"Awh, doll, no need to be upset…
…I'll make you all better."
Chapter 16
The "Doctor"
Wicca let out a rasping laugh, splattering a spray of blood across the skeleton's large hoody. She felt a small ping of satisfaction at staining the white fur lined hood.
"Good luck with that, dolly," She snarled, "There won't be much of me left to make better."
The skeleton gave her a quizzical look, which only sent the girl into a fit of coughing, painful laughter.
"You can't be serious!" She said, astonished.
The skeleton just blinked in response.
"I hate to break it to you, love, but I'm a bit squishier than you. I don't have a cage of bone as a body, only on the inside. It's a bit of a setback."
He reached up and scratched the back of his skull and darted his eyes to the side. He still wasn't getting it.
"Look pal, you impaled me. Stitching me up as lovingly as you did won't fix it. I kinda have these things called organs, and you probably-definitely-hit one of 'em."
The skeleton furrowed his brow bone and made a gesture with his hand as if to say -and so?
"So-" The witch grit her teeth against the pain and his ignorance, "I'm dying, sugar, my insides are ruptured and bleeding. Unless you have a doctor lying around somewhere, I won't be around to play with much longer."
She glared up at him, a hand firmly pressed against her side. She saw the light in his eyes flare up in understanding.
"Took you long enough." She muttered.
"I should just let you die, then!" He snapped back, sick of her attitude.
"I know pain and suffering is your MO, Mr. Edgy-McEdgypants, but think about it. If you let me die, you get short term satisfaction. If you just fucking save me, you get to watch me suffer for a longer time. Now what is it going to be."
She was being too aggressive. She shouldn't push him like this. She didn't know him well, thank God, but she knew enough to know that acting like this would get her nowhere. But she wasn't thinking clearly enough to use her wit and cunning. Her damn fever and pain were eclipsing all common sense.
He grounded his teeth, red already steaming out of a single socket.
"Fine." He growled, "I'll take you to a doctor, love." He said the word mockingly, "But you'll regret it. Oh, pet, you'll regret it." The skeleton chuckled and walked away.
"Believe me, I'd much rather be snorting flowers right now." It came out as a whisper, her strength failing.
When he came back, he was whistling a jaunty tune and spinning a little cord in his hand. Turns out, the cord wasn't actually a cord.
It's a leash.
The witch struggled to get away as he advanced, but her fine motor skills were already mush. The synapses in her head weren't firing fast enough. He easily grabbed her ankle and twisted, pulling her closer. He leaned on top of her, placing a tight collar around her neck and easily clipped the leash on while she squirmed under him.
She let out little gasps of pain as her head pounded and her wound throbbed. She scrabbled at the collar, trying to find the clip to release it. The skeleton easily batted her hands away and he tutted in disappointment.
"Nuh-uh, you play by my rules, dolly. I'll get you your doctor, and I'll have me a nice pet." His golden tooth glinted in the awful, artificial light as he grinned woofishly. "I've got one more present." He reached into his oversized black hoody and pulled out a metal caged muzzle.
"You're not serious!" The witch cried, and again tried to scramble back. But he pinched her leash and flicked his wrist, propelling her forward. He easily pinned her arms behind her with one hand, and with the other pulled the muzzle on.
Her hands instantly went up to the metal cage as she hyperventilated.
The skeleton just laughed and tugged on her leash. She fell to the ground with a sloppy smack. She let out a yowl of pain as blood spurted between her lips and dripped to the floor. She gripped her side protectively, cradling it.
"You asshole." She coughed out.
He leaned down close, feeling her wheezing breath on his face. Casually, he lifted his hand and-
SMACK-
Wicca's eyes grew wide and she tentatively touched her cheek, already red and tender. Her half-dead brain was trying to process what happened as she trembled on the cold-hard ground. But all that came to her were distorted memories:
A man-or a boy? Fading, edging into the landscape. Yelling, screaming. Panic, terror, anger in his voice. Violence, flaring up. A smack, cutting clear through the air.
"What did you do?! What did you do!"
-and then it was gone, the skeleton already pulling her across the floor. She scrambled to get up and let out a hiss of pain as she stood.
The skeleton looked back and an ugly look crossed his face. Before he could yank her to the ground, she had a playing card between her black finger tips.
"I'll go along with being your little pet, but I will not crawl on the ground like an animal." She clenched her teeth, her voice deep and husky. The skeleton lifted his lip in a snarl, but the sound of a door being slammed opened froze him in place.
His eyes just ever so slightly grew larger, his hands faintly shaking, his breath somewhat ragged.
"Just hurry up." He growled, then wrenched the leash painfully.
They must have been in a basement, for they ascended some damaged wooden steps and stopped in a little alcove before the ground floor.
"What're we waiting for?" Wicca asked, rubbing her throat.
"Sh!"
The witch rolled her eyes, "Well then." She mouthed silently.
But a figure stepped into view and caught her full attention. She gasped.
"Papyrus?"
But it wasn't Papyrus. Just like the skeleton beside her, the same skeleton who had nearly killed her (and still might), wasn't Sans.
Sans.
Wicca felt a pang of longing. What she wouldn't do to see Sans again, her sans. And if she was saying that, then well…
This Papyrus may be of the same built and the same name, but that was it. Decked out in armored spikes he couldn't be more different than her denim jacket wearing, beautifully kind Papyrus. The only thing they seemed to have in common was the scarf, but even that was the wrong color. Where as this one had on a red, ratty one, her Papyrus wore a nice multi-colored fluffy one. The pants were almost the same though…Wicca wasn't sure how she felt about that. Everything else was completely wrong. This one radiated a dark, buzzing static that made the witch nervous.
He disappeared in a room up a different set of stairs. With a quick tug, the wrong Sans was pulling her away from the alcove, through a door, and outside into Snowden.
The cave ceiling was starting to blacken, signifying the oncoming night. Wicca repressed bafflement and kept the question (how could the inside of a cave have its own daylight and nightlight?) to herself.
They walked to the edge of town, not coming across a single monster. At one-point Wicca thought she saw a shadow stalking them, but Sans let out a low growl and it scampered away.
They walked, and walked, and walked. They walked through fields of beautiful glowing flowers, they walked across cascading waterfalls, they walked into a scalding desert like wasteland.
Is this the Hotlands? Wicca found herself asking. She only had the tiniest bit of information she gathered not hours before from Grillby's to help her, but she was quite sure that it was. If a place is called Hotlands and one happens across a hot land…
They stopped at a dilapidated building that Wicca managed to dine as a lab of some sort (The Royal Labs?). The skeleton pushed a tiny button and spoke quietly into a little speaker. The witch couldn't hear him over the whine in her head and the stabbing in her side.
An automated door revealed the inside of the lab, and the skeleton dragged her in. They passed by strange artifacts of "science". Down they went, into the belly of the beast. Wicca could hear faint screaming in the distance, and her stomach cramped at the sound. She cast a nervous glance at her captor.
"I thought we were going to a doctor?"
"We are."
"This isn't exactly a clinic."
At last they arrived at an open room. All sorts of beeping and machinery could be heard. As well as a low muttering. Wicca noticed the skeleton gulp before they plunged in.
The lights were bright and blinding, the witch had to hold a hand to her eyes and squint. She could see a metal table with some sort of object on it, a man bent over in a lab coat sounding peeved, and a little yellow something darting around.
Wicca blinked and blinked. And blinked again. The light was no longer affecting her, but she couldn't believe what she was seeing. A large pool of scarlet was gathered around the object on the table. But it wasn't really an object, now was it? Wicca gasped and held a hand to her mouth.
Twisted and distorted. Limbs arranged in a pattern that was not monstrously (or even humanly) possible. Skin and scales pulled apart, revealing masses underneath. A rotting, copper, vomit-inducing smell swirling in the air. A flat line, then
-dust.
Just gone, in an instant. The man in the coat threw his scalpel down, scattering the dust and ash.
"Take it out of here." A measured voice instructed.
The yellow darting thing stepped up and began to wheel the table out of the room. It brushed past her, twitching.
And then, the man in the coat turned around.
Wicca's stomach dropped.
Because it wasn't exactly a man.
Because that would be too simple, wouldn't it?
Because fate really likes to push the swirling, unyielding envelope of life.
Because the witch was looking at Gaster.
And he was looking back at her.