Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eight years ago, magical monsters emerged from their centuries-long imprisonment under Mt. Ebott and immediately declared war on humankind. Using the souls of seven humans, presumed to be among the plethora of missing persons cases for which Ebott was infamous, the monsters broke a magical barrier apparently constructed by humans of old to prevent just such an escape. Their king, made preternaturally powerful by these souls, spearheaded an assault that absolutely devastated the surrounding cities. The monsters slaughtered without conscience, uncaring if their victims were armed soldiers or children begging for mercy. Human weapons were powerless against their magic and accelerated healing abilities.

In the height of desperation, human government made the incredibly controversial decision to nuke Mt. Ebott; an action of which the ramifications would never be determined, as the monsters somehow redirected the warhead into space. Unable to track its location, all humans of the world collectively held their breath until an enormous cloud of dust on the moon's surface marked the missile's impact on the celestial body a week later.

While monsters celebrated this, their greatest victory, the moon-nuking marked a turning point in the war. Until then, the monsters' assault had been limited only to North America, where Mt. Ebott was located. However, worldwide outrage over the attack on the moon provoked international action. Scientists and technological experts worked together, their efforts culminating in the development of magical control collars. These devices, while having no effect on humans, could not only disable a monster's ability to fight, but also completely override their actions.

The fighting quickly turned from monsters against humans to monsters against other monsters controlled by humans. Six months later, the monster king was dead and any free monster still alive was on the lam.

With the immediate threat neutralized, the government was now faced with the difficult question of what to do with the thousands of monsters they'd captured during the war. It didn't take long for money-making entities to see the potential profit in using collar-controlled monsters as magical slaves, and they lobbied for the release of all monsters to the public market. Opposition was strong, but in the end it was impossible to defend a race who had so ruthlessly slaughtered civilians. The public saw enslavement as justice; if anything, it was more mercy than the murderers deserved. A faction of "Eliminationists" lobbied for all monsters to be terminated, and warned that dependency on the control collars was dangerous, but they were a minority. Seven years after the war, monster slaves were a ubiquitous presence in most major US cities.

Chapter Text

You were just starting the long walk back to your car when you witnessed a crotchety old man screaming and swinging his cane at a form on the ground. As the form dodged, his hood fell back, revealing a control collar under what appeared to be a... skull? Huh, you'd never seen a skeleton monster before. 

Among sundry incoherencies, you heard the old man, presumably the monster's owner, scream, "Stay still, damnit!" 

A light on the collar flashed green as the command was accepted. The monster froze, completely unable to move or avoid the next attack. 

At this point you gave a fearsome scream and heroically tackled the old man, knocking both of you down onto the sidewalk pavement. He responded by biting your arm, hard. Apparently he still had his natural teeth, or else they made dentures ridiculously sharp, because it actually broke the skin in a few places, causing you to cry out in pain. When you yelled at an interested bystander to call the police, it completely freaked out the old man. You wondered if he had a criminal record. It wouldn't surprise you. 

The old man begged you not to press charges and shoved a stack of papers in your hands, announcing that he was giving you the skeleton monster. Before you could say anything, he was already shuffling down the block as fast as possible. You considered chasing him down (it wouldn't be hard) but the monster on the ground took priority.

"Oh my god, are you alright??" you asked, holding out your hand to help him stand up. The skeleton didn't answer, or take your hand. He continued to stare at you with blank, dark sockets, jaw set in a sharp toothed grimace.

You pushed aside how unnervingly creepy it was and sat down on your knees, putting aside the stack of papers and holding up your hands placatingly. 

"I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Please, I just want to help."

The skeleton still didn't move, but after a moment, two glowing red lights like pupils appeared in the darkness of his eye sockets. They traveled down to stare at his collar where a red light was blinking, signalling that the monster was fighting a command.

"Huh? ...oh...OH!" Duh! The last thing that asshole had said was "stay still." All you had to do was give a different order. You cleared your throat and said in the most authoritative manner you could, "You are allowed to move!"

The light on the collar blinked purple, but the skeleton stayed frozen in place. He looked at you with glowing pupils, his expression much the same but maybe a little... annoyed?

"What? What does purple mean?"

He rolled his eyelights but didn't answer, though apparently he was trying to, since the light blinked red again. 

"Uh...You are allowed to speak!" The light flashed purple. "What the hell?! I said, you are ALLOWED TO SPEAK! Stop following that asshole's commands!"

The collar continued to blink purple, which was rapidly becoming your least favorite color. What was wrong?! Was it set to another language or something? You pulled up a translation app on your phone. "Uh...Sprechen! Hablar! Mówić! Shuōhuà! Paroli! Labhair! Parler! Eakspay Atinlay!"

The only thing your tirade accomplished was to attract the attention of passersby, curious why someone was screaming at their monster in a bunch of different languages. You caught the eye of one person who graced you with a particularly baleful stare as they walked past, likely a fellow monster sympathizer, angry to see a monster being abused by its owner. You groaned. "God damn it. I'm so sorry, man, I don't know how these stupid collars work," you said to the monster. He stared at you with an only slightly less malevolent expression. After a moment, he gestured with his pupil-eyelights towards the stack of monster slave registration papers lying on the ground where you had dropped them.

"Oh...oh, shit." You remembered then, that some collars could be set to only allow commands from the owner. "Is that collar locked to only listen to your owner? Look up for yes, down for no."

The skeleton looked up, then continued staring balefully at you, his collar blinking red as he continually fought against its control. 

"Fuck. That asshole gave me a bunch of your papers but he didn't transfer ownership, did he?" It was a rhetorical question, but the skeleton looked up anyways. "God dammit. Well now what?"

The skeleton rolled his eyes.

"Sorry, that wasn't a yes/no question. Uh... crap. I didn't really want to register as your owner, but I guess that's the only way, huh?"

He paused for a moment, then looked up. 

"Right. Well, there's a monster DMV about two miles that way. I could carry you to my car, but it’s, like, a twenty minute walk that way." You pointed down the street. "Can I leave you here and come back with the car?"

The skeleton frantically looked downwards. 

"Right, right, that leaves you kind of vulnerable, huh." You looked at the monster on the ground. He was significantly shorter than you and considering that he was literally a skeleton, he probably wasn't super heavy.

"Uh... well, I guess I’ll have to carry you." You scooped up the papers and started bending down to pick him up, but stopped when you noticed his eyes were black again. "Oh, sorry! Is it okay if I pick you up? I promise, I'm gonna get that stupid collar to release you as soon as I can." After a moment you added, "And don't worry, I'm not some kind of pervert-rapist or anything."

That was probably not the best thing to say, if the skeleton's disgusted expression was anything to go by. But after a moment his red eyelights reappeared and tentatively moved upward. 

"Right. Okay, uh... I guess I'll do the old fireman's carry." As gently as you could, you scooped up the skeleton and slung him over your shoulder, the pressure forcing a quiet grunt from him, which puzzled you because as far as you could tell, he didn't have lungs. To your surprise, his bones were warm to the touch and slightly soft. They were also a lot thicker than an actual human skeleton. He was heavier than you had expected, but not so much that it was impossible to carry him. The fact that he was frozen in place and not dead weight made it a lot easier. 

The walk to your car was probably the strangest experience of your adult life. To say that you attracted a little attention would be an understatement. Every single person on the damnably busy sidewalk stared at you. Some were polite enough to quickly look away but most of them ogled unabashedly at the spectacle of someone lumbering down the street with a monster flung over their shoulder. A few people outright laughed and one particularly rude asshole posed next to you for a selfie. The threadbare t-shirt and shorts the skeleton monster was wearing did little to pad his bones, which dug painfully into your shoulder the longer you went. "I'm so sorry, this has gotta be wicked uncomfortable for you," you said to the skeleton, addressing the side of him hanging over the front of your body. "We're almost there. It's just, like, two more blocks."

You were only a few feet from your car when, in an excruciatingly ironic development, you encountered the wrath of a rather dimwitted yet aggressively passionate monster sympathizer walking by. The woman, who looked to be in her forties and sported a very ‘I demand to speak to the manager’ haircut, was outraged by the wanton cruelty before her. "You put that monster down, RIGHT NOW!" she screamed.

"No, no you don't understand," you tried to say, "he's stuck-"

"Unhand him or I swear, I am calling the police! There are LAWS!"

"I'm not abusing him, lady!" 

"Liar! I can see scratches and cracks all over him! People like you make me SICK! How dare you do that to a completely defenseless monster?!"

"THAT WASN'T M-" you started to protest, but at this point the woman apparently decided that calling the police would take too long and it was time to take justice into her own hands. In an abominably misguided attempt to save the skeleton from his abuser, she kicked your leg, smacking into your left shin and knocking your foot out from under you. As someone who struggled to balance on one foot while standing perfectly still and not carrying a skeleton monster, you had no hope of remaining standing. You felt yourself falling forward and were flooded with that terrible, icy sensation of knowing you are about to have a violent encounter with the ground. In an act of heroism and selflessness worthy of legend, you threw all the movement you could into making sure the side of you not holding the skeleton would hit the pavement first. You tightened your grip on him with one arm and reached out with the other to brace for impact.

Apparently your upper arm strength was even worse than you thought (though to your credit, you had been carrying something heavy for twenty minutes) because the last thing you remembered was a very close look at an interesting crack in the sidewalk, and then blackness. 

________________

Sans was pretty sure the screaming lady ran away immediately after knocking out the human carrying him, but he had landed facing the opposite direction and couldn't turn his head to see. 

A minute ago, as he was being paraded down the street, completely paralyzed and hanging off the shoulder of yet another new owner while other humans laughed and took pictures, Sans was certain his life couldn't possibly get any worse. The universe had apparently taken this sentiment as a challenge, because now he was lying on the ground, halfway on top of an unconscious human and with a toe bone that really fuckin' hurt from where it had scuffed against the concrete.

Pedestrian traffic, which had been inconveniently heavy for the entire journey, had now almost completely dried up. The nearest human headed their way was walking several large dogs, and Sans prayed to the stars that the human under him would wake up before they both got peed on. Equally bad, the human with the dogs might assume Sans was somehow responsible for the incapacitation of his owner. Stars, he hoped you weren't dead. Ordinarily, he'd be thrilled to see any human get dusted, but right now he needed you alive. The fact that Sans very clearly couldn't move would do no good in court, where monster slaves rarely received even the meager rights to fair trial supposedly bestowed to them by law. 

Sans concentrated, trying to feel the presence of the human's soul. Ordinarily, he would be able to see it as clearly as a star in the night sky, but the fucking control collar was set to suppress almost all of his magic. To his relief, he found the human’s soul after a few moments of searching. They were still alive, but hurt; probably concussed, if he remembered anything about biological brains correctly. Fortunately for this owner, Sans' previous one had kept a small channel of his magic unlocked specifically for healing, which he forced the monster to use on his disgusting bunions. Sans was less than proficient in healing magic, especially when being chronically underfed and healing from his own injuries, but the stupid man never gave him a chance to explain that; not that it would have mattered.  At least the involuntary use of what little healing ability he had meant that he was now more practiced than ever before.

Trying to ignore the pain in his foot and disconcerting awkwardness of his frozen position, Sans focused on his own soul and generated a strand of green healing magic, which he stretched in the direction of the human's head. It took a few tries before he made the connection, but eventually he was able to find the area of brain matter that had sustained the most injury. 

Boss could do this so much better, he thought as he worked. The subsequent pang of sadness broke his concentration and Sans mentally cursed as he searched again for the connection. Don't think about him now. Focus. This idiot clearly has no experience owning a monster slave. You finally have a shot at escape and finding Pap, but first you need this dumb human to unfreeze the fucking collar. 

After a minute of effort, the human under Sans finally started to stir. They groaned and slowly raised a hand to their head. He didn't have a great view but Sans thought he saw it come away with a significant amount of blood on it. 

"Ow..." the human groaned, slowly pushing themselves off the ground. At this point they must have noticed the weight of the skeleton monster laying halfway on top of them, because they turned their head around to look at Sans. Upon seeing him, their eyes lost their lethargic, confused glaze and took on an expression of panic.

"Oh my god! Are you okay??" they said, carefully lifting Sans' rigid body as they worked their way into a sitting position.

Sans answered "yes," with his eyes, relieved that the collar did not seem to recognize this as a lie, despite the fact that one of his toes was almost certainly broken. He wished he could yell at the human to stop getting their gross-ass blood on him. 

"Oh thank Christ. What the actual FUCK was that lady's problem?!" The human pinched their nose, which apparently was the source of the bleeding. Their voice came out sounding weirdly stuffy in a way Sans found very annoying. "I'm trying to HELP you! Seriously! Slavery is unbelievably fucked up. I'm gonna help you I promise. We can-" 

The human suddenly cut themselves off, clapping a hand over their wet, fleshy mouth. They looked up and down the street, as though checking if anyone had been listening. At this point, the guy walking his dogs had reached them, but even if he had been paying attention, there was no way he could have heard anything over the music thumping loudly in his headphones. As it was, he didn't so much as spare a glance for the bleeding human and frozen monster lying on the sidewalk. Typical fucking human.

"Hang on, I'll make room in the car," said the human. They carefully laid Sans on the ground before struggling to their feet and gathering up the scattered mess of registration papers. A minute later, they had the back door of the car open and returned to pick him up. 

Either the human was not completely healed from the concussion or just naturally very clumsy, because as they pushed Sans into the car feet first, the beleaguered skeleton could only watch in helpless terror as the edge of the doorframe rapidly approached his face.

*thump*

"FUCK! OH MY GOD! I AM SO SORRY!" 

Sans silently vowed that before he escaped, he would make time to kill this human. 

Chapter Text

Fitting the skeleton into the backseat of your economy hatchback was harder than you had anticipated. It wasn't that the monster was large, he was actually a bit smaller than you, but the way he was frozen in place made it awkward. Apparently the collar had taken the command to "hold still" extremely literally; the monster couldn't even bend his arms and legs. The back seat of your car wasn't quite wide enough for his rigid form to fit lengthwise, and it wasn't as if you could just prop him up sideways; that seemed like it would be super uncomfortable. 

Eventually you managed to fold down the back seats and push enough trash out of the way to make a flat surface big enough for the skeleton to sit in the same pose he had been in when the old guy yelled the command. You couldn't exactly buckle him in so you'd just have to be extra careful while driving. You were so careful, in fact, that you paid much more attention to the road than to what you were saying, treating your literal captive audience to an unfiltered stream of verbalized thoughts.

"Okay, right now we're going to the government-monster-department-office-thing or whatever to get you unlocked. Uh- I mean the collar. Can't unlock you , that'd be silly. ...heheheh, after all, that would take skeleton key, wouldn't it? 'Ba-dum tshh!' ...Sorry, was that joke offensive? It was, wasn't it. Sorry.

"In all seriousness, I want to make it clear that I do not believe in monster enslavement. I mean, I believe it exists, you know, obviously, haha.  But what I'm trying to say is I don't believe believe it, you know? I'm not a slave owner and I didn't even want to be a slave owner, but when we go into the building I'm gonna have to act like I'm totally stoked to be your new owner, because then they'll give me control of the collar and I can let you move around and stuff. I promise I'm not gonna make you do anything, okay? Just play along until we can get out of there and then we'll go somewhere and talk about what we're gonna do long-term cause I wanna help any way I can. I mean… it's the least I can do to make-up for everything my species has done to yours, right? 

"Urghhhh. God, this whole slavery thing is so fucked up. I still can't freaking believe it. There are dystopian novels about this kinda thing! I know humans suck and everything, but we regressed, like, two whole centuries backwards. People just don't understand that history repeats itself every fucking time. They're like 'Oh, this time it's different,' but it's really not; it's not different just because this time it's happening to you and you can justify it because you're intimately aware of the issues instead of looking back in a history textbook of a bunch of people you can't even remember the names of. Everybody thinks they're special and what happened to other people won't happen to them- but that's the people in history thought, too, and it's what people are gonna think when they look back on what's happening now. Tchh.

"Hey, maybe this'll make you feel better; I don't know how much you know about human history, but humans have been enslaving each other for pretty much all of the time we've been alive. It's not something personal against monsters; we're terrible to other humans, too. Yeah, there've been some nice, matriarchal civilizations that didn't have slaves and everyone got along and they all… ate nuts and fruits, or whatever, but they were pretty much wiped out every time by these violent, patriarchal societies that would just come in and be like 'Let's make this place more terrible and get rid of all the happy peacefulness.' God...Fuck the Patriarchy, man! I don't know how it was with you guys in the Underground, but up here women weren't even allowed to vote in America until like...1918 or something?** Wow, I should really know that. That's the public school system for you; all I remember is that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and I'll take that knowledge to my grave."
_____________

If a genie had appeared and given Sans a wish to kill one human he wanted, wherever they were, he would have chosen this one. Nevermind that this particular human was currently piloting the car he was in; he'd risk dying in a crash ten times over just to make this human shut the FUCK up. They could at least have turned the radio on; even the shittiest music in the world would have been better than this one-sided barrage of military-grade drivel. It was bad enough being frozen in place, sliding around in a small sea of empty soda cans and cellophane wrappers; it was infinitely worse being forced to listen to the human yap about how it was apparently okay for humans to enslave monsters because they enslaved other humans, too, so at least the injustice was fair. Wow, that was a hell of an oxymoron, wasn't it? Fair injustice. Poetic, yet supremely idiotic.

It didn't matter what the human said about how they "just wanted to help" and "won't ever use the collar, I promise"; he'd heard it enough times to never believe it again. That had been one of the dumbest mistakes in his life, and one he didn't plan on repeating.  What was that human expression? "Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice and now I've been double-fooled," or something like that. He'd never felt like the phrase was worth devoting to memory.

Over the past eight years, Sans had come to realize that the only thing about a human that really mattered to a monster was whether they were smart or stupid. This human was definitely the latter. Their unchecked rant about the plight of monsterkind only further exemplified how seriously out of their depth they were. This human was a scared little kid floating in the deep end of a swimming pool, and they were the best shot he’d had at escape in years. He just had to wait for the right moment.

Sans' machinations were interrupted by the shrill squeak of rubber on metal as the car suddenly braked. The vehicle screeched to a dead stop; subsequently creating a force of inertia that sent the monster careening into the back of the seats in front of him. The worst part was that he landed directly on his broken toe again. If Sans could talk, he would have had some choice words for the driver. As it was, all he could do was redouble his efforts to think of a way to escape that involved collateral damage in the form of a specific annoying human. No, "annoying" wasn't nearly a strong enough adjective for what he'd been through today. Exasperated? Aggravated? "Pissed off?"
Through the remissing daze of blunt force trauma, he heard the voice he now detested most in the entire world shout, "My bad! I thought that street was one-way. They really should put up better signs, but whatever, are you okay? Oh, right, you can't answer me. Uh… well, were almost there, so you should be able to move again soon. Just hang tight, okay?"

___________

"You want some help with that?" a man asked as you carried the skeleton into the government building. The offer was tempting, but the man gave off a bad vibe, like he was gonna take the monster and run. You'd heard of that kind of thing happening; you specifically remembered it because you had been ticked off by the news referring to what was really kidnapping as "theft." 

"Uh… No, thank you. I got it."

The man looked a little disappointed, which only furthered your suspicions. "You sure?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's fine; just gotta make it up to the third floor, right? That's what it says on the directory."

"You sure? That's pretty far."

"Well… there’s an elevator, right?" 

The man pointed to the left. "Yeah, but it's all the way on that side of the building."

Ah, crap. "Well, thanks for the directions," you said cheerfully, and headed off towards where the man had pointed before he could say anything else. To be honest, you weren't sure you'd make it to the office. The skeleton wasn't super heavy, but you'd already carried him all the way back to your car and then you had to park on the far end of the building's parking lot. Your arms were getting dangerously tired. Not only that, but the spot where the old man had bitten you was really starting to hurt now that the adrenaline of your legendary fight had worn off. Looking closely at the wound for the first time, you realized it was more serious than you had originally thought. The old man had apparently unhinged his jaw like a snake because there were spots where the skin was broken on the top and underside of your forearm. You should probably get a tetanus booster. Christ , you hoped this wasn't how the zombie apocalypse got started.

You soon noticed that you and your unwilling piggyback-buddy were getting more than a few stares from human and monsterkind alike as you semi-successfully navigated the bureaucratic labyrinth. A few of them snickered, and you saw one monster bump the monster next to her with her elbow and point.

"Do they know you?" You whispered to the skeleton, briefly forgetting that the entire reason you were here was because your monster friend couldn't speak or move. That didn't stop you from digging the hole a little deeper, though. "Wait, is that racist to be like 'all monsters know each other?' Shit, sorry." 

As you got further into the building, however, your thoughtless comment turned out to be correct. A dog-shaped monster laughed loudly and literally barked, "Hey Sans! How's it hanging? HAHA!" 

Was that the skeleton's name? He wasn't saying anything, of course, but he started to feel warm in your arms. You saw in a passing mirror that his cheeks had a rosy flush and his body temperature was definitely rising. You weren't sure whether that meant he was embarrassed or angry, probably both. Even without being able to talk, you got the distinct impression that he wanted to kill everyone in here and then you; possibly not in that order.

You continued to receive derisive attention all the way until you reached the Department of Monster-whatever. To your infinite relief, there was no line. You walked right up to the front desk where a rather large woman was trying unsuccessfully to staple a thick stack of paper. When she saw you standing behind the counter, she paused in her endeavor long enough to say, "Chucky over there will help you," then resumed battling the office supplies.

Before you could ask where exactly "Chucky" was, a very tall, excited young man ran over to you.

"O-M-G! That's a skeleton monster, right? They're SUPER rare," he said, as if the monster on your shoulder was a high-value trading card. He waved for you to follow him. "C'mon, we can get you registered or whatever over here." 

You followed the chipper youth into a room filled with green curtained stalls, each containing a couple of regular chairs, a rolling stool, and a desk with a computer and some other equipment you didn't recognize. It distinctly reminded you of a phlebotomy lab. Chucky gestured for you to have a seat.

"Uh…" you said, unsure of what to do with the monster you were carrying.

Chucky seemed to recognize your hesitation. "Oh, you can put your monster down, it's fine."

It was the first time you'd heard someone call the skeleton "your monster." It sent a sickening chill down your spine and you gave an involuntary shudder. 

"No," you said resolutely, "I'm not putting him on the ground." 

The youth looked down and considered the laminated tile floor for a moment. "Yeah, I don't blame you. Who KNOWS what kind of crap has been spilled in here." He snapped his fingers as an idea came to him. "Hold on, I'll be right back." He ran to the front of the room, almost colliding with a woman leading a large bear monster on a chain.

"Watch it!" She snapped. 

"Sorry, ma'am!" Chucky said. "What can I do for you?"

The woman pointed at the bear monster. "I think the collar is malfunctioning. He's not listening to what I say and it keeps getting worse."

"Okay, well, I'll be with you in just a few minutes," Chucky said, and waved towards one of the stalls. "Please have a seat." 

He ran out of the room, then reappeared less than twenty seconds later, pushing a squeaky-wheeled gurney. 

"There," he said, stopping next to you. "You can put him on this."

The gurney looked like it had been bought at the liquidation sale of a particularly thrifty hospital that had been put out of business by a series of lawsuits following the lethal failure of cheap equipment; that is to say, the gurney looked rickety. But the linen sheet covering it seemed clean enough so you gently lowered the frozen monster onto it, making sure to put him right-side-up.

Chucky plopped down on the rolling stool by the desk and logged into the computer. "You got paperwork?"

You reached into your back pocket and took out the tightly rolled stack of papers the bitey, hopefully-not-zombie old man had thrown at you. You handed them to Chucky. He smoothed them out as best he could, then flipped through a few pages before finding the one he needed.

"Here we go, 'Monster ID Form.'" He typed in a long string of numbers and letters, having to repeatedly look back and forth between the paper and the computer. "The new collars have QR codes," he remarked off-handedly, "but that one looks like an old model, maybe even first-gen." 

You looked at the skeleton monster, noting that the lights in his eyes had gone out. "Hey," you said gently, resisting the urge to put you hand on his shoulder, "You doing okay?" 

His eyes stayed dark, so you figured he was probably not going to respond. Not that you blamed him; this whole thing must suck so bad. But a few seconds later, the red dots in his eye sockets reappeared. He stared at you with keen intensity, then looked up. 

"Pfff," you scoffed good-naturedly, "Yeah, you know what? I don't believe you. But don't worry, we should have you unfrozen soo-"

"Holy CRAP!" Chucky shouted. "Do you know who this monster is??"

You frowned. "What? No, I just got him. Why, what's wrong?"

Chucky pointed to the computer screen. "That's 'Sans'. Apparently he was one of the most dangerous monsters in the war! He killed a LOT of humans."

You felt the blood in your veins turn to ice. "What, really??" You knew he'd probably fought in the war but... "But he's so small!" 

You could almost physically feel the heat of eyes burning into the back of your head, and turned to see the skeleton giving you a murderous glare. Oops.

"Says here he's got a bunch of magical abilities like bigass- sorry, large laser beams and using blue magic to grab people's souls," Chucky said enthusiastically, as though he were reading the stats of a powerful Yu-Gi-Oh monster. "Duuuuude, he's like, mega -dangerous. Says here he's suspected in the death of one owner and they think he's been used by big crime bosses or whatever to kill more people. Where did you even get him??"

"Uh…" What on Earth had you gotten yourself into? "Some old dude bit me and gave him to me so I wouldn't sue him."

Chucky guffawed and swiveled on the stool to face you. "Bro that's fu- freaking hilarious!" Suddenly, his expression became more subdued. "But seriously, that monster is not a fluffy little pet. You should sell him to the police or military; they're always buying powerful monsters and you'll get a lot of money."

You didn't know what to say.

"Uh…"

________________

And there it was, Sans thought. Another do-gooder human that was all for monster rights until they were reminded of the war; you know, that crucial little detail of how less than ten years ago, he and the other monsters had popped up on the surface world and started slaughtering humans. Sans had been through this a few times before; a human would try to "save him" by buying him from someone worse (or in this case, accepting him as a weird bribe), but then they learned what he'd done and couldn't get rid of him fast enough.

He would never admit how much that hurt. He didn't know why it did, but it hurt every time, and he was sold to the next buyer hating humans even more. It was infuriating. The damn sentiment was blatantly hypocritical; after all, he had killed humans in the war and still tried to whenever possible. Humans should be scared of him, and boy did this human look scared. Good. That was good. He hated them. He wanted them to die.

After the anti-slavery speech in the car, he was pretty sure that this human didn't have any direct connections to people who bought monsters, so it was probably going to be back to the public auction house with ol' Sansy. He wondered if they'd keep him frozen until then. It was the smart thing to do. They'd want to sell him as soon as they cou-

"Thanks, but no. He's not for sale." 

Sans blinked in surprise at the human. ...Was this really happening? 

"You sure?" the tall human asked. "Cause I wouldn't, if I were you."

Shut up, kid, shut up! Sans shouted in his head. If Dummy over here actually wanted to keep him, they'd have to reset the collar to recognize a new owner; which is exactly what he'd been hoping for. When the control collars were first deployed, they had a small problem where immediately after an owner transfer, they briefly lost power. This gave the monster a few precious seconds of free will. Later models had fixed this problem but to his infinite shame and regret, Sans had been one of the first monsters captured, and his collar had never been replaced. In previous transfers, his owners had known about the flaw and took precautions in the form of chaining him down to a chair and pointing a gun in his face while they smeared their gross blood on the collar sensor. This bean-pole kid who treated monsters with the go-get'em attitude of a Pokemon trainer didn't look like he'd been trained on how to deal with first gen collars.

"Yes. I'm sure," the human said firmly. "What do I need to do to get control of his collar?"

The kid shrugged. "Alrighty then, it's your funeral," he mumbled. He handed the other human a pen and pointed to various parts of the paperwork. "Sign here and here and put your information here."

He picked up a box on the desk and shook out one of those one-use pointy needle thingies. "To assign a new owner, you have to put a drop of your blood in that little hole in the collar."

The other human looked horrified. "Wait, really?"

"It's just how the magic works, don’t ask me." The kid held out the needle. "You wanna stick your finger or should I?"

The human looked extremely nervous. "Uh… You better do it."

"Okay," the kid said. He reached into another box and pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves. "You gonna be one of those people who faint at the sight of blood?"

Sans always loved it when humans did that, but right now he was relieved to hear them say, "No, no, I'm fine with needles and blood, I just don't know if I can do it to myself."

"Okay, give me your han- oh, wait, I almost forgot!" The kid sprung to his feet and picked up what looked like a barcode scanner from the desk. "Gotta use this on the collar to unlock owner transfer first; otherwise people could just transfer monsters whenever they wanted." 

Sans stared maliciously at the boy as he held the device up to his collar, which gave a long beep signaling it was ready to accept a blood sample. For some reason, the other human had also gotten out of the chair and stood next to the gurney. The kid picked up the needle from where he'd left it on the desk and gestured for Sans' new owner to give him their hand. Sans struggled not to grin. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. The skeleton readied himself as much as he could without actually moving his body. Freedom here we come!

The needle was only a centimeter away when, in perfect dramatic timing, there was a thunderous roar followed by loud crashing sounds and a woman screaming. Sans was faced towards the wall and couldn't see what was going on, but judging from the reactions of the two humans in front of him and the familiar voice of Freddy the bear, he could pretty well guess. 

Bean-pole immediately put his long legs to use and sprinted away. To Sans' enormous surprise, the other human didn't. Instead, they frantically grabbed a needle from the box on the desk and jabbed it into their finger, then found the sensor on his collar and smeared blood on it. The collar gave a long beep signaling that it had accepted the sample and another short beep to confirm that it had started processing it.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," the human muttered. "How long will it take until you can move ag-" The human stopped mid-word as they looked up in fear at something right behind Sans. 

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Sans the skeleton ," rolled the deep voice of Freddy the bear. "What's the matter, buddy? You stuck? No bones or blue magic?" The bear laughed maliciously. "Heheheh. Well, I guess this is my lucky day. I almost feel bad cause no one else is here to see it. There are a looooot of monsters who'd love to see you dust." He cracked his knuckles. "Say goodnight, Sansy."

Damn this first gen collar. Yeah, it was the only one with the shutting-off problem, but at least the new ones processed blood faster. He had been so close to freedom and now he was going to die at the paws of Freddy the bear. Freddy the fucking bear. Sans' figured his final thought should probably be something meaningful, so as he heard the *whoosh* of enormous claws, he pictured himself and his little brother together; not as they had been in later years, but how they used to be, before things got bad. 

But the claws never hit him. Instead, he heard the human scream and felt their body slam into the back of the gurney, as, for the second time that day, they took a blow meant for him.

Freddy growled. "Outta my way, twerp!"

The human shouted between pained gasps, "You… You leave him the fuck alone!"

"The hell do you want to protect Sans for, dumbshit??" Freddy asked. Apparently he wasn't interested in the reply because a moment later there was another *whoosh* and a heavy thud as the human went sailing across the room. Sans could just barely see where they landed out of the corner of his eye socket. They weren't screaming anymore, which was probably a bad sign. 

Before Freddy could swipe at him again, the sound of more humans coming into the room got the bear’s attention. Sans heard him run in that direction, roaring. The collar gave a short beep, meaning that it had reached the halfway point of processing the transfer of ownership. It wasn't done yet, but the previous owner's commands had been erased and default commands were restored, which gave him permission to move again. With immense relief, Sans felt his body return to his control. He turned around to look at the scene.

The room was in shambles. Several curtains had been knocked down and paperwork was scattered everywhere. The lady who had come in with the bear monster lay headless on the floor. The tall kid was nowhere to be seen. At the room's entrance, Freddy was battling four security guards and seemed to be winning.

It was pure chaos.
Perfect. 

The collar gave a long, loud beep as it finished processing the transfer of ownership, then the light went out. It was off. Without wasting a beat, Sans grabbed the collar and ripped it off, sighing with relief as he felt air hit his neck bones for the first time in years. This was it. He was free. The skeleton's magic was low after months of being suppressed, but after a few frustrating seconds he managed to gather enough to teleport a short distance. He figured he'd aim for the roof of the building and stay there until his magic had recovered enough to teleport further away, which should only take a couple of minutes. 

Laughing maniacally, Sans hopped off the gurney onto the floor. He had to be standing when he teleported; he'd landed tailbone-first after trying it while sitting and didn't feel like experiencing that pain again. He was just about to make the jump when a gasping sound got his attention. A few feet away, the human - his human- was lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. They coughed as they struggled to take in air; a condition which probably had something to do with the massive claw wounds across their chest and neck. 

….Whatever. Time to go. It's not like it mattered to Sans if this human died; he had spent the last hour-and-a-half hoping for this exact thing. Besides, maybe they wouldn't die. Maybe another human would come in and save them.

Sans looked back at the door, where five more security guards were struggling to subdue Freddy. The bear had already KO'd three of them and didn't show any signs of stopping.

…Okay, so maybe another human wasn't going to get here in time. But that's fine, he just needed to forget about this dumb, compassionate human and leave while he still could. It was their own damn fault if they died because they made the idiotic decision to protect a killer like him. It wasn't like he'd asked them to save his life ...twice. 

Ah, shit, now they were looking at him. 

"Please…" the human gasped between gurgling breaths. Then they lay limp on the floor, not moving.

Fuck. FUCK. FUUUUUCK.

Sans gave a loud, frustrated growl. "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?" 

With no small amount of regret, Sans released the magic he'd gathered to teleport and focused on healing magic instead. He knelt in the disgusting puddle of blood next to the human and put his hands over the wounds on their neck and chest. A bright green glow emanated from beneath his palms as tissues slowly began to knit back together. It took him a whole minute to stop the bleeding; several large blood vessels had been hit, and one was torn almost completely in half. As soon as he was reasonably certain the human would live, he got back to his feet and started gathering magic for a teleport. Okay, time to get out of h-

*BZZZZT!*

A deafening electric buzz shot through the skeleton's nonexistent ears as an overpowering force usurped control over his body and magic. He seized up and fell face-first onto the floor. His skull bounced sharply off the laminate tile as he landed, once again slamming his god damned broken toe into the ground. As he lay there, groaning, he saw one of the guards holding a mass-control beacon. It was a device made to take down an entire group of monsters at once. Sans was intimately familiar with the machines; after all, he had been one of the monsters they used to design it.

For the second time that day, Sans found himself on the ground, completely unable to move. At least this time he could still talk, an ability he immediately put to use by screaming, "FUCKIN, AGAIN?! REALLY?!?? " 

Chapter Text

With a final, deep scratch, Sans finished the drawing he had been carving into the clear plexiglass wall that made up the front side of his small holding cell at the monster detention center. The container was made of pathetically flimsy material, but the collar made escape impossible; he had been commanded to stay in the cell without any attempts to escape and, after a few disturbing remarks to passing humans, been forbidden from making noise. Technically, he had also been told not to damage the cell in any way, but was adding some art to the drab walls really "damaging" them? No it wasn't; he successfully convinced himself and thereby the collar that what he was doing was making the cell better . Loopholes were handy like that. Intention was everything in magic and he exploited it whenever possible.

Sans smirked as he proudly admired the various words and images he'd carved into the plastic and plexiglass with his claws. This facility might have him and several other monsters lined up like animals at a petshop, but he was a little more vindictive than the average goldfish; even if the most he could accomplish right now was petty vandalism.

The sound of approaching footsteps interrupted Sans' musings on what to draw next. He watched through the clear plexiglass wall as a detention center employee led another human down the row of confiscated and ownerless monsters. They stopped in front of his cell and the human pointed at him. It was difficult to see through all the improvements he'd made to the clear plexiglass, but after a moment Sans recognized the human that had made the last thirty-two hours of his life even more miserable than usual. Them and their stupid, infectious martyr-complex. He honestly hadn't expected to see them again. They had been pretty damn adamant about not wanting a monster slave, and yet here they were collecting him like a lost dog at the pound. 

The center employee cursed as she noticed the masterful additions Sans had made to the walls of his cell. His mouth curled into a terrifying sharp-toothed grin, a single golden tooth glinting under the fluorescent lights. It gave the monster no small amount of pleasure to know that the employee would be in hot water for letting the damage happen on her watch. She had been pretty lax about doing her rounds, which were supposed to be done every fifteen minutes but had happened only half as frequently, and always with her observation impeded by the distraction of an ever-present smartphone. He'd never been able to do this much art before someone noticed. 

Sans' satisfaction doubled at seeing the horrified look on the other human's face as they took in the gruesome image he had drawn on the front wall. He was particularly proud of that one. It really captured how a human being impaled on a bed of giant, pointy bones looked in real life. It had blood spatters and all kinds of other details; if you looked carefully you could even see that the human had shit their pants as they so often did after dying. Sans had found that phenomen endlessly amusing. It had seriously grossed out P- Boss, which only made it that much funnier. 

The bittersweet memory immediately soured Sans' mood and he silently growled, staring down the center employee as she angrily punched in the code to open the cell door. It beeped and she flung it open.

"OUT. NOW." 

Out of habit, Sans fought to resist the command as his body moved against his will. His new collar flashed red and gave a pleasant chime. "Resistance detected " said a sing-song female voice, sounding exactly like the robot that answers when you call a company and reach the automated menu. But instead of saying something like "For help activating a new card, press two,"  the collar cheerily said "Applying mild corrective shock " and zapped him right in the fucking neck. If he hadn't been ordered not to make noise, Sans would have had some choice words for the people behind the new collar's design. Mild, my ass !

The collar obediently piloted his body to stand in front of the two humans. His looked as out-of-their-depth as ever, while the center employee looked absolutely murderous. That cheered the monster up a little. He gave her a smug grin and winked. The woman nearly screamed in rage and swung her slow, fleshy hand at his face. Sans easily dodged, leaning out of the way without moving his feet. The woman's unanswered swing nearly unbalanced her and she had to stumble to catch herself. Sans cackled with laughter, or he would have if the collar wasn't keeping him from making noise. As it was, he just looked like an especially vicious mime.

"Sonnuva-" the employee cursed. She grabbed a flashlight from her belt and raised it to strike him. 

"Stop!" the other human shouted, jumping between the two of them. To Sans' disappointment, the employee managed to abort her swing just in time to narrowly avoid smashing her flashlight directly into the other human's neck. The latter stumbled clumsily as they fought to counteract the inertia of the drastic movement and remain upright, which they somehow accomplished despite initially looking entirely floor-bound. As soon as they regained their balance, they wheeled on the employee. 

"What the HELL is wrong with you??  You can't do that!"

The employee backed up a little, looking stricken. "I get it, I get it; Sorry for hitting your monster."

"He's not m- whatever, just tell him he can move."

The employee raised an eyebrow. "He's your monster, ain't he?"

"....Right. Uh…Yeah." The human turned to Sans, who waited eagerly for the idiot to release him. They almost certainly didn't know the right things to say to ensure he didn't immediately run off, or at least cause a little mayhem before being caught again. This could be his second chance.

 "You can m-" the human started to say, but was interrupted by the employee. 

"What are you, crazy?! You can't just release him like that," the woman shouted. 

Sans imagined what it would feel like to break her neck. It would probably be very satisfying. Just… CRUNCH .  

The other human looked puzzled. "What? Why?"

The employee shook her head. "Why do I always gotta deal with the newbies?" she muttered under her breath. "You've never had a monster before, huh? Well, you're gonna need to learn a few basic rules if you don't want it to run away or cause mayhem. There's some info sheets at the desk."

The employee walked back towards the entrance. The other human waved for Sans to follow them and started to walk away. When Sans remained where he was, they looked back, confused. He rolled his eyelights.

"You've got to say it out loud," the shelter employee said without looking back.

"Right…" The other human looked at Sans, meeting his eyes for the first time since their unceremonious reunion. Their expression was hard to read, even for a human face. There was fear there, which made sense; he was giving them a downright predatory stare. But after a moment, their eyes softened and a corner of their mouth twitched upwards in a cautious smile. It made Sans want to kick their teeth in. Still… it made him think back to a happier time in the Underground; back when it was safe for kids to be kids. That was the way Pap looked at people when he was little, like he was hoping every new person could be his friend. 

The memory distracted Sans so much that he forgot to glare angrily at the human as they walked closer to him. They briefly glanced back towards the employee, making sure they were out of earshot. 

"I'm sorry," the human said quietly. "We'll talk soon, okay? When we're out of here...my car is outside. I-" they looked like they wanted to say more, but hesitated.

"You coming or what?" the center employee called from her desk.

The human jerked their head around. "Oh! Uh, yeah!" They gave Sans another plaintive look. "Sorry. I guess I have to… yeah… uh…please don't fight it, I don't want you to get zapped. I'll try to turn that off as soon as I can." They looked sheepishly at the ground. "Follow me."

*chime* Command Accepted. 

The human grimaced. They turned and walked towards the desk. Sans briefly considered resisting again just to spite them, but decided it wasn't worth it. This dumb softie would give him plenty of chances to escape later; better not attract attention now.

At the front desk, the center employee gave the human a hefty stack of papers, including a manual for the specific model of control collar on Sans. He glanced at the cover. Servent Ultrobae™ enhanced control with s-assist

Fuck. He wasn't up to date on the newest collars, but Servent was one of the first developers. Their collars had dominated the consumer market for a long time thanks to superior "loophole-catching" technology. And now, besides an annoying-ass speaker, they also included electrical shock. Perfect. It would be almost impossible to escape now. The person controlling the color would have to be an incompetent moron. 

…Actually, escape might still be on the table. 

The human was looking thoughtfully at the manual and info sheets. "Hey… it's possible to lock a collar to only listen to its owner's commands, right?"

Sans raised a brow-bone. Was this really happening?

The employee shook her head. "Well, yeah, but I wouldn't recommend it, especially since you don't have much experience. No one's gonna be able to stop him if you mess up, except the cops."

"Show me how to do it," the other human said firmly, then after a moment added, "please."

Sans could hardly believe it. The idiot was even stupider than he'd thought- and that was saying something!

The employee pointed to something in the manual and the human read it out loud. "Lock to owner command." 

*chime* 'Command Lock' will allow only commands given by collar owner and law enforcement. This setting is not recommended. Proceed?

"Proceed."

*chime* Settings changed.

The employee waved towards the door. "There you go. Now, please leave before he finds a way to kill you. I've already gotta clean up the damn cell."

The human gave Sans a nervous glance. He shrugged.

Chapter Text

You hated this. You hated this whole situation. You knew the monster couldn't possibly have found a nicer "owner" than you, but that didn't change the fact that you legally had a slave. Every time you had to acknowledge that fact, you felt like you might throw up. You wanted to talk to… Sans, you thought his name was. Your memory from the previous day was understandably a little fuzzy. The paperwork only had an ID number, so that was useless. Letting the collar continue to keep him from speaking turned your stomach, but you needed to say some things that would be very bad to let other humans overhear. You'd wait until you were in the car. 

You couldn't bring yourself to look back, but you knew the skeleton was obediently following you from the sounds of bone scraping on cement behind you. Oh, that's right, he didn't have shoes. 

*Scrrrp*clik-clak* *Scrrrp*clik-clak*  

It sounded… really painful. Your car was parked several blocks away and he probably wouldn't let you carry him. You stopped walking, and heard him stop a few feet behind you. He was a little shorter than you, right? So his shoe size was probably smaller than yours. Well, that, and he didn’t have any actual fleshy flesh. You stopped walking and considered the shoes you were wearing. The neon orange stripes and velcro straps meant that these shoes weren’t the most stylish things ever; but sometime during the whole ambulance ride and hospitalization you had lost your shoes, and this was the only pair in the hospital lost-and-found bin that had fit you. You’d taken a cab from the hospital to the monster DMV where your car was still parked, then driven directly to the monster pound where they’d told you your skeleton was being held.

Well, fugly or not, if you had been the one with bare bones scraping on the ground, you’d be happy to wear them. You undid the velcro with a loud *zzZZPP!* and slipped the shoes off. You kept your socks on; you figured he probably didn't want those after you'd been wearing them all day. 

The mature thing to do would be to turn around and offer the shoes to him like a normal person. But you really, really didn't want to face him. You were gonna put that off long as possible. Instead, you left your shoes on the ground and walked a few feet forward, then stopped. You heard the skeleton take a couple more steps, which hopefully put him right on top of the shoes. 

"You can put those on, if you want," you said, still not looking behind you. "Your bones sounds like they hurt. I can give you the socks, too, but you probably don’t want ‘em. They're kinda sweaty." 

There was no reply, of course. You hoped he was putting the shoes on. After a few seconds of silence, you risked a glance at the ground behind you. Oh good, he was putting on the shoes. 

You pointed down the street. "It's still a few blocks to where I parked. The monster pound — oh man, that's a bad name for it, huh. Sorry. The parking lot only had like two frickin spots and all the damn street parking is closed for street cleaning." You tentatively peeked over your shoulder. “Are you ready?” Out of the corner of your eye, you saw him wave his hand impatiently. You took that as a ‘yes’ and started walking again.

It took approximately ten seconds before you couldn’t stand the awkward silence anymore. So you did what you do best: ramble nervously. “I promise I’ll turn off the non-speaking command once we’re in the car; I just- the things we need to talk about could get me, and by extension, you, in big trouble if the wrong people heard it. I know it’s kinda a dick move on my part, sorry. Ugh, parking downtown sucks. I had to drive around for ten minutes trying to find a spot. I’m actually kinda worried we’ll get there and I’ll have a parking ticket. The stupid frickin’ signs are a… miasma? No, that’s not the word I’m looking for. Like… a puzzle, but said more poetically than that. It’s also really hard to see what color the curb is painted sometimes, too. One time, I parked where it was red cause it was so muddy and dusty I couldn’t tell. Do you know how much they give for parking tickets? Like seventy bucks or something! UGH! And they always seem to know, too! You can leave your car for five minutes and come back to find a ticket. I live in fear of the day I get a ticket and it blows off the windshield and I only learn about it when the frickin’ FBI or something breaks down my door and hauls me to jail. I heard about that once — well, saw, more like. John Oliver did a whole show or whatever on debt from tickets and fines and stuff from the city and apparently even though 'debtors' prison' is no longer a thing, apparently the city can lock you up if you owe them money cause I guess they consider it breaking the law. They had this example of this old woman who didn’t pay a fine for a few months, or maybe it was a couple of years; I can’t remember. But yeah, they threw Granny in jail and it’s like, how can you do that to someone? Like, it’s not just unethical and cruel, but if she couldn’t come up with the money before, how the frick is she supposed to do it now?' Anyway, the thing with John Oliver went on to talk about how this law firm or whatever got her out of jail by arguing that it was basically the same thing as a debtors’ prison…”

It took a painfully long time to make it back to the car. Well, it was more like five minutes, but you spent the whole time trying to avoid stepping in puddles and gum and crap while you walked down the sidewalk in socks; not to mention the set of eyes burning into the back of your head the whole time. You finally got to your car and there on the windshield was a bright-red parking ticket.

“God damnit,” you swore. You popped the front passenger-side door open and walked around to the driver-side, angrily snagging the damn ticket before getting in. When you looked over, you saw the skeleton still standing outside the car, completely ignoring you. Frick. You’d specifically not said anything because you thought it would probably count as a command, and figured he’d get what you meant. He probably had, and was just doing this to spite you.

“Hey,” you said. He didn’t react. Hmm… how to phrase this? “Do you think you could get in the car?”

*chime* Command accepted.

FUCK. The skeleton's body moved to get in, jerking slightly as he fought the command.

*chime* Resistance detected. Applying mild corrective shock.

“Nonononono-” you frantically stammered, but apparently it was too late. You heard a loud *zap* noise and saw the skeleton flinch. You hid your stupid, stupid face in your hands.

"Shit. I'm so sorry. I thought if it was rhetorical it wouldn't… Argh!" You gave a small, frustrated scream. "I'm so sorry, man. I have no idea what I'm doing. I know I fuck up a lot but please, you've gotta believe me that I only want to help."

The skeleton cleared his throat. How the hell'd he do that? He didn't even have a throat. You looked up from the nest of your soggy hands to see him impatiently pointing at his still-not-talking mouth. 

"Oh, shit, yeah," you said. "Uh…" You still didn't want him talking where other people could hear it. "Close that door firs—" You realized your mistake two late. "Damn it!"

*chime: Command accepted *

You slapped your clammy palms over your face again, as the skeleton moved robotically to slam the door shut. "Fuuuuuuck. Why can't I remember not to say stuff that's a command?! You'd think it would be easy." 

Sans cleared his throat again, louder. 

You sunk further into yourself. "Oh, yeah," you said, peeking at him through your fingers. "You can talk."

*chime* Command accepted

A deep, rough voice spoke from your right. “The fuck are you doin’ that for?”

Slowly, you peeled your hands off your face and looked over. Two glowing red eyes burned into you, saturated with malice. The skeleton gave you a cruel grin, clearly getting a kick out of your reaction. You gave a quiet, involuntary "eep!"

"What?" he chuckled. "You scared of me, master?"  

"I…" you squeaked out. 

He smiled like he was imagining what it would feel like to break your neck; like the only thing keeping you from being ripped in half in that very moment was a small plastic collar... Actually, that was probably not an exaggeration.

"So, you gonna let me move, too?" he asked in a heavily accented, lazy drawl. "Or was all the 'I'm one of the good humans' shit only applicable when I was a cute little pet to carry around?” He flicked a crumb off the armrest. “Heh. Thanks for that, by the way. It was fun. We should do it again sometime."

This was probably the moment to say something confident and meaningful that bridged the gap between your two peoples with a message of peace and love. Instead, like the ambassador you are, you chose to argue like a toddler. 

"Are you serious?! I had to carry you! You were a frickin plank; what else was I supposed to do??"

The skeleton just scoffed. "Tch."

"I genuinely want to help you, okay?! I've done everything I could! I'm still gonna do everything I can!" You felt the sting of tears threatening to spill over. It was all so much. Yesterday you almost died. Now you were being yelled at for something that wasn't your fault, by someone who hated you more than anyone had ever hated you before.

"Aww… is da poor widdle swave owner gonna cwy?" the skeleton mocked. "Pweeze don't cw-"

"Shut up!" You yelled. 

*chime* Command accepted.

The skeleton went silent mid-word, fangs snapping shut with an audible click. He grinned in cynical amusement. 

Your hand flew to your mouth. "No — I didn't mean — You can talk!"

*chime* Command accepted.

The skeleton yawned and stretched his arms over his head and cracked his neck. "So, you regret picking me up, yet?" he said in his heavy accent. You thought it was Boston… or New York? There were specific ones in areas of New York but you couldn't remember the differences. 

You decided not to answer that. "I… I'm Y/N." You tentatively held out a hand. "You're Sans, right?" 

He shrugged. "Eh, more or less." For a moment it looked like he was raising his hand to meet yours, but then he reached to scratch the back of his neck. He looked out the window, nonchalant. "So, you gonna let me move around now, or what?"

"Oh," you started. "Yeah, you can move around freely."

*chime* Command accepted

Sans chuckled darkly. "Heh, heh, heh. Oh, you fucking moron." 

In an instant, the skeleton was out of the car again and hauling ass down the street.

"W-wait!" you stammered as you frantically unbuckled the seatbelt and jumped out of the car. You screamed after him, "WAIT! STOP!"

Thirty yards away, you watched the skeleton come to a screeching halt. A moment later you faintly heard the collar chime, followed by Sans spasming and dropping to the ground yelling "OW! FUCK!"

"Oh, shit, " you cursed, and started sprinting over to where he had fallen; which, as luck would have it, was in the middle of a moderately active city street. "Aah! I'm sorry! It just slipped out!"

Sans sat up and leveled you with a positively murderous glare.  It actually startled you so much that for a moment, you lost concentration on what your feet were doing and landed on the next step with your foot slightly twisted. Your pathetically weak ankle buckled and you tripped, landing hard on the asphalt. Thankfully, you were able to strategically break the fall with your hands, the palms of which were now all scratched up. Genius.

You frantically scrambled to your feet and closed the remaining distance between you and the angry monster. Your ankle fuckin' hurt , but you didn't have time to feel sorry for yourself right now. You'd do that later. 

The aforementioned skeleton had stood up by the time you made it to him.

"I should've fuckin' clocked you," he seethed. 

"I… I didn't mean it!" You could feel tears starting to well up again, and you hated it. For once, couldn't you deal with something like an emotionally stable adult?! Was that too much to ask, brain?

“Fuck humans," Sans spat, “and fuck you in particular.”

You cringed, unconsciously backing away from him. To be fair, he was really scary. You'd never felt so despised before. Sure, sometimes you said the wrong thing and pissed people off, but it was nothing compared to this. The sheer intensity of the monster's hatred and disgust was overwhelming, your fight-or-flight response focusing on the immediate threat and blocking out everything else;
so it made sense you didn't see the truck coming straight at you. 

Your only warning was a sudden change in Sans' expression as he looked up the street. In an instant, the furious scowl dropped off his face; replaced immediately with panic. 

Too late, you turned your head to see what he was looking at, and beheld a large rent-it-yourself moving truck hurtling straight towards you; the driver apparently completely oblivious to the human and monster standing in the middle of the road. There was no way you could move out of the way in time. You figured that your final thoughts should probably be something meaningful, so you tried to think of as many important memories as possible. Sort of a see-your-life-flashing-before-your-eyes kinda thing. 

You had just started to remember the time your family had brought a picnic to the beach and were immediately set-upon by a hoard of bloodthirsty seagulls, when something grabbed your arm and pulled, hard . Your body was yanked out of the way milliseconds before the truck zoomed past. You only managed not to fall because something was around your chest, holding you up. 

After you took a moment to process the fact that your gruesome demise via vehicular-obliteration was no longer imminent, you realized Sans had pulled you out of the way, catching you before you could fall. 

The skeleton lifted one arm away from you to flip-off the driver. He screamed after the retreating vehicle, "Open your fuckin’ eyes, asshole!" 

"I…" you stammered. Sans shifted his attention from the truck back to you. He started to extricate his arm from where it was still wrapped around your upper-torso but you frantically clung on. The passing wave of adrenaline left you weak and shaky; you could barely stay standing. Tears came in earnest, now, as relief flooded you.

"Kid, I…" Sans said uncomfortably, "You gotta let go of m-"

To his infinite chagrin, you grabbed the skeleton in a bear hug and started sobbing into his shirt. It was clear that it hadn't been washed in a long time and smelled really frickin gross, but you didn't care. 

In the periphery, you heard cars honking. You felt Sans trying to move away and grabbed on tighter, desperate to have something to hold on to. You felt his voice rumble in his chest, "Fuckin' Hell. Look, just tell me I can move so you can have your nervous breakdown somewhere besides the middle of the damn street, alright?"

You nodded weakly and managed to choke out between sobs, "Y-you can m-move."

The collar's response was really loud since the speaker was right next to your ear.

*CHIME* COMMAND ACCEPTED

Wow, you really needed to turn that off. Sans started shuffling towards the sidewalk, pulling you along. As soon as you took a step, though, pain shot up your leg. You cried out and clung to Sans, leaning on him to stop yourself from falling.
“The fuck’s your problem, now?!” he snapped.

"M-my an-ankle," you stammered. "I tw-twisted it."

"Are fucking kidding me?!" Sans growled, illiciting another wave of sobbing from the human clinging to him like a barnacle. More car horns honked. "Rrrrrghhhh… Fine!" he grumbled, "It's not like I had any fuckin' dignity left to lose, anyway." 

You felt his arms tighten around your hips as he lifted you off the ground. Wow, he was way stronger than he looked. He didn't sling you over his shoulder, but it was enough of a parallel to make you giggle a little through the tears.

"You keep laughing, and I’m leaving your sorry ass in the street," Sans snapped. That shut you up. 

Sans carried you all the way back to your car. The driver's side door was still open from when you'd jumped out of it. Sans unceremoniously dropped you into the seat. He slammed the door shut and walked around the car. You were sure he was going to run away again, but a few moments later he opened the passenger side door and got in. He folded his arms and propped his ugly-sneaker-clad feet up on the dashboard. He made a low, grossed-out noise as he looked at the wet splotch on the front of his shirt. You offered him a box of tissues as you struggled to blot your eyes and runny nose. He took one and gingerly wiped at the fabric, dropping the dirty tissue as far away from himself as he could.

"Th-thanks," you managed to sniffle after you'd calmed down a little.

Sans stared out the window, scowling. "Whatever. So, what now? You done being a wussy little crybaby?" 

"N-no," you said, voice wavering. "No, I'm pretty much always like this." 

"Honestly, that sounds fuckin' exhausting." The skeleton started rummaging through the various empty chip bags and cellophane wrappers lying around. Man, you really need to clean your car. "You got any actual food? I'm fuckin' starved." 

"W-we could get drive-thru, if you want?" you offered.

The skeleton actually brightened up at that. "Hell yes, I do. D'you know how long it's been since I've had some decent fries?"

You tried to do the math in your head. "Well, if it was before the end of the war, that'd be about seven years ago. Or it could have been in the Underground before you came up, but I don't know if you guys had french fries down there. Unless you mean you got some sometime during the whole… slavery thing-"

"Jesus Christ , it was a rhetorical question," Sans interrupted. "Just shut up and drive us to food, stupid."

Chapter Text

The trip to Fat Marge's Sliders was largely uneventful, though you were a little surprised by Sans' order of, "Six large fries, and drown 'em in mustard." 

You asked him about it while you both waited in line. "Just fries? I would've thought you'd want 'tough-guy food.'"

He gave you a weird look. "The Hell's that s'posed to mean?"

"Oh, you know, there's this whole marketing thing reinforcing the belief that eating meat is masculine. They've got a bunch of commercials with beefy guys eating… beef? I don't think those words are related but it sounds like it could be, you know? Anyway, they always show these videos of plumped-up burgers that violently slam into frame cause violence is also manly; and they've always got an aggressive name like 'PENTUPLE-BACON MAX CHEESE-RIPPER' or 'DOUBLE-SLAM BARBEQUE BACON FRIED CHICKEN BURRITO.' It's always bacon. There's this obsession with bacon online, too, where people are like 'hahaha BACON' and it's apparently really funny cause it tastes good. It makes me sick. Pigs are just as smart, if not smarter than dogs and we still keep 'em in these hellish little cages basically torturing them their whole lives and nobody cares cause 'hahaha bacon' and 'REAL men eat meat', you know what I'm saying?"

Sans was staring absently out the window. When he noticed that you were waiting for a response he said, "Oh, sorry, did you say something? I wasn't listening."

You sighed. "Yeah, yeah. I know I ramble a lot. So, do you, like, not eat meat cause you feel bad for the animals or what?"

"Fuck , no," he snorted. "I don't give a shit what you humans do to other fleshy organisms on the surface. Almost no monsters eat meat, or any other gross shit that comes outta animals."

He scrunched up his face, which looked really weird considering it was made out of bone. "Seriously, what's your fuckin' obsession with milk? It's like drinkin' piss. And eggs 'r just lil' round chicken turds. You humans'll eat dead animals and anything that comes outta an animal when they're still alive if you squeeze 'em hard enough."

You laughed really hard at that; his grossed-out expression was just too funny. "Oh, c'mon," you said once you'd calmed down, "are you telling me that you guys had never had any meat underground?"

"Nah, didn't have any animals except for some rats and mice. Don't know if it was always that way or if we just ran out a long time ago. What we did have was a fuckton of plants, and with magic you can turn that shit into any kind of food you want. So yeah, we had hamburgers; just not the ones made out of yer gross animal bits."

"That sounds awesome, I wish I could try some! They'd make bank selling magical vegan food on the surface that tastes just like meat."

Sans snorted again. How the hell was he even doing that? "Yeah, good luck ever clearing that one with the FDA. You guys can't even get past GMOs; you think they're ever gonna be alright with monster magic in the food?"

"Duuuuude, don't even get me started; I could go on a rant about that for hours. "

Sans gave you a flat look. "Do it, and I'm takin' one of your eyes, kid."

Despite yourself, you grinned. "WOW, that's a really creepily-specific threat. Yeah, yeah, I won't."

After an unbearable ten seconds of silence, you were about to risk life and limb eye by going back on that statement and start ranting just to fill the awkward empty space in the conversation. Thankfully, you were interrupted by Sans saying, "You know, I've actually eaten meat on the surface."

"Really?" you said, surprised. "But I thought you said it grossed you the hell out?"

 Sans you a cynical look. "Oh, it fuckin' does, which is why they thought it was hilariously entertaining to make me do it."

You grimaced. "Jesus, that sucks. I'm so sorry you went through that."

"The fuck are you sorry for? It's not like you were doin' it."

"No, that's not what I meant," you explained. "People get confused about that all the time. When I'm saying 'sorry,' I'm not apologizing; I'm saying I feel bad on your behalf. The word 'sorry' by definition just means being in the condition where you're run down and weak and feeble or whatever. Like, a 'sorry sight.' It's like-"

Your enthusiastic unrequested lecture was effectively brought to a close by Sans leaning back with his eye-sockets closed, making exaggerated snoring noises.

You needed to talk, and you needed to do it somewhere no one else could possibly hear. You had heard stories of monster-sympathizers getting spied on in their own homes, and God knows how many shifty government cameras and hidden microphones were hidden around town. You didn’t know how much you believed in the whole "Big Brother is watching you" paranoia, but it would still be better to make sure. The only place nearby you could think of that would definitely be safe was a giant empty dirt lot right outside of town.

You were almost there when a car suddenly cut you off and you had to slam on the brakes, jerking the skeleton in the passenger seat hard against the seatbelt.

"Fuck!" he snapped, "Can't you drive??"

You briefly considered commanding the skeleton to poke himself in the eye-socket, but successfully resisted the temptation. Instead you decided to ask about something that had been nagging at you.

"So... funny thing; the monster nurse who healed me at the hospital said someone had already healed me partway… Was that you?" 

Sans scoffed dismissively. "Oh, please, you think I care about your dumb ass?" 

"Oh… I guess it must have been some other monster. Whoever it was apparently sucks at healing; the doctor said that with the mess they made, I'll probably need surgery in the future to fix all the blood vessels that grew back in the wrong-"

"LOOK, healing is hard, okay?! It's not like I had a lot of time!"

"So it was you! Ha!" You shouted triumphantly.

"I should've let you fuckin' die," he muttered.

There were a couple minutes of awkward silence after that. When you finally spoke, it was in a more subdued tone.

"Thanks for not ...letting me die. The nurse said I wouldn't have survived. I kinda owe you my life."

"Tch," he scoffed, looking out the window. "Wh-whatever. Where are we going, anyway? Cause right now it looks like you're taking me outside city limits to kill me without witnesses and bury the dust."

"What?? Why would you even think that?"

He shrugged. "It's what I'd do."

-----

Sans had no fuckin' clue where he was. He'd never been to this part of town before; all he knew was that they had driven east until they were away from all the buildings and now they were somewhere outside of town. The human explained that they wanted to make sure nobody heard them talking. It was total overkill, but at least he had fun needling them about their driving on the way.

Finally, they pulled off the road.

"Sorry the car's such a mess," the human grumbled as they collected the trash from Burger Queen into a bag and threw it in the back where it landed amongst piles of empty soda cans and chip bags. "I need to clean this thing."

Sans gestured at the empty dirt lot they were parked in. He said in a cartoonishly dramatic accent, "Behold the field in which I grow my fucks, and see that it is barren."

That actually got a small giggle out of them. To his disgust, Sans caught himself grinning. He shook his head; scowling harder to make up for it.

"So," the human said, "We need to talk about what we're gonna do now. I think one of the first steps is disabling as many of the automatic commands on the collar as we can, and definitely making sure the shock-thing is off. I was thinking about it on the way over, and it might be a good solution to work around me accidentally giving commands if I set it to a different language. I'll set it to one I don't speak, and then there's no way to give commands even if I wanted to, which I absolutely don't."

"Careful now," Sans said sarcastically, "I wouldn't be a good charity case if I wasn't entirely at your mercy."

The human frowned. “Oh, c’mon, you know that’s not what this is. I'm not trying to help you because I want to have 'good karma' or to feel better myself. I genuinely care about what happens to you."

"Why?" he asked cynically. "What have I ever done for you?" 

“Dude, you saved my life, like, two times already."

"Nah, that stuff wouldn’t’ve happened if it weren't for me. Freddy has a personal grudge against me; though pretty much everybody else does too. In fact, I don't think there's a single monster that likes me, anymore."

Before the human could respond with a question he definitely didn't want to answer, he continued, "Besides, you cared even before that. Hell, you tackled an old man for Chris'sake." He shook his head, grinning. "Funniest fuckin' thing I've ever seen."

"Oh, what, like you could have done anything better!" they said defensively. "Of course it looks easy looking back on it  while we’re sitting here in the car, but I only had a couple of seconds to react. He was gonna frickin’ hit you! And you know what? He was an asshole and deserved a good clobbering." They looked at their arm where the bite marks had mostly disappeared. "Besides, it's not like he didn't defend himself. I'm still worried I'm gonna get rabies or something."

They looked nervously at Sans. “He’s not a zombie, right?”

The skeleton snorted. "Nah. I was with the asshole pretty much 24/7 for the past month and never saw him come near any zombies or rabid squirrels. Couldn't do a damn thing for himself. Your legendary battle is the fastest I've ever seen him move."

The human rolled their eyes. "Yeah, yeah. They'll write about it in the history books, right next to the chapter on the fucked-up time period when humans enslaved monsters." 

"You say that like you think it's gonna stop soon," he said skeptically.

The human shrugged. "I don't know. It'll probably take a lot of years, but eventually it has to change. People can't keep being this terrible forever. We’ve stopped doing slavery before and we’ll do it again, damnit!”

Sans scoffed. "You're so fuckin' naive it's annoying." He looked out the window. "Humans and monsters are never gonna stop bein' fuckin pricks to each other. The whole 'give people a second chance' thing is hippy-dippy bullshit. You think people can really change?"

He expected the human to get angry at that. Instead, they gently said, "Sans," to get his attention back from the window. They weren't frowning or smirking with some holier-than-thou look. they just looked… earnest. "That's not what I'm talking about. I think people can change, yes, but you're right- it is 'hippy-dippy bullshit' to expect them to."

Their annoying, patronizing attitude was starting to get on Sans’ nerves; but he was honestly curious about where they were going with this.

The human continued, "No one does bad things without a reason. People forget that when they're angry. We assume others act the way they do because of who they intrinsically are, but then when we judge our own actions, we blame the situation. It's called the ‘fundamental attribution error.’ For instance, say a co-worker missed a project deadline and now everybody else has to stay late to get it finished on time for the big client or whatever. 'Wow, Heinz is such an asshole,’ you think."

"Is this hypothetical, or…?" Sans asked.

The human waved their hand dismissively. "Doesn't matter; besides, his name wasn’t Heinz. But yeah, then if you miss a project deadline, you blame it on circumstance. You say 'Well I would have done it on time but blah-blah insert-excuse-here.' Maybe some unexpected stuff came up that week that was completely not your fault; like, for instance, you had to take your dog to the emergency vet at 2am because somehow they got on to the bathroom counter and ate a bunch of fancy-ass expensive cherry blossom soap you brought back from your trip to Japan. Then you had to take the same dimwit dog back to the same vet two nights later cause they ate a bunch of goddamn sand from the miniature zen-garden on your desk."

Sans snickered. "That's pretty damn specific. You sure it's just hypothetical?”

The human grinned and continued, "Oh yeah, completely hypothetical example. But hey! If you ever see a store selling mini-zen gardens, let me know; cause I do not want to explain to my mom what happened to the one she gave me." They giggled, then coughed and continued, "But anyway, my point is that it's inaccurate to judge a person for their actions without also considering the situation they were in."

Sans grunted. "Hm. So what, is everyone just excused all the time for doing bad shit cause they were in a bad situation?"

"No,” they said, looking thoughtful. “I still think there are 'bad people' in the world, and there should be consequences for what you do; but it's hypocritical to denounce someone for doing the same thing you would have in their situation. There's no 'good' or 'evil,' there's just… people; and you can't really judge fairly if you don't know what it was like to be them. There's this delusion everybody has that you'll never do the same bad things you hear about someone else doing because you're a better person than them. I realized that fact a long time ago and I started trying to look at myself with brutal honesty, even if it means admitting that I’d do stuff I’m ashamed of. Like, if I had to fight to protect the people I loved, I like to imagine that I'd find some hippy-dippy pacifistic way to save everyone. But truthfully, if it actually happened and it came down to life and death, I'd do whatever it took to keep my loved ones safe; even if it meant I had to do something really bad. Same goes for war. You can't blame people for defending themselves and their people. It's what anyone would do, but only some people ever actually have to make that choice. That part’s all luck of the draw."

The human looked at their lap, fiddling awkwardly with their fingers. "I think you know what I'm talking about, Sans."

He scowled and looked back out the window. "Yeah. You're not exactly subtle about it. Are you seriously telling me that you forgive monsters for what we did to humans?"

After a moment of thought, they replied, "I don't know, but I'd like to think that I could . What about you? Do you forgive humans?"

Sans suppressed an involuntary growl. Memories of the war came to mind. Losing everyone he ever cared about. Hurting everyone he ever cared about. The humiliation of being a fuckin' slave. The cruelty and abuse he and all the other monsters had suffered in the past seven years.

"No, I sure fuckin' can't," he ground out. "Guess you're just a better person than me, huh?"

"Oh, please , you think that’s a fair measure of if someone’s a good person? Of course you don’t forgive humans; that’s totally normal. I’m probably one of the only humans who doesn’t flat out hate monsters, either.”

"Nah, I’m a little worse than the average human." He grumbled. "Worse than the average monster, too.”

He held up a finger to cut off whatever the human was about to say. “And before you tell me I'm actually great and need to stop hating on myself, think about the file Chucklefuck showed you at the DMV. Numbers don’t lie."

He wiggled his finger bones in the air. "Surprised these are still white, honestly." He dropped his hands back into his lap and looked out the window at the dusty wasteland around them.

“Damn, that’s a raw sentence,” the human said appreciatively. “You could put that in a book or fanfic or something.”

“God, you’re one of those people, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. But back to the raw dialogue; that sounds really dark, man. You’ve got some serious backstory. I’m not even gonna guess what terrible shit you must’ve lived through. I’m not a psychiatrist or anything, but it you wanna talk about it, I’m a pretty good listener, I think.”

Sans snorted. "Fuck , no."

“Oh, c’mon,” the human said pleadingly. “I’ve never had a friend with a dark, troubled past.”

“Look, human,” he said through clenched teeth, “this buddy-chum-pal-amigo-homeslice-breadslice-dawg thing you want to happen? It ain't happening. I ain't your fuckin' friend."

The human’s face fell. "Hey, can't blame me for trying,” they said meekly. Then they steeled themselves and looked at him with an aggressive smile. “But you know what? Whether you want it or not, I'm gonna be supportive as hell; and when the day comes that you realize you need a friend, you'll already have one." Y/N pumped their fist. 

...Damn, Sans had to admit that wasn't a bad speech. Unnnghhhh, this whole conversation was putting him dangerously close to processing emotions he'd successfully repressed for years. It took him a moment to think of a way to avert that disaster.

 "Well" he said, "I actually do have something you could help me with by talking."

The human brightened up at that, then gave him a suspicious look. "Oh?"

He grinned sardonically. "Yeah. Tell me something to make it easier for me to hate ya."

"...Huh," they said, looking thoughtful. "Like what?"

Sans waved his hand lazily through the air. "Anything. The worse, the better."

The human nibbled on their thumb as they considered it, and for a moment, his attention was entirely diverted. He wondered what that felt like. It was hard to imagine; skeletons didn't exactly have nibblible fingers.

"Okay," they said finally, "How about this? There's a bunch of questions I wanted to ask you that I haven't said out-loud because I figured it would make you mad. Will that work?"

Sans hadn't expected an actual, useful answer, but now he was curious. "Sure. Whadd'ya wanna know?"

The human nibbled on another finger and hummed. He wished they’d stop doing that. It looked fuckin’ gross.

"Alright, first question: How many people have you killed?"

"You talkin' humans or monsters?" he asked.

"Oh.. uh…" The human started nibbling on that damn thumb again. "Both, I guess."

He sighed. "You sure you want me to answer that?" 

The human frowned. "No...probably not. I'm just gonna assume it's a lot."

He shrugged. "Honestly, I lost count."

"...That was during the war, right?" 

"Mostly. The Underground wasn't exactly hospitable at the end, and I've managed to take out a few owners since then. Sometimes they've actually had me kill other humans for mafia and gang shit, which is pretty much as fun as bein' a slave gets." 

The human nodded thoughtfully. They stared out the window for a bit before they spoke again. "...Hey, Sans?"

"Yeah?" he said, looking out his own window at the exceptionally disinteresting dirt lot.

"Could you... promise not to kill me?"

He turned around to face them, but they kept staring out the window. "The hell kinda thing is that to say??"

"I know you have every right to hate humans, me included, but…" The human turned to look at him and gave a tiny sniffle. Ah, fuck, were they gonna start crying again? Fuckin’ hell.

"Please, just… tell me you're not gonna kill me the moment you get the chance," they said, voice trembling slightly.

"Oh fer fuck'sake," Sans said, "Fine! I won't kill ya unless ya reeeeally piss me off, kay?"

The human shook their head. "Sans, I fuck up a lot . We’ve known each other for less than 48 hours and I’ve already pissed you off m ultiple times."

He groaned. "Yeah, and you’re still fuckin’ alive, aren’t you? I’m not gonna kill ya just for being an idiot, though I’ll admit I’ve been goddamn tempted."
The human wiped their eyes with a tissue and then dabbed at their nose. Sans didn’t even try to hide his disgusted grimace.

"Can you please just say it? 'I promise not to kill you, Y/N.' Please? Just… lie to me?"

"I don't lie when I make promises," he growled. "If I make a promise, I keep it. Besides," he pointed at the ring of plastic on his neck. "I've got a control collar, dumbshit. I can't kill you, even if I wanted to."

"That's a lie, and you know I know it's a lie!” they retorted. “Monsters get around collars all the time. You literally just told me that you've killed humans since the war; and that bear almost killed me yesterday!"

Damn it, Freddy. He hated that fuckin’ bear. 

"Listen," Sans said, dragging a hand down his face. "If it'll shut you up, I can tell you two specific commands that there's no way a monster can get around. Guaranteed safety. Capiche?"

"No," the human said stubbornly, "I'm not using that thing to control you."

Sans threw his arms up in exasperation. "Then yer a fucking idiot! I'm a murderer!"

"Everyone's a murderer!" the human shouted back, raising their arms as well.

"The fuck- no, they're not!"

The human gave him a sudden, hard stare. "What happened Underground, Sans?"

The question was so unexpected that he was temporarily at a loss for words. "What hap… the hell d'ya wanna know that for?"

The human's effort to sound tough was pathetically adorable. "What. Happened." 

"A lotta shit happened, that's what. We came topside and brought the shit with us. Then we got the shit beaten out of us."

"Why?"

"Cause you guys figured out how to use our own fucking magic against us."

"No, why did you guys attack us? No one knows why; it's one of the biggest unsolved mysteries. Even being ordered by the collars, no monster will talk about what happened Underground and why you didn't even try to make peace with humans when you came up."

"Because we can't!" Sans snapped. He smiled at their confused expression. "Guess what, dingus? The collars ain’t the only thing that can control a monster, and they're definitely not the oldest or the strongest. It's honestly been fun watching humans try to make monsters talk about it cause for once the collars don't work."

"But what if you're not actually commanded to say it? Like, if I ask you right now without it being a command."

Sans gave a sharp laugh. "Ha! You think humans haven't tried that? You can do anything you want to a monster- and oh, they did - but we won't talk about it because we can't talk about it, not even to other monsters. I'm surprised we're even allowed to remember it."

"Allowed?"

He made a dismissive gesture. "Eh, don't ask, cause I can't tell ya."

"Not even yes or no questions?" 

"Nope. Like I said, they tried it all."

The human looked thoughtful, and Sans could practically hear the mismatched gears struggling to turn in their head. "...What about questions that aren't about what happened, but what happened because of it?"

Sans blinked. "Uh… it depends."

"Can I try?"

He shrugged. "Sure, why not?" 

"Okay, did the thing cause the war?" 

Sans thought for a moment, prodding at the resistance. "Nah. Can't say, it counts."

The human looked at him with suspicion. "You're just saying that, aren't you."

Sans growled, making them flinch a little. “Let's get one thing straight, okay? I don't lie. Period. But hey, if you don't believe me," he pointed at the collar on his neck, "just say the word and I've gotta tell the truth." 

The human shook their head. "Okay, I believe you." They nibbled on that gross-ass finger again. "What if I ask instead… what was the happiest time in your life like?"

Huh. Memories of snowball fights and hamburgers came to mind; using echo flowers to talk to each other from opposite sides of the same room. Then there was that time he had told an especially bad joke to Papyrus while he was drinking chocolate milk and it came out of his nose when he laughed. That was probably when his lil' bro had started disliking puns. Thinking about it made Sans start to smile unconsciously. In fact, he was so preoccupied with whether or not he could say it that he didn't stop to think if he should say it. 

"When Pap was little. We used to-" Shit. Sans looked at the human, preparing to deflect questions about his brother. For once, they were tactfully silent. They just waited eagerly for him to continue. 

"The happiest part of my life was a long time ago, before everything got bad and the thing happened," he said.

The human tapped the steering wheel with their fingers. "So… when you were happy, were you an asshole? Like, did you beat people up or kill anybody?"

"What? No, I didn't kill anyone until we GRNGH! " Sans' words stopped like he'd run into a brick wall. It took him a moment to recover. "No. No killing when we were happy.”

"Okay, but was there ever a time you were happy to kill someone?"

"Yes," he answered easily. After a moment of silence he said, "Ya want me to elaborate, or…?"

The human shook their head. "No, I probably really don't. What about…. the first time you killed someone, was it because you wanted to or you had to?"

Sans didn't want to remember that day. "Had to," he answered quickly. 

"Monster or human?"

"Monster, now move on."

"Okay. The last time you killed someone, did you do it because you wanted to or had to?"

Sans wanted to say "had to," but that wasn't true. The last human he had killed was the owner previous to the old man with the disgusting bunions, and there was no denying he did that because he wanted to. And he did not do it quickly, either. 

"Wanted."

The human didn't look surprised. "I'm guessing that was one of your owners, right?"

"Yup. Real piece of work. I don't feel like talking about it and you definitely don't wanna hear about it, so move on."

"Yeah, that's probably for the best." The human nibbled on that goddamn finger again. "Okay; have you ever killed someone for absolutely no reason?"

Sans frowned. "Whadd'ya mean?"

"Like, just randomly picked someone you'd never met, who had never done anything to hurt you or the people you loved- human or monster- and killed them solely because it was pleasurable to do so and no other reason?"

"Holy fuck, do I really come across as that much of a psycho? Of course I had always had a fucking reason."

The human tried and failed to completely repress a smug smile, clearly struggling to resist saying ' See? Told you so.'

Sans scowled. "Next question."

"Okay. Even if you had a reason, have you ever killed when it wasn't justified?"

Memories of terrified civilians rose unbidden to his mind. 

They weren't even trying to fight back.

"...Yes."

"You hesitated. Is that because you feel bad about it?"

He couldn't sleep.  

"I feel…awful."

"Did you want to do it?" 

It was so much fun. 

"At the time…yes"

"So not anymore? Why, what changed?"

Because of the thing. He shook his head. The human seemed to understand what he meant, but looked suspicious. Sans had a bad feeling about what they were going to ask next.

"At the DMV, Chunky, or whatever the hell his name was, said your collar was first gen. So does that mean you got captured early in the war? Like, when they first started using the collars?”

Sans eyes flickered out like candlelights. 

He’d thought they’d torture him… but what happened was so much worse.

"Do you honestly think I want to talk about that?" he snarled. He didn’t want to remember this; he really, really didn’t want to remember this.

There was so much dust. He couldn't stop. Why couldn't he stop?!

Surprisingly, the human didn't let it drop. "No; you wanted me to piss you off by asking invasive questions!” they said angrily. “Well here's a really insensitive one: you said you’ve killed both, but which one have you killed more? Humans or monsters?"
He didn’t want to answer that. He wasn’t even sure what the answer was; though if he had to guess...

Get away from me, Pap.

Sans wanted to argue; say that he didn’t owe them any information about what he’d done. But he just felt… tired. After a moment, he gave a weak, defeated laugh. "Heh… you know, we had a saying Underground. 'Every time you kill, it becomes easier to kill again.'” He stared at his hands, lying limp in his lap. “I've…."

Was it ever his choice? Ever?

"...I've killed a lot of humans, kid," he almost whispered.

All of ‘em, even the small ones.

He shut his eyes. "And...a lot of monsters." 

Everyone was going to die because of him.

" Sans."

He fucked up so bad, and now everyone was gonna die.

"Sans, c’mon, man, you’ve gotta stop; you’re spiraling.”

It was all his fault. He should’ve never let himself get taken alive.

"SANS!"

"What?!" Sans screamed; or at least, he tried to scream. What came out was more akin to an angry sob.

He opened his eyes to see the human looking at him, worriedly. "Dude, you're crying."

Sans blinked. He touched a cheekbone and felt wetness. His finger came away stained with translucent red liquid.

"You… you are crying, right?" the human asked. "Cause there's red stuff coming out of your eyes and if it's not tears, we should probably call an exorcist or somethi-"

"YEAH, I'M FUCKIN' CRYING!" Sans yelled angrily between sobs. "FUCK! THIS IS WHY YER NOT SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT FEELINGS!" The skeleton curled himself into a ball as tight as he could, hugging his knees to his chest.

"I'm-I'm so sorry, man. I didn’t meant to-"

"Shuddup and make it stop!"

"...You mean, with a command?"

"No shit!"

The human wrinkled their nose in disgust. "That's a thing? People really command monsters to stop crying?" 

"All the fuckin' time! Hurry up!"

The human folded their arms. "I'm not doing it, Sans."

He glared at them, vision swimming. "Are you gonna make me fuckin' beg?! Just say 'stop!' "

"It’s fucked-up and I’m not doing it."

Sans uncurled enough to scream, "Well, then get the fuck out, ya useless prick!"

“Dude, I- my ankle’s jacked-up; I can’t walk.”

He looked them dead in the eyes. “Then sit on the fuckin’ ground.”

Without further protest, the human opened the car door and hobbled out, leaving Sans alone with no escape from himself.

Chapter Text

You spent the next ten minutes sitting on the ground in a fruitless, concentrated effort to recall every technique you'd ever learned in therapy. From what little you managed to remember, you didn't think any of it would be helpful now. Whatever baggage Sans had, it far exceeded your meager psychotherapy abilities. All you could really do is just be there, ready to help when he trusted you enough to ask.

Your unproductive reverie was interrupted by the ominous sound of approaching tires. Balancing carefully on your good foot, you stood up and peeked over the top of your car to see two incredibly villainous-looking black sedans turning into the dirt lot you were parked in. 

"Uh... Sans?" You said nervously, knocking on the car window. No answer. You took your eyes off the approaching black sedans for a moment to look inside the car. Sans wasn't sobbing violently anymore, but he was still curled up on the seat, looking positively miserable.

You tried the door handle. Locked. You had stupidly left your keys inside; you could see them still in the ignition. Looking back up, you saw the black cars getting closer.

You knocked harder. "Hey, Sans," you said, a slight panic creeping into your tone, "I know this is exactly the kind of thing people in movies say right before a scary chase scene, but I think we've got company!" 

Sans finally lifted his head, his tear-streaked face giving you an equally annoyed and confused look. You pointed at the cars, now only about a hundred feet away. Sans looked out the window and shouted, "Oh, FUCK!"

You pounded a fist against the door, now thoroughly freaked out. "Unlock it! Quick!"

To your relief, Sans immediately leaned over and pulled the handle, popping the door open. "Drive! Drive, right now!" he shouted.

You frantically scrambled inside and turned the key in the ignition before you were even sitting down. The moment you heard the engine turn over, you stepped hard on the gas pedal, letting the sudden acceleration slam the car door shut for you as you peeled out on the dirt lot. 

Out of the side of your vision, you noticed Sans struggling to brace himself against the change in momentum. 

"Sans, what the FUCK is going on?!" you screamed. A quick glance in the rearview mirror showed that the black cars were hot on your tail. "Who are these guys?!"

"FUCK if I know!" he shouted back. "Lotta people wanna kill me or use me; neither ends with you staying alive, by the way!"

"Jesus fucking Christ! What should we do??" 

Sans pointed at the road you came in on. "Head away from the city as fast as this piece of shit can do!"  He pointed at the control collar. "And give me permission to use magic!"

"You can use magic!" 

The collar chimed. *Chime* CAUTION: setting is not recommended for monsters with significant-

"Do it anyway!"

*Chime* unrecognized command

The car bounced sharply as you hit the paved road, nearly knocking your head into the ceiling. 

"Fuckin- Proceed!" 

*Chime* Settings changed. Magic enabled.

"Aces!" Sans shouted. "Now say 'enable lethal self-defense!'"

"What?!" you screamed. "No! No, you're not killing anybody!"

Suddenly, your rear window exploded amidst the sound of rapid gunfire. You shrieked and ducked your head as you felt bullets peppering the back of your car.

Sans covered his skull with his arms, hiding as low as he could. "I encourage you to FUCKIN' RETHINK THAT!"

It was a pretty compelling argument. "Enable lethal defense!" you shouted.

*Chime* CAUTION: enabling lethal force for defense is not recommended. Servent is not responsible-"

"Proceed, dammit!"

*Chime* Defensive Lethal force enabled

Sans gave an evil grin. "'Bout fuckin' time," he growled, one eye suddenly flaring into a glowing red ring. "Don't run into anything," he said, turning around in the seat to face out the shattered back window.

Another spray of bullets hit the car and you shrieked again. Should you be trying to serpentine or something? That's what they did in movies, right? You gave a couple experimental jerks to the wheel, weaving left and right. From the continued sound of bullets pinging off the car, this didn't seem to throw the bad guys off their aim. It did, however, succeed in throwing Sans against the side of the car. 

"FUCK!" he shouted. "The fuck are you-"

"Serpentine!" you screamed, in way of explanation. 

"Don't serpentine in a high-speed chase, you fuckin moron!" Sans snarled. 

"Oh, sorry! I just don't have that much experience being CHASED BY PEOPLE WITH GUNS!"

"JUST DRIVE STRAIGHT AND LET ME FUCKIN CONCENTRATE!" 

Sans turned to look out the back window again, eyes narrowing in a focused effort. He let go of the seat back with one bony hand, holding his arm up towards the black cars. 

"If I can just get enough to...rARGH!" With a swift, forceful motion, Sans jerked his hand upwards. The sound of gunfire was interrupted by a deafening crack. In the rearview mirror, you saw the road behind you explode in a burst of flying asphalt. One enormous, sharp white bone jutted out of the ground, directly in front of the first black sedan. The driver had no time to try to swerve before the car struck the bone like a bollard. The metal crunched like a huge ball of tin foil, bringing the front of the car to an immediate stop. Unfortunately for the passengers, the back of the car wanted to keep moving. The vehicle flipped and rolled in a spectacularly violent display of physics, finally landing in a ditch off the side of the road. Then it exploded, because that's what cars do during chase scenes.

"Yeah!" you screamed, but your triumphant whoop was cut off by another round of gunfire. Oh, right. There's another car. Apparently, that driver managed to swerve in time. 

Looking over, you saw Sans duck back down just in time to avoid a bullet pinging through the car and out the windshield. He slumped weakly, grimacing.

"Did you get hit?!" you asked, ducking your own head.

Sans groaned. "Nah, I'm fine, I just... it's gonna take me a minute to get enough magic back. Fuckin' Servent; it's never taken this long before." 

"Okay, then you can do the bone thing again?" 

"Yeah, I... holy shit." 

You noticed Sans staring out the side window and followed his gaze to see something in the not-so-distant sky.

"Are you serious?!" you shouted in disbelief. "Is that a fucking helicopter?!?"

"Either that, or a really, really big bird." Sans gave a sarcastic smile. "Hey, on the plus side, this narrows the list of suspects." 

You had to shout over another round of gunfire, "Well, I can't even begin to tell you how much better that makes me feel!"

Looking ahead, you realized you were approaching a fork in the road. You really didn't know this area; you'd only driven to the dirt lot a couple of times before, when you needed a wide open space.

"Hey, should I go left or right??" you asked.

Sans was closing his eyes, face screwed up in concentration. "I don't know, pick one. Just... gimme thirty seconds to gather enough magic, and I can teleport us outta here." 

You looked away from the road for a moment to give him an incredulous look. "Woah, you can do that?!"

"Not if you don't shut up and let me concentrate!" he snapped.

"Alright, alright!" You turned your attention to the road ahead of you, pointing at the upcoming fork. "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe!"

You took the exit on the left. The black sedan followed only a second behind. It was gaining on you, fast. Your economy-hatchback was many things, but a race car it was not. 

You quickly realized the exit you'd taken was a service road leading to a large municipal water canal. The road made a sharp right bend to run along the edge.

"Fuck! Hold on!" you shouted as you slammed the brakes, slowing down enough to make the turn without flipping your car over. The car probably wouldn't have actually flipped over, but you'd seen it happen in enough movies to consider it a valid possibility.

Sans grabbed on to the side of the car as your tires squealed in protest at the sudden change in direction. A moment later, you were speeding along the service road with the canal only a few feet to your left.

The black sedan took the turn a lot faster, barely slowing down at all. You watched in terror as they came up on the right side of your car, trapping you against the edge of the canal.

"Uh... S-Sans??" you stammered. A quick glance showed you he was still concentrating, holding his hands on either side of his skull, eyes scrunched shut in a deep scowl.

"Almost..." he muttered.

You noticed someone in the back of the black sedan roll down a window and hold up a very big gun.

"Sans, I did that thing in movies where they drive into a bad spot!" you shouted, voice verging on hysterical.  

He groaned. "Hold on..."

The bad guy opened fire. You screamed and ducked down as far as you could. Bullets zipped and pinged into the metal and cheap upholstery around you. You heard glass and plastic shattering. Something hot grazed your left arm, leaving a searing pain. Did you get shot?? You didn't have time to react before another burst of gunfire hit the side of the car, blowing out a front tire. The steering wheel jerked out of your control and the car veered hard left, right over the edge of the canal. For a brief moment, your economy hatchback got to live out its dream of being an airplane as the vehicle flew through open air towards the concrete canal floor thirty feet below. You screamed as the sickening sense of freefall flipped your stomach. This was it; this was how you died.

Through the chaos, you were dimly aware of something grabbing your right arm. Suddenly, the whole world was a  blur, and you felt gravity flip around you like a roller coaster. A moment later, your vision was clear again, and you had just enough time to realize you were now directly above some kind of lake before landing with an enormous, ungraceful, high-velocity splash. 

You frantically clawed your way up to the surface, struggling against the drag of your clothes in the water and something pulling on your right arm. After a few terrifying seconds, your head broke through the surface and you took desperate gasps of air, coughing up water inhaled during your unprepared landing. It took you a moment to realize the force pulling against your arm was Sans, holding on tight, but not struggling to reach the surface himself. 

"Sans!" you shouted. You took a deep breath and ducked back under, grabbing under the skeleton's arms and hoisting his head back up above the water next to you.

"Sans! Are you okay??" you spluttered, struggling to keep the two of you both afloat. 

To your surprise, Sans wasn't unconscious, though he was definitely exhausted. He looked back at you with two tired red eyelights. "I'm fine," he spluttered, mouth only halfway above the water. "Don't worry about me, I don't hafta breathe." He pointed towards the shore fifty feet away. "I'll hang on, you just swim. You can swim, right?"

"Yeah, it's *gasp* the one sport I'm *gasp* actually good at."

"Great." Sans gave a thumbs up. "You got this, buddy."

With one arm, he pushed away from you, sinking back below the surface — keeping a firm grip on your right arm, but giving you room to swim. 

You didn't waste your breath asking questions. You started paddling towards the shore. Thirty seconds later, your feet scraped the lake bed and you struggled to stand up. Sans let go and you both crawled out of the water on to a rough, pebbly beach. You collapsed onto the stones, panting as you desperately tried to catch your breath. Your twisted ankle throbbed and your palms stung where you'd scratched them on the asphalt earlier.

Next to you, Sans tilted his skull left and right, shaking out lake water. 

"You okay?" you gasped.

Sans nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. You?"

"I'm okay, I think," you answered honestly. "What the fuck just happened???"

Sans shrugged. "Whoever they are, they've got money and aren't afraid of making a scene." 

He took his shirt off and started wringing it out. His ribcage was covered in old scars and cracks that you shuddered to imagine the stories behind. You realized you were staring and quickly looked away.

Sans didn't seem to notice. He continued nonchalantly, "Humans have fought over me before, but I've never seen them send a fuckin' helicopter."

You gave him an uneasy look. "That guy at the monster DMV wasn't exaggerating, huh. You're a weapon."  

Sans gave his shirt a couple shakes before pulling it back on. "Yup. Regret your noble decision, yet?" 

You grunted, flipping over to lie on your back. You sighed. "Honestly? It doesn't speak well for my sense of self-preservation that I don't."

Chapter Text

For a couple minutes, you and Sans just lay there, dripping cold pond water on the meticulously manicured golf course turf. A less than comfortable silence stretched on until you cautiously asked, "...So now what?"

"Fuck if I know," Sans said flatly. His clothes made wet squelching noises as he lazily turned over onto his stomach, resting his head face down on his bony arms. You wrinkled your brows; that did not look comfortable.

"Okay, uh..." You considered your options. Emergency situation; what do you do? First priority, immediate safety. Check, no serious injuries or imminent danger. Second priority, slightly less immediate safety, gotta find a place to go and figure out how to get there. Third priority, comfort, find dry clothes or just shake really fast like a wet dog. Heheheh. No, wait, be serious. Serious time. Fourth priority... Uh... morale?

You looked at the skeleton flopped in the grass next to you. "Hey Sans?"

You heard a muffled "What?" as he grumbled into the turf, not bothering to lift his head. 

"How's your morale?" You asked.

After a moment's pause, he answered, "You know, I'm not even going to waste brain power answering that."

"That's... probably for the best," you admitted. "Wait, 'brain power?' You don't have a brain, right? I thought you guys were, like, coagulated matter held together with magic or whatever? And then the thinky-thinky-part is intangible, like, in the soul or whatever?" You frowned. "Honestly, it threw me into some pretty bad existential dread when I read about that. Like, if souls are real, what's the brain? I've been spending this whole time thinking of consciousness as an ever-moving web of nervous impulses traveling along an impossibly intricate network of neurons."

You heard Sans give a muffled sigh. "Why are you like this?" 

You snorted softly. "Genetics, probably. Anyway, we can't just lie here all day. There's a golf cart way over there; probably a bunch of old dudes who are gonna yell at us." 

"Well, shit, why didn't you say so sooner? I'm quaking in terror. We better leave right away," Sans mumbled apathetically, his complete lack of physical movement showing no sense of urgency.

You tapped your chin, thoughtfully. "Hmm. Can you teleport us to my apartment?"

"No, for three reasons." Sans lifted one arm out from underneath his head, holding up three skeletal fingers. "One, I haven't been there before, and two, I can't hold enough magic with this lovely little collar to make a jump that far," he said, dropping his index and ring finger as he counted, leaving only his middle finger in what had to be the most creative way you'd ever been flipped off. Honestly, you couldn't even be mad. 

"And the third is... because you just don't want to?" you asked when he didn't continue. 

"No, that's reason number four, actually." Sans replaced the arm under his head, still speaking directly into the ground. "The third reason is because whoever those fuckwits were, it was a major operation. Someone wants me, bad. They must've been watching the center when you got me. There's every chance they know who you are and are waiting at your apartment right now."

"Oh, shit..." you mutter. "We're, like, actually on the run, aren't we?"

"Yuuuup." 

"Jesus Christ... Uh..." You fumbled in your pockets, trying to extract your phone. The wet fabric clung to it, refusing to release its prize without a fight. Finally, it popped out. You shot a frantic text to your neighbor, who very kindly had taken your dogs to her house when you were admitted to the hospital. 

"Francine, something very bad happened and I've gotta go underground, bad people after me, guns and everything. Don't know how long. Please take care of dogs, I will repay all costs. Ask my family for money if needed. Life and death situation. Not joking. Thank you"

After a moment you followed up with, "SERIOUSLY NOT JOKING. There was a gun car chase and everything don't go to police, bad guys might find you and dogs hostages just keep em hidden AGAIN, NOT A JOKE see you eventually when it's safe thank you sorry"

You sighed, turning off your phone. 

 "Okay, I've seen movies. They can probably track this, right?"

"Absolutely," Sans answered without moving his head to see what you were talking about.

"C'mon, seriously," you complained. "Do you think they can track my phone?"

Immediately Sans bolted upright, eyes wide with panic. 

"Oh, shit, was your phone on?! Fuck, they've probably got our location already!" He gestured frantically at the lake. "Quick! Throw it in! Throw it in!" 

"AAAAAAH!" you screamed, flinging your phone as hard as you could. It hit the water almost exactly where you and Sans had landed, disappearing with a violent splash.

The skeleton next to you dissolved into whooping laughter, falling backwards and rolling around on the plush turf. "You... You fucking moron!" he wheezed. "You really thought... You really thought they could track your phone like it's fucking CSI!"

It took a few seconds for your brain to resolve the barrage of conflicting stimuli it had just received, but when you had, your face grew hot with an embarrassed, angry blush. 

"Oh, real fuckin' funny, Sans. Hahaha," you snapped. "It's so funny now we don't have a map or a way to contact anybody. The hell are we supposed to do now, asshole?!" you shouted, smacking the laughing skeleton on the skull. Your fleshy human hand easily bounced off the bone with a wet slap, doing nothing to stop Sans's incessant laughter and undoubtedly hurting you worse than him.

Fuming, you struggled to your feet and started hobbling towards that golf cart you'd seen earlier. The prospect of walking all the way to the golf course entrance in wet clothes and a twisted ankle was enough motivation to face the embarrassment of asking for help, and at this point you were really too mad to care, anyway.

------

It took Sans almost half a minute to notice the human was gone. Fuck, he hadn't laughed that hard in years. A brief look around told him the human's direction. With a quick teleport, he caught up to them, still giggling. To his disappointment, they only jumped a little at his sudden appearance, but their subsequent murderous glare entertained him immensely. 

When they got to the golf cart, the human convinced three very confused old businessmen to give them a ride to the entrance by using what Sans later named the "Get pity by looking like a pathetic drowned rat" technique.

At first, one golfer objected to letting Sans on the cart, insisting that the "degenerate monstrosity" simply run to keep up. Before Sans could present what would have surely been an eloquent and diplomatic speech addressing his objections to the gentlemen's opinion, his human asserted that Sans was their "service animal," and therefore legally required to be allowed anywhere. The human continued to embellish the ruse with unnecessary details for the entire drive back to the golf course entrance, finally departing the vehicle with many thanks for delivering them and their monster trained to detect the fluctuations of hormone levels caused by a rare form of "auto-immunotic disease" acquired via exposure to dangerous "omega radiation" emitted by a faulty microwave produced by a company now facing a class-action lawsuit from similarly affected consumers.

Lacking a phone with which to use a ride-sharing app, the human had to ask a golf course employee to call them a cab. Then the employee had to call them another cab when the first driver refused them service. It was unclear whether this was because of anti-monster prejudice, or because the human and Sans were still visibly soaked with pond water. Thankfully, the second cabbie had lower standards  An hour later, when they had gone as far as the cabbie would take them, they got out, the human apologetically paying the driver with soggy bills. 

They found a nearby discount clothing store and purchased several sets of clean, dry clothes. It was the first time in years that Sans had been given agency over his own clothes, and despite projecting an attitude of annoyed indifference, he reluctantly found himself actually enjoying picking them out. He left the store wearing a red turtleneck and black parka, paired incongruously with shorts and the first human-made shoes he'd ever worn that were actually in his size. After walking around barefoot for so long, the sneakers were like soft pillows on his scraped-up bones. 

The human had to ask several strangers before finally getting someone to lend them their phone. They looked up directions to the nearest monster-friendly accommodations, thankfully finding a motel only a few blocks away. Their progress was frustratingly slow as the human limped on their hurt ankle. Sans almost considered carrying them again. Almost.

While his human spoke to the hollow-eyed receptionist at the front desk about getting a room, Sans lazily surveyed their surroundings. It didn't seem like a "bad" motel, but he had definitely seen better. Paint peeled on the ceiling. There was a faint, ever present smell of cigarettes and concentrated cleaning solution. A medium-sized cockroach slowly meandered across one of the lobby walls. The wood of the front desk was scratched and vandalized. There was a dark, blotchy stain on the carpet near the door, its shape reminding Sans of the chalk outline around a corpse. 

...On second thought, it was a bad motel. But over the past seven years, Sans had developed exceptionally low standards for the accommodations he got — when his owners had deigned to house him at all.

It was almost sunset by the time they finally got to their room. The exhausted human had put up little argument when the receptionist had informed them that the only "monster-friendly" room available was a single. Sans wasn't sure if the human had expected him to sleep on the floor or what, but he wasted no time in flopping on the small twin bed. It wasn't a high quality mattress by any standard, and the box spring squeaked loudly whenever he moved, but to Sans's weary body, it was heavenly. Immediately he felt himself start to fall asleep, barely noticing as the human let him know they were going to take a shower and then get food or something — he didn't try very hard to listen. The blanket and pillow welcomed him like a soft cocoon, lulling him to sleep. The last thought to pass through his mind before drifting off was a mild surprise at realizing how safe he felt. Even before coming to the surface, his life had held little time for relaxation, and the past seven years had trained him to never let down his guard. And yet, whether it was because of the exhaustion from using magic while under the influence of a control collar, or the emotional typhoon he'd experienced right before that, Sans quickly succumbed to the sweet release of a blissfully dreamless sleep. 

"OH, SHIT! GOD DAMMIT TO HELL!" 

Sans jerked upright, yanked back into consciousness by the sound of the human's loud cussing. He looked over to see them frantically shaking a laptop upside down, some kind of thick, colored liquid dripping off the keyboard. 

"The fuck happened?" he asked groggily. 

The human gave a small startled jump, noticing that he was awake. They looked at him and grimaced. "Ah, dammit, sorry. I was trying not to wake you." They gestured at the wobbly table next to them, where several shopping bags and to-go boxes sat. A container of bright orange soup was knocked over, its contents escaping over the edge of the table, decorating the dingy old carpet with bright splotches of color.

"I got food from a Thai place down the street," the human said, carrying the laptop into the bathroom. They walked with less of limp, and Sans noticed they were now wearing an ankle brace. The human returned a moment later, wiping soup off of the keyboard with a hand-towel. "Help yourself to whatever. I didn't know what you'd like, but they had lots of vegan options so I bought way too much." 

The human paused to look at the hand-towel, now mostly colored orange. "Ah, crap. That's gonna stain, isn't it."

Sans rubbed the sleep from his sockets, wondering how long he'd been out. Looking at the darkened window only told him it was at least an hour after sunset. There was an old digital clock next to the bed, but the blinking numbers were nowhere close to accurate. 

Sans groaned as he forced himself to get up off the bed. He shuffled over to the table, carefully avoiding stepping in puddles of soup. He sat down opposite the human and looked over the food.

"Where'd you get the computer?" he asked.

The human briefly looked up from their cleaning. "Oh, there's a tech place a couple blocks away. I got a buncha stuff, including this cheapo laptop, then I immediately spilled goddamn soup all over it."

Sans snorted. "I'm guessing you didn't spring for a warranty covering food-related damages, huh?"

"Heh. No, surprisingly they didn't offer that." The human brightened. "Oh! I have a present for you, by the way." 

They reached into one of the shopping bags, pulling out two smartphones still in the box. They slid one on the table towards Sans. 

"It's a little old, but actually not a bad model," they explained. "I thought I'd have to go cheaper, but they were having a two-for-one deal, so that worked out great. They don't have SIM cards yet but we can use 'em on WiFi."

Sans blinked in surprise, setting down the container of noodles he was about to dump into his mouth. "You got me a phone?"

The human smiled way too happily. "Yeah! I mean, it's not fair for me to get one and you not." They narrowed their eyes at him and said in a much more irritable tone, "On the other hand, it's your fault I even had to buy a new phone at all. Maybe I should just keep this one, too." 

The human reached for the box, but Sans quickly snatched it away with a small burst of magic. Red energy briefly enveloped the box, drawing it into his hand like a yo-yo. 

The human stared in amazement. "Dude, you can float things? That's incredible!"

Sans shrugged. "It's not hard, just some simple energy manipulation. Any monster could do it, but almost all of 'em are too stupid."

The human scoffed. "You say that, but I can do absolutely zero magic, so it's all impressive as hell to me. I saw a video of one monster who could summon spears out of thin air and they threw a bunch of apples and she hit every single one. Not to mention what healing magic has done to healthcare. Jesus Christ, is that useful. Like, dude, imagine never having to wear bandaids for days cause of stupid little cuts. It's so goddamn annoying." The human wiggled their hands and Sans noticed they had a couple bandages on their palms. When had that happened?

"Oh yeah, I find that super relatable," Sans said, using his bony fingers to shovel noodles into his mouth. 

The human gave him a thoughtful frown. "Okay, I have several questions about your freaky body."

Sans paused and raised an eyebrow. "You feel like rephrasing that, pardner?"

The human considered him for a moment, then waved a hand dismissively. "No, actually, I don't. We haven't spent a lot of time together, but I've known you long enough to know that you're not actually offended, you're just trying to make me feel bad."

Sans shrugged and went back to eating. "Whatever will I do, now my plot is undone."

The human pointed at his mouth. "Okay, that right there! That's what I'm talking about. You've got a bunch of food in your mouth, but your voice sounds exactly the same, like it's not being physically affected. But that scientific mystery pales in comparison to the question of where the hell the food even goes." They gestured at his spine and ribcage. "I mean, it's clearly not going into your body or falling on the floor. You're not even chewing; it's just, like, getting sucked into the void."

Sans grabbed a second, unspilled container of soup, pouring it directly into his open mouth. "Incredible how you're the very first human to ever ask me that," he said, voice perfectly clear.

"Really?" the human asked, surprised.

"No, dipshit, it's literally the first thing every human asks." Sans poured the last of the soup, wiping his face off on his sweater sleeve. "That, and if I've got a dick — and before you ask, no."

The human looked disgusted. "Ew. God, people are gross. They're really so obsessed with sex they think 'Ah, well, this being has absolutely no flesh that I can see, but they probably still have a dick.' But for the food thing, in our defense it's really interesting and totally different than what you'd expect." They snorted. "Hell, my favorite 'walks into a bar' joke doesn't even work, now."

"Your favorite what now?"

"You haven't heard any of those? Like, 'A snake walks into a bar and the bartender says 'snakes can walk?!' or  'A woman walks into a bar and she says ouch!' They're almost always stupid. What makes them funny is the consistent format that always starts by someone walking into a bar. Then something unexpected diverts the listeners' expectations."

Sans gave the human an impressed look. "That is single-handedly the most boring way I've ever heard someone explain comedy." 

The human rolled their eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I once heard — or read? Yeah, I think I read it — that 'Humor is like a frog; once you dissect it, the only people still interested are the scientists.'" 

"Again, you amaze me," Sans said, moving on to a big container of rice.

The human continued to rattle on, bereft of encouragement. "But, yeah, there are actually some 'bar' jokes that are pretty funny. Like, the skeleton one I like that doesn't work anymore is 'A skeleton walks into a bar. He orders a beer, a mop, and a bucket.'" 

When Sans didn't laugh, they helpfully explained, "You see, it's funny because human skeletons — like, from dead humans, made up of non-magical bones — if they drank beer, it would get all over the floor l. Then they'd have to clean it up... hence the mop and bucket... and..." 

The human sighed. "Nevermind." They put the now mostly dry laptop on the table and grabbed a container of noodles from the rapidly shrinking selection of food. To Sans's disgust, they had just taken a big bite when they suddenly shouted, sending a few half-chewed bits of noodle flying. "Oh! I thought of one you'd like! Ah, crap, sorry. That was gross." Sans scooted his chair a few inches backwards as they wiped the table with a napkin. "Anyway," they continued, "You'll like this one because it involves a human dying."

That caught Sans off guard and he gave a surprised bark of laughter. "Oh, yeah? Let's hear it." 

"Okay, so, two chemists go into a bar. The first one says 'I think I'll have H²O.' The second one says 'I think I'll have H²O too' and she died."

Sans snorted. He had to admit, that one was pretty good. "You ever hear the one about why they put fences around cemeteries?" he asked. 

The human thought for a moment  "Because... the fence-builders' union got a lucrative non-compete contract?" 

"I ask again, why are you like this?"

"Look, don't be bitter just cause they unionized. The fence-building market is savage."

Chapter Text

After they ate, the human sat at the desk with their laptop while Sans lay on the bed searching the web with his new phone. He wanted to find the public records of monster owner transfers. There were ways to get around regulations and change ownership without leaving a paper trail, but it was still the best chance he had for finding his brother. To the surprise of no one, the motel WiFi was annoyingly slow and frequently dropped out entirely. Even when he finally found the right government website, it was frustratingly difficult to navigate. There was no way to search for a specific monster; he had to scroll through page after slowly-loading page, restarting from the top every time the WiFi dropped and the site reloaded.

Sans was just about ready to chuck the damn phone through the window when the human let out a triumphant whoop. "Yes! Got it!" 

They picked up the laptop, carrying it over to sit next to Sans on the bed. Before he had a chance to violently shove them off, they pointed to the screen excitedly.

"I think I found a way to disable the collar.”

Sans blinked in surprise. "That's what you've been doing?"

"Yeah!" the human shouted, then grimaced as they looked at the walls to the adjoining motel rooms. They continued in a quieter voice, “I'm not sure if it's legit, but they claim it worked on their monster.” 

Sans looked at the screen. It showed a lengthy text post on some anonymous forum he'd never seen before. “Alright, lemme see that,” he said, gesturing for the laptop. The human handed it to him, then got up. “Hang on, I gotta use the bathroom.”

While the human hobbled off to do their gross biological stuff, Sans read the forum post. 

Hmm… 

“Yeah, if I try this, I'm gonna be insta-dead. Don't know who posted it, but they're either dangerously incompetent or have it out for monsters. How did you even find this?” Without waiting for an answer, Sans opened up the browser menu and looked back at the search history.

Oh, for fucksake. 

“You Googled ‘How to jailbreak a monster control collar?’” he asked, incredulous.

The human’s muffled voice came through the bathroom door. “Hey! Are you looking at my search history?!”

Sans continued, reading aloud, “‘How do I break a monster collar,’ ‘Monster collar hacks,’ ‘monster collar hacks legit,’ ‘where to find a guide to disable a control collar,’ ‘monster slave underground railroad’ — you're aware that your government scans the web for shit like this, right?” 

It was another minute before Sans heard the sound of a toilet flushing and water running in the sink. The human re-appeared and rolled their eyes at him. “Yeah, I know. I've watched Snowden . You can relax, I used a VPN.” They walked back over and sat on the bed. Sans briefly considered telling them to get a chair, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. 

“Did you download anything?” Sans asked, skeptically.

“Uh… Yeah? But just some pdf’s.” 

Sans quickly scanned through the download folder. The files were mostly control collar user manuals, but there were a couple of comprehensive schematics that might actually prove useful. 

“You're sure that forum post is bunk?” the human asked.

“Let’s just say I’m uniquely qualified when it comes to control collars,” Sans replied.

The human sighed. “Well, there goes plan B.”

Sans looked at them and raised a browbone. “The hell was plan A?”

The human rubbed the side of their neck, sheepishly. “Well, I'll admit, my initial plan when I was picking you up from impound was to offer to continue being your owner on paper while trying in practice to give you as much freedom as I could. Like, no commands, self-autonomy, asking what you want, you know?”

“Sounds like paradise.”

The human looked angry for a moment, then looked down. “Yeah. I'm pretty out-of-touch with the realities of your situation, I know. It says a lot that my initial reaction was to think you should be grateful to have ‘good owner.’”

“That's pretty fucked up, yeah.”

They frowned. “Hey, that's why I said ‘initial reaction.’ I noticed myself thinking that, and challenged it. I try to be self-aware and fix assumptions and heuristics and fallacies and stuff like that.”

“Wow, that’s very big of you. How many years of therapy did that take?”

The human grinned, amused. “So many, dude. You have no idea.” They looked at him thoughtfully. “You know, I bet it would do you a lot of good.”

Sans scoffed. “What, therapy? Yeah, no. Maybe that shit works for people who like to hear themselves talk, and have the money to pay somebody to listen, but I'll keep my own problems to myself.”

The human gave him a flat look. “Sans, I watched you have a bonafide meltdown in the car not five hours ago. You're gonna tell me there isn't any trauma you desperately need to unpack?”

Sans waved his hands and spoke in a mocking tone. “Oh, look at me, I'm… whatever your name is, and I take care of my mental health like a real douche-canoe.”

The human snorted. “You know, I've had a suspicion for a while that you forgot my name.”

Sans shrugged. “Honestly, I don't think I ever bothered to learn it at all.” 

“What have you been calling me in your head?”

“What?”

The human waved a hand, like it would somehow help explain the question. “You know, like, your internal dialogue. The voice you think of that's not really a sound, but you can hear it. Surely you've had a moment like ‘I wonder how ‘blank’ is doing’ or something like that.”

“I don't really care how you're doing. Frankly, I don't think about you unless I have to.” 

They rolled their eyes. “Alright, whatever. Then I guess you don't need me to tell you what my name is.” 

To his annoyance, Sans felt a reflexive urge to ask. “That reverse psychology bullshit ain't gonna work on me,” he lied. 

“I'm not trying to reverse-psychology you. I don't care what you call me.” Before Sans could make a crude suggestion, the human quickly amended, “No, I take that back. I care if it's something mean or gross.” 

“Aw, you're no fun.” Sans grinned. “There are so many good ones! ‘Klutzy Fleshbag,’ ‘Meatwad,’ ‘Wet Sack of Organs…” 

The human gave him a flat look. “Haha, very funny. By that naming pattern, I should call you something stupid, like, ‘Mr. Ribcage,’ or ‘Skull Man,’ or ‘Bone Boy,’ or ‘Señor Bones,’ or ‘Lord Bone-ington of Bonerville,’ or…” 

The human trailed off as they watched Sans unsuccessfully trying to stifle his laughter. “Please,” he wheezed, “Please start an official legal request to change my name to ‘Lord Bonington, Lord of Boner—’” He started laughing too hard to keep speaking. 

An annoyed knock came from the wall adjoining the next room, followed by a muffled voice. “Hey, keep it down! It's late!” 

“How dare you address me suchly, peasant!” Sans shouted back between bouts of laughter. “I am the regal lord of Bonerville!” 

“Oh, shut up,” the human shushed him. The collar dinged.

*chime: Command accepted*

*chime* Resistance detected. Applying mild corrective shock.

“Cancel, cancel!” The human shouted as Sans silently twitched in pain. He barely managed to catch the computer before it fell off his lap. 

The human dropped their face into their hands and groaned. “Goddamnit. Look, I'm sorry I keep doing that by accident, but do you have to fight it every time? You know I’m just gonna undo it.”

Despite the lingering sting of the correction, Sans grinned. “I'd say yeah, for the principle of it. But honestly, at this point it's to make you feel bad.”

“Oh, c'mon.” They dropped their voice to a whisper. “I'm literally trying to free you from it right now — what more could you want?”

“I'd like to know that it won't kill me when you try.” 

“Alright then, genius, what do you propose?”

Sans gestured at the computer. “While you were taking your sweet time doing gross human bathroom stuff, I've been looking at those schematics you found.” He grinned. “I have an idea, but you're not gonna like it.”

----

So, it turned out that Sans’s idea was to speedrun the complete dissolution of your finances. Okay, that was a bit hyperbolic — he needed some of the mechanical components inside your brand new laptop to build a device he claimed would be able to deactivate the collar. 

Sans wasn't very familiar with mobile operating systems and begrudgingly asked you to help transfer them to his phone. As soon as he had the schematics on the smaller screen for reference, he started carefully disassembling the laptop. With the use of red magic, Sans made short work of the screws and nuts holding the relatively cheap computer together. 

“Hmm,” he hummed as he surveyed the explosion of electronic components. “Got almost everything we need.” He looked around the hotel room for a minute. With a quick burst of red magic, he ripped the microwave from where it was mounted to the wall, sending layers of paint and stucco flying. 

“Hey!” you shouted. 

“Shh!” Sans whispered, putting a boney finger to his mouth before grabbing the microwave from where it now floated in front of him. “Don't want to get in trouble.”

“C’mon, man,” you whined in a quieter voice. “That's gonna come out of the deposit! You couldn't have just unscrewed it or something?”

The skeleton didn't look up from his work as he rapidly disassembled the motel’s property. “Sounds like more of a ‘you’ problem.” 

You sighed. “How long do you think this is gonna take?”

Sans snorted. “Why, you impatient to be unlinked from this thing? And here I thought it was me who had the worse end of the deal.” 

You rolled your eyes. “I just wanna know if I have time to sleep. You got to take a nap, but I haven't.” 

“Eh, this'll maybe take me two, three hours to build, then at least an hour to run some tests.”

“Alright. You don't need my help with any of it, right?”

Sans stopped working long enough to spare you a silent, flat look. 

“Hey, fine, I was just asking,” you muttered, walking away to go get ready for bed. 

Your sleep was surprisingly undisturbed, considering everything you'd been through in the last few hours. Perhaps your brain was simply too exhausted to manifest troubling dreams. 

When you woke, it was to the sound of Sans saying your name. “Hey Y/N, get your ass up. It's almost ready.”

You sat up, rubbing sleep from your eyes. To your left, the cool light of morning shone softly through cheap curtains. Guess it took Sans longer than he had thought. He was still sitting hunched over the desk in almost the exact position he'd been in when you went to sleep, fussing with something you couldn't see. 

It took you a groggy moment to process exactly what he had said. “Hey, you remembered my name!”

He answered without looking up. “Actually, I looked at your driver's license while you were out.”

“Aww, well it's an effort.” You got up and walked over to see what he was doing.

“That's it?” you said, gesturing at the device in Sans’s hand. The palm-sized gizmo was a mess of electronic components. Wires of various colors and sizes enwrapped what looked like a small lithium-ion battery sandwiched between two metal plates, the wires woven around each other in a complex but seemingly random pattern. A single keyboard button sat in the middle of the device — for some reason, Sans had picked the letter P. 

“It looks like a friggin’ IED,” you said. 

“A what?” Sans asked. 

You shook your head. “Nevermind. You got all the parts you needed from the laptop and microwave?” You looked at the device more closely. “Huh. That’s a pretty small battery for a laptop.”

Sans waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, it's not. I got that one from your phone.”

Sure enough, when you looked at the pile of dissected components stacked in a messy pile in one corner of the table, you could make out a few mangled pieces of your brand new phone's corpse. 

You groaned and dragged a palm down the side of your face. “C’mon, seriously?” 

Sans shrugged. “Needed a smaller battery.”

“You know, I don't actually have infinite money. Sooner or later, you're gonna need to stop destroying my phones.”

Sans chuckled. “Okay, first off, the one you threw in the lake is completely on you. I can't help if you fall for stupid shit.”

Before you could tell Sans exactly what you thought of his “stupid shit,” he continued. 

“Secondly, it doesn't matter. With the collar off, I'll be able to steal as much money as we could ever need.”

“...We?” you asked, choosing to consider the less scrupulous part of his statement later. “You wanna stick together?”

“Well…yeah,” Sans answered, pointedly not meeting your eye. “At least for a bit. I got something I need to do, and it'll go much easier with a human’s help. And you need me around, cause those mutherfuckers from yesterday are not gonna give up easy.” 

He made a good point. Though you were apprehensive about whatever scheme Sans wanted your help with, knowing he'd be around to protect you from the bad guys was a palpable relief. 

“What you need my help with… is anyone going to get hurt?” you asked hesitantly.

Sans gave you a grin tinged with malice. “If it goes to plan? No. If shit hits the fan? Maybe. But I don't think you're gonna be particularly heartbroken over these chumps. I need you to help me infiltrate a monster auction.” 

“Oh, god,” you muttered, feeling a bit queasy. 

Sans waved dismissively. “Don't be a baby, it'll be fine. Besides,” he added cheerily, “that's a problem for later. Right now, we gotta see if this works without killing me.”

His cavalier attitude didn't exactly fill you with confidence. “Uh… weren't you gonna test it first?” you asked.

“Yeah, I did, but there's only so much I can do without another collar to experiment on.” He held the device up to one eyesocket, re-examining the intricate tangle of wires. “I give it 60-40 odds.”

“Wait, like, odds that it just doesn't work, or odds that it kills you?”

“Yes.” Sans pressed the device against his collar, fingerbone hovering over the button. “Okay, ready?” 

“No!” you said. “I don't even know what I'm supposed to do!” 

“Eh, mostly just stand there and look pretty. And if I don't make it, read the note on my phone.” 

Before you could ask him what the hell he meant, Sans scrunched his eye sockets shut and pressed the button.

Chapter Text

Sans hid behind a bush in front of the Division of Magic and Monster Countermeasures, asking himself for the hundredth time how his life had come to this one unbelievable moment. He reflected on all the bad decisions he'd made, leading to this, the granddaddy of bad ideas. The first was coming out of The Underground at all, though it wasn't exactly fair to call that a choice. The next was getting captured alive, a mistake that cost him everything and enabled humanity to enslave monster kind. Then there was the day when Y/N accidentally became his owner. Multiple times, he chose to save their life at the expense of his own freedom and safety. And now here he was, doing it again. Why?

Because his biggest mistake of all had been letting himself care, again.

Sans couldn't bring himself to regret it, though. Y/N had taken his miserable life and transmogrified it like an emotional alchemist. They annoyed him and amused him more than anyone he’d ever met. They were dumb and naive. Disgustingly slap happy and kind-hearted.

And then they’d been torn away, leaving a weeping, ragged hole in his soul where they used to be. Sans placed a palm over his chest, bracing for what he had to do. Until today, there had been no power on Earth strong enough to compel him to return to this cursed place.

With a final thought of how big a mistake this was, Sans stepped into the open. It took longer than he'd expected for a guard to spot him and raise the alarm. Moments later, he was surrounded. A growing crowd of guards in monster division regulation uniform leveled various weapons at him. Some were control devices, some were magical weapons, and a few were just straight-up guns.  Half of them shouted for him to put his hands up while the other half ordered him to put his hands on the ground. 

"You want my hands up or on the ground? Make up your fucking mind." He growled. 

He felt someone approaching him from behind, and it took every bit of his self-control not to move. He gritted his teeth as they snapped a control collar on him with a loud click. He felt the all-too-familiar hum of its mana suppression field, pushing down on him like a weighted blanket. Sticky tendrils of control reached into his mind, and he instinctively began to fight against the twisting and warping of his thoughts. 

His concentration was nearly broken when another human grabbed his hands, tying them together with zip-tie handcuffs behind his back. Sans grimaced as their gross, fleshy hands ran over his body, checking for weapons. 

"You could at least take me out for dinner first," he muttered, humorlessly.

The guard who'd frisked him pointed at his feet. "Shoes off," he commanded.

"Oh, cmon, really?" Sans growled. 

The soldier gave him a threatening look. "Shoes off, monster." 

Sans scowled at him. "What, you think I've got a handgun hidden in these Air Nike's? Sneakers are a threat, now?"

The soldier put a hand on the monster stunning device at his belt. "Shoes off, final warning."

Sans briefly considered telling him to take the shoes and shove 'em up his ass. The control collar they'd put on him wasn't attuned to any specific human, and as such, couldn't magically enforce his compliance to verbal orders. With an annoyed sigh, Sans slipped the shoes off anyway. To his chagrin, the soldier picked them up and walked away.

"Oh, for fuck's sake! You can't even let me have shoes?!" he shouted after him. 

A hard shove on his shoulders pushed Sans into a kneeling position on the ground. One of the humans kept a firm hand on his collar, as if holding on to a misbehaving dog. The hard plastic tugged uncomfortably on his neck.

"Hey, Earth to dipshit," he growled at them. "Fucking relax. It's pretty obvious I'm turning myself in."

The guard didn't respond. Sans sighed. "You're doing this for Y/N," he muttered to himself. "You're gonna be a nice little prisoner. You're not gonna blast a hole in this asshat's chest."

Several agonizingly slow minutes passed as the guards spoke to headquarters over the radio, waiting for instructions on what to do with Sans. He glowered, watching impatiently. They were wasting precious time. 

"If I could make a suggestion," he said to the guard who seemed to be the most in charge, "I'd really like to speak to the director."  

When they ignored him, he said louder, "Hey! Get the goddamn director. I need to talk to her, it's important." 

The guard met his eyes for a moment, then resumed their conversation over the radio.

Sans turned his skull around 180° to face the human still holding his collar, flashing his sharp teeth in a dangerous snarl. "Call the fucking director, or you start losing fingers." 

That finally seemed to get a result. A minute later, two guards grabbed him by the shoulders, hoisting him to his feet. They held his arms as they walked inside the building while several other guards continued to level weapons at him. Eventually, they stopped at a holding cell, shoving Sans inside past the wall of thick, clear plexiglass. Lines of electrified wire ran across the entire surface, humming quietly as they powered up. 

All but four of the guards left, the remainder standing at attention outside the cell. Sans ignored them, carefully lowering himself to sit in the center of the room while he waited for the director to show up. The bulky collar felt heavy on his neck and the zip ties were making his wrist bones start to ache. 

"Hey!" Sans said to the guards, shouting to be heard through the plexiglass. "Is the director on her way, or what?"

To his surprise, one of them actually answered, pressing a button to activate a microphone. "She'll be here shortly."

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a small group of soldiers approached. At their front strode an older woman in a suit. When she reached the cell, she dismissed the soldiers with a wave. She walked up to the clear wall and smiled at Sans with that eerie imitation of friendliness he'd hoped to never see again. 

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Sans ." she said through the microphone, in a tone devoid of surprise. "What has it been, five years since you were here? I heard you made some trouble after getting released to private custody. Not that it surprised me; you'll remember how adamantly I was opposed to the decision." 

Sans couldn't suppress a low, menacing growl at the sight of the human who had caused so much misery in his life. His mind flashed with unwelcome images of his time here. Arriving beaten and only half-conscious, bound by heavy, borderline-painful restraints. The humiliation of being a prisoner, shackled to a gurney while scientists poked and prodded, trying to understand his magic. His abject horror the day they showed him the first control collar, developed by mimicking his ability to manipulate souls. How pleased the director sounded as she demonstrated to Sans exactly how little autonomy his new collar left to him. Her unconcerned voice as she transferred Sans's collar control to the general, knowing exactly what he would make him do.

Sans closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

You're doing this for Y/N, he thought. Just talk. Forget everything else. The only thing that matters right now is getting help.

Sans opened his eyes and got to his feet as gracefully as he could with his hands still tied behind his back. He met the director's gaze and returned her saccharine smile. "Director, it's a pleasure."

The director nodded. "Likewise. I honestly didn't think I'd ever see you again. Imagine my surprise when I heard you showed up at our doorstep, uncollared and apparently surrendering yourself on your own free will." She gave him a quizzical look. "Care to tell me why?"

"Oh, I just missed the painful tests and exploitation," he said with forced cheeriness. "It's been way too long since I've been used as a weapon against my own kind, and I'm running out of things to have nightmares about."

The director's smile remained unaffected. "Aha, I see. And the real reason?"

Sans walked up as close as he could to the electrified cell wall, meeting her unwavering gaze with a burning, hateful stare. Over several silent moments, the fire drained from his eyes, and he spoke in a tone more quiet and subdued than any human had ever heard before. "I need your help."

The director raised her eyebrows. "Oh? Honestly, I thought if you'd ever come back here, it would be to enact a grotesque revenge. I'll admit I'm incredibly curious."

"There's a person," Sans said. "A human. They’re in trouble. We need to—"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, wait," the director interrupted in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. " You want to save a human?"

"Shut the fuck up and listen ," Sans said with lethal calm. "Their name is Y/N. The Ebott Mob's got ‘em, and god knows what they're doing right now." For a brief moment, Sans closed his eyes. Somehow, saying it aloud made the pain sharper. "I can't get to them. They've got some tough fuckin' monsters besides an arsenal of who knows what black market fuckery."

"If I remember correctly, one of your powers is spatial matter displacement," the director said. "You can't just use that?"

Sans gave a derisive snort. "'Teleportation.' Just call it teleportation, there's no one to impress here. And no, I can't teleport in because I haven't been there before."

"Still," the director said, "That's never stopped you before." 

"Are you familiar with this fun little hack someone discovered you can do with the collars you invented? You remove one little resistor, slap it on a human, and suddenly the collar becomes a deathtrap triggered by magic use nearby. Do you understand me? I use magic within twenty feet of Y/N and they die."

The director wasn't smiling now. "I'm aware of the issue; we're taking steps to address it. New models are tamper-proof, and old models affected by the exploit are in a mandatory recall." 

In a movement too flexible for a human, Sans lifted his legs up and stepped over the zip ties binding his arms together behind his back, bringing his hands up in front of him. He jabbed a finger in the director's face. "I don't give a fuck what 'steps' you're taking. They showed me on a video call. They’re tied to a fuckin' pole," he spat, voice shaking with barely contained rage. "They’re scared. They were trying to look brave, but I could see they were absolutely fuckin' terrified." 

Sans pressed his index finger against the plexiglass, ignoring the sting of electric current over bone.  "We need to get them out now . I've seen what happens in these rooms; I've belonged to humans like these and I've watched what they do to prisoners." Sans's knuckles collided with the plexiglass in a dull crack as he slammed his fist into the window. "So excuse me if I seem a little FUCKIN' IMPATIENT!" he roared. 

The director didn't even have the decency to flinch. She watched him, pensively. 

"I suppose I already knew you'd had a rough few years after leaving here."

Before Sans could compose a properly caustic retort, she held up a hand to forestall him. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I've told you that from the very beginning." She gave a very slight smile. "Believe it or not, I actually respect you quite a bit, Sans." She once again held up a hand to cut off his imminent objection. "I mean it. I've always respected your intelligence and I'm especially impressed by your bravery in coming back here. I don't regret what we had to do to stop the war, but I do regret what happened to you, and how you were treated. Off the record, I'll admit that I should have done more to ensure your health and safety after the war."

"My safety ??" Sans barked a single, bitter laugh. "After all this time, that's single most heinous fuckin' thing I've ever heard you say." 

This time, it was Sans's turn to forestall the director's reply, which he did with another punch to the window. The crackle of electricity over bone was audible in the brief moment of silence. "Forget your perverse hope that I'll forgive you and your government, or whatever bullshit," he hissed. "Help me save Y/N. They’re a human — that's your fuckin' job, isn't it? Protecting humans?" 

The director shook her head. "Technically, it's not within my jurisdiction. It's not like how it was during the war. Nowadays, we handle the regulation and development of collars and other magical technology."

Sans pulled his singed hand off of the plexiglass. "Bullshit. You've got connections. Call in a favor." 

The director watched him in silence for a few moments. Finally, she asked, "Sans, did you really come here to offer yourself in exchange for my help?"

"No shit." 

"And if I facilitate the rescue of this 'Y/N,' you'll be sitting here in this cell when I come back?" 

Sans gestured at the walls. "You see a way out?" 

"No, I do not. You seem well and truly captured." She cocked her head ever-so-slightly to the left. "Which significantly detracts from your bargaining power, wouldn't you say?" 

Sans said nothing. After a moment, the director chuckled softly. "For someone who hates humans so much, you've clearly watched a lot of our movies." She wagged a finger. "Fortunately for you, the real world doesn't work like that. You're right, protecting humans is the basis of what we do here. I can't help directly, but my assistant has been monitoring this conversation and I'm sure she has already alerted the correct people. Do you know where they're keeping your ...friend? I assume you must be friends." The director shook her head and smiled as Sans watched in dumb silence. "Some day, you must tell me what they did to earn such devotion. I wouldn't have thought it possible." 

"They’re... I'm pretty sure they’re at Gordon Canning, the old building outside Ebott," Sans said. He was hesitant to believe the Director, but she'd never lied to him before — just told him about the terrible things that were about to happen and then they happened. 

The director tapped a small earpiece Sans hadn't noticed. "You got that?" she said. Sans couldn't hear the reply, but after a moment, the director nodded and said, "Affirmative." 

She turned her attention back to Sans. "Unless you have something else of imminent importance, I think we're done here."

"Uh... yeah," was all Sans said. 

"Superb," the director said. "Excuse me, I have a lot of paperwork waiting — more, now." She took a few steps away before stopping and speaking over her shoulder. "Oh, and Sans? Thank you, by the way. I appreciate the restraint you've shown tonight."

Something about her tone unsettled Sans. "What's that 'sposed to mean?" 

To his growing unease, the director gave a smirk of what seemed like genuine amusement. "You know exactly what I mean, Sans. I'm genuinely impressed you waited this long, that's a level of patience I didn't expect from you." She pointed to a camera in the corner of the room. "I look forward to reviewing the footage of your escape, later.

Fuck. Of course she knew. "I don't know what you mean," Sans said. It didn't sound believable, even to himself..  

"Give me some credit. You wouldn't come unprepared." The director gave him a tired smile. "Whatever you planned as an escape, I'm sure I can't stop you. I won't even try. In exchange, I'd appreciate if you didn't damage anything or anyone on your way out." 

Without another word, she turned and left, leaving Sans to sort through what the fuck just happened. It took ten seconds before he'd organized his thoughts enough to take action. He knocked a fist into the side of his skull, rattling loose the device he'd hidden inside. He opened his jaw and let it drop into his hands. As he pressed a button, the magic he'd stored within it gave a short pulse, temporarily inactivating the control collar on his neck. Without its suppressing field, he easily ripped the accursed thing in half. And then, in a blink, he was gone.