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There were few things that Frisk was sure of, few things that she could rely on that weren’t products of her own naive hopes and past trauma from a part of her life that she’d rather not think about.
And one of those things: was dancing.
When she’d first fallen to the underground it’d been a shock, the way the magic down there had filled her veins and helped her to gain a confidence as she’d effortlessly moved her body to an unseen rhythm that had echoed within her mind and heart.
Hearing everyone’s soul songs as they’d moved to their rhythms was reassuring and comforting in a way she’d never known before.
Frisk could love, she could trust, and most of all hope without that lingering doubt that’d always plagued her. That tiny voice in the back of her head whispering, ‘when?’. When would the other shoe drop? When would she realize that no one truly wanted anything to do with her and were humoring her?
Dancing in the underground had made that voice vanish as if it’d never existed.
So that was why, even now, upon the surface after she’d helped everyone to go free— that unshakable belief that every single monster she’d helped save really did love and care for her without reservation. The loss of her ability to dance once she’d no longer been in a magic drenched underground had been devastating, but she’d been able to handle it.
After all, Frisk at least had the memories of the soulsongs of those closest to her in her mind.
She could easily recall the feelings of the BONDS she still shared with them.
All but one…
The one monster she’d wanted to experience that magical phenomenon with more than anyone, but hadn’t been given the chance, until now.
The warm winds of early fall tangled her chestnut brown locks as she stared into the sockets of the monster beside her, the sand of the beach grounding as it wove between her toes and moved across itself in a faint shimmer.
Sans had his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, but it was clear that he was fidgeting as he was wont to do when feeling nervous with how the fabric subtly shifted.
“Can… can you repeat that?” She asked, harshly swallowing around the lump in her throat.
He chuckled, “will ya dance with me, frisk?”
She blinked twice, trying to process the fact he had indeed asked her to do what she’d been practically begging him for the whole time she’d known him.
Before her… magic had vanished, at least.
Frisk looked away to take in the stretch of beach before them, her mind racing. Even if she did give him the benefit of the doubt that this offer was real and genuine, she couldn’t help asking herself ‘why?’.
Why now?
When they were now more worlds apart than they’d ever been before.
There was a tight feeling in her chest, overfull cotton and smoke.
“There’s… no point, Sans.” She whispered.
He frowned, his skeletal brows furrowing in confusion at the heart breaking cadence of her words. It was so unlike her. Frisk’s tone was always vibrant, airy and joyful. Not this. Not cracked and wounded.
“I—how could you do this now?” She spun on her heel to look at him, her hair flaring around her in a darkened halo as her golden irises shone with barely withheld tears. “How can you finally agree to dance with me when I can no longer hear you?!”
The words struck him like a blow, filling his ribs with ice as his shoulders slumped.
But as much as hearing that hurt him, saying it hurt her worse. It felt like her heart was about to literally break in two, and this time it felt awful on a level that wasn’t comparative to all the times she’d inadvertently died in combat. Every nick of a musical note given form, every blow dealt by a weapon of choice, felt nothing like this.
He was finally giving her what she’d always wanted with him, and it felt almost bitter.
The tears started to fall, and her throat went raw as she sobbed.
“I won’t be able to hear your soulsong! I won’t be able to hear mine or how our melodies blend! I won’t be able to BOND with you! O-or resonate—”
Sans curled his hands so tightly into fists his knuckles cracked.
“THAT’S NOT TRUE!”
Her breath caught as his normally reserved baritone broke across her and echoed around them, and all she could do was helplessly stare at him in shock as he kept his face turned away, hidden within the shadow of his hood.
The silence stretched.
Only the sound of the water as it crashed along the shoreline and the wind as it pulled at their clothes in a hurried gust disturbed the thick miasma of sorrow and regret drowning the both of them. The misery was so suffocating that Sans had to take a shaky breath before he dared to speak again as he looked up at her.
“you may not be able to BOND with me, frisk… but you can still resonate with me.”
Her eyes widened. “...what?”
“you won’t hear anything like you were able to with the others, that’s just how it is. there’s no changing that.” Sans’ tone was firm, unrelenting with no room for doubt, “but you don’t need magic to understand me.”
Their gazes locked, and he stood tall as he held his hand out to her, eyelights bright and…
Determined.
“we’re compatible, frisk,” Alarmingly so, enough that it had terrified him at first when he’d realized it, and honestly still did. “there’s a reason i kept telling you ‘no’. and it wasn’t because i didn’t want to dance with you. trust me, nothing on this earth could ever keep you from resonating with me.”
Her breathing hitched, and with a trembling lip she slowly looked down at his offered palm. The way the moonlight highlighted the porcelain white of his bones as it broke into colored fractals across the sand filled her chest with a quiet awe that gradually dissolved into a soft warmth.
She was as enchanted with the refraction of his being as he was the inner glow of her soul as it oscillated within the depths of her eyes, a mirage of light waves that shook the core of him.
Frisk swallowed thickly, and took a single step forward as she reached for his hand.
The moment the tips of her fingers brushed his metacarpals, he curled his phalanges around her delicate hand, and pulled her to him. The sudden loss of gravity made her eyes widen as she fell forward into his arms.
“Ah!” Frisk let out a startled cry, before going still as his arm wrapped her waist and held her firmly against his chest.
Her cheeks flushed.
They had never been this close before. She could faintly smell the salt spray of the sea in the threads of his clothing, intermingled with a faint sweetness that reminded her too much of his favorite condiment, and something else, something… like chalk and flint.
Her heart skipped as he held her hand up and interlaced their fingers together.
His breath was hot against her ear, a murmur as he relished the vanilla’d scent of her hair where it settled like silk against his teeth, “ready?”
This was it…
They were about to dance together…
…was she ready?
There’d be no music, no wonder or magic, only them.
Could she trust that?
Sans didn’t say anything, didn’t move, only continued to hold her and commit the feeling of her body against his to memory. Ever the embodiment of patience itself as he waited for her to give the answer the both of them had been subconsciously waiting for since the first moment their paths had crossed.
Since he said those words to her, that to this day still resounded in her heart.
‘take care of yourself, kid.’
And she realized in the warmth of his embrace that yes, she could.
‘‘cause someone really cares about you.’
Frisk could trust Sans to the end of time itself, when the final lights went out and the void itself collapsed inwards, leaving not even a single atom to thrive within the yawning darkness that was the nothingness of existence.
There would be no reassurances, no safety net that was a soulsong.
But she found that she was okay with that.
Because Frisk was okay with placing her faith in him.
She closed her eyes, a faint smile gracing her lips.
“Yes.”
The world fell away as he guided her into a turn.
There was no sound, no music, but it was them and the light between them all the same as she fell into step alongside him with a timeless grace no amount of magic or practice could ever give.
One that only two souls in sync could provide.