At this new, slower pace, Sans found he could just keep up, but it was close, and he knew he'd still tire soon.
"why do humans have to be so damned resilient," he grumbled. "even with wounds she's still this determined."
She was destroying herself with this, he could see - humans weren't supposed to leak blood through their clothes like that.
But something was driving her on anyway, and he knew that it came from her now, not the anomaly.
The next time she brushed by him, the heat in her shield almost seared his bones, but he was close enough to see the fierce resolution in her face.
In that split second, he tried to read meaning from her expression.
"Why," it said, "why why why..." as if it was the only word her soul knew.
"is it because i wounded her so badly before? no...this kind of pain doesn't come from physical wounds."
Distracted for an instant, Sans lost the rhythm of the fight, and then he saw the lie in her strikes. She might've destroyed him in that moment, but she went wide, intentionally.
Sans looked at her keenly, and stopped trying to dodge. Her bluff called now, she paused.
"if you want to say something, you know you can use words, right?" he said with irony.
She looked confused for a moment, as if maybe she'd actually forgotten that she was sentient and had the use of more language than a single word. Her nose wrinkled. "Why." she snarled like an animal.
He was taken aback by the raw emotion in the sound. The anger lashed across the space between them like a whip, but it was still better than the cold cruelty he usually faced in battle. Monsters could feel the strong emotions of humans, like something in the air, and right now, there was a distinct lack of malice in her anger, as if it had all burned away.
He stood at ease, but with all his magical weaponry poised and ready to fight as long as he had to. One of the Gaster Blasters growled quietly behind a mouthful of gathered energy.
She should've been scared, but in some distant part of her mind, she found the sight of his strength oddly comforting.
Her shield was unstable now, like a flickering flame. Through the gaps in its protection, Sans saw her gasp as the anomaly choked her heart with silver tendrils of magic, attempting to force her obedience, but her soul pushed back, trying to free itself.
"you're hurting. that's obvious," Sans said to her. "not just physically, i mean. but just because you were hurt, it doesn't make it right to hurt others."
She blinked as if her vision was blurry, hesitating.
"is that why you stopped? because you know that?" Sans asked softly.
Her expression changed then, for the better, and she suddenly crumpled and let herself fall to the strange ground. She fought to stay conscious, sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest. Sans saw the anomaly's gray magic flutter around her, trying to force her to stand and fight, but her own feelings were driving her to resist its pull. The anomaly was losing its control over the storm it had created.
"We were comrades in a war," Rose whispered hollowly. "There was nothing I wanted more than for you to defend me. How many times was I bruised and beaten in front of you? But it took my dog dying before you'd even say a word of protest."
Sans looked at her strangely, confused. "who's she talking to? someone in her past, maybe?"
Looking back later on it, she'd be hugely embarrassed by this...talking about things from the past, blaming someone as if they were the person from back then who hurt her... But at this moment, her words were driven by a deep, instinctual, emotional part of her, and nothing else seemed to matter.
"Why?" she continued. "Do you know how much it would've meant to me if you'd spoken up for me, instead of standing by her while she hurt me and acting like you didn't care? We could've ended her tyranny together. But you just stood there."
The sorrow in her voice grew desperate. "Why!? I thought you were my brother! Didn't that mean anything to you? Because it sure did to me!"
Sans froze at those words of condemnation, and quick as light, he shortcut away, halfway across the world.
This time, she didn't follow him. She held her knees and rocked back and forth, crying and trying to make her way out of the maze of the past.