Chapter Text
They had been learning all about souls at school for the past week, and Sans had loved every second of it. Ms. Duckfoot kept saying that understanding the soul was just as important as understanding magic bullets. Sans had never been able to make bullets. The other kids in class were all able to make full patterns now, but whenever Sans tried to make even a single bullet, he became tired and shaky, the same way he did when he was sick. Telekinesis was a little easier, but Mom and Dad always got angry when they caught him doing it, saying he was just going to “overexert” himself if he kept it up. He was pretty sure that word meant the same thing as “getting tired and shaky.”
He couldn’t make bullets, but everyone had a soul, even weird kids like Sans. Ms. Duckfoot said that a monster couldn’t exist without a soul, so Sans definitely had to have one. It was something he could understand. He had tried to think about what life was like for normal monsters, but it was hard. These lessons had made it so much easier. The stuff about emotions and feelings and stuff was kind of boring, but Sans liked hearing about the more complicated stuff, like how souls worked and things about “resonance” and “tuning.” It made him feel a little smart when he understood things that his classmates didn’t, for once.
Today’s lesson had been all about how to actually bring your soul out into the open, so that you could look at it and check it for problems.
“It’s dangerous to do it in public,” Ms. Duckfoot said reasonably, writing some notes on the whiteboard. “Souls are very fragile when they’re out in the open, and you could easily hurt yourself or someone else by accident. So it’s important that you do it when you’re alone, somewhere safe, quiet and comfortable.”
A talkative Loox named Ifor raised their hand. Ms. Duckfoot smiled and called on them.
“How come we have to bring it out if it’s dangerous?” they asked, dropping their hand back onto their desk. “Wouldn’t we just, like, know if something was wrong with it?”
“Very good question!” Ms. Duckfoot said, which was what she always said when someone asked a question. “It’s true, you will almost always be able to feel it when something is not right with your soul. But knowing that something is wrong and knowing what that something is, is very different, you see? Sometimes it even takes someone else, like a family member or a doctor, to see exactly what’s wrong. And for monsters without eyes, or who are sight-impaired, this is still true! Taking your soul out, and doing it the correct way, makes it something physical and tangible--something that you can experience in the real world, instead of just inside you. That’s why it’s so important to know how to do it, and do it right, even if you only need to do it once or twice in your whole life! Does that make sense?”
There was a chorus of nods and yesses. Ms. Duckfoot beamed and turned back to finish writing on the board.
“So tonight,” she said as she finished and turned back to the class, “what I’d like all of you to do is to find somewhere at home that’s nice and quiet and private, and to take a few minutes to try and call out your souls.”
She started passing out sheets describing the assignment, and the students started passing them up the rows of desks.
“You can ask a parent or someone else you trust for help, if that makes you feel more comfortable. Remember the exercises we did today about how to tune in to your soul’s vibration. If you can’t get it to work, or if you start to feel uncomfortable or unsafe, then that is perfectly alright! It is very important that you don’t try to force it, alright?”
Sans eagerly watched as the assignment papers moved up the row toward him. This was going to be some really neat homework, like when they did addition tables.
“I want you to write three complete sentences about how it feels, and if you see anything interesting. Some people have been known to learn all kinds of things or to gain incredible insight from peering into their own soul. It’s the most important source of magic, after all!”
Tena, the squid monster who sat in front of Sans, started to hand him the stack of assignments, but then he stopped and frowned.
“Um, are you doing this one?”
“Huh?” Sans held out his hand. It was a pretty normal question, since sometimes Sans either wasn’t allowed to do certain assignments, or just couldn’t.
“Yeah, I--”
“Come on, pass it back,” Peanut, the squirrel monster who sat behind Sans, said with impatience. “No way is he doing this one.”
“Yes I am,” Sans insisted. He raised his hand, waving it to get Ms. Duckfoot’s attention. She was back in front of the whiteboard and smiled at him when she saw.
“Yes, Sans?”
“I’m allowed to do this one, right?”
Even from all the way across the room, Sans could see the way her smile flickered. For a moment, she looked concerned and distracted, like she was arguing with herself. People always got looks like that when he was around, and Sans was getting pretty good at telling what people’s faces meant.
“Yes, I think so,” she said. “Just make sure it’s alright with your parents first, okay?”
Sans felt his soul sink a little. That was no good. His parents would probably tell him no. If they had their way, he wouldn’t ever do homework, or even go to school. Maybe…maybe this was one of those things that they didn’t need to know about.
“Okay, I will, promise,” he said, and took an assignment for himself before passing it back to Peanut.
“I bet you don’t even have a soul,” Peanut said with a mean smile as he passed the sheets backward.
“Peanut, don’t start,” Ms. Duckworth called out, in that tone she got just before she started to actually get upset.
“That’s dumb,” Sans said, rolling his eyelights. “Everyone has a soul.”
“You can’t even do magic, though,” Peanut’s friend Sparko pointed out from the next row over.
“Monsters and humans have souls,” Peanut agreed. “But if you can’t do magic are you even a monster?”
Earlier on in the year, when his classmates had started to realize all the things that were wrong with Sans, Sans had always flinched at such questions. It hurt, but now he could make it so that it only hurt in that secret place inside, instead of on the outside. People got meaner when they could see that they were hurting you; if you hid it, then they started thinking you were tough and didn’t care what people said.
“I’m not a monster,” Sans said, grinning. “Cause I’m a joke ster.”
Tena and Sparko both snickered. Peanut clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. Sans turned back around in his desk, satisfied. He looked over the assignment, reading it over a few times to make sure he understood the words, then carefully tucked it into his folder.
Peanut was wrong. He definitely had a soul. Tonight when he saw it for the first time, maybe he could finally prove that he was just like everyone else.
Kids talked a lot about whether they liked home or school better. The general opinion seemed to be that home was way better--it was where the snacks, the toys, the games and the TV were. People like Sans, who thought school was better, were usually called “nerds.” It had been very strange to Sans that anyone could think that home was better than school. School was where you learned cool things and met people, there was almost endless free food even if it was kind of lousy, and your parents weren’t around. But then Sans had been over to a friend’s house and had seen how other parents acted with their own kids. Other parents seemed pretty nice. It made sense that other kids wanted to be around them.
Sans’s chest was tight as he waited outside the school, clutching the straps of his backpack. He watched as some of the older kids dispersed, allowed to walk home on their own, while the ones Sans’s age waited for parents, siblings, or guardians. There was the usual noise of people asking his classmates how school had been, what they had learned, all of the normal questions. Sans’s eyelights scanned the street, his soul tense.
Eventually, he saw Dad coming to walk him home, and he relaxed a little. Dad was quieter than Mom. Dad wouldn’t ask about homework.
“Alright, kiddo,” Dad said in his tired-sounding way when he drew level with Sans. “Ready to go?”
“Uh-huh.”
Dad gestured and started walking back toward their house. Sans followed. He watched Dad’s back and didn’t speak. Dad didn’t speak either, not even to ask how school had been.
It was only a few blocks walk. Neither of them said a word.
That made it all the more jarring when Dad opened the front door of the house and they were both met with a wall of sound. A tiny figure was plunked down on the floor in the entryway, babbling and laughing as he smashed a toy car against a colorful wooden block. Papyrus was the loudest person Sans had ever met, and that included kids twice Papyrus’s age, and even adults.
This was the one good thing about home, and it was a really, really good thing. Sans grinned and set his backpack down near the door. Dad sighed heavily and walked past them both toward the kitchen.
“Hey, Papy,” he said, going to his brother. “Whatcha playin’?”
Papyrus’s whole self lit up and he started scrambling unsteadily to his feet. Sans grabbed his arm to help him up. Papyrus had been walking for a little while now, but he was still wobbly.
“Ans!” Papyrus hugged Sans around the middle. “Ans! The cars aw fightin’ the bocks!”
“They’re fighting the blocks, huh?” Sans said, crouching down and taking stock of the general mess in the entryway. There were other toy cars and wooden blocks scattered all over, and the blocks had been arranged by color.
“Bww,” Papyrus said, struggling with the word. “Bwocks. But onwee the boo ones, cuz the boo ones aw bad, cuz they said the cars can’t come in the living woom, and th’ red ones aw good and aw friends wif th’ cars, but the boo ones awnt letting anyone in the living woom, see?”
He pointed to a line of blue blocks arranged across the entrance to the living room like some kind of small, blocky army.
“Oh man, that’s so mean of them,” Sans said, grinning huge. So little, and Papyrus was already so smart and creative. “But the cars and the red blocks are gonna beat ‘em, right?”
“It’s a looooong battoo,” Papyrus said, very seriously. “They gotta hav a big fight, an’, an’ make the b--bb--bll--blue bocks…”
He frowned, clearly frustrated with how hard the words were.
“They gotta make the blue blocks…?” Sans prompted.
Papyrus beamed, back on track. “They gotta make ‘em be frens!”
“Aww, sounds like a happy ending! That’s so cool, bro.”
Papyrus spread his arms, giggling. “Coo!”
Sans was about to offer to play with him later when Mom walked in. She almost stepped on the row of blue blocks and made an annoyed sound as she had to step over them.
“Papyrus, sweetie, how many times have I told you not to leave your toys everywhere?”
She didn’t yell. Usually, when she did yell, it was at Dad. Papyrus toddled in her direction.
“Mommy, the bocks are fightin--”
“Sweetie, volume, we’ve talked about this,” she said, pressing a hand to her head like she had a headache. “And it’s blocks, you’re old enough to start pronouncing it correctly. Clean up your toys, will you?”
“He’s just playing,” Sans said, gingerly moving a few of the toys out of the way before she could get more annoyed. Papyrus had already moved on, going to fix the blocks that Mom had almost tripped over.
“Don’t leave your backpack by the door,” Mom said without looking at Sans, heading for the kitchen. “Take it up to your room, how many times do I have to tell you?”
There was no point in telling her that he had just put it down for a minute because it was heavy, that he was going to take it up to his room after saying hi to Papyrus. She had already stopped listening. Sans watched her disappear into the kitchen.
“Dearest,” he heard her say, in that fake-happy voice she got sometimes when she was angry at Dad. “You didn’t by any chance give Papy the juice with added sugar, did you?”
“What?” Sans heard Dad answer. “I thought you dumped it out?”
“What, waste perfectly good food? Dump money down the drain? It’s not like Sans can’t drink it.”
“Papy said he wanted the purple one, I gave him the purple one. I thought you’d gotten the new--”
Mom laughed bitterly. “Well, that explains why he’s been a nightmare for the past three hours. Way to go, honey.”
Sans picked up his backpack and gave Papyrus a quick hug. Papyrus let out a delighted squeal, flailing his arms.
“I gotta go do homework, then I’ll come play with you, okay?” he said quietly. “Try not to block any more doorways, hehe.”
Papyrus’s delighted flailing turned into him trying to push Sans away with a displeased nyeh. Sans laughed and let him go.
He could still hear his parents as he dragged his backpack up the stairs.
“It looks exactly like the sugar-free bottle, what the hell do you want from me?”
“Some common sense, maybe? For you to pay attention? For you to not give our hyperactive child sugar?”
“That’s not even real, chemically speaking it’s…”
Their voices thankfully petered out by the time Sans reached his bedroom, but he still closed the door behind him. He leaned back against the door with a tired sigh. He used to try and stop them when they argued. Now it just made him tired and a little faint.
But it wasn’t so bad. With Papyrus downstairs playing and his parents distracted, Sans could do his homework in peace. He clambered onto his bed and dug the folder out of his backpack, then tugged the assignment sheet free. Call out your soul, then write three sentences about it. That was easy. Sans was good at making whole sentences, even if he got a lot of red marks for his handwriting. At least Ms. Duckfoot had stopped trying to get him to write capital letters. Something about writing capitals always felt weird.
Ms. Duckfoot had said it was important to be comfortable and safe, so Sans snuggled back against the pillows and kicked off his shoes, letting them fall where they landed. He tilted his head toward the door, trying to listen for anyone coming. He couldn’t hear anything but the occasional muffled laughter from Papyrus.
Sans gave his favorite plush starfish a quick hug. This was as comfortable and safe as he could possibly be. He thought back to the lessons and activities from today, the breathing exercises, how Ms. Duckfoot had told everyone to count slowly in their heads. It made Sans sleepy when he tried it now. He pressed both hands against his chest and tried to focus, thinking about his soul. He definitely had one. He was a monster like everyone else. Just because he was weird and weak and broken and got sick all the time didn’t mean he didn’t have a soul.
He could feel it now, like he’d felt it in class--something stirring in his chest, a warmth, a distant hum. It felt like a little moth fluttering against the inside of a glass jar. All he had to do was to let it out, right?
It seemed that it wasn’t as simple as that. He had to stop a couple times, either when he heard a sound from downstairs or lost focus. He tried to let his mind go quiet, like Ms. Duckfoot had talked about, but his mind was always a little noisy. He always had to be very careful, and to notice every little thing, because there were all kinds of little things that could hurt him. Even a little thing like that could kill him. His parents had explained what that meant, over and over. So he could never let his head go totally quiet, because then he might not be noticing something. But that wasn’t really a bad thing. Thinking a lot about things made it easier to figure out how things worked and what things meant. They had done a science course earlier in the school year, and he had figured out all kinds of things that other kids in class had missed. That was when Peanut and the others had started calling him a nerd.
Being a nerd was fine by him. Nerds were normal. There were lots of nerds at school.
He kept breathing, in and out, slowly counting in his head. Things had gone quiet downstairs, which meant it was easier to focus. He pressed his hands against his chest again. Souls were everything that made you who you were, so Sans thought about the things that made him Sans.
That fluttering, warm feeling started to get stronger and stronger. Sans opened his eyesockets. There was a glow forming in the middle of his chest, behind his hands. He got so excited he almost lost hold of the feeling. He managed to hold on, coaxing it further and further.
A new feeling came with it--a sort of uncomfortable, raw feeling, like being woken up from a very deep sleep, or like being alone in a very big cavern, or like feeling a very far away earthquake. It felt like his soul was trying to cling to him, like it was afraid to let go. It wasn’t a nice feeling, and Sans thought back to what Ms. Duckfoot had said. He shouldn’t force it. And if it got uncomfortable, he was supposed to stop.
But if he stopped, then this would be one more homework assignment that he couldn't do, and that always made him feel like a failure. Peanut would say that it proved that Sans had no soul, and nothing Sans could say would convince him otherwise. No one else in his class was exempt from things the way Sans was. There were other kids in other classes, but he didn’t know them, and he didn’t think they were exempt for the same reasons. People got so worried about Sans’s safety that sometimes they just didn’t let him do anything, and not only was it boring, but it made the other kids stare and whisper and think that Sans must just not be a monster at all. The other kids in class weren’t allowed to form bullets when Sans was around, and some of them resented him for it. And they were right to be resentful, weren’t they? People shouldn’t have to change their ways or hold themselves back just because Sans was nearby.
So he kept going. He loosened his grip on his chest and tried to let himself relax even more, closing his eyesockets again. He was pretty good at being relaxed, so it wasn’t too hard. Maybe his soul was just scared. It had never been out in the open before, at least not that Sans could remember. Maybe back when he was really little and was seeing doctors all the time.
“It’s okay,” Sans said, feeling a little silly for talking to his soul. “It’s safe. No one’s here and nothing’s moving.”
The uncomfortable feeling didn’t really go away, and he winced as he felt his soul tug a little too hard. It didn’t hurt, really, but it just felt sort of wrong.
“It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”
He tried not to pull. He nudged it, thinking of how he’d nudged Papyrus along when he was still learning to walk. Slowly, very slowly, his soul relaxed its grip. Even more slowly, it finally let go.
It was a very freeing, light feeling, like Sans was weightless. He had done it! He opened his eyesockets and smiled as he saw his soul, floating above his cupped hands.
His smile fell away when he got a better look at it.
He had seen souls before. He’d seen his parents’ souls one time, and he’d seen Papyrus’s soul a few times--Mom said that energetic babies like Papyrus would call out their souls without meaning to on occasion. He’d seen the diagrams and drawings in Ms. Duckfoot’s class, and watched the video with the funny scientist and the cartoon souls. Monster souls looked like a heart turned upside down, and they glowed a bright white that illuminated things around them.
Sans’s soul didn’t look like that. It was shaped right, but the edges weren’t smooth--they were kind of squiggly and sunken, kind of withered, making the whole thing ugly. It was really small, too, even though all the souls he’d seen had been the same size. And it was barely glowing. The glow pulsed dimly, like a lightbulb that was about to go out.
Sans knew he was sick, and he knew it was the bad kind of sickness. He’d heard doctors and his parents all say that he would probably die sometime soon. But other, normal monsters got sick sometimes too, like when they’d eaten bad monster food, or hadn’t eaten enough, or were too sad, or other things like that. They got sick, but being sick wasn’t all of who they were. They always got better eventually.
His soul looked sick. If a soul was everything someone was, then everything about him was sick. If his soul was bad and ugly and wrong, then everything about him was bad and ugly and wrong. It wasn’t just his HP. It was everything.
Sans dropped his hands and let go of the feeling entirely. His soul sank back into his chest and vanished. He felt it slide easily back into place and felt normal again.
Normal.
He hugged his knees to his chest. Maybe today was just a bad day, even though he felt fine. Maybe his soul looked like a regular soul the rest of the time. Maybe everyone’s soul looked that ugly when they were sick. Or there had to be other monsters who were sick like Sans was, right? Maybe he wasn't the only one with a weird soul. He should ask his parents about it. He didn’t like that idea at all, since he knew they would be angry at him, but he had to know for sure, right?
His soul had been so dim. Did that mean everyone was right, and that he was going to die soon?
He hugged his starfish plush, burying his face in the soft fabric. He’d had this starfish his whole life. It was starting to get a little threadbare.
“Sans, don’t pick at your food, just eat it.”
Sans paused in sculpting his mashed potatoes into a sort of bowl shape, then continued. “I’m not hun--”
“And elbows off the table. You know better.”
Sans set his fork down and obeyed.
“Sorry, Mom.”
Mom peered at him coldly from across the dinner table for a minute before going back to her own food. They were all eating in silence, except for Papyrus, who was giggling and making a mess with his plate like usual.
“He’s gonna end up with potatoes in his spine again,” Dad said, watching Papyrus with a tired look. “I bathed him last night, tonight it’s your turn.”
Mom sighed, her eyelights flickering in annoyance
“Papy, sweetie, stop playing with your food.” She reached over with her napkin and scrubbed a bit of potato off of Papyrus’s neck. Papyrus leaned away to try and escape the offending napkin, but Mom was very good at cleaning things quickly.
Sans looked between his parents, wondering if now was a good time. There wouldn't really be a perfectly good time, he knew. Dinnertime was always like this; it was his least favorite meal. The food always had a kind of hollow taste to it, and Mom and Dad were both always tired and crabby. It didn’t help that Sans wasn’t very good with table manners, no matter how he tried. He just kept making mistakes. And he sat so low in the chair that it was always more comfortable to keep his elbows on the table.
“Sans, come on, you have to eat,” Dad said.
“I’m not hung--”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re not hungry, you’re much too fragile to be skipping meals,” Mom said with another cold glare. “Or do you want to be shaky and lightheaded all tomorrow? Do you want me to get another call from your teacher complaining that you’re falling asleep in class again?”
“No.”
“Then eat. I’m not gonna ask again.”
Sans made himself eat. The potatoes and carrots all tasted empty. The cafeteria food at school was so much better, and the lunch ladies were really nice. One of them always made sure Sans got an extra butter roll. Even the plain bowl of cereal Sans made for himself in the morning was better than dinner.
Satisfied that Sans was obeying, Mom finally smiled a little.
“So, how was school today?”
“Ow was skoo?” Papyrus chirped.
“It was fine.”
“Descriptive,” Dad muttered.
“Um.” Sans swallowed a mouthful of papery potatoes, nervous. “We been learning about souls.”
“‘We’ve been,’” Mom corrected. “Don’t teach your brother bad habits.”
Sans squirmed and stared at his plate. “Sorry. ‘We’ve been’ learning about souls.”
“Language is very important to skeletons, you know that.”
“I know.”
“So what have you learned about souls?”
Sans had learned all kinds of different things, but all he said was, “Um, that they’re important.”
“Sounds like a real useful lesson,” Dad said, in that weird tone he got where Sans couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“Mommy, wass a soww?”
“Eat your dinner, Papy,” Mom said, still staring at Sans like she was looking right into his thoughts. It got so hard to think clearly when she stared like that. “And? What else? Use your words.”
“That, that they’re what makes a monster who they are? A-And, um, that they’re magic?”
“I don’ wike pototoos…”
“Anything else?”
“Um, and we been--”
“‘We’ve been.’”
“We’ve been learning how to call them out?”
Both of them suddenly looked startled. Dad turned to stare at Sans as well. Mom’s eyesockets went big. Sans shrank in his seat.
“What?”
“In public?”
“N-No, um, Ms. Duckfoot s-said, um, we should only do it when we’re safe and alone…”
Mom stared for a moment longer, then turned to Dad, shaking her head.
“What in the world is going on with these schools these days? No sense of decorum.”
Sans didn’t know what that word meant, but it sounded a little like they were insulting Ms. Duckfoot, and he didn’t like that. He gripped the edge of the table, carefully setting down his fork.
“Um, b-but Ms. Duckfoot said, said it’s important to learn about, c-cause it helps you be, um, in touch with your, your feelings and your self and, and she said it’s called ‘mindfulness,’ cause it--”
“I should’ve known,” Dad said, shaking his head the same way Mom had. “More of that touchy-feely modern crap.”
Sans looked between them, scared. They were going to figure it out any moment now, and he knew from experience that it was better to get to it before they did.
“C-Can I ask a question?”
“‘May I,’ Sans, for godssakes, how hard is it to speak correctly?”
“M-May I ask a question?”
“You may,” Mom said, gesturing at him to continue. Dad went back to his meal.
“Um.” Sans twisted his hands together, trying to find some courage. He could be brave at school, because he could always just tell jokes, and that would get people to stop being mean, or get their words to stop hurting so much. But that had never worked at home. Mom and Dad just found it tiring and annoying, the same way they found everything tiring and annoying.
Sans was scared. What if they refused to answer? Or worse, what if they did answer, and it was the answer Sans thought it was?
At least Papyrus was still happy, playing with his food, off in his own little world. Sometimes he would pick up on how tense things got at dinnertime, and then he would start crying, and then Mom and Dad would just get more upset. Sans hated seeing Papyrus cry. Papyrus crying was a lot worse than Mom and Dad being upset or annoyed.
This would be easier if Papyrus was too distracted to notice.
“Um.”
“Spit it out, sweetie.”
“How, how come my soul looks so different from everyone else’s?”
Mom and Dad both started staring at him again. They both stopped eating.
The silence was so sharp that even Papyrus stopped playing with his food and looked up, looking between everyone in confusion.
“You called it out?” Mom asked very quietly.
“Just for a little bit,” Sans said, a shiver running through him at the look in her eyelights. “I wanted to see it, and I won’t do it again--”
“You know better,” Mom, sockets wide. “Sans, honey, you know better. You could have hurt yourself. You could have died. ”
“I was careful! I was really, really careful! I’m sorry, I won’t ever do it again, I promise, I just wanted to do the--I mean, I just wanted to, to see it for real, but it looks s-so different, and I wanted to know why…”
“Sans, are you stupid?” Dad said, not raising his voice because he never raised his voice. “Are you doing this on purpose? Do you like making us worry?”
“N-No, I just…”
“Sans you can’t ever do that again,” Mom said, leaning forward.
“I won’t.”
“Not ever, understand?”
“Ans? Ans?”
“I said I won’t!”
Mom finally looked away from him and reached across the table to grab Dad’s wrist.
“It’s that school, he never used to take risks like this…”
“Filling his head with ideas…”
Sans saw where this was going and sat up as high in his chair as he could, almost standing.
“It’s not school! It’s not! M-Ms. Duckfoot said we shouldn’t, but I did it anyway, cause I just wanted to see it! It was my fault, not the school. I was bad. It was my fault, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”
They peered at him, and he couldn’t tell if they were convinced or not. Another shiver ran through him and he felt his eyesockets sting.
“It wasn’t school’s fault. It was my fault. P-Please don’t make me quit. I don’t wanna quit school. I w-wanna be normal.”
“Sweetie, you’re not normal. You’re never going to be normal.”
Sans couldn’t hide his flinch. “B-But I wanna stay in school. Please? I like school.”
“Ans? Ans, don’ be sad.”
They looked at each other again, and then Mom let go of Dad’s wrist. Dad rubbed at his face with both hands and Mom massaged her temples, sighing. Papyrus watched Sans with a puzzled frown, chewing on the end of his spoon.
“Sit down,” Mom said, and Sans sat. “We’re not gonna make you quit.”
“We’re not?” Dad said.
“We’re not, because I don’t want to try and handle two kids twenty-four seven, dearest, do you?”
Dad didn’t answer. Mom lowered her hands again.
“You’re not an idiot, Sans,” she said sharply. “You know better than to take risks like this.”
Sans folded his arms, not sure what to do with all the angry-sad-scared-hurt feelings inside him. “I said I won’t do it again.”
“Good.”
“But…”
He winced at the look Mom gave him, but kept going.
“But how come it looks so different?”
“You already know why.” Mom’s voice was a little gentler now. “It’s because you’re sick. It’s the same reason why you can’t ever take risks like yanking out your soul and exposing it to god knows what. You’re too weak for it.”
“You came out wrong, kiddo,” Dad said, finishing his meal. “Nothing anyone can do about it.”
Sans hugged himself tighter. His chest was hurting.
“So it’s always gonna look like that?”
“Your soul has been weak since the day you were born,” Mom said. “We’ve tried everything, sweetie. Every doctor and specialist in the Underground.”
Sans thought about all the funny-smelling quiet rooms, the stern monsters in white coats, the strange magic, the uncomfortable tests, the beep of machines. He tried not to shiver again.
“I’m never gonna get better...?”
“No,” Mom said, and Sans slumped in the chair. “So I don’t want to hear about you taking stupid risks anymore, understand? Or we’ll rethink our decision to let you stay in that school.”
“Okay.”
“Speak up, Sans, lowercase doesn’t mean you get to mumble.”
“Okay,” Sans said, loud enough for them to hear. He sniffed and scrubbed at his eyesockets. "Does…does anyone else have a soul like mine?"
"Probably not," Dad said.
"Who knows?" Mom said at the same time. "There's a reason why people don't go around pulling out their souls in public. It's like airing your dirty laundry. Completely classless. What does it matter if anyone else has a soul like yours?"
Sans mopped at his eyesockets again, trying to catch all the tears before anyone could see them.
"I-It doesn't."
He heard Papyrus’s chair squeak as Papyrus clambered down out of the booster seat. He waddled over to Sans’s side of the table and hugged Sans around the middle. Sans automatically wrapped an arm around him, holding his brother close, trying not to sniffle.
“Ans, don be sad.”
“Stop crying,” Mom snapped. “Crying won’t help anything. You’re just upsetting your brother.”
Papyrus gave a little whine, staring up at Sans with big, sad eyelights. Sans rubbed his eyesockets dry and made himself smile.
“Hey, I’m okay, Papy, I’m okay. Sorry, don’t worry. I’m okay.”
Papyrus smooshed his face against Sans’s side and whined again, like he wasn’t really convinced. Sans hugged him a little tighter.
Sans looked up at Mom, but he couldn’t quite look at her face. He stared at her hands instead.
“M-May I be excused, please?”
“You’re not leaving this table until you’ve finished everything on your plate. What did we just talk about? You need to take care of yourself, Sans. Stop crying and eat.”
Sans picked up his fork. His food had gone cold.
Later, before bedtime, Sans wrote three complete sentences about how calling out his soul had felt. All three sentences were lies.