"We should make a truce."

Dust looked at you for a moment, wondering if you could possibly be serious. "Truces are overrated," he sneered in response. "They're nothing more than false lies that humans dilute their heads with, full of empty promises. The human race acts like it was meant to be together, that those of your species are meant to live together in harmony and work towards a future full of prosperity. But deep down, rooted inside the fundamental aspects of your genetic code is the desire to fend for yourself. Because if it ever comes down to it, it really is just a dog eat dog world."

"And is that the point you're trying to prove?" you asked, attempting to make out the shape of Dust through the dark of night. You were back in some place, though it was not the same building as last time, strapped to a chair in the folds of night. A part of you screamed in desperation for someone, anyone to save you. The other portion of your brain seemed to relish this moment for you had been craving this since the moment you had been whisked away into the hospital, drugged out of your mind and attempted to be forced into a mold, a cast that society had crafted for you that everyone was supposed to fit into.

The blue eye laced with red stared at you for a moment and then shifted its focus to a single knife clutched within the skeleton's hand. Dust had not bothered to remove the stains of gore from the blade, the painful reminder of what he had done, when he had killed one of the only humans that had bothered to show you compassion.

You tasted vomit as you recalled the knife sticking out of Hank's throat, the way his body slumped over and crumbled to the floor as if his bones were made out of nothing more than dust, the way that any former hints of the person he had once been eradicated and extinguished the moment the knife that cut through him, removing decades of experiences and of personal accomplishment in the matter of seconds.

"It's not a point," Dust snarled and he moved dangerously close to you, the knife pressed against the side of your throat. "Points are statements that people believe in, details to an argument. I am simply showing your world the fact, the truth that you humans try to cover up and ignore, parading around the flesh of this planet like you're above the creatures that roam the forests, when all of you are really nothing more than animals yourselves."

"If it matters so much to you," you retorted, "if you're so hellbent on wiping humanity from the face of the Earth, than why don't you do it already? You seem to have the whole thing figured out right down to the last detail, so why don't you just go on ahead and push down that first domino? I don't see how I come into any of this or why you even bothered wasting your time trying to come back for me, why you even bothered to slaughter your way through a building."

The tip of the knife increased in pressure, a thin stream of hot blood trailing down the side of your neck. "After everything I've done for you, after all the work I spent carving into your mind and shaping you into something new, you're really still ungrateful?"

You could feel your resolve weakening, the few ounces of sanity that still floated around inside your mind threatening to flicker out and fade. It had been several hours since you had last been in the hospital, since you had last taken the medication that was slowly helping to unwind the knots and tension of the storm that ravaged inside your head. You wondered how much of you had actually recovered since the police had dragged you out of the abandoned apartment complex, a blubbering mess, and how much of your sanity was really just a facade painted by the medication.

More than anything you wanted the knife to dig back into you, for Dust to resume the work he had been so intent on finishing before the humans had rudely interrupted. But now the two of you stood here in the dark of the night, alone where no one would find you, away from the happenings of the world, oblivious to all but yourselves. Dust seemed to sense that part of your mind that was clamouring for control, the insanity that had so deeply rooted itself inside you and you could see the bones of his face stretch out into a crude smile.

"A truce," you continued, the rational part of yourself still speaking, though you weren't sure how much longer you could keep yourself together before your mind split in two, releasing the insanity from the mental prison you had caged it in. "That's all I'm asking. A deal."

"I already told you," Dust snarled, "that there will be no truces. What sort of reasoning festers inside your mind anyway? You are in no position to negotiate with me, you have no advantage, nothing to offer me. Your life is quite literally at the mercy of me and this blade of mine."

"Of course there's something," you laughed weakly, your eyes trained on the knife, not sure what you were really thinking of it right now. You hated and worshipped it at the same time. "I must have something, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered to trouble yourself with getting me back. If I really meant nothing to you, had nothing that you wanted, the second you gained your freedom you would have taken off sprinting towards the outskirts of the city, continuing on with this sadistic plan of yours to wipe humanity off the playing board."

The comedian said nothing, but you could see the hatred and fear that burned inside his single flowing red eye, and the very sight chilled your blood to ice. Here, on his face, was the expression of someone who could kill at the slightest provocation, who could slip a knife down your throat and walk away without the slightest bit of trauma to their mind, go on about their daily lives while your rotting corpse festered five feet away.

And it was this expression that hardened your resolve, that gave you strength, that told you that you would never let the insanity that was burning inside your mind to win, that no matter what this skeleton did to you, even if he tortured and bent your mind for years on end, you would not succumb to the insanity that scorched its way through you.

For a moment you were certain that the comedian was going to kill you, that you had pushed Dust too far and had finally decided that perhaps you weren't worth his time, that maybe you should just join the line of cold, dead corpses that were slabbed to his name.

But there was also something else within his gaze. A small spark of emotion that was a stark contrast to the fury in his gaze, an emotion that you had never known him capable of. You could have sworn that for a brief, unmistakable moment, a small glimpse of desperation flickered in the depths of his eye sockets, a ghost of the person he had once been fighting to stay alive, screaming so that their whisper could be heard.

Was that why the comedian had taken you hostage when he had killed so many others without a care in the world? Was that why he had fixated himself with dragging you away from the only sanctuary you had known in these last few days, determined to finish what he had started?

You thought so, the more you stared at the skeleton and the way his single blue eye laced with red continued to search your gaze, the two of you picking each other apart, isolating the key aspects of your personality traits.

"Because you're lonely," the words left your tongue before you could halt them, surprised by the tone your voice had taken. "Because you're afraid of the dark and of being on the run, because deep down inside, you don't want to watch the world burn. You don't want any of this. And that's the one thing I have that you so desperately need, even when I have nothing more than the clothes on my back to call my own. I'm company."

The skeleton flinched from your words as if you had described the very composition of his being in a few short sentences. After he gained his resolve, the comedian leaned closer to you, eyes burning in rage. But there was still the flicker of hope and determination that remained, always and forever.

"You don't know anything about what I want," the skeleton snapped, his eye flaring with the beginnings of flame in the moment of his anger. "You cannot even begin to comprehend one thing about me, fabricate an understanding of who I am or the comedian that once inhabited this form. You cannot imagine what I have done to my own people, how many of my friends and family I killed to end the hell that they were trapped inside, how much it has numbed me to the happenings of the world and therefore how little and insignificant you are to me."

You leaned forward, wrists screaming in protest as your skin dug into the metal restraints so that your face was only inches away from the skeleton's. "Than what are you waiting for?" you snarled, not bothering to conceal the hatred you felt towards him during this very moment. "If I mean so little to you, than by all means you are welcome to stick that knife into my brain and end this dilemma once and for all."

When the skeleton did not reply, you continued, "Because like it or not, I do know you better than a few others might. I've seen the world the way you see it, when you had tried to carve the sanity away from my mind, for one fleeting day I was lost inside the storm inside my mind, saw how annoying the happenings of the world would be and how much better it would be if the whole damn planet went silent.

"For a moment I was you," you whispered, your voice dropping to a lower volume. "You made me that way, carved me into something I didn't want to become and hopes that someone would understand you, that there would be another living creature that could emphasise with what you were going through. I wanted to kill every human in my path and I might have done so if my mind hadn't been stitched back together with string that keeps threatening to break the longer I look at you."

Your jaw clenched as you continued. "But in that brief moment of my life, in that blink of eternity, I understood how lonely it felt. How lonely it was to see the world in a completely different way, to be consciously aware that every other sane person on the planet would want nothing to do with you because you didn't fit their definition of normal. And that's how you feel now, isn't it? Fear, anger, repulsion for everything around you, wondering how the hell the world can go on while you're in some dark corner struggling to stay alive when it feels like you might fall apart at any second.

For the first time in a very long time, you felt as if you understood Dust entirely. When you had first picked up the case, when the whispers of a serial killer stalking the night of New York City had made way to the New York Police Department, you had thought it impossible to understand what went on inside the ramblings of a mad man's mind.

But the tables had turned these last few days. You had become the mad man, had your mind destroyed in such a way that for a fleeting moment, you understood what it was like to hate and despise the world around you, the way that life itself seemed to be this constant annoying ring in the back of your mind that you wanted to stop at any way possible.

"I should hate you." You drew in a shaky breath, wondering how much longer you could continue with this little speech of yours. "I should hate you for all the people you killed, how much pleasure you take in ending the lives of others. It disgusts and terrifies me at the same time how taking a life is as easy for you as it is to breathe. I should hate you for killing my friends and torturing me and for the long list of crimes that is attached to your name with a ball and a chain."

Dust made a move as if he wished to speak but you continued to talk, desperate to get every last word in before he stuck a knife down your throat and you ceased your soul into the gaping maws of oblivion for the rest of time itself.

"But at the same time," you continued, "I look into your gaze and feel nothing but pity, remorse for what you've become, what could have been. And I think you realise that too, that beneath the insanity and the insatiable hunger that burns inside you to end all life on this planet, that you don't want to do this, that the old you, the real you is trapped inside your mind, screaming into the dark and the cold of the night to be listened, for someone to hear. So this is me, listening."

There was a cold silence that followed, reflecting much of the rift that existed between you and the skeleton, the distance that he put himself from every other living thing. But you were determined to build a bridge and cross that gap, to save the ghost of the comedian's former self that was still fighting to live. For it was that whisper of who he had once been that had reached out, chosen to keep you alive rather than murdering you in hopes of finding someone who could understand him when all else ran.

At last, the comedian cleared his voice and began to speak. "He thinks you're funny," he chuckled, nodding towards an area of empty space. You wondered whom Dust was referring to, why he kept using the word 'we' when there was no one else in the room with him other than you. "Papyrus says I should just kill you now and I must admit, it would put a lot of end to the misery you've caused me these last few days."

It occurred to you that Dust had two faces that he wore interchangeably, masks that he switched from without hesitation, reflecting much of the split nature of his mind and of his soul. Right now it seemed as if he was wearing the face of the hardened serial killer that was famous for haunting the streets of New York City, cutting down people with a single butcher knife, taking lives in the dark of the night and leaving behind no fingerprint, treading on the beach and leaving behind nothing, not even a footprint.

And it was this face that you feared, the face that showed hardened resolve and hatred towards every living thing, the type of face that you were certain would not hesitate to kill you if you even so much as breathed without his permission. You longed for the other face he had been wearing only moments ago, the face that seemed to always be in doubt, to offer a glimmer of hope and emotion besides that of the insanity that was working so hard to dominate his mind.

But then the hardened face slipped away and was replaced by the other one, the kinder one, the one that you felt best suited Dust. "Then again, perhaps it has gotten boring me here with no one but Papyrus." Again, the mentioning of this Papyrus figure did not fail to confuse you for there was no one else in this room besides you and the comedian.

"Then a truce," you insisted, feeling a slight flicker of hope stir inside you. Perhaps there was a chance after all, a chance to reach the skeleton and flush away the insanity inside his mind the same that you had done with yourself.

Dust stared for a moment, seeming to be conflicted. Every root instinct of his was screaming to kill you, to put the life of this damn human to an end and continue with his plan, to end the life of the humans and rule over a world of darkness and decay, the way nature had intended. Because everything died in the end. Even in a few billon years time would the last white dwarf star burn away and leave the universe in a vast pit of nothing but dark and cold.

But there was another part of him that was relishing this moment, the faint trace of his former self that was still fighting to be heard despite all the years of being locked away in a cage of insanity, latching onto this human as a means of recovery. Slowly, Dust stood up, his mind made.

You tensed up as the skeleton walked closer to you. It was too dark now to see which face he was wearing, if he was the serial killer or the small part of himself that was still struggling to be heard. But in the dim of the light you could make out the blade of the knife, aiming towards your wrists.

With a shaky sigh you took in what you thought to be your last breath, enjoying the last time in what would be forever that your lungs would be graced with the breeze of the passing wind. Dust was leaning over, the knife closer when he...

Broke off the restraints?

You looked down at your hands in astonishment, able to move them of your own free will. The skeleton stood back, wondering what you would make of yourself. But you a truce, the silent pact that existed between the two of you, with the hidden part of Dust that was still fighting, reaching out to you to save him, to make his voice heard through the veil of insanity.

Because by freeing your hands had the truce been made. For with hands that were no longer bound could you begin to build.

And what a glorious bridge that would be.