The chimera king sat in his study, shuffling papers around on his desk. He wasn't organizing them. He was moving them around for the sake of the rustle and the distraction. He was nervous.
He and his friend Gaster had been up all night many times, pouring over these very papers. Checking how monsters were doing while being confined Underground, casting out inquiries in the form of questionnaires about policies. Most of them came back blank. As long as everything was more or less peaceful, people didn't seem to care what they did. It was somehow more nerve wracking not to have any feedback. How was he to know what reactions would be if . . .
He had contemplated in how many different ways his proposal could go wrong, and how many different ways it could go right. He was driving himself up the wall with this.
The soft click of the door opening appeared magnified in the soundproofed room. With him completely lost in his thoughts, it might as well have been a bang.
Gaster walked in.
In the future.
Anachronistic Arachnid Number 8 Log
Hello all. I am Dr. W. D. Gaster. At long last, I have been recovered from the void. The multiple monsters tasked with investigating the hauntings of the Underground have some tape recordings of the strange sounds and the appearances various parts of my psyche took on. If you'd like to view them, please click the link at the bottom corner of this video. Please note that, given my splintered state, I was not always entirely conscious of some of my actions. But, I continue to study all of this, to ensure that it can never happen to anyone else, and to understand my journey better myself, as well.
You will note that I used purple magic. You will note that I had multiple disembodied hands. Many attempts to count them were made as they appeared to phase in and out of existence, but now they know the answer. I have exactly six. Just like all other spider monsters! You will note I had no nose, either. Spiders do not have noses. My daughter Muffet is overjoyed to meet me. I've gained back my other three eyes, like her. Why did I only have two eyes in the void? Any why did I appear skeletal? Well, I'll get to that later. But the crook in the fissure in the right side of my skull was a remnant of that upper eye, second from the right.
My wife, the Duchess, snaps all six of her hands in a clatter and chatter and says, well, at least I can give you a one person audience for your spoken word poetry again, eh, dear?
I love that woman to bits.
Get it, bit, like a computer?
Zing!
The graceful spider slipped in, closing the door almost as softly as he had entered it. The insomniac- Asgore forcefully stifled the triply alliterative word insect from his thoughts. 'Insect' was a slur against spiders, though it did pop up in his mind sometimes. People just didn't care what the difference was.
"My Lord?" he inquired quietly. "What's on the agenda for tonight?"
At the innocence of the question Asgore almost lost his nerve with what he was going to ask.
In the future.
Anachronistic Arachnid Number 8 Log.
We've almost cracked how to get the machines to retain recordings from futures. Humans have done experiments where quantum particles can be sent back in time with stored information. Alphys and I have been working tirelessly to reproduce those results. All of them have gotten garbled in translation so far, but the point is that something is coming through.
Something that didn't exist in the 'original' past.
Maybe I'll be able to rest my mind at last.
Alphys calls me a pioneer
Her eyes shine bright and clear
Despite . . . oh man, about three different major things that should be bothering her but for some reason aren't. I can't make heads or tails of it.
After some very intensive magic healing, that's taken around eight months, Frisk has been healed from their sustained trauma in the Underground. You try having your soul yanked out of you multiple times and die over and over-
I mean, I knew humans were powerful but this is absolutely ridiculous.
The kid kind of scares me.
No, not kind of. Very much.
Anyway, without the burden of zeir trauma, ze has been able to focus on the resetting power and tweak it. Ze might be the first true time traveler, but I've warned the child again and again not to get too excited. That power takes a lot out of zem. Ze is terribly weak and feeble as soon as ze has crossed over, not to mention the time positioning is very inexact. Our situation is dire, but that pressure and responsibility does not belong on zem. Frisk. You've already done more than enough for monsterkind. That power is an absolute last resort, not a convenience to be employed whenever it strikes our fancy.
Speaking of which, I've just had a very confounding conversation with one of my other selves, Number 2. I actually haven't had much mutual contact with him before this, he was just the second one I happened to glimpse seconds of in a trance. He's not exactly in a pocket universe, but he's also not very nearby. But then, all of our universes play by slightly different rules. He contacted me and excitedly tried to tell me that he'd found a way to avoid both the Core accident and being split apart. I'd heard this all before, and it wasn't true no matter how much he wished it were, but he was insistent.
Sans thought re-meeting people he'd already introduced himself to was tedious? Try explaining to yourselves over and over your travails with time tinkering. Then talk to me about tedious.
I've actually started recording videos of myself as sort of "required reading" before they ask me any questions. So I don't have to repeat myself so much.
To make things more complicated, we can't actually talk in person. It's always either a mental sync in my mind, or talking to someone through a computer that we've tuned to each other's frequencies.
When Number 17 catches up to me, he'll wish he had hair to tear out.
When he was put back together, his form didn't grow his back. Heh heh heh.
Forget the fact that I've had the debate about influencing the free will and determinism of other dimension's selves with myself in my own head, having it literally with myself . . . ugh.
Well, I guess it's not all bad. I know myself very well, so most of the time I can predict what an objection will be, and head it off. Or, I find a new way to phrase something that works with more Doctors.
Despite what all the personal histories and stories might influence you to think, Number 2, no one relationship can, reliably throughout all dimensions, alter your life's trajectory in the 'right' way. Or even turn out positively itself. Way, way too many butterflies. I wish I could munch on them as easily as literal butterflies. Stick to your own dimension, your own decisions, and don't interfere with others' lives unless you've got both really good reason and rock solid probability ratios gathered on your side. That's a lesson I've had to learn more than once.
I am happy that you are happy.
Only a little under half of the Doctors I've met are.
I'm not sure if I'd count myself as one of them.
Asgore breathed a couple of times and swallowed. He tried to keep his voice even. "I'm been hearing rumors," he started haltingly, "that men who lose their wives in childbirth are . . . turning to each other for, eh, fulfillment."
As comprehension dawned on him, the lavender spider's blush was purple.
But in a wink, it was gone again. The man straightened and said brusquely- instead of 'blush-ly' Asgore's mind supplied- "Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, do they not?"
Asgore raised an eyebrow. That wasn't how he would've phrased it, but the spider did have a point. He tapped a couple of feline claws on his desk, thinking.
Confined in the Underground, almost everyone was paired up, and there was nowhere else to go for either suitors or prospects. As in human prisons, people were making due with what they had, though blessedly it was not a coercive arrangement as it was there. Maybe same gender schools and curiousness was a better comparison.
Gaster wasn't one to get straight to the very heart of a matter. Usually he liked to look at it from at least two different angles, and ramble. Maybe the discomfort with the topic had prompted him to be tight lipped.
"So you don't think I should punish them?" he asked.
"My opinion does not matter, My Lord," he replied humbly. "I am merely a sounding board."
Asgore smiled at the rhyme.
"Board . . ." Gaster repeated, eyes distant.
It took the part-dragon a moment to figure out what he was remembering. A bit of wordplay from before Asriel's death drifted vaguely to his mind.
That was not a place he wanted to go, especially tonight. "I am asking for your opinion, Gaster," he said a bit forcefully, to chase away the ghost.
The spider immediately reacted to the authority in his voice, though he hadn't meant to chastise him. "Well, drawing attention to them would cause a stir in the first place, wouldn't it? Letting them lie-" He paused, obviously tempted by a play on words, but seemed unsure whether that was appropriate for the situation. Or maybe he didn't even want to go there.
"-in their beds?" Asgore added helpfully.
At the pun, Gaster sucked in a breath and let out a long, high baritone laugh, cradling his belly with all six hands. When he had enough air again he said, "Oh, oh, oh don't do that to me Sire, I'm going to get a stitch." He coughed once, twice, almost regained calm, but lost it again.
The part-dragon sat back, satisfied with his mischief. He stretched languidly, claws coming out and back in again. He had noted that, often people laughed even more when uncomfortable, as if it were a defense mechanism for dealing with it. Regardless, he was glad he had finally broken the awkward tension. "Well, how am I supposed to be held responsible if you can't control yourself?" he teased.
At the statement the spider suddenly slumped his shoulders.
"What did I say?" Asgore blinked.
"It's . . . nothing, Sire," he said in a tone that clearly said the opposite of the words.
Asgore stood and walked around the desk. "What's eating you?"
"Everything eats spiders," the doctor dodged dejectedly.
Asgore chewed on that sentence for a moment. Was it a dodge, a play on the more literal meaning of the phrase and a reference to his tiny relatives, or a reference to a monster spider's place in the social hierarchy? Many times the Doctor liked to be oblique or metaphorical about things.
"It's nothing," he repeated, eyes down.
When pressed, sometimes he would get defensive, so he decided to . . .
. . . he got a bit irritated when his brain filled in "let it lie."
A few more minutes passed, and per usual the spider seemed to appreciate the silence. He relaxed.
Then, he said, "Your father would've punished them. But, in so many ways," he said reverently, "you are not your father. Ah-" he caught himself quickly, "and I mean him no disrespect, of course."
"Why must you always walk on eggshells, Gaster?" Asgore took a step towards him. "I thought we'd have moved past that by now."
"It befits my station," the spider replied simply.
"Your 'station' is that of my closest friend," the fire monster said warmly.
The spider's look was not quite surprised, yet not quite at ease, either. The five eyes locked with his for a few moments.
Surely that truth was past obvious? Asgore asked himself. Was it just that the spider had a hard time believing it? Even after all these years? They'd had their differences, but there was no other advisor he trusted more. Was the spider just uncomfortable hearing it aloud, with such sincerity? What was the hangup?
Maybe he was taking it too personally. The Doctor, though he stepped and spoke with grace, was bumbling in one area: sentiment.
He and Toriel, when young, had always been able to take off that proper mask of presentation when not entertaining or inspiring. They had dealt it a damaging blow, very intentionally, with the instating of the Nose Nuzzle Contest. What had started out as a much loved and much worn private joke between them evolved into something that would have scandalized their parents.
"My father . . ." He used the mask, of course. It was still important. But it seemed to be the other way around with Gaster. He was caged by it. "In some ways I wish I could be him, but in others . . ."
"Isn't it like that for everyone?" the spider managed a half-smile.
"Not everyone."
"Oh, so there are people out there who completely want to be carbon copies, and people who want absolutely nothing to do with their legacy? Poor souls." The spider paused, tilting his many-eyed head and then narrowing them. "I don't think I've ever encountered the former. The latter has cropped up, though, I suppose."
The royal's manticore tail twitched, almost a wag, as he chuckled. The Doctor could dance philosophical circles around him. Suddenly he had the oddest thought, that he wished the Doctor would start dancing literal circles around him.