Chapter 5
Evening and Morning

The tense stillness that had reigned for the last hour, filled only by the scratch of Frisk's pencil on paper, was broken at last by Dean's coded knock on the skeletons' front door. Sam felt the room spin briefly as he finally began breathing normally again.

"That's Dean," he reported on his way to the door. "And... I guess Sans is with him," he added as the salt line turned blue.

Frisk and Papyrus both heaved audible sighs of relief.

It was in fact Sans who opened the door and came in first, his magic ensuring that the salt line held despite the incoming foot traffic. Dean entered second, followed by Undyne, the lizard woman (Alphys) in a lab coat, and the female boss monster (Toriel). Toriel made a beeline for Frisk, who put the notebook on the coffee table and started crying all over again, and Papyrus vacated his spot on the couch for Alphys and walked over to the new arrivals at the same time Sam did.

"How'd it go?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged his eyebrows. "Unless she pulled a fakeout worthy of Crowley, she's gone. Alphys programmed Asgore's phone as an EMF meter, and he's gone to the Underground with some of the other sentries to check the locket Frisk gave Flowey. Oh, and..." He pulled an unfamiliar set of keys out of his pocket and handed them to Sam. "We're gonna have to drive Angela back to town."

"Angela?! What's Angela doing here?"

"Providing backup, she thought. Got there just before we did. Saw the whole thing."

"Dang. She all right?"

"As good as can be expected, honestly. But still."

"SANS, YOU SHOULD HAVE INVITED HER OVER!" Papyrus chided.

"i did, bro," Sans replied. "she didn't think she could face frisk, even knowing that chara was the real killer. and spaghetti would have reminded her too much of her mom."

"Grillby's looking after her," Undyne added, then punched Papyrus lightly on the shoulder. "What about you nerds?"

"FRISK HASN'T STOPPED WRITING SINCE YOU LEFT," Papyrus replied quietly with a worried glance at the couch. "I DIDN'T KNOW THE SITUATION WAS THAT BAD."

"Don't blame yourself," Sam said. "None of you knew what to look for, and Chara was really good at hiding."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, "and kids who clam up like that... the worse things are, the more they shut down, especially if they're convinced no one will believe them. Gotta know the right buttons to push to get 'em to say anything at all, even in writing."

And even that doesn't always work, Sam grumbled internally. A knock-down punch, a trashed motel room, taking a crowbar to the freshly rebuilt Impala... all of those were bad enough, but at least they were clues to what was going on inside Dean's head. When Dean shut down entirely, Sam had to watch him constantly because even a split second's inattention could be the opening he needed to disappear and do something apocalyptically stupid.

Not that Sam had much room to talk, having been the one to actually start the Apocalypse. Um. Anyway.

"i dunno about you guys," Sans interrupted, "but i'm starving. look"—he inhaled sharply, sucking his jacket and shirt tight against his bones—"you can count my ribs!"

"SANS!" Papyrus cried, throwing up his hands in exasperation, as Undyne cackled.

"And I thought you had a black hole for a stomach as a kid," Dean deadpanned to Sam.

"You're just jealous you can't pull that trick," Sam jabbed back.

"Ah, c'mon, Sammy. I'm hungry, too. Look at me; I'm skin and bone!"

"That puts you one up on Sans."

The three on the couch were watching now, as evidenced by Alphys groaning and burying her blushing face in her hands.

"One thing I have to say for Papyrus," said Toriel. "His cooking really sticks to your ribs."

"NYEH!" Papyrus yelped and fled to the kitchen.

Frisk giggled helplessly.

As Sans and Undyne went to the couch, however, Dean stopped smiling and herded Sam over to the ladder for the sleeping loft. "You read anything Frisk's written?" he asked quietly.

"No, not yet," Sam replied at the same volume. "Why, what happened?"

"We do need to find out who Chara was calling. She told Asgore she was more powerful than he'd ever hope to be, and she said she'd summoned us."

Sam blinked. "You can't summon a human."

"Yeah, well, she didn't know that, clearly. Someone musta told her she could."

"So someone was using her as much as she was using Frisk."

"Someone who could get this close to Sidhe territory without being challenged by them."

Sam thought for a moment. "Y'know, there is lore that suggests the Sidhe were originally angels who didn't take sides when Lucifer rebelled. God couldn't let them stay in Heaven, but they hadn't done anything worthy of punishment, so he cast them down to live on Earth until Doomsday."

Dean frowned. "Why the hell would an angel make a deal with a sociopathic ghost?"

"I dunno. Maybe it's a renegade like Balthazar."

Dean grumbled a little. "Maybe Frisk can tell us."

But Frisk declared through Sans that the story wasn't finished yet, and Toriel insisted that everyone be quiet so Frisk could complete it before supper. So Dean went into the kitchen to help Papyrus, and Undyne dragged Sam into Papyrus' room to talk about wrestling while Sans and Alphys went up in the loft to do... something. Fortunately, Undyne's phone rang before she could suggest going outside to spar; Asgore was calling to report that the locket was clean and that he was going to have a long talk with Flowey that evening. And then Dean came to announce that supper was ready, which saved Sam the trouble of claiming he couldn't spar on an empty stomach.

Sam expected Dean to make some sort of off-color remark about being alone behind closed doors with Undyne, but he didn't. The fact that Undyne kissed Alphys on their way to the table explained why.

Supper was surprisingly good, though Papyrus confessed that Dean had made the sauce and given him the recipe. After eating, however, the fact that Sam had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours started to catch up with him, and he still had to follow Dean back to Ebott in Angela's truck. So Frisk gave Dean the notebook and a hug, and the Winchesters took their leave, collected a barely conscious Angela from Grillby's, and headed back to town.

Hennessy was pacing outside the door nearest the brothers' hotel room when they arrived. "There you are!" he said as Sam got out of the truck. "Where's Angela?"

"Asleep," Sam replied, pointing his thumb to where she sat dozing in the passenger seat, her face illuminated by the dome light. "She's not hurt, just exhausted and a little drunk. There's a bar at the prepper compound, and after what happened... she needed a drink."

Hennessy frowned. "What did happen?"

"Nothing we can't discuss over breakfast," Dean stated. "Short version is, the girl resisted and got herself killed. We're damn lucky nobody else got hurt."

"Cave-in?"

"Fire."

Hennessy hissed.

"Yeah. Angela can tell you about it in the morning; she saw the whole thing."

"You know where she lives, right?" Sam asked. "Why don't you drive her home?"

Hennessy ran a hand over his face and suddenly looked as tired as Sam felt. "Yeah, yeah, that's... that's a good idea. Thanks, Agent."

Sam handed over the truck keys, then followed Dean into the hotel room and set the salt lines while Dean painted angel-proofing wards on the walls with lemon juice he'd bought from Grillby. After that, though, the day caught up with Sam all at once, and he went straight to bed without even bothering to change. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Dean slept well—suspiciously well—that night but woke early and sat down at the table to start working through Frisk's statement. Well, it was really more of a confession, evidently meant as much for Sans' and Toriel's eyes as for the Winchesters'. Most of the part pertaining to events in the Underground didn't seem particularly relevant, except to the extent that it confirmed or contradicted what Sans had said about Chara and Asriel. Frisk did reveal that the possession had begun long before the Underground's arrival in this reality, however, and that Chara had tried to destroy the world before Frisk had summoned the strength of will (determination?) to take back control and ensure a happy ending. Asriel had absorbed every soul available to him, except for Frisk's and Chara's, in order to break the Barrier but had then released them all, including the human souls Asgore had harvested. Frisk had somehow sensed a Reaper coming to collect them, and since Chara had relinquished control and gone quiet as soon as they'd discovered where they were, Frisk had thought Chara had left as well. And everything had been fine and dandy for the first few months.

Then Frisk had woken out of a dead sleep just before midnight on Halloween night to find Chara in control and about to sacrifice a rabbit to any power, celestial or infernal, that cared to pay attention. Frisk had screamed and struggled, but to no avail. The pattern had repeated several times a week over the next two months, though sometimes Frisk had only woken the next morning to find the bloody dagger in plain sight, where Chara had left it with the evident intent of getting Frisk in trouble. Killing had, as Frisk put it, increased Chara's EXP and LOVE significantly; at one point, Frisk had apparently realized that Dean wouldn't know what those abbreviations meant and added a footnote defining them as "execution points" and "level of violence," respectively. (That explained Chara's comment about love, at least.) But her ad hoc sacrifices hadn't gotten any response until the solstice—and Frisk had tried to draw the being that had shown up.

The first picture, labeled "Naomi," wasn't particularly helpful. Like most kids, Frisk wasn't terribly adept at drawing facial features; the most Dean could gather was that it was a woman-shaped being in a dark suit and that her dark hair had been pulled back in a severe bun. That probably narrowed down the possibilities to angel or demon, since both favored the executive look when it suited them and a Hebrew name wasn't likely to belong to a goddess or a fairy of the Unseelie courts. But then Dean turned the page... and found himself staring at a two-page spread of winged weirdness labeled "True Form."

"Hey," Sam's sleepy voice interrupted his reverie, accompanied by the appearance of a coffee mug next to Dean's right hand. "That Frisk's?"

"Yeah," Dean replied with a nod of thanks and took a drink of coffee. "It's what answered the black cat."

"Mm. Angel."

Dean looked up at Sam. "You sure?"

Sam nodded, took a drink of his own coffee, and scrubbed at his eyes as he sat down. "Yeah. When I was... in the Cage, y'know, most of the time Michael and Lucifer looked like... like Nick and Adam, although Michael said once that Adam wasn't really there. Think Cas cut him loose when he hit Michael with the holy oil Molotov."

Dean blinked. He'd always assumed that their half-brother, who'd accepted possession by Michael to save Dean, had fallen into Lucifer's Cage along with both archangels when Sam had dragged them in with him to end the Apocalypse. "Huh. Good to know."

"But sometimes I'd get... glimpses. It's really hard to explain, describe, anything. And when Michael first showed up in Stull, I saw him through Lucifer's eyes. So yeah, I recognize an angel's true form." Sam took another drink and gestured toward the picture with his mug. "This one's pretty high-ranking—a Domination, at least, maybe a Throne."

Before Dean could ask what that meant, the room phone rang. Mrs. Hennessy had insisted the day before that law enforcement always stayed for free at her hotel, and now she was calling to inform them that breakfast was on the house, too. Never one to turn down free food, Dean accepted quickly. But while Sam stumbled off to make himself presentable, Dean turned the page and kept reading:

I don't know how I was able to see Naomi's true form; maybe it's a side effect of being exposed to so much monster magic. But that's the last thing I remember from that night. I don't know what Chara and Naomi talked about, although now I think they must have made some sort of deal. At the time, I thought maybe Naomi had scared Chara off because she went quiet again through the holidays.

But a few nights after New Year's, she woke me up outside someone's house in Ebott; she said she wanted to show me something. And then she broke in and killed the man. I couldn't stop her. It was like I was tied up and gagged. It was even worse than in the Underground, because this was a human. There was blood and—Frisk had scribbled out several words after that and ended the sentence instead with an anticlimactic stuff.

When we got home and I finally got control back, I tried and tried to reset, but the menu wouldn't come up. I thought about trying to force a Reset by killing myself, but if it didn't work... I couldn't do that to Mom and Dunkle Sans. And then Mom walked in and found me crying. She thought I'd had a nightmare. Chara wouldn't let me tell her the truth.

Dean's heart ached. Poor Frisk. The kid had made some terrible decisions in the Underground, apparently, but hell, so had Dean. And the Reset button had offered the ability to reverse those decisions, even though the damage was never completely undone. But like Dean had told Sans, it didn't work that way in this universe. He had some idea of what it was like to be powerless against a possessing entity, although neither the specter nor the Khan worm had been totally comparable. But losing the power to fix things afterward, especially when you'd gotten as accustomed to it as Frisk had... that must be even worse.

Hell, Cas could probably relate, as often as he'd been rendered nearly human. Dean might oughta have Cas come talk to Frisk. They needed more information about Naomi anyway.

Sam came out of the bathroom at that point looking more or less awake, so Dean summarized Frisk's confession for him on their way to breakfast. Naomi's name didn't ring any bells for Sam, though ("It's not like I could read Lucifer's mind, Dean!"), and they tabled the discussion upon reaching the hotel's small but cheerful dining room. Nobody else was there aside from Mrs. Hennessy, so they claimed a table close to the fireplace.

No sooner had Mrs. Hennessy delivered their coffee, however, than her son walked in with Angela in tow. "Agents!" Hennessy called. "Mind if we join you?"

"Not at all," Sam replied as the brothers stood and Dean pulled out a chair for Angela, who still looked pretty wrung out.

Angela smiled and sat down. "Thank you."

"Boy, you guys weren't kidding about Angela being drunk last night," Hennessy said as he sat down next to Sam. "She told me the wildest story about what happened up there. Pretty ridiculous, though. I mean, you're not dead serial killers who wasted a ghost in a bar full of monsters, right?"

"Of course not," Dean lied with practiced ease and turned to Angela. "That bartender musta slipped you some absinthe when you weren't looking."

Angela forced a laugh. "Right, that makes much more sense." Then her smile somehow dimmed and became more genuine at the same time. "He really was kind, though. And, uh... hot. Very... very hot, yeah."

"Scorching," Dean agreed with zero concern for what Hennessy might read into it. "Be careful, though. Guy like that, it's easy to get burned."

"Aheh. Right."

Hennessy cleared his throat. "Anyway, we've talked it over again and pieced together what really happened. You guys can file your report with the Bureau; we'll close out the files here and take care of the media and all. Sure is a shame the fire caused a cave-in and the girl's remains aren't recoverable, but hey, all the more reason for people to keep away from the mine. What'd you say her name was?"

"Chara," Sam supplied. "Chara Dreemurr. She was trying to frame her twin, Frisk."

"I... see. Identical twins?"

Dean shrugged. "Close enough for government work."

Angela groaned, but her smile was brighter. Sam gave him the I can't believe you actually said that grimace.

Hennessy, on the other hand, got a calculating look in his eye. "I don't suppose the Bureau has a file on the Dreemurrs."

Dean shook his head. "No, these people have been so far off the grid for so many years, the government doesn't know they exist."

"They may not even be US citizens," Sam added, "but there's no way to tell. The twins were adopted, though, after they'd been abandoned. So if you want to keep the Dreemurrs out of the news..."

"Dreemurr sounds like an alias anyway," Hennessy agreed a little too quickly. "We'll see what we can come up with."

"Campbell," Dean suggested to forestall any ideas Hennessy might have of declaring the kids to be Winchesters.

Hennessy opened his mouth to object but then thought better of it. "Er, Campbell, right. Sure."

Just then, Mrs. Hennessy delivered breakfast for four, and Dean took the break in the conversation as a chance to change the subject. "So, Angela," he began as Mrs. Hennessy left. "You gonna take some time off?"

Angela nodded. "Yeah. After Mom's funeral, I'm... actually, I'm going out to Sioux Falls for a while. Jody Mills invited me to stay with her for a couple of weeks."

"Good," said Sam before Dean could. "Jody's a good friend. She'll take good care of you."

And explain hunting while she's at it, Dean added mentally. Jody had faced down zombies and Leviathans as courageously as any hunter, and she'd helped out with a couple of other cases as well. She knew enough to be able to help Angela deal with having lost a loved one to the supernatural.

"What about you guys?" Angela asked. "Will you be on your way now that the case is closed?"

"Actually, it isn't quite," Sam answered. "According to Frisk, Chara had an accomplice. It's not likely this person's going to continue the killings, but we need to find out what was really going on to make sure the town is safe."

Hennessy frowned. "An accomplice? Someone from town?"

Dean shook his head. "Probably not. All we have is a first name—Naomi."

"We're planning to talk to Frisk again later this morning," Sam added. "We got a written statement yesterday, but with Chara gone, Frisk might be more willing to open up."

"May not have any more information to give us, though. Sounds like Chara was doing a pretty good job of keeping Frisk in the dark."

"We'll still ask."

"Oh, yeah, of course we'll ask. Just sayin' we may need to check other sources."

As if on cue, footsteps approached from the direction of the dining room door, to which Dean had his back. But Sam's eyebrows jumped in surprise, and he called "Hey!" and got up to grab a chair from another table, which meant the newcomer wasn't Cas.

"so here you are," replied a voice Dean hadn't expected but probably should have. "you two are tough men to find."

"Well, hell," Dean returned as Sans, mask and goggles and gloves in place, walked up and clambered into the chair Sam set at their end of the table, "if we'd known you were comin', we'da baked a pie."

Hennessy shot Dean a strange look. "Don't you mean cake?"

"Pie's better," Dean and Sans chorused, then acknowledged their agreement with a fistbump.

"How's Frisk?" Sam asked, sitting down again.

Sans sighed. "still asleep, i think. we had a big sleepover, but nobody slept well—except alphys, maybe. paps insisted on making breakfast so tori could stay with frisk, which would have been a great idea if he didn't use spaghetti to make pancakes. i came down here out of self-defense."

"Why not just get takeout from Muffet's?"

"eh, you know paps. cooking for company makes him feel better."

Hennessy looked at Sans even more strangely than he'd looked at Dean. "Spaghetti pancakes?"

"he's still learning how to cook, and spaghetti's about the only thing he's mastered. well, i say that... he's noodled around with lasagna some, and it's pretty good. i got him a paula deen cookbook for christmas, but tori and i are still trying to convince him to follow the recipes as written. he doesn't always understand the terminology, and he usually asks undyne for advice, which means we're lucky if nothing ends up on fire. frisk says we need to find a way to get food network, whatever that means, so papyrus can watch some actual cooking shows on our days off."

Noticing Hennessy's growing bewilderment, Angela cleared her throat. "Uh, I suppose introductions are in order. Jerry Hennessy's one of my most trusted officers," she told Sans, who nodded once to acknowledge the implication of her emphasis. "Jerry, this is... uh..."

"oh, sorry. sans gaster. name's classified, though."

"He works for the Dreemurrs," Dean added, making a mental note to ask about the surname later.

Hennessy took a deep breath and turned his attention to his plate. "This meeting never happened!"

"thanks, pal," Sans said, sounding amused.

Sam caught Mrs. Hennessy's attention and ordered another plate and some coffee for Sans, and the conversation turned to safe small talk for the rest of the meal. Sans kept his mask on, though, and Dean never did see how he managed to eat through it—but then again, he never had seen Sans take a bite of his food the day before, either.

As the meal wound down, however, Sans put down his fork with a sigh. "tibia-nest, agents, i didn't just come down here to eat. there's something i need to talk to you about—in private."

"Likewise," said Dean. "Our room private enough?"

"should be."

So after taking their leave of Angela and Hennessy, the brothers took Sans back to their room. Dean noticed, however, that Sans kept scanning the walls of the hall as they walked, as if he were looking for something.

"What?" Dean asked as they stopped for Sam to unlock the door.

Sans raised his left hand and illuminated a vertical line running along the edge of the molding around the door, intersected by an irregular pattern of horizontal and diagonal lines. "what is that? it's on all the doorframes."

Sam stepped back to look. "Huh. Looks like Ogham—Irish runes."

Dean's eyebrows shot up. "Well, that explains some things."

Sans looked up at him. "can you read it?"

"No," the brothers chorused.

"But I can guess," Dean continued. "Some sort of charm, and maybe wards, too. Ensures every guest has a good night's sleep, minimum."

Sam raised his chin. "So the Hennessys are in league with the fairies, at least in this way."

Sans' goggles shifted as if he were raising a brow ridge. "you're sure that's all it is?"

"Well, it hardly makes sense to put a curse on every room in your hotel."

"Not only that," Dean added as Sam finally opened the door. "I slept well last night—too well. Better than I have since before our dad died. And I hadn't even had a beer."

Sans flinched a little but nodded. "okay, yeah, that makes sense. it's just... normally, when i've been somewhere once, i can... find a shortcut to get back, right? but i couldn't get into your room. i managed to find your car, but it took me ten minutes or so to get into the building and find you. i actually had to use the front door."

"Huh. Well, that might have something to do with the wards we put up last night."

Hand still glowing, Sans cautiously approached the doorway, which began to shimmer faintly in response to his magic. "is... is that a barrier?"

"It shouldn't keep you from walking through," Sam replied. "It's angel-proofing. Then again, I don't know why it would have blocked your shortcut, unless the way you travel is the same as the way angels travel."

Sans gulped audibly but stepped carefully across the threshold. The ward barrier wavered, causing Sans to shudder slightly, but it didn't repel him.

"You okay, dude?" Dean asked as he entered and shut the door behind him.

Sans heaved a sigh of relief and extinguished his magic. "yeah, yeah. felt weird, but i'm all right. why angel wards?"

"Just a hunch," Sam answered, "but it turned out to be accurate. Chara was working with an angel, according to Frisk."

"Speaking of which, here's what we needed to talk to you about." Dean picked up Frisk's notebook and handed it to Sans. "I think Frisk wants you and Toriel to read this, too."

Sans nodded and tucked the notebook under his right arm. "thanks."

"What was it you need from us?"

"i need your help dealing with... not a ghost, exactly. it's my dad—or what's left of him."

"You mean his dust, or..."

"no, no. he's not dead. it's just that i'm the only one who remembers that he exists. well, frisk might have seen him a couple of times. he's... it's hard to explain, but he's scattered across time and space. or at least he was until we got here."

Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean, then at Sans, and said, "Maybe you'd better start from the beginning."

"that's harder than it sounds. even i don't remember a lot. what i can tell you is that papyrus and i had a father, dr. w. d. gaster. he was the royal scientist before alphys. he was studying the nature of space-time—trying to find a way to break the barrier, i think. i really can't tell you much. anyway, he built this machine in the core—it's a power station in the underground, used to be a research facility—and... well, long story short, he fell into it."

The Winchesters hissed in sympathy.

"like i said, no one else remembers him now, not even asgore. not even paps. that's why we never use our last name; it's not like most monsters have last names anyway. but i've seen him now and then, even since we arrived here, only he won't come out of the underground. and..." Sans ran a gloved hand over his masked face. "i thought... maybe you could help me convince him that it's safe."

Dean frowned. "Why us and not Frisk?"

"And why now?" Sam added.

Sans hesitated, then huffed. "tibia-nest? i had a dream about dad last night, and he insisted on talking to you, said he had urgent information you needed. look, i don't understand it, either," he continued when Sam and Dean exchanged another odd look. "maybe he knows something about this angel chara was working with."

Sam shrugged his eyebrows and tilted his head a little. "I guess it's worth checking out. We need to head back up there to talk to Frisk again anyway."

Dean sighed. "Yeah, all right. Guess we should drive, just in case."

The drive back to East Ebott was quiet; Dean turned off the stereo to allow Sans to at least skim Frisk's confession. As they passed Grillby's, however, Sam asked Sans to navigate, and Sans gave them directions to the mine entrance, which was about half a mile past the edge of the monsters' town. He had taken off his mask and goggles at some point but kept his hands in his pockets as he led the Winchesters to a spot just outside the dark, gaping doorway into the Underground.

"we're here," he announced as they stopped.

The shadows inside the mine entrance seemed to thicken.

Sans looked around as if searching for something to say. "uh, knock, knock."

Dean didn't actually hear a response, but he thought there might have been one all the same.

"scold."

There—a barely audible rasp.

"'s cold out here, dad, but i swear, nobody's going to hurt you. in fact, i think you'll be more corporeal out here than you are in there."

Something writhed in the darkness.

"just try. please. we'll help you."

There was a pause, and then the darkness started to seep out of the mine entrance. No, wait—that was the edge of a shapeless black robe. As it inched further into the daylight, skeletal hands with large holes in what should have been the palms appeared. Eventually, Dean could make out an egg-shaped skull with a vertical crack above the right eye socket and another below the left eye socket. Slowly, the figure—Dr. Gaster?—took one step away from the mine entrance, then another, then a third.

Sans looked ready to cry for joy. "see? i told you there was nothing to be afraid of!"

Dr. Gaster opened his mouth to reply, but what came out was unintelligibly garbled, like the sound of turning a radio dial rapidly past a bunch of stations without tuning in to any of them.

Sans didn't seem to have any trouble understanding it, however, and his smile dimmed. "what do you mean? what were you doing?" Dr. Gaster started to answer, but Sans shook his head. "whoa, whoa, slow down, dad. what about code?"

Dr. Gaster seemed to repeat himself.

"of... of this universe?"

Dr. Gaster nodded but then swayed suddenly. Sam ran to steady him, but as he caught the skeleton, Dr. Gaster grabbed Sam's shirt, looked him in the eye, and rasped something urgently before collapsing noisily against him, eye sockets shut.

"Whoa!" Sam exclaimed, trying to keep Dr. Gaster upright, but it was a harder fight than Dean would have expected. Apparently Dr. Gaster wasn't completely corporeal after all, or at least not completely solid.

Sans, on the other hand, wasn't paying much attention. His eye sockets had gone dark, and he ran a shaking hand over his face.

"What?" Dean demanded. "What'd he tell Sam?"

"you won't like it. but it explains... a lot. a whole hell of a lot."

"I don't care whether we'll like it. What'd he say?"

Sans looked up at Dean. "someone's been tampering with the angels' base code."