Rising Storm [ Ink!Sans x Reader ]

5. How to Feel Normal

It was funny, really, how easy it was to stop caring. With the blink of an eye, with the last sigh of dying lungs, with the mere flicker of thoughts, everything that one stood for, everything that one had fought so valiantly for years and years could simply vanish without a trace. And what a relief it was too, when one finally let go of all the pains in the world and stopped to smell the cactuses.

That was what Ink thought as he stared at the empty Void that surrounded him, the jaws of some evil and primordial monster that had swallowed him whole. How long had he been trapped here, how long had he been stuck in this world of white? The painter could not remember a time before this, the time when he had not been an artist of the Void but rather an unimportant comedian in some forgotten world in a dead time. He was the sole survivor of a damned and forsaken universe, chosen to live but mere chance and nothing more.

He was supposed to be the guardian of the universes, that was how the play went. Ink's script was simple, to dance the dance of dragons with Error until the end of time, to wage war against the damned glitch until they eradicated themselves into oblivion. Ink was the light, the good, and Error was the dark, the evil. And for that the balance dictated that the two would forever be on opposing sides, clashing heads with no victory and no loss.

And for a time Ink had liked that balance, liked waging war against Error and defending the universes he took so much pride in, loved watching them grow and develop as the creators seeded new ideas into them, as characters and coding developed and evolved as the years went by.

But even that job, the job of protecting the universes and watching new worlds grow and expand, that had proven to be an annoyance, but Ink said nothing, even when he wanted nothing more than to stop, to stop the cycle he was so wrapped up in. But once the rebellion ensued, once Nightmare and his band of loyal followers rose up from the ashes and declared themselves gods of the multiverse, once they captured Ink and threw him in some forgotten space in time to rot for the rest of eternity, that was when the painter finally had a chance to sit back and realise how relaxing it was to take a break from everything, how contented he was to never return to the never-ending cycle of the balance.

Things had finally stopped.

Now that Ink was no longer a part of this so called balance, now that he was no longer damned to fight against Error until the end of time, he was finally free! The artist laughed at that thought and then laughed even harder at the sound of his own voice echoing in this world of white. He had long since succumbed to the insanity that was building within the rotting folds of his own mind. If the painter had a soul, he supposed it would have been corrupted by now.

And that was another perk, too. Ink was one of the special ones, one of the few lucky enough to stake the claim that they no longer possessed a soul. Ink had ripped it from his mortal form once his universe had ceased to rot in the afterlife and he was the only survivor, ripped it out and had taken away all the pains of feeling and caring. Because without a soul, one could have no emotions and without emotion, one could simply stop feeling at all.

At first, when his universe had perished and Ink was all alone in this world of white, he had liked living without a soul, he had liked being able to wander in this damned place without caring or mourning the deaths of his loved ones, for without a soul, he cared nothing for them. But over time it had proven to be too much, Ink began to slowly push himself towards the brink of insanity.

As the years passed when Ink wandered the Void, he began to want to feel something, anything, pain, lust, pride, anything that would spark the same vitality that had once raged through his veins. But there was nothing, not one thing could bring back that spark of emotion, and the realisation that he might never feel again, that he would be reduced to a shell of his former self and wander around in this infinite plain of white and decay, that drove the painter to drastic measures.