Darkness.
Pain.
Fear.
And-
Laughter.
"Don't you get it? There's no such thing as happy endings. This is all that's left!"
Light fading in. Gray overtaking black.
The world materialized around you for the eighth time. You came into yourself with a jerk borne from how you'd died the last time - thorns around your soul, choking it, strangling it, suffocating it to death.
The world sat black and lifeless, lit only by Flowey's stolen souls and the feeble light given out by the soul he would drag from your chest. A hollow echo of nothingness permeated the cold, motionless air. You could feel nothing except your muscles tensing, smell nothing except the sweat already forming on your brow, hear nothing except the pound of your pulse in your ears and Flowey, always Flowey.
Like clockwork, Flowey pulled your soul from your body.
Like clockwork, his manic laugh sounded through the blackness.
Like clockwork, the fight began.
The attacks were always the same: waves of white bullets, flamethrowers, bombs and vines and bullets. You always dodged them the same: moving between bullets, slipping past flamethrowers, scurrying through bombs. You always missed the same one. You never could dodge the vines.
Like clockwork, your health dropped. You realized you were exhausted even though the fight had just begun.
Seven. Seven deaths. You'd never died so many times in a row. You'd never been forced back, over and over again, with no respite, no items, no determination to see you through...
No hope.
You ducked another vine, narrowly avoiding it in time. A Venus flytrap opened its mouth next to you and you leaped upwards, weaving between flies.
You remembered each and every death. After all, it wasn't like feeling your life-force drain away and your soul splinter was easy to forget. You'd died once to a pair of Vegetoids in the Ruins - that was when you'd first learned about your powers. After that you didn't die again until Papyrus, and then only once. Undyne killed you twice. The CORE monsters killed you twice. Mettaton killed you once. Asgore killed you four times.
Seven times, and you died at the same place over and over and over again. You didn't even know what the fourth soul looked like.
You could feel it. Every time you died, your grip on this world slipped a little more. It was getting harder to fight. It was getting harder to remember why you had to fight. You just wanted this to stop, wanted this to be a bad dream you'd startle awake from and leave behind in moments. But this bad dream was one you'd never wake up from.
Flowey's mouth opened, shooting a brilliant white beam that caught you dead-on. Your soul shuddered and you fought back a cry of pain, watching as your health descended below half. You staggered and almost collapsed.
Why were you doing this?
There was a moment of silence inside your brain, but finally you remembered. Your friends.
You'd killed at first out of sheer terror and self-defense. You hadn't felt guilty, either, because they were monsters. You hadn't even thought the majority were sentient, given that most of the monsters in the Ruins didn't know how to speak in any human tongue. After Toriel had told you that the entire rest of the Underground wanted to kill you, you'd cared even less about killing them back.
But then Papyrus had come along. He was so utterly innocent and sweet. You'd watched him cry after accidentally squashing an ant, and you'd realized that, even though a lot of the monsters had tried to kill you, there were some who were different. And those who weren't, you could befriend.
The thought of Papyrus fading out of existence, the thought of him never being born, the thought of never having to eat his terrible spaghetti again...
It filled you with determination.
You would beat Flowey, and you would save your friends. You squared your shoulders and saw your soul's red glow get stronger, echoing your decision.
Bombs rained down; bullets raced towards you; flames danced around you. You gritted your teeth and endured.
The fourth soul came forward. You ducked between words. They turned green and healed you, bringing you almost to full health.
The fifth soul came next. You ran between flames. They turned green and healed you, but only brought you to half-health.
The sixth soul came. Their bullets were insanely hard to dodge and even harder to get, which meant you were healed almost nothing. Fear crept back into you, your hopelessness eclipsing your determination slowly but steadily. But you refused to give up. You simply refused.
Then, all of a sudden, the atmosphere shifted. The blackness lightened and a gentle breeze seemed almost to play around you. Above your pounding heart you heard something else, a quiet but powerful thrum.
The sixth soul disappeared for an instant. The next, it was back, forming a circle with the five other souls. Their light washed against your face and you smiled for the first time in a very long time.
They came and surrounded your fragile, injured soul. The glow surrounding them grew brighter. Green materialized in front of them, flowing into your soul. You felt the healing magic pour into you and strengthen you and you whispered a thanks, feeling your determination grow once more. It was time to end this, once and for all.
Flowey faded back in, seemingly unaware of what had just transpired. His barrage of attacks started up once more. All of a sudden they seemed so much slower. You lunged towards the FIGHT button. All of a sudden you were doing much more damage.
Hope bloomed inside you, strengthening your exhausted soul. The souls were on your side, not Flowey's. A stream of green magic healed every hit you received. You were winning.
And then finally you hit the FIGHT button one last time and watched in morbid satisfaction as the once-endless rain of attacks trickled to a halt.
"No...NO! This can't be happening!"
You let yourself relax, panting heavily. You couldn't believe you'd done it. You'd won. You'd actually won.
"You...YOU..."
Suddenly the world slid to a halt.
FILE 3 LOADED
Flowey sneered at you. "You IDIOT."
A bolt of light burst from his mouth. Your soul snapped in two. You screamed.
A vine tore through your chest. Your soul snapped in two. You screamed.
A bolt of light burst from his mouth. Your soul snapped in two. You screamed.
A vine tore...
You screamed.
Over and over and over again, unrelentingly, you died. And died. And died.
And no one - not Papyrus, not Sans, not the souls - tried to stop it.
Then suddenly you were alive again, and your soul was throbbing, spasming, aching, at one HP but still there. Around you lay a ring of bullets and you swallowed. Hopelessness surged up inside you. Hadn't that been enough for him? Hadn't all those deaths satisfied him? Would he still kill you again?
Flowey's laughter sounded. "Did you really think you could defeat me? I am the God of this world. And you? You're hopeless. Hopeless and alone."
Your eyes flicked desperately from side to side, searching for the souls. Where were they? Hadn't they wanted to help you? Had Flowey killed them too? Or...or did they just not want to come?
You...you didn't want to be alone.
"Golly, that's right! Your worthless friends can't save you now. Call for help. I dare you. Cry into the darkness!"
You didn't want to be alone.
"'Mommy! Daddy! Somebody help!' See what good it does you!"
You were shaking, shivering in the unnatural cold. An aching chasm tore through your chest, a phantom pain borne from the many times you'd died. You curled up on the ground and fought back desperate tears.
You didn't want to be alone.
You reached out a trembling hand and touched the ACT button.
...
...
...
But nobody came.
And in that moment, you realized that you were completely and utterly alone. There was no one else. No one else in the universe who cared if you lived or died.
The ache in your chest grew. You felt something deep inside you splinter, unwilling to face reality. You were alone.
"Boy! What a shame!"
Alone. The cold crept into your heart.
"Nobody else is gonna get to see you die!"
The circle of white closed in, drawing nearer and nearer to your vulnerable soul. You just watched. You were the only one left to see it.
But then, just as the bullets crushed into your soul...they vanished. The agonizing pain disappeared with it. You clutched at your chest in shock, wide-eyed.
"What?" Flowey asked. "How'd you...? Well, I'll just..."
LOAD FAILED
You staggered to your feet. Could someone have come after all? Did Papyrus hear? Did Sans? Had they come to save you?
"Wh-where are my powers?"
The six souls appeared in the air. Disappointment lanced through you. They hadn't come, after all. But, at least...at least you weren't alone.
Brilliant flashes of light flew through the air, joined by Flowey's anguished screams. You shielded your eyes as the light grew blinding. A roaring gust of wind flew by your ears. There was a powerful blast of energy, and then everything stilled once more into blackness.
For a moment, as you opened your eyes and saw nothing, terror struck. Were you alone once more? But then as you strained your eyes, you made out the faint outline of something.
A flower.
Two buttons appeared to either side of you.
FIGHT ❤ MERCY
You swallowed. Every muscle in your body ached. Your soul throbbed mercilessly from the echo of your myriad deaths. You were exhausted in every way possible and one step away from a breakdown. You didn't want to spare him. Not after everything he'd done. You wanted him to suffer just as much as you had.
But you knew, if you selected FIGHT instead, you'd never be able to face your friends again. So, through the roaring in your ears, you mustered your determination and selected MERCY.
"What are you doing?" Flowey's voice was suddenly small. Small and tired. "Do you really think I've learned anything from this? No."
You stepped to the right, selected MERCY.
"Sparing me won't change anything. Killing me is the only way to end this."
You selected MERCY.
"If you let me live..." Flowey's voice deepened, twisted into something sinister. "I'll come back."
MERCY.
"I'll kill you."
MERCY.
"I'll kill everyone."
MERCY.
"I'll kill everyone you love."
You took a deep breath. Hit MERCY.
For once, Flowey was rendered speechless. He gaped at you.
He looked horrible, almost as horrible as his Omega form but in a different way. There were cracks across his face that spread all the way to his stem. They looked agonizing, as if someone had systematically cut him into pieces. You swallowed and wondered what exactly the souls had done to him. From the cracks a dark, viscous liquid trickled down his body onto the ground. Blood, or whatever he had in place of it.
You selected MERCY. He stared at you.
"Why?" his voice was tiny and fragile.
MERCY.
"Why are you being...so nice to me?"
MERCY.
"I can't understand."
Truthfully, you didn't either. You didn't think of yourself as that nice of a person. If it weren't for Papyrus, for Sans, for Undyne, you think you would've killed him.
But at the same time, maybe there was some part of you that understood. Or a part of you that could understand, one day, given enough time.
MERCY.
"I can't understand!"
MERCY.
Maybe you hit it because you'd learned what it felt like to be utterly alone. Because you knew that Flowey was utterly alone. Because you knew that, if you were alone like that for years, you weren't sure you'd have made it out alright, either.
"I just can't understand!"
Flowey stared at you for a long moment, fear and confusion and pain on his scarred face. Then he turned and ran.
You stared at his retreating figure until it was swallowed by the blackness. Then you sank down, looked at the blackness around you, and began to sob.
