It's so quiet. And so loud. What is this? Everything feels so strange. Where are these words coming from?... Are these thoughts? Are these voices coming from elsewhere? Where is this exactly? Is it even "where"? Or is it "when"?
Familiar screams echo all around. But how can that be if it's quiet? Stop… stop screaming.
It's so dark. Or is it bright? It must be darkness. There's nothing to see. How did I get here….
"I"? Who is "I"? I… me… who is me? Who am I?... I'm a monster. A monster. Underground.
I am a monster who lives in the underground. Is where I am right now Underground? What does the Underground look like?... There are others. Who are they? Where are they? Where am I?... Someone please help me…
A lab. What is a lab?... I worked there! That's right. I worked at a lab…. For who?...
I am a monster who lives and works at a lab in the Underground with other monsters.
What was I working for? What was I doing?... I was… I was… experimenting. On someone? How? I was making something. With someone. What was it? Who was it?... They're short. Happy… they were asking questions… I was so proud of them…
My child. My child and I were working on something together. Son. My son… I have two! I have two sons! Happy. Hyper. Loved to learn. Different things though. Ah… my boys…
Wingdings… That's my name. Wingdings… Aster?... Gaster. What did I look like?... Tall…black clothes. "They're slimming okay? Turtle necks are stylish." Unusual thoughts.
I live… Snow. Lots of snow. Snow… Snowdin… I live in Snowdin town. With my sons….
It's so cold here…. Why is it cold?... Why is it so damn dark? Oh… if I'm a monster, then I must have a body… I can't feel anything though. I can't feel my body… Why not?...
Let's think. What do I remember doing?... Working at the lab… My son was asking questions… The machine… Loud creaking noises at the lab… We were working on the machine…. Creak creak creak creak creak creak…. My son was in trouble… We fell, that's right. The path bottomed out. Creak creak creak creak… The machine fell. The machine saved my son. I fell.
I fell. I fell. I fell. I fell. Down? Up? No, down. I fell down. Where? What did I fall into? Is that where I am? I fell into darkness? Can I get out?...
()
After some unknown amount of time, the figure appears. He is but a shadow of what he once was. A glob. A figure. A shell. He's melting eternally but never losing mass. It's too dark to see anything.
Wingdings Gaster floats weightlessly in the void. He simultaneously feels pain and nothing at all. He can't describe it. In fact it's hard to think straight in the first place. It takes him a long… "time" to even grasp that he exists.
There is no concept of time…. And yet it feels like days before something flashes. Color. Shapes. Something like a memory flashes in front of Gaster like a tv getting bad reception. He looks at it slowly. It doesn't make any sense, but the scene looks familiar. Like home…
His house! He more or less sits up from his back float position and somehow drifts over to the scene. When he reaches out, the scene surrounds Gaster but it all looks unclear and salt and peppery… But it's still his house for sure. It's messier than he recalls… Was it always like that maybe? Someone walks in the door. A tall man who for a long time he can't recognize. A red scarf… a silly outfit… he's very loud and… Gaster can't seem to understand a word he's saying… Is he perhaps complaining about the mess? He's a skeleton, Gaster observes… Hmm… Why is this skeleton in his house? He looks oddly like Papyrus and it weirds him out…. Ah, Papyrus. That was one of his sons' names! How could he forget something so important?...
The flash goes away and darkness envelopes Gaster once again. It takes a long time for another flash to happen. He glides over to that glimpse into the outside world and reaches for it. And just as before, the scene surrounds him.
It's Snowdin. Outside of the small bar and grill, the oldest son is having a snowball fight with several of the other children. He seems very young. He gets hurt and cries for a while. And Gaster is not there. The other children make fun of him until Sans stands up and tackles one of them. Part of Gaster is proud, and the other part is worried. Why isn't HE there? This is… is this the past? The future? Time…. He can't remember.
This repeats several times. Looks into the past, watching Sans (ah that was his name) study hard in his bedroom on science mumbo jumbo. Times where he cried because he felt alone, and times where he laughed and made everyone else laugh. He watched Papyrus fight and lose against another familiar face. A scaly blue one with red hair. He can't put his finger on what her name is.
He sees other things too… But Gaster has ONLY seen things in the Underground. Never the surface. He wonders why that is.
Gaster realizes after many scenes, that he seems to be flickering in and out of time and space randomly. Some of these scenes scare him. Make him angry. Emotion is something that is slowly returning to him. How long has he been here dammit?... It feels like… like decades have gone by already…
He watches his sons grow up this way… Two very different monsters. Sans, the outward jester who has many friends and acquaintances, and yet alone he studies hard on something. He goes to the lab in the back of the house often to dabble (and sometimes kick) the machine they made together, checks the drawers and looks at papers of something that Gaster cannot see. And then Papyrus who has learned that the only way to get attention is to be loud. But he's a very positive boy and is able to see good in everyone. Sometimes he falters and gets depressed… But a lot of the time he's able to pull through. And if he can't on his own, Sans is there to cheer him up.
Gaster notices that he doesn't see the two working together on things a lot. It's a rare occurrence which he finds strange. Through these scenes, he can recall many memories. Some of which include that Papyrus used to be very clingy to Sans. Always wanting to be involved in whatever his big brother was doing. Why has this changed?
He also notices that no one seems to remember him… A scene flashes where Sans is asking monsters in the lab if they remember who Gaster is. And everyone says no. The sadness on his sons face is devastating. The blue tears he sheds make Gaster sick to what should be his stomach. Sans is the only one who remembers him.
Another scene. Gaster notices he can move around in this one. A new development.
Sans is in the secret lab behind the house, opening the drawers there.
Gaster floats over to him and looks at his face. He's very sad… and looking down at the papers Gaster couldn't see before. So he looks.
It's the terrible picture that Sans drew on that final day. He's written "don't forget" on it.
"OH SANS… I'M SO SORRY… I WANT TO COME HOME. I WANT TO COME HOME… THE MACHINE… TRY THE MACHINE."
Sans quickly looks up and around… Did… Did Sans hear him somehow?
"SANS?" Several moments pass by before Sans looks back at the picture and stares hard… Then a grin slowly creeps its way onto his face.
"You know…" Sans says.
"I can't tell if I'm goin' crazy or what. But… old man if that's you, then I think I heard you. Wouldn't that be nice?"
Oh merciful gods, Sans heard him? A little at least? How NOW? Why? What's different about this time? Gaster swings his arms wildly!
"SANS! SANS YES IT'S ME! IT WAS ME!"
"Uh… I mean I… Well, if you're REALLY there, then try talking to me again." Sans says. Gaster musters all his might to yell and move and flail about.
"I'M HERE! I'M RIGHT HERE MY BOY! I'VE BEEN WATCHING YOU ALL THIS TIME, BUT I'M STILL HERE, I DON'T KNOW WHERE—"
"Heh… Guess I really am goin' crazy…" To Sans, only silence responded. He looks down at the paper and sluggishly puts it back in the drawer.
Gatser can feel his heart sink.
"NO! NO SANS YOU'RE /NOT/ CRAZY! I'M RIGHT HERE, OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! YOU JUST HEARD ME A MOMENT AGO, YOU'RE NOT CRAZY! I'M RIGHT—"
The scene closes and dark tendrils cover it up like a curtain made of nightmares. It takes Gaster away from his son…
"NO PLEASE! MY SON! I HAVE TO KEEP TRYING! HE HEARD ME! HE HEARD ME!" Gaster screams into the void as the last bit of Sans' sad face disappears into darkness.
All is quiet again. Alone in the abyss. Gaster clutches his hands to his chest and resists the urge to cry… This CANNOT be happening. It keeps getting worse. Without him… so many things have changed. The IMPORTANT things.
Time in this space is infinite. It is looping and also not looping all at once. The unbearable loneliness is crushing. The constant feeling of falling and floating makes him sick and it makes him angry. Why can't he hold still? Why? Why?! WHY?!
He just wants to be with his boys again…
Gaster would quit his job at the lab to be with them.
This darkness…
Gaster would dust someone to be with them.
Why does it feel like it's growing?
Gaster would let the entire Underground burn to be with them.
Gaster would murder every man woman and child to be with them.
Gaster would destroy the Earth to be with them.
Gaster would defy time and space to be with them.
Every moment that passes, Gaster feels like he's losing his mind more and more. He knows that these are horrible thoughts. They're the worst thoughts that he could genuinely feel. But he wants out so bad. He wants Sans and Papyrus to smile at him again. Oh God he just wants to hug his children! Any fate outside of this hell would be merciful. Any torture a monster can endure would be better than this…
A scene glows behind Gaster. It's the only thing that knocks the scientist from his spiral of maddening thoughts. Ah, temporary release. At least for now, he'll have to settle for these… THINGS that allow him to see AYTHING.
He floats over and reaches out…
Things… things change a lot after this.
The scene flickers forward many times, like a skipping cd.
The Ruin doors open. Could the queen be returning?... No, it's… God it's a human child! The last one the underground needs! Kill them! Kill them! Kill them! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM!
The human with their blue and fuchsia stripped shirt walk around the underground, talking to some of the Froggit's and Whimsum's. And yet at the same time, they will kill some of them.
Sans! Sans appears, finally! Kill the child! GET THEIR SOUL BOY!
But he only greats them with a god-awful joke. Why is he being nice to them? They're a killer!
Gaster watches the child go through the forest, killing some and not others. Papyrus! Ah his boy is so tall! His outfit is ridiculous, but he can faintly recall a flash where he saw the two making that thing. It also seems that Sans never got his growth spurt. He wonders if Sans is sad about that. Haha.
Many puzzles, the human goes through them. They fight Papyrus, but they spare him. Gaster sighs with relief. He recalls his thoughts from earlier. Letting the underground burn just to be with them. For now, seeing his boys escape death will have to do.
They fight and don't fight. Fight and don't fight. Until they reach the end. Asgore! Ah Asgore. It's been a while since a flash has shown the King.
Gaster misses his friend… He misses that furry fool with too big a heart…
During this incredibly long scene, Gaster notices that this tiny yellow flower has been quite a nuisance… He watches the human walk around and follows them, disappearing when the human turns and almost sees him.
The flower kills King Asgore. Gaster's heart hurts and he has to look away for a moment. The flower turns into a beast and kills the human several times. And yet….
The child does not die. Their soul pieces itself back together!... Could this be what Gaster was working on in the lab? This perseverance?
The child beats the flower… and then things go black. But he can hear a phone ringing. He can hear Sans' voice. Sans talks to the human and tells them that all the human souls have gone missing… Papyrus shows up next. Goodness he's loud. But it doesn't matter. It's his son's voices….
Undyne. She takes the phone next. Undyne… Undyne…? Oh... OH! OH! She's the one that was being experimented on before all of this!
A flash and the scene ends…. That was the longest one Gaster has ever seen. But God it was glorious. Finally, something other than darkness in front of him like blindness.
More time passes. Gaster can feel his physical form deteriorating. More glob like now. He doesn't have feet. His hands have detached from his arms… His arms are gone. That's just freaking great. No arms!
Another scene! Ah yes! Reach!
Gaster wishes he didn't reach out for this one…
The human is here yet again. They slaughter everyone. Papyrus tells the human they can be good if they try harder. And yet the human dusts him with one shot. His skull falls into his own body's dust.
"NO! NO PAPYRUS!" Gaster screams. He stares at his youngest child's dust in horror.
"I CERTAINLY WASN'T EXPECTING THAT…" Papyrus manages to say… before completely fading.
Gaster feels like throwing up. His son… his son was just… murdered. The child… Wait… They're the SAME child from before. How can that be? Are they… looping through time as well?
Yet something like that is at the back of his mind. He screams and cries over Papyrus' dust, trying to conjure up any magic he can so he can rip that human apart one bone slowly at a time.
"Pap? Hey Pap, where are ya?" Sans… No. He can't see this! No no no no no!
And yet, he does. Gaster watches Sans stand far away from the dust. He refuses to believe it… But after a long time, he walks over. The red scarf is proof. Sans reacts much in the way that Gaster did. The old scientist can only sit next to his son in spirit while he wails and mourns the last member of his family. Gaster didn't know he could feel so much emptier. More anguish than he was feeling in the void. His own heart break felt awful. But watching Sans suffer, alone… He wishes for just a second that he could go back into darkness and never see that again.
The child kills everyone. Everyone in their path. Gaster follows them right alongside Sans. Until they reach the last corridor.
They are LV 19. Gaster looks at Sans and… recognizes this disturbing calm. He remembers that growing up, when Sans was REALLY mad, he would stay quiet. He would stay still. Acting calm.
But he's a time bomb.
He fights the human. And he kills them. But they return… How? Sans kills them. They return? This brat! How are they doing this? The human lasts for a bit longer. Sans kills them. They return.
This cycle repeats and the human lasts longer and longer each time. At a certain point, Gaster notices that Sans is using… How… How?! He's using the blasters that Gaster made many many years ago! Sans is strong enough to use them? So many! So often! This is amazing! There's no way Sans could possibly lose!
But with only 1 HP… Finally the human lasts for the longest time and survives. Sans keeps them from moving by not using his turn up. But he falls asleep. The human moves slowly.
"SANS! SANS WAKE UP YOU DOLT, THE HUMAN IS MOVING! THEY'RE GOING TO KILL YOU, PLEASE SANS WAKE UP! PLEASE OH GODS NO NO PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!" Gaster begs. He goes to touch Sans, but he phases through him. It feels weird and static-y, like his hand had gone to sleep.
The human child gets to their fight option and swing. Sans moves.
"Did you really think I'd stand there and—" They slice him. All of his HP goes down. 99999999? Where the HELL did he get all that health from?
"Papyrus… Do you want anything?" Are his last words before walking away and falling to the ground, dust plumping out of his hoody.
While the human walks on like nothing just happened, Gaster goes over to the dust. It shouldn't be this way… It can't possibly be this way. This is NOT REAL. This must all be a piece of his imagination. He's going insane! Yes that's it, he's going insane from being in the void for so long!...
That has to be it right?...
"SANS?" He says quietly. Maybe if he imagines hard enough, the dust will reform and Sans will be standing there again….
But nothing happens.
This is torture. This is absolute unbridled torture. He's going to lose his mind… Gaster can feel his physical form fall away in despair. He feels sick. He wants to stop seeing. He wants to stop hearing.
The darkness is better than this. The void is better than watching his children suffer and then be murdered. Gaster can't take this much longer.
()
And yet, for what seems like years, he watches this scene a million more times. A million different ways. Different outcomes. Everything begins to blend together into a collage of colors and shapes. For the first thirty times he watched, he screamed and yelled and flailed as loudly as he could so that maybe he could at least HINT to his sons that there was danger. What to do next. The next thirty, he shouts angrily. How could they be so foolish?! How could they let this human do this to them? How can they not realize that time is looping?
A hundred times. Five hundred times. Five thousand times…
Gaster has relived his entire life a million times. He's seen it all. Every mistake he made, every lie that anyone has told, every whisper that the echo flowers heard. Every life born and destroyed over and over again.
His emotions drain slowly. It's becoming hard to… feel. Pity, sympathy, anger, sadness. It's all disappearing… It's the only way he can save what's left of himself. He must become emotionless if he wants to survive for much longer, or risk dying while going insane.
Is this what he deserves for the war? Is this his punishment? Retribution, atonement? What cruel God could do something this terrible?
Gaster begins to make a habit of whispering to himself to fill in the silence… The silence is one of the worst parts of this place. So he talks. Whispers. Formulas. He repeats everything everyone says from start to finish of some scenes. He counts the letters of the alphabet and makes everyone's words into numbers. "8-5-12-12-15" for "Hello." He translates everything he's ever heard said into Wingdings. He draws in the air and uses what's left of his imagination to create something new. But it's never new. Gaster is beginning to forget what he knows and doesn't know.
A scene appears. Gaster wonders if he should even bother. He's not feeling up to it… And yet, when he sees it's a grey room with nothing in it, he feels compelled. Has he seen this before? No, he'd remember something as unusual as an empty grey room. So he goes to it. The flash surrounds him. He's in a room.
"HOW ODD… BUT IT'S SO RELAXING. IF I COULD STILL EAT OR SLEEP I THINK I WOULD TAKE A NAP RIGHT HERE… BUT DO I DARE CLOSE MY EYES?" Gaster goops forward until he reaches the center of the small room. How peculiar… There's a door ahead of him. Why is this room important? Why is it only just showing up? Has something happened perhaps that's changed the course of things?
While he thinks, he sees the human child coming through the door. They stop and look at something ahead of them… then take several steps forward towards him. There must be something behind him. But suddenly the human reaches out and puts a small hand on him. HE FEELS. A HAND. ON HIM. He looks down and gasps. The feeling alone was terrifying and new. How?...
The flash starts to disappear around him. How did… how could… Everything goes black. Back into the void. How has this happened? The child TOUCHED him. And he FELT it for real!...
Gaster can't help the purple tears that flow from his sockets. Just that one simple touch was so overwhelming for someone who can now not feel a single thing. He hopes… that he can phase into that piece of time and space again. Maybe someday… he can…
He cries silently into his hands…
Does he DARE think of escape? He's thought about it before but it always ends with Gaster just becoming more and more sad. Escape from this place is impossible. And yet he can't stop the idea.
Escape…
That would be so very nice. Highly improbable… but nice.
