Reincarnate : Judgement

A sound rings through the corridor, a violent shiver that crawls down his spine. An ache in his chest, further alerting him to the familiar presence behind him. Doubts run through his mind, a race between that and determination. It's strong and despite anything, it couldn't deny him his role. A familiar apathy taking hold of his soul, and then further his senses.

Sans turns his skull, shifting to face her lazily. He watches Maya approach, appraising her demeanor with a returned stare. One that she keeps shifting from him with jarring movement, and desperate-despairing eyes. She refused to say a word to him during the last several resets but it certainly doesn't feel that way. It had felt loud and chaotic actually, her voice ringing in his head without end.

She's not going to break from that yet but he continues forcing eye contact anyway. Maya doesn't move forward to attack, just standing under that stare. Her voice wouldn't stop echoing, surging in a frenzied panic. Seething enough that it could match his own burning torrent of emotions, taking a captive hold of his apathy. But no one would ever come.

They both remain silent, her shifting becoming more pronounced until something finally snaps in her. Slight boredom crosses his face with that response. He doesn't bother to dodge, taking full damage and Maya stands there, visibly breaking under wraps. He doesn't console her and clutches at his stab wound, that expression adding more incentive to subdue her will.

"You're really breaking there, aren't cha?"

Maya shook, anger and desperation weaving itself through her. "Please stop fighting me here… I'm tired of you resetting. I can't just keep killing you on repeat, and I can't let you have your way on this. Just let me do the right thing-"

Everything is starting to piss him off, every word from her mouth incited feelings he couldn't put a handle on. Not even a minute into her finally opening her mouth, and his emotions are fully barbed again.

"I don't care," Sans answers. "You're not going to drive yourself onto a speared edge because of your shitty impressions of what wrong and right are."

Sans has his own outcome to bet on and a better one by his standards. He couldn't care less if that outcome was 'right' just that it is what it is. He sat there leveling her. He wasn't so concerned with Maya's thought towards that end.

"You can stop whenever you like," Sans offers. "Of course when you do so, I'll keep you right here unable to continue throwing yourself towards near death. But I guess that's not gonna happen yet huh? See ya in the next reset Maya."

Golden rays of light shimmer throughout Judgement Hall. Sans against that column, out of view, waiting. It's quiet, peaceful. Beautiful in a way that he'd never admit to, a silence that stretches on for hours under the wrap of a soft royal glow. A silence that ends hours later to the sound of echoing footsteps ringing throughout the corridor. He doesn't hold up a kind demeanor.

"You've been busy huh?" Sans asks. He stands before the human, left eye lighting to contrast the golden hues of the corridor. They stare at him in a sort of haze and he's caught off tempo. The longer he locks eyes with her the more unnerved he gets. Another human? Is this supposed to be a joke?

"Who are ya? What do you want?"

Sans flinches at the sight of her mumbling something incoherent. Sans doesn't break eye contact, nor respond to their murmur. She's completely out of sorts, her hair and face messes of their own. Visibly scared yet unmistakable determination in her movements. That's not a new sight.

"Listen, I don't know how it is you know my name, but it'd be best if you don't try anything capiche?" Sans says. His tone indicates the statement threatening, hoping to deter a fight.

Then the human does something he couldn't process well. Namely, dropping to the floor and curling up into a tight ball. He was thrown off and for a moment thought that she was trying to catch him off guard to attack him. That thought left pretty quickly when he noticed the subtle shaking in her form and pieces of porcelain sticking from her hair.

Sans stares. Thoughts are rushing through his mind, trying to piece together what exactly happened with her. She's shaking and he's eerily uncomfortable with how torn apart she looks. Did she walk the entire underground until she ended up here?

The curling up while silently crying is awfully similar to him right down to the uncontrollable trembling. Undeniably some sort of mental breakdown, cause apparently determination doesn't override her brand of mortal terror. The more you know. If only the actual murderous child felt this scared of him.

Sans tries to calm himself to the best of his ability. He might be out for the child's blood but he's in no way ready to get hostile with someone else. Suddenly, he teleports closer to Maya kneeling down to her level. They don't have any LV.

"Are you ok-?"

"You're the only one alive here," She speaks with a certain oddity he couldn't read. Sans doesn't respond, processing the statement. If he's the only monster alive then she'd be shocked to see one. Sans couldn't get a good read on what she was thinking, but he didn't want to upset the human either.

"...So what's the name, pal?" Sans asks.

"It's Maya," She answers. Exhaustion clouds her eyes. She doesn't speak but summons the reset button before her hand. He noticed her bleeding, likely from the porcelain… lamp?

Sans watches her relax, trembling with calm willful restraint. She reaches for the reset button before quickly stopping. She cast a shaky look in his direction, avoiding direct eye contact. "C-can you please find me when I drop into the underground?"

It wasn't a demand, just utterly scared.

Sans is taken aback but doesn't stop to question it before nodding, cursing the sudden influx of panic over him. "Ya.. Yeah, of course, I'll find ya…"

Maya nods back at him, biting down her responses. It's quick and when she appears at the start, she breaks down within seconds. Images of her death cloud her mind, and she quietly allows herself to break. It was just too quick, from that kind of death to sudden post-genocide undertale. She just appeared outside the judgment hall.

Within moments, there's a skeleton in front of her, a very fandom looking skeleton in front of her. Admittedly, she still doesn't care much for how odd it is, at least not yet. She just wants to be sure she isn't alone during this.

Sans looks over her with recurrent concern. As if just remembering how beaten up she'd been. Maya looks back to his concerned expression while crying and well, he pulls her head against his shoulder saying it's fine. He sits by her side after a few moments, allowing her the time to process.

Authors Note:

Hi, I've completed the first draft of this work. Over the process of me writing this, and a few other projects I think my writing has improved. I feel a bit better about how I express the motivations and actions of my characters. This was a really fun project for me, considering I'd had a long break from writing before this. In any case, I loved writing this but when I look back on how I wrote this, I kinda hate it. In a good kinda way I think, because it was a learning process. I could never get Maya across the way I wanted to. Anyway, I decided to reapproach how I handled the romance area of this story. I'm starting on the second draft and I'm going to remove the first draft because I can't imagine how someone would like that first draft now. If I am in fact wrong and you were invested, sorry for not uploading the final chapters before. I'm seriously hoping for the payoff to be better executed in my rewrite. ~Author