God damn it. Sans had one job—keep an eye on the human, make sure she rested, keep her out of trouble. Now, as he stared dumbfoundedly down at the obviously empty couch on the first floor, he only had one real thought come floating through his fatigued skull.

"i'm gonna kill that girl."

He threw his soiled jacket somewhere in the corner of his room and snatched his hoodie from where it was hung next to his door, slipping it on as he shoved socked feet into slippers, descending the stairs so quickly he may as well have teleported. Far be it from him to ever move that fast on purpose—apparently, that was another thing she was able to do to him without him knowing, damn it all. Frustration simmered at the back of his throat, but even he knew that the feeling was covering a darker, more icy fear that clutched at the inside of his ribcage and froze into a heavy thing somewhere next to his SOUL. She needed to rest. She needed to stay out of sight for now until they figured things out with her magic. She needed to stay safe, fuck, and even just thinking that sent an uncomfortable rattle up along his spine. He didn't bother opening the front door, he jolted through space and found himself outside a few feet away.

"think, sans, think. where would she—"

His pupils settled on the ground. Blue grass and sand mixed together to create an uneven path leading through the village proper. The isles were on the night cycle now—which, didn't look different, but having something of a curfew helped with the constant feeling of nighttime—so nobody was around save for some real night owl types. Sans had excellent night vision, picking out the disturbed sand leading through the village and far to the left, back towards the entrance. He took a step and jittered to the far end, focused on the footprints leading up, until the grass and sand gave away to stone, ascending on a gentle incline that only grew steeper until it led to a cliff overlooking a majority of the Starlight Isles and surrounding territories.

His steps slowed as a silhouette came into view near the edge, an ambient warm breeze tugging the cape pulled around their shoulders. Briefly, he thought he'd stumbled across Count Koffin K doing something...but when they raised their head to gaze upward, he realized he'd found his target.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and resisted the urge to stomp his way up the cliff to her side.

"and what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Angel startled a little, jerking around halfway and flinching. Burning purple eyes met his own, wide and alarmed.

For a second, he felt like they fit right in with the "stars" in their sky.

"Oh! Oh. Sans. Hey."

"answer the question, human."

"Right. Um." Her gaze trailed away, back over the edge of the cliff. "Well don't worry, I didn't fuck off to, uh...y'know. Yeah. Ye—yeah. I'm just, just..."

He didn't speak, recognizing by the tone of her voice that she was struggling to get her thoughts out. She got scrambled like that sometimes—it reminded him of Alphys...when she wasn't putting on a whole fake persona, anyways.

"...Processing. Mhm."

"your near death experience or your magic?"

"Can it be both?"

He inclined his head and slowly stepped forward, moving to stand beside her. There was a very long pause before he spoke.

"well, uh, anyways. asgore said you gotta rest. my brother'll have a conniption if he finds out you're out here."

"Right. Sorry. I just...really needed to get some air. Please."

Frustration boiled behind his teeth, but he sucked back the smoke and smiled anyways. When she glanced at him, whatever she saw in his expression made her grimace and look away again.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not dying."

"you nearly did." The lights in his eyesockets extinguished, smile thinning until it was nearly a frown. "like, 6 hours ago. unless you forgot. i mean...wouldn't really be surprised, ya did hit your head pretty hard during your little stunt."

"God, Sans, can you just—not? For once?"

"i dunno what you mean."

She whirled on him, a desperate sort of anger flashing onto her features.

"You know exactly what I mean! Don't kick me while I'm down. I—"

"i'm trying to get you back in bed before anyone sees you, but hey, if you wanna keep acting like a babybones, be my guest."

"I'm NOT—" Angel cut herself off and shut her eyes, drawing Sans's cape around her shoulders tighter and covering her face with a hand. "Not...fuck. Fuck. Sans. I–I don't need you to act like my parent. Be all weird and protective over your brother, but don't...let's not pretend. Don't do the same with me cuz you think you have to. It hurts."

He didn't know what to say, for once. There was a quiet swallowing sound while he searched for something, anything to respond to that. Seconds dragged into minutes before she spoke again.

"...I'm gonna die down here."

"hey, you just said you're not—"

"No, Sans." She interrupted, insistent, voice pitching high and broken. "I'm gonna die down here. This place, it's driving me fucking mental. I don't. I don't know what to do."

Her hand slipped away again, a frightened, tight little grin stretching across her face as she looked at him. It looked like it hurt.

"The sun. I miss the sun. I feel like I've been stuck in a damn time loop where it's always night time and I do the same damn shit every day! Yesterday was the first time in weeks that I felt like something new happened and I completely fucked it. I've been having so much fun here that I forgot that—I forgot. I forgot!" She began to laugh, gesturing to her body frantically, trying to get a point across. "I forgot!"

Sans listened to her speak with an increasing feeling of worry, frustration melting into concern the longer she went on.

"kid—" He started, but she cut him off again, her laughter ceasing as quickly as it had come, turning her body away.

"Don't. Please don't. I don't think I could stand if it you started with the pity train."

"wasn't the pity train, was more like the empathy express."

His weak attempt at humor did bring a smaller, more genuine twitch of her mouth than whatever fake grin she'd been trying to keep up. How had she ever managed to fool him before? In hindsight, it was obvious now, all the times she'd been pretending at joy.

Ah, but then, she was the perseverant kind of person. Maybe she was just...used to that.

He didn't want to know why.

"i was just gonna say...you're not alone."

He reached out and set a hand on her shoulder, struggling to find the words. Sun sickness had been a lot more prevalent back during the aftermath of the war—he had no experience dealing with it directly.

"it ain't so bad. you're still here. people down here like you."

"...Do you even like me?"

"huh?"

Angel turned her head just a little, enough to catch his gaze with her own. She looked exhausted, the warm breeze threatening to spill the tears welling up in her eyes.

"I pay attention, you know. You—god, Sans, you only tolerate me cuz I'm friends with Papyrus, right? Sometimes I feel like we get along great, and then something happens and you just...act off. Am I that much of a burden to you? Should I just leave?"

His thoughts flashed back to the day before. The panic that had thrummed through his body at the mere thought of losing her, that same panic that had brought him out here looking for her in the first place.

"i..." He hesitated. "...think it's been a long day, angel. you're tired and homesick and still coming down from the adrenaline high from earlier. you'll feel better in the morning."

Angel just gazed at him for a long, long moment. Those purple eyes searching for something in his expression before they went lax, her face flattening.

"...You're right. You're right. I'm just..." A lump in her throat. The tears began streaking down her face, dripping off her chin. "...so tired."

"hey." His voice was soft now, softer than she'd heard it before. "...i get the feeling, bud."

Her shoulders shaking, she raised a hand and slipped it over the one he had on her shoulder just for some measure of comfort, head ducking and turning away as she quietly hiccuped. He let her hold him there, warm fingers on chilled bones as she anchored herself again in the present.

It was a good long while before she let him take her home.

...

"Hey, Sans...?"

"mhm?"

"I forgot my glasses. You're gonna have to lead me back."

It was quiet now. Just the sounds of her peaceful breathing and the ambient rustling of the wind through the pine trees outside. The TV was muted, only on to give some light if the human was to wake up. Not that she was likely to—healing was an exhausting process, and apparently even more so to beings made of physical matter.

Sans leaned against the wall next to the television, arms crossed over his chest. He hadn't moved in...oh, if he had to say, maybe 3 hours? He'd parked himself there once Asgore had deemed her no longer at risk of dusting—no, wait. Humans didn't do that, did they?

He was learning a lot about humans today.

For one—the blood.

Comics didn't do it justice. Most of what washed up down here was kid stuff, tagged with that old "Approved by the Comics Code Authority" nonsense that he was beginning to suspect was just straight up censorship. Of course on a factual level he'd known that humans had blood; he wasn't stupid, he'd skimmed waterlogged science textbooks with interest.

Did you know that humans have nearly five liters of blood in them? If they lose about 40% of that, they're dead. That's about 2 liters, give or take. It's so little blood. Just 3 liters makes a gallon. Humans were walking around with just above a gallon of blood inside them, sloshing all over the place.

It's heavy, too. Well—humans were heavy in a way that most monsters couldn't be. They were just stuff, collected together in a bag of skin and liquids. Angel weight approximately 150 pounds, if he had to guess. Limp, it felt like more.

His hands tightened on his arms, bones digging into soft fabric. Dried blood flaked off a dark stain along his chest and right arm, just where his left hand rested. It was uncomfortable. He didn't move his hand.

Could Sans even describe that unique, awful, stomach-churning feeling of sheer nausea at the memory of feeling it seep into his clothes? His mind went back to the first drop, that single, perfect, ruby red drop that'd plopped down onto his white glove and soaked into it. Like a blooming rose.

He felt a fullbody shiver pass through him, rattling in the air softly, too quiet to disturb her rest.

...Why couldn't he stop focusing on it?

His gloves were in the trash now. He couldn't bring himself to take off the jacket, though, regardless of the blood dried on the fabric.

Blood was dark when the cells within died. Brown didn't go well with blue. He really should go wash it. But then, the blood hadn't washed off the gloves. So where did that leave him?

Pupils tracked where the drop had fallen from, sliding up along a tree trunk until it landed on the dark figure overhead, hung over a particularly thick branch. A hand hung down, fresh red drip drip dripping. The faint purple glow of her headset was the only reason he even realized who it was, as hidden in the leaves as she was.

It was a blur. He reacted without even really thinking of it, reaching up and grabbing onto her soul with his magic, pulling her down almost too harshly. It prompted a breathless whine of pain from the nearly unconscious human, his brother gasping next to him as she slumped down into Sans's waiting arms.

"SHE'S...IS SHE...?"

Home again, no time to speculate. Her HP was low. It was dropping. He CHECKED and found it steadily beeping down, sending electric panic down his spine. More blurs. Pawing at purple clothes, assessing the damage, an awful wound that would've made him lose his lunch if he'd had the stomach to do so. The smell strong and iron, mixed with the fragrant perfume of the trees she'd been caught in. Bandaging her with Papyrus's help, watching in despair as she bled through and began steadily staining an old shirt of his, a bead of blood sliding down the side of her face from her nose and swiftly drying, sticky red on brown skin still dark from the sun. Fuck. Fuck.

Nauseated, he flicked his gaze back to her face on the couch. She was sleeping peacefully. Her features were soft and relaxed, open, no pain present. Not like earlier, when she'd been unconscious and clearly in so much pain that she couldn't help but react even while down for the count, crying and moaning while they'd tried to fix her up. The flickering TV cast ghoulish blue light on her face, an arm slipping out of the blankets and flopping limp downward.

He needed to know more. More about human bodies. He needed to make sure this couldn't happen again. He'd half a mind to wake her up and force her to quit their endeavor altogether, if not for Asgore's insistence that she gets rest.

Was her chest rising with her breath? Was it?

Struck with a sudden, uncharacteristic paranoia, he pushed off from the wall and approached on silent feet. He reached and pressed a hand to her chest over the blanket.

A steady rise and fall. The vibrations softly reverberated through his bones, easing the tension that had coiled in his shoulders. He felt stupid. He kneeled and gently took her fallen arm, raising it to tuck it into the blanket again only to stop, digits still pressed against her wrist.

"her heart," he thinks. "of course."

A soft flutter beat against his fingertips. Like he'd caught a butterfly in his hands. But this...was in her arm, or rather, her wrist. Small, insistent. Steady. Warm.

Sans really should tuck her arm back under the blanket. He should. He doesn't. He raised it somewhat and adjusted his grip, tilting his head as he focused on that feeling. He shut his eyesockets, letting the rhythm drum against his fingers and beat the fear out of his body. He'd never actually touched her skin before, had he? Always wearing those gloves. In his panic, earlier, he'd never registered how warm she was. The warm pulse of her heart was all he could focus on now.

"It's okay. I'm okay."

Her words earlier had been so insistent. She'd been so concerned about Papyrus's reaction to her near death that she's jumped to soothing him rather than focus on her own injury. Was it that she knew her magic would hold out? Or had it only been for his brother's benefit?

He wondered how often she'd had to try and push away the pain to reassure someone else.

He put her arm back under the covers and adjusted her make-shift pillow, the blue cape folded in on itself until it resembled the bed-sheet it used to be. Then he stood and stepped away, his body disappearing into the shadows before she could stir at the disturbance.