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Dust was… small.
Even by the normal standards of a Sans, he was small.
He was smaller than Nightmare, smaller than Ink, and he was the smallest out of all of his mates.
When he was a child, people thought he was so much younger than he actually was, and even when he was their Gaster’s assistant (before the world… changed) those who didn’t know him asked where his parents were more often than not. Joke’s on them, though, he didn’t even have parents.
Though that usually wasn’t really an achievement he supposed.
In the end it didn’t matter either, all of them are long dead and Dust is still here.
He actually thought that he might even grow a little or at least get taller when he started gaining LV the first time. It was a thought to distract him from the atrocity and the horror of what his life had become. It stopped being a numb and mindless thought when the Papyrus in his head started yelling at him about how weak he still was ever hour of every day.
That thought had quickly been proven wrong when he stayed roughly the same, and over the countless resets even started to be weaker. Frail. Smaller.
Before he killed his brother his brother died, he would tell Dust he was worried. His bones looked ashier and the shadows of his face seemed deeper. Dust hid in the darkness of his hood and didn’t let Papyrus look that close again.
When the child had stopped falling down one day and his universe was empty, and Dust’s body was covered in more scars than clean bone, Nightmare came to him. He offered Dust a place to stay— a place that was safe and free and where he could be with others who wouldn’t care about him or his past.
He laughed in what he thought was a hallucination’s face and passed out drunk at his feet, but not before vomiting all over his shoes.
A stellar introduction, as Killer would later say.
Nightmare brought Dust back to his and Papyrus’ old house and when he woke up to find Nightmare still patiently waiting for him to wake up, he figured there wasn’t any harm in saying yes.
If this "king of negativity" was a hallucination, what could possibly come from agreeing?
And it turned out, there was a lot.
He was the second to last member to join Nightmare’s gang, a gang that later became friends and then mates, a fact that Dust was incredibly happy about.
When the multiverse was explained to him that first time and he found out that he wasn’t the only Sans, he thought that there would be others like him, and technically there were. There were indeed other “Dusttale” Sanses, but most of them were not out in the multiverse, and even of those who were, he was still the original Dust sans. Not the original Sans, but still.
And that made him unique in a way.
The few other Dusts that he met (usually in open neutral Multiverse AUs where he was in disguise)were often a lot louder than he was. Dustswap was loud and angry, yelling all the time, and Dustfell was growly and surly. Scidust talked non stop just like original Dust when he was hallucinating badly, and they were all strong and tough looking.
They stood up tall with teeth bared and wild eyes, and people left them alone. They were certainly often shorter than a standard Sans, but they were still taller than him and still so much larger than life.
In the same AUs just a single street down, people would often ask Dust if he needed help finding a way home. Or the worst, the worst, was when the people of the wider multiverse thought they knew everything and were the heroes and they asked if the lost and young looking Sans needed help to find his brother.
He would tell them to kindly fuck off while Papyrus screeched wicked laughter into his ears.
Dust thought that maybe there were others like him somewhere that looked taller than 10 years old since there was an infinite number of Sanses but it appeared that he had been mistaken.
He was the smallest Sans that he had ever met and he didn’t like it.
He knew that his mates liked it of course, and he was happy that they did. He couldn’t deny the joy he felt cradled safely in their arms or how light and free he felt when he sat on their shoulders, and he certainly couldn’t deny the utter ecstasy that it was to be sandwiched between two of them and fucked until he couldn’t remember his name and Papyrus was silent in his ears.
His mates loved him and despite what some people said, he knew that very well.
They treasured him and made sure that he ate, even when it was difficult, and were always there to support him when he needed and when he was with them, he didn’t feel bad about himself.
Or, he still did sometimes, but they never left him alone when he was sad and they were always there to help him feel better.
But his mates weren’t always there. And Dust knew that when other people first saw him, they didn’t see something precious or lovely to care for (not that he would want that from anyone but his mates) they saw someone that was easy to hurt.
He tried to make up for it with glares that could silence nosy monsters and magic that could kill many of them in one hit. He tried to train as much as his body would allow.
In the end though, those could never make up for it when he really needed it to.
They had been on a mission when it happened. It was simple, or it was supposed to be. They needed specific parts from a surface world city and it had been going fine. Cross had gone in to a shop under a disguise while Dust stood guard outside, but then someone had seen through his disguised CHECK, and the stars had been called.
They fought, as they always did, called in their own reinforcements, and Dust had been separated, fighting Ink.
As much as Ink was indeed a tough opponent, he wasn’t the worst or the hardest to fight, that honour surprisingly went to Blue.
It had been dumb, a simple slip up, and Dust had gotten injured. Nothing too bad he hadn’t had before, some bruised ribs and sprained ankle, but it was still enough to hurt.
Ink had gotten distracted so Dust had taken his chance and fled. Nightmare had told them this was meant to be quick. Fight if they needed to but escape when they had the chance.
Dust only meant to find a secluded place where Ink wouldn’t find him so that he could call his boss, but in the end it just made everything worse.
He was hurt and distracted and when he was pulled into a secluded alleyway and a monster more than thrice his size pinned him down to the floor with a magic nullifier, the glares and the magic and training he put so much effort into meant nothing.
His bones were weak and without his magic, he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t do anything.
He was a sitting fucking duck, and he was going to die.
The monster on top of him leered and ran his tongue over his sharp canines, pupils dilating only wider with a sick sense of glee as Dust struggled to dislodge him.
His eyelights constricted while his vision narrowed, and he could see and feel every detail in perfect clarity. He could feel the damp ground soaking into his shorts beneath him and how the rough stone was scratching into his legs and his wrists where the monster held him down.
He felt the exact moment that his shorts loosened when the monster clawed right through the drawstring and through the loose fabric, and though his ecto wasn’t summoned, he could feel the monster violently grind his pelvis against his own. Dust could see the monster's hard on through his already loosened pants and shivered in disgust when he felt it on his bones.
Dust struggled and fought but it didn’t matter when the monster above him was so much stronger.
“C’mon baby,” he said, growling low in his throat, “Give me something pretty.”
A hand reached into the space of his pelvis, reaching farther than anyone ever should until it reached a specific leyline and tugged and his ecto snapped into place.
He snarled and bucked his hips but the monster was just encouraged. Fingers reached down the front of his pants and claws were jammed into his cunt with no preparation, and it hurt. It radiated up from his ecto and felt like white hot razor blades inside him.
Blood dripped down his legs to stain his shorts and his eyelights glowed brighter in rage.
No, he would not let him do this, this was not okay, Dust didn’t want this—
People often forgot that, even though his magic was his main defence, he still had teeth.
The monster leaned down while the claws kept moving inside him, whether to leer or to bite or torment, Dust wasn’t sure, but he took the opportunity before it could slip by and he bit into the monster’s muzzle.
Soft flesh was easier to bite into than bone, and the piece of cartilage and tissue came away easily.
He tasted blood and dust in his mouth and the monster finally recoiled in shock, yelping at the pain.
The claws slid out of him, slicing and spreading more blood as they went, only leaving him more damaged.
Within seconds, Dust was pouncing on the monster, forcing him back to the floor. He could feel the lingering arousal through his torn up shorts and it made him sick with anger and fear.
Dust laughed.
He laughed until he looked insane and the monster now below him started to tremble from the shock, a hand still clutching his injured face.
The nullifier snapped off his wrist and his thumb dislocated with it, but he barely felt it over the magic rushing through his soul and the vile tearing pain that was shooting from between his legs.
In his hands was a viciously sharp bone attack, filled with as much hatred and anger as he could muster and with another mad giggle from between blood covered teeth, he brought the attack down.
Into the monster’s chest.
Into his stomach.
Into his hands that were covered in Dust’s blood.
And into his already disintegrating face.
The gurgling eventually stopped and the blood splatters on his face and his body and in his mouth turned to dust. He fell to the dirty ground with no weight under him and he shuddered.
He couldn’t support his own weight and he barely held himself up from collapsing down into the pile of dust below him.
“…N-Nightmare…” he didn’t know why he was saying things, his lovely mate wouldn’t be able to hear him. And yet, “Night… please, N-Nightmare.”
Struggling, he rolled to the side, managing to lean against the alley wall.
Adrenaline was wearing off and everything hurt.
He searched in his pockets but couldn’t find his phone, and more tears dripped down his face as he saw it at the entrance to the alley he had been dragged into.
He wouldn’t be able to get it even if his legs were steady enough to stand; he was sure that he wouldn’t be able to walk from the pain throbbing inside him.
In the end he had to summon a blaster to pick it up for him. It brought it over and he saw missed calls already from his mates, especially from Killer, and that made tears well even more. This mission was never supposed to be hard, and it was supposed to be quick.
Yet here he was, crying alone in an alleyway covered in the dust of a monster who took advantage of his weakness, while his mates worried and were probably looking for him.
The thought made him laugh so that he wouldn’t cry.
He unlocked his phone and dialed Nightmare’s number. None of their phone numbers were saved in case anyone was able to hack into their phones, but Dust had them all memorised.
The phone barely rang once before it was picked up and he heard his terrified mate on the other side of the line.
“Dust?!” It was Nightmare’s voice but he could hear the others clamouring to reach the phone in the background. “Dust, where are you?”
He tried, he really did, to not break immediately, but the sound of his mates’ voices was too much and all of the hurt and fear flooded out of him all at once.
He could only cry as he held the phone close to his chest where his soul was hidden, and the sounds of his worried mates just got louder.
“Dust please, where are you? Are you injured?”
He nodded his head before he remembered that they couldn’t see him and he stuttered, “y-yeah.”
Realistically, his injuries weren’t... that bad.
He had walked before on broken shattered bones and had been burned and stabbed more times than he could count and yet somehow this hurt worse.
He was scared and all he wanted to do was curl up with his mates and forget he was ever even alive.
“Please, my dearest,” and that just made more tears that lines the edges of his eye sockets, “if you cannot say, can you open your location to be tracked?”
Nightmare didn’t normally like their phones to be traceable either so that no one could find them. In the AUs that they normally went to, the population would be so small that Nightmare would be able to just find them all, no matter where they were.
Here though? It was a city bigger than most New Homes, and it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. There was so much negativity everywhere that it was difficult to find a specific source of it.
With more effort than it probably should have taken, he went to the settings and sent his location to Night. The reaction was immediate and he saw a portal form at the entrance to the alley before Nightmare rushed through.
Killer ran through after him, quickly followed by Horror and Cross.
They saw him immediately and soon enough, Nightmare was on his knees before Dust, with the others closely behind.
He reached out his hands and they were cradled by Nightmare’s larger ones, while Killer held a hand to his cheek.
He felt a change in the air the exact moment that Killer started to survey the damage and got to his torn up shorts and even more torn up ecto that Dust couldn’t hide.
There was still plenty of blood between his legs, he could feel the tacky feeling as it dried, and he could still feel where some of it hadn’t stopped and continued to drain out of him onto the floor.
Killer’s smile sharpened, and liquid hate dripped more heavily down his face.
“Who was it?” he said, smile still and poised to strike. “Who hurt ya', Bun?”
It took mere moments for the rest of them to clue in to what had happened, and Dust wasn’t surprised to feel the flair of magic fill the air with a low buzz all around them.
It still made him flinch.
Nightmare noticed and got closer, sliding his tentacles gently around Dust’s smaller form, picking him up from the ground. The drip of the blood was even louder in his ears.
He was tucked into Nightmare’s chest and he clung on to his neck with all he could, hiding away in his mate.
He thought that he heard Killer yelling somewhere far away, and Cross trying to calm him down, but he couldn’t be sure.
Horror followed the closest to Nightmare and was talking to Dust lowly as they walked through the portal back to the castle. He whispered sweet nothings and quiet reassurances, all while begging Dust to stay with them.
Dust wasn’t in danger, he was sure about that. He hadn’t hit his head, and he wasn’t bleeding out, despite how much blood was still freely flowing.
He was safe in the arms of his mate and they wouldn’t let anything else happen to him anymore, he was sure.
So Dust curled more into Nightmare, tuned out the noise of everything, and closed his eyes tight.
Within the arms of his mate, he let the emptiness consume him.
Dust was startled into awareness when Nightmare tried to set him down.
He startled so badly that he nearly kicked Killer in the face from his position by their side in his effort to stay in Nightmare’s arms.
Magic flashed around them, and before he knew it, bones had sprung up around him, pointing deadly sharp edges at the others.
His eyelights constricted into pinpricks and he couldn’t hear past his own heavy breathing. He was hurt and he was scared, and cackling laughter started to echo in his ears, and all he wanted was to be close to his mate.
He didn’t want to be taken away.
Quiet humming slowly cut it’s way through the ringing and laughter in his ears and the fear started to drain away. His breathing evened and his fists unclenched from their hold in Nightmare’s sweater.
A tentacle was cool against his forehead as it siphoned his negativity, and his vision started to clear. The bones he had summoned were shamefully retracted.
“My dear,” Nightmare started, “may I hand you to Horror and Killer so they may hold you? I need to heal your wounds and I cannot do so holding you like this.”
Dust was surprised to feel tears start to well in his eyesockets.
Surely he was stronger than this?
Surely, he should be able to let go of his mate without crying, he was barely even hurt.
He shuddered out a breath and nodded, and he was placed between Horror and Killer on their bed. They immediately huddled close to him, gently supporting him and holding his hands.
His pelvis hurt.
He was hesitant to reveal his wounds to Nightmare, especially the ones he knew were between his legs. Realistically, it was just like any other wound, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with his mates looking after him like they had dozens of times before.
And yet.
And yet.
He didn’t want to open his legs from their tightly closed position leaning against Killer.
Nightmare didn’t push, choosing to attend to his other minor injuries first; healing over the small scrapes along his wrists and arms, and the light sprain in his ankle.
Cross was sent for ice for Dust’s ribs for after Nightmare healed them since, despite how wonderful healing magic was, it was not a fix all. Healing still hurt and still left its scars.
The mind didn’t so easily adapt to the rapidly changing condition of the body, and would not so easily feel better. His healed scrapes still itched and the bruises still felt as if they had only healed for a few days instead of just being fixed.
The vicious slices between his legs would still burn in agony, only being made worse as he shivered and sobbed.
And he didn’t even really understand why he was in such distress but he was.
Horror and Killer tried to help him feel better; they talked to him quietly and tried to distract him but nothing could make him feel okay again. He knew that he needed to be healed or he would spend weeks longer than he needed to in pain.
Nightmare’s eyes met his with a question and Dust nodded, despite the fear and anguish still rattling through him.
He cried when Nightmare’s hands gently parted his legs and he could almost physically feel the cool gaze on him.
While his mates had seen him in such a position before (after all, they had seen every part of him inside and out, and had the situation been any different, Dust might have been begging for more) this was… not at all the same.
He was hurt and he was scared and all he wanted was to have never existed at all.
Even as Nightmare ghosted cold hands over his wounds to heal them, he knew it wouldn’t fix everything. He could feel the scars that sealed themselves deep inside his ecto and he knew those scars would never disappear.
He was fucking ruined and he would never be the same.
His ecto would never be able to stretch to accommodate the others, he would always feel different inside, and his pelvis would never again stop hurting.
More tears escaped him as he keened. He could feel Nightmare constantly siphoning more and more of his agony but it wasn’t fast enough. It felt his ribs had turned into claws, curling in and carving straight through his soul, just like the monster who hurt him in the first place.
He wished they had never gone to that universe in the first place.
He wished that he was bigger, that he could defend himself like any of the others, that he wasn’t so pathetic and weak.
He wished that he were dead.
By the time Nightmare had finished, static had started filling his bones, moving up his arms and his legs until all he could feel was the pain.
Awareness started to slip, and though his mates asked questions and tried to talk to him and offer affection, he could barely pay attention.
In the corner, Papyrus stood alone, and even with no head, Dust could tell he was staring at him.
Dust had killed everyone he knew and loved in an effort to save his world and himself.
And he had.
He had saved himself, and his world was left alone, empty and deserted but safe from the human.
He had done all of that, and he had killed his baby brother just to end up exactly where he started; hurt and scared and alone.
He really did deserve his brother’s ire, didn’t he?
Letting out a quiet laugh through his tears, he succumbed again to the static whispering to him, and let his mind go quiet.
The next time he became aware, He was surrounded by softness and warmth.
He was leaning on Horror with a half eaten muffin in his limp hands, and he was made aware of the others in varying states of wakefulness around them when Killer laughed at the tv, startling Cross.
A movie was playing quietly and Dust was wrapped in their softest blankets that they always used when one of them was injured. Underneath, he was dressed in light pyjamas.
There was an ice pack between his legs but he chose not to focus too much on that or where everything still hurt.
Horror noticed him aware and pulled Dust closer to his side.
“...With us, Bun…?”
Dust nodded.
They sat in the quiet, the calm after everything that just happened, and Dust could barely even imagine that he had been ra— attacked just a few hours ago.
He shifted, curling even more into his mate and murmuring lowly, “please don’t leave.”
His mate nuzzled into the top of his head over his hood, and purred.
“N-never,” Horror said, “We’ll… Stay with you whenever you n-need.”
Dust wasn’t fully sure if he believed him.
But he didn’t really want to think about it, he didn’t really want to think about anything.
He was hurt and sad and scared but he sighed and took a bite of his muffin that tasted like ash.
He settled in and adjusted the ice.
He ignored the shadows in the corner, and he watched the movie.