IMPORTANT: For the sake of this story let's assume that from when Chara fell, until the barrier was broken by Frisk, there was a span of around 10 years. And now on to your regularly scheduled chapter

"No, that can't be…" Sans sounds incredulous, he steps away from you, pacing around the room, his skull in his hands. "That's… How… You're so… And Chara was ruthless…"

At this last comment your whole world shatters. "What did Chara do to you?" You ask quietly, watching his whole body tense. He turns to you and you can see a deep rooted pain in his eyes.

"If you don't know that, then I'd rather not tell you, at least not yet." You can tell he's saying this through gritted teeth. "Just… Explain to me what's going on, please. I need to know." You take a deep and shaky breath, preparing yourself to delve into your past, dreading the experience. Sensing your apprehension and watching you shrink into yourself he slowly approaches you again, kneeling in front of you and placing his bony arms around you. You hold onto him tight, quivering.

"I suppose you deserve to know after everything you've done for me, and after what you just saw." You pause for a moment. "I won't blame you if you want me to leave after I'm done…"

You feel Sans picking you up off the ground and setting you down on what you assume is his bed, the sheets are crumpled up in a corner. He sits in front of you and takes your hands in his. "Whenever you're ready then."

You nod and try to stop your body from trembling, to no avail.

"I was born in the nearby village to Mt. Ebott. I never really knew my mother. She died giving birth to Chara when I was only 3 years old, so my memories of her are pretty much non-existent. But ever since I can remember, our father was never one to show affection… Quite the opposite… He was always buried in his research, going through book after book about the war, monsters and their magic. How they got it, how they used it, why humans didn't possess it… He was obsessed with their power, wanted it for himself.

"Me and Chara, we never really got anything from him other than food and clothing, and even then, if we came up to him saying we were hungry while he was especially immersed in his work he would beat us away… I tried my best to take care of Chara… He wasn't a bad child. He wasn't… He just wanted his father to love him the way any child would. I loved him. But that wasn't enough for him… Chara… He started acting out. He'd tell other kids to do things he knew they would get in trouble, and hit them when they didn't do what he wanted… I tried to make him stop but he would start crying and I didn't have the heart to yell at him… He was my brother after all…

"I know you think he was the first human to fall… But that… isn't true…" You stop to take a hold of yourself. Your hands are shaking harder and you feel Sans squeeze them tightly, reassuringly.

"So that kid wasn't the first?" You shake your head and go on.

"One day, our father went up Mount Ebott with someone he had hired to help with his research. When he came back down he was alone. To this day I'm almost certain he pushed them through the barrier… Not long after that, Chara was playing outside in the bed of golden flowers right outside our house, at night, at this point he was around 7 years old. I wasn't very far away, I always kept an eye on him as best I could. A monster appeared, coming from the Underground. It was scared, and confused. I guess they must've killed the person that fell and come through the barrier after absorbing their soul, but you could just tell they didn't want to hurt anyone. Chara knew about our father's obsession. So he thought that if he could deliver him the poor monster, he'd finally love him. He told the monster that he was going to help, that his father was the best and smartest person in the world and that he'd help them get their family and friends back. He was always such a good liar…" At this, Sans seems to grimace slightly, you look away before you continue.

"When our father saw the monster he dropped everything he was working on, didn't even think twice before trapping them. He chained them down with magic suppressing links he'd developed not long ago. I remember him saying this was the perfect time to test them. When I saw the maddened look in his eyes I was so scared… Chara didn't even notice, he was just waiting for his approval. But it never came. Instead he looked me dead in the eyes and told me to come closer. At first I didn't move but then he threatened to hurt me and Chara and I slowly inched closer. He grabbed my wrists so hard it was bound to leave a bruise, I tried to get away, begging him to please let me go." You close your eyes and hold your head between your hands, fear gripping you tightly as you recall everything. Your breathing's laboured but you push on. "He tied me to a bed and started his sick experimenting.

"He'd extract magic out of the monster and inject it into my veins. It hurt so much… My body convulsed violently, rejecting it just as viciously. This torture went on for days… Then it turned to weeks, then months… He built a cell to keep the monster in and reinforced the straps on me so that I wouldn't twitch so hard… Chara would keep his distance. But he was always watching. At first he was horrified. God, the poor thing… The things he saw…" Sans scoots closer to you, amazed at how you could be thinking of someone like Chara when you were the one feeling the pain first hand. "Soon, his face showed no emotion. It was like he had lost all faith in humanity if he ever had any. At this point, our father had realised that the only way he was going to get the magic to infuse with my soul was if he took it from source to source… He was starting to lose his patience too… He drained the last bit of magic from the monster and they turned to dust right in front of my eyes. As you can probably tell… Humans don't possess the magic to extract their souls out of their bodies…" You stop for a moment, bringing your shaking hands over to your jacket's zipper. You pull it down to your stomach and open the jacket at your chest, exposing the large, ugly scar between your breasts. A humourless laugh escapes your throat and you feel tears making their way down your cheeks, to your neck, and to your chest. "He had to get to it somehow."

Sans looks mortified. You see blue droplets at the corners of his eyes and he puts his hand over your aching heart. "Star I… I'm so sorry…"

You place your hand over his on your chest. After a moment you bring it back down and pull the zipper back up. "I don't think I've ever screamed so much in my life… When he was done with me, he just left me there, in pain, barely breathing. I vaguely remember Chara coming over to me and holding my hand. And I guess somehow our souls must have connected through some magic that may have seeped from me to him… I don't really know… All I know is that was the last time I saw him alive, with my own eyes. But sometimes I would dream about Chara. I would see him, with a new family, a family of monsters that looked somewhat like big, fluffy goats…" At this you smiled slightly. "Toriel… Asgore… Asriel… They gave Chara the love he deserved… and he almost looked happy… In my head they were just dreams, but they gave me the strength to hold on to my life, for just a little longer… Hoping maybe someday I would get to see him again… Finally happy… There were days where I thought I would die, and others where I wanted to die, but I always held on…

"I don't know how much time passed. One day I just somehow felt stronger. Strong enough to get myself out of bed. I was so weak that my father didn't even bother to strap me to it or even check on me anymore, he just expected me to die sooner or later, not really killing me on the off chance that it would actually work. I felt drawn outside, to the bed of flowers that Chara used to play in. I ripped the tubes from my veins and stumbled my way there. When I got to the door I couldn't have possibly been prepared for what was there waiting for me. A monster that looked like the small child monster in my dreams, but somehow different was kneeling amongst the flowers with Chara's dead body cradled in his arms.

"When I looked the monster in the eyes, I could've sworn I saw Chara's face, he looked... I can't even describe the face I saw… But I remember screaming for them to run back, but it was too late. The villagers were already coming out of their houses, weapons in hand, and my father grabbed me by the collar, holding me in place when I tried to run for Asriel. 'That monster killed that child!' 'Kill him!' Several people chanted this awful mantra as they stabbed the poor creature that had treated my brother as their own, loving him the way no one ever had, and my father didn't let me do a thing to stop those bastards. The scene was just too much for me to take, I screamed until my throat was raw. I suddenly felt filled with determination to help them, power just seemed to pour from my soul and I managed to release myself from my father's grip and ran towards the monster. Out of instinct I used the magic inside me to push the villagers off of him. I don't think they even noticed me… 'Get out of here!' I begged. 'I don't know how much longer I can hold them off! Run, you idiot, just go!' That seemed to resonate with them, because I saw them muster up the strength to get up and go back to where they had come from. When they were far enough away, I just let myself collapse to my knees, expecting to just crumble to pieces from using so much power that was not really my own. But I didn't.

"After that I was thrown into the cell my father had created for the monster. He ran tests on me. Some more children fell down after Chara. I have a sneaking suspicion he had something to do with that as well, hoping more monsters would come back carrying their souls for him to use for his own sick purposes… But they never came back…

"He would throw all he had at me, honing my control of the magic. At first I refused to go along with it. That's when I got most of these." You motion to all the scars covering your body. "But deep down I didn't really want to die. I longed for freedom. I wanted to be happy… To walk freely beneath the stars that kept me company as a child… So I started fighting back."

You wrap your arms around yourself, feeling extremely guilty about what was coming. "Hey, it's okay. I'm here." Sans envelops you in a tender embrace.

"He started throwing rabid dogs at me… And I didn't… I never meant… Usually I could just knock them out, send them away… But… I didn't mean to… It was going for my throat but I didn't mean to…" You sob into Sans' shoulder.

"It's okay… You did what you had to…" Somehow you think that he knows how it feels.

"It was years of this… So many long years… I thought it would never end until the day the barrier broke. The power released from it messed with the electrical and magnetic fields around the village and the cage door opened. I didn't even stop to think, I sprinted out of there and I ran as far away, for as long as I could. I ran until my legs gave out at and I found myself exhausted and out of breath, lying on the floor of that park. I rolled onto my back and just stared at the stars until dawn. I was free… I was finally free…" Sans is holding you tight as you shiver in his arms. "I don't deserve freedom though… I should have died. If I had died, he would never have experimented on himself, he wouldn't be what he is now, power mad, and dangerous… If I had any shred of decency I would've died a long time ago…"

Sans places his hands on either side of your face and looks right into your eyes. "Don't ever say that. I don't want to hear you say that ever again." His forehead presses against yours and he closes his eyes. He's so close…

"Why don't you hate me? Why aren't you throwing me out, afraid what I might do to you, or Papyrus?"

"You're powerful. That much is clear. So am I, but that doesn't matter." He pauses for a moment. "Just earlier tonight you were fighting a man you clearly hate, and you were holding back. He was merciless, tearing at you at any chance he got, and not once did you actually try to kill him. You might think you did, but you didn't. I was watching. I saw you hesitate. I saw you falter."

"I've killed once before…"

"By accident and out of necessity, and you still feel terrible about it." You feel vulnerable, exposed. Deep down you know what he's saying is true. You can feel his breath on your face… You pull your own hands up to his skull. "I'm never going to let him hurt you again…"

You're overcome with emotion. You feel drained and at the same time like you're coming alive, your stomach is doing flips and your soul is weary but unrestricted. You feel liberated and at the same time trapped in Sans' embrace. He's still so close… You lean closer… "I…" You whisper quietly, not sure what you want to say. He opens his eyes to look at you, that familiar blue appearing out of nowhere. He backs away and you do the same looking down at your hands, your cheeks feeling warm.

"You should get some rest for now…" He says and you nod. He gets a blanket and lays it over your shoulders. You lean against the wall and he sits at the far end of the bed, his back to you. "I'll be here if you need me…"

At the sound of Sans' words, you become painfully aware of what you wanted to say to him. Slowly you crawl over to him and put your arms over his hips, resting your chin on his shoulder. "I need you…"

Sans reaches his hand over to your cheek and you feel yourself leaning into his soft touch, your lids closing of their own accord. "I need you too." His voice is barely even a whisper. Without thinking, you just place a soft, butterfly of a kiss on his cheek. Opening your eyes you see them radiating a cyan glow and you smile, blushing as well.

"Thank you for everything you've done for me…"

NOTE: I re-wrote this chapter time and time again, and I'm still not sure if it's at 100% but I like the way it turned out, now Star's past has been revealed. Thank you so much for reading and as always any feedback is welcome :)