Ah, yes. I updated a MONTH after the last chapter. So turns out my emotional problems didn't get better. Like, at all. If anything they may have gotten slightly worse. So yeah... I'm so sorry I didn't update. My excuse is my poor mental health. We'll just leave it at that. Again, I'm SO sorry!
BUT! Since I once again updated late, you deserve another fun fact about this story! Did you know that I actually based Gaster off of me? Yeah, I'm a complete sucker for science stuff and sometimes use big words that no one understands. Of course, Gaster is A LOT more intelligent than I am, but to be honest, that is to be expected. I'm still kind of smart though, at least I think so.
Warning, an ACTUAL filler chapter is ahead! (Of course, with a cliff hanger, because how else do you end a chapter?) Please review, and I hope you enjoy chapter 8 of Leaving the Void!

~Emily Believes


"Entry Number Seventeen. Darker, darker, yet darker. The darkness keeps growing, the shadows cutting deeper. Photon readings negative. This next experiment seems very, very... interesting. ...What do you two think?"

"Fuhuhu! I can't believe that is Sans and awake and Papyrus isn't! This is so weird!"

"Well, I don't think being knocked unconscious counts as 'sleeping.'"

"A-Are we s-sure th-they'll wake u-up? Wh-Wh-What if th-they're d-d-dead?"

"Then they'd be dust and so would we. Hey, kid, want to help me wake up everyone?"

Shuffling. Footsteps.

"Papyrus, you bonehead! Get up!"

"Psst, Tori. Wake up."

"D-Dr. Gaster, wake up! W-We need you to t-tell us wh-where we are!"

Gaster eyes cracked open. Darkness. He could only see darkness. He could only hear the voices of those who had already awoken. "We need you to tell us where we are."

Blindly standing, Gaster brushed himself off. He could hear the others beginning to wake and mutter amongst themselves (perhaps "mutter" didn't exactly describe Papyrus' volume level very accurately). "Be careful where you step," was the first thing he said, causing the others to slowly quiet down. Where they were… Hardly anyone had explored it in the timelines, and if they did, they were one of his old lab assistants. For the most part, it had been abandoned, only known to an elite few. "I'm not sure how disorganized this place is. I haven't been here in years."

As if the mysterious place recognized his voice, the lights turned on immediately after he finished speaking. As everything came into focus, they noticed they were right in front of the permanently open elevator, which was too damaged to be of any use anymore. Only meters ahead of them was a door that had automatically opened with the lights as they turned on. CORE Lab, read a sign above the opening. "You built a lab down here?" Toriel questioned with raised eyebrows.

"Nothing in science goes unquestioned," responded Gaster, leading the group through the opening. Through the opening stood the transparent inner walls that allowed the group to see a marvelous contraption, a part of the machine that took geothermal heat and converted it into electricity for the entire Underground. The outer walls of the room were littered with many blueprints and graphs that showed to be slightly burnt and faded. "I figured that since the CORE would take quite a long time to construct, building a lab down here only seemed reasonable," Gaster explained, though he was slightly distracted. That map has to be here somewhere...

The others marveled at various things in room as Gaster searched for a vital piece of parchment, the thing that would allow them to escape this place. He tried to recall memories from so long ago, but nothing clear or helpful came to mind. The astonished mutters of those behind him didn't help, either. Where would I leave such a thing? he kept asking himself. Surely if it was that important I wouldn't forget…

It seems like it should be obvious…

He simply stared at the weathered material used to create the walls, as if they held some sort of clue.

Perhaps Chara took it…? No, no… if she knew this lab was here she wouldn't have acted so condescending…

Did they hold a clue? A riddle, perhaps? A puzzle to lead them out of this place? A solution that would bring them one step closer to correcting the wrongs that took the lives of too many monsters across too many timelines?

If so, then why didn't he remember it?

"Dr. Gaster… do these markings mean anything important?"

Markings. A light bulb suddenly went off in Gaster's head. Clues. He walked over to the others, who were all gathered around something that had been written on the wall. They all made a small hole in their huddle so the former Royal Scientist could analyze the markings…

"Those are not markings," Gaster said simply upon first seeing them. Faint words in Wingdings were written on the wall. Of course, they would appear to be markings in their eyes, he thought. They cannot read Wingdings… He glanced over at his eldest son, whose eyes were narrowed at the words on the wall. At least, majority of them can't… Gaster himself then turned his attention to the words, trying to make even the smallest sense out of them.

His eyes widened. He knew what this was. He knew what the "markings" were. He knew there were many more of them scattered around the CORE lab. He could make sense of the faded symbols. Maybe we don't need the map… Perhaps the entries will tell us where the exit lies, he thought, staring at the coded words. He paused for a second, trying to recollect his memories of building the CORE, trying to see if there were any faults in his thinking. No. No, that's ridiculous. We would just spend hours down here going through my old experiments. The entries were used to document my work, not give directions. Every delay we face, the closer Chara gets to destroying this universe.

But if we wish to stop her… what other choice do we have? They hold the only source of direction that I remember…

"...Entries, I believe would be a better word," Gaster finally said.

Alphys gave a small gasp. She quickly turned her head to Gaster. "Entries?! You mean there's more of these that explain your experiments?!" she exclaimed hurriedly. He smiled slightly and nodded. "What do they say?! ..Oh - u-uhm, I mean… You don't have to sh-share if you want to. I mean, I understand w-why… I'm just curious and I-I…"

"It's alright, Dr. Alphys," Gaster interrupted, clearly amused. "I figured you all would want to know what this means anyways, for one reason or another." He turned to the faded words on the walls, the weathered documentation of his past experiments. "Ahem," he said, catching the attention of those who had started side-conversations. "'Entry Number One. There does not seem to be a way to technologically produce these entries yet, so I unfortunately have to improvise. For those who will read these entries, my name is W.D. Gaster, the current Royal Scientist of the Underground. Much of the population has migrated to what the King has dubbed "New Home." However, the path from Hotland to New Home is very treacherous, and there's not much light in the new capital, or anywhere else in the Underground for that matter. Therefore, the King has assigned me the task of creating a machine that will simultaneously create electricity and act as a passageway to New Home. I have already built this lab with the help of a few friends. The blueprints for the rest have been drawn and I have already hired lab assistants. This will certainly be an interesting project.'"

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence after Gaster had finished reading his first entry. "So you're the one built this big hunk of metal?" Undyne questioned with a raised eyebrow, breaking the quiet atmosphere.

"With the erasure of one's existence comes the erasure of their accomplishments," Gaster replied with a hint of sorrow in his tone. "Some know the CORE was built by the old Royal Scientist, and only the smallest fraction of those monsters actually know my name. Most, I've noticed, simply just assume Dr. Alphys built it or that it was always there." He remembered very clearly looking into the timelines, watching his legacy fade to dust, watching it morph into something unrecognizable, intoxicated by muddy fables told by those who barely knew him. He remembered very clearly seeing the years drag on, seeing the inevitable change that he couldn't stop. He remembered very clearly watching his accommodating imprint turn into a nasty scar.

"It's so strange. Grillbz isn't as, well, you know, fiery as he used to be."

How could I have done such a thing?

"I know you're not the sage you pretend to be, Gaster."

If I had just been more careful…

"Sans… When will Father return from his business trip? It's been forever!"

"Dunno, Pap. Dad's pretty smart and useful in his field. It could be a while."

...none of this would've happened…

"Beware of the man who speaks in hands."

This is all…

"What kind of loser with that many years of experience just falls into his own machine? Talk about pathetic!"

...my…

"That asshole mad scientist? I'm glad that guy died. He was messing around with things he had no business messing around with."

...fault.

"Citizens of the Underground, we have terrible news to share with you today. Dr. Wing Din Gaster, the Royal Scientist, fell into one of his machines… We cannot find any trace of him. The kingdom has lost a great mind and a great soul. Help us mourn the memory of Dr. Gaster, for even though we don't know what exactly happened, one thing is for certain:

He is dead."

Gaster felt a pang in his heart, like his fragile soul fragment was ripping into multiple pieces, like his last grasp on this reality was destroying itself. Time was running out. How could he have done such a thing? How could he have set up such evil, such suffering? Breathing grew difficult. Time was running out. Precious seconds were slipping away, for in those seconds, the single slash of a knife could doom the universe as he knew it. Time was running out; the darkness was growing. Time was running out. How could he have let things escalate this far? Time was running out.

Time was running out, and the shadows just kept whispering the faint reminder that there was nothing he could do.


Gaster was met with darkness when he returned to consciousness. He was met with the concerned cries of his family and friends. "Wake up," they said. "Wake up!" And he wanted to desperately, but his limbs did not comply. History is doomed to repeat itself in many ways, he thought, thinking back to how it was troubling for him to stand upon rewriting his existence in the Ruins. But this was different. He could actually move his limbs then, if barely, but now he felt like he was in a state of paralysis.

"Let's just find the next entry," he heard Sans say clearly though the muffled calls. "Shouldn't be that hard."

Everyone's pleas disappeared abruptly. "Without that guy's guidance?! Are you insane?! We'll get lost down here!" came the voice of Undyne. "No one else can read those random symbols, anyways."

"We don't haveta read 'em, just haveta find 'em. It's like a puzzle." Only Frisk and I, Gaster thought, and Sans himself know that's not true.

"A puzzle?! Wowie! I love puzzles!" exclaimed Papyrus.

"What about Dr. Gaster?" Toriel asked. "We can't just leave him here."

"Alright. Then we won't."

Suddenly, something grasped hold of Gaster's weakened soul fragment. There was only light pressure applied, but his soul still ached nonetheless. He felt the ground disappear beneath him. What was going on? He tried to piece together things - sort the rational thoughts from his cluttered mind - when something clicked. Sans' powers. Sans had the power to grasp onto his soul to move him around safely. He has the potential to, at least, he thought upon remembering the countless battles his son fought against Chara, using that same magic to destroy her again and again. Sans is my son. He doesn't hold hatred for me as he does for Chara, he reassured himself, though somehow, even with the prior knowledge and memories, there was a lingering fear that in someway that statement wasn't true.

As the others chattered on through their exploration of the CORE lab, Gaster was left to wonder what had happened. Why couldn't he move? Why were his eyes only met with a pitch black hue? What caused him to be in this state? The entry, we were reading the entry…. My very first entry, he recollected as he heard Sans reading Entry Number Nine to himself. "Exit isn't that way," Sans spoke. "That will lead us to a fiery pit of doom."

"And how do you know that?" Undyne asked skeptically.

"Guess it just boils down to instinct."

"Sans! If you're going to model after the Great Papyrus and lead everyone, than you can't tell your ridiculous puns!" Papyrus exclaimed.

"Sorry, Pap. Didn't mean to fire you up."

Though the puns seemed to be an annoyance to some, they apparently trusted him, Gaster noted, as he heard no screams of someone being burned alive, which was always a nice thing to note. He knew what Sans had mentioned: a small door that when opened revealed the intense magma that lay deep below Hotland's surface, which was used to rid of scrap metal, but he couldn't focus his attention on those things. Not now.

I read the entry aloud, and Undyne asked, well I suppose more of stated that I was the one who built the CORE, he thought as the others continued their journey. But why did the answer to that one questioned cause such self-deprecating thoughts? Why did those thoughts cause him to actually lose consciousness? He thought and he thought and he thought. Why? The answer didn't come to him. His thoughts were almost too cluttered to make any sense of anything, anyways. Eventually, hours into the search for the exit, the search for an answer, he let his mind wonder.

Luckily, where it wandered caused an epiphany.

The pressure on his soul, his weak, broken soul. It grew. For what reason, he wasn't certain. Maybe Sans came in contact with one of his machines and wanted to make sure history didn't repeat. Whatever happened, the action caused him to think. The only reason I'm able to exist here is because of determination. My half of a soul alone would not be able to handle creating such energy and supplying magic. Loud conversing surfaced around him. Reminiscing about the change of my legacy must have subconsciously lowered my determination. My soul couldn't create enough energy to keep me conscious, thus, I lost that consciousness.

As if finding the answer caused it, the world started to fade back into view. He could hear the faint sounds of city noises, smell the faint odor of light smog. In front of him was a small house just outside of the capital of New Home. Luxurious for one person alone, just right for a small family. They had found an exit: the passageway Gaster created from the CORE lab to his house, his own little shortcut. That's what the chatter was about. It looked more rundown after being unoccupied for an unfathomable amount of time, but one word still came to mind when he saw the place, even if it wasn't the same as when he last saw it.

Home.

It was his first home outside of college. It was where he worked on many experiments after his hours at the lab in the castle were done. It was where he brought Sans and Papyrus after meeting them for the first time. It was where he raised them as his own. It was where he last saw his old friend before unintentionally entering the Void.

Home.

Likely out of his own surprise and nostalgia, Sans suddenly let go of Gaster's soul, causing him to drop to the ground. But Gaster paid no mind to it. He simply stood back up, and walked over to Sans and Papyrus. He uttered one simple sentence.

"We're home, boys."

After everyone got over the initial shock of Gaster's return to consciousness (and stopped barraging him with questions, which he simply answered, "It's just my weak soul. Nothing disastrous."), Gaster lead everyone inside. He was smiling, grinning in fact. He couldn't wait to see his old house again. He wanted to relive old memories, momentarily go back to a time where he didn't have to worry about saving the universe, or a soulless sadistic child killing his family and friends. Plus, his notes and experiments on soul energy were done at the lab in his house, so that could help along the way. If he needed anything right now, it was a boost in determination.

That's exactly what he didn't get when he opened the door.