Chapter Text
The lamp kept swinging noiselessly on top of the pole, bathing the surrounding several meters in the light of the soul inside. The ever-whispering darkness kept following its prey — its well-deserved prey that was ready to become one with it yet was so dastardly torn out of its grasp at the very last moment.
Now that prey was under the light’s protection, and it was walking away, surprised by the kindness the soulless creature had shown it as it tightly held onto its savior’s hand.
The prey in question was Dust.
Dust had no idea where the strength to fight had come from and why he’d suddenly tore off the spot in his rush to get to the light. Perhaps, it was because that light was warm, or perhaps, it was because it was the cheerful and compassionate Blueberry holding the lamp. At least, he used to be cheerful and compassionate.
Dust ran up to him and pulled him into a hug: “I’m so glad to see you! If you’re here, it means I’m not the only one who survived!”
He was surprised when the ever-cheerful Blue didn’t hug him back. The kid must’ve been startled. After all, it’s not every day that a serial killer with more than a few screws hopelessly lost, is happy to see you. Or perhaps, the kid was just as lost and confused about where they were.
If Dust was in his comfort zone of death and destruction, he never would’ve wished for this parody of a Sans to hug him — but here, lost in this strange and terrifying place, where even the ghost of his brother refused to show his face, Dust wanted to feel another person’s warmth and hear their words of comfort.
The problem was that the body inside Dust’s embrace had no warmth to share. It was actually surprisingly cold. He didn’t get any comforting words or silly promises either. That’s when Dust toned down on the excitement and pulled away from Blue. He took a closer look at the kid and started to slowly back away.
“Who the Void are you?!”
He kept backing away, until the dark amalgamation once again had him in its greedy claws. However, before it could celebrate its victory, it was once again scared off by the light of the soul.
Blue — a pathligher — was slowly walking towards the terrified Dust. His eyes were void of any meaning or feeling — which was further complemented by the emptiness inside his ribcage.
He stopped a step away from Dust. He was soulless and cold but — unlike the darkness — he meant the murderer no harm, and the soft light of the soul coming from inside the lamp felt like a beacon, inviting him to travel. Blue’s expressionless eyes seemed to look past Dust. Gone were the familiar stars, and the circles of eyelights looked dull, especially in comparison with the blindingly bright soul.
Blue didn’t answer Dust’s question but held out his hand. And Dust took it.
That’s how his long trek through the darkness started — in silence, accompanied by the whispers in the dark and protected by the light of Blue’s soul.
Dust kept thinking of all sorts of eerie things. For example, he was belatedly struck with the idea that he was in the bowels of Purgatory, and the soulless Blue was taking him to Hell. He had a hard time believing a more optimistic version of this was possible: one where Blue could be leading him towards light and peace.
His world was dead, after all. Not just his world — his whole Multiverse fell into obscurity — which meant he must've gone with it.
Thoughts such as this one kept weighing him down: the kind of heavy burden that he wished to share with someone. There was no one but his soulless guide available though, so that’s who he chose to share his story with. It was long and bleak, which seemed to fit the atmosphere around them perfectly.
Back at the beginning, things weren’t so bad. He was a regular monster, living in a regular world. He had a brother, a job, a few friends. Then came a human and ruined his fragile happiness. In all honesty, if all of the evil they’d caused stayed with them — on their hands and in their LV — Sans wouldn’t have hated them. He had always been too lazy for hatred. He would’ve accepted it as his fate: He got to see everyone he held dear die. And then he died himself.
The problems started when he woke up alive and lived through that pain again. And again. And again. More than three hundred “again”s.
No one would’ve stayed sane after going through this torment. Sans wasn’t an exception.
He just wanted the pain to stop. And yet, he was so consumed with achieving his goal that he forgot about the other things that no longer mattered. Sans only realized his mistake when his own jacket turned grey with dust, when his own bone attacks pierced the chest of his dear brother. When, for the first time, the human looked horrified upon leaving the Ruins.
The human refused to return after their death. They left Sans to rot away, all alone in the crumbling world.
Sins, regrets, pain and loneliness kept bearing down on the skeleton for years, exacerbating the long-present schizophrenia. Sans could no longer tell what was real and what was a product of his sick mind. The ghost of Papyrus, for example, must’ve been real, because he didn’t let him forget his sins. The octopus that came out of a portal, however, was definitely a hallucination — and hallucinations had to be ignored.
“I’m talking to you, you doormat!” Nightmare snapped at the skeleton, who kept ignoring him, and picked him up with his tentacles. He gave his captive a shake, unleashing a thick cloud of dust into the air — thick enough to hide Sans from sight for a couple of moments.
“Oh! So you’re real? On second thought… Nah, definitely not. There’s no one alive here: I’ve killed them all!”
Nightmare was pretty skeptical as he examined this epitome of a mental disorder in action, unsure whether he had use for such an unstable specimen. However, the dust covering the jacket and the smile that spoke of hidden pain, helped him make his choice: “You’ll do, dusty. If you pledge your loyalty to me, I’ll take you to my castle.”
“Dusty? Oh, right. I’m a dusty throw rug, right?!” Sans guffawed.
Nightmare cringed and figured he’d get the answer out of him later, when the lunatic had his symptoms better handled and believed in reality more than in his sick fantasies. He took the new recruit to his lair, where his previously acquired rogues were waiting.
“Who’s that, Boss?” Killer was watching the new delivery with unmistakable disgust.
“Is it food?” The ever-hungry Horror pulled out an axe.
“No, you idiots. It’s your new teammate!” Nightmare said and put Sans down on the floor. The new arrival looked around, saw two alternate versions of himself and immediately engaged in a conversation with someone invisible. He lowered himself to the floor then and started to sway from side to side.
Killer and Horror shared a look then stared at their boss with the same expression of confusion written on their faces. Their leader responded with the same sort of expression, then faltered and addressed his team: “He’s not sane…”
“We’ve noticed!”
“...so you’re going to watch him and call me once this duster’s mind clears. Or whenever he starts making more sense.” Nightmare hurried to retire to his chambers, not willing to play a part in this farce.
His soldiers cringed but didn’t argue.
“Maybe we could hit him with something heavy and tell Night he’d offed himself?” Killer suggested, grinning.
“Or we could eat him and tell Night he ran away?” Horror supported the idea of getting rid of the lunatic.
They didn’t bother keeping their voices low, but this still got no reaction from the new Sans. He was still sitting, swaying and talking to things no one else could see.
Nothing could bring him back to reality. Horror even offered him a chunk of meat, practically putting his heart — well, not exactly his — into the gesture. It didn’t help. Killer tried poking a knife into the spaces between the other’s ribs, and got the same lack of reaction.
In the end, they left him be and were extremely surprised when a couple of hours later he got up and came over himself. He didn’t ask many questions: only clarified whether he was asleep and where he was. He wasn’t at all surprised to find out that he wasn’t asleep, that he was surrounded by alternate versions of himself, and that he was actually in an entirely different universe. He wasn’t able to talk to Nightmare that day though, having withdrawn into his shell, overwhelmed by the new information.
He only managed to talk to his boss a couple of days later. As Killer eloquently put it, his screws tightened — the ones that were still left, that is.
Sans reacted calmly to the idea of terrorizing worlds in the company of lowlifes like himself. He didn’t mind his new nickname — Dust — either. In general, he only had three states of being: “I’m gonna kill everyone”, “I’m talking to my brother”, and “I’m a little flower”. The third one was the calmest one: in this state Dust dissociated from reality and withdrew into the unknowable depths of his mind. The first one occurred when Nightmare ordered him to attack, and in these moments the only thing the formerly pacifistic Sans could think about was raising his LV. When he was in his second state, Dust was talkative and non-aggressive — because Papyrus didn’t like violence.
The screws were slowly returning to their rightful places. Dust started to take more interest in what was happening around him.
He didn’t particularly like what was going on though. There had been a time when he wanted to protect his friends and himself from chaos and pain — and what had he come to? He was the one breaking down the defences of Sanses akin to himself and ruining their dreams. It’s as if he’d become a Chara.
Maybe, this was the right way to go about it?
No, not really, as the team of the guardians of AUs — Ink, Blue and Dream — had shown him. One day the three of them came and gave the whole gang a good thrashing.
At first Dust was actually open-minded to the idea of this trio’s existence — but then he asked himself: Where were they when he was suffering? Why didn’t they help him?
He asked Ink about this during one of their fights, and the answer he received knocked him off balance for a good long while:
“Such is your fate, Sans. And you should’ve accepted it instead of hanging out with the bad guys. Besides, I have no right to interfere with the natural order of things inside the universes. Sorry about that.”
Apology not accepted! How could he even accept it from the person, who openly suggested he returned to the life of pain and loneliness? Fate? Well, maybe this was his fate: causing mayhem, creating chaos and multiplying pain!”
Out of the three guardians of the AUs, only Blue turned out to be a nice person to talk to. Dust discovered it when the youngest guardian ended up as their prisoner.
Blue treated Dust’s story with understanding and was sympathetic to his plight. He asked the murderer to leave Nightmare and try searching for a new path in life.
“Anybody can be a good person if they just try.”
These were the words his brother said a long time ago — right before he died.
Blue didn’t die. He was saved. And Dust started to consider his options. Perhaps, it would really be best for him to leave the gang?
However, before Dust had the opportunity to make the final decision, a chain of events happened that came to be the beginning of the end.
Nightmare killed Dream and ate the apple of his soul like a ripe fruit.
This upset the balance. It grew fragile like an egg shell, and Nightmare used this opportunity to conquer universe after universe, turning the entire Multiverse dark and unstable. Bright emotions started to fade away, while the darker ones grew excessively. There was nothing the remaining guardians could do to stop him. They could only watch the Multiverse fall to ruin.
Then the Multiverse faced another upheaval: Error killed Ink.
There was no one left to protect the worlds then. Blue couldn’t even protect himself, and he was about to join his friends in death — but something happened in that moment. Something frightening.
Killer had already raised the knife over the crying last guardian for the final strike — when everyone heard an eerie voice. It came like a punch to the gut, leaving everyone’s backs slick with sweat and souls beating in agony.
“You failed to meet the expectations placed upon you!”
The battle came to a halt. No one — not even Nightmare — could force themself to keep going. Everyone felt the awful pressure of the unknown force — and something else too. It felt as if not only all of the happiness vanished from the Multiverse, but it also took every shred of emotions, desires, wishes and hopes with it.
For the first time ever, Nightmare was scared, and for once, he regretted killing his brother. Even Error piped down, holed up inside his abode all of a sudden, like a black cat in a dark room, and stopped showing up. The others seemed to turn into ghosts of their former selves, searching for the peace they’d lost.
The last time Dust saw Blue was inside Ink’s Void. The kid was silent, standing still, like a statue, and staring up at the painted sky with an empty sort of look inside his bright eyes. He noticed Dust and gave him a weak smile:
“This is the end, right?” was the only thing he said then.
Dust didn’t answer. He didn’t want to lie, didn’t like to make promises, and didn’t know what was going on. So he walked up to the other and stared up at the painted sky as well.
They remained like that until it came.
It was an… indescribable something — as if someone wounded the Multiverse itself, and the wound split forth to form the shape of a living being. It had everything inside it: light and darkness, life and death, all and nothing — and all of it kept flickering like stars and burning out.
No one could do anything about this thing. The moment anyone got close, they got sucked into this creature — to the place where hundreds of worlds rested already.
It came — and the Multiverse simply ceased to exist. Everyone ceased to exist. Even the Void ceased to exist.
Dust thought he’d ceased to exist as well. He found himself lying in pitch darkness, and he was just trying to grasp what had happened, when the darkness spoke to him all of a sudden. It surrounded him at all sides, promising to give him peace as it clung to him with hundreds of hands and called him with thousands of voices.
“Join us! You’ll like it with us! You’ll never be alone!”
“Don’t touch me!” Dust screamed and tried to fight back with magic — only to find that he had no magic left — and physical strength meant nothing in a fight against this creature.
The darkness kept pulling him in, squeezing him in its deadly embrace and smothering him with promises. Dust was about to give in… when he saw Blue. He felt the other’s warm bright light and broke out of the scorching embrace.
That’s how Dust ended up as a new resident of Zero Infinity, trekking through the thick darkness with the formerly cheerful guardian — now a soulless guide, whose soul was trapped within the cage of a lamp. Dust recounted his life’s story for his companion and got no response. He had no idea where he was led to and why. He simply kept walking, thinking about the way his guide’s hand felt surprisingly cold and dead in his palm. He’d probably end up this way too.
His eyes were drawn to the hole in the other’s chest: the torn edges of the fabric around it, the bared teeth of the broken ribs and the darkness within the body.
“Did it hurt?” Dust asked. He wasn’t expecting an answer. “Are you taking me to the person who would do the same to me? Who’d tear my soul out and put it into a cage?”
Blue’s eyes momentarily twitched in an attempt to become stars, and he squeezed Dust’s hand tighter in an attempt to comfort him. Though, perhaps, Dust was imagining things. He couldn’t even guarantee the things he was seeing weren’t all a figment of his imagination. Maybe he was actually somewhere inside Night’s castle, huddled in a corner and drooling as he stared at a wall?
Ah, if only it was so! But no, everything that had happened to him was a bitter reality.
“And I thought it couldn’t get worse! I killed everyone in my world. Went insane. Ended up in Nightmare’s gang. Kept bringing chaos and death into others’ worlds. Helped destabilize the balance and saw the death of my Multiverse. And now I’m actually afraid to say that it can’t get any worse — because I know it can! And I’m scared to find out how.”
He wasn’t imagining things: Blue actually squeezed his hand tighter for a moment, and Dust thought he caught a glimpse of the familiar comforting spark in the other’s dull eyelights.
“Thanks. You always knew how to give people hope, Blue.”
Their trek through the darkness seemed to be going on forever, and at some point Dust grew weary. One moment he was walking — and the next he fell down to the stone-covered floor, exhausted. The rocks dug into his bones painfully with their sharp edges.
“Weird. Where did all these rocks come from? There’s nothing here after all — only emptiness, darkness and the amalgamation.” All of this seemed odd to him. Was there someone in here building houses that fell apart with time? “Where did all these rocks come from, Blue?”
In a way of answering the question, Blue upped the brightness of the soul inside the lamp and held it up higher, illuminating the statue-filled space around them.
Dust was instantly covered in cold sweat. A real graveyard spread around him: statues in place of headstones, and stones in place of dust. These were eerie sculptures of lives’ final moments — and Dust knew all of the deceased. Here, Nightmare was hiding his face in his hands. Here, his brother froze, his final tears unshed. Here, Horror was gnawing on his own arm. Here, Killer was stabbing himself in the chest with a knife. Here, Ink was lying on the ground and blankly staring up at the darkness of the ceiling. Here, Chara was leaning on a statue of Asriel. Here, Error froze, an insane grin on his face. And here… was Dust himself — standing and smiling at someone invisible.
Dust came closer to his statue.The gray stone was cold and lifeless, yet formed his perfect copy, except… Dust looked at his own jacket, then compared it to the one on the stone statue. They had a slightly different pocket cut. Then he examined the copy’s face and saw a thin line of a scar he didn’t have. The statue was also missing a few fingers — while Dust managed to keep the whole set.
He was hit with a realization: It was one of his alternate selves he was looking at, not himself.
“Right. If alternate universes exist, then why can’t alternate Multiverses, right? Are we in one of them?”
Blue didn’t answer. He was staring at his own statue.
The stone Blue was lying a little ways away from the others. It was easy to see this kid had been through a lifetime worth of hardships, and they left horrifying marks on his body. Then, one day, the stone Blue gave up. He lied down and couldn't get up anymore. This challenge became the one the kid wasn’t able to handle.
Dust looked at the stone figure as sadness welled up inside him, and asked, “Please, wherever you’re taking me, let’s just keep going.”
The pathlighter gave him a barely perceptible nod and held out his hand again, waited for Dust to take it and continued their journey through the darkness. The light of his soul provided Dust with hope — provided him with strength to keep on walking.