ENDING WRITTEN BY ME

*This can't end well*

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You surveyed the vast expanse of Sans' around you, your mind rushing to make the impossible choice. Some of them were from universes that you had never been to, yet you felt a string connection to each.

"Who is it going to be?" Ink asked, his voice a muffled whisper. A stray tear formed in the corner of your left eye. After everything you had done, everything you had been through, it couldn't end this way.

Right?

And that's when you saw him.

You had almost forgotten about him, yet there he was, offering you a piece of his soul. You examined the portion of the soul carefully. It was composed of a fragile material that would seem to blow away at the slightest touch.

Just like dust.

You took a step towards him. Anxious glances were exchanged between several of the other Sans' followed by disapproving glares. Your jaw tightened and your shoulders stiffened. Their ridicule only justified your choice.

"Why me?" he croaked, his red and purple pinpricks meeting your gaze, flashing defiantly. There was a slight twitch to his right arm, as if he felt anxious without a knife in hand.

"I think we should dust off our old differences," you explained, grabbing the portion of his soul before he could object. There was some humor that reflected in his eyesockets as you pressed the division of his soul into your's.

You let out a muffled gasp as a wave of emotions crashed down upon you. Not only did you now share a portion of your soul with Sans, but in turn, you shared an identity. Countless murders replayed in your head to the point where they blended together. Knife after knife, slaughter after slaughter, became inseparable.

You had not expected what emotion he had contributed to these actions. You often thought that he took some sort of primitive joy in slaughtering his kind, but what you found was a massive amount of regret.

I killed everyone.

The replay of memories turned to Sans hunched over a rock, mounds of dust surrounding him. The most prominent emotion was the overwhelming loneliness that consumed him. Every inanimate object was a stifling representation of you in some way. The time you had spent with him... it was the only time he had felt any emotion of some sort.

Your gaze refused to meet Sans' as you turned to Ink. "Will I ever see you again?" you asked, desperately searching his eyes for a different answer than the one you already knew.

"No..." he replied, his voice firm and laced with an emotion you couldn't identify. "The choice you have made was certainly an interesting one to make," he concluded, wringing his hands.

You bade farewell to the few Sans' you had grown to know over the past few weeks and then waved your hand, opening the rift that would take you to the universe where you would spend the rest of your life. You refused to meet Ink's searching gaze, knowing that if you saw him one more time, any determination you had to stay in the Dusttale timeline would collapse.

Did I make the right choice? you wondered as the rift disappeared, leaving you in a world of silence.

You noticed that Sans' hoodie was down, making him look much more like the friendlier version of himself that you had once known. Maybe there is some hope for him after all, you thought, linking your arm with his.

He seemed startled by the gesture, as if he had had little contact with any living thing for a long time. There was a slight blue tint to his cheeks. This isn't so bad, you thought to yourself as Sans waved his hand, teleporting you to an undisclosed location.

The first thing you recognized was the intense heat.

"W-Why are we here?" you asked, surveying the surreal appearance of Hotlands. A large laboratory loomed in front of you. Cracks spiraled across the building, making it appear as if it had experienced no lifeforms in a very long time. Sans pushed the door open, causing it to crash to the ground.

You jumped slightly at the loud noise that echoed across the landscape. Sans cast you a suspicious glance before urging you foreword. "You didn't answer the question," you began, making no effort to hide the accusations in your words. Sans only shrugged as if to say that your opinion mattered little to him.

"Listen to me!" you spat, pulling away from him. "I sacrificed everything to be with you because I saw what others couldn't."

He pulled away from you, eyeing you with a look of disgust. "You didn't see what others couldn't, [Y/N]. A heroic part of you deduced that you could salvage whatever remained of my former self." He rocked on his feet with child-like excitement. "But that Sans'? He's gone now! I killed him just like the others."

You found yourself taking a step back from him. "B-But..." you protested. "You felt regret for killing them."

"When my soul - or at least what remained of it - fused with your's, I allowed you to see a twisted interpretation of my memories to induce a feeling of sympathy. Thus, it would allow you to come back to this damned universe with me."

"To kill me?" you spat, feeling hysteria rise in your voice.

"Of course not," he smirked, leaning dangerously close to you. "I wanted someone to understand how it felt to be me. And I thought that you of all people would accept that."

"I don't," you narrowed your eyes and turned away from him.

"Oh [Y/N]," Sans sang, cocking his head to one side. "Since when were you the one in control?"

You found your limbs being moved in awkward jerking motions. Horror clawed at your stomach at the realization of what he was doing. "You wanted me to take a part of your soul so you could control me..." you hissed, awkwardly following Sans down a long hallway.

He only laughed as he stopped at a door and knocked once. After a long silence, a nervous voice asked, "Who goes there?"

"It's me," Sans replied, laughing to himself as shouts rang from whatever monsters resided in the room.

"You may have killed the others, but you won't be able to kill us!" a monster announced triumphantly, though the doubt in their voice was evident.

Survivors, you realized with sudden dread. Sans is going to make me kill them.

A sudden thought entered your mind. Unlike the thousands of others that raced through your mind, this one was much more prominent than the rest. Slowly, it began to dull any other thoughts until it consumed your entire mental state. Your identify began to fuse with Sans until the two of you were almost inseparable apart from physical bodies.

You were him and he was you.

"We're going to have a mad time!" the two of you sang together and raced into the room of frightened monsters. They eyed you with a look of fear and hatred as Sans handed you a knife.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

You felt his eagerness reflected inside your own mind, blocking out any protests you may have made if you had been your own separate being. "Of course," you smirked and slashed a monster across the chest. It collapsed to the floor, erupting into a pile of dust.

The world became a blur, full of desperate cries for mercy and screams of the dying. And then there came a time when there was only silence, a vast, empty silence. "W-We did it..." you murmured, embracing Sans. Tears rolled down your cheeks, relishing the victory.

The thought, this urge to kill, did not leave your mind. Instead, your very being embraced it as if it were part of your own identity. Together, you and Sams ascended to the surface.

The world too reflected the silence of the Underground. Not even a cricket stirred, for their very species had been wiped out. Plants seemed to shrivel and die from wherever you walked.

But this silence? This death?

It did not bother you.

For as long as there was silence and you were with Sans...

You were happy.

THE END