There was a time when we believed the war was over. The weeks spent being rounded up like cattle and marched to the cave were what I thought would be the longest of my life, but at least the war was over. At least we were banished, rather than those who were too far to hear the news in time, too slow to make the trek. The humans will find them eventually. The humans will cut them down.
I wish it could be said that no monsters here currently are subjected to that selfsame agony, but I fear I cannot. The other monsters still have not come to their senses, and my hope is fading.
The place we hide today is filled with water. There are plants and rocks around, the sort of which I have never seen in my life. Any living thing down here seems to produce its own light, unhindered by the lack of sun. The water is cold and clear. There are flowers that whisper and veins of crystals speckling the ceiling. They make me think of the stars, but they are, in truth, poor substitutes.
Roman likes it here. The boy spent hours among the blue flowers, talking to them and pretending the words they hiss back were part of a real conversation. It is not healthy to keep a child alone for so long, but there is nothing to be done for it. At least the false conversation helped him forget his hunger for a short while. There is still so little salvageable that I have found. No animals live in these caves save inchworms and insects too quick for my old bones to catch. I wonder if the plants are edible. I fear they are poison. I have lived too long to trust eating things that glow under their own power. It may save my life, or kill me. Either way, I will not take the risk yet. It is our third day without food, though, and that risk may be sooner encroaching than I would like to admit. We may be able to survive without food, but if we are unable to defend ourselves, it matters very little.
Our hope at this moment is for the new monarchs to soothe the people and stop the killings. I am not a human. I stood my ground with my fellow monsters as a skeleton. I wish they could see. Our origins mean nothing to what we are now. I am no traitor, and certainly Roman is none either. Nor were Helvetica, nor Arial, nor Gulim. May their souls live on in the dirt they fell in, and carry them back to their fields. I haven't heard from either Vrinda or Trebuchet for weeks, and without them I cannot bare to think what state their child is in. I can only hope they are safe, even if I know in my heart they are not. I fear the worst. Always, now, I fear the worst.
To think, at one time, I feared humans more than anything, when it was my own kind's cruelty that should finally kill me.
-The second to last entry from the journal of Bradley Hand ITC.
000
Gaster fled the building.
He dashed back up to their room, told a startled CS-1 to stay exactly where he was, and climbed out the window, sliding down the thatched roof and summoning two floating bones to ease him the next two stories to the ground.
He landed well, rolling a little in the snow and hardly feeling any jarring at it, despite how out of practice he was. He stood to shake the snow off and glanced back up at the window ledge where he'd come from. A line of snow had been cleared off the roof from his descent, and CS-1 started down at him with wide, frightened eyes and jerking hand movements demanding to know what was going on and why he'd taken such a steep fall.
Gaster waved the child off, signing at him, No time to explain. Stay and be hidden, before turning and sprinting towards Waterfall.
There was a human in the underground.
A real, living human.
Their third since Chara.
The first he'd be able to see since Chara.
All up and down the streets, what few monsters remained outside were dashing into buildings and huddling inside with little regard to whether they were homes, shops, or sheds, so long as there were four walls and a locked door between them and the outside. If anyone saw him sprinting behind the houses, they didn't comment, surely assuming he was risking danger to try and reach someone precious.
They wouldn't have been entirely wrong.
Gaster remembered the last two humans who fell—one killed by a monster who'd followed Queen Toriel to the ruins and killed the human hidden within. The first soul delivered to Asgore.
The Queen sealed the tunnel to Home, trapping herself and the remaining monsters in its ruins.
The Underground mourned like she'd been the one killed in those winding streets. Mourning only made worse by how soon after the Princes' deaths it was.
There had been regret. There had been hesitance and shame and fear in the Underground, to the point where the vigilante monster's name had gone unannounced in an attempt to protect them, but the next human—
The next human had changed that.
Beating monsters to death where they stood.
The Underground mourned again.
Anything so violent to come out of the ruins could only mean their Queen was dead.
Gaster had been in college at the time. Watched the procession from his window as the monsters burned parchment and let it fall over the Capital in place of her dust, but he'd never gotten a chance to see the dead human. Never been able to get close or actually see the creature who had hunted Snowdin's forests, killed by a panicked civilian before they could ever reach the town.
This one, though.
This was his chance, now.
Gaster kept off the roads, not wanting anyone to spot him as he hurried towards Waterfall. He only hesitated as he came to the river, fog covering the area from where the ground very suddenly became warmer than the air around it.
The snow turned to slush, there. Soaking his shoes in a way they hadn't been soaked in Snowdin. He hesitated.
Not wanting to enter Waterfall.
He'd avoided the place for years, knowing who lived inside.
He'd used to go all the time—Waterfall. To the Dump. Picking out broken things and sneaking them back out. But he'd avoided it for the last decade, and had been beyond content with that, and now the human had made it there?
Why. Why couldn't they have just… stayed in the forest?
His mouth tensed and his fists clenched.
Who knew when a human might fall again? Who knew if he'd even be in a position to see, when the time came?
He stepped through the fog and entered Waterfall.
000
It was damp.
Dust didn't wash off.
She didn't bother to try.
She would survive at any cost.
She deserved to survive.
000
Waterfall was damp, and cold, and… unwelcoming.
Gaster crept along the rocks, constantly looking over his shoulder, soul shuddering in his ribcage at every off sound. Every unfamiliar movement.
Waterfall wasn't a quiet place, but it was quiet in the ways most people thought of things being 'quiet.' It had background sounds. The slosh of water rushing over rocks, burbling when it grew shallow, crashing when it fell. The whispers of echo flowers, repeating old history lessons carefully left intact and the footsteps of those who tread too loudly. The drip-dripping of forming stalagmites. The plop of the odd fish or water monster, popping up to the surface and immediately down again. The underfoot crunch of the lichen and fungi which somehow grew here, liking the damp, the dark; drawn to the the faint light and occasional warmth of monster habitations.
He crept around those—their lights out, now. Their shutters closed and doors locked tight, trying to avoid being noticed. Trying to let the human pass by.
The only lights now came from the rocks, and the mushrooms, and the pinpricks of his eyelights, barely enough to cut through the darkness.
He'd been wandering through Waterfall for almost twenty minutes and started to fear he'd taken a wrong turn. That perhaps he should have paid more attention to the side tunnels, rather than guessing the human would take the most direct and obvious route through the caverns.
Those fears were finally quelled when he came across the first pile of dust.
They were scattered beneath a flower, spread out, like it'd been gradual. Like they might've tried to crawl away.
Gaster took a deep breath, staring down at the dust and wondering how long it'd been there.
Who had it been?
There were clothes laying open on top of the dust, a vest, a scarf. A few gold coins that must've been in the dead monster's pockets. A piece of paper, folded up several times, writing barely visible on the inside.
Gaster edged around the dust, pulling his eyes away after a long moment.
It wasn't the first time he'd seen dust. It was the first time he'd… the first time he'd been able to identify it as all belonging to just one monster, though.
Somehow, it was just as bad.
He hesitated for a moment, about to try and pass by, before he stared once more at the echo flower.
Glanced back down at the dust.
Didn't want. Scared to?
Didn't want to step in it. Didn't want to disturb it.
Knew that now he'd thought it, the question would keep him awake for days unless he answered it now.
He edged closer to the echo flower, very, very carefully minding where his feet went as he avoided the dust as best he could until he was finally close enough to listen, reaching out and tilting the petal just slightly in his direction to hear a little better what might've been this monster's last moments.
…there wasn't much. Not much of anything.
Heavy breathing. Human breathing. And a huff of finality.
He couldn't tell where the loop ended or began.
He let the echo flower go, wondering for a moment if he should say something.
Erase the murder's last mark on this monster's memory.
…
He moved away from the echo flower and crept deeper into Waterfall.
There would be more piles of dust. He couldn't stop for all of them.
The next was by the rock wall of the cavern, smeared against it, like the monster had been slumping when it passed. Others in the middle of walkways, like they'd been knocked dead where they stood.
He counted two, three, four, seven.
Seven dead, just on pathways in Waterfall, once the warning had already gotten out. Once the cry for safety rang through Snowdin.
He didn't want to know what quiet, beautiful, unprepared Snowdin forest looked like among the trees.
Gaster kept walking. Mouth tense until his jaw hurt. Shoulders hunched. Eyes flicking back and forth. He kept one hand to the wall at all times, as if we here scared he'd fall over the moment he tried to walk on his own.
The inside of his head was clear. Not sharp. Just loud. Loud and saying you idiot. Finish what you started. Look what you're getting into. They can't be far off. Be scared. What are you going to get from this? but his legs wouldn't let him turn around.
His legs were lead weights, barely skimming his feet along the ground, but they wouldn't turn around, even as the wire in his shoulders pulled them tighter and the pain in his jaw began working up into the cracks in his skull.
…Waterfall was flattening out, now. The roar of water steadying into a quiet burble. Plants beginning to grow in the water. The glowworms emerging, lighting the cavern cyan.
He entered the Quiet Water, and froze, choking from his neck down to his base, at the human on the other side of the room.
They were tall and curved, arched in a way he couldn't quite wrap his mind around, even when they stood perfectly upright and were slowly turning their head, left. Right.
Deciding where to go next.
Around their waste was a dark blue skirt. Wide and fluffed. Their legs were wrapped in ribbons. There hair pulled up tight. He could see the crease in the back of their neck where a spine should go—
"I think you should sit down nice and slow, now."
Any cold terror Gaster had left flooded into him at the voice behind his neck.
Slowly, stiffly, he moved to the ground, propped on his knees. Eyes frozen forward, still on the human.
This.
This—
This was why he'd never, never wanted to come to Waterfall.
"Haven't seen you around in a while," Gerson said, voice low, creaky in the way it was. Gaster knew the hammer was out. Felt it tap the ground behind his leg. Knew Gerson was watching the human just as sharply as he was, even with one eye on the skeleton. "Shoulda figured this'd bring you running right back."
(Gaster'd been thirteen. Irritable. No impulse control. Picked a bad fight—not bad for him, but for the poor fucker nearby, and he hadn't. He hadn't wanted to stop when the other cried mercy.
Then the war hero showed up, and Gaster hadn't stood a chance, and hadn't been able to stop shaking when Gerson held the hammer just one last swing away from crushing his skull and said don't you ever let me catch you about to do that again, and—
Spared.
Only came to Waterfall for the Dump after that. Only snuck his way in, avoiding monsters and murmurs alike. Don't notice me, he's not going to spare me again—)
"Not causing trouble," Gaster said, whispering through his teeth, eyes staring forward still.
It'd been twenty years, and he still, still couldn't shake that terror out of him.
"Just wanted to get a look at your ancestors?" Gerson said, snorting in a way that told Gaster he couldn't bullshit his way out of this one. The hammer was right by his leg, and Gerson always knew way more than he let on, way more than his frailty implied; wrote half the history books in the Underground and always left out that one crucial fucking fact—
000
She had value. She had worth.
She deserved to live.
She had promised the kind creature in the ruins she would survive at any cost, so she donned the clothing she felt most powerful in, and when she saw potential threats, she leapt forward, determined to be the one who survived.
She would not be torn apart by circumstances.
This was Integrity.
000
The bones thrust up through her stomach and lungs. Another slid right through her windpipe.
The hammer cracked into his spine and Gaster—three HP damage. It was shock that moved the hammer, not anger or hate—Gaster caught himself with his hands on the floor, line of sight broken, but not before he could see the bones. Not before a snapped rib poked out the side of her chest, and her spine broke, and—
"It wasn't me!" he said, voice almost gone in panic. Didn't even had to try to whisper his words this time. "It wasn't me, I didn't. I didn't do—oh fuck. Oh stars."
He tried to crane his neck up and see over the water, see what was happening. Whatever it was that Gerson could see while the hammer was still shoved on his spine.
"Check my LV," he said, only more frantic when Gerson didn't respond, just seeing the edge of his beak, opened partway in shock. "I didn't—"
"Kid," Gerson said, voice low.
Hammer lifting.
"Get out of here."
Gaster scrambled to his feet.
He fled.
000
There's a human in the Underground, and he's been there all along
(beta'd by askull4everyoccasion with a secret cameo. Bradley Hand ITC is Elitigre of tumblr's oc! Roman is from a guest on ffnet)
