Everything hurt...

Cross scrambled, as he used his hands to climb up whatever this was....

Everything hurt, and it was their fault, they had made a mistake that couldn't be undone... They let their guard down, and this was the price that they paid for it.

How could they have been so stupid?!

------

Cross was happily humming, chewing on a bar of chocolate, as they wandered through the AU. It was so quiet, all of the Monsters had retired for the night, and Cross was now looking for a sleeping spot of their own...

They stopped walking, when they felt someone placing a hand on their shoulder.

They looked up, to see what had to be a Sans, looking at them. "What's a young one like you, doing out here, when you should be sleeping?" The Sans asked him.

"I'm on my way home!" They told him. "I just love in one of the more remote communities Mister, and we came here to celebrate a holiday back home." They internally winced at having to act like a Babybones, but they didn't have a choice, it was safer for them to hide the fact that they were an adult in the body of a Babybones... Would they still count as one, due to the messed up time of their AU?

"Where's your parents kid?"

They were brought out of their thoughts, when the Sans asked them a question.

"Don't have any." They tried to shrug their shoulders, but they winced when the Sans tightened his grip on the shoulder that he was holding...

"So, no one will miss you then?" He grinned, but there was something about that grin that told them to run, but when they tried...

They screamed, as they felt their left arm being yanked, causing their left shoulder to become dislocated, and a burning sensation in their neck, as something was jabbed into it.

----

He was always curious...

Why, exactly, did nearly all of the immortal Babybones, native, or visiting, have wings?

To fly away, free. The ground was dangerous, snakes in the grass.

Why couldn't they have other abilities, to help them stand out, like the touch of Death? That was the only other ability that he had seen...

Living so close to the Void, had open his mind up to so many possibilities, if touch based abilities, and changes to the body was possible, then what else could these Babybones do?

He had one of them in his grasp now, and he opened an eyesocket of his unconscious test subject, staring at the potential that it held...

"Alright then, let's see if I can make you a little bit more special..."

---

That, was when the pain began, robbing them of the memories of what had been done to them...

It was crueler than what XGaster had done to them, because it wasn't over in a flash, but kinda too, since their new jailer always drowned them, in pain relief, before they started their experiments on them.

They were trying to make them 'special', not 'perfect', like XGaster would have done, they were seeking something 'special', an answer to a question, and Cross was a way for them to find it.

Though, despite all of the pain relief, it still hurt...

They were back where they had started, they were someone's test subject, their experiment, and they just wanted it to stop!

They wanted their freedom back! They wanted Red, or Fresh, to save them again! They would even accept the Stars, or their old co-workers saving them, it that ended up with them having their freedom back!

"Chara!" They cried out, one time, forgetting that they hadn't gone through the events that had ended with Chara being attached to their Soul. "Help me, please!"

But nobody came...

"Chara?"

They almost broke again, during that moment, Chara may have been a homicidal child that honestly had a pretty good reason to yell, scream, and attack the world that had hurt him, he did show some measure of care to them...

Maybe it came from sharing a body, and without Cross, he couldn't hack the Codes, but whenever they had really needed help, or just some time to shut down, and just process everything, Chara had always been there to step in, or he would shut up for a few hours, understanding that his hateful words was something that Cross didn't need to hear, at that moment of time...

To finally realise that they had cut themselves off from that source of support was scary, but as they always did, Cross reached out to the parts of their mind that was protecting them from breaking, and they held on for dear life, reaching out, with their Magic, to find a way out of this mess...

And their eyesockets started to burn, as something answered their call for help...

It was at that moment, their jailer entered their cell, carrying something that was made out of metal, in their arms, and Cross stared at them, wishing for them to enter a state, in which they could never hurt anyone, ever again, and know what it was like to have your freedom taken from you...

Their jailer actually squealed when he saw them. "Oh my goodness! I did it! You have scale patterns around your eyesockets now! And are those bone blemishes that look like freckles?!" He excitedly started to run towards them, most likely to take a closer look at the results of his experiments, but he couldn't move…

"What the?!" He cried, looking at his legs, and he froze when he saw the stone that was creeping up them.

He looked back at Cross, to see that their eyelights were glowing red, and that they were silts in a sea of darkness…

Cross kept on glaring at their jailer, something was telling them to not stop doing this, if they stopped now, then they would never be able to escape again.

—-

Blue was patrolling Outertale when he saw them.

They were tiny, and covered in space dust, with glowing eyelights that were bright red, and bone blemishes that covered their cheeks, and gathered around their nose. Scale markings were around their eyesockets, and the only thing that they were wearing was a hospital gown. The gown was dirty, and it was torn at the ends.

Their eyelights widened when they saw Blue, and they started to run away from him.

'Hey, wait!" Blue yelled, before he started to run after them, hoping to catch them, before they tripped over something, and they fell off of one of the ledges here, and into the Void. "Kid! Wait!"

The kid continued to run, away from Blue, scrambling up a cliff, and Blue froze when he realised where they were going...

"Kid! Come back! That part is unstable!"

He ran after them again, but he was too late.

The kid slipped... And they screamed, as they fell from the cliff, Blue was unable to get there, in time, to save them...

And he was forced to watch, helpless, as they fell into the Void.