Before the Storm ( Sans x Reader )

6. Backwards But Never Losing

You never thought of yourself to be an insomniac.

Then again, it was hard to have anything to compare to since you had literally meant no other living creature apart from the few dozen skeletons that had passed through these catacombs, existing from hours to weeks before withering to dust. How long were living things even supposed to sleep for? Was it one hour or a week? You did not think that you met the average number of hours a human often slept given that you often woke up each night screaming from some nightmare that had been plaguing your mind.

But when you awoke within the clutches of the dark, no light greeting you from any angle, nothing but cold dead silence filling the graveyard of the hallways that composed this underground tomb, did you feel afraid.

It was curious that you should be afraid now given that you were in a position that offered no signs of danger. During the night was perhaps the time you felt the safest, guarded against the enemies of the night by the thin laser that was both your guardian and your imprisoner. It was during the daytime when the laboratory was alive with light and screams of the damned when you were supposed to be in danger, when the scientist could pull you out at any time and send electricity dancing down your spine.

The faint whistling in the far corner of the room indicated that Sans was still asleep. Perhaps whatever had waken you was nothing at all given that not even he was stirred from whatever obscene enemy waited for you in the dark. Through the thin light that was illuminated by the laser that guarded the entrance to the cell could you make out Papyrus' immobile form who had not stirred the slightest, oblivious to anyone and anything around him.

You attempted to force your eyes shut, wanting to summon forth again the tidal wave of fatigue that had once guided you into the land of dream and nightmare. But sleep would not greet you no matter how much you tried to find it, the hair on the back of your neck still rising in anticipation of the unseen enemy that waited for you in the dark of night, always watching, never faltering, never fading.

There's no one there, you reassured yourself, shifting over to one side so that your eyes were looking at the wall of the cell rather than facing the outside laboratory, not wanting to be exposed to whatever could be stalking the shadows of this place. No one wanders these catacombs apart from the scientist and he's the only one to fear. To be afraid of the dark and the shadows is just as ridiculous as being afraid of a piece of paper or some other inanimate object.

But it was not the shadows or the darkness that you were afraid of. It was what they were hiding, what was stalking them and concealed against the dark of night, never seen, never heard until their hands were wrapped suddenly around your throat, squeezing the life from your blood...

For it was an instinct that was ground into the fundamental genetic coding that constructed each and every human, that little bit of survival instinct that had allowed your ancestors to stay alive against the millions of predators and creatures of the night that had pressed themselves against the flank of darkness, ready to claim the life of anyone foolish enough to stray from the light of their makeshift fires in favour of the world that was hidden in shadow during the happenings of night.

Daylight was certainty, a time when everyone and everything could be seen. But during the night, when uncertainty was thrown into the mix, when the once-known land became the adversary that was teeming with hidden predators, your ancestors had learned to fear the dark, to grow afraid of it. That instinct, after all, was the reason why they survived why so many other species were ground into extinction, evading things with sharp teeth and claws whilst other animals fell victim to the monsters of the night.