Her Guardian || Demon! Dream Sans x Reader

trēs

The body collapsed to the floor as Dream's sword disappeared and he sighed heavily. It didn't bring him pleasure to kill anyone, even a man as corrupt as Theo, but if he had let him finish talking, the man would've told him directly to kill the girl. He couldn't disobey a direct command because there weren't any loopholes to exploit, and he could tell the man was wising up to the fact that he'd skipped some very important parts of the soul contract that forbade Dream from killing him. His command to kill a corrupted soul was fulfilled threefold. It was a necessary death—though Dream liked to believe death was never necessary—and he could only brush himself off and turn to the human girl.

She was trembling as she looked up at him, and she stumbled backwards, looking close to collapse. He quickly teleported over to support her but she shoved him away and grabbed her knife out of the bottle of holy water to point at him. He looked down at it with surprise before smiling softly, his gaze warm once more as he focused back on her. "I am not going to hurt you, human," he said softly, his arms wide to show he had no weapons. He tried to calm her down with his positivity but she resisted his influence.

"You just killed them like it was nothing!" she shouted, her voice shaking as much as her body. He sighed, his arms dropping an inch before he put on a wider smile. She was terrified of him, and he didn't blame her after what he just did. Discomfort crossed his skull at his own actions but he quickly shook it off.

"They were going to kill you, human," he said, his voice just as soft and sweet as before. "If I did not kill them first, that rotten human would have instructed me to kill you in a way I could not refuse." It was calculated, and while he hated killing for any reason, knowing death was unavoidable in this scenario made him more confident in his choice. It was either kill those three corrupted men, or the pure girl. The choice was clear.

"You could kill me right now anyways!" she protested, her knife shaking even more at the thought. He sighed, realizing that this approach wasn't working. So instead he stepped back, dropping his hands to his sides. Her eyes narrowed but he couldn't get an inkling on what she was thinking. He felt her emotions—consisting of heavy distrust, caution, and fear—but her thoughts were completely unknown to him. She was unreadable.

"Why haven't you killed me already?" This time her words were much quieter, like she was both suspicious and intrigued as to why he was acting so odd. He smiled warmly in an effort to ease her mind but her expression became more guarded instead.

"I have no reason to. I was not directly told to, and I fulfilled what I was ordered to do: kill corrupted souls." He shook his head more to himself than her. "Not that I enjoy killing, per se, but even so. Your soul was uncorrupted, so I had no reason to kill you in the first place." The knife fell an inch.

"But Theo clearly wanted you to kill me." Her words were less confident now, like maybe she was mistaken.

Dream's smile looked a little closer to a smirk as he said, "What he implied was not what he explicitly told me to do, and if I recall, he told me to take care of you, so I will do just that." The way Dream said 'take care of' didn't hold Theo's hateful subtext, instead it almost sounded like a sweet promise of how he'd look after and protect her.

Her (e/c) eyes flashed with recognition, and what almost looked like a smile started to take shape on her lips. "You tricky demon," she mumbled. She'd always known them to find loopholes in any single thing they could—be it contracts or commands—but she never thought she'd see the day it was done in her favor. But what was this demon's endgame? "So you have some moral code against killing or something?"

He cocked his head to the side. "Why do you assume I want to kill you?"

"You're avoiding the question." Her gaze narrowed, the familiar demon trick of answering the question with a question to divert her attention not going over her head due to her experience with Dance trying the same thing.