[FGOD Error Sans] - Nature vs Nurture

The Dark Sanses (Point of Divergence)

... It's been a whole year again since I updated anything. Being an adult sucks, but the money is worth it, I guess. Take the suffering of everyone here as a reward for your patience.

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The Destruction of an entire Universe and its inhabitants was... comically simple for all the suffering it involved for the Monsters of this and his original Multiverse. Before everything changed, long before his family was anything more than Chroma and his God, destroying was a simple and easy routine to get lost in.

Find a universe.

Enter.

Kill all the inhabitants.

Destroy the now-empty husk.

Return home.

Repeat the process until your Soul gets satisfied.

It was intoxicating, the Souls breaking beneath his threads, fighting or accepting death with open arms; it made no difference. The dust and the red made it all worthwhile, Chroma's encouragement as he created space for the Multiverse, and the joy he felt seeing beautiful new Universes being created that he would one day destroy.

(And if perhaps these days he didn't find the same joy in doing his job, that wasn't important... it never was.)

A whole Multiverse of distance hadn't changed that routine; it had only added steps and changed the team accompanying him on his mission. On certain days, he could even pretend nothing had changed, no matter how unfair it was for everyone involved to see others in their place.

But at the end of the day, it was a routine that had no reason to be broken at all. His Dark Sans had long since surpassed the normal Monster in strength and power. Any fight against even one of them was merely an act to buy time, an unwavering hope that their Creator would arrive at any moment and drive them away.

Most of their victims found that hope to be in vain.

Even when he did bother to appear, either alone or with Dream and Blue, Ink was quick to show where his loyalties lay, not even glancing at the world dying around him. His gaze always sought out Erimos, and it was rare for him to look any other way once he found him on the battlefield. However, that part of the routine had become increasingly... uncomfortable with each passing year.

The Destroyer wasn't blind, even if he tried to be. Ink's growing coldness toward the Copies wasn't a secret to the Dark Sans or the Sans Council. The latter blamed him for it, and he couldn't disagree when the Copies' existence was for his sake and the preservation of his sanity after all.

It was logical that Ink would have to desensitize himself to the deaths of these Universes; their only function was to stand out and be destroyed by his threads whenever he felt it necessary. All to keep alive the Universes that truly mattered, the ones Ink could afford to love, the wails of the inhabitants of the Copies were completely ignored these days, not even a glance to spare.

("They're copies, I created them for you, and it's not like you're killing the versions I put effort into, right?" That was the explanation he got, and it was such a strange situation, but familiar in a way he'd rather not think about.

Because those words...

"They're for you, Eri! They'll see you coming and be grateful to have inhabited our Multiverse, after all, I didn't create them to last."

It reminded him so much of the ones Chróma once told him when they were starting to fulfill their role, but where Chróma balanced his disinterest with some kindness, in the way that his creations did not see death by his hands as something to fear, and Ink...