Supernova (Ink!Sans x Reader)

The War Begins

"But do we?"

Ink looked down at the button, convinced that he was going to destroy it rather than this decimated universe he was in. "Do we have to keep doing this? Perhaps it was always meant to be this way, for everything to be wrapped up in silence with a nice little bow on top, damning everything to be just like the Void itself. It seems like we're putting in more trouble than it's worth to keep life and all of creation going, when reality has other plans. It requires nothing to create a world of silence, but someone, some small bit of energy to fill it up with noise. Perhaps this is the natural order, creating a multiverse without any noise."

"You're starting to sound a bit like Error," the skeleton chuckled nervously, adjusting his grip around a strange and arcane bow that was clutched in his grip. Ink knew that bow well, for he had seen it in use during the war, when its arrows of blue had slaughtered whole armies, reducing entire battlefields to dust.

"You never told me where you got your bow from," Ink muttered, wanting to change the subject. In truth he did find it strange that a part of him was beginning to share the same attitude as his enemy Error, a skeleton who would be contented with seeing the entire universe fall into a big pit of nothingness. Even with emotions hammering away inside him, the painter could not help but understand, if even the slightest, Error's argument that the multiverse was meant to simply stop, for all the music and clamour to one day fall dead.

A strange look clouded the skeleton's features as he lost himself amongst the memories inside his mind. "I'm sure you've heard the story of the maiden who represented the embodiment of hope and sorrow in the universe, who had lived in peace and safety for thousands of years in some forgotten universe before she had been so needlessly slaughtered by some human aspiring to steal her powers," he recounted, his tone dropping to one that almost seemed as quiet and devoid of all emotion as the dead universe they both walked in.

"Where by her last dying breath, she transferred her life and consciousness into a nearby apple tree and two skeletons in the ground in hope that no human would ever gain her powers to wreak havoc across all of time and space. The two skeletons in the ground each received her powers, I obtaining the embodiment of all hopes and aspirations in the multiverse whilst my brother received her powers that embodied sorrow, but that did not make him evil, I hope you understand that bit. We killed the man that had murdered our mother and took it upon ourselves to guard the apple tree from where our mother's soul lived inside, where the apples upon the tree had changed, half ebony as the night to reflect sorrow and those on the other half as radiant as the rising sun, to embody hope and harmony.

"And one day my brother took it upon himself to eat one of the ebony apples, forever corrupting his mind, heart and soul, to transform himself into a creature of pure hatred and rage. Nightmare, he named himself as he slew down the tree we had guarded together for so long before he vanished into the night. I made my bow on that day, from a broken branch just long enough to be carved, that holds just a whisper of our mother's soul and the ghost of her consciousness, the very magic that powers it."

"A fascinating tale," Ink remarked, feeling a small bit of sympathy for the skeleton that called himself his friend. It seemed that Dream, the skeleton he was with, had taken a personal toll during the war, having to face and fight his brother head-on. "Has it been hard on you since?"

"Since the war?" Dream laughed the same laugh that Ink often found himself mimicking from time to time, the laugh that seemed to have no real joy or humour, reflecting the empty pit of despair and sorrow that had rooted in their minds as they had fought in the bitter war against Nightmare and his followers, where now nothing seemed to offer the same joy and life as it once had when things were more simple, where the painter and his friends were not running around a decimated multiverse, picking out the ruined universes and erasing them from existence so that there would be no more corrupted coding and creation could once more start creating again.

"I think of my brother from time to time, if perhaps there was some small part of him that still existed amongst all that hatred and evil that rooted inside his mind, but when I looked into his eyes as he destroyed universe after universe, I grew certain that he, the brother I had once known and cared for, had long since passed into whatever afterlife awaits us after this lifetime and that there was only a daemon that was using his vessel to carry out horrific deeds," Dream sighed, leaning against his bow. "But even now, even though this war is over, I still feel as if Nightmare is not dead, as if some tainted part of his consciousness remains somewhere, waiting for the next moment to strike."

"Can't you reach out and feel him?" Ink asked. "I thought you were sensitive to all the pain and good in the multiverse."

"Of course I can," Dream grimaced, "but there is too much pain and wrong in the multiverse right now to even isolate where Nightmare might be, if he was alive. All I can feel right now are the cries of the dead and the dying, a chorus of lamentation that will not end until we finish cleaning up the mess left behind from this war."

"I know, I know," Ink muttered, getting Dream's hint. It was necessary for him to erase this world, to forever eradicate its coding so they could move on to the next injured universe, erase that too until there was no whisper of tainted or corrupted coding anywhere in the universe. "But it feels like a waste, throwing away all the beauty that still exists here."

"In the new worlds we create in the future, we can make one just like this with the same sky and the same stars," Dream promised the painter.

"That it be," Ink sighed, though he did not voice the real reason that he did not want to destroy this ruined universe with the stars and the planets. For it had not been just him that had created his universe, but he had done it with alongside a human as well, a human who had perhaps been the only other thing in creation that had even come close to understanding the joy that echoed in his bones whenever he had created a new world, strung together pieces of coding to create new universes that would last for thousands of years.

But that human was no more, lost as one of the billions of casualties in the war that had ripped creation apart. Perhaps they were still alive somewhere, some ghost of their coding floating about just as Nightmare's might, but the painter was not sure, he was never sure. The future seemed just as clouded as the next five seconds, not sure where he was going anymore, when all of this would stop, when everything would return to how it had once been.

It felt, in a way, that by destroying this universe, it was destroying the last piece of evidence that the human the painter had once walked and talked with would no longer exist, no reminder that they had ever been there at all, no more truth to their existence than a story.

But if creation was to move onwards, if things were to be restored, than this universe must be destroyed, be cast into the pit of all the other rotted universes and burned into rubble. Such was the way of things.

"Forgive me, we know not what we have done or what may be," the painter whispered and slammed his fist on the orange button, whipping around to open a rift to carry both him and Dream out of this collapsing universe before it winked out of existence. He did not bother looking up at the sky, he did not want to see the stars and the nebulae flicker and fade. The painter preferred to keep a preserved image in his mind, to remember it as it had once been and not what it was now.

We are picking up the pieces, the painter reminded himself, to start a better future, to allow the multiverse to once more pick up where it left off.

But somewhere in the desolate corners of the Void, wrapped in silence and an eternal white, the multiverse did something it had not done in a very long time, not since before the war. It did something that was not possible, for the damage and corruption that existed from decaying universes had put all of reality at one great big halt.

It began to create.

So I also want to give a huge, huge shoutout to @PotatoTheChip for giving me the idea and complete plot behind this book. None of this would have been possible without her, so please check out her own Ink!Sans x reader titled ' Tall Tales' and give her a follow! :D