Prompt: King Papyrus! - Written for a friend's birthday
Being king can be glorious.
It's not something that often crosses his mind. Papyrus isn't the kind of monster to dwell on the negatives of life, but it's also hard to stay positive when all around you there's death and despair.
When everybody is in mourning, not only for the people they have lost, but the future as well. Something that had seemed so hopeful when Asgore was still alive, a revered fable held up by shaking pillars of lies, crumbled to dust.
But then there are moments like this. Small moments, when Papyrus can take a sick kind of pleasure in knowing that right now, right here, he has gained something he would never have had any other way.
An entire following of monsters that know him. Like him. Love him.
And they look up at him, on his throne. At the way he smiles and rules, fair and just, as if he were the actual sun, come down from the surface to grace them with its light.
Because Papyrus can act.
He can be everything they want him to be. Everything they need. Still they fall, but not nearly as many as otherwise - because he can make them believe. If only a fraction of his hope can rub off on them then maybe it can be enough.
Not nearly enough to save all of them, but some.
And Sans will tell him it doesn't matter. Nothing matters until time rewinds and starts over and everything is left undone.
He will point at the garden and say that they, the monsters outside his throne room, are just like those flowers. They can wilt and rot and they can die and it doesn't matter because they will bloom again and not remember.
There is no point in caring.
Papyrus doesn't answer. Doesn't tell him that if he stops caring now, when the world is ending and he is all there is left to believe in, then he wouldn't care anyhow.
They look at him and see him and adore him. And his mailbox is ever overflowing.
Just a small tiny part of him that relishes in finally not being alone.
And Papyrus knows it can be glorious to be king.
Tumblr: sharada-n
