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It all started when Sans was a teenager, there was a small accident, nothing serious. Just a high school chemistry project gone wrong. A beaker slipped and a foreign object got in his eyes. The doctors told him his eyes would be fine, the magic controlling his sight would adapt and would quickly heal on it’s own.
His vision was blurred for a while, but it eventually turned clear once more, and he didn’t think about the accident again for years.
It wasn’t until he woke up one morning and everything seemed a little blurry that he thought about it again, but he figured that he just didn’t summon his eyelights properly. Reigniting the little lights worked, his vision clear once more.
He didn’t think about his vision again until his vision was a little blurry two weeks later. Once again, reigniting his eyelights worked a charm.
One day, a human child fell into the underground and freed all monsters, his life was turned upside down, suddenly they were thrust into a whirlwind of moving, integration, and light. It took almost a month before Sans stopped wondering where he was when he woke up, and almost a month before his eyes started acting weird once more. He woke up to his vision blurred more than the previous two times, and a tiny black spot in the center of his vision.
“It may be the stress of moving.” Asgore told him when he went over for tea later in the day, “Keep an eye on it, it may be something more serious.”
It wasn’t until the fifth time he woke up to spots in his vision that he decided to see someone about his problem.
“Have you ever had an injury to your eyes before?” She asked as he held his eyes open for her to examine.
“yes, but it was over a decade ago, and the doctors said my sight would be fine.” Sans explained, worry forming a pit in his false stomach. The doctor leaned back, sorrow written on her face.
“It seems like those doctors gave a false diagnosis.” She said, shaking her head in sorrow. “The leylines that control your sight are deteriorating. We might be able to save your sight if we operate on the leylines but if it fails or if you continue to use your sight as normal, you will go blind.” She told him. Sans didn’t know how to respond.
His friends didn’t take the news very well, they all offered their support, offering to help with meals and driving him places since Sans could no longer drive himself and Papyrus was a rather busy monster.
On the day of the surgery, all his friend’s showed up, waiting just outside during the entire procedure. They all came to visit him in the recovery room when he woke up, all of them waiting for the doctor to tell them the news.
“I’m sorry, the surgery was unsuccessful.” The doctor said. The silence in the room became deafening, Sans’s soul felt like it had dropped through the chair and was now laying on the cold tile of the floor.
“Isn’t there something you can do?” Undyne asked. He had never heard her sound so desperate in his life.
“Unfortunately, no.” He told Undyne, then turned to Sans, “You should still be able to somewhat see for a few weeks, but we don’t expect your sight to stick around much longer.” Sans couldn’t respond.
“Thank you for letting us stay with you.” Papyrus told Toriel and Asgore when they finished moving their stuff over two weeks later. Sans had lost his job when he told his employer about his condition, and they couldn’t keep their house up and running on Papyrus’s income alone.
“There is no problem. We want to help as much as possible.” Asgore told them. Frisk gave them a thumbs up, happy that their favorite skeleton duo was moving in with them.
Every day, Sans’s sight became worse and worse, the spots taking up nearly half his vision and the blurriness so bad he could barely read anymore. He wasn’t able to understand the little human’s sign language unless they signed very slowly. They started learning morse code as a joke, saying that when Sans’s sight gave out, they would at least still be able to communicate by Frisk tapping words out onto Sans’s hand.
‘Do you understand me?” Frisk tapped while they were practicing.
“yep, i can hear you loud and clear kiddo.” Sans joked, earning a tiny giggle from the child.
The day his sight went out was a scary one, but it wasn’t as if he wasn’t prepared for it. Sans had opened his eyes to darkness, which wasn’t completely abnormal, he had woken to scares like this before. He tried reigniting his eyelights, but nothing. He tried again, still nothing. Sans sat there, knowing what was going on.
He was blind.
Sans had sat there on his bed, too scared about falling over or getting lost to risk navigating the rather large house. Toriel had come into his room later in the morning where Sans told her the news. He was scared, not knowing what was in the future for him.
He knew one thing though, he still had his life and his family to help him. Even though, in that moment he wanted to curl up under his borrowed bed and never emerge, he knew he had to continue, if not for himself, then for his friends and family.