In Revenge's Wake (Undertale Fanfic)

17.

I entered a dark room, shadowed in a gloomy half light so dull I couldn't make out anything except for a few odd shapes almost flickering in the darkness. What looked like eight hospital beds were crammed in, their sheets lumpy and pointed in places.
     It wasn't a large room. I could probably walk to the other end in only a few paces, but if it were possible it felt even smaller. The air was musty, as if it had been still for a long time, and there was an odd dripping coming from a corner that I tried not to think too much about.
       My whole body was screaming at me to get out of this room; the very silence seemed to make my head hurt.
       "What is this place?" I breathed.
       It's the place the Underground tried very hard to forget. Humans trapped the things they were afraid of in the Underground. And the monsters...
      "Trapped theirs in here," I murmered, finally understanding.
      It's been many years since anyone's been here, Chara told me, They are unlikely to wake.
       My blood went cold. "So- The things- They are what's under the sheets?"
       Chara didn't answer. She didn't need to.
       I took a step back closer to the door.
      "I can't be in here," I whispered, "Something feels very very wrong."
       Flowey appeared next to me, his eye slightly narrowed as he surveyed the scene quickly around him, never stopping to rest on something for more than a few seconds.
        No.
     Chara snarled so suddenly at me I jumped in surprise.
       I brought you here to show you what you're trying to save. I brought you here, she let out a high pitched laugh, to prove that your skeleton friend, and everyone you were ever friends with, are just as bad as every human you ran from on the surface. 
       I didn't want to be here any longer. My heart was thudding out of my chest as I took another shaky step backwards. As I did so, I felt Chara shift within me. The sheets quivered. Or was that my imagination?
       I took another step back-
       I couldn't move.
       "-Chara-!" I gasped, "What are you doing?!"
        Since when were you the one in control?
        Desperately, I tried to move my feet- to turn and run, but I couldn't even bend my knees. In my fear, eyes kept playing tricks on me; a sheet seemed to move slightly in the dim lighting, a monster seemed to lurk in all the corners.
       But maybe it wasn't all just imagination. Slowly, surely, the shapes underneath the sheets seemed to grow, and I heard a raspy intake of breath from my right.
       Becoming almost light headed from fear, I tried to force my muscles to work again.
      "Chara please-!" I tried desperately.
       I'm just showing you the truth. I'm showing you what you're trying to save- who you're trusting.
         Tears of frustration and fear fell onto my face as the creatures seemed to move to the side of the hospital-type beds, the sheets beginning to slide off them.
       You can't save your 'friends' because they have always been bad. This whole world is bad. Underground and on the surface. This is why it would be better off gone. No one else remembers it but me, because they all refuse to accept it happened. It's become a myth, a ghost story. I didn't ruin them, they ruined themselves. And my work is their punishment. Their punishment for forgetting, their punishment for wrecking everything out of their own selfish greed.
        In the darkness, their figures were misshapen, unfriendly. It was too dark to make out any of their features. Eight creatures. And I knew all of them were staring at me.
        They began to get up, slow and stiff from their long slumber.
        They ruined themselves long before I ruined them.
      They stumbled drunkenly towards me, their strange limbs flailing at bed posts and walls to stay upright.
        I brought you back to understand, She whispered to me, I'm not your enemy. I've been following your journey ever since you fell onto my grave. You brought me back. Together, we could be great. We could let this world burn.
       Seven paces away.
       I know how you feel about the humans. I know what they did to you. I can see your darkest thoughts, Frisk.
       Six paces.
      We can make them pay. We can save people just like us, right now.
        I remembered my screams, I remembered calling out for help, calling for someone- anyone- to come and save me. But nobody came. Nobody ever came. Five paces.
        We had to go through it alone. But they don't have to. We can save them from that, right now. Working together, we can destroy this world and move onto the next. It's the only way to stop all of this.
         I remember begging for death. I remembered wishing the world would just end, right then and there.
       Other people feel like that, right now.
     Four paces.
      The creatures in front of you are in pain too. And it's your skeleton friend's fault.
       They were waking up, their movements slowly becoming quicker, less stiff.
      Three paces.
       We can save them, Frisk. Just work with me.
       I took a deep breath.
      "I-"
      "Get away from her." A gruff voice echoed behind me, and a flash of blue light lit up the room.
       NO!  Chara screamed in frustration and anger.
       They had been reaching out towards me, and in this sudden light I caught a glimpse of the one closest to me before it was thrown backwards.
        It's skin was a leathered black, almost as if human skin had been taken and preserved, and then stretched back onto a body. The face was gaunt, and it's mouth was constantly gaped open in a silent scream. The flesh around the mouth was cracked and crumbling, the teeth large and some scarily sharp, like fangs littering the gums.
       The closest thing it could be compared to would be a human shape, however even this would be a poor comparison. Nothing about it screamed human in the slightest.
       None of this, however, scared me. Not compared to it's eyes. I wasn't sure what it was, but something about them, and the expression in them, chilled me to the bone. I didn't have time to decipher the emotion before it was flung back to the opposite wall.
     I whirled around, suddenly in control of my legs again. Sans was a few inches inside the room, standing in front of the doorframe. The blue flame danced in his eye angrily and his hand was outstretched, a gaster blaster in front of him.
       The creatures that weren't hit hissed together, recoiling from the beam still reaching out towards them.
        "Little bird," He said calmly, his eyes darting to me for a second and then moving back to the scene in front of me. I ran to his side, and he put the hand that wasn't outstretched protectively in front of  me, pushing me further back so he was in front of me.
        I stared at the creatures, who were now cowering away from Sans' magic.
       "Sans, look at them! They're terrified!" I called to him in horror, "Stop, you're hurting them!"
        Sans flinched at my words, and almost as if he had been shaken from a trance, he let his hand fall. He was breathing heavily, staring at the creatures shivering in the corner. He clicked his fingers and murmured something I didn't understand, and almost like clockwork, the creatures slowly ambled to their beds, before lying back down in sync, almost immediately going still, hidden under the sheets once again. It frightened me how they had obeyed him so suddenly.
        It was as if nothing happened. Sans finally turned to me, his expression softer than the one of anger I saw before. It was at that point the events of the past hour hit me. I breathed in one shuddering breath, before inhaling in a loud sob, my whole body shaking.
      Silently, Sans walked over and took me in his arms, his head resting on mine as I sobbed into his chest.
       "Thank god you're safe," he murmured.
        Somehow these words made me sob harder into Sans jacket as he held me tighter.
        I thought back to what Chara had said before, about the Underground, and I remembered the expression the creature had when we looked each other in the eyes. Sans had known how to control them, what to do. I felt a stab of betrayal shoot through me.
       Now, I wasn't even sure if I was safe with Sans anymore.