Nothing is ever perfect.

In every utopia, in every perfection lies a flaw, always a maligant disease that lurks in the shadows, waiting patiently for the moment to strike, to tear the whole system apart and start anew. And that fault lay with you for no matter how hard Gaster struggled, no matter how many times he rewrote your code and stuffed false memories into your mind, every part of you rebeled, fought against it.

Something is wrong here, isn't it? This wasn't your world, this timeline was a prison, not your home. You came from a dead world from a dead time with ghosts to remember you, nothing alive came from your universe. It was gone and you were its echo, the last survivor from a civilisation that had endured for centuries, eradicated in the blink of an eye.

The memories were seeping through, breaking past Gaster's grasp around this universe and tearing the bloody thing apart and nothing he could say or do would change that. For you, for everything was not just a mere string of numbers, it was so much more than that. You were a living creature. a living, breathing organism and so was everyone else around you. You were not a string of unimportant numbers that could be destroyed in a single thought, in the blink of an eye. Even if you were wiped from all of reality, a whisper would remain, something would serve as a reminder that you had once lived, had once talked, had once breathed the same air as those that continued to live, that you had once loved.

These were the thoughts that swam through your mind as your being drifted in and out of reality,walking between the world of dream and the world of reality and the world of dream was a world that Gaster could never control for it had no code to manipulate. In your dreams you were free, free to think as you pleased and act as you would.

He is not a god, you realised, feeling the tug of reality slowly releasing your hold on this world. For gods can control everything and Gaster gets his power from manipulating code, but there are some things even he can't control. And still, gods can be killed just as much as the next man. My gods are dead, the ones from my old worlds because no one lives to remember or worship them. Religion is a thing of man for there was no god in the beginning of the universe or when the first bacteria swam through the oceans. A god is an idea created by those who seek reassurance in a higher power and give the title to anyone willing to do the things they cannot. That is a god, not a being of infinite power, but one of finite, limited and weak.

But then your musings ended and you were pulled from the world of dream and thrown back into reality. Gaster's name once more escaped your grasp for here in the physical world you had still not broken free of the strings wrapped around you, pulling you like a puppet in Gaster's game of chess.

You found yourself on the ground, circled by a group of skeletons or at least what remained of the army. A part of you felt relieved noticing that the humans you had commanded had at least managed to deal several blows to the wretched creatures, but did any humans even remain? You weren't in your old camp but somewhere far away, which prosed the question, why had you been spared?

Your gaze fell upon the black skeleton, the one clad in insanity with a stream of glitched code following him around like a loyal companion. What was the purpose in keeping you alive, you held no value and no human lived to care for you. The humans that you commanded were most likely dead in the aftermath of the battle. You attempted to stand up but found yourself immobile, soul pinned to the ground.

"It's just for safety precautions, I'm sure you understand," the glitch of a skeleton smirked, sitting down in front of you so that the two of you could see somewhat eye-to-eyesocket. "Leave us," he barked the command to the growing crowd of skeletons which then dispersed amid mumbled grunts about how they were never paid enough for this hellhole of a job.

"Why am I alive?" Your speech was not a captive, you discovered.

"You don't sound grateful," the skeleton chuckled. "This is the second time I have spared your life and yet you still do not thank me. And I wonder why the humans call us monsters ungrateful wretches, it seems to be quite the opposite."

"You took our homes, waged war against us," you spat. "We used to live in harmony together, the two of our races and then your kin turned on the humans and slaughtered millions without care because you wanted the planet for yourself and couldn't live with the prospect of having to share it with others."

"And that," the skeleton chuckled, "is the definition of human nature. Monsters are not like that, at least most of us anyway. I would be rather content with the whole lot dead but we don't always get our way. It was the humans that turned on the monsters, not the other way around. You broke into our homes in the dead of night and killed and butchered until the sky snowed dust. That is the true story human, and that is the right one."

"So what now?" you snarled, struggling against the invisible chains that held you to the ground. "You're obviously not going to kill me or you would have done so already the second we met, and you went through the enormous task of relocating me here so what is the gain? Is it a truce that you want? I hate to burst your bubble bud, but I don't have the authority for that kind of decision."

You should be fighting more than just the monsters, a voice whispered in your ear.

Strangely, the mentioning of a truce stirred something inside of you and invoked a similar reaction inside of you. Why the hell did this creature seem so familair to you as if you had seen him only yesterday? You were certain that the two of you had never met before yet the odd feeling still remained, the strange wash of nostalgia that crashed over you every time you stared at him.

"What's your name?" you asked, afraid that the invisible binds on your soul would suddenly tighten and kill you altogether and then your soul would sail into oblivion into whatever life was after this one.

"Sans," the glitch of a skeleton replied, though something about that name did not sound quite right to you. It seemed out of place, the needle in the haystack that seemed all too wrong when pointed out. Even the skeleton seemed to cringe at the mentioning of his own name as if every fibre of his being seemed to scream otherwise. "And you go by?"

"Frisk." The name left your tongue and yet it did not seem as if it belonged to you at all but rather to a different person entirely, one who was long since dead. The skeleton too seemed to recoil from the name, some hidden part of him wanting to protest otherwise. It felt as if you had been cut from a tree branch and grafted onto an entirely new one. Even if you had been forced into the role, you never quite fit in, small details and aspects still prominent.

"This is wrong," you murmured and felt every aspect of you, every number that composed your code shrieked in protest and began to crack, the invisible hold, this unseen grasp that held its clutches on top of you began to melt away and the false memories and false lives tumbled like dominoes over top one another until nothing remained. You were nothing, remembered nothing, what were you? You struggled to speak and yet no words left your tongue for there was nothing to speak, did you even know how to speak?

"Frisk?" The black skeleton asked, losing his arrogant facade. "Are you alright?"

How crude that name sounded! It wasn't your name and it never had been, your name was buried underneath the ghosted corpses of those in your dead universe. But what was your name for not anyone in your old world lived to rememeber it and it too had finally ceased from your mind?

Your mind had been ripped apart, raw and cold, stinging at the slightest touch, at the slightest thought. You hissed between your teeth and felt the grip on your soul slacken as the comedian, yes he was a comedian, not a glitch or an anomaly, but a comedian, your comedian, drew back the magic hold over your soul. And now he was picking you up, was it even possible? The same skeleton, the same comedian, the one who had slaughtered thousands of your people had spared you and was now even helping you?

The memories, the real memories, they were slipping through the cracks now, filling up the empty spaces of the false ones. "I know my name," you gasped and looked upon the skeleton, knowing his full name. "It's [Y/N}, I think."

And he wasn't Sans, that was not the comedian's name. Perhaps it had once been Sans in a dead world with dead people that had once said it, but no longer. "And your name is Error," you replied slowly and felt the words hum within you, sounding right, sounding final. They weren't out of place, the names Error and [Y/N]. Not wrong, not grafted onto a different tree, they were right.

The memories were seeping through Error as well, his memories washed away, the ones of old slowly coming back into place, snapping puzzle pieces that joined together one by one. You had been right, what you told Gaster. No matter what he did, no matter how many times he altered your code or changed your life and your memories, a part of you would always remain no matter how buried. Every drop of blood in your veins would fight back for you truly couldn't be completely altered, for your soul and all souls were things that could never be smothered by the monstrosity of the Overwrite button for a soul was not a piece of code that could be altered. It was unique, viable and resistant, determined.

The strings were breaking, Gaster was losing. He wasn't the god of this timeline, he was a monster and like all monsters, could be killed with the mere flick of a knife. All things died the same.

Even false gods.

The world flickered, your surroundings faded from view until you found yourself in the Void as all things ended up, things such as yourself and Error that had been exiled from your forgotten worlds for you belonged nowhere but in a place where nothing existed.

Gaster was angry, angrier than he had been in a long, long time. How dare this damn human destroy everything he had worked for, everything had worked out as he had planned. Gaster had pulled the strings and made it so that the painter's body ended as his vessel, destroyed entire universes until nothing remained, crafted his perfect world and altered the human and the glitch's code so that they would become sworn mortal enemies and yet still they had triumphed.

But the Overwrite button was bound to Gaster's soul and with that he was still immortal. They could not win.

"Error was right, you know," Gaster snarled, looking from the human and then to their pet skeleton. "I have spared your life hundreds of times and yet you show no gratitude, even when I crafted a new home for you, a better world where there was no need to reset or change anything because the plot never ended, the story never halted. But I suppose that is the nature of all humans, to find error in perfection."

Your eyes flickered to the remains of the Doodle Sphere, a hollow graveyard. The song of the multiverse had ended and not one voice remained, everything was silent, peaceful. Even Error was on edge, the silence a nagging jester. It reminded him of the first few years he spent alone in this damned world, where there was nothing but silence and the sounds of his own screams to break the air.

But then, piece by piece, the realization of it all sunk in. Because what remained, what remained of every universe, what remained when all else in a world perished? What could not die even if you tried to kill it, even if you ripped it into a thousand pieces and buried each under fifteen layers of cement?

Hate, it was what remained. Hate was the name of the substance that was the final embodiment of each dead world, each deleted world left behind the hate accumulated inside. Hate was the name of the demons that walked the Void and picked off those left behind from deleted worlds, what killed the anomalies, what killed the parasites.

And Gaster had done it, he had erased every universe from existence, but yet the hate would remain. And if every universe that had ever lived or existed was wiped from all of reality, wasn't that a whole lot of hate left behind?

"You won't win, not now or not ever," you snarled, taking a step forward. Error was beginning to realise what you had already pieced together, his eyes scanning the horizon for any signs of the foul creatures. "By your own hand, by your own actions, that will be the reason you die, why we all die and nothing will ever again live, do you understand?"

And then the creatures emerged, the demons of hate with their glowing red eyes and transparent black skin that moved like shadows in a world where there was no light to cast them. They took on different shapes, different embodiments that offered glimpses into the worlds they were from. They would not only kill Gaster, you knew, but the whole lot of you. But that was how it should be and how it would end. All of time and space came from the Void and it would end the same.

Gaster slammed his fist onto the Overwrite button, desperation in his features. And yet the creatures of hate did not disappear, but continued to move forwards, closer and closer to the kill.

"I don't understand!" Gaster spat, looking around wildly. "It always works, the Overwrite button dominates everything!"

"Everything with code," Error snarled, watching as the hate creatures circled in closer, giggling all the while. "But hate cannot be manipulated for it simply is, it is neither alive nor dead. When you destroyed those worlds, when you erased everything, what did you think was left behind? Nothing? No, hate always remains and you cannot kill it, let alone change it."

"Fools!" Gaster whirled around and then stopped, accepting his fate. Looking at you with a knowing smile, he slammed his fist once more onto the Overwrite button.

And the demons struck, wrapping around Gaster's limbs and tearing apart his soul, leeching away at the vitality that constructed it until they filled the empty vessel with hate itself, transforming Gaster into a creature of hate. It was a fate worse than death, for not a part of him remained.

Was this a victory?

You thought so until the world began to shift, your memories and identity once more changing until there was nothing, nothing...

The final overwrite.