Under Water 2: The Red Harren [completed]

XXI

Sans' POV:

Everyone was terrified. They had all been frozen, no one had moved until the sirens were heard in the distance, and Chara and Nightmare disappeared.

Asriel was sitting down, leaning against a wall, staring off into space, mumbling something both too quiet and too distorted to understand.

Frisk was beside me, holding my hand, staring off at something that no one else could see, too. I looked over to Undyne, who was telling the police what had happened, while Alphys tried to figure out what was wrong and how they had gotten through without even a bit of disturbance to the timeline.

The rest of the people in the gym stood around talking, not understand what had happened, or what to do, or why it had happened. Most of them didn't understand who had attacked us, or why. And the ones that did were questioning how. And us, the group who had gotten targetted?

We weren't doing anything. We were frozen in this space, frozen in that time. I kept on replaying what had happened in my head over and over again, trying to understand why.

No one wanted to lose Chara. But we had. We had lost her and. . . we may never be able to get her back. . .

I felt Frisk flinch and look around. I put a hand on her shoulder, making her flinch again, and I pulled away immediately.

"Are you okay?"

"N-No, I-I'm not. I just got harassed by one of my nemesis, one of my best friends gone bad just turned on me fully, and the entire time they were both saying insulting and concerning things. So, no, I'm not fine."

She was frightened, and she was lashing out. I had to comfort her. . . I couldn't. . . lose her again. . .

I reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away.

"Frisk, please, let's just--"

"I need time to process this, Sans!" She snapped, quieting down immediately after, "I could handle the threats on my life, I could handle the impending doom every day, I could handle the off-handed comments from Nightmare, taunting me every day, but this, this is much worse than any punishment they could ever give me. It wasn't even me they hurt, it was someone I cared about, loved, even, that they hurt. And that's worse than anything they could ever do to me." Her voice was wavering and it was cracking slightly; she was about to cry, but she didn't want to.

"Frisk, I-I'm. . . sorry, that this happened, I-I know there's nothing anyone can do to help you, t-to try and help you heal, but please. . . just, don't push us all away again. This isn't your fault."

She laughed, really, truly, laughed.

"This is all my fault. I should have kept people away from me knowing how much of a danger I was, and still am. I was the one who forgot to go to her place that day, I was the one who made it there late, I was the one who wasn't there to stop Error, I was the one who thought that Nightmare was really trying to attack me, I was the one who messed it up for everyone else. So if you think that this isn't my fault, then you aren't looking at the clear facts. They aren't pretty, but they're the truth." She turned away from me, about to leave.

I grabbed her shoulder, ignoring how she instantly pulled away, "This is not your fault, Frisk."

"It's always my fault!" She shouted at the top of her lungs, her voice finally breaking, the tears falling down.

"It's--"

She wrenched her arm away from my now I gentle grasp and took off running: No one stopped her.

I wasn't about to lose her, too. I wasn't about to break something that was still fragile.

I wasn't about to be a nightmare to her.