ShelterTale

ShelterTale Part 20

Sans dragged his hand down his face, drawing out the sound of bone scraping bone. He looked at the four human SOULs being kept stable in four cylindrical containers, then glanced at the clock on the wall, noting the ungodly hour. He let out his second long sigh of the night.

The souls were delicate and he didn't want to move them, but he also didn't want to leave them unattended for even a moment. Those containers were rushed work, and even though Sans could usually take pride in the quality of his creations, he wasn't confident they wouldn't suddenly malfunction.

After a third, smaller sigh, Sans took out his cellphone and selected a number from his contacts.

***

Wingdings woke from his somewhat fitful sleep to a positively screeching noise. At least, it sounded that way until his head cleared up a bit. The king clutched his fractured skull with one hand and reached for the phone on his nightstand with the other.

"Sans?" he asked, not bothering to check the caller ID. Only his own children could understand him without the use of sign language, and only Sans would be up at two o'clock in the damn morning.

"hey, dad," an uncharacteristically strained voice came out of the speakers. "i know it's late, but can you come down to the lab? something happened. i... i don't know how to deal with it."

Wingdings sat up straighter in his bed. Even as a child, Sans had always been overly independent, taking care of everything on his own. If he ever asked for help, it was because he truly couldn't manage alone. Now that he was an experienced and accomplished adult, anything he couldn't handle alone was serious business.

"Are you hurt?" the king asked, throwing his sheets back and standing up. A spike of pain hit his skull from moving too quickly and he clutched it, swaying, but he managed to stay upright.

"i'm not hurt," Sans answered sincerely. "technically, there aren't any lives on the line? it's hard to explain over the phone. fuck, i'm still processing."

Whatever it was, it didn't sound good. "I'm on my way, Sans." Wingdings ended the call and shoved his phone in his robe pocket. He didn't bother to get dressed in proper clothes and immediately started on his way to the lab. Sans didn't offer to teleport him, so he assumed it was an issue he couldn't take his eyes off of. Or perhaps he couldn't move? He said he wasn't hurt.

Wingdings arrived as soon as he could and made a beeline for the lab basement that was his son's territory. He knocked on the heavy metal door, "Sans? I'm here. Can you open the door?"

To his relief, the door swung open, but the king's anxiety resurfaced when he saw the positively haggard look on his son's face.

"hey, dad." The first prince tried to wear a normal smile, but it looked incredibly painful. He stepped aside to let Wingdings in, allowing the king to glimpse the four human SOULs sitting contained on the back counter. "so, i saw something pretty messed up. heh." There was no joy in that laugh.

The king stared with his sockets as wide as they could go and stepped just far enough inside that Sans could close the door. He stared at the SOULs, noticing that they weren't in immediate danger of shattering. When he could finally tear his eyes away, he looked back at his son's face. Every trace of his usually cool and composed demeanor was gone, shredded into messy ribbons that only further tangled his expression.

The king composed himself, walked further into the lab, and pulled out a chair for himself to sit on. He prepared another one and gestured for Sans to take it. The first prince practically collapsed into it. His legs were shaking. It was hard to tell with the dim lighting, but his complexion wasn't looking so good either.

"Walk me through it step by step," he ordered calmly.

Sans started explaining what he'd seen and heard on the recording. First, his voice was just a little shaky, then he started trembling, and by the end he was sobbing. Wingdings wished he could understand why—truly understand—but he did his best. He moved his chair closer and put an arm around his son's back, giving him a shoulder to cry on.

The story with the apparently monster-worshipping human cultists was disturbing, but as far as Wingdings could tell that was only a smaller part of what was troubling his son. He didn't think it was the death of humans that got to him, considering he must have seen plenty of recorded deaths before. Was it the way that they were killed? Was it why they were killed? Did it have to do with the proximity of their deaths to the shelter? Or maybe he thought he could have prevented it somehow if he had done something differently.

A furrowed look of confusion settled on the king's face as he realized that he truly didn't know. Whatever Sans was feeling right now was too complex for him to reason through with so little information. Feeling stuck, the king just let the boy cry into his shoulder and kept rubbing his humerus with a reassuring grip, his skull turning a thousand miles a minute.

"You... um," Wingdings cursed to himself. None of his trains of thought were going anywhere. What sort of reassurance wouldn't make Sans feel worse? What did he want to hear? "I'm sorry? No. Good job?" He absently scratched at the scar on top of his skull with his free hand and sighed apologetically. "I... don't know what you're feeling to know how to respond."

Sans laughed through one of his sobs and moaned into his father's robe. "i don't know what i'm feeling either, but it hurts."

Wingdings looked down at his trembling child, frowned, and held him more tightly. "I'm here for you, Sans."

The prince's sobbing intensified, and the king nearly said something else in a hurry, but the way Sans held him tighter made him think he had said the right thing after all, so he didn't move or speak and just let the boy cry. After a long while, they were finally ready to talk about the souls.

"i used what i remembered from your notes to make some containers for them," Sans sniffed, rubbing a last magical tear out of his eye socket. "i'm not too confident in how well they'll hold up. i don't know what to do with them after this—i'm not even sure why i went to get them." He looked worryingly somber for a moment before recovering again.

"Well," Wingdings pondered, "there are a lot of potential uses for a human SOUL, and we didn't have any on hand until now. Perhaps you could simply study them and see if anything pans out."

Sans turned to look at the four colorful souls, floating quietly in their containers as if they were sleeping. They had seemed so afraid when they sought help in his embrace. Did he really save them from breaking just for them to become research materials? Not to mention, they had been left fading for hours, and their colors weren't so bright anymore.

Did they have any consciousness left to care about any of that?

"i'll consider it. in the meantime, could you help me make some more permanent containers for them?"

"Well, it's certainly been a good while, but I'll give it my best go. Mind if I borrow a lab coat and some coffee?"

"help yourself."

The king chuckled and traded the robe over his pajamas for a lab coat over his pajamas. He looked the part once he had a coffee cup in his hand.

Wingdings chuckled again, "This feels a bit like one of our father son science projects."

Sans smiled weakly, hoping for the world that this wouldn't be a recurring project.