Chapter 2: Retracing steps
Nothing was said for a long moment.
She knew, looking at the bedroom door that if you were to open it and go through, they would truly be in the sealed Underground of the past. There was snow outside of that window. She knew; it would be as if the universe had re-written itself and everything would fall into a terrible order of placement of every item and every being within, and every event would do the same as reality accepted itself.
Sans seems to shrink in on himself, reaching with his hand to creep into his empty right eyesocket as the other red eye-light shrank to a thin line, an old habit he had made big strides on getting away from since he'd met her. He was starting to mutter to himself and not her, "not real, never was, can't ever leave, you're not-"
"I'm here Sans. It's okay. I iam/i here, you're not alone." She tugged firmly at his left sleeve to stop him and his eye snapped to focus on the hand on him which hadn't let go just yet.
His shoulders rise and fall helplessly, and he looks up once more to bring both skeletal hands gently to her face. Pityingly he looks in her eyes, "oh sweetheart, 'm so sorry sweetheart"
"No."
Out of any way he might have expected someone to react, this confident, brusque rejection calmly directed at him was something he didn't really have a response for. Other than to flinch slightly, lean back and squint one browbone in attention. "uh, swe-... it's-..."
"No." She stared him down as if waiting for him to challenge this as his jaw opened and closed as his thoughts stalled, and looked away from him taking a small breath, looking up to the ceiling from left to right and down until taking it all in and completing a circle back to him.
"We are going to start again, Sans. We aren't staying here."
He opened his mouth,- "And no, I know I am seeing what you are seeing is here but I also know logic says otherwise. I remember where I met you and it iwasn't here/i, you were always afraid to even come back to the Underground since the barrier fell in case it somehow came back to life. You finally told me that on a movie night when I bought one of the ones over you had never got to watch before." She tipped her head and raised both eyebrows, "The one on the boat with the dumb chicken. It actually got you laughing so I knew I picked the right movie that night. So we are going to start again and I am going to help you."
Sans seemed to see her anew at this, straightening a little as his widened eyelight flicked side to side in miniscule movements searching her face hopefully, and finding no doubt. "heh, yeah that little guy… was quite the survivor… glad he wasn't eggsecuted"
He watched as she let out a huff with a small smile in relief, before leading him onward.
The girl reached left handed to add to the one on his arm, pulling it up in front of them both and moving to grasp his hand in hers, then turned to walk them around the bed to where the lamp and the phone still sat on the bedside table, and picked up the phone, pulling it out from its plug with a thumb. The little plastic tortilla dangled as it was brought up. "You actually seemed like you couldn't stop once you started making those jokes about the chicken. You said the movie was poultry in motion,-"
"heh ok you did laugh at that one. you snorted"
"- then when I was driving home to my place my phone started buzzing. When I got in there were reels of chicken jokes and memes you were finding to send me and you kept going to like 1am." She took his hand and placed the phone in it, having turned the torch feature on. "We got one real item so far to start us off. I'm gonna try this differently and combine the next step to help."
She considered the lamp. "If I unplug this is it gonna still be on somehow?" She crouched and reached in between the bed and table to try anyway.
"...yuup"
Scowling at the offending item with hand on hip, the orb inside turned to direct its pupil at her. "heyy don't look at me like that i can't help it" he said from the side, causing a bemused head turn to him before she grabbed the pillow by the open end of the pillowcase (hey that one's real?-) drew it underarm and shoved the entire thing one handed over the lamp, pillow and all, to fall at an ungraceful lumpy angle against the wall. The pillow now glowed with a hint of blue but the room was much darker.
"ok that's less confusing now but i can't see so well, you want me to find another 'real' item?"
"Use your actual eye Sans you can't have that other one back." She told him, like maybe refusing to let him reach in the tube and have his own eyeball back, and held up his hand gripping the shining phone between them. "Neither of us are gonna look at the next item yet anyway, the light is just so we don't fall over, so just look at me for now." she said, and started sidling both towards where the dog biscuit bag was.
Once both pairs of feet were touching something in the right place she had him keep focus on her and both crouch down. Taking the hand not holding the phone, guiding him to reach as neither looked, but both touched the item that was there underfoot. Heh, it wasn't a papery bag. It was-
"'s my pants" both smiled and huffed a little childishly and he knew what was coming, him lifting a leg cuff up to eye level. "you said i should have an option other than just shorts, so i got these"
"And they never left the floor yet. You know…" yeah come on out with it "Papyrus did say you gotta keep this place tidy because he won't do it for you when he comes over. What were his words about laundry? You can't just be having socks all over the house just because you're… wait a minute did he really word it like that?"
"eheh" Sans just grinned and stood up as both watched him drop the attire back to its home. "next item?"
"Okay I think you keep some stuff where that pillar was, right? Same deal, just eyes on each other and we can shuffle over there."
Holding close together lit by the phone in the middle, a skeleton and human performed something like a waltz with no rhythm back around the bed and across the room. "Okay! iI/i know what this is so you better!" Taking his hand again she reached down slightly so he could feel the top.
"pfft" His shoulders jogged and he closed his sockets to direct his face away, trying not to laugh. "it's the laundry basket" He admitted and dared to look back as his helper leaned in and closed her own eyes with lips bitten together in an attempt not to smirk because she couldn't look in his eye for a moment.
His hand patted at the top of it, and she felt it too, "it's a rattaan red mushroom, and it doesn't mean anything that it was in the children's section of the shop"
She smiled at him more easily now. The wall picture seemed the next appropriate place. There wasn't much to feel by touch but she knew she could jog his memories when they got to the frame and thought about its reason for being placed there. The awkward walk with just the sound of footsteps permeating the background crackling from across the room became an awkward bumping around the other bedside table to be in reach of the wall item sideways on, and as she stopped and began to lift Sans' right hand to reach out he yanked it back. Head down and both eyes gone dark. The girl waited patiently, nothing occurring to help other than that while gently rubbing her thumbs on the bones clasping her hands and the phone.
"it… it won't change" came out eventually. She kept quiet, just breathing softly. "...what i did, it's easy to say it was just self defense, gets easier to justify what i did after, heh, easier and easier isn't it? you know there was bad stuff goin' on in the underground but you still wanted to be friends with someone like me. you think 'm still a good person, keep hangin' round me wantin' to help me enjoy everythin' life has to offer up here" She started with a small gasp as he turned his skull directly to look at the picture of the empty face-plate, and followed. Red filled their vision.
His hand came up to touch the edge of his right socket that was again filled with red, inclining his skull in a sad motion, speaking softly he confessed. "this is his, took it off him along with his life when 'defendin' myself became a rampage. he doesn't iget/i to be up here." He turned and motioned up from the eyelight to the jagged hole at the top of his skull. "if i hadn't snapped when they took my eye and tried to kill me, hey, maybe it woulda worked out better you know? maybe my shut-down plan for the core woulda failed for some reason. felt my magic powerin' the core so it iwas/i workin', like they said. hey if that failed they still did have the shut-down to fall back on so it was the pragmatic choice undyne really made. i coulda just let go, let them have their way and dusted so that eye was all that was left of me, and this guy could be out here right now, maybe stood where we are, gettin' to be a good person again insteada me. but i couldn't let that happen could i? not for people who'd do somethin' like that, betray so readily a friend who cared about 'em, but not for all the innocent monsters of the underground either, all their families, and the ones who mighta made it if they got food production goin' again at that point, not for their starvin' kids and the last of our species sufferin' in the dark" He looked in her eyes desperately, waiting for an answer to an impossible challenge to justify forgiveness in all this.
She looked back steadily, with a brief head-tip towards the wall. "Does that guy get to have forgiveness?" She paused, thinking carefully as she continued. "So he's up here, getting to be a good person again like you said. Sounds to me like you know he was capable of it. Even though he murdered another monster to save himself, and maybe killed others too. So okay maybe it gets easier when you live that way, until you don't have to struggle anymore and life seems to say a morality that's possible to live by now should've been what you stuck to then. You iare/i a good person Sans. I'd like to think I know you well enough by now to see for myself that if the world gives you the tiniest avenue to be good, you take it. So, would this guy have been stood here thinking of you and what he did then? What would you tell him to do? Do you hate him Sans?"
He looked shocked "what? no… no i, i did. at the time but…"
"I'm not saying we have no choice, he did and so did you. If he hadn't stayed in the guard despite everything they did, if instead of hurting you like maybe he wanted not to; he refused, what would have happened to him? Kicked out of the royal guard with no income or rations from it to help any loved ones? Imprisoned unable to do a thing? Killed as a traitor? And you," her tone got harsher, "who in the iworldi/ would you deny making any allowance for the fact they just had an attempt to kill them and a MASSIVE, soul-crushing head trauma affecting their actions? Other than yourself."
Nothing was left but the sound of crackling from across the room by the window, thin light seeping through the closed curtains. He drops down both hands, leaving her holding the lowered phone in one hand, taking a step away to face the window pensively. She gazed down, feeling his grip around the soft palm of her free hand stay steady.
"no world-changing answer then?" He grins slightly at the window.
"Wouldn't say that. Iit might've been if you weren't already aware it's all true," she shrugged.
"just gotta let myself have it then? that easy?"
She sighed, as he listened to her voice, "I don't think we'd be here groping your furniture if it was easy Sans. But yeah it is ok to let yourself live. Everyone who made it out of the Underground counts as something for the sake of those who didn't, and that includes you. If you can't let go of the picture, so what? We can keep it as a memorial, let it be part of you moving on."
"cant"
"Wha-?"
He turned to the picture, "it's already gone"
The girl turned to face the wall again herself, and there hung a picture in place of the one before. Reaching to brush the frame with the fingers wrapped around the phone, he stepped back over and put his other hand on it too, the torch having lit up the silver edging and the print she bought for Sans when he moved in. "framed print of bones"
"I said I'd get you skeleton themed decor when you relented on letting me get a housewarming gift. So I got you Bones McCoy on the transporter in all his retro Star trek glory", she remembered.
"teleporting bones, heh, yeah"
"It's signed too, found it on the net. It was nearly a tie between him and bribing the McEbott staff for the huge McRib advert and framing that."
"five items" He faced her.
"Yeah."
"the lamp's just a lamp, got it on sale out on my own." He barely glanced over at the darkened bedside.
Pat pat pat. Pat pat pat. The sound like crackling had made itself clearer now, coming from the window.
Sans took the phone and let go fully to walk over to it, stopping by to plug back in the now creamy glowing pillowcase, and pulled the curtains. He smiled, a soft grin, and went as far as to open the window, breathing in the faint smells of traffic fumes and petrichor.
"its raining here"
"Wanna go get something to eat? Could get a burger?"
"ya know what? yeah. but i think… 'm gonna try something new"
End note: Gets out spray bottle: "No!"
Chicken jokes: What do you get when you cross a chicken with a cement mixer? A bricklayer.
Why did the chicken cross the road? No one knows. But the road will have its vengeance!
I'd send you the links to more jokes but it's just cluckbait.
'Brother! Why is there a pillow on your lamp?"
"dunno bro, guess i just love soft lighting"