Aldyr and Sans sat out in the waiting room as the doctors performed emergency surgery for Rose.

Sans felt himself shaking, and tried to stop it from getting to be enough to rattle his bones audibly.

He was still trying to come down from the fear and panic of another killing run, and another life and death battle.

Part of the fear was wondering if he was starting to turn into what he hated the most. He lectured Frisk so many times on violence, but how many times had he killed by now? How many times had he sent bones ripping through Frisk's body, turning it into a dead bloodied mess?

Sure, it was only after they'd literally killed everyone in their path and were about to destroy the world, but wasn't there any other way?

At least those other times, things had been over quickly. Today, watching Rose crawl for several minutes and not die had been worse than seeing a quick death - knowing how much pain it probably was for her, after dying himself several times. And she kept saying she was innocent.

Sans wondered how close he was to losing it completely. It was getting harder and harder to trust his own judgment, as with every killing run he sensed his emotions getting more and more out of control. He was tired of seeing monsters be killed, he was tired of being killed, and he was tired of killing.

It was soul-wrenching sometimes, watching Frisk come out of the ruins again, after a very bad run. The kind that gave Papyrus nightmares. Sometimes he wanted to kill them as justice for what they'd done. But despite that, he always tried hard to be kind and give them a fresh chance.

The timelines, and this Anomaly entity possessing Frisk had made questions of morality very tricky. There was no precedent in Asgore's legal or history books for how to handle it. So he'd resolved to treat each new Frisk as a different person after a reset, no matter how he felt about what they'd done in another timeline.

He didn't think he'd done the wrong thing with Frisk so far, fortunately. He'd done his best not to show his anger at how the Anomaly had used their body in previous timelines. Toriel's promise from him had helped with that. The promise was something he hung onto whenever his own hurt and pain from Frisk's past murders was getting to be too much.

Only every now and again, he'd spoken to the Anomaly directly. Sometimes, he noticed that they did act differently afterward. Sometimes, even with... regret? Sometimes he saw them try to undo what they'd done, and work hard to do better the next time. It gave him hope that the Anomaly was not a purely evil force.

He'd been studying the Anomaly's behavior closely with the help of some of the other sans-es he managed to contact, and the Anomaly was quite erratic. As though they were one person throughout a given timeline, but then could act like a completely different person in the next timeline.

Maybe that gave some support to Rose's claim that she wasn't the one controlling Frisk in the last timeline. Maybe the Anomaly was actually multiple people. It was a theory he'd considered, but didn't have any solid data for until now.

But today, when he met the shadowy Anomaly, the one he had suspected for a long time of manipulating Frisk and Chara and turning them into murderers, he felt all of the hidden anger he'd built up and suppressed for so long.

He wondered if he'd lost control for the first time today. What if Rose really wasn't responsible for all of this? He could've tried to talk to her. He could've asked her why she was doing this, and let her answer. He'd let his fury power his actions instead of calm thinking. It was his responsibility as a judge to make sure that he was being fair.

It was the LV she had that had driven his suspicions to the breaking point. Surely that meant she was the real killer. But what if it was a mistake somehow, or faked? Was that even possible? If he'd made a mistake, he hoped desperately she didn't die.

Aldyr sensed Sans's thoughtfulness, and intentionally didn't speak. He knew how annoying it could be when someone interrupted your deep thinking. He stood watching at the window to the operating room with a wistful and concerned expression.

Lira, the second officer, came and visited Aldyr, asking for status, and telling him about some friends in another world who desperately needed assistance after a disaster. He told her what had happened with Rose, and to help their friends with their disaster and then to try to return the ship to this location as soon as possible. She bowed with respect, obeyed and returned to the bridge.

Overhearing their low conversation, Sans vaguely wondered, "where are we, anyway...?", but the question didn't seem that important right now. It was something to deal with later.

Three hours later, Khermos finally came out of surgery. Aldyr had in fact returned to his seat and was lightly dozing the last hour or so. Sans was still too keyed up to relax, thoughts racing.

Aldyr stood to talk to Khermos.

"How is she?" Aldyr asked worriedly, trying to read Khermos's face for answers.

"Stable, at the moment," Khermos replied. "The damage is very bad, though. I've done what I can to repair it, but we'll see how she does overnight. The natural healing process needs to take over now."

Unnoticed by them, Sans smiled a little. "heh - so she's alive," he thought. It was a bittersweet feeling, not knowing if he'd have to fight her again if she turned out to be bad after all.

Aldyr exhaled, relieved. "How long do you think it will be before she's conscious?"

"Maybe tomorrow."

"Understandable. Sans here says she killed his people, though, and he hurt her in defense of them."

"She'd never do that," Khermos said emphatically.

"I agree, personally. Maybe it'd be best, Sans, if you told us what happened from the beginning. I'll assemble the senior officers to listen."