Chapter Text
Pantheism: The belief that reality, the universe, the entirety of all that exists are akin to what some would call a deity. The divine. The idea that the creation and the creator itself were one in the same.
You hadn’t been so sure about how sold you were on the whole deity thing, but from a young age you had believed that everything was connected to one another. That much had been proven true on an atomic level, but you were convinced it ran deeper than that. Less tangible, but no less real. Where the diversity of everything had been born from its sameness. Where the spiritual was also the literal. Even the smallest stone held power within it.
It made things like multiverses and butterfly effects fascinating and terrifying. Compelling and unbelievable.
Contradictions seemed all too common in the natural world.
Like jumbo shrimp. Civil war. True fiction.
Or in this case, pretty ugly. That’s what you’d call your current situation.
The thrum of the machine behind you was numbing, washing over you as you stared motionlessly up into the eyes of the living dead.
It felt like a cruel joke- as if the universe was proving itself to you, exposing its true nature to be just as you had expected in the most unexpected of ways. Yin and Yang personified laughed at you from the heavens.
How had you found yourself here?
You’d need to start from the beginning, re-trace your steps.
It had been a beautiful morning. And by beautiful, you meant it had been pouring rain. Thunder crashed and lightning struck. To you it was like a symphony. Nothing could put you in a good mood quite like a thunderstorm and a good movie; curled on the sofa in your pajamas and swaddled in your softest blanket.
A blue haze settled over the world outside and comforted you. You had been in paradise.
Things only started to sour when a particularly ear-splitting screech had jolted you from your lazy stupor. Accompanying the alarmingly close sound of a lightning strike was a power outage. The once soft blues turned to a deeper navy, the television now dark.
The noise of rain pelting the windows in a less-than friendly rap, begging to be let in just once, permeated your home.
You must have had the volume of the movie much louder than you thought, you hadn’t noticed the severity of the storm until it was all you could hear.
“Shit, now what.” You grumbled, stalking through your small apartment as the train of your blanket fluttered behind you like a regal cape, dubbing you the king of your humble abode. If only you had a crown to call your own outside of the few popcorn kernels that had surely gotten tangled in your hair during your marathoning.
Opening a rather small closet, you laid eyes on your ransom.
A battery operated lantern.
It sat atop your coffee table quite nicely, a warm amber doing its duty to stave off the encroaching blackness that had just begun to overtake the living room.
With the television and internet defeated, your phone was your only hope now.
…If only you had remembered to charge it.
An icon of a red battery taunted you. It flashed on the considerably smaller screen, sealing your fate.
Allowing the cushions surrounding you to pull you in, you watched the clouds swirl outside. The rain had brought the wind as reinforcement, still trying desperately to break and enter into your warm and preferably dry fortress.
It was when you decided to find something more primitive to fill your time, perhaps reading, that things took yet another turn.
Not for the worse. Not for the better. But a turn, certainly.
Another crack, another white hot flash, and suddenly static filled the air.
The screen of your television was covered with electronic snow. It was silent for the first time in hours, which was odd, because you could still very well see the storm raging from through the glass panes to the right of you.
It was as if the last strike of lightning had deafened you- stuffed your ears with cotton. But then again you could hear yourself breathing still… Just slightly elevated and heavier. You’d been startled.
The blizzard raging on the silver screen drew your attention once more. You inched closer, and you could swear you began to see colors mix with what you had initially assumed had been a sea of pure black and white. They grew more vibrant the nearer you got, pulling you in with their intrigue.
By the time you were close enough for your nose to make contact with the front of the screen- the strange fuzzy heat tickling your face- what once had been solemn silence had blossomed into a supernova.
Without warning, an overwhelming pulling sensation enveloped you. You had been convinced that you’d crash into the thing, but instead you fell. You fell deep. As if you had fallen into your television, into the static.
You could hear again, you noticed. Strange warbling, almost mechanical in nature, ebbed and flowed within the space. Or lack thereof.
It almost sounded like a person talking, or trying to at least. But the mumbling cut off sharply at times… it was unnatural.
The colors from before were out of control now. A kaleidoscope of every hue, so bright you wanted to look away, but everywhere you turned it was there.
Just as suddenly as it had started, it had stopped. The world had ditched its technicolor barrage and replaced it with more familiar shades.
The world softened into an environment more muted. Gray walls and cold, white tiled floors welcomed you. The skeleton, however, had yet to be so hospitable.
Strangely, you felt serene. Your heart was hammering in your chest, sure, but you couldn’t gather the energy to do much more than blink back at the person(?) in front of you. No screaming, no scrambling, just… Coexisting. You left it up to them to decide how to proceed.
“shit.”
“Hah!” You guffawed, utterly gob-smacked by the vulgar language of the Halloween decoration. It was an inappropriate reaction on your part, perhaps, but it seemed neither of you were in the mood for minding your manners.
“heh, uh… so. name’s sans. sans the skeleton.” He offered, boney hand outstretched towards you where you still sat, sprawled on the floor.
The thought of touching bare bone wigged you out, so instead you opted to get up on your own. You found him to be slightly taller than you still as you stood upright, but not by much.
A few more awkward beats passed before you offered your own name. Once introduced, you felt it necessary to finally address the elephant in the room. “Wh… Where am I? And, uh, how are you… Alive?”
He snorted at you, a short indignant sound that got very close to offending you, but you supposed he was owed that after your own brashness up until now.
“you’re in my basement.” A pause, and then he was waggling his fingers in an almost jazz hand-like gesture. “and magic.”
You’d decided then and there that he was useless.
Perhaps you had died? Electrocuted by your own television during the freak storm that had rolled in?
…Had you also been turned into a skeleton?
Without a second longer, your hands flew to your cheeks, squishing the flesh there with an urgency. Once you were sure your face had not been unburdened by flesh, you allowed yourself to gaze down at your hands. They too proved to still be skin-covered.
“look, kid, how about we get you upstairs and then we can try to sort things out?”
The nickname felt patronizing.
Once again, you exercised the patience of a saint, choosing to forgive him in favor of potentially getting some actual answers.
A nod was all he needed to begin leading you towards a minimalistic staircase. The lack of your blanket cape became immediately evident. You wished for nothing more than to burrow into it, feeling all the more lost and small as you stepped through a doorway and into an impressively large lodge.
Tall and triangular windows lined the back wall of what you determined to be the living room.
It was pitch black outside and raining. The sight gave you hope that you may not be very far from your own home. Your own bed. Sanctuary.
Butterflies filled your stomach at the notion. That is, they did, until you were reminded of the zombie-adjacent individual standing beside you. Skeletons couldn’t talk where you were from. You had no idea where you were. The weather had been a simple and unfortunate coincidence.
The burning sensation behind your eyes was becoming hard to ignore.
“hey! hey! what’s wrong?” Sans filled your vision, his empty orbital cavities made you queasy. The roundness of his cartoonish features only added to the unease.
Tears were now falling with a vengeance. You had been successful at keeping your sobs locked within your throat, which was currently tightening painfully with effort. All you could do was shake your head at him pitifully.
It seemed the aforementioned serene feeling had simply been the cause of shock. Shock that had since worn off, dread and fear taking its place.
“uh…!” Sans was floundering. It was obvious he did not have much experience comforting crying women. There was a joke to be found there.
“Sans…?” A new voice entered the ring, further paralyzing you.
You were scared. Scared to see who or what had spoken.
“paps, little help?”
Without another word, you could sense the newest member of their little entourage near you. Soon enough, a skeleton much larger than Sans was crouching in front of you, his long and angular face pinched with concern.
“Human? Can you hear me? My name is Papyrus.” It sounded like he was purposefully keeping his voice lower than he was used to. You appreciated that.
It was obvious from his imploring tone that he was waiting for you to acknowledge him before he’d continue.
You wanted to respond, but instead a terribly embarrassing hiccup was all that came out.
Not trusting your voice, you instead bobbed your head. You were using every last ounce of energy you had to try and stop any further tears from escaping. You did not have very much energy left.
“Great! Let’s get you comfortable, okay? Want to sit down?”
Already he was guiding you over to a particularly plush looking recliner. As soon as you were sinking into the chair, your body began to relax. Your shoulders stayed tense, but the light-headed sensation you had been staving off from standing with locked-knees was ebbing away steadily.
Papyrus was once more kneeling beside you. He turned away briefly to order Sans to retrieve a glass of water, but was quick to return his attention to you.
“You are safe here, I promise.”
You believed him.
Tucking your legs under you, you focused on slowing your breathing. Something Papyrus appeared to have picked up on, as you noticed his own chest began to rise and fall in a similar tempo, if not a little slower.
Soon enough Sans was back with a glass filled to the brim with ice cubes and cold water. It was a wonder how the cup didn’t simply fall from his grip, what with the lack of skin for friction. Magic, you guessed.
Graciously, you accepted the peace offering, sipping gingerly. You refused to make eye contact with either skeleton. Instead you focused on the delightfully glacial beverage you’d been blessed with.
“you, uh, chill out yet?” Sans piped up, a nervous kind of humor lacing his words.
Papyrus lightly shoved the shorter of the two of them. “Sans! Now is not the time for your cantankerous puns!”
Oh. You hadn’t even caught it. A small smile wormed its way onto your face. Leave it to a corny joke to help lift your mood.
“oh!”
“Oh!”
Their gazes were plastered to your face, trained to capture any and every shift in emotion.
You felt sheepish. Your smile dropped.
“oh...”
“Oh...”
For a pair of skeletons who appeared to be opposites in nearly every way, they sure were scarily in sync. You were sensing a theme here.
Something something duality.
It would come to you later.