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Sans jolted awake from a nightmare, gasping for breath like a dying fish. Before he registered the reality around him, he let out a short scream of terror, and quickly devolved into sobs. His hands scratched at his exposed ankles as he tried to remove the phantom hands that tried to drag him away. His mind was still trapped in the nightmare when the bedroom door slammed open.

"WOULD YOU BE QUIET?" Papyrus screeched angrily.

The smaller skeleton flinched from the noise, but since he was still lost in his own nightmare-induced panic, he couldn't manage to quiet himself. He felt the invisible hands moving higher up his legs, their insidious claws digging into bone like needles, and he kicked and screamed in an attempt to get away. Despite his struggling, he only ended up backing himself into the corner his mattress was tucked into.

"THE ENTIRE UNDERGROUND IS GOING TO HEAR YOUR DAMN SNIVELING!"

He felt a pair of more solid, rough hands grab onto his arms, keeping him from scratching at his legs.

"STOP THIS RIGHT NOW, SANS!"

At this, Sans's eyelights flashed up to see his brother standing over him, and it was enough for him to realize he had been asleep. It wasn't real. The hands gripping his legs weren't real, not anymore. But Papyrus's hands were real, and they were only somewhat less terrifying.

"I-I… I'm sorry, Boss! I'm sorry!" Sans wheezed out, trying to avoid another beating.

Papyrus glared down. Seeing the expression, Sans felt his already heavy breathing growing more frantic as he found it increasingly difficult to draw air into his non-existent lungs, and he felt his bones begin to rattle as he tried to wrench his hands out of his brother's grasp. He wanted to get away. He had to get away.

"Get ahold of yourself!" Papyrus ordered, moving his hands to Sans's shoulders and shaking him.

But this, of course, did nothing but make his panic worse. Sans gasped. He vaguely noticed Papyrus [CHECK]ing him, and then, without warning, he suddenly felt a sharp pain across his cheekbone as Papyrus slapped him.

[-0.01 HP]

Thus began a cycle of Sans panicking, Papyrus hitting him to get him to stop, and Sans panicking even more. His older brother mostly stuck to slapping him this time, but he had decided to try kicking him a few times since it seemed to be effective earlier. Fortunately, that hadn't lasted long because it caused the slash across Sans' chest to start bleeding again, wreaking more damage than the taller skeleton intended. So, Papyrus had gone back to slapping and shaking him in a vain attempt to beat him out of a panic attack. It only stopped because, eventually, Sans's body couldn't maintain its panicked state, and he collapsed into a curled up ball of sweat and pain as Papyrus put his hands on his hips.

"There," Papyrus spoke. "Now get back to sleep. I'm not letting you sleep in."

And with that, Papyrus swept out of the room, leaving Sans alone. He wasn't sure whether he was glad for that or not. Sure, he didn't want Papyrus to keep hitting him or yelling at him, but couldn't he have at least stopped to ask if Sans was okay? Or heal the HP he had taken from him? He was below half of his measly 1 HP. Again. And again, it was Papyrus's fault.

[HP: 0.1/1]

Sans was exhausted, but he knew he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. He was lucky enough to get the few hours he did, and after that whole fiasco…

He laid there, staring at the ceiling for a long time, waiting for morning to come. The longer he laid there, however, the worse he felt. He was sad, he was angry, and he was tired. He was so damn tired of it all. Tired of Papyrus, tired of being weak, tired of living in a world of hatred and fear.

He sat up, cringing at the way his bones protested against the movement.

Getting out of bed, Sans decided that he wasn't going to wait for his brother to start yelling at him to wake up. Instead, he went over to his bedroom door and finally locked it. Then, he opened his bedroom window. Papyrus would kick the door down eventually, and he wanted him to think he climbed out of it; even now, he didn't want Papyrus to know about his shortcuts. With that done, Sans teleported to Waterfall.

The air was thick with mist and dust, obscuring most of the already minimal light in the cavern. He had teleported to one of the rooms that no one really ventured into, so he was alone. Sans took a deep breath in and began to make his way through the tunnel that connected the cavern to the rest of Waterfall, trying his best to ignore the pain that coursed through him, and a few minutes later, he came out of the opening leading to the dump. He had to push a large pile of trash out of the way to emerge, but he didn't care about the filth that transferred onto his hands.

His feet sank into the muddy bottom of the shallow water as he walked. He hadn't bothered to put his shoes on, and he silently mused that he was right to do so. After all, wet sneakers were the absolute worst, and he didn't want that to be one of the last things he felt. And the cool water almost felt nice against his bones.

It was easy to find his way to the cliff the waterfall dropped off at. Once, there had been a fence to keep people from falling to their death, but as it fell into disrepair, no one bothered to fix it. After all, if you were stupid enough to get close enough to fall, you deserved whatever happened. Well, Sans supposed that, even if there was still a fence, it wouldn't do much to keep him from getting close to the edge.

Sans stood there for a while, watching the water disappear into the darkness far below. The cliff went down so far that he couldn't even see the bottom, see the spot where his life would end. Somehow, that made the idea a bit less scary. By the time he could see it, it would already be too late to back out; he wouldn't even be able to think of teleporting before it was over.

For a moment, he wondered what time it was. He hadn't been gone that long, but he had spent most of the night awake. Papyrus would probably be getting up soon. He'd yell for Sans to get up, and when he didn't get an answer, he'd get angry. He'd probably bang on the door. When he still got nothing, he'd probably kick the door in; after all, he wouldn't let Sans get away with disrespecting him like that. Then, he'd see that the window was open and Sans was gone. Would he go looking for him? Probably, if only because he was mad that Sans hadn't stayed in his room like he was told. Yet, he probably wouldn't look for him for a while, thinking that Sans would come back eventually and face his punishment.

But he wouldn't ever be coming back. And he wasn't going to ever get punished again.

This was it.

Not wanting to give himself time to back out, Sans stepped forward, his foot meeting nothing but air. In a second, the water flowing around him made him lose balance, and he plummeted down into the frigid abyss.

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