For the people who are still alive

[sansational]

The nightmares come the night after the funeral.

He escorts S-4 and Sans-Serif back to the castle. Makes a couple of attempts to apologize to his other self that don't make it past his mouth. Tucks them both in, reads them both a story, returns to his own room just next door.

Barely an hour later, Sans wakes up blind with panic and crying out in terror. It leaves him huddled in the far corner of the room, his hands over his head, nails digging into his skull, teeth chattering and tears pouring from his eyes thick and fast enough to blind and choke him. Nightmares of what was and what could have been. Dreams of melting smiles and sharp teeth reaching and clawing for him, dragging him down and under and into and come and join the fun.

He resolves not to sleep again, after that. Eating also comes to seem...less important. He's not hungry. What good does food do him, anyway? It doesn't restore his HP. He's always at his best. It's just that his best isn't nearly enough.

One murderous human is dead. Another might arrive. He has to be ready. He has to protect everyone. He can't let those nightmares of dust (or maybe they're visions of timelines yet to be) come true.

Sans immerses himself in his lab. He buries himself in his work, and when he exhausts his old avenues of search, he makes up new ones. Anything to keep moving. Anything to not think of the past, here and elsewhere. When he emerges, it's usually to be found in the library, or outside, armed with his telescope and a notebook. And a pair of boots - the echo of bloody squishes from his old ones had led to Sans tossing them under his bed in disgust, along with his hoodie Otherwise, he gathers seemingly random ingredients from the gardens with an expression of fierce concentration on his face. There's probably no way to get this doseage exactly right.

But he can get close. Perhaps he can even do better.


It's like walking in on the wreckage of his own life. It's like waking from another nightmare all over again.

His brother, exhausted (that was never supposed to be the plan). His other self, lost (and Sans was supposed to show him better). His friends, worried or in some cases so far past worried that they had hit anger (he never asked them to care but of course that's the point).

So much is a mess, he knows he's done wrong and needs to fix it, but sleep isn't coming any easier and he doesn't know where to start. The raging uncertainty and the press of problems leaves him tempted to just curl up in a ball on his bed again and just...tune it all out.

But for others' sake, if nothing else, Sans is good at carrying on. It's just a matter of...shifting focus from what it had been before.

What Sans does know is that, for the first time in days, he's hungry. His soul feels hollow for the need of some proper food. And he's opened his eyes enough to properly see that S-4 and Sans-Serif are both looking a little more spindly again. Lucas' stew had done him some good the first time around. He'd even remembered to take some hasty notes on the recipe.

Maybe he can do it justice, if only for his family's sake.

So anyone who ventures down into the kitchens a day or so after Frisk returns will find a corner of it something of a mess. A pot of hot water is simmering on the stove, Some rather messily chopped vegetables are cooking away inside, along with an admittedly pleasant array of seasonings. A mess on the table testifies to Sans' attempts to continue adding ingredients...

...but, more than likely, visitors will find him dozing right there at the table, half a carrot or potato still waiting on the cutting board.

Anyone worried about his welfare can at least take some comfort in the fact that both the slippers and the hoodie have returned to their rightful place.


((ooc: Replies are likely to be slow as other threads progress. Just consider this Sans putting down a tether to the admittedly busy timeline around here. Either way, just note if you're tagging him before Frisk's return or after.))

Comments

[lightofthestars]

Were she not so skilled at climbing, she might have slipped at his sudden laughter, so strong it is. Yet she cannot help but join in, her own laughter ringing through the trees.

"Of course I can, dôl asg," she tells him with laughter-shook voice. "I told you before: I do not know how to jest in Westron, but that does not mean I know no jests at all."

[sansational]

"yeah, but i mean...there's jests..." Sans gestures one way. "and then there's puns." He gestures rather more emphatically in the other direction. "anybody can jest. only masters can pun."

That's true in any sense of the word, but Sans is on a roll anyway.

"anyway. i love it. i am totally gonna tell frisk."

[lightofthestars]

A...! Now she is not laughing.

"Should you? It would not do for me to set a poor example."

They are yet so young, after all.

[sansational]

"please." Sans waves a hand dismissively at the very idea. "it'll take more than that to set a bad example for the kid."

After what he's seen as of late, Sans is more certain of that than he ever was.

"besides. they love puns, too." They could stand up to some of the most atrocious ones he could dish out.

[lightofthestars]

"If you are sure."

It is clear to her that Frisk has seen much beyond what one their years should have seen. It troubles her at times.

But her thoughts soon leave her worries, for here they are, at the top of the tree at last.

Her smile returns to her face. Before she crests the tree, she looks over her shoulder to him. "Are you ready?"

[sansational]

When Tauriel looks back, she'll find Sans looking up, staring up through the leaves at the glimmers of stars already visible overhead. His gaze is intent, as though he hopes to draw them all down by sheer force of will alone.

But then he feels her gaze on him, looks back at her, and grins. He offers a thumbs-up for good measure, replying: "ready as i'll ever be."

And indeed, when they surface through the canopy like rising from deep water, Sans gasps aloud, otherwise struck quite speechless.

[lightofthestars]

A wide smile of wonder fills her face as, at last, they can see the stars clearly. She perches upon a high, thin branch--one that could not possibly support the weight of a human--as easily as if she stood upon firm ground. Above them, the heavens' stars blaze, and she is moved to an old song as well known to her as her name:

"A Elbereth Gilthoniel
silivren penna míriel
o menel aglar elenath!..."

[sansational]

So, so much cooler than glowing rocks on the ceiling. For a moment, Sans just rests his head on Tauriel's shoulders, staring up into the sky with eyelights just as bright as the stars arching overhead. He'd thought they were breathtaking before just from down on the ground. But an unbroken view is something else entirely. It almost doesn't seem as though they'll need the telescope.

But, since he brought it anyway...

"hey, uh, tauriel? don't freak out, okay? you're gonna feel like you're losing your grip on me. i promise, you're not."

[lightofthestars]

She stops her singing and looks back at Sans. She does not understand what he means, not at all, but she says, "Very well. I promise to remain calm."

[sansational]

That is...much less arguing than he expected. Sans blinks, and then he smiles, looking genuinely touched for a moment. "cool. thanks."

Then he works himself out of her grip and over the open air. There's a brief, breathless moment of falling, and then in the back of his mind he hears the familiar "ping" of a soul being turned blue. In this case, it just happens to be his soul. The first thing that Tauriel will see is that Sans abruptly stops falling after just a foot or so, to instead hover steadily in the air. His left eyelight begins to flicker between a deep blue and a bright gold, and a faint blue and white glow becomes visible through his shirt, around about where the heart would be on a normal creature.

Sans frowns intently up at the sky, and then slowly rights himself in the air, until he's floating upright beside her. Leaving both his hands free to reach behind him and free the telescope.

[lightofthestars]

It is very hard to keep her promise. When Sans first starts falling, her hands go taut; it is all she can do to keep them by her sides. Within an instant, though, his eye glows and...so does his heart? (She had though that he was made only of bone.)

Her eyes are Moon-wide and her mouth is open, and without thinking, she says, "Sophie was right!"

[sansational]

Sans looks up from carefully unwrapping the telescope, frowning at her blankly for a moment. "say what now?"

Then he remembers. Then he laughs, hard enough that it lights up his entire expression. "oh, man. i'm gonna be known as 'the flying skeleton' around here forever, huh?"

...there are worse fates. There are infinitely less cool fates. Still grinning, he passes the telescope carefully over, viewing-side first. "ladies and elves who could kick my ass first."

[lightofthestars]

"It...would seem so." She shakes her head before marvelling at him anew. "I had not thought she lied, but I had thought her imagination--over-lively."

It seems this is not at all so. A flying skeleton: will he never cease to amaze her?

She takes the telescope into her hands with great care, then asks, "What do I do?"

...Neil had used a like word before, "badass." She will need to ask Sans what such words mean.

[sansational]

A flying skeleton who actually folds his arms behind his head and seems to recline in the air with a contented sigh. Well, now he's just showing off. But a little showing off every now and then is fun. Especially to her.

"look through the short end." He points the right side to her, before pointing up at the sky. "then just look out through the other end. everything should look even bigger and shinier."

[lightofthestars]

She fixes her eye upon a star that brings to her mind the bright red shoulder of Menelvagor, then lifts the telescope to her eye.

Her gasp must echo throughout the woods, for--for she could nigh reach out and touch the star--no, it is not one star, but two! She swings about, holding fast to the telescope, and what she had known as a small twist of stars becomes a great windmill in her sight.

Could any invention be more wonderful than this?

[sansational]

Here and now, watching the evident wonder on her face as she looks from one star to the next, Sans certainly doesn't think so. He gives her a minute or two to just explore the sky as she will, before he dares to break the silence again. "see anything interesting up there?"

More to the point is the question of if she sees anything familiar, he supposes.

[lightofthestars]

She is far too caught up in joy to hear the question beneath his question. Instead, she takes the telescope down from her eye, smiling so widely it hurts, and says, "Look at that group of stars! They are so small now, but they are so radiant with the telescope!"

She points at another twist of stars, forgetting that to his eyes that it would be but a smear in the night (if that), and holds out the telescope for him to take.

[sansational]

Sans eagerly takes the telescope without hesitation, holding it up to his eyesocket and turning it where she indicates. She'll know when he's seen it, because Sans goes entirely still, even freezing in midair. "woah..."

Glorious doesn't even begin to describe it.

Sans takes the chance to look around at some other stars in the sky. One bright star becomes three. He finds what looks a bit like a line of five, curving through the air, and laughs after staring for a moment. "hey, when you squint at 'em, those stars kinda look like a fish!"

[lightofthestars]

She does indeed squint as he says, and soon a smile blooms upon her face. "Such a mighty fish, to swim in that great sea! Look--it seeks to eat up that blue star!"

[sansational]

Sans chuckles happily as she joins in so readily with the familiar game. "hey, giant star fish have gotta eat, too."

He closes one eyesocket to better focus on another cluster of stars, tracing the shape of it with a fingerbone. A sort of box-shape, with one brighter star nearer to the center. "what about that one?"

[lightofthestars]

"Hmm.... Maybe it is the belly of another creature. A hound, or a lion?"

She searches for lines of stars to form the creature's limbs.

[sansational]

Sans nods as comprehension dawns, and points out the first limb that becomes clear to him. "definitely a dog. trust me, i know a dog when i see it. even when it's up in the sky."

With such a wide, clear night to work with, the two of them will likely be able to keep themselves amused with picking out shapes for quite a while, long enough that Sans will eventually need to settle himself on Tauriel's back again.

[lightofthestars]

She gladly receives him anew upon her back, and with no small relief. Though he seems to support himself in the air with ease, it is still a long drop to the ground, even for an Elf.

She keeps one arm around Sans and grips the telescope with her other hand. At times, she views the stars; otherwise, she balances it upon her shoulder for Sans to use.

Truly, she could stay here with him for ever.

[sansational]

It's as close as Sans can ever come to a perfect moment. He is, here and now, utterly content.

Unfortunately, when Sans is utterly content with a situation and frequently even when he isn't, he usually starts dozing off. She's just so solid and the rustling of the trees below them is so peaceful and it really has been quite a long day...

He'll still probably wake up in time to catch the telescope when it slips out of his fingers, even if she doesn't. Sans stares at it muzzily for a second, and then chuckles in embarrassment. "o-kay. i think i'll take that as a sign that it's time for me to call it a night."

[lightofthestars]

She laughs softly, her grip strong upon the telescope. "I did not wish to say anything before now, but I must agree--unless you would like to spend the night in this tree."

In spite of her words, she passes the telescope back to him to ready herself for climbing down. Alone, she would reach the ground in a few leaps, but she will chance injury to neither Sans nor the telescope that way.