Archive of Our Own

A knife pins your leg to the hall's floor. You'd reach to remove it if your hands weren't pinned in the same way.

Even pain gave up on you a long time ago. The tears streaking down your face are just as much an illusion to you as death— just a Reset and they're gone. You grow tired of pretending to feel hurt for a moment and look up blankly at Chara as they plant their foot on your chest.

"You know, friend, I told you humans were harder to kill than monsters," they say, twirling a knife like a baton. "We're persistent little roaches. Should have a monster actually wanted to kill me for my SOUL, it would've taken an awful lot of determination to kill me. I'm sure you know."

You'd sign some taunt like too bad there's none left to try, but your hands are kind of tied right now. Or impaled and bleeding profusely.

(your friend backstage in your mind doesn't seem to know what pain is, either, beyond the fact that some people find black comedy hilarious.)

For a moment, you're sure you see Chara's incessant smile waver— maybe the color even drains from their cheeks a bit. As if they had a memory of how even the King, famous declaring war on humanity, allowed an 'oversight' and let Chara stay as an honorary monster. As if they didn't have their own human SOUL. As if they weren't one of the roadblocks dangling freedom out of reach from monsterkind.

Chara spent so much time hiding from themself, you're not surprised it took them so long to confront you.

(some people took the king's oversight as a sign of mercy. some in his inner cicle took it as cowardice at the prospect of finishing the job. you, when you found this out in another timeline, thought this 'Sans' was just being lazy. you had found it far too easy to kill him the first time, almost like he had given up halfway through the battle.)

"Oh, gracious, look at me chatting up a storm," Chara says. "I'll be waiting right here to greet you as soon as you come back."

They raise their knife, seem to think better of it, and slip it into the hoodie's pocket they can instead rip out the knives pinning your hands into the ground. You remember you're supposed to wince in pain and do it a second too late— wooden acting. They barely notice as their knives reach their zenith.

Wait, you sign. Stupid. As if they ever waited. You win. I'll RESET and bring everything back.

"I've made my mistake trusting a human once already," they say. And yet they haven't killed you yet.

Time is the worst gift that can be given to a thing like you.

You can't RESET with my Determination overpowering yours. If you kill me, I'll keep coming back. Asriel will stay dead, you sign furiously with your broken hands. But if you let me fix this, I can bring them all back.

"As if you take me for a fool," Chara says. "You'll just do it again."

You can watch my every step. If I hurt anyone, you can end me for real.

A line is whispered to you. You sign it: You want to see him again.

They hesitate again. You expect some type of dramatic conclusion. You feel like you've earned it, in a way. It smells like copper and sweat and clothes you haven't changed at all in your long-term memory.

(you aren't sure what possessed you to sign those things— then again, you're not sure what drives you, just that it's taken you off a cliff and hurtling toward a rocky shore.)

Chara seems to ponder. Drops of your blood fall from the blades onto your clothes. You remember how Asriel had offered you a change of clothes when you got snail pie on them, as if your clothes weren't covered constantly in blood and dust and dirt and filth and you hate yourself you hate—

The knives drive down into your chest.

"I refuse," Chara says, casting a disgusted glance down at you. "I'll kill you every time until you don't come back at all. Only then will I say I win."

—-

Take 37.

If you keep refusing, I'll eventually kill you, you say. Beads of sweat roll down Chara's face from bangs plastered to their forehead. Then you really won't ever see him again.

"I find it worth never seeing him again in exchange for watching the life die in your eyes," they say.

A maelstrom of blades gathered behind your back while you were signing. You walk futilely closer to Chara as they impale you and don't break your stride as you RESET and head into the battle again.

—-

Take 103.

Game over.

"i know you can do it!" you hear a familiar voice say with more belief in you then he ever had in himself. "METTA! stay determined..."

Your essence seems to pause. You could go back, but Chara won't budge. And, if you're being honest with yourself, you aren't getting much further in the fight than last time.

But if you start over again anyway, maybe Chara would be pacified seeing Asriel again. Or better yet, maybe they'd forget all this. Their SOUL and all it remembers is bound to the timeline too.

(and, god, you're so tired.)

You RESET.

The timeline yanks every molecule back as if tethered. A world forms itself from dust. Knives rip themselves free from monsters' hearts. An evacuation backwards becomes monsters settling happily back into a town. Your sick death march forward becomes a gradual retreat.

It all settles with you on your back. You smell pollen in the air. Birds chirp far, far away, as if telling you this is the last you'll ever hear of the sky.

*It's likely the universe is just a projection, anyway, you've been told. By whom, you don't remember. You see the words on your eyelids like teleprompters. *Why not give them a good show, darling?

—-

The Ruins loom behind you.

You spent a longer time than usual with Papyrus, cooking spaghetti for dinner (and breakfast— and lunch...) and spending lazy afternoons spread out on the floor with junior jumble and crosswords coating the carpet. You gave this world time to heal, you think.

(and yourself, too, just maybe- the third time you smushed 'FUNNYBONE' into the boxes for a crossword puzzle  answer, milk came out of papyrus's nose bone laughing and you started laughing too and it almost felt natural. not like you were just doing it because you had to. almost.)

No leaves or stones dare cross your path, just a single stick. You step over it the way you know you should and keep walking, waiting for it to snap behind you.

It doesn't.

For once, this scenario has managed to startle you. Your steps are usually calculated, the same distance in each stride, one foot in front of the other. Today you find yourself walking as briskly as if to shake your sins off your back.

Your legs stop involuntarily at the bridge. The sound of your footsteps continues without you. It takes you a moment to realize it's coming from behind you. Even at your irregular stride, they matched you step for step to avoid being heard.

"Human. Don't you know how to greet a new friend? Turn around and shake my hand."

A normal human would be relieved. You try and be like that. You turn around for the old whoopie cushion in the hand trick.

Chara sinks their knife into your chest the second you face them. It's as if they waited for you to turn so they could see your eyes roll back into the sockets.

That's always funny.

"I don't forgive," Chara says as your body collapses into the snow, "and I don't forget."

—-

"Prove to me that you can best even the Great Papyrus!" Papyrus says. "Then I'll permit your exit!"

*Papyrus— 8 ATT 2 DEF, a voice whispers. *Only wants the best for you. 

So let him die for you, the voice leaves unfinished.

You think about the first time you fell. You had wanted to die. You were so confused. You were so scared. You were so... furious.

And then you felt nothing. As if only a part of you had died in the fall. You can thaw those feelings one at a time behind your numb exterior, but only as a thought exercise. The only difference between rage and joy for you is the chemical used to produce them.  

Still, rage roars to life a little too quickly when you take the stick and slice his SOUL open with it.

For a moment, the world is still. You feel as if everyone on the surface held their breath and it all exhaled in the chill that pervades the Ruins. Papyrus collapses to his knees. You can't tell if he's shaking or if you are. "H-human... do you really... hate me after all?"

Your eyes bore holes deeper than his eye sockets. How many times did he call to ask if you preferred rigatoni or rotini? How many times did he read with you a bedtime story about a brave royal guardsman and fall asleep before you did?  How many times had you called him 'big brother' as you closed the book and settled in to the sounds of his breathing?

How many times had you murdered him without remorse?  

"No... I'm just letting my emotions get away from me," he says, his own dust choking his throat. "I still believe in you, friend! I know this isn't how you really are! Anyone can be a good person if they believe!"

Then why did you abandon your brother? you sign.

The lights in his eyes dim to two unfocused points.

Oh, you're sick, you tell yourself. You can't just kill him. You have to let him burn in despair.

I'm hopeless. I always was. I always will be.

"Don't say that!" Papyrus says. The dots of light he calls 'eyes' focus in for you. "Even... the Great Papyrus makes mistakes, human. I know that must be a shock to you! I... I suppose I thought I could fix them through you."

His body makes the most delightful soundtrack to this as it falls apart. You hold his head still in your hands. "But! Anyone can fix their mistakes! It's never too late to start over! I still have my head! I can become a, er... headmaster of my own cooking school! It'll be great! I'll still invite you to attend my cooking lessons! I'll still—"

Your palms meet as you crush the skull in between your hands. A cloud of dust floats and obscures your face for a moment. When it clears, your expression hadn't changed since when you initiated the battle.

Your LOVE increases— not from 1 to 2, but higher still. You've been ready for this day.  

You've let Chara kill you a hundred times. They're almost bored of it now, spitting out the same tired dialogue as if waiting for the director to get frustrated and just pick a decent take.

Now, it'll be showtime.

—-

You stop voluntarily this time before the makeshift 'gate' and try your hardest to keep your body still.

"Human. Don't you know how to greet a new friend? Turn around and shake my hand."

This is it. You inhale. You turn. You know.  

You grab Chara's hand, but instead of shaking, you twist their wrist back a way it wasn't meant to be bent and force the blade back to them and drive it into their own throat.

(blood, it's so satisfying to see blood for once besides your own. and you LOVE the shock on their face.)

"I don't forgive," your voice says, with a mind of its own, "or forget, either."

Chara collapses into the snow, sputtering. Drops of red glisten like oceans of red on the white. A steady stream drips from Chara's mouth, as if draining all that rosy color in their cheeks.

*They're ready for their closeup! you hear. Laughter pounds your chest and rings in your ears like the whole surface was watching as one grand audience. You laugh as Chara reaches for their knife in their throat; you laugh as you grab it and their eyes meet yours; you laugh as you rip it out and you see their eyes roll back this time.

It's nothing more than inconvenient to you that they leave a body behind. At least monsters knew how to clean up after themselves when they were no longer useful.

You take their hand- knife to meet you!- and begin to drag them through the snow. Whether because of the temperature or blood loss, their body is going cold fast. Pebbles tumble off the edge of the cliff you finally settle upon. The inky nothingness below is silent, not even wind, but your ears are packed full of incessant laughing anyway.

To think, just a few days ago (or weeks— or years) you'd been poised to jump and end your life like this. And now here we are!

You toss Chara's body into the abyss. Their eyes never close, not until you can't see each other anymore.

Slipping the knife into your pocket, you kick fresh snow over the red. Good as new. It's with a spring in your step and a whistle that you cross the bridge to meet Asriel for the first time.

—-

The conveniently-shaped lamp casts dramatic shadows on your face when he first approaches. How odd. It's never even been plugged in.

"Chara!" the goat-child says. "It's been hours!! Hours! And you still haven't re-calibrated your—"

He stops in his tracks. "Oh! Howdy! Pardon my bad manners, mortal! I thought you were my sibling! Have you seen them, by any chance?" he asks. "They're a human! You can't miss 'em."

You shrug. Never seen a human, you sign.

He replies too in sign language, as if to avoid being rude, Oh, okay! Well, if you see them, tell them to recalibrate their puzzles! The absolute awesome and cool god of HYPERDEATH demands it!

Asriel begins to back away, tugging on his scarf. "Mweh heh—" he begins to laugh, then covers his mouth with one hand. Heh, he concludes by signing.

You wait until he's gone before signing Ha Ha Ha to yourself.

—-

Suspiciously-human-looking new friend! Asriel signs as soon as you stop before the colored tile puzzle. I wasn't going to do these since Chara didn't recalibrate their puzzles and it's not like you're really a human, but...

You watch his ears twitch in excitement. I got this cool new puzzle from my awesome Dr. Dad!! So we gotta try it out, ok? Yeah? Great! he finishes.

You step onto the unactivated puzzle floor.

"HEY!" he says, then covers his mouth again. You consider speaking to tell him you can hear- you've responded to his spoken words, for god's sake- but can't be bothered. You're supposed to stand over there! I didn't turn it on!

Another step leaves the smallest smear of red on a grey tile. There's color for him, you think. You hear laughter again, but you're not laughing, and neither is he.

You wouldn't be surprised if the last person in the world to laugh had already done it.

Aw, man! Asriel signs. It's ok if you didn't feel like it. I'll leave the instructions here so you can do it yourself, ok? I'm going to keep looking for Chara. Enjoy yourself, mortal! The great deity demands it!

He leaves the paper on a snowbank and runs off. You pick it up. It's chicken-scratch mixed with excited pawprints.

Silently, you head back to the nearest rope bridge. You fold the instructions into a paper plane and watch the abyss below swallow the white paper whole.

Ha Ha Ha.

—-

Snowdin is evacuated by the time you reach it. You loot shops and homes— not that you need money anymore, but it just seems like something an animal like you would do.

The first time you killed everyone, you fought Asriel just ahead, and yet you've already altered this timeline far beyond what you've ever done before. Asriel had run back and forth through puzzles he activated himself for greater mobility, asking more frantically each time if you'd seen Chara.

They're never this late! he signed. To your amusement, each description of Chara was less and less flattering. You sure you haven't seen them? They're really lazy and have a weird little freckle like right here? He gestured at his throat.

You were tempted to sign that they would have a lot more there than a freckle. But you simply had walked past Asriel as if he wasn't there.

—-

In an earlier timeline, Asriel explained to you that he was supposed to be on the lookout for passing humans. He said 'Dr. Dad' did lots of cool research on SOULs and he'd probably do a checkup on you or something before letting you go.

"BORING!" he'd said, so excited he gave up trying to remember how to sign everything out. "I have a really cool idea! A secret idea! If I get a human SOUL, I can become a REAL god and I can go to the surface to free everyone!"

This he explained as stars rained from the nonexistant sky and punctured you with nonexistant pain. "Dr. Dad will be so proud of me! Sans will make a pie shaped like my head! And I'll become a really cool royal guardsperson like Mom!!"

In your last genocide timeline, you killed him before he could speak or sign a word. You shot Icarus from the sky before he got close to the sun. In this earlier timeline, you were already depraved. You wanted to see what would happen if he killed you.

So you caught all his shooting stars and made all his wishes come true. With your HP at 1, he'd smiled so big you thought it must hurt (as if you would know) and he bounced over to you. "Ok! Ok ok ok! Now I gotta figure out how to borrow your SOUL! Just for a sec, I swear! You and me can make everyone so happy! I just gotta... figure out how to—"

"You have to kill me," you said.

(you only seemed to speak at your most comfortable. what turned your spigot and allowed your words to flow again? the prospect of your death? or watching the hope drain from his face?)

"Wh-what?"

"You have to kill me and take my SOUL by force."

He tried to smile again. You remembered a past timeline (how many were there, how many times had you tried every variation of this little game?) where you counted his teeth.

You remember an even earlier timeline where you had done it while he wasn't near death.

"O-oh, I get it! You're making a joke! Haha... Chara tells jokes like that too, sometimes."

You hadn't changed expression.

"If you wanted a human SOUL," you said, "you could have taken Chara's."

"NO!" he shouted. "That— that doesn't count!"

"Why not? You're only 'borrowing' it."

"I— I don't know, okay?! I couldn't borrow their SOUL. I-it's theirs! I couldn't... hurt them."

"'Hurt'," you say. You were speaking almost involuntarily. The ink was barely dry on the script before you read it off. "You knew, didn't you? You knew you'd have to kill them."

Asriel backed up, repelled by you, running from you. "You're lying! You're just— you're just trying to make me mad! Take it back!"

"Do you want to disappoint everyone?"

And he froze. Predictable.

"Everyone's praying for this, I bet. Research is so slow, and you have a better idea than the King. You'd be so famous." There was a glint in your eye. "Your Dad would even come out of his lab."

"H-how'd you...?"

"I know." Your body lifted itself up to its feet as if on strings. "I know, darling, that in this world, it's kill or be killed."

"No... stop it!" he shouted. "STOP IT!"

Asriel ran away.

And yet, when you actually killed him in the next timeline, he still used his dying breath to tell you that he would still be your friend.

He forgave. He forgot. Not necessarily in that order, though.

You die. He dies. You kill. You spare. None of it will matter when the curtains close. Only Chara had been the exception.

And you wouldn't have to worry about them anymore.

—-

White.

Every time you confronted Asriel, the first thing you'd seen had been his rainbow scarf. His fur had blended right in to the snow.

This time he blends in so well that you can't see him at all. In fact, he's not there.

The wind blanketed any potential tracks. How curious. You could just continue on to Waterfall right now if you wanted— though you'd have lower LV to fight Toriel, unfortunately.

You shrug and keep walking. It doesn't matter.

The show must go on.

—-

—-

"Howdy."

All timelines are different, even in a small way. Something to keep the show 'fresh'. Sometimes when you made it to this 'judgement hall', you heard a bell ringing. Sometimes, you heard birds chirping.

Now, you hear nothing but the voice before you.

"It's been a little while, huh?" he says. He tugs at his scarf. "... I never got to introduce myself properly, did I? I was too busy... looking for Chara... heh."

You step closer. Asriel's nose used to twitch when he was nervous. Now, he's deathly still.

"I'm Asriel. I was gonna be a 'great god' or something, but... my parents are proud of me already."

A pause. "Or, uh... were. I wish I... realized that while they were. Still alive."

You take another testing step closer. A familiar knife dances in your hands.

"Y'know, I looked all the places Chara hangs out. They were just... gone. Poof," Asriel says. He's studying his feet. "Everyone I tried to ask was running away. They said there was a human killing everyone.

"Heh... to think I was so mad... I said Chara would never hurt anybody." Asriel looks directly at you for the first time. He's grinning. It seems so friendly, the type of smile you'd give someone if you were adopting them into your family. But his eyes have a sharpness that you've only seen in a certain flower. "I get it now, though. They meant you."

You can't seem to make yourself express anything other than a shrug. Your hand does the work for you, twirling the blade that took Chara's life. You always did speak with your hands.

"M-maybe there's no-one left to free," Asriel says. His voice cracks. "But... I have a surprise. One last thing I can do. You'll see! I can—"

He grasps his hands to his chest after you slice it open. He looks at his own dust and seems to try to put it back in himself for a futile second— like a puppy licking its death wound. His mouth hangs agape.

"I can... still be a great god that saves everyone... I can— I can—"

You slit his throat like you killed his sibling. He clutches his throat and the dust spills from his uncovered chest again.

"I... can..."

His SOUL materializes before him, white and pure as the snow you dragged Chara's body through. It's so fragile— monster SOULs are the weakest forms of SOUL energy. A breeze could shatter it right now.

A crack spreads in it like glass. He screams breathlessly. Then he exhales. His final breath and the SOUL snaps in half.

...

But it refused.

Drops of red stain the SOUL like Chara's blood on the snow. You watch in shock- okay, apathy- as it pours into all the cracks and holds the SOUL together like glue. Asriel's wounds patch up as if sewed together by string.

It hits you then. Asriel didn't develop some overused trope-like hunter's eyes. They were the narrow eyes that watched you die so many times in this same hall.

"I can FIGHT!" Asriel exclaims. "And my first order of business as a god is to strike you down!"

As if he'd said let there be light, a flash of color blinds you and you stagger blindly into the stars shattering through the ceiling. These aren't little sparklers, they're supernovas burning into the spacelike void you've carved yourself into.

You're still alive when the light settles. Your skin may or may not have disintegrated and you may or may not only be able to see a shape ahead of you and nothing else, but you're alive.

"You made it through that?" Asriel says. You hear a second voice underneath his— faint, but there, just loud enough to mock you. "Huh. I was told that humans are persistent little roaches to kill." He chuckles. "Well, you would know. You dirty sibling killer."

The knife rattles as if alive on the floor nearby. You reach out and grab it and immediately yank your hand back, hot it's so hot it's pure fire and the blade sizzles and sparks like it just came out of the forge.

"They talked a lot about not trusting humans. They didn't want me to call them one," Asriel says. "At first, I didn't believe that humans could be so awful. But... looks like for every human like them, there's one like you."

You struggle to your feet only to be knocked back down. "Oh, how rude of me, chatting up a storm! You aren't even talking back. Here, your god will make this easy for you to understand."

Blindly, you remember Asriel in his dying moments. He had been shocked you'd hurt him. He had believed in humans so much. "Human! The soon-to-be great god commands you to... to tell Chara it's not your fault." he had said. "... Please... if you can do that... for me..."

I W-I-L-L N-E-V-E-R F-O-R-G-I-V-E Y-O-U, he signs now. He grasps your face in a hand.

Then he fires the beam.

(they say the last thing people see is black. in your dying moments, you see every color you know and some you can't even name beyond how they burned.)

—-

"Don't you have anything better to do?" Asriel says as soon as you LOAD.

You scratch your chin. Nah.

"Aren't you tired yet, mortal?" Asriel asks after disintegrating you.

You stretch your freshly-respawned body and pretend to run through a mental checklist. I'm good.

"Will you GIVE UP yet?" Asriel spits the thirtieth time he kills you and the thirty-first time you reload.

Not yet, you say. Not with such a pressing motivation.

"What?" he says. "What do you mean?"

I guess I just love seeing— dramatic pause, — how much you CHARA 'bout your sibling!

You swear he burns your body into ashes and the ashes into a black spot on the floor that time.

Asriel was no god if not a vengeful one. One of the torturing, "make you beg me to kill you" types. Nothing infuriated him more than watching you shrug off every death like a poke on the shoulder.

You just can't care anymore. You had wanted to die, once. You thought of it as an end to pain. You suppose it kind of was. Your pain was over. But you couldn't rest.

You had hoped to meet Death and met a stupid flower who wanted to be your best friend. Robbed of the idea of a 'Grim Reaper', you decided to politely cast all monsters across Styx yourself.

So when it was finally all over, after damning all their SOULs to Hell before you made your entrance, you'd have such a great audience waiting for you.

—-

*ASRIEL— ?? ATT ?? DEF

*Macbeth.

You're sure that, in some strange alternate universe where Chara narrated instead, they would describe you like this:

*FRISK— I TOLD YOU SO ATT, YOU DIDNT LISTEN DEF

*At least they brought us together in the end.

*Make it the last thing they do.

—-

You leap over the volley of knives (check), do a somersault and slide underneath the beam he fires (can't forget that one), then finally leap and slash upwards at Asriel. You're not sure if it's his hubris that allows you to hit him or knowing that each time you 'kill' him, his SOUL will snap right back into place.

You've choreographed every dodge into a unique dance. Every death only stretches the show longer. It's only a matter of time.

FIGHT. Miss. FIGHT. Miss. FIGHT. Hit— just kidding, you were killed by it once but now here you are, striking a pose as Asriel grows more and more furious.

"Why are you doing this?" Asriel demands. "Do you really think you're not deserving of retribution?!"

No, you sign.

"I demand an explanation!"

Bored, you sign.

"Because you're BORED!?" Asriel's voice shakes the palace. "You killed my sibling because you were BORED?!"

You weren't going to do it yourself. I did you a favor.

"You did nothing of the sort, you sick mortal!"

Why are YOU doing this, Asriel? What will you do if you kill me?

"I'll..." For a moment, you see a boy rather than a god. "I'll bring everyone back!" he says. "And everything will be ok again!"

You'll RESET.

"Yeah! I mean... of course, human!"

If you do, I'll come back too. I'll come back every time.

"Th-then I'll smite you again!"

And then what? You go to the surface and gather more SOULs? You break the barrier? Don't make me laugh, you say, as if you've laughed at all since this had all started. War will break out as soon as they leave the Underground. Imagine when they see you with the SOULs of children, one of them your sibling's.

"It's not my fault! I... I didn't kill them! You did!" He points at you, genuinely points at you like a kid pointing out their bully to the hall monitor.

You've read somewhere that gods are fueled by belief. You haven't exactly left a wide pool of believers for Asriel to gain power— unless the dust in your nails and in your hair is whispering prayers without you. That would explain the voices.

*And if gods are powered by belief, you're told, *what better way to put an end to this than cull his own?

Nobody will believe you didn't kill Chara, you say. Only we know the truth. You can't even kill one human, Asriel. How can you kill all of them? 

"Stop it!" He shuts his eyes to avoid seeing your sign language— or to block off the welling tears. Your body aches to kill again. It's an itch, an ache behind the eyes, an invasive thought: just one more, you tell yourself. Just one more kill. The same logic spoken by those addicted to nicotine.

(but that kills you faster.)

It would be so easy to kill him now with his eyes closed and his hooves shaking, click clack click clack on the floor that should be rightfully coated in your blood. You could run up now and chop his head off and punt it into that idiot King's face.

But that's so boring. You'll settle in and rest when you're dead.

So long as you're tortured in limbo— why not have some fun?

You open your mouth and the words flow like tar. "Even roaches survive a nuclear bomb," you say. Oh god (is that ironic?), that feels good. "What was it your sibling called us again? Hm... I forgot. Can you ask them for me?"

"I... I—"

"It doesn't matter how strong you are, Asriel," you say. You've held the tone of someone reading the back of a shampoo bottle. Yet, now you hiss through your broken little teeth: "You can be a god all you want, but there's always going to be nonbelievers."

"Stop it! I— I, as your god, order you to— to shut up!"

Light gathers in his hands and bursts before your heart gets out another beat. The whole hall embraces it, burning, searing, cleansing— but you move forward, inch by inch, as if trudging through a blizzard. Your health reaches 1, then 0.1, then 0.01, then 0.00000000001.

"I SAID STOP!"

You press on, the coals of hell at your feet. You stand face to face with Asriel. You stop. You wait, even as your health plummets and your body screams in agony. You grin at him.

You FIGHT.

The light dies when you stab Asriel. He puts a hand to his chest, as if to keep the dust from falling out. How naive. Up close, you can hardly see the color or shape of his eyes through the tears.

"How.. how could I lose?" he says, not to you, to himself. You wonder if he hears a reply. "I'm... the absolute god of... hyperdeath..."

"And you'll die like the rest of them."

You see a ghost of a word on his lips— 'mom' or 'dad' or 'sibling' or 'friend' or something predictably Asriel. He spends what feels like hours trying to find the right word.

"I don't care about the plan," says the boy rather than the god. "I— I don't care about what it takes. I just... want this to be over."

You raise your knife. God bows before man on his knees, clutching his chest. He raises up a hand. "So please— just... let me win—"

But you refused.

(coup de grâce: noun

a final blow or shot given to kill a wounded person or animal.

A 'mercy kill'. Words your simple mind would've thought never went together until you were denied one.)

"Chara." Funny how he manages to speak even after you slit his throat. Maybe that's the power of a deity. "Chara— I'm sorry. I'm so sorry... I don't wanna be a god. I just want to be your brother. Chara—"

His hand reaches to his face. His eyebrows raise in surprise as his own hand wipes his fur clean of tears. He sniffles as it rubs his nose, too.  They barely seem to register you're there.

How moving. You swear you could shed a tear. Could, not would. Your eyes are as dry as your pool of excuses as you watch the same cracks form in Asriel's SOUL. Red veins snake around it and start to squeeze it back together it frantically. You see the red pulsing, urging, but a second later the SOUL snaps in half.

"— I'm so sorry."

And it crumbles to dust. Just like all the others. You're not sure how long you stand there, wondering how many humans witnessed an apotheosis and a fall from grace in the same day.

If nobody stops you, you suppose you'll be the last.

*In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground, you hear. *For out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return— Genesis 3:19.

—-

"... odd. i've never seen a flower cry before."

King Sans notices you for the first time as you crunch on a flower below. Somehow, his eyes are closed. "heya. by any chance have you seen any murderous humans on the loose? that plant came pretty far to warn me about 'em."

I've never seen a human, you sign.

"man," he says. "i wish i could say the same."

He almost just stands there and takes it when you attack him. As if he knows it's futile. People always did say the king had a sharp intellect hiding behind that dumb grin of his.

"just remember," he says. "you wanted this."

A circle of bullets surrounds him, but you're sure his SOUL snaps before they hit. He doesn't wipe that smile off his face even in his last moment of life.

'Flowey' sprouts from where he stood. "See? I never betrayed you!" they say, their voice frantic. "It was all an act! I was just waiting for the dramatic reveal! After all it's me your best friend! I can be helpful, I won't get in your way, I won't hog your limelight I swear! I can— I can help..."

A shadow passes over their face. You think their face has shifted to the 'true' Flowey, but all you see is potential ways they'll die.

"oh... what am i saying? i've never helped you..." they say. their words practically fall to the floor like tears.  "i always let you down. im sorry metta... i'm... so sorry... p l e a s e  k i l l  m e . . ."

You remember when you fell the first time. "oh... I know how scary it is!" the flower had said. "I died once too." 

It had confused you so much at first. What had it meant? But before you could ponder their death, you were rapidly facing your own in the face of a ring of bullets.

(a note: panicked and shocked at being alive, you once ran into them as they closed in on you. that was the first time you died. it wasn't a minute before you were in the same situation. was that when you snapped? was that when death was nothing to you but something you shrugged off?)

A hundred times, you barely walked through the Ruins until Papyrus took to leading you by the hand, you were so inconsolable. A hundred times, you stared at the training dummy wondering if there was a way it could kill you.

One time, you took your stick and cut the dummy straight in half. Anger. Hatred. They had all become such distant concepts to you. You should already be dead. The dead didn't have feelings.

Or so you thought, as you now watch the former ghost watching you with tears in their eyes.

Your body aches with burns and cuts and anger. You stab the flower again and again, until you can't even recognize a face, until there's not even a flower left. Then you do nothing but stab the ground where they’d been, making sure to crush any roots they could have left behind, chipping out the floor bit by bit until the knife breaks in your hand.

Fury. Indignation. Vexation. It's as if you waited until nobody could see you before you screamed up at the cave ceiling that those stupid monsters called their 'sky' and not even your echo wanted to reply to you.

You grab the broken blade of the knife in your hands. Each piece is too small to use to take your life. You bring one to your own throat, you feel the crawling flesh and the dust falling on your skin and tears stinging your eyes and the world stops.

You can't move your body. The blood has halted in your veins. A teardrop hangs in the air in front of you.

This is it. Somehow, you always knew the world hated you. You thought somehow doing all this would be revenge against it. And yet here you are, frozen in the timeline you thought you controlled because you finally did something it didn't like. You've died a thousand times and not one of them was good enough for you, and now this is your punishment.

You swear that you can hear that laugh track pounding your ear drums one last time.

—-

Blackness. Then: a spotlight cuts through it. The child it focuses on casts no shadow.

Their body is as bent and lifeless as a discarded stage prop. Somehow, you're sure it was until now. They crack their backwards joints and roll their head on their shoulders but never swap that smile on their face.

A grey, lifeless quality tints their skin. You're not sure if they're human.

You're not sure if you are, either.

*Hello, they say. They don't use sign language. They don't speak verbal language. They simply seem to express, and you hear. *I am Metta. 

*I owe you a huge thanks.

*Your power awakened me from death.

It's not that you can't move your body— you can't even sense it. You are no longer anything. You have no eyes to see this with. You have no mind to comprehend this with. Yet, somehow, you are.

*At first, I was so confused. Our plan had failed, no?

*Why was I alive?

*Then I had an epiphany. I realized the purpose of my reincarnation. I realized why we've done all this.

*It was for fun.

*You've shown me not even dying can keep me from the spotlight.

*Chara. Asriel. Papyrus. Sans. Even you. You all were such great actors in my show. All the grief felt so... real.

*As if anything matters to you. To us.

What matters to you is you can no longer feel the metal shard at your throat.

*'LOVE'. There's no love in show business, darling. What needs to be done will be done no matter what- or who- has to be cut down.

*You.

*You're the only human who understands that.

*I can't wait for the encore.

One thing remains, too: your exhaustion. Death is synonymous with rest in so many cultures but you've been nothing but on your feet since you fell. You feel as if your eyes are being held open, otherwise you'd simply embrace the void now.

*Now. You know what needs to be done. Let's close the curtains on this miserable world and move on to the next.

You don't want to live anymore. You don't want to die anymore. You don't want to there to be a 'next' world. You're being offered To Be and you simply no longer want anything.

You refuse to erase the world.

*oh?

*How strange... this isn't scripted.

Their eyes grow wide with mock excitement. When they finally open their mouth to speak, a black goo like a mouthful of soil leaks out.

*w h e n  h a v e  y o u  e v e r  h a d  a  c h o i c e  i n  y o u r  r o l e ?

They close in on you, hinging and unhinging their jaw in something like 'laughter'. Their attack doesn't just kill you like the others' did— it shatters your SOUL into a thousand pieces, a million pieces, one shard for every time you died and started over.

The pain is as excruciating as if all of it from all the combined timelines hit you at once. Your mind is white hot pain for only a fraction of a second, but you feel as if this world is frozen in time. And the spotlight cuts and the void silences your scream and every fragment of your SOUL rains into the nothingness.

For once, you experience what you've put them all through: what it feels like for a monster to become dust.