To Kill A Killer

Chapter 12: Still Just You

The blade tore through flesh and bone, his hands slick with blood as he carved another chunk from the human's wrecked, whimpering body, the gun that had killed his friend lying forgotten in their limp hand.

His footsteps echoed off the vaulted ceiling of a long, dark corridor.

There was a note left in the empty shop. 'Please don't hurt my family.'

He couldn't breathe. There was barbed wire wrapped around his SOUL.

The dust was all over him, choking him with every breath. The red scarf at his feet was stark against the snow.

His bones trembled with magic that he didn't have the energy for.

A raised hand. A wide grin. "C'mon, Dust Bunny, don't leave me hanging!"

He had no destination. No direction. He couldn't think.

A replacement.

It was too much.

Killer is dead.

Killer is dead.

Killer is dead.

He pressed his hands over his ears, squeezing his eyes shut as he walked – as if those things would help when all the noise was in his own damn head.

Beside him, Papyrus snorted derisively. "THAT'S RIGHT, HIDE IN YOUR HOOD LIKE THE COWARD YOU ARE. YOU FORGOT. YOU MISTOOK THE IMPOSTER FOR KILLER, AND YOU CAN'T EVEN FACE THAT FACT."

His phalanges dug into the sides of his skull.

"YOU'RE TOO WEAK TO BRING ANY OF US BACK, MUCH LESS HIM."

Air rasped in his ribcage. Too loud. The air was too loud. His steps were too loud. His thoughts were too loud.

"YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO SEE HIM AGAIN."

He couldn't stop. He had to keep going. Keep breathing. Keep walking. Keep thinking.

The knife slashed through him. It hurt. He couldn't breathe, he was collapsing, and it HURT, but he didn't make a sound. Didn't stop. He was the only one who could oppose the human. If he stopped moving, stopped attacking, then they won.

Another step. Another breath. His magic was boiling beneath his bones.

"ARE YOU EVEN TRYING?"

His hands tugged his hood. Dragged down the fabric. Buried themselves in Papyrus' scarf.

The snow was swirling around him. His dying brother smiled sadly. "S-STILL... I BELIEVE IN YOU! YOU CAN DO A LITTLE BETTER IF YOU JUST TRY... EVEN IF YOU DON'T THINK SO... I PROMISE."

That was why he didn't make promises. What was the point when he knew he could never keep them?

His phalanges twisted into the worn red material. Purple sparks trailed behind his shoes.

"IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU. AT LEAST KILLER WAS USEFUL."

I know.

"YOU'RE WORTHLESS."

I know, I know, I know, I know –

"YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST LET THAT HUMAN KILL YOU TOO –"

"I KNOW!"

Pain shot through his hand, and something shattered.

Slowly, he looked up.

A mirror. There was a mirror on the wall in front of him, its frame tarnished and ornate, cracks webbed across the glass. His fist was still in the centre, clenched and bloodied, red-hot lines split across his knuckles. Wide, mismatched eyes stared back at him from the shadows of a hood, eyelights burning with purple fire, bright beads of liquid forming at the edges of the sockets. The images were broken, distorted, repeated like a thousand timelines in shattered glass, and every single shard was Sans.

Sans, who was useless. Sans, who was worthless. Sans, who sat around while his friends were killed, who didn't do shit until the last minute. Who, when he actually bothered to get off his ass, just murdered them himself. Who had lost everything, over and over and over again – his brother, his best friend, his own damn self. Sans, who deserved so much worse than the glass in his knuckles and the magic spilling from his hand.

Just him. Despite everything, it was still just him.

The laugh tore itself from his throat, cutting through the musty air like a serrated knife. He staggered back, his spine hitting a door on the opposite wall, and slid to the ground, face dripping with tears, hands clutching Killer's jacket, sockets wide and eyelights burning as he laughed desperately, despairingly, at the hopeless, hateful mess in the mirror. The sound was louder than his shout had been, louder than his thoughts or his footsteps, louder than Papyrus, but nobody came. Why should they? He didn't deserve their help.

His grin stretched painfully wide across his face, he reached up and grasped the doorknob, dragging himself to his feet. The knob twisted beneath his hands, and he was sent stumbling into a thick, matted clump of stuffing, the rubber soles of his slippers squeaking against the scratched wooden floor. He stuck out a blind hand to steady himself, and felt a frayed strip of burlap give way, sandwiching itself between his palm and the wall. Below it, something heavy thunked against the hole-ridden plaster, swaying with the movement of the fabric.

He felt along the burlap, his searching fingers running down the ragged threads until they found a familiar aluminium cap.

He paused.

The same night again at an empty Grillby's, drinking from the same bottles he'd already emptied countless times. Filling the dead, dusty silence with slurred jokes and screams and sobs. An acrid burn in his throat as he vomited purple magic into the sink. Waking up in his room, his only grogginess from sleep, his only sickness from the painfully stark memories of dust choking him as his brother smiled sadly.

His phalanges dug into the fabric around the bottle's neck, tugging the knot open.

The haze, the fog that muffled the noise and silenced his thoughts. The way it made everything so distant, even the dust that he could normally still feel on his bones no matter how hard he scrubbed it off.

The fabric fell away from the bottle. The cap came off with a single practiced motion.

A slightly blurred image of Nightmare, his eye icy and his voice dangerously calm. "You are to stop this nonsense at once. You are of no use to me in your current state."

Slowly, he lifted the bottle to his mouth.

He hesitated.

Killer is dead, Killer is dead, Killer is dead –

The first gulp burnt its way down to his worthlessly Determined SOUL.

It didn't help, so he had a second. And a third.

By the tenth, things were quiet enough that he could drink the rest in peace.