A/N- Alright so this is my first fanfiction. I'm not big on longs authors notes, so all I'm gonna say is please don't expect regular updates. I'll post new chapters when I can and I'm sorry for my crappy writing skills. On with the show!
Trigger warning- self-harm, blood, sad Inky boy.
-Red tinted ink steadily dripped onto the floor of the doodlesphere, speckling it with dark crimson. Not that it mattered, a swipe of an eraser and it would look normal, as if it never happened.
The colorful skeleton set the blade on the desk next to him with a soft clink that seemed to echo in the quiet of his home. He smiled softly and drew himself some bandages, inexpertly wrapping them around his arms before rolling his sleeves down once again.
He looked around him at all the different Universes encircling the doodlesphere and noticed one of them was slightly ripped, and the tear was slowly getting larger. He let out a quick, exasperated sigh. Error must be at it again, he thought to himself before making a portal with his brush and jumping in.
He arrived outside a Snowdin forest, and to his surprise, the blue strings were completely absent, but something still wasn't right, it was too quiet. He walked over to the town which itself seemed as welcoming as most of the Snowdin towns, except for the fact that there were piles of dust scattered here and there, their contents blowing away in the cold afternoon breeze.
No no no no no no no...
Maybe he wasn't too late, maybe this AU still had hope. Ink kept these thoughts with him as he ran around, looking for the source of the chaos, but was startled by a roar behind him. He spun around, only to see a creature quickly emerging from the trees, its long spindly legs preparing to attack.
Ink reached for his brush, but he was caught off guard, and the strange creature swiped it away from his reach, it landed in the snow with a soft thump, He lunged for it but the beast was too fast, and attacked the skeleton when he was caught off guard. Its sharp claws sliced gashed across Ink's chest, turning the crisp white snow dark, and making the skeleton see spots in his vision.
He wouldn't give up that easily though, and jumped onto the beast's back, swiftly retrieving his cutting knife from his stained jacket and plunging it into the pale skin beneath him.
The creature let out a shriek and threw the small skeleton off, before slamming him against a nearby tree, sending him into unconsciousness.
*Error's POV*
Error sat in his blue bean bag, carefully stitching together a new doll for his collection. His hands glitched for a moment, and so did the puppet of the short skeleton with colorful attire and a large paintbrush on his back. He set the plush next to him and tried to control his glitching, his eyes getting harder and harder to see out of.
"Damn eyesight..." he mumbled to himself and he reached for his red-rimmed glasses. He put them on only to see his newly sewn Ink doll glitching out of control.
"What the hell?"
This never happened before, but there it was, the doll was still flickering in and out of existence in places, its colors inverting sometimes as well.
'What's that squid doing?' He thought to himself as he stood up and picked up the puppet.
"Gah!"
He quickly let go of the doll and it dropped to the ground, still glitching. Error grasped his hand, which felt as if it were on fire after touching the glitching object. Had its code interfered with Error's own? Whatever it was, it wasn't right and he felt the need to check it out.
He glitched out of the anti void, arriving in the doodle sphere, but Ink wasn't there. It wasn't that surprising though, as the squid wasted most of his time protecting those anomalies he called AUs. Still, he wasn't in the mood for destroying today and didn't have much better to do, so he looked around and spotted one of the universes. It was cracked along the edges and blackening as well, Error stared at it, confused. What was destroying this Universe? Usually, it was him, but whatever it was, Ink was probably there fighting whatever it was, trying to be the hero and save the useless Universe.
Error rolled his eyes before teleporting to the AU, might as well see what's going on.
He never would have guessed what was waiting for him. Error arrived in a Snowdin, he spotted something laying on the ground near him, it was the squid's obnoxious paintbrush!
But where was the squid himself? Error let out an angry huff and turned to the sound of high pitched shrieking. A large snowy creature had its back to him and seemed to be clawing at something, and the dark liquid was spraying out from around its long claws.
"What the fu-" Error began, but the creature suddenly spun around, throwing another all too familiar skeleton to the ground, maroon ink dripping from its claws. Before he could assess the situation, Error was slammed into the nearest tree, causing a fresh heap of snow to land around him.
Ok. This thing had to die.
Blue strings shot out of Error's fingertips, wrapping themselves around the legs of the creature and causing it to fall to the ground with a crash that shook the trees around them. He glitched to the other side of the thing and saw something protruding from its back. He quickly retrieved the small knife just as the creature broke free of its bindings and prepared to attack again. But the skeleton already had its yard spreading toward it, this time aiming for its soul.
The white soul of the creature became entangled in the blue rope and was being squeezed so tight that its host couldn't move. It was good for Error, though, and he glitched right in front of the soul and thrust the sharp object into it, causing creams to sound throughout the crumbling universe.
Error gave the dusting thing a smug smile as he tried to catch his breath, and looked around, eyeing the dark liquid drenching the snow near his feat. He followed the trail to the rim of the forest and got an unexpected sinking feeling in his nonexistent stomach. He rushed forward, taking note of the white closing in around him as the universe slowly disappeared. He stepped over what looked like a shredded bandage, a small voice in the back of his mind questioning its existence, but the thought completely disappeared when he saw the mutilated body of a short skeleton in front of him. He fell to his knees in front of ink and tried to assess the damage.
A large gash across the chest, broken limbs, smaller cuts up the arms, it was too much to count, but that wasn't what Errors focus was on. Now, as much as Error hated Ink, and as many times they had fought, he had never actually pictured the artistic skeleton dusting. Gone. Dead.
"The hell am I doing?" Error mustered to himself as he summoned the same strings he had used to try and kill Ink so many times, and wrapped them around the worst injuries as gingerly and quickly as he could. That would be enough to give him some time to try and fix more of the damage.
His life was in his hands, literally. Why didn't he just kill him? It would be so easy, so effortless. What was wrong with him?
Despite the protests going off in his head, Error felt a strange need to keep Ink alive. He carefully picked up the smaller skeleton and prepared to return to the antivoid, leaving the dying universe behind him.
