For the LOVE

The room was full of beeping machines and I could smell that gag-inducing scent of industrial cleaner that every hospital uses. I didn't want to open my eyes. If I could keep them closed, nothing would be real yet. Not that I knew what was real. I had been in this place for three days now. Nothing was changing. Fragments of dreams (or were they memories?) kept skittering behind my eyes while I laid there. I had been in a car accident, my best friend Liz had been in the driver seat, when we had been t-boned by a drunk. Liz had walked away but I was laid up with a few bruised ribs and a concussion. That's what we get for celebrating right?

I figured that they would be releasing me today. Liz was due by any minute now and hopefully the paperwork for my release would be along shortly afterwards. Opening my eyes, the puke-pink walls of the hospital seem to glare back at me. I had seen too much of this hospital when I was younger that I now refused to wear ANYTHING pink. As I began to sit up, monitors beeped in warning alerting the nurses right outside.

"Morning sleepy-head! Your sister should be by soon. We need to be finishing your last few checks so you can go home today. Let's get your temp and heartrate…. You gave us a bit of a fright last night…"

"Last night? How?" I asked annoyed. What did they do all night? Watch me sleep? Creeps.

"You were shouting in your sleep. Sounded like a bad dream. Your sister said that might happen and said to turn on the music she had brought in. Once we did that, you seemed to quiet right back to sleep. Freaked us all out though…." She kept checking my vitals while she yammered on.

"Yeah…. Sorry about that. Happens every once in a while. I don't really like hospitals." I hadn't liked hospitals since I had woken up in this exact one about twenty years ago with absolutely nothing for memories.

"Well, everything seems fine. I'll let the doctor know you are ready." She smiled as she walked out the door.

'Yay….' I thought. 'I get to go home to my "sister"' Liz had been playing the "sister" card whenever I had to go to the hospital for as long as I could remember. Her family had never officially adopted me but we had been super close from the minute we had met in the elementary school cafeteria. Nothing like quite bonds people like mutual misery.

Her parents had split in a rather ugly divorce and I had been a ward of the state since I had woken in a hospital and informed that my family (not that I remembered them) was dead. It hadn't been long till we were actual friends, relying on each other when everything seemed to be against us. We weren't attracted to each other (but played the occasional lesbian couple when the need arose) bet when I had to leave CPS, we moved in together. So, when I had the occasional hiccup at school or work and blacked out, she claimed she was my sister and was able to be right by my side.

Speak of the devil and they shall appear….

"Hey lazy bones! How ya doin'?" Liz suddenly appeared in the doorway as if summoned by my thoughts.

"Not bad…. Apparently I had an interesting night but I don't remember anything."

"Normal shit then? Cool." She crossed the room to sit at my right side. She was a pretty girl, 5'4", with long wavy light brown hair. Little on the heavier scale than she would've liked but that didn't stop her sense of fashion. Turning her blue eyes to the machines and placing her latest purple backpack on the floor near my bed, she flopped into the chair beside me. I could see she still had a few scrapes on her face under all the makeup but other than that she seemed fine.

"I'm good. I'm ready to get out of here."

"Good. I'm making dinner tonight. This time we will celebrate at home."

I smiled as I used the remote to change the bed into a more comfortable position. We had been celebrating my recent job hiring as a receptionist working with the Pro-Monster Association. It had been my dream job since the monsters had first started emerging from Mt. Ebott. Who better to help them find a place (and peace) in the world than a woman who had worked so hard to find her own?

"So unless someone launches their shitty Chevy Impala up six floors, we won't be interrupted again?"

"Don't even joke about that Lauren…." Liz hit me with a stern look.

She never called me my legal name unless I made her uncomfortable.

"Sorry…" I looked away trying not the show have pissed I was. The name just never seemed like mine. I had sworn off my legal name after they had told me what it was in the hospital the first time. My parents had apparently had my DNA registered after I had run away at age six. Wonder why….

"Look. Let's just get this stupid paperwork over with and then we can go home and you can veg on your computer and watch COPS and be our normal selves again ok?" She reached over and squeezed my hand.

"That sounds so fucking perfect, you have no idea…." Sighing at her, I felt the shadow of a smile on my face.

Now to wait for the damn paperwork.

[Three Hours Later]

"You think my face look ok enough for a YouTube video?" I called from my room.

"Sure…. If you put a bag over it….." Liz answered from the living room.

'You bitch….' I laughed as I began the video. What better way to celebrate then make a video lip-syncing and dancing to Kat McSnatch's "You are a Cunt"? It sure as hell made me feel better.

Laughing until I was pretty sure I broke one of my bruised ribs, I posted the video. I hope that got some people to laugh. My channel was pretty much just Liz and I making fools of ourselves and then the last ten seconds always seemed to be the most awful laughter that could come out of my mouth. Walking down the hall to the smell of some amazing home cooking, I checked a glance at the mirror. Liz had put it at the very last bit of the hallway for 'Last Looks' before you had to see anyone in the living room. My normal waist length brown hair still seemed out of sorts even after a shower, my dull blue eyes had more than enough bags under them to qualify me for the undertaker and nothing could really hide the nasty bruise to the right side of my head. I looked like I always did. Yippee.

"Come eat before you break the mirror dork!" Liz called from the couch.

Our apartment wasn't very big but it was home for us. The living room doubled as a dining room, the actual dining table was covered in bags, crafts, and random bits of mail, so Liz had set up our dinner on the small dark wood coffee table I had found at a GoodWill years before. How she made anything in that tiny galley kitchen, I will never know. Flicking on the TV and surfing until she had found my favorite cop show, we ate her homemade chicken pot pie casserole in silence.

"You ready for your first day?" Liz said breaking the silence.

"Yeah. I'm really glad they didn't expect me to start till tomorrow," I replied.

"Well, at least you had already quit that serving job once you knew it was a done deal. I don't know what I would've done if I had had to see Nick to explain." She shivered. She had dated my manager and had recently broken up with him when she had caught him with a few of the other serving girls…. All at the same time.

"Yeah, I'll be glad to NEVER go back there. Deal?"

"Deal."

Breaking into a fit of giggles we cleaned up the dishes, made lunches of the leftovers and headed down the hall to our rooms for bed.

Before falling asleep, I turned on my music.

[A few miles away in the monster town of Above]

Sans sat on his bed in the semi-dark, the only light coming from the screen of his laptop as he ran through emails. Sleeping through the night had been a thing of the past years ago so why would he start now? Instead he wandered the internet (and all of it's darker places) in hopes of passing out before sunrise.

A ping notified him that a new email had come through. This time from Alphys.

'Probably something about work…. Or some stupid anime thing….' He thought as opened it.

"OMG, YOU TOTALLY HAVE TO WATCH THIS! XDXDXDXD" it said above a link for YouTube.

'I was wrong. More anime shit…. Well, fuck it. I'm not doing anything,' he thought as he clicked on the link. Before him was a young woman, dancing and lip-syncing to some ridiculous song and before he knew it he was laughing so hard his sides hurt. He opened his chat to Alphys and wrote her a quick message.

"that was hilarious! is this what you and undyne have been talking about this whole week?"

"OMGSANS!IDIDN'TMEANTOSENDTHATTOYOU!"

"s'ok. it was pretty funny!"

"YEAH!UNDYNESAWSOMETHINGFROMHERANDWEVEBEENWATCHINGALLHERVIDEOS! PRETTYGREAT!"

"cool. see ya at work tomorrow. night."

Closing his laptop, he placed it on the floor of his room. His room was pretty much a carbon copy of the one he had had in the underground, including the tornado and his complete lack of organization. Just because he had moved to Above with the rest of the monsters, hadn't meant he would change. Actually, a small part of him had wanted to change, but that had disappeared as quickly as Frisk had.

Laying back on his bed, he closed his eye sockets, hoping for a dreamless sleep.

He wasn't so lucky.

[After the Destruction of the Barrier]

They had done it! Finally, the barrier was gone, Frisk hadn't shown any homicidal tendencies, and together all of their friends were leaving the Underground! Sans turned his head to smile at Frisk while Papyrus took his first look at the world.

It was like something out of a horrible movie. One minute Frisk was standing beside him, smiling with tears in their eyes. Then the ground seemed to open and swallow them whole. He hadn't been quick enough to grab them with his magic. They just disappeared into nothing.

Everyone began to scream. There was no hole back into the Underground. There was no trace they had existed. They searched the entire Underground, Sans even took one of his shortcuts to visit Flowey's garden. Nothing. Soon the monsters began to lose hope. Some even thought they had imagined Frisk. Maybe they had been an angel in disguise, sent to rescue them?

Sans knew better. Sans had seen that "angel" turn into a demon time and again.

One whole year had passed since the barrier had been broken and the monsters had been building new lives above ground and still Sans searched from time to time. If it had been a Reset, why hadn't he felt it? He would've seen soul if they had died right?

So he stopped looking. He waited every day for a reset. He stopped caring. What good would it do? He still moved in with his brother when Papyrus had said their new house was ready, but he kept it the same. Why put all the effort into changing it if it would all be gone tomorrow?

On the two year anniversary, he tried to die.

Papyrus had caught him in the act and had taken him to Alphys. She had strapped him down on a table for about a day before Papyrus had freaked out and demanded a different way to keep him safe. It still hadn't mattered to Sans. Two years of constant fear had drained him of just about everything. It wasn't until Asgore had come to visit the new lab and talked to him about needed some protection for a meeting he was having with the humans that Sans showed any emotion. Anger was easy to reach for when you are that empty.

Keeping Asgore safe while he had been with a bunch of raving lunatics had felt pretty good to Sans. One or two times he had had to flash his eye and everyone seemed to calm down. It had been the assassination attempt on the way back to Above that had really brought Sans back to reality. If nothing was going to change, then he couldn't just let Asgore die. He had just been saying that Toriel had let her into her home and they were making progress. SO he couldn't let some asshole with a car bomb on the side of the road take them out.

Over his dead fucking body.

He had been able to rein in the GasterBlaster just enough to only cripple the human permanently but not kill him. The human police seemed to appreciate that.

It took a few weeks before he was able to get the clearance to work with Alphys in the new lab after that. He took every day a step at a time. He couldn't let it all pass him by anymore but that didn't mean his nights weren't plagued by the same nightmares that he had had in the past. So usually he filled them with meaningless company some nights (when he could get them past Pap) and others he spent on the computer. He had his friends, he had a decent job, he could still go to Grillby's, but still he felt that emptiness creep inside his breastbone when the sun went down.

At least tonight he had the laughter of a pretty young woman filling his head as he finished his recollections….