After a long and dreary meeting, the ship's senior leadership decided to wait for Rose to wake up before doing anything else, keeping everything in a holding pattern until then.
"This is my cabin," Aldyr showed Sans. "We'll be staying together until this matter is resolved. I'll ask you to stick close to me for now and not wander the ship. Rose will have a similar restriction. I want to think the best of both of you, but under the circumstances, being that we're in the middle of an investigation, that's my responsibility as the acting captain."
"i get it," Sans said. He noticed Kiro was following closely behind him as well, the wolf watching him with sharp eyes.
They'd made him his own guest bed anyway, across the room from Aldyr's, so there was that. Sleep was kind of attractive right now. Sleep? Yeah, sure, if he could sleep.
Sans felt numb, his emotions diving down into apathy and depression again. He was completely and totally drained. But the numb feeling was only a thin layer over other feelings.
For some reason, all of the deaths from Frisk's latest rampant slaughter were coming crashing down on him right now. Discordant, loud sounds of terror and pain that only he could hear in his own mind. He tried to contain how he felt enough to not show it on the outside.
Aldyr quietly made himself dinner in the cabin's kitchen. Sans wondered what to do with himself. He made do with sitting at the table, for now.
"It's probably an impolite question, but I've never met a skeleton before," Aldyr said. "May I ask, do you...eat?"
It was tempting to make a pun out of that, but he wasn't in a very punnish mood. "yes. i do."
"Can you generally eat human food, or is it something else?"
Sans knew the answer to that since he'd actually been on the surface before, in another timeline. It was...harder...to eat human food, as opposed to monster food that had a lot of magic in it, but he could manage it.
"yes, i can," he replied tersely. He still felt somewhat mistrustful, despite Aldyr's friendliness. He had been kidnapped here, after all.
"All right, then. I'll make you some of what I'm eating tonight. Ok?"
Aldyr made some potatoes with steamed vegetables and beans with sauce, and toasted bread.
He watched Sans eat with interest, in between taking bites of dinner himself.
Sans knew by experience this was always something that humans were curious about when it came to skeletons. At least the food got him back to full HP. He'd suffered some minor bumps and scrapes in the long battle, as well as exhaustion.
"By the way," Aldyr said, "Do you have family we should inform? I don't want to think of someone waiting up for you and wondering where you are."
Papyrus... He felt bad. Papyrus was probably wondering where he was for hours after the last reset. But then he had an attack of suspicion. He wouldn't risk Papyrus for anything. "No, not really," he said.
"I see," Aldyr said dubiously. "Let me know if you change your mind later. I think we can find a way to communicate."
"ok." Sans already wondered if he had judged Aldyr too harshly by not telling him the truth, but he figured better safe than sorry.
Safe? Since when was his brother ever safe, Sans asked himself. In fact, the last time he'd seen him, Papyrus was...
His usual mask covering his feelings dropped because he simply didn't have the strength to maintain it anymore.
Aldyr noticed his tired and completely hopeless expression and gave him a thoughtful glance. "Sorry to say this...but you honestly don't look so good. Not...physically, I mean, but otherwise. I guess that's understandable, after all you told us...but...if you want to talk about it, I'm here."
"not really up to it. sorry."
Aldyr paused, trying to think of something helpful. "Just...have a little hope, I guess I want to say. Things sound like they've gotten pretty dark, but tomorrow can be better."
"sure. tomorrow." Time-related words were too ironic, after all the resets.
"Hey, you've never been here or met me before right? That proves something can change. Not everything is an endless cycle of misery. Maybe more things will keep changing, and it will get better."
That got the first spark of interest from Sans.
"i guess so..." he said, in a slightly less depressed tone of voice.
Sans buried his face in his hands.
"sometimes i just feel...like i'm losing my mind..."
Aldyr tried to encourage him. "Multiple timelines, a killer running rampant...if it were most people, they'd have probably lost it a long time ago. You're strong if you made it this far without going insane."
"i just...if your captain is really innocent, then i hurt an innocent person for the first time...i don't deserve to live..."
"No, please don't think that..." Aldyr said, putting his fork down gently. "I'm sure she knows what you've been going through and she wouldn't judge you for making a mistake..."
"...maybe...i failed so many times...couldn't save them...couldn't save them at all...their deaths were my fault..."
Sans felt a wetness on his hands from his eyesockets and tried to brush it away. Normally he would've never talked about this, but he was in such a bad state, he was desperate. In some ways, it was easier to talk about this with a stranger, than with his friends who he always tried to put on a happy face for.
"The only one responsible is the one who killed them," Aldyr said. "That's all..."
"nothing has mattered for such a long time...i die, it's reset and i come back...frisk dies, same thing...world is destroyed, who cares, it comes back...i stopped even trying to explain what was going on to alphys because she'd just forget in the next reset..."
Sans trembled with the frustration of the hopeless memories. He hated being like this, but he'd kept everything inside for so long.
"but today...something actually did happen that mattered...rose was hurt, didn't reset, had to actually get healed by a doctor instead of simply loading a save like frisk? that's new...something actually mattered, there was a consequence for an action...my action...even if it was bad, there was still an actual consequence...that means maybe i can actually do something good and it would matter...it's like waking up from a long nightmare where all my actions were just hopeless habits...i wasn't even alive at all...maybe this is better, but i'm not sure this isn't just another dream or it won't just reset again..."
"We don't have the ability to reset things like that, outside of your world..." Aldyr said. "Maybe that's a good thing...And resets don't affect the ship, so you definitely don't have to worry about suddenly appearing somewhere else while you're here."
Aldyr tried to think of kind words, and said, "You've obviously got a lot of wounds inside from what happened. It's going to take time to heal, but if you got this far and survived, I know you can do it. There must be a way to make things be different from now on."
"i don't know...but you're right, this timeline is different...maybe things can actually change...thanks."
"No problem," Aldyr said. "Thanks for talking with me."
Sans felt some of his internal strength returning. Monsters were affected by the good or bad intentions of others. Aldyr's steady kindness was having a positive effect on him.