Fictober 2024

(Phantom) Pain

Universe: Horrortale

MC: Papyrus

Genre: Hurt/Comfort

Warnings:
-OOC
-Barely edited
-(Badly written) meltdown
-Implied past cannibalism (but also not really cus they're monsters)
-Implied past injur(ies)y

A/N:

This is actually an idea I'd like to explore more in the future when I can make it more coherent!
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His breath comes in short, sharp, puffs, rib cage strained as he desperately claws at it through his shirt, tears in his eyes when his fingers dig into his bones and stay there, trembling all the while as he desperately tries to gather pieces of his sanity back together. Scents overwhelm him despite all the running he did to avoid the crowds, to avoid everything and everyone, sounds he can still hear distantly no matter where he goes.

It's all too much. He can usually handle them, has gotten so good at getting used to being back in such a- a robust society, but sometimes it gets too much and he remembers and his body remembers and he can't convince himself he isn't back underground.

It's painful. It's pathetic. Papyrus has been forced to realise he isn't as great as he likes to say he is, as he wishes to be, as of the last thirty something years, but especially since he got to the surface.

Dust comes off of him in flakes, unhealthy, fragile yellow bones that still refuse to go back to their pearly white colour glare back at him every time he gazes at himself. Every crack, every scar, reminds him of a past he'd rather forget.

But, well, life isn't fair. Papyrus remembers.

(While he has to watch his brother forget even him sometimes, try to reach for a better past, not the broken monster in front of him, because he must be hallucinating.

Papyrus knows Sans doesn't mean it when he says he isn't his brother, so he just tries to smile through it.

He... he tries.)

He laughs, something small, something self depreciating. Then, he sobs.

All of this because of a damn hotdog.
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("It's stupid, I know, b-but... it consumes me sometimes. I've been getting better, I promise!" Papyrus's words are a desperate plea as he flinches, skull raised from where he was facing his fidgeting hands to stare at his therapist for a second before his gaze lowers again. "It's just... I can't forget."

He stops wringing his hands, placing his skull in them as he desperately tries not to cry.

"I try, but th-then somedays something just triggers it, and I can't help feeling so hungry again, as if I'll never be full even if..."

"... Even if you eat everything around you."

His therapist continues where he pauses, hesitates. They both know what the words truly mean. It brings a strange comfort to Papyrus. It makes guilt crawl down his spine.

His teeth hurt.

(It's a phantom ache, he knows. He shouldn't be feeling it. But, he still does.)

"It'll be alright."

The human smiles at him, a sure thing, as if they wholeheartedly believe in him.

... it'll be alright. Papyrus may not be great now, but he can try to be. He gives a shaky smile back. He's always been good at trying.

(... And lying.) )
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A/N:

Speed running five prompts was not a good idea-

Next up: Undertale, Sans