Before the Storm ( Sans x Reader )

11. Into the Unknown

The Missing Piece

No matter the cost.

You wiped the trail of blood from the corner of your mouth, wincing at the metallic taste that flooded your senses as the tip of your tongue brushed against the hot liquid. It was a comfort, almost, the way that your blood provided some form of warmth against the startling coldness that had begun to seep through your limbs since the start of the battle, the same type of warmth that often settled into the limbs of those that had begun their descent into the clutches of death, where the walls between reality blurred and the afterlife, whatever realm lay beyond this existence, emerged.

You knew that this was a fight that you could and would not win from the moment you had taken charge, decided to confront the demonic entity that was so intent on ripping your soul from your corporeal form and using the depths of your magic that were trapped inside your mind to unleash havoc and chaos upon the rest of the world that you had not yet known.

Why had you fought a losing battle?

Perhaps it had been out of spite and hatred, hatred for the scientist whom you fought against now. Even though the mind of the scientist no longer controlled his vessel, it was still the same deformed pair of hands whom crafted the magic, the same narrowed pair of eyes that glinted at you through the cracked pair of spectacles on his face. So even if you were not fighting the scientist himself, perhaps this was your sadistic way of exacting your revenge, to perhaps make the feeble ghost of a consciousness that still existed inside his mind to feel the same pain that you and the two skeletons had felt every time you had been strapped on that damn metal table, screaming as bolt after bolt of electricity snaked its way down your spine, numbing all your senses until you felt nothing but pain, pain, pain!

Or perhaps it was for the skeletons themselves, the two skeletons that you had finally accepted as living creatures rather than inanimate objects, things that you had tried to distance yourself from in the fear that they might wither into dust at the slightest touch, that they might one day crumble into ash on the operating table and you would find yourself alone once more.

Because you were always alone, were you not? You were always the one who had watched generation after generation of test subjects wander through these walls, test subjects you had allowed yourself to grow attached to, form relationships with only to have them die right before your very eyes. So you had distanced yourself, kept your mind and heart closed from every living thing around you, to numb out the pain and disappointment as the experiments descended into their own blubbering insanity, internal systems collapsing as the result of some faulty wiring.

But Sans and Papyrus had been different.

They had lived where others had died, lived the longest out of all the experiments that had come and gone in your lifetime. And so the faint inkling of hope had manifested inside your mind, the flare of determination and wonder that perhaps you wouldn't be alone after all, that these would live, that you wouldn't have to watch as the scientist carried away their ashes and thrown them away into flame, no memory that they had ever existed apart from the ghost of the memories that existed within your mind.

You had allowed them to become people that you cared for and you were determined to not let another person close to you die. So yes, that was why you were fighting, even when the odds were not in your favour, why you were fighting against an entity who had the power of immortals on their side.

"And yet you have failed at even that," Kris sighed as if reading your innermost thoughts, a prospect that greatly unnerved you. For the mind of man was often one's last sanctuary and if that was violated, where then could you hide? The daemon took a step closer to you and knelt in front of your crumpled form, tilting your chin upwards so that the two of you stated eye to eye.