((A/N: A big thanks to JasherTheDarkened and Meg for your reviews!))

Frisk was overwhelmed with concern when she saw the look on Sans' face. It was so troubled and conflicted, and he was so deep in thought that he hadn't let go of her hand yet. He was shaking.

"Sans?" She asked quietly, not sure if she would set him off. Sans didn't respond though, his eye-sockets narrowed as he remained deep in thought. He was getting angrier, his grip on her hand tightening.

"Sans." Frisk stressed in a louder voice tugging at her hand, his grip beginning to hurt, but Sans remained unreachable. Frisk could tell that whatever was going on in his head was getting worse as his eye-lights faded away. He was starting to scare her.

"Sans!" She shouted, yanking at her hand again, now worried about her single HP being lost accidentally to his tightening grip.

"what!" Sans snapped, his eye flickering blue with magic. Frisk flinched away, tears escaping her eye-sockets.

"Your hurting me!" She whimpered.

The anger on Sans' face drained away and flooded with guilt. He quickly let go of her hand and brought his hands up as a sign of passiveness.

"i-i'm sorry, babybones." He apologised. Frisk stepped away, still terrified and tears now running down her face like raindrops. "i'm not mad at you. i-i didn't mean to hurt ya. it's, it's just that this has stressed me out, and-and," He closed his eye-sockets, bringing his hands to his face, Frisk peered at him curiously, pity beginning to swell in her chest.

"it's my fault that he's trapped there, and falmercia is giving me a chance to get him back, but i can't trust her, and even if i can we don't even know what this legendary artefact does and we could be just giving her all she needs to kill us all, or worse. and-and-and-" Sans was interrupted when Frisk crushed him in a hug, and he immediately went back to apologising, feeling awful and well aware that she must have been absolutely terrified. "i'm sorry, i'm so sorry frisk."

"It's alright Sans." Frisk assured. She completely understood, Sans was so stressed and while it freaked her out to see him like this when he was usually so calm and cool, it was completely fair. He obviously felt responsible for what happened to Gaster, but it was an actual demon that was offering to return Gaster to him, a demon who had purposely neglected to mention important details about their deals in the past.

It was a tough choice and if anything bad happened because they made this deal, it would be entirely on them. Frisk had a bad feeling about this deal on so many levels, but remembering Sans' face before when Falmercia told him that Gaster was alive…

"Let's do it." Frisk said suddenly, and Sans looked at her if she had grown another skull. "Let's get Gaster back."

Sans looked down at Frisk, worry in his eye-sockets, "babybones, you- we, we don't need to do this for my sake. it's too big of a risk."

Frisk shook her head, "I can't let you blame yourself forever Sans, you've gone through so much, experienced so much loss, because of my mistakes, it's time you got something back."

"frisk…" Sans looked like he didn't know what to say.

"Maybe we can look at the artefact first and see what it does before we give it to Falmercia. If we think it's dangerous we could always back out." Frisk reasoned, hoping that it would sooth Sans' conscience.

"that, that doesn't sound like a bad idea, babybones." Sans agreed, making Frisk smile. He held out his hand which she took, "let's take a shortcut to waterfall."

This time the shortcut was much quicker and didn't leave Frisk feeling confused afterwards. She looked around and saw that they were standing by the umbrella stand, and remembering Asriel's statue, Frisk went over and picked one up.

"what are you doing, kiddo?" Sans asked, confused as he had never attempted to get the legendary artefact before.

"To get inside the room that has the artefact, you need to get play a song on the piano," Frisk said under the assumption that Sans knew which piano she was speaking of, "and you hear that song when you put an umbrella over Asriel's statue."

"asriel's statue?" Sans asked, not sure what Frisk was talking about.

"This way," Frisk pointed in the statue's direction and started walking. Sans shrugged and followed her, probably assuming that she knew what she was doing.

As they walked they listened to the gentle sounds of waterfall, the sound of water running soothing to their non-existent ears. The both remained quiet, as they both had a lot to think about, though unsurprisingly it was Frisk who broke the silence.

"Sans, what did Falmercia mean by 'our sides door'?" She asked.

Sans looked at Frisk and explained carefully, "between here, or as i like to call it, reality, and the void, there are two barriers, or doors as dad called them. to go from one side, say reality, and stay in the other, the void, the doors need to be opened from both sides, or else we just bounce back to the side you came from. i take advantage of this with my short-cuts."

Frisk nodded, concentrating, "So, that thing I feel my soul pass through each time we take a shortcut is our side's door?"

Sans nodded, "yep. as for how dad got trapped in there… i have a theory. i think when he fell into the core, he tried to take a shortcut out to save himself, but the core is a magical generator, and must have boosted his magic, which must have sent him crashing through the void's door instead of bouncing off, and he mustn't be able to get out because he can't open our door."

Frisk's eyes widened and she beamed, coming up with an idea, "Then why don't you open our side's door for him?" Sans shook his head with regret.

"no can do, babybones, this sort of magic is very advanced stuff, and it has to be precise. at my level, unless we open the doors at the exact time, knowing each other's exact location… it just won't be possible." Frisk looked down in disappointment. What was she thinking? If it was possible, Sans would have thought and tried it already.

However, Sans' explanation made her eyes widen in fear as a thought entered her head.

Asriel's statue became visible and Frisk made a quick dash ahead to put the umbrella in place, regretting her decision immediately as a wave of exhaustion flushed over her before she even reached it.

Asriel's song began to play, and Sans narrowed his eyes at the sound, "i have heard this before… but where?"

Frisk smiled grimly, "The first run. After I fought Asriel and he opened the barrier for us." Sans nodded numbly. He took a look at Frisk who waved her hand with the music, memorising the music notes. She smiled bitter-sweetly as she caught him watching her.

"I'm not as good as my sister, but I can at least do this." Sans looked down, Frisk's story made him feel uncomfortable. She didn't deserve that.

Once Frisk was sure that she had memorised all the notes, she nodded at Sans and the headed back towards the Artefact room.

Suddenly she spoke up about what was bothering her. "Sans? About what you said earlier about the magic being advanced, what does that say about Falmercia?"

Sans frowned and shook his skull, "i don't think i want to know." Frisk nodded grimly, she had been getting a feeling that Falmercia was hiding something, more than that, that she was planning something. The more she learnt about what this demon was capable of, the more scared it made her, but she chose not to mention this to Sans, she didn't want to make this decision any harder for him.

Frisk grabbed Sans' hand and held it tightly, they walked the rest of the way in silence, both with daunting thoughts on their minds.