Chapter Text
They were trekking through the darkness. A pathlighter Chara illuminated their way. A pathlighter like them was a rarity. Frisks and Charas rarely ended up in Zero Infinity, and if they did, they were rarely inclined to give up their souls to serve the light. So the two travellers spent a part of their journey discussing the reasons that pushed Charas to become pathlighters, and reminiscing about the times they crossed paths with this type of unfriendly humans.
Negative and Scar weren’t wayfarers. They considered themselves revellers and jokers, who knew nothing sweeter than to visit a cluster or two to see what life was like there, stir up some trouble if things got boring, then settle to watch their favorite “series”. They were the common residents of Zero Infinity who’d managed to adjust to its ever-changing lifestyle. They were absolutely cool with lacking any sort of important goal in their lives and never tried to search for one, enjoying their freedom.
They started this journey through the darkness for the sake of going on a journey. So they walked, talked and didn’t look around much. What did they care about the other pathlighter and their charges, who passed them by now and again? Those people had their own stories that didn’t involve them.
And so they walked, until they literally stumbled over a living being.
“Why the hell are you lying around here?” Scar was quick to snap, and only then anger gave way to surprise. How could there be anyone alive lying here, if they didn’t have the pathlighter’s light to keep them safe? The amalgamation should’ve devoured them a long time ago.
And if this was a wayfarer lying on the ground, then now was a good time to turn tail and run. If they actually fell asleep in such an inopportune place, who knew how dangerous and murderous they could be?
However, the stranger took their time getting up and making their indignation be known — as in, they didn’t do that at all. Why? Well, the answer was revealed when Scar and Negative took a closer look at them. The poor guy’s legs were petrified up to their knees.
“Is this an Error?” Negative asked, unsure.
“Yep, yet another Error.” Scar grimaced: he hated the black skeletons. His fingers subconsciously touched his mangled eye-socket.
There really was an Error sitting in front of the travellers — but a weird kind of Error: too thin, taller than they were used to, and he had a long tail that was lifelessly lying on the ground. He didn’t take offence to how rude they were being — didn’t show any emotions at all. Bent and broken, he was silently turning to stone.
Except normally the process took mere minutes — and yet this guy, apparently, had been sitting here for hours. Maybe even days. Maybe even years.
Something else didn’t add up: The light of the lantern didn’t affect the stone crust. And that’s considering that normally, pathlighters would free people from the stone — if that was still possible — and lead them towards the habitable areas. If the poor souls agreed to come, that is.
“Hey! How are you, pal?” Scar put as much distaste into saying “pal” as it was possible. He got no response, so he forced the Error’s head up, looked into the other’s eye-sockets and shuddered. The gaze he was met with was pained, exhausted and pleading.
What exactly it was pleading for remained unknown. Maybe it was for a quick death, or maybe it was for a blessed salvation.
Negative crouched next to the Error and examined the spot where the stone legs met the ground.
“He grew into the ground,” was Negative’s shocking discovery. A closer look also revealed that the stone hadn't claimed a single inch in the last couple of minutes, so, surprised, he said: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.”
Scar let go of the Error’s head, and it hung low again, as if there were no vertebrae to keep it upright.
“Pathetic.” Scar grimaced. He looked around. “Are there any habitable areas around here?”
Negative too looked around, intrigued: “I doubt it. At least, I haven’t heard of any.”
“Then where did he come from?”
“Perhaps this is the place his world dumped him into?”
“Perhaps.”
Both looked at the Error and had the same thought: he didn’t look like a newbie. There was something about this Error — something that only occurred in people who’d been living in Zero Infinity for a long while.
“Maybe he’s a wayfarer?” Scar walked around Error and instantly answered his own question: “Nah, wayfarers can’t become pathlighters or turn to stone. Can they?”
“Maybe we simply don’t know all there is to know about wayfarers?” Negative noted. He was just as intrigued by this anomalous Error. “Either way, whatever is happening to him, it isn’t normal.”
They circled around the anomalous Error a little longer, then sat down beside him, tying Chara down close to him as well. Perhaps the human would be able to reinvigorate the guy, and then he’d talk to them, tell them something interesting.
But the Error kept sinking into despair, remaining silent. The stone shackles on his feet resisted the light.
Everything about this was extremely odd.
“Maybe this is Zero Infinity glitching out?” Negative suggested with a chuckle. “The poor thing has been eating way too many Errors.”
The joke tickled Scar’s funny bone, and he burst out laughing.
“Nothing is impossible.”
“So what are we going to do about this?” Negative gave the hunched black skeleton an appraising look.
“Do we have to do a thing about this?”
“We don’t, thank the Void. But aren’t you curious how this guy ended up in such a state? What if he’s special? A new kind of creature?”
Scar shrugged: “I’m not that curious. All wayfarers end up as something strange sooner or later. And wayfarer Errors end up sick in the head to boot!
“Take Annihilator, for example. He was your regular Error, then he started tailing Nothing — and now he’s banned every habitable area. He’s got an aura to match Nothing’s too. Or take Butterfly? We’re lucky we managed to escape from that cluster: there’s nothing but butterflies left there now. That’s a thing straight out of horror movies! And Dollmaker—”
“There’s two of them. Which one are you talking about?”
“The one who sewed himself an Ink out of body parts!”
“Yeah, that’s horror movie material for sure.”
“The other one isn’t any better.” Scar cringed. “And I think they call him Master of Souls now, to avoid confusion. Either way, when a doll gets sewn together to house a recreated soul inside it — that is not a pretty sight. There’s also—”
“I get it, I get it,” Negative interrupted. “All Errors are living problems. I know. But you still haven’t told me what we’re going to do about this one.”
Scar growled and fixed the black skeleton with a murderous look. A large fountain pen appeared in his hands, and he held its pointy end against the black skull.
Negative watched him do that, intrigued: “Are you going to check if he’s immortal?” he decided to clarify.
“If he dies, then he really is special.” An evil grin stretched over Scar’s face. However, the weapon didn’t strike after all. “Damnit, he’s not even listening to us, as if he’s some kind of a pathlighter!”
The sharp tip of the pen poked the floor at the Error’s feet. Scar attempted to use the art supply as a shovel, but the ground of Zero Infinity remained unbreakable.
“What if we cut him away at ground level?” Scar suggested after a minute or two of useless scratching.
“Yeah, better yet, let’s snap off his legs… Wait! Are you suggesting we add a black ballast to our life?” Negative asked, surprised.
Scar had actually surprised himself with that suggestion. He hated Errors after all — so why was he running in circles around this one?
“Let’s assume you piqued my curiosity,” Scar said dismissively and pulled the Chara even closer. “Hey, Error! Either you liven up, or we’ll cut your tail off!” In order to back up his words, he took the long, lithe limb into his hands and pulled it taut, checking how long it was.
Negative moved closer, almost touching his forehead to the Error’s, and suddenly asked: “Scar, quit threatening him. I think he’s been through enough already.”
“What do you suggest I do then? Dance for him?”
“I suggest you try being nice to him,” Negative said with an eerie grin on his face and almost burst out laughing at the expression his friend made. “Well, if you really want to take this deadweight with you, then I think the only way to pull him out of the stone is to instill hope in his soul. It worked for me.”
Scar shuddered. They never discussed their past since both of them had it filled with troubles and bad decisions. Scar brought his world to its doom with his very own hands, when he let anger reign over him. Negative killed his own brother and ate his soul — the black apple — in an attempt to preserve the balance. It did nothing to help the balance — and that’s putting it mildly.
This guy’s story was probably about as grim as theirs.
“Fine.” Scar rubbed his forehead and sighed heavily. “How about I fuck him nicely? In some Multiverses we’re lovers and fuck like rabbits. What if he’s so glum because he lost his lover?”
“I hope you’re joking.” Negative crossed his arms.
“Of course I am! But still? What do you mean by ‘being nice’?”
Negative sat down next to the Error and wrapped his tentacles around him, like Cthulhu around a sinking ship. He focused, trying to remember how to grant positivity to people, and said, “Try to inspire good memories inside him—”
“And if there are none?”
“Just give it a try! And I’ll force him to keep thinking about them. This should help.”
Scar fixed his friend with a baffled look, as if the other had suddenly turned into a rainbow pony.
“Yeah, bringing positivity into the masses is surely my calling.” And yet, in spite of all the misgivings and reluctance to do something like this, Scar sat down beside the Error and started to talk to him. His speech was rough and unsure at first, but slowly it grew easier and lighter.
He talked about everything but tried to stick to good things for the most part. It took some effort, but he remembered how he used to be an optimistic skeleton with a strong desire to share his positivity with people. Remembered trying to earn his Error’s trust and become his friend. And even though this story was marred by the horrifying wound and slow loss of optimism, he still remembered that it was his Error who brought him to a doctor back then — and the glitch never liked looking at the crack that split his enemy’s eye-socket either. An eternal reminder.
“If only he found it in him to apologize, everything would’ve ended differently,” Scar said, voice tinged with sadness. He didn’t immediately notice that the Error wasn’t sitting limply like a broken doll anymore. He was holding his head up just a little, tilting it to stare at the white skeleton’s scarred eye-socket with pity in his eyes. This Error’s eye-sockets were both the same size, their shape tapering into a slight point at the sides, and his eyelights turned out to be bright red. They looked like smoldering embers, ready to burn everyone around to ashes should someone fan the flames.
“No matter which way you look at it, you don’t look anything like my Error even with your eyes closed.”
The tiniest of smiles graced the black skeleton’s face. He didn’t at all want to look like the skeleton who left so many wounds — both physical and mental — on the person who was so kind to him in this moment.
“Good. See, even inside this nightmare there’s a place for something good to happen. Take me for example! I lost everything and everyone, but then I met Negative, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve finally broken down or gave into anger. Ha! It’s kinda funny, isn’t it? The prince of negativity-slash-positivity himself is holding me back from crossing that line. I think I’ve struck the balance and found zen. Heh!
“So you’ll be okay too. After the mountains of shit there’s always a steep descent into “The Valley of Happiness”, where there are rainbows everywhere, and… Dear god, is this crap really coming out of my mouth? Well, let’s call it “The Valley of Not-Quite-Shit-and-Fleeting-Joys”. That’s closer to the truth.”
Scar turned to Negative for support. He’d already relayed his whole life story to the Error, and he had nothing else to talk about. Negative nodded towards the Error encouragingly, as if to say, Keep going, you’re almost there.
“So, maybe you could come with us? I promise, we won’t let you get hurt. Let’s be friends?” Scar held out his hand — just the way he used to do back in his world for his own Error. The difference was that this Error took his hand.
The other’s palm was warm and rough, its bones surprisingly thin and a little pointy at the ends.
Suddenly, the Error’s eyelights vanished, and he collapsed onto Scar. The stone crust shedded off his legs.
Negative laughed at Scar’s surprised expression: “Grab your princess and let’s go.”
“He makes a pretty crappy princess.” Scar made a face and shifted the Error to hold him a bit more comfortably. He was surprised by how little the other weighed and how thin his bones looked.
“Then quit staring at him.”
Scar growled something unintelligible, threw the “princess” onto his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and resumed his journey.