***Hello, everyone! I'm gonna be honest with you: this is an idea that I've had for well over a year, maybe two years. I don't know. But I've written and revised it many times, and I shall now share it in hopes that someone out there likes it. Alphys, Undyne, and Gaster belong to Toby Fox, baby Arrow belongs to me, and let's roll!
Strange things had been happening to Alphys. Nothing major... just little things.
She would see dark figures in her vision before she put on her glasses in the mornings. Or in all the occurrences that she had to haul herself out of bed to take care of her infant son at three in the morning, she would glance around the room and see a shadow behind the curtains. Either she would blink and it would be gone, or her son would cry and she would get distracted.
These kinds of things carried over to her phone as well. She would get calls without ID numbers, and they would only have static. One time, when she heard her name in a slow, hushed growl, she screamed and dropped her phone in shock. The screen was now cracked because of it, but she couldn't afford a new one currently.
And all of the text on her phone and laptop would occasionally appear in strange symbols. She recognized it vaguely, but it was from at least a decade ago. When she turned off and turned back on either device, the text was perfectly fine.
Like nothing had ever happened.
XxX
When the doorbell rang, both Alphys and Undyne woke up. Unfortunately, so did their son.
"I got it," Undyne mumbled, her eye hardly open.
"N-no, I'll g-get it," Alphys said quickly.
It took a few minutes for Undyne to actually wake up, and she would submit to anything when she was this tired. "Hm... okay, sweetie," she said. And, she was out in seconds.
Alphys was amused, until she heard more crying and the doorbell ringing again. So, she went to the nursery first and to the crib.
Inside was a month-old baby boy. He was a fish monster, one with orange scales and a bit of red hair. And he was not happy that he'd been woken up.
"I-it's okay, it's o-okay," Alphys said, holding him to her chest. But she was more trying to convince herself of that than anything else. Especially when she ran down the stairs and opened the door. "O-oh my God..." was all she could say. Even her son's whimpering stopped.
For standing in the doorway was W. D. Gaster.
"Alphys... you haven't changed much. I need your help... please..." he said. His tone was desperate and pleading.
Alphys could still hardly believe that her former mentor was in front of her. "S-sure. Uh, c-come in. My wife is a-asleep, but she s-sleeps like a l-log," she said.
She and Gaster sat down on the living room couch.
"I see that you have a child," Gaster noted.
"Y-yeah. His name is A-Arrow. He started c-crying when you r-rang the d-doorbell, but he's c-calm now, and I ran d-down here. I can take him b-back upstairs..." Alphys offered.
"No, it's fine. I did not come just to check in on you. I am certain you can heal my now. After all, if a female monster does not have healing magic to begin with, she obtains them after giving birth," Gaster said.
"W-well, what d-do you need h-healed?" Alphys asked.
Gaster held up his hands. They were crudely wrapped in bandages.
"O-oh my God, wh-what happened?" she asked, shocked.
Gaster shakily unwrapped his bandages, wincing and biting back curses. But he held up his now-unwrapped hands. They had bone pieces crammed into the holes. The job was evidently quick and careless. The pieces and the bones around them were cracked and chipped.
"H-holy..." Alphys trailed off. She put Arrow on her lap and healed Gaster's hands. Granted, there were still lines from where the pieces had been, but those were mere scars.
"Thank you. I suppose you'd like to know what brought me to your house at this hour?" Gaster asked.
"B-beyond the need of h-healing, y-yes," Alphys said. She picked up Arrow, who had started to get fussy when his mother and put him down.
"It goes into a long story. But a long time ago, I married a woman named Arial. One of the former Royal Guard Captains. And I love her more than I could say. We wound up having two sons together. You might know them... Sans and Papyrus? Those are my sons. Arial and I raised them like any other parents would raise their children. Like your wife and yourself are most likely raising your son. But a few years after Papyrus was born, that was when the war happened. So Arial had to naturally fight in it. She wound up... she wound up being killed. Something inside of me broke. Losing my wife just... changed me. Sans and Papyrus were no longer my children. No, they were experiments. I did terrible things to them. I cut out holes in the palms of my hands to be implanted into their skulls, but saved their pieces. One day, while I was working in the Core, it shifted. And the lack of safety rails caused me to fall in. I don't know how long I was in the Void. Time and space do not exist there. It's endless nothingness. But I fought my way out, back to here. I found Sans and Papyrus and asked for their forgiveness. Papyrus, being himself, forgave me straight away. Sans... was not so trusting. I made a deal: if I could make him whole, a sort of treaty would be made. so I went back to my lab and found their bone pieces. I went back to their house, removed my bone pieces from their skulls, and gave them back theirs. Toriel was on standby, administering healing magic so they barely felt a thing. It was tonight. After they had all called it lights out, I tried to make myself whole as well. That, ah, didn't go well. I needed assistance, desperately. I came to my trusted former intern. I have been trying to communicate with you for days now. But it was reduced to shadows and cell phone glitches," Gaster explained.
He sighed, rewrapping his hands in the bandages firmly. That was the only sound he heard, until he looked up.
"I-I... I can't b-believe... that it was y-you causing these th-things to happen," Alphys managed.
"It was. But I would not have disturbed you if I had known that you had other matters to attend to. After all, you're a grown woman now, with a wife and son," Gaster said. Alphys looked down at Arrow, who was now soundly asleep in her arms.
"I-if you ever need t-to talk about th-this again, then y-you can a-a-always come to me. I know h-how it feels... to h-hurt people, innocent p-people, and regret it," she said.
Gaster thought about it. Then, he stood up. "Get some rest," was all he said. But he said it in such a tone that Alphys immediately obeyed, going off up the stairs.
Gaster walked out of the house into the cold and dark of the night.
I hate to break it to you, Alphys, he though grimly, the only other sound being his footsteps against the ground, but you will never understand this feeling.
***And that's about it. Please don't logic this too hard, it's an old idea that I decided to share with you. As for what Gaster said about the healing magic? That's my head cannon. Anyways, be sure to leave a review on the way out, and I'll see you all in the next one! Bye!