Daybreak [ Error!Sans x Reader ]

11. Pulling the Strings

Error was usually fond of quiet, fond of frequenting universes where there was nothing but quiet and the occasional passing of the breeze, but the silence that engulfed this world was deafening, a silence that set him on edge. The Underfell universe had never known quiet or suffering, not when it had its human to reset the world, perhaps conducting genocide runs, but always bringing the monsters back with the mere push of a button. But that was something of the past, the swollen corpse of the human Frisk was evidence enough, propped up against a lone tree. The nearby pile of ashes signified the skeleton brothers were also a distant memory of this world.

"Wonderful," Error breathed and continued onwards, approaching the town of Snowdin. He walked by it solemnly, carefully skirting the piles of dust and ash for reasons unknown. It was not like he respected the dead, he had created enough corpses in his lifetime to lose the ability to respect the deceased for dead monsters were nothing more than dust and human corpses nothing more than rotting piles of carbon.

But the red scarf that flapped in the breeze, trapped underneath a fallen mailbox, that stirred something inside of Error, memories of his forgotten world, memories that had begun to cease from his mind as well. He couldn't remember the name of his world or what he had done in his universe, the only memory serving of his timeline being that of the red glasses on his face. His failing memories weren't a bother, Error didn't remember much of anything these days.

Error knew that he had a Papyrus once, an Undyne, Toriel, Asgore, the list was endless. He knew he came from a world and from that world he must have had friends. But he didn't remember having friends or family or even caring for someone at all, so that was the reasoning behind his impassive walk through Snowdin, not giving a damn for the deceased simply because he never knew them. But the red scarf, that was familiar.

It was certain that [Y/N] had been through here, the slaughter and carnage was evidence enough. But how they had prevented the human Frisk from resetting the Underfell timeline remained a mystery. Error watched as a few of the houses within the town began to glitch, already succumbing to the code of their collapsing timeline. Ripping away Frisk's ability to reset was the first domino in a chain set of reactions that would ultimately bring this world to its knees. It was funny how much Ink had fought to protect these pieces of unimportant code when they could be destroyed so easily.

The dust was a path and that was the path Error followed as he exited Snowdin and into the dusted world of Waterfall. It resembled much of Snowdin, the dust of monsters resembling the snow in every detail. In fact it almost seemed to be snowing dust from the carnage that had occured here. Error didn't understand the need for such violence. If one wanted to destroy a universe, it was better to delete the entire code. There was less of a mess and it saved time.

Maybe Geno had been right and it was pointless in trying to track down the human, not if they had the ability to jump from one timeline to the next. Error remembered when he had first gotten that ability, had finally managed to focus his powers on one thought, the simple thought of escaping the white hell he had been thrown into, being able to jump into a random universe. That was one of his earliest memories, one that was fragmented. He was pretty sure he had killed everyone in that universe though.

And what if [Y/N] wasn't compliant, that was another issue in of itself. They needed the human on their side in order to take down Nightmare and his army. If it revealed itself that [Y/N] was still caught up in their murderous spree, well, that was another problem right then and there. Error supposed he would have to kill the human, put them out of their misery and then what? Nightmare would win and hunt Error down, force him to bend the knee or put a bone in his skull for good measure. Either way, there was no happy ending if Nightmare won.

See, this was the problem. Error had it all figured out while everyone else was running about trying to fix up their nonsense messes and expecting him to help along. They only needed one universe, the main universe and nothing else. Every other universe was just background noise in the Void and it was particularly annoying. If there was only one universe, than there would be no need to have to worry about rogue universes trying to slaughter one another, everything would be quiet, efficient. Glitches were a disease, and even if Error was an anomaly himself, at least he was doing everyone a favour by taking out the trash.