Misery Loves Company

Chapter 19: Misery Loves Company

Sans wasn't quite certain of how long he'd been sitting in the dark.

It had to have been several long, quiet hours. He even popped in a couple more of Mettaton's movies, although he didn't bother watching them. He and Papyrus had already seen them quite a few times. Sans had actually seen all of them so many times that he could easily quote some of them, though not nearly to the level that Papyrus could, even though he had seen them so many more times.

It didn't matter. He didn't like Mettaton, but spending time with Papyrus just doing anything was fine by him. He just wanted background noise to fall asleep to.

Sleep was something that obviously wasn't going to come to him tonight, either.

Sans stroked Frisk's hair for a while, subtly shifting them aside to swap out old movies now and then. At some point Frisk began murmuring in their sleep when he stopped, letting out a low, quiet whimper. He almost didn't hear it he was so lost in thought, and his chest ached to see their brows furrowed in pain. He didn't care, they couldn't make him. He didn't. And yet… Sans worriedly pressed his palm down on their head, applying just enough pressure to still them, to hopefully help, to let them know that though whatever dream they were having they weren't alone. Their expression shifted a little bit after a while, finally relaxing enough to allow them to slumber more deeply.

But of course, they weren't really alone, even when they were.

There was always the matter of this 'Chara'.

A frown settled across his face firmly. It was more than an irritation, it made his marrow boil to think of that brat pushing around his kid. His Frisk, his anomaly. Another entity living in Frisk, the child with the red eyes. Sans let out a sigh through his teeth, thinking. They weren't his, he was acting crazy. That other one just bothered was, though, if Chara even really was a separate entity at all. That particular thought was a relatively haunting one. What if Chara was just another personality of Frisk's?

Was hating Chara just a method of hating Frisk?

He looked down at the child curled up next to him on the couch, and his expression softened. He wasn't entirely certain that he even had it in him to be angry at Frisk anymore, let alone hate them. At least, he hoped not. He hated a lot of things. He hated the taste of anchovies. He hated the thought of them being hurt. He hated resets.

But he honestly couldn't bring himself to really hate them, even if he tried.

And besides, that would imply that he would try, and that was, quite frankly, just too much effort.

He started to rise after a while, blinking the weariness from his eye sockets. He didn't make it completely off the couch before he realized that Frisk still had an iron grip on the hem of his jacket. He thought about subtly slipping their fingers off and heavily debated simply flopping back down onto the sofa and hoping that sleep might actually come tonight before he realized that they were staring sleepily at him, their eyes half lidded.

"Sans?" they mumbled blearily.

"Hey buddy," he said softly, petting them on the head again and stroking their cheek. "Don't worry, just me. Go back to sleep, alright?"

"Okay, Sans…" Frisk said through a yawn, but didn't release him.

"… Kiddo."

"Please," they looked… scared? Hurt? He couldn't tell. "Please, Sans. Don't… don't go. Please…?"

Sans forced a plastic grin, silently noting that his resolve was steadily crumbling.

"Not goin' anywhere, babybones," Sans ran his thumb over their forehead. He was going to ditch them the first chance he got. "Get some rest. Okay?"

"O-okay, Sans…" Frisk agreed after a long, drawn out moment. He only hoped that they'd bought his boldfaced lie. "I-I just…"

"What is it, buddy?" Sans slowly caved in and sat back down next to them, careful not to disturb them much as he pulled their blanket a little more around them, drawing it up to tuck them in.

"I'm sorry," they said through another little yawn. "I don't… I don't wanna be alone."

"You're not alone, Frisky-bits," he chuckled. They held out a hand to him again, and he met it with his own. Their touch was so gentle, so soft, so warm.

How in the hell are these the same hands that were covered in my brother's dust-?

"Sans?"

He blinked, not even having realized that the lights in his eye sockets had gone out momentarily. He tried to force himself to relax, steadying his breathing.

"It's nothing, kiddo…" Sans rubbed their hand with his thumb, drawing small, tiny circles over their palm. "Don't worry. Okay? I'm… I'm gonna fix this."

"… Fix what?" Frisk snuggled against him a little more, closing their eyes as their breaths came slow and heavy. He instantly regretted his choice of words, turning instead to the flickering television screen. He felt like the pit of his stomach was a mile deep, and he bit his tongue.

There was no need to open up to them about it.

There was technically no need to open up to them about anything .

Did they even deserve to know, after what they'd done?

Do I even deserve mercy after what I've done?

There was so much he wanted to say. There was so much that he wanted to tell them, to ask them, there was so much that he wanted to know, to just understand. They were a good kid. They might understand, too. They might be the only one in all of creation who might actually understand.

They might also hate him almost as much as he hated himself.

The thought of them knowing him for what he truly was, that awful gnawing desire in him that he refused to acknowledge, it made him feel sick . He was just repressed, that had to be it. That was the only thought that he would allow. They just couldn't be permitted to know, to see him for the wretched thing that he was. All it took was a small magical pulse and he could sense them, could feel their soul burning like wildfire beside him. They were so good, so loving, so forgiving, so pure and just being around him would inevitably corrupt them, and that thought only made him feel worse. Papyrus really was the only good thing for them, the fact that he just came as part of the packaged deal was disgusting. He didn't deserve to be around them. He didn't deserve to know them.

It would be so easy to just throw himself into Snowdin's river.

Again.

They would be better off that way.

They wouldn't be hurt nearly as badly, then.

Sans opened and closed his mouth uncertainly, squeezing his eye sockets shut.

"Babybones…" he started eventually, his breathing ragged. His chest hurt, his stomach hurt, his head hurt, everything just ached and every fiber of him wanted him to just shut up before it was too late. When Frisk didn't respond, he made his decision, finally turning to them and opening his eyes.

They were fast asleep, still gently holding his hand, with a small, pleased little smile on their face.

Abomination.

Sans quietly, softly, ever so slowly slipped out of their loose grip, making sure that they were fully tucked in before clicking off the television. He didn't trust himself to speak anymore. Hell, he hardly trusted himself to breathe. He felt so horrid. Maybe because that's all he was. A horrid, awful creature that felt like he deserved to.

He hated it, he despised it, but…

There was just a piece of him that didn't want them to let go.

He made sure to keep from dragging his slippers across the floor to avoid scuffling noise and ever so silently slipped out the front door, latching it quietly behind him. He let out a relieved sigh after a moment. He rifled in his pockets for a moment before digging out one of the dog biscuits, reminding himself to drop off the box for Doggo when it wasn't the middle of the night.

Or maybe he could just drop them off in the middle of the night, he couldn't really care less anymore.

He lit the tip and inhaled deeply, the scent filling him as he finally let out along, arduous smoky sigh. He sank down and almost collapsed on the front step, rubbing his tired eye sockets with his free hand. Maybe if he really, really tried, he could just pretend for a little while that things would all turn out okay. It felt so silly, so selfish, but that was all he really wanted. To just… pretend.

Maybe that was all he had been doing the entire time.

"What am I doing," he muttered bitterly. "What in the actual fuck am I doing with my life ."

He really was a foul, miserable creature. He didn't bother with the usual smoke rings, just letting out one puff through his nostril bone after the other until the effects finally began to kick in. He felt a bit lighter, a bit dizzier, a bit more absentminded, but he still felt sick.

Maybe because he was the illness, a sickness for which there was no cure. He was the source of his own misery. And if he kept going down the path he was on, there was a good chance of it spreading to everyone he loved. He simply couldn't afford not to care anymore.

Sans let out another sigh and dropped the rest of the dog biscuit into the snow, standing and dusting the light sprinkling of snow from his knees before closing his eye sockets. His mind was made up. He almost fell into the shortcut, but he still didn't really care. So long as he got from point A to point B, that was all that mattered.

Snow rustled down in little eddies from the displaced air as the skeleton vanished from the world, little white monuments to the fleeting hope that he used to hold.

Alphys slurped at her cup of noodles, never taking her eyes off of the screen. The human wandered about the edge of the screen for a little while, the recording skipping a couple beats. They even tramped through the snow right up next to the camera, giving her a decent glance of them. Him? Her? They poked inquisitively at absolutely everything, even meandering eventually right up to the camera with widened thin eyes. For a brief moment Alphys smiled when they gave a little friendly wave before wandering off, a gait in their step. They knew the camera was there but didn't bother it? From the length of their hair and their odd choice of blue striped jumper, she really couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl, and the question was niggling at her. She shrugged to herself, fast forwarding through the silence. It probably didn't matter.

She eventually came to the end of the tape, where it was suddenly cut off in a flash to black. Alphys frowned as she ate another mouthful without glancing away, frowning when she dropped a noodle onto her pajamas before flicking it up with a spare claw and chowing it down as well. It was puzzling, to say the least. The tapes were all modified to hold many hours of footage apiece, and the fact that the Snowdin cameras all seemed to suffer from the same malfunction was strange, to say the least. With one of them she even thought she caught a flash of blue, but it might have just been a flicker on the tape. She sighed quietly. She'd have to go back down to the sub lab, again, and dig up more precious blank tapes. She didn't relish the idea of potentially being forced to write over any old tapes just for footage that might or might not yield any sight of the elusive human about. Hopefully the next trip to the garbage dump would provide some more.

Or at the very least, maybe a couple 'new' anime hidden amongst the rubble.

"Man I love this channel."

Alphys gave an unholy shriek of terror as she toppled out of her swivel chair, tumbling to the ground and grabbing uselessly at her noodles before they landed with a splat beside her.

"Sans!" Alphys spluttered indignantly as she struggled to stand, blushing deeply. "W-w-what have I t-told you about d-doing that?!"

"Sorry," Sans chortled good naturedly as he assisted her to stand. "You're kinda jumpy, anyone ever tell you that?"

"Yes," she scowled at him, giving one last dejected gaze to her lost noodles. "Y-you, for one. Undyne. My moms. The King. E-everyone I've ever m-met. What a-are you even doing here? Don't y-you know what time it is-? You smell weird. Are… are you drunk ?"

"Obviously the right time, if you're up at this hour," Sans ignored her last question and shrugged with a small grin. He stuck his hands in his pockets, leaning back and forth on the balls of his feet cheerfully. "Didn't think you'd actually be awake."

"C-couldn't sleep, as usual," Alphys rubbed her eyes wearily, letting out a sigh as she dropped back into her chair and faced him fully, letting her tail swing behind her in the small opening in the back. "I aassume you h-have a good reason for scaring my tail off."

Sans looked about a million miles away for a moment, his gaze somewhere behind her. She resisted the urge to glance behind her, staring at him for a bit before he finally answered and the look was gone like it had never been there at all.

"Just picking up on a bit of light reading," he shrugged with a plastered grin. "I was gonna pop on down to the true lab and grab hit the books."

"C-can you p-please not call it that?" Alphys shifted uncomfortably. "J-just call it a sub lab. That's what it i-is."

"Yeah sure," he shrugged again noncommittally before pulling a small black comb out of his pocket and running it a few times over the top of his skull. Alphys stared at the display but Sans either didn't notice or didn't care. "Can I ask a favor of you, by the way?"

"Wh-what is it?" Alphys rubbed her elbows. "Y-you know you can a-aalways ask me anything, Sans."

For a brief moment, she saw through the carefully planned facade, and it was like seeing a completely different skeleton. He just looked so worn, so tired, so hurt .

And just like that it was gone, leaving her wondering if maybe she'd imagined it altogether.

"… You're a good friend, Al," Sans said after a moment, sticking his hands back into his jacket pockets. She blushed awkwardly, looking away. He shook his head quietly. It was painfully apparent that she really wasn't used to receiving compliments.

"I'm, uh…" he coughed uneasily into one hand. "I'm gonna need to borrow some of your documents on humans. Not the anime this time," he added pointedly.

"Wh- really?" she blinked curiously. "Is this about the human that you found?"

"Yeah kinda," Sans shrugged for the umpteenth time. "Guess you could say I'm, uh, working on some research of my own right now. That's why I'm, eh, also going to need t'borrow some of your notes on… human souls?"

For a long, horribly stretched moment, she didn't respond.

She didn't blink.

She didn't say anything at all.

"… O-okay…?" she said after a long while, and Sans let out a visible sigh of relief. "A-any r-reason why?"

"I… I can't really…" Sans looked away, crossing his arms. There was a light dusting of blue crossing his cheeks, and he slowly closed his eyes and let out an uneven sigh. The pained look was back for just a second, but his grin took over his face a moment later.

"Just researching everything that I need to know to improve the situation," he said after a moment, and she could tell just how forced it was. "I just have a, uh… theory that I need to test out before anything. It's probably nothing to worry about. By the way, could you keep the chatter between you and Undyne about the human to a minimum?"

"Sh-she told you ab-bout that?" Alphys froze, wide eyed with horror.

"Nah, took a wild guess," he winked at her expression. "But in all seriousness, if word were to get out about them, things could get hairy."

"I d-don't think U-Undyne would tell anyone…" she shifted nervously in her seat. "A-and I-I-I wouldn't, either! Just… just saying."

"Good to know, Al," he patted her genially on the shoulder, and this time his smile seemed a little more genuine. "I'mma pop on down to the 'sub lab' and dig up some books, shouldn't be more than a few minutes. Can you compile some the information on human souls for me-?"

"Done and done," she said proudly, swiveling toward her computer and printing out several long sheets of paper. "I can even have it in a neat little binder for you when you're ready."

"You're the best of the best, Alphys," Sans beamed at her, and her scales turned a cherry red. She started to respond, but he was already gone by the time she tried.

Alphys sighed and stared down at her ruined snack with a frown.

For as much as Sans liked to joke around and poke fun, he really was harmless. She closed her eyes for a moment, her mind feeling heavy.

Before long though he would be gone again, just like always. And before she knew it, it would be back to routine. Back to painful silence, back to the weight of everything on her shoulders, back to misery. Stars she hated anyone being down in that awful place. But he could keep her secret, she had to do the same for him. She sighed again and began to rewind the tapes, her thoughts almost tripping over themselves to be heard, to be listened to, to be acknowledged. Maybe things wouldn't turn out the way that she wanted to. Maybe things wouldn't all wind up more ruined than they already were.

But for just a little while, she could pretend.