Welcome Home, Serial Killer

Chapter 1 - A Testimony

A gentle warm wash cloth had prodded at Sans' cheek, the skeleton limp as he allowed the blood to be cleaned from his face. The image of her body flashed over and over within his mind, the taste of vomit present in his mouth still. Right. He had thrown up.

"You can talk to me," Papyrus had whispered quietly, gently moving the wash cloth to the side.

"Nothing to talk about," Sans had mumbled, voice weak and staggering. Papyrus frowned at this. 

"If anyone should know, it should be me, right?" Papyrus asked, pausing the washcloth. "Come on Sans, we're brothers. You shouldn't keep anything from me. I'm just trying to help."

"It was fucking gruesome!" Undyne's booming voice bounced throughout the walls of Papyrus' house. "Not to mention he was a substitute, so imagine that shit! So shut the fuck up and don't question my witness! He saw the dude, so once he gets over whatever the hells going on now we can get him to testify!"

That was the funny thing about seeing something like that. After the adrenaline had faded from his bones, Sans just... was tired. Really tired. His movements were sluggish, mind hollow. All that he could think of was that scene, constantly dragging the corpse image back into his mind until he was trying to choke it back down.

Dead. The girl was dead.

Sans could barely remember another person dragging him back, or the shaking as they asked where the other man went. And he couldn't even remember Papyrus' yelling of his name when he had arrived at the school, nor could he remember the drive home. It was just a blur of emotions and confusion, building within him until it was ready to break down.

It was just a girl. Just a little girl, who hadn't known any better. A little girl who had a future ahead of her. A little girl who had made eye contact with him as she died -

"It's okay, you're not there anymore!" Papyrus said, his soothing voice bringing Sans back to reality.

The older brother clutched the other, rocking him back and forth on the toilet. The blood had been washed off already, the horrible remains of the memory finally gone. Yet the images persisted, giving detail after detail on what he had witnessed in repeat, as if the play button was on a constant loop.

It was odd, how he managed to remember it more vividly now than he had earlier. Once it had really set in, the panic and fear skyrocketed until Sans was practically numb from the many emotions combating themselves in him at the same exact time.

The emotional barrier broke down.

Large tears rolled down his face, containing all of the horror and fear he had felt before. The girl was ripped in half, right in front of him. The blood was gruesome, heck, he even had some on him earlier! What if it had been him instead, what if the man had chosen to rip him in half? What if the man had decided to go around and finish the rest of the children off while Sans couldn't even react?

It hurt. It wasn't like he knew her very much, he had only learned her name moments before she died, but seeing it... it was horrifying. It was nothing like what Sans had seen.

"This has to be the killer we've been looking for!" Undyne's loud voice yelled, "I mean, the punk saw some kid get torn in half in a second! You saw the scene, there was blood everywhere! Some of her guts were on the branches! There's no way it was a onetime off killer!"

Sans suddenly doubled down over himself to the side and vomited into the bathroom sink, the smell of the blood still fresh in his mind. He couldn't stop thinking about it, he couldn't. It was there, in his mind, reminding him about what he saw.