Chapter 13: Secrets

Your wrists were cold, like someone was pressing ice cubes into your veins like knives. You moved, and the pressure increased, shackles digging into your flesh and your body mass swinging heavily. You blinked unconsciousness from your eyes to realize you were fettered to something behind you, something that gave off a warm aura.

"Sans," you breathed, recognizing his presence like an energy field. For a moment, your emotions flared, relieved he was safe and alive after being attacked like that, and you let yourself be engulfed in the prospect that yes, you were with Sans, and nothing else mattered.

But of course, reality washes back too quickly, and you immediately feel a pang of guilt for wishing such a simple, selfish reality to be true. You rinse fantasy from your eyes with a few blinks and clear your throat.

"Hm? Frisk?" Sans awakened at the sound.

"Yes, it's me. I'm fine."

He sighed and you felt his posture loosen, limbs slacking in his binds.

You cursed your heart for jumping at his reactions, cursing yourself for allowing your emotions to throb. Quickly, you silenced them and made note to keep those feelings in check. You had other, more dire things to worry about. "Do you know where we are?"

Tentatively, he looked around before replying, "No. 'N these chains must be enchanted, I can't use my magic to break free."

"Damn," you whispered.

"Don't freak out."

"I'm not." You chuckled. "I've been through worse."

"I know." Sans laughed dryly and then exhaled, as if resigning to the situation.

You struggled, but your efforts were to no avail, and you couldn't see anything except darkness. You, too, gave in to circumstance.

Within moments of you both having quit, you heard a rustling sound, almost as if the ground was being scraped. You squinted, as if it would help you hear, but you had nothing else to do, and you realized the sound was more of something emerging from the ground. A whoosh of air swept past you not a second before a leafy petal brushed the hair out of your face.

"You look so pretty when you're helpless," a voice, high pitched and grating, confirmed your suspicions.

"Flowey." You struggled not to growl, as not to upset him further. In your current predicament, you couldn't afford to.

He "humphed" before moving around to Sans. "Well Frisk," he said, voice silky and taunting. "Isn't this quite the sight. Not so tough now, eh, Sansy?" You felt the back of Sans head push against yours. You could only assume he was flinching away from Flowey's mocking caress. "I told you both not to escape, and look at you now. I bet you regret it, eh?"

"We were conducting research outside the lab." Sans hissed. You could tell he was smirking. "You still need us, anyway."

"Tsk tsk, Mr. Skeleton," Flowey whispered. "I know you are out of ideas, and that your final solution to this is to banish me. Thus, you have failed, and are at my mercy, so to speak."

"But," you spoke up, "You must also know that I insist on finding a peaceful solution! Though you may not deserve it," you muttered, attempting to glare at the flower, "sparing has gotten me this far."

"That may be true, but have you any ideas how?" Flowey queried.

You sighed. "No."

"Then you have failed. So, consider this the first of many, how should we say, 'tests' for my little experiments." His fake motherly tone sent shivers down your spine. "How would you like that, Sans?"

Sans did not speak, instead breathing heavily. For the first time in a while, you could tell that Sans was utterly and completely terrified.

"It's rude to not respond, Sans." You could practically hear him grinning and feel his sick excitement for what was to come. "That's strike one, and I know just how to make you pay for that."

You gasped, horrified. Sans rapid breathing escalated at an alarming rate.

"Say, Frisk," Flowey began eerily. "Do you know Sans' secret?"

You were almost too scared to speak; almost. "Wh-what secret?"

A cackle filled the hollow darkness surrounding the three of you. You began to feel a slight prickling sensation along your legs, climbing slowly up your body. Flowey's thorns wrapped around both of your bodies and started to tighten.

"Knowledge. Power. Death." Flowey began, Sans shuttering against your back. You couldn't help but realize how close he was to you, and it was the only thing preventing you from screaming. "You might know he knows about multiple timelines from the nature of his research, but do you really know what he did in some of those timelines?"

You stiffened. "I don't care. He's still Sans."

"Oh, you say that now. But when you lose what matters most to you so many times, you go crazy, do some things you're not so proud of."

"Don't," Sans begged, fury and fear mixing with what you could only describe as misery and dread.

The vines tightened once more, this time eliciting a harsh shriek out of Sans and a silent sob from you.

"Behave, you. After all, it's all true. You, my skeleton friend, saw him murdered before your eyes so many times, you went through desperate measures to try to find happiness again. You tried to protect your dear brother to the point where you forbade him from leaving the house and prohibiting his contact with anybody except yourself. Boy, those were the times where it was especially fun to kill him. You tried cherishing the time you had left with him but even that didn't work. Well, of course that wouldn't make you happy. Silly Sans, he always died in the end. It didn't matter if you made him your little bottom, forcing your incestuous love onto him, or if you brainwashed him into thinking you were his father. In the end, I was still very thorough."

Sans let out a small whimper, muttering "I'm sorry," over and over again until his voice relented and gave way to gentle, broken sobs.

Flowey paused to mock his cries before continuing. "You even tried not caring, and where did that lead you? Ah, yes, I remember. You ended up allowing him to die in front of you, each speck of life drained from him as he cried out to you for help, and what did you do?" Flowey grew extremely close to Sans' face as he gritted his teeth. "Nothing. You watched, and let him die."

"S-stop," Sans breathed, so soft a whisper you almost didn't hear.

"You know what else he did, Frisk?" Flowey elaborated sinfully. "He tried to kill himself, thrice. He tried to burn himself, and would've succeeded had Grillby not been prepared to save him. He tried to drown himself, but the boat guy pulled him out. And lastly, he came to me." Flowey turned to Sans and squeezed again, longer this time, both of you screaming until your lungs hurt and your bones rattled. "Killing you was the best thing I've ever done. It's a pity you enjoyed it so much, and that it was only so temporary." Flowey cackled. "What a shameful masochist." He laughed, squeezing again until you could scream no more and your organs felt they would slip out.

"And you, Frisk," Flowey slithered around again to you, cupping your face with a thorny vine, digging cuts into your skin. "I know your secrets, too. Like how you jumped down a mountain hoping to kill yourself as well. And how your first week in the underground you were a sweating, shivering mess. Bad case of the detox blues, huh? And so young, too. I wonder what kind of fucked up family you had that would make you do something so horrible to yourself."

You were speechless. Nobody should have to go through this, you thought as you relived the worst years of your life, all in the course of a few seconds. Everything hurt. Your entire body shook with pain, thorns piercing every already tender and torn area, while your heart throbbed and your memories still managed to haunt you, despite the physical pain you felt, burning through your flesh.

And still, it didn't end, but rather continued to get worse and worse.

"But that's not all," Flowey seethed. "No, you did much worse to yourself than just swallow pills. You're a shameful little sadist too, aren't you? I wonder how unloved you were by your parents that they didn't even notice the gashes and cuts along your arms and legs. Wow, it's sad really. It's a wonder any of it even healed, the way you mutilated yourself."

Your breathing matched Sans now as you hyperventilated, anxiety flowing over you in waves as your deep, dark past finally caught up to you and you remembered how terrible that really was.

"You're both animals!" Flowey cackled evilly, clearly enjoying himself. It made you want to puke, as if you weren't one second away from gagging already. "And we haven't even gotten to the best secrets yet, have we? I saved the best for last. So, who wants to go first?"

Both you and Sans were silent, still quite shaken from both of your pasts being dug up.

"Sans! How about you?" The flower sniggered. "Remember those humans who had found their way to the underground before Frisk? Of course you do! After all, you killed one of them, didn't you?"

Your eyes went wide and you gasped as Sans slumped his head, finally accepting defeat.

"And you!" he went on, manically screeching, loving each and every second of your agony. "Maybe you didn't even want to admit it to yourself, but I know how you really feel. About Sans, that is. You love him, and not just like a brother. No, you want to know what it's really like to get under the skin of Sans the Skeleton."

You too now hung your head in shame, trying to ignore the feeling of Sans weakly rattling behind you.

"And now, as much fun as I've had here today, I think I'll leave you two alone now to think about what you've done, and discuss the consequences of your actions. I'm sure it's great to know that one of you has got a crush on the one who's killed your kind. I look forward to seeing how this all plays out. Also, make sure you relish this time I'm giving you to recover, because there won't always be breaks between these 'experiments.'"

And with that, Flowey vanished into the ground along with his vines, which he tugged downwards off of you without loosening first so that they scraped shreds of skin and bone as they receded, leaving the two of you in shambles, broken once again as you were before you had met each other, yet just the same as before he entered the room, desperately in need of a plan for escape.