyed look of concern. One hand holding the foot sticking out from under the sheet. He never normally slept under a sheet, leaving the bed in a bundled up pile of abandoned covers while he pretended to sleep anywhere but. This must be since he met her. Here? Underground.

I'm sorry, he thought sadly as he stared but didn't voice. What was the point? She was stuck here in this hell and he couldn't help. There was no way out.

"uh." He looked awkwardly at the hand still on his foot. "sweetheart why're you?..."

"You were having a nightmare," the girl said, letting go gently, "it's a sorta safe thing I heard of. If someone is having a nightmare who has been in a combat zone… or something and might wake up scared or… erm, you know, fighting?"

He grimaced slightly at that. It's lucky he woke that way, he could've come to reaching into his jacket for real if he thought something grabbed hold of him in that nightmare, and not had time to recognise them. He still felt a little uncertain but it was okay now, because they were safe for now. But he couldn't save her from ending up here, that would be too good to be true.

He looked at where his clawed hands had been digging into the sheets in his disturbed sleep searching for a weapon that wasn't there, and loosened his grip to turn and swing his legs out from the bed to stand as she did, to take a few careful steps towards him.

"'m okay," he reached up to touch her face with care not to scrape with the claws on his scarred bone fingers, "we're okay, i won't let anyone hurt you." He let out a small huff and turned to look at the door. "is papyrus downstairs?" He needed to check on him even if it was only a dream, just to feel safer.

"What? No he's across town you know tha-" Her words ground to a halt and she frowned and considered him carefully as he reacted.

"what?! he shouldn't go on his own it's not safe! i gotta go find him.-"

"Sans wait!" She cut him off. "Your brother is safe, where do you think we are right now? Look at me."

He paused. You can't be serious, he needs to go but… Something isn't right. He doesn't know why but he trusts her to know what she's talking about in this. He looked up to her eyes as she waited patiently, a hand on his arm that had dropped from reaching to her face.

"...you're in my house, with me. in the underground."

He doesn't miss the way her jaw clenches just before smiling sadly, then as her face broadens the smile to reassure him. "No."

What?

He squints a little at her as she moves a step closer with a look of greater certainty and talks before he can put words to any argument to that statement, which was as if thinking she could change reality by denying it.

"There's another safe thing I know about, and I need you to help me to do it, Sans is that ok? When we get through it you'll see. Trust me just for a little while okay?" Papyrus is still at the forefront of his worries, but she said he is safe and he does… trust her even if he's not sure when that came to be in the time they've known each other. It's been a while now he knows, even if things seem strange at the moment.

Heh do I really trust another human that much already? He nods and says okay at least.

A smile, relieved; and they carry on. "I want you to point out five things you can see in this room." He must have raised a browbone because she placates him a little, adding with another smile "Just tell me what you see, then we can do the next part and you'll see where I'm going with this." okay.

He stays facing but leans to turn and find whatever item might count. Is it anything? Well what about this. The phone, he points out, with its little tortilla charm dangling off it as it sat on the bedside table to charge.

"the mobile phone, with the charm"

A grin, "I got you that after the mobile shop, remember what I told you? I was looking for a novelty one to get you and was kinda proud of myself for thinking up that when I saw it, I usually suck at puns."

He remembered. "you said you bought it for our friend-chip, heh, stuck it on my phone for me after i bought that…"

"In the shop on the surface, with all the cars parked outside you stopped to look at when we went that day."

He stared at the phone on the table, a new phone to replace his old lab altered one he had for years, human made and out of place in his room. But he did remember buying it and using it. It was a nice memory wasn't it. There the proof was mundanely sat, refusing to disappear and let the memory betray itself as the delusion it should be.

"Okay good start, let's find the second item?" she says, so he starts to look round the room further. This one takes him a lot longer. The room is full of stuff but…

"the lamp"

She looked briefly at the lamp glowing warmly through its cream tube shade. She'd had the foresight to quickly venture to turn it on at sans bedside as he thrashed and cried out before retreating to the other end of the bed to wake him. Best that he wake to a friendly face instead of a shadow grabbing him.

"That's right, let's keep going!"

Sans hesitated before moving his gaze away from the lamp, its blue glow falling on the room around it. He followed where the glow lit up and found the next item. "empty food bag" He paused, "i used to help feed one of the patients in the lab from the dog guard's supplies in snowdin. until the power went out… 'n wasn't like i could risk the trip later on. snowdin needed it by then anyway"

"Why are you keeping that?" She hadn't really noticed it before even if Sans' room could get a little messy at times, but seeing the crumpled dog food bag in plain view now she wondered why she hadn't mentioned it in hope he'd get rid of it.

"eh, stuff always comes in handy down here even when you humans might just be used to dumpin' it, could use the bag to hold other stuff? but i guess i was really hopin' i could fill it up again when… when it all got fixed" He hunched in on himself a little at this, halfheartedly pulling his arm away but she didn't let go of his sleeve yet. He looked back up at her and then to the lamp and a little bitterness seeped into his tone, "but who was gonna fix it? alphys? heheh- me? it was-"

"Let's just carry on, you're doing really well Sans, we got three things so far" she cut in, not willing to let him carry on in that dark line of thought he carried ready to blame himself on a bad day. Standing with him bathed in the blue light pushing shadows away from both of them.

"We just need two more."

He looked. There wasn't a lot to find, so his eye wandered up to the wall where a framed picture hung. As he stared for a moment she followed and examined the framed image of a gold face-plate of armor with an empty black cross section center. There wasn't much other detail, and it was against a red background. The red matched the walls of the room like it had spilled out from the picture. The girl was sure for a minute there was a story at the ready she could reassure him with about a framed picture, but it wasn't this one. Sans didn't speak at all this time, so she prompted quietly; "The picture?"

"..."

"they were thugs, just in grand armor. never knew monsters could get like that at the time but i was kinda avoidin' things until i went to und- the empress. i even knew some of them from before and yuh-know, they were okay guys really, not much skill to help out their families other than brute strength so that's what they ended up as when they got desperate enough. the one that wore that mask is gone now"

Her features hardened as she glanced away and back to the mask. She didn't like this, that he was holding on to something that was clearly so attached to his hurt, and in a big enough way that she felt he wasn't letting her in on it all. "But you kept this. It must have been important to you even if it was a bad memory?"

"four" He lowered his head and jerked his skull round as his companion started at his worsening mood, his clenched grin stretching into a widening grimace. "want five right?" To a small sombre nod he shrugged and motioned; "the pillar"

Looking to the far end of the room, a broken pillar sat.

She looked up. The room was barren and walled with red cracked walls and peeling wallpaper. Walls that seemed to merge into cave walls in the dark as they reached the pillar. The carpet was faded and frayed purple zigzags with stains in places, and the bed at the center was just an old mattress with sheets dumped in the center. If they reached out to touch it she knew it would be there. It was all partly lit by the window on the adjoining wall with faint white light filtering through closed ragged curtains. A crackling static seemed to permeate into the room. However the main source of light was the lamp, a glass tube next to the bed illuminating everything up to the darkened edges of the area, an orb at the center pulsing now with blue and a hint of yellow, looking back at her.

"Oh."