Daddy's a Serial Killer

Chapter 22 - Open Floor Communication

This was what he did for Papyrus. Every time he misbehaved, Sans just tried to talk to him or ignore it. That's why his brother was so fucked up now. Why he walked all over Sans. Why wouldn't he? Sans practically laid down for him and pulled a rug over his chest.

This was a pattern. Sans realized that way too late. He always thought he messed up a bit while raising Papyrus, but he didn't realize... it was still happening. He talked about it with Jane before. He thought he had already fixed this issue!

He was doing it again. Sans thought he handled it but he did it again.

Sans ended up laying in their backyard, looking up at the cloud filled blue sky of early year weather as he dwelled in self-reflection. A bit chilly out. Not overly freezing now, and the weather was coming back to the warm spring and summer promised. Bean would probably enjoy splashing around in a pool.

The shuffle of grass could be heard before Jane was settled onto the ground beside Sans, letting her body flop against the untrimmed lawn. Her hair sprawled out below her, mixing with the grass, and certainly was now thoroughly dirty.

"It's a bit too early to be star gazing now, huh?" Jane asked.

"Never too early. Just because I can't see the stars doesn't mean they aren't there." Sans gestured towards the sky. "So technically I am star gazing. Just can't see what the hell I'm gazing at."

Jane dragged her head towards Sans, eyes lightly narrowed as she looked across his defeated facial expression. "So you found out about Sally's lie, huh?"

Sans frowned. "... So you knew?"

"Yeah. We all did, admittedly. It was kind of - well, super obvious."

"And why didn't you tell me?"

"When I first found out I didn't want to say anything because I was trying to get you to ditch your friends. And hey, that lie did set the coursework for your doubt. After I found out that you're really cute and an awesome person I realized that it should come from Sally herself."

Fair. Sans would have been more upset if he found out from someone other than Sally.

"Sorry, for that."

"No, no, you're good, it's just..." Sans sighed, looking to the side. "I feel stupid. I made a lot of stupid mistakes and didn't even learn from them and I'm just... I'm not going to be a good parent. What the hell was I thinking?"

"You're saying you made mistakes to a serial killer."

Sans snorted. Right. He couldn't complain to a group of people who had it worse than him.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Sans groaned.

"No one does. We just all pretend that we do. That's what life is about."

Curse Jane and her stupidly amazing ability to have her head on straight. No matter what anxiety or depressed thoughts Sans threw in her direction she'd be able to handle them. That was probably a good thing, though.

"I'm upset that she lied to me about the incident. And I'm upset that she poisoned Toby. But she had good reasons for both of them. To her, Toby was insulting everyone here, and Papyrus was always a dick. I'm frustrated but I don't want to do anything rash. I don't... I don't know. At all. What to do."

"What do you mean?"

"I know I should punish her, she almost got Toby killed! But I have to figure out how to talk to Toby about him insulting some of the CreepyPasta here, and then figure out how to talk to everyone else about their treatment of Toby because that's not fair to him. And I have a kid and two partners and a job and I am fucking swamped. I feel like my head is about to burst."