Surprisingly the rest of the night went by without any other incidents. Looking over to your side you see Sans sleeping face down on the pillow, his arm lazily spread over your midsection. You trace the bones in his hands with your fingers gingerly making him hum in his sleep. Out of curiosity, turning over to your side you do the same thing over his skull and he seems to shiver, his eyes slowly opening to look at you with a groggy expression.

"Morning." He smiles. "No more nightmares?" You shake your head. "Good."

You sit up on the bed and put your feet to the floor, testing putting some weight on them. It seems better. Carefully you stand up, pleased with the fact that your legs are working again. Rolling over onto his back, Sans does the same as you walk out into the hall, following you close behind. You get yourself a glass of water and he leans on the counter staring at you intensely.

"You look worried." He says after a while in silence.

"Hmm?"

"If you changed your mind I can go by myself. It's probably better that way."

"No, I haven't. It's just…" You go quiet, a hand going to your chest as the memory of the pain returns unwarranted. "I keep thinking… What if when we get there he's not there?"

The small skeleton steps closer. "He's dead. I made damn sure he wouldn't hurt you again, or anyone else." Somehow those words don't offer you any comfort.

"And what if someone did find him?"

"I'm sure no one did." You nod your head weakly. He's right. You're just being paranoid.

"Hey, how long was I out?"

"Tori mentioned something about a week and a half I think. To be honest I wasn't paying much attention to time going by…" Sans murmurs.

Oh god… It was that long. You're suddenly aware of how grimy and disgusting you must be. "I should shower… I feel filthy…" He smiles at your comment.

"You look gorgeous to me." Stepping closer still he worms his arms around your waist burrowing his face in your neck and inhaling deeply, making you shudder and causing your whole body to tingle. "Smell delicious too…"

"Ahem!" Someone clears their throat outside the door and you both push away from each other, blushing fiercely. "Sans, there's a child in the house." Toriel scolds.

"Sorry." You both mutter feeling like children who got caught stealing cookies out of the cookie jar.

"It's quite alright, I know how it is to be young and… Well, I'm sure you're hungry, my child, I'll prepare you both a meal. I've laid out some clothes for you in the bedroom, if you want to use the shower and change as well." You thank her profusely and she smiles lovingly.

As you make your way out, Sans stays behind with Toriel, watching you walk away. "Isn't she wonderful?"

She simply chuckles.

You put on the clothes Toriel picked out for you. Skinny black jeans and a maroon hoodie. Simple and comfortable. She even set out a hair and toothbrush which you eagerly use taking a look at yourself in the mirror and nodding somewhat satisfied with the result. Your eyes still look very tired but you suppose you'll need some time to look and feel even remotely stable.

In the kitchen a breakfast of pancakes awaits you. You spy Frisk sitting on a chair, swinging their legs back and forth and signing to Sans.

"Oh yeah? That's good kiddo, hope it goes well." When they see you walk in, their face beams as they motion with their hands. "Kid's saying good morning." Sans translates.

"Well good morning Frisk." You return their smile and take the seat opposite from where they are. The skeleton saunters over to you.

"You look better."

"I feel it, thank you."

While you savour the amazing pancakes Sans helps himself to a bottle of ketchup. He offers you some and you wrinkle your nose thinking back to when you did that before. You finish eating and take your plates over to the sink.

"That's alright child, I'll take care of it."

"No, I insist. It's the least I can do…" You stare down at your hands in shame.

"Well alright, but next time you come visit please make it on better terms. I would love to have you over for dinner sometime. We could have a little chat, if you'd like." You agree timidly and start rinsing.

"I'm sure he loved you… He just didn't know how…" Your voice is so quiet Toriel might've missed it if she wasn't paying attention. She turns to you with a small smile that could melt a frozen heart.

"Thank you."

You dry your hands off and look over to Sans, a bubble of anxiety rising to your throat. "We should get going then." He ruffles Frisk's hair (you're starting to think that's his way of showing affection to them) and walks over to you, taking your hand.

"Be safe you two." Toriel says with concern.

"Safe is my middle name." Both you and Frisk snort at that.

You materialise in front of the house you grew up in. Mostly inside a cell. The thought sends shudders down your spine and fills you with dread. You look at the bed of flowers out front and find the ground stained a dark red that almost looks black by now. It's your blood. Looking around you, the village is still quiet, nothing but a few birds chirping and the wind blowing softly can be heard. Ghost town was a pretty accurate description. It made you uneasy, coupled with the horrid memories you have of this place.

Sans squeezes your hand reassuringly and starts walking somewhere else, with you in tow. Approaching some more isolated houses he stops suddenly.

"Are you sure you want to see this?" You're not, but you nod anyway.

Walking behind one of the buildings you see something out of the corner of your eye. There's something lying on the ground, surrounded by the same stained dirt back where you nearly bled out. "My magic disintegrated after a while. He wasn't exactly like that when I left him. But the body hasn't been touched." He's rubbing his head with his hand, looking tense, but you can't tear your eyes away from where it lies so you don't notice.

Ever so slowly you step towards it, only slightly expecting it to get up and come at you. But of course it doesn't. Approaching the corpse a vile smell hits your nose but you keep advancing. You kneel in front of it. "Star, don't…" He mutters when he sees you reaching for it. But you have to see it. You just have to. Focusing you use your magic to turn it over and the sight is even more revolting than the stench. You turn away, your hand in front of your mouth, your eyes wide. You feel the contents of your stomach rise up to your throat and out.

It looks a sickly green colour and it's crawling with maggots, creating holes where there weren't any before and the skin is ruptured in places where the bloating was more severe. The tongue is swollen to the point that it's sticking out of its mouth, and there's a sickening liquid substance leaking out of the eyes, ears and nose, which at this point look deformed and partially eaten. It's gruesome. It's death.

The small skeleton kneels next to you and rubs your back softly as you shake. He pulls you away from the scene, afraid you might vomit again, or worse. "I shouldn't have brought you."

"No, I'm fine. I… I needed to see it." You try to push the image out of your mind but it's burned into your eyelids when you close them. "We need to bury it." You say, your stomach still churning.

"I'll do it."

"We both will. I need to see that he's 6 feet under and not coming back up." Sans nods silently and lifts the corpse with his magic, his eye flashing blue. There's a small cemetery up ahead, you lead him to it.

There you make a point to dig the hole yourself. You make it as deep as you can. You want to be certain that he doesn't crawl back out. Sans helps you out of the grave and lowers the body into it. Before you start to fill it back up you stare in disdain, fists balled at your side.

"I hope you're burning in the deepest pits of hell, paying for your sins." You feel a hand clutching your shoulder and you curl into Sans' arms.

He rubs your face with his thumbs. "You have some dirt… Well, all over you. You should've let me help more." He uses his magic to get the piles of soil back into the hole.

You shake your head at him. "This helps me put some of it behind me. Gave me some time to think while I did it."

"What about?"

"How I don't want to live the rest of my life trapped in that cell anymore or running away from him. I can finally live on my own terms and I'm not going to let him rule over me anymore."

"Is there anything else you need to do?" He asks, looking ready to leave this place for good.

"Yeah. Do you have any matches?" Sans looks at you questioningly.

"You're not planning on burning the village down are you?"

"Just his research. I don't want anyone else getting their hands on that." And with that you start making your way back to the house.

You stop in front of a door to the room you spent most of your life in. You guess it could be considered your room, in a twisted sense. With tears threatening to fall from your eyes you turn away from it and go into his office.

The walls are covered by shelves filled with books upon books about souls, monster history, monster magic and human physiology. Sans' gaze goes through all of the literature and his eyes seem filled with a mix of fascination and disgust at what he used such knowledge for.

"You can't destroy everything. Some of these books are really valuable. Alphys could use them to further her own research." He muses.

"And what if someone else uses them to get to the same conclusions he did?" Your voice is sterner than you mean it to be.

"Alphys wouldn't let them get into the wrong hands." He takes out a book from the shelves and flips through it. "Look at this… 'The human soul has the potential to harness all kinds of power but the extents of such abilities are not yet fully recognised as without the use of magic to extract the souls their study is nearly impossible.' Huh. Makes sense." You snatch the book from his hands and snap it shut.

"I know what they say. I lived through his theory testing." He flinches at your coldness but doesn't say anything, knowing that what you're going through right now can't be easy. You spot a trash can in a corner and pull it into the middle of the room, tossing the book into it. Walking over to his desk it's covered in papers filled with his scratchy handwriting. Your eyes stop at a black notebook. You pick it up and open it.

Subject shows violent reactions to the insertion of magic directly into the blood stream. It seems to cause internal damage as the energy isn't contained or controlled.

You rip the page out and crumple the paper into a ball throwing it into the can. "I was nothing more to him than a subject, an experiment." You spit the words out, bile rising up in your throat, you flip through a few pages and come to one where the words catch your eye.

The experiments seem to be leading to nothing but the slow destruction of the subjects' organism, affecting especially the nervous system causing severe convulsions that are becoming harder to contain. The magic needs to be stored safely in a way that it can be accessed without attacking the host. The source of magic is the soul. That must be the only option left.

You throw that one away too, the ghost of the pain in your chest gripping at your heart with sharp claws. You start to shake and the small skeleton walks up behind you, taking the book from your hands. "Don't this to yourself." Without speaking you pick up more of the papers and throw them in with the others, stopping to rip some in half out of anger and frustration. You notice that Sans has taken the book out and into a corner and you go to pick it back up. You look at it for a moment before exhaling heavily.

"Okay, we can take some of the books." His eyes seem to shine at that and he stares at the bookshelves.

"I was very much into science at some point." His hands are going over the books' spines as he reads through the titles.

"Oh?" You perk up at his revelation, some of your rage subsiding. He hums in confirmation.

"Physics was more my field. I also liked astronomy from some of the books in the Underground but as you can guess it's not exactly easy to study that without the sky to look at." You nod in understanding. "But a… friend of mine… Also liked to study souls. Mainly the determination in humans. One of his experiments went wrong. It didn't end very well." There's a tension in the air all of a sudden. "Alphys took over his work sometime after. I kind of stepped away from everything then."

You walk over to the very back of the room and take out a book. It was the only thing in this room your father ever let you touch. You tap on Sans' shoulder and when he turns around you set it in his hands. "You can have this one, if you want it." It was a book on astrophysics that you liked to flip through as a child. "I never really understood it but I liked the pictures. I think you'd like it."

His hand strokes the cover gently and he looks up at you smiling. "Thank you." You blush slightly even though you're still scowling from being in such close proximity to your torture chamber.

You go back to throwing things in the trash while Sans picks out the books he thinks would be most useful to Alphys. Deep in the dark corners of your mind you fear that this is a bad decision but you know it's irrational to destroy so much literature that could potentially be used for good.

When you're both done with your tasks you stare wide eyed at the rather large stack next to Sans. "Maybe I went a little overboard." You decide not to comment and throw the rest of the books into the trash can, picking it up and taking it outside. You dig through drawers around the house until you find some old matches.

He's waiting next to the paper filled bin when you come back. The match comes to life with a bright orange flame and you throw it in. You feel skeletal arms wrap around your waist and Sans resting his chin on your shoulder. The flames illuminate your face, creating random patterns of light and shadow and when he stares at you he sees determination burning in your eyes and smiles warmly.

You feel ready to rise from those ashes.

NOTE: That's it for this chapter, I don't know when the next one will be out, I've got some things I know I want to do but I'm still trying to figure out in which direction to go

As always, thank you for reading and feel free to leave any feedback, hope you enjoyed