Despite Gaster's numerous threats to fire many people, it was still another week and a half before they were allowed to leave the hospital. And even then, it was with strict instruction to not go to work for a few weeks. Someone had even gotten King Asgore to come tell Gaster to take a break, and apparently the only thing Gaster couldn't do as Royal Scientist was overrule Asgore's command.

So Sans and Gaster went home.

Honestly, it wasn't all that bad to take some time off and just stay home. Papyrus was quite happy with it, too, especially because it meant his family was getting better.

There was indeed another scarred crack in Gaster's face. It ran upwards from his right eyesocket, and had half-paralyzed said eyesocket. He couldn't open it more than halfway. Overall, though, he said this didn't especially matter. He could still see out of it more or less alright, and said that it didn't really hurt much at all anymore.

Another four weeks, and Gaster decided he was going to go back to the True Lab, regardless of what people said. He had had people cleaning up the wreckage from the explosion, but didn't want them to start rebuilding until he was there.

Because yes, they were going to rebuild. He wasn't about to let something so small as an explosion get in the way of his project.

Sans spent another day or two at home before heading to work again, too. He was still a pretty sore, and moving too fast hurt, but overall he was doing well.

A month or so passed, and they got to the point where things had exploded in their faces the previous time. This time, everything worked as planned, and construction continued.

And then, suddenly, they were ready for the first real test.

They had a little camera device they would be dropping through the fold, and if everything worked right, it would come out of the fold onto a a table next to the machine. If things didn't go as planned, well, that was why they were using a camera instead of a living monster.

Gaster wanted to be the one to drop the camera into the fold, but he was the one who knew how to work everything at the control panel best, so it was Sans who would be doing the honors.

The day arrived with much excitement. Gaster couldn't sit still for a moment, and had Sans' face not already been stuck in a grin, his jaw might have been rather sore from the expression.

Everything had to be checked again before they could start it up. From system diagnostics to circuitry, wiring, and screws, everything was checked and checked again. Gaster was determined that this time, there should be no explosions.

Eventually, the checking was finished, and they were ready to start. Suddenly, all the excitement shifted to nervous tension.

Sans again stood at Gaster's side, the small black box of the camera gripped in his hand. Gaster worked at the control panel, hitting buttons and flipping switches. After a couple seconds, the machine powered up, the soft hum of fans filling the room. Gaster let it run like that for a few minutes.

"... Well, nothing's exploded yet, so I guess it's time to make the fold."

Sans bounced a little on his toes, but said nothing.

Gaster started back at the control panel. "Sans. If you want to get ready at the platform..."

The "platform" was where they would be making the entry fold. It was, quite literally, just a steel platform on the floor, some machinery running off one side of it.

Sans walked over to the platform, tense silence following him.

"Camera's on?"

Sans looked at the camera. Then he hit the on switch.

"yeah. camera's on."

"Alright. Initiating fold in three... two... one."

Gaster hit the button.

And with a peculiar sound that can only be described as the rustle of the fabric of space, everything went black. Sans cried out, jerking back, the camera slipping from his grip--

And then everything was fine.

He was standing in front of the platform, the camera on the floor at his feet. Above the platform, there was a strange sort of... displacement. Even looking directly at it, Sans couldn't really tell what was wrong, there was just something off.

"Are you okay, Sans?" Gaster asked, urgency in his voice.

"y-yeah. just startled me is all. wasn't expecting that." He leaned over to pick up the camera.

"Alright. Careful."

"yeah." Sans reached for the camera.

And then something happened. The distortion somehow flickered, and Sans found himself plummeting into darkness.

~o0o~

There hadn't been any time for Gaster to react.

One instant, Sans was there, crouched over and reaching for the camera. It was like Gaster had blinked, and in less than that instant of darkness, Sans was just gone.

Another half of a moment passed, and everything flickered black for the barest instant again, and suddenly Sans was back, landing with a crash on the table that had been the location of the exit fold, his body jerking in wild spasms that sent him flopping onto the floor.

Gaster immediately reached out and hit the emergency shutdown button, lunging away from the control panel towards where Sans was on the floor.

In the few seconds it took for Gaster to get to Sans, his stopped moving except for small trembling twitches. Gaster dropped down, crouching next to the prone figure. Not entirely sure what was wrong or what to do, but worried nonetheless, Gaster reached out and set a hand on Sans' shoulder. His jaw moved, but he found himself unable to speak.

Sans calmed down a little. Still shivering, he opened his eyesockets just a little. "d-di-ng-s."

Gaster smiled, relief flooding through him. That quickly changed back into concern, though, when Sans started struggling to get up.

"Sans, stay down. We don't know what's wrong, you shouldn't get up yet."

"n-no-- i just- need to--" Sans kept trying to get up. Gaster tried to push him back down.

Then something strange happened. It was like Sans shifted. He just sort of slipped away from Gaster's hand, twisting out of Gaster's grip. He stood and started to stagger forward.

"Sans, sit down."

When Gaster reached for him again, Sans dodged with astonishing speed, swaying away from Gaster's outstretched hand, and stumbling onward.

"i-i'm f-fine-- need to--"

"Sans, what could you possibly need to do right now?!" Gaster reached again, and Sans just flopped away with a sort of almost drunken-seeming lurch.

"j-just need t-to-- to-- tr-trashcan-"

Gaster stopped. That hadn't been what he was expecting. "What?"

Sans gestured vaguely. A moment later, he reached the trashcan in the corner of the room. He grabbed the edges of it in a tight grip, ducked his head into the can, and started coughing and choking.

Gaster swore, scrambling back to his feet and hurrying over. Just as he reached Sans, Sans pulled away from the trashcan. He staggered half a step back before collapsing. Gaster just barely managed to catch him.

Gaster lifted Sans up, the smaller skeleton totally limp in his arms. "Sans? Sans?"

The only response was a weak moan.

Gaster let out another string of curses before turning and striding out of the room, carrying Sans.

~o0o~

It was so... empty.

The black emptiness pressed in on him, the darkness obliterating his screams, his cries for help.

It was cold, so so cold. So empty.

Sans sat up and screamed.

Gaster was at his side immediately, wrapping his arms around Sans in a tight hug. Sans sat, gasping and shivering for a minute before leaning against his creator, whimpering.

Gaster hugged him even more tightly. "Hush, shh, shh. It's okay, Sans. You're okay. Everything's alright, I brought you home, you're okay."

"wh-- what ha-hap-happened?" Sans begged, pressing his face into Gaster's shoulder.

Gaster didn't let go of him. "You fell into the fold. Outside space. Apparently, it drained your Magic pretty severely. But on the bright side, the fold worked, and aside from the loss of Magic, you're alright. And you'll recover."

Sans just let out a quiet, noncommittal sound. He tried to remember.

He could remember bending over, reaching for the camera, and then...

Blackness. An astoundingly vast emptiness. An infinite nothingness.

The total lack of space.

He had never realized just how full space was. Even with his eyes closed, curled up in Gaster's arms, he could feel it. He was simply aware of it, of his surroundings (the living room of the Snowdin house), he was more aware than he ever had been of Gaster's Magic, of his lifeforce, pulsing in his chest.

Sans was aware of space. Of the expanse of it, of its protective blanket between him and the nothingness beyond.

He took a deep breath, and could feel the very existence of the air that rushed through him.

"--lright, Sans?"

Sans snapped back to attention, looking up at Gaster. "h-huh?"

"Are you alright?" Gaster repeated.

Sans was silent for a long time, trying to speak, but unable. Finally, in a hushed voice, "... h-have you ever... ever realized just how... how much there is?"

"Sans...?"

"i-... there's just so... so much. so many things and so much color and noise and light, and just so much space. and outside space..."

Gaster just blew out a breath, gently pushing Sans' skull back down to rest on his shoulder again.

They sat like that for a while.

And then Papyrus got home from school.

"...!! Dad! And Sans! I thought you two were at the lab!"

"We were." Gaster looked from Papyrus back to Sans. "There was an accident."

Papyrus looked concerned. "Oh. Is Sans alright?"

"... He will be."

"... Is there anything I can do to help?"

Before Gaster could answer, Sans wordlessly stretched out one hand to Papyrus. Papyrus quietly took Sans' hand, whereupon Sans pulled him forward. Gaster unwrapped one arm from around Sans and pulled Papyrus into the hug.

And for a while, Gaster just sat there, hugging Sans and Papyrus, his two creations curled up in his lap.

~o0o~

The next morning, Papyrus was reluctant to leave Sans and go to school. Sans said he would be fine, however, and Gaster said he was forcing Sans to take the day off anyway. That launched into a whole argument between Sans and Gaster, how Sans thought that was hypocritical of Gaster, as Gaster had refused to wait the whole recovery period when the machine had first exploded, and Gaster argued that he was the Royal Scientist, so Sans had better listen to him, dangit!

Papyrus had left the house assured that Sans would be fine.

Once he left, though, Sans brought up a topic of some concern to Gaster. He had been far too rattled to accurately talk about it yesterday, but now he told Gaster about this new awareness of space that he had.

Gaster blinked a little. "... That... actually would maybe sort of explain something. When you first fell out of the fold, you were still awake."

"really?" Sans frowned. "i don't remember."

"No, that doesn't surprise me. You were kind of..." Gaster made a sort of "out-of-it" gesture. "But you insisted on getting up. Walked over to the trashcan and threw up."

"in the trashcan, i hope?"

Gaster chuckled a little. "Yeah. In the trashcan. But before, when you were trying to get up, I was trying to grab you and keep you down. But, even as, uh, out of it as you were, you somehow still kept dodging me with room to spare."

"huh..." Sans frowned, deep in thought. Then he looked up at Gaster. "throw something at me."

Gaster frowned. "What? No! You've already been through enough. I don't want to break your skull, too."

"you won't. seriously, throw something."

"No."

"even if i go get one of pap's stuffed toys?"

Sans could tell Gaster's scientific need-to-research-everything side was winning out. "... Fine. Go get one."

Gaster ended up chucking a stuffed rabbit at Sans, which Sans avoided with ease every time. So they also got a stuffed dog, and Gaster threw both at the same time, or one right after another.

Still Sans dodged. It was as if he could feel it coming, feel the object moving towards him...

He already had a quick response time from all his training, both in the lab and from being the Judge, and now, paired with this strange new awareness of space, he could dodge practically anything Gaster could throw at him.

Eventually, Gaster wanted to see how well he could avoid actual attacks. Of course, being quite conscious of how near this was to experimenting with Sans, he got Sans' consent first, and promised to keep his attacks so weak that it wouldn't hurt any more than a hard poke should Sans get hit. Sans readily agreed.

So they left the house for Snowdin Forest, where there was plenty of room, and no one to gawk at them.

They started easy, just a few small attacks. By the end of an hour, though, Gaster was going all-out on Sans. Still Sans dodged nearly everything.

They also learned then that Gaster's Blasters' faces apparently mirrored Gaster's own, each with one scar running down from the left eyesocket, and another up from the half-closed right.

This discovery came when Gaster summoned twelve Blasters in a ring around Sans and fired them off sequentially.

For a moment, Sans was able to twist in place, pivoting around at the hips, but he knew he would only be able to keep that up for a moment or two. He could feel each individual beam arcing from the Blasters' mouths towards him through space, and just twist away in time to not get hit. The worst part was that he could also feel the space beyond the Blasters, the mercifully attack-free space, if he could just be there, instead of here, a beam shooting towards his chest, have to get out of the way, not enough time, too slow--

He couldn't have said how he did it, he just did it. He reached out for that space beyond the Blasters and pulled.

And suddenly, there was darkness, the crushing nothingness outside space, bearing down on him--

Fwoomp!

He had landed in a snowdrift. He laid there, shivering, gasping at that sweet, sweet air of space, his fingers burrowing into the snow, feeling the existence of it.

"Sans?!" Gaster was suddenly at his side.

Sans took a few deep breaths. It was okay, he was okay, he was here, in space, okay. Then he sat up. "yeah, i'm alright."

Gaster's relief was clear on his face. "That's good. It was just like when you fell into the fold, everything went dark for a second, and you were just... gone."

Sans rubbed the back of his skull. "... felt like it, too. had the same sort of..." he gestured vaguely. "and i'm feeling pretty tired..."

Then he looked up. They were still in the same clearing, but... it had been over there that Gaster had been attacking him. And it was over here that he had... pulled, or whatever.

Sans' grin widened with sudden understanding, and he looked up at Gaster. "dings, i think i just folded space."

§

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Remember, votes and Comments are not only always welcome, but always appreciated, too!