She slipped poison into his drink.

That's what Sans had discovered when he had emerged into the kitchen. Clockwork, one hand holding her knife, her other pressed around Toby as he coughed up blood. And little Sally, standing with a handful of monochrome candies she must have stolen from his boyfriend.

"What the hell's going on in here?" Sans had demanded.

The funny thing about being 'man of the house' was that when Sans rose his voice, people heard. He never had that sort of authority before. Yet the moment he walked into the room, expecting only a few people to hear, the crowd of serial killers all fell silent and looked over at him.

"Nothing!" Sally squeaked, tucking the candy behind her back.

Toby tried to glare at her, but another cough rattled through his body and caused more blood to splatter into his already red-stained hand. Clockwork tightened her grip on him, staring at the blood in horror.

"Holy shit."

Sans was upon Toby in an instant, tilting his chin to see the fresh blood dripping from his mouth. To their side, a cup of coffee was splattered across the ground, the plastic cup sitting in the pool of the spilled beverage. A piece of candy, unwrapped and wet, sat slightly adjacent to the cup.

Shit. Did Sally slip one of Laughing Jack's candies into Toby's cup? Holy shit. This wasn't good.

"Is there a cure, Jack?" Clockwork asked, voice strained. "Is he...?"

"Oh, him? If he ate enough for it to be lethal then he'd already be dead." Nonchalantly, Laughing Jack waved his hand. "Sally just put it into his drink, it hadn't fully dissolved yet, and he only took a sip. He'll just be hacking up blood for the next few minutes."

Sans sighed. Thank the lord Toby wasn't dead.

Clockwork frowned at him. "Very reassuring."

"It'll have no lasting health effects, give it half an hour and he'll be fine. If he drank a more potent dose he'd be on the floor in his blood. Be happy it's this."

Clockwork huffed, before folding her arm more firmly and hoisting his entire body weight with her arm. One final glare was shot at Sally, who stared with her own narrowed eyes before Clockwork dragged away a bloody and almost limp Toby. Sans followed them for a moment before turning and looking at Sally. A girl who almost murdered someone inside of his safe house.

"Sally."

Sans kneeled in front of her. She tucked the candy further behind her back, turning away her face from his.

"Sally."

Slowly, she peeked at him, before darting her eyes back towards the now empty bar.

"Everyone else get out, I gotta talk to Sally," Sans said, looking back at the forming group of onlookers. "I think it'd be best if we handled this privately."

They left with shuffling feet. Bean whined in Laughing Jack's arms, but her clown Father distracted her with a bag of candy for her to enjoy. Then they were alone.

He didn't understand why she'd suddenly lash out and attempt to poison someone. Was Toby a threat to her? The guy seemed pretty harmless. Had some weird ideas about CreepyPasta, but that wasn't his concern.

A hand reached out. "Can I touch you? Are you comfortable with me touching you right now?"

Silently, she nodded. Sans moved forward, gently resting his hands on her shoulders.

"What's going on, kiddo?" Sans asked quietly.

It only took those soft words to make Sally turn and burst out sobbing.

She dug her small hands into his hoodie and clung to him, tears racking her body to the point of trembling. He fully brought his arms around her in an instant, holding her as she cried.

"It's not fair!" Sally said, gripping his close.

"What's not?"

"He gets to just sit around and choose he's a CreepyPasta? That's not fair! I never got to choose!" Sally sobbed into Sans' shoulder. "It's not a name I ever got to have! I never wanted to kill anyone! It's not my fault everyone is so mean!"

Oh, dear. Sans rubbed her back, staring at the floor with the realization of just how insulting Toby's philosophy was to Sally. She was raped. Killed. Had to kill people that broke into her home and scared her. None of this was ever her choice. She went through so much trauma that brought that name. And watching some man discard it without much care must be horrific to her.

How the fuck did he not realize this before? He didn't consider it. What being a CreepyPasta meant. He just always assumed it was some fancy name they held. A title.

But to people like Sally and Toby, it meant so much more than that. It represented safety. Belonging. Or something to run from.

"Sally, oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize - it's my fault, I should have spoken with him about it first," Sans said, "Do you want me to go talk to him?"

"No!"

Sally dug her hands further into the fabric of his clothing.

"You're always busy now. I hate it." Her voice, now quiet, was strained and almost dry. "We don't spend any alone time anymore. Ever since you got Bean I feel like I'm just... here. And I wanted a family."

Shit. That's another thing he completely forgot about. When he raised Paps, it was just the two of them. He could focus entirely on Papyrus. He didn't consider...

The shitty brother award goes to Sans now. He was being pretty bad to Sally right now.

"Did you bring this up with your therapist?" Sans asked her. "What did she say?"

"She said babies are hard. That they take a lot of work. But that I needed to talk to you and understand..." She sniffed, rubbing her eyes. "It's not fair though. I couldn't tell her about Toby. And I couldn't talk to you because you were always busy. I thought if I killed him it'd make things easier."

"Sally."

Sans pulled away lightly, moving forward to cup her face. She stared up at him, eyes sore and her nose running snot down her face.

"You should know that the title of CreepyPasta means something to each person individually. To you, it might be something you feel like you can never escape from. But to Toby, that name was shackles that he choose to take off. You will never have to go by any name you don't want to. Do you want to stop being a CreepyPasta? You can just become... Sally Font. My little sister. And that'll be it. If you want. Toby is allowed to consider himself no longer a CreepyPasta, but you do realize that also applies to you, right?"

Sally paused. "I... I dunno."

"That's alright. Think about it. I... I'm sorry for what's been going on with everything. You're right to feel upset over Toby disowning the name you feel like you can't. I'll have someone talk to him about it." Sans patted her shoulders as he stared down at her.

He should have noticed. He really should have. This went entirely over his head.

"And, uh, about the whole ignoring thing... I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was excluding you that much. It's entirely my fault. Why don't we have a monthly hangout date? On that specific day of the month, we'll go out for the whole day and do something. Just the two of us. I can't promise I can give you full attention every day, we live with a lot of people and we have a baby in the house, but this can secure that we spend time with one another."

When has Sans ever been this busy? Dating two people, having multiple teenagers and kids inside of his house, constantly looking over his shoulder for the police... he's never had this much going on.

He's losing his grip. Not only with his magical strength but also with his control over his life. He really should have realized this would happen with her.

Sans could train his magic another time. Right now he had to make sure he had more of a grip on the relationships inside of his life.

"Can we?" Sally asked, eyes sparkling.

"Yeah, sure. Hell, let's make it today. Every month on this date we can go out and do something. Maybe sign up for a class or something we can do monthly. I had an errand I had to do today but I'll pawn that off onto someone else. Let's spend the day together."

~~~~~~

They did just that. Spent the whole day together. Walked through a mall, let Sally explore a toy shop, and got ice cream halfway through before they went to a park with their newly bought super soakers, upon which Sans absolutely owned his sister in a battle of spraying each other and ducking behind trees.

Overall, a good and fun day. Spent some rich dude's money, made Sally happy, and ate some good homemade ice cream from a little new shop downtown. A very productive day indeed. Especially when he pulled out his ketchup bottle and made the cashier stare in utter horror as he added it to his pumpkin ice cream. Heh. Always fun to do.

Sally seemed to be having fun, which was pretty good. She had a big smile on her face all day and was practically prancing around everywhere they stopped, bursting full of energy. Occasionally she'd even run over randomly and give Sans a big and long hug, just because.

He was glad to see her having a fun time. That was good. Sally needed this. And her therapy was going pretty well with learning how to cope with all of the trauma she had. Of course, she couldn't talk about being dead, or about killing people, but it'd have to do.

"Um..."

Then Sally was pulling on his sleeve.

As Sans looked down, she bit her lip, tugging once more on the blue fabric before she slightly shuffled her feet.

"What's up, kiddo?" He asked.

"I, um... have a confession to make. About what happened at that dinner party. With Charlie." Sally sucked in a breath. "Who broke him."

Oh.

Sans leaned forward, the happiness quickly draining away when he realized what event she was talking about.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"It was... I just wanted your attention. I didn't like them. I wanted them gone. So I thought if, uh, they acted mean to me, you'd leave. So Charlie offered to take one for the team." She hugged the bear closer to her chest as she spoke about him, green eyes nervously fluttering to the side. "I... I'm sorry. Don't hate me."

Well.

Shit.

Sans leaned down, thinking back to that horrible day. He had always hated that way because of the pure dismissal his family had when dealing with someone he cared about. But they weren't lying about Sally. It was her.

"You broke him?" Sans asked, quietly.

She nodded.

Fucking shit. Shit on a -

Sans ran a hand down his face. Okay, now this was getting complicated. She poisoned Toby, and now he was finding out she framed his brother and Undyne for -

It was so obvious from the start! How did he never figure out it was Sally? Of course her story was backward. She blamed Papyrus, then somehow the blame got shifted onto Undyne and she immediately jumped onto the boat Sans would believe more. And why the hell would Undyne even ask to see a stuffed animal? The whole story was fucked from the start.

And Sans believed it. Because the only other alternative was blaming Papyrus or Sally, and he couldn't bring himself to ever try to be mad at someone he considered family.

Did this make his friends and family better? For a moment Sans considered that. Since Sally had lied, that meant they were telling the truth. That they were rightfully upset. But then the rubble crushing his foot flashed through his head and that thought was quick to be gone.

No. This didn't change his no-contact stance. They were still bad people. They made his already bad self-esteem plummet and he almost died because of his brother. Every time he thought about them he remembered another thing they said or did that'd make him question why he was ever friends with them all over again.

This didn't change that. And Sally was admitting the truth, at the very least.

She kept looking at him, shuffling her feet from side to side as she awaited his response. Sans sucked in a breath.

"I... I'm not sure how to feel about this." Sans paused. "No, correction, this is very upsetting for me to hear. I wish you had... hadn't done that, first off, and I also wish you told me sooner. But mainly - okay, okay, this is - whew." He ran a hand down his face. "I don't hate you. I never will. But I am mad at you, okay? You did a bad thing. You can't hurt other people's images or safety for attention, Sally. Alright?"

This was a pattern. He thought she was acting out earlier today because of his lack of attention, but there was more to it. Act out. Create a fuss. Rip apart her bear. Literally poison Toby.

"But it's the only way people ever listen to me." Sally sniffed, hands clasping together. "It's how you listened to me earlier. And why we're here."

She poisoned someone. And he fucking rewarded her.

He's an idiot.

Sans sighed, pressing his hands against his face.

He thought it was a one-time act out for attention against someone she really thought was insulting her and threatening her. But it was how she got attention. Hurt someone. Cause a ruckus. Get looked at. He knew it was because of her past, but this wasn't healthy. And he couldn't support this behavior. Instead of disciplining her he still clung to that damned hope and brought her out for a day of fun. Which was giving her what she wanted for terrible behavior.

"I... need to go home," Sans muttered. "Let's go home."

《》《》《》

Last chapter was kind of bare and short and mostly about sex so here's another