(Y'all like angst? Y'all like Afterdeath angst? Y'all liked my cruddy oneshot where I had Reaper kill himself?

Alright. I see how it is.)

Reaper wasn't like his brother.

He wasn't a messenger of promise. He didn't take souls on peaceful walks through their dearest memories, and make them forget their pain as they passed on. He wasn't a friend to everyone and he didn't see good in everyone. He wasn't always on-task or focused. He wasn't liked by most of the other gods. Hell, he hadn't even been necessarily liked by his own creator, the God of Magic.

Unlike Papyrus, who the mortal realm knew as Grim, his job was messy and crawling with misfortune. His brother took care of the souls who died from natural causes, like disease or old age. Reaper dealt with suicides, murders, and accidents. Contrary to the first oneshot, where he did kill himself, he would never do that. If he did, then the full burden of the God of Death would be placed on his brother. That meant he'd have to see and hear all of the horrible, insensitive, disturbing things that Reaper did.

Papyrus had become friends with most of the gods on Mt. Ebott and had a good reputation in the mortal world's stories. He was best friends with Undyne, the Goddess of War. The only three who Reaper could even consider close to friends were Toriel, Alphys, and Frisk. Toriel only put up with him because she had no other choice, Alphys admired his odd intellect about certain things, and Frisk was just kind to everyone. There was Grillby, but Reaper felt like he annoyed the God of the Hearth more than anything else in this world.

Whenever Reaper wasn't out reaping souls, everyone believed he was confined to his bedroom. It wasn't a terrible assumption, as he did spend a lot of his time in there. But that was before he'd discovered the odd shift in the AU known as Aftertale. He was familiar with the time loop that existed within every AU, the RESET Button, and the Genocide Timelines. AUs like Horrortale, Dusttale, and Aftertale were always on his day-to-day schedule.

But one day he'd noticed something that was immediately off about Aftertale. It wasn't uncommon for him to see this AU's Chara, who, according to the story, was the one causing the constant Genocide Timelines. But he hadn't seen even the briefest flicker of the Frisk. And then, as he trailed behind the Chara, he noticed that none of the interactions with the Sans were taking place. Then he'd found out why.

They were both stuck in the SAVE Menu.

When he'd first popped his head into the SAVE Menu, he gave the two quite the scare. The situation had only gotten worse when he explained that he was one of the two Gods of Death. That wasn't his last visit to the SAVE Menu, either. Whenever the Chara was stuck in the Undyne fight, he'd slip into the SAVE Menu to talk to them. Though each time their bonding got cut shorter and shorter, as Chara was starting to breeze through even the Undyne fight.

Over time, more and more color started to be stolen away from the Frisk and Sans. Since they were both named Sans, Reaper opted to give him the nickname of Geno. It was kind of bitter, as "Geno" was the first four letters of the word "Genocide", which was what had thrown them into their prison to begin with. Practically all of Geno's clothes had turned white, though the scarf of his world's Papyrus remained intact and bright red. Frisk's hair was starting to turn white as it lost its brown pigment, with something similar happening to their clothes as well.

Aftertale's Frisk was relatively nice to him, though extremely reserved and self-isolated. It was probably all of the guilt weighing down on their chest. Geno was a completely different story. He was defensive and often made certain comments about Reaper's more childish antics. He was kind of like a Tsundere.

Toriel had taken notice to his constant visits to Aftertale. She would gently tease him about it, but one day asked him if he had a crush on Geno. He wasn't quite sure if that was what it was. He didn't know what that kind of love felt like, so he couldn't be certain. All that he did know was that he found Geno very interesting and liked to be around him, even if the other monster probably hated his voice.

But things couldn't stay like that forever.

Reaper's world had... an anomaly. And I mean an anomaly. Something that wasn't supposed to exist. His world's Chara had been the first human to die, but... there were some complications with the reaping. It had been an accident on his own part. Rule Number One of being a God of Death was to never reap a soul before they're due. He'd accidentally touched Chara, and their soul was reaped ahead of their time.

Chara had become... corrupted and twisted. They were consumed by the chaotic matter released by his mistake, and the real them was gone within just seconds. Now they were a vessel of this chaotic matter. They were hellbent on getting revenge for the darkness that he'd cursed them with. He had been trying to track them down for centuries, but never had any luck with it. The only one who could find them with ease was a buttercup flower named Flowey, who had once been the beloved Asriel, the God of Hope.

And then they'd stolen his scythe and all hell had broken loose.

Souls were getting reaped ahead of their time and the balance was tipping dangerously. His desperation had spiraled out of control. Finally, Flowey had caved in and told him where Chara was heading.

They were heading to Aftertale.

"Come out, come out wherever you are~!" Chara sang with an evil cackle.

The rip in the fabric of reality behind them closed up. Their eyes darted around the space, searching for their next targets. They'd overheard a conversation between Reaper, Toriel, and Frisk about this AU. He'd been getting pretty close to the Frisk and Sans from this world, who he nicknamed Geno. Kinda messed up, but he wasn't any form of a saint. That much was proven with what he did to them.

They wondered if the two somehow knew they were on their way. As Chara looked around the SAVE Menu, they couldn't spot a single sign of life anywhere. But they knew those two were locked in here forever. If they actually wanted to, they would've gone and thanked Aftertale's Chara for giving them two easy pickings for targets. Easy pickings with great significance to one of their objectives, that is.

"What are you doing here?"

.... Or they had just been facing the wrong way.

Chara turned around, their grip on the scythe tightening. Sure enough, Geno was standing right there. Frisk was behind him. They both eyed the scythe in their hands for a moment. They definitely recognized it.

"Hello Geno," Chara grinned. "I have a few bones to pick from you~."

~~(This is about where I lost motivation, but I am determined to get a oneshot out today)~~

Frisk watched the scene before them, dread building in their stomach.

The fight between Geno and Chara had lasted for a few hours. Despite the boosts he had from the DETERMINATION he injected himself with, his power was still struggling against Chara's chaotic ones. Frisk was completely powerless to do anything to help, as Chara had manifested some sort of chains to keep them stuck in place.

Things weren't looking good for Geno. They were both having flashbacks to all of the Genocide Timelines they'd been forced to endure. The final fight in Judgement Hall. They both knew what was coming next. The final blow. And this time... Geno wouldn't be able to come back. 

(So I'm gonna cut it off here. I might edit it later and add the rest of it. I don't know why but I always seem to have a hard writing anything for Afterdeath, despite how much I like the ship.

Also someone explain how the prompt that inspired the start of this was "Maybe you should stop trying to socialize, everyone hates you anyway" and this is the end result--

I just wanna write angst dammit.)