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There’s bloodstains on the inside of the sleeves when you give the jacket back to Sans. You hope he doesn’t notice this time
He mentioned it once when you were over, saying he’d flipped it inside out to wash it and noticed the rust color left over. You’d frozen up and hadn’t spoken for the rest of the night. He’d tried everything he could think of to make you talk, but you couldn’t even sign a sorry to him. He’d mumbled a “shit kid,” and then pulled you close and let you sleep on his shoulder the rest of the night.
He hasn’t told Toriel yet.
You're positive she’d watch you like a hawk, lock away the sharps, stop letting you go to Sans’s.
You don’t think she’d get it.
You’ve tried to stop, internalize your feelings more, not let them end up in lines of blood across your body and you woke up with scratches you didn’t remember making.
You stopped trying after Toriel asked about the ones on your neck.
You’ve got a sort of guilt calling her your Mom. Like you’re just replacing the two four six eight children she lost before she got you.
You don’t want her to feel obligated to be your mother. You call her Mom to hers and everyone else’s face but it hurts in a way you can’t block out.
You’re seventeen and you’ve called her mom for eight years, but it still rips at you.
Sans knows.
He knows because you told him one night after showing up drunk and he was mad and you cried and cried on his couch because it hurt to call her mom and it Hurt to know that you were just a replacement child and it HURT to feel unwanted again like you did before the mountain and your parents would yell until you cried and then they’d yell some more until you’d fall asleep with bruises on your face and body and it HURT.
He’d gotten this sad look on his face and stopped being angry, got you a glass of water and an ibuprofen for your headache, and made you go to sleep. You woke up remembering every slurred word that exited your mouth and you’d left before he could wake up.
As you hand him his jacket, you can tell he notes the way your sweater sleeves are pulled down over your hands. You stand there for a second, adjust your backpack and say a quiet goodbye.
It feels final.
Sans can feel it too, because he asks if you want to come inside for a bit, but you decline, saying you need to get home so you can help Mom make pie. Mom comes out as a garbled mix of “Mom” and “Toriel” and he knows and he knows and he knows but you choose that moment to wave and walk away.
You take out your phone and call Toriel.
“Hey Mom.” You swallow. “Can I stay and Sans’s tonight?”
“Frisk, dear, it’s a school night.”
“I know, but Sans was gonna help me with my math homework and Papyrus is making a new spaghetti recipe and I thought it would be better to just stay over.”
“Are you sure you’ll go to bed at a reasonable time?”
“Of course, don’t want to miss out on my favorite teacher.”
You can tell she’s smiling as she says, “Alright. Have fun over there.”
“Love you, Mom.”
“Love you too, Frisk.”
The phone clicks off, and you breathe out a sigh of relief. Staring up to the mountain in front of you, you wonder why your head chose to take you to Mount Ebott.
To finish what you tried to do eight years ago, your brain replies snidely.
You walk through the opening of the cave, back in Asgore’s castle after all these years. The walls are silent as you walk, back and back and back until you’re out of the Core and in Hotland again. The heat is heavy, and you push up your sleeves, unafraid of anyone seeing you.
It’s very quiet and you’re left alone with your thoughts as you walk through the sweltering heat and through the damp crystal caves and over bridges of ice until you're at the house you haven’t visited in a long, long time.
You let yourself into Sans and Papyrus’s old house. The stairs are creaky and unused as you make your way up to his room. You unlock it, still holding the key on your phone, and look around you.
There’s no trash tornado this time, no sock pile, just a crumpled blanket on old sheets on an old, underused mattress.
There’s dust everywhere, and it probably isn’t healthy, but you curl into the blanket anyway, and it is so soft and everything is so quiet and you wish you could just disappear into this moment forever.
And then your phone buzzes.
You look and see Sans’s name on the screen.
‘kid,’ the text reads. ‘you okay? i called tori to make sure you got home okay and she said you were staying at my house’
You stare at the screen. He wasn’t supposed to call her. He wasn’t supposed to give you away like this.
Your phone buzzes again. A call from Toriel pops up on the screen and you quickly hit the decline button.
‘frisk i know you can see these,’ is the next thing that comes from Sans.
‘c’mon don’t make this hard just let us come get you’
‘frisk please’
You’re panicking. You’re not sure when you pulled the x-acto knife from your backpack, but it’s in your hands and you’re shaking and there’s so much red so much blood and you flash to Sans’s strained smile as he died, leaking ketchup from his insides and you scream, digging the blade deeper and it hurts and it’s good and you’re numb and you can feel your heart hammering behind your eye sockets and you’re getting blood all over his sheets what if he wanted these after eight years maybe this blanket’s important maybe you should just
Die.
It’s what you came down here for in the first place, isn’t it?
Your breaths get quicker and you can’t even function at this point, just curled around yourself crying. Your phone continues to buzz and you wail and scratch at your neck and you think you threw the knife because it’s not on the bed with you anymore and you’re crying and you’re crying and you can’t stop and everything hurts and it’s so quiet and you’re so alone.
So alone.
You sit like that until the bleeding stops and the crying stops and your throat is raw from screaming into your knees.
You unlock your phone.
There’s thirty missed calls from Toriel, twenty three from Asgore, fourteen from both papyrus and Undyne, and seven from Alphys.
Sans didn’t even attempt to call you, sending you a barrage of text messages instead. You glance through, hands shaking.
‘okay you’re making this difficult’
‘frisk let me come find you please everyone’s worried’
‘you don’t have to go home right away just come back’
‘don’t disappear like this’
‘i don’t know if you’re okay please just call someone’
‘text someone’
‘don’t leave like this’
‘i’m coming to find you whether you like it or not’
Your finger’s shake as you type out a reply.
‘cna you commm gte me’
It’s almost immediately after that you get a response.
‘oh my god you’re okay’
‘where are you?’
‘old snoedim house your romm’
You wrap the blanket around yourself tighter, dropping the phone on the mattress and you lie down into a little Frisk ball and wait.
It doesn’t take long, he’s got shortcuts all over.
You don’t really expect him to knock though.
“Frisk?”
You make a non-committal noise in response, no words coming out right. He comes in and stops, staring at you.
“Fuck,” he whispers. He can see the blood, see your face, see the knife across the floor and it’s almost as if his face melts.
Sans never stops smiling, but this is not right. The frown is small and drooping and his pin prick pupils are so dim.
He comes over to you and you shift, making room for him on the bed. His hand reaches to pull back the blanket and you let him, curling up further in yourself.
You can hear the sharp intake of breath. He doesn’t even need air, but he breaths anyway.
You close your eyes, hide your shame, hide your guilt. The cuts are all over your arms, two deep deep deep long vertical lines running up the length of both your forearms, smaller not so shallow ones covering the rest.
It’s a miracle you’re not dead.
“That’s-” he cuts himself off and you cringe.
You hear him mutter that he should’ve told Toriel, and you sit up.
“Don’t tell Mom!”
It’s the first time you’ve meant Mom in a long time. You’re scared. She doesn’t need to know. She can’t know. She’ll get mad, leave you, ban you, hurt you hurt you hurt hurt hurt hurt.
Sans bumps his forehead with yours, focusing your eyes to his. “Shhhhh shh shh shhh.” His hand come up to cup your face, bony, gentle on your cheeks. “Calm down.”
He’s scared too, you realize. He’s never seen you like this before. The closest was when you came to him drunk and sobbing, but even then, you didn’t have gashes up the length of your arm.
He pulls you into a hug and your voice leaves you in shaky gasps, trying not to cry. He’s got his hands around your back and you shiver. You can feel his hesitance.
“You can’t disappear like that.”
You nod, but you don’t really mean it. You don’t want to burden them, not again, not after everything they’ve done for you.
“I thought you were dead, kid.”
Your breath catches. You can’t stop the ugly noises from coming out of your mouth and you can feel him stiffen and you feel so guilty, so bad for hurting him like this, before he tightens his arms around you and you hide your face in his jacket and just let yourself cry.
Maybe you walk, maybe Sans picks you up, maybe space just moves itself around you weird, but you’re back in Sans’s Earth house room and the bed is so much more comfortable and you are so tired of yourself and you just want everything to be over.
“You want to stay here tonight?”
You nod. You don’t want Torie- MOM to see you like this. Not tonight.
He nods. “I’m gonna call Tori and let her know you’re okay.”
You lay down, curl up in his new blanket, and turn into yet another Frisk ball until he comes back in.
“It took a lot, but she’s letting you stay here tonight, and also you don’t have to go to school tomorrow.”
You muffle an okay into his pillow, and he comes and sits by you.
“Don’t disappear again.”
You nod and he ruffles your hair.
“Get some rest, kid.”
You close your eyes and take his advice.