The Only One Like Me: Remastered Edition (Sans x Reader)

Chapter Three: London Bridge is Falling Down

That granola bar and soda bottle she picked up at the vending machine did wonders. Y/N sighed, letting the crispness of the air fill her lungs with a cold sensation before being released. Despite the world seeming to rest on her shoulders, she managed to find hope in the little things. That was enough to keep her alive.

It was curious—as she had been getting her food items, she had the sudden sensation that someone had been watching her, but in the moments following it had disappeared. In addition, her sixth sense hadn't gone off, which only furthered her inquisitiveness.

But Y/N's mind wandered off that train of thought and drew back to the topic she couldn't stop herself from thinking about: that hole.

Something about it simply fascinated her. Of course it did—she was a creature of mystery and thrillers, and this hole was the biggest mystery she had ever faced, besides...well...

Y/N quickly directed her thoughts away from that, back to the recent, familiar nuisance. Again, she imagined an underworld beneath all she had known. Sparkling water, shimmering light, scorching heat, calm echoes of life. A wonderland more fantastical and aesthetic than anything Carroll could dream up. It was beautiful, in her mind's eye, though it might not even exist anywhere else but.

And again, the prospect of seeing for herself presented itself in her mind. What's the harm, her mind always asked. Literally everything will be harmed was the usual answer. She preferred her brain matter contained inside her head rather than splattered on the floor of a tunnel to the center of the Earth.

Like yesterday, the idea lingered longer than she liked. Y/N couldn't dismiss it outright, for once. There was still an inconsolable part of her desperate to know, no matter the cost.

What if...maybe...

Her heartbeat took off in her excitement, and her mind went wild with possibilities. She could hardly breathe from the stifling, pure adrenaline pumping through her bloodstream. On a typical day, when her overactive imagination took a hold of her like this, she was able to scold it back into order, in this reminding herself that she did indeed contain a microscopic speck of common sense.

Today was not a typical day, apparently. Tuning out her inner voice begging her to go see was not an option. The clamoring inside her consciousness was rising in volume like a tidal wave, and they slammed into the walls she had so carefully contained them in, cracking them in moments and crashing over her senses. She wasn't prepared for her defenses to be breached so easily, and she was most certainly not prepared to be corrupted in a snap afterwards.

Y/N abruptly stopped. She had been walking back from the store after browsing the products and awkwardly avoiding the other customers (ending up in her purchasing a box of the granola bars from the vending machine, as she had discovered they were actually very good), but now she was rooted in place. Luckily, no one was around, or else they would have questioned why a woman carrying a grocery bag had suddenly frozen in the middle of the sidewalk with an insane look on her face.

Then, like gravity, the hole began to pull her in.

Her mind was in a frenzy. The sane part of her was determined to keep a grasp on reality, but the more dominant part of her brain was speed-walking (somehow more smart than her yesterday self) to the place she couldn't take her mind off. Her body was moving on its own accord, too caught up to slow down now. Her pace didn't change as the landscape turned from suburbia to wilderness, and neither did it slow when she throttled down the steep decline of the basin.

Y/N blinked, and she was seated at the edge of the hole, leaning over it precariously and staring with an intense, obsessive gaze. Control was finally returned to her begging hands, and she jerked back once again, scrambling back and dirtying her nicer blue jeans with streaks of blackish dirt.