Grillby didn't realize how exhausted the day had made him until he and Gaster were settling in for the night. It had taken them a bit to figure out some kind of shelter for the night - neither of them had taken a tent with them when the battling had started, and with the army scattered as it was there were no supply wagons to help fill in the missing pieces. In the end they managed to grab some spare canvas and rope from a kind monster by one of the campfires, and after some fiddling managed to tie it up to a tree like some kind of awning.

Gaster remarked jokingly that he was glad his best friend was made of fire - a shelter as simple as this couldn't keep the autumn chill away like a proper tent could.

Food was a little easier to get ahold of. It was nothing but hard bread and dried meat, meager and basic. But it was by far better than nothing. Grillby was getting used to the uncomfortable feeling of empty magic slowly being filled. They visited Amathea one last time before calling it a night, telling her they'd be back first thing in the morning - and Gaster reminding her once again he was going to get her healed up. They were both surprised to see Brigg walk in just as they left, the commander nodded to them as they passed. Grillby watched him make his way over to Amathea just before they exited the tent.

Well it was… good to see them... getting along…?

The elemental was grateful for the rest when they finally settled in for the night. He curled up against the tree they'd rigged their canvas to, uncomfortable and exhausted but glad for the feeling of safety. Yes safety. Finally. Surrounded by monsters with a cool night and not a cloud in the sky, something over his head to keep him dry just in case, and Gaster and Amathea both healing and seconds away if he needed them. Finally. Finally. He was safe. Grillby fell asleep with Gaster sprawled across the ground beside him, the skeleton for once falling asleep before Grillby did.

When Grillby awoke he didn't wake in the morning like he normally did. He didn't even stir when Gaster eventually yawned and stretched and with those silent footsteps hurried off to go see Amathea. Grillby awoke with a sluggish stoking of his flame, building from exhausted reds to more healthy and vibrant oranges. The sun was high overhead when he finally opened his eyes to see it, his soul humming contentedly in his chest for the first time in what felt like a very long time. He was so taken aback by the feeling that for several minutes he just lay on his back, blinking at the dappled sunlight as it flickered against the top of the sagging canvas above his head. He didn't want to move. He wanted to stare at those shifting spots of molten sunlight and pretend he was back at the camp he'd been summoned in.

Finally with a sigh Grillby pulled himself to his feet, stretching his stiff limbs and crackling warmly. And then with as much purpose as he could muster into his slowly waking soul, Grillby made his way across the camp to the healing tent - occasionally stealing up abandoned or dying fires as he walked. He earned himself a few strange stares from the monsters around him, but it left him feeling revived and full. Finally he was feeling complete again. Good. He never wanted to feel so empty and weak ever again.

Amathea beamed at him when he entered the tent, and he sparked in bright colors back at her. Gaster was fiddling with her soul, too intent on his work to notice Grillby as the elemental entered. He had a nurse at his side, gently weaving her soul-stuff into tiny cracks in Amathea's soul that Grillby could hardly see.

"It's about time you got up, loiter-sack," Amathea barked enthusiastically, "I was starting to wonder if you were going to sleep the whole day away."

"I very nearly did," Grillby laughed with a soft crackle, "But I feel great now. I can almost forget the rainstorm ever happened."

A bit of nervousness crept into his voice and the elemental cast a wary glance at the ceiling of the tent - still dappled with spattered sunlight, "Almost."

Amathea flashed him a pitiful smile, a knowing one, "Don't worry about it too much lad. There are things that take longer to heal than wounds, and you're no lesser monster for them."

Gaster smirked, "Wow you two are sentimental today."

With a flourish of his hands he finished his work on Amathea's soul, instructing the nurse who'd helped him to get some rest. Then he turned expectantly to Grillby, waving for the elemental to sit down on the cot beside Amathea.

"Alright firefly, your turn."

"Me?" Grillby chuckled with an incredulous spark, "But I feel fine - for once."

"Oh hush," Gaster huffed, "There's a difference between feeling fine and actually being healed. Especially with the state you were in. Now come on."

He waved his hand in a familiar motion, and Grillby rolled his eyes as best he could, anticipating the grip of blue as Gaster nudged him forward -

Nothing happened.

Gaster blinked up at Grillby confusedly, then down at his hand, then back up at the elemental again.

"... something wrong?" Amathea asked, watching Gaster with concern. The skeleton signed a few confused sentence fragments, trying to align his thoughts.

"You okay Gaster?" Grillby asked, flickering worriedly.

"My blue didn't work," the skeleton muttered, his gaze dropping back to his hands again, "Why didn't it work?"

"You just got back from a nightmare, lad," Amathea said gently, "You're probably too tired to use that kind of magic."

"But… I got a good night's sleep. I've eaten, I've had water," Gaster looked between his friends, the perplexed frown on his face starting to turn to panic, "There's absolutely no reason for it not to work! It… it was just working yesterday! It shouldn't -"

Suddenly all expression wiped itself off of Gaster's face, his gaze slipping off into the distance, "I broke something."

"Gaster you can't break magic!" Amathea snorted, "It's magic for heaven's sakes! Now calm down."

"No, no I broke something," the skeleton's expression refocused on Grillby, a scowl gritting his teeth, "When I dropped Brigg. That hurt, a lot. I thought I was just overexerting myself, but it felt like something snapped. Something did snap."

"Gaster if your magic broke, that means something in your soul is broken," Grillby said quietly, worry turning his fire in sickly greens, "You'd be dust."

Gaster flailed his arms in a grand, exasperated sign, "No I wouldn't. It makes sense! I cracked up my soul using too much magic like a moron - I must've cracked something important. And while I was trying to grab Brigg it just shattered the rest of the way. Can I even fix that? Oh hell!"

The skeleton gave another exasperated set of signs, berating himself for his stupidity before motioning once again for Grillby to down, "And the same thing is going to happen to you if you still have cracks in your soul. So get over here."

Still flickering in quiet apprehension, Grillby did as he was told, sitting gently beside Amathea on her cot. Gaster got to work checking over the elemental's soul, grumbling bitterly under his breath as he did so. His quiet ramblings trailed off into silent sternness as he flipped Grillby's molten soul around in his hands. The elemental shivered.

There were cracks. They were thin and mending, refracting mixed hues of red and purple through its surface like fiery spider webs. But what unsettled Grillby the most about it was the look on Gaster's face as he examined it. The skeleton looked relieved. The glint in his eye sockets hinted at the expectation for much worse, worse that he'd seen before. Finally appeased, Gaster let the soul sink back into it's place in Grillby's chest.

"It's all just on the surface," Gaster said, sighing, "You'll be fine."

"How much worse was it?" Grillby murmured, morbid curiosity getting the better of him. Amathea raised her eyebrows, echoing the question silently. Gaster shrugged.

"I mean… bad," the skeleton said uncomfortably, "Like I said, I didn't think you were going to make it through the night."

Gaster rubbed his arm distractedly, "Next time we heal a soul that looks like it, I'll point it out to you… if you really want to know."

Gaster hissed out one last sigh through his teeth before standing up, "Now uh… I'm going to go see if I can fix whatever I busted."

Without another word, Gaster left, a troubled frown cringing across his teeth. Amathea and Grillby exchanged dismal glances, not really knowing what else they could do. Of the two of them, it was Amathea who got to her feet first.

"Aye well… since I'm fixed up now I suppose I should help Brigg with damage control," Amathea hummed, "Grillby, you feeling well enough to go on patrol? They'll need help finding food and stragglers. And it'll boost morale to see some powerful monsters walking about."

The elemental nodded quietly.

"And wear some armor," Amathea added, smiling slightly at the afterthought, "It'll make you look more impressive. Make some of the smaller beasties wandering around here feel safe."

"Yes ma'am," Grillby flickered a smirk.

"That's it lad, lighten up," the commander said hearteningly, giving Grillby a reassuring pat on the shoulder, "And if you catch something good enough, maybe you can convince us to have a little bonfire."

Amathea strode off towards the exit to the tent, ear frills twitching as she said, "Heaven knows we need some cheer to clear the dust from the air."

Grillby spent the day volunteering for every patrol he could find, anything that would pass the time and prove useful to the other monsters in camp. Meanwhile Gaster busied himself in the healing tents, grabbing random nurses as volunteers to help him heal the hurting inside while Amathea took her seat once again with the other commanders. It was just her, Brigg and two others that Grillby had never met before, and they were inseparable as they discussed what they were supposed to do next. Now that monsters were being healed, they could get mobile again. The problem now was where they could go.

Word had already gotten back to the capital about their loss, and it was bitter medicine to swallow when word returned that their battle wasn't the only massive defeat to have been suffered by the monsters as of late. Humans were crawling like ants across the hills, numerous and determined, beating the monsters ever further south towards the mountains. And according to Amathea, they were armed to the teeth with mages. She told Grillby and Gaster that night, face grim and eyes distant, that the entire Western front had been destroyed, wiped out by a group of powerful mages who made a force no monster could stop. The entire army had been reduced to dust, the countryside shattered with the marks of extermination and war.*

The monsters were losing. Badly.

Gaster asked in a hushed voice if Amathea had heard anything from her sister. The commander didn't answer. They turned in for the night then, restless and worried. Grillby made himself comfortable between Amathea and Gaster, offering them his warmth as the evening chilled. It took him awhile to actually fall asleep.

When he slept that night, Grillby dreamed of rain and rivers. He dreamed of Gaster and Brigg trying to drag him to safety before both of them finally dropped him, and he was consumed by the burning cold of water everywhere, drowning him, whisking his dust away in an angry current that devoured everything.

Grillby awoke with a gasp, soul shuddering in his chest like a frantic heartbeat, his flames pitched in panicky and feverish hues. Grillby's whole body shook. He sat up slowly, breathing in deep breaths, hurriedly hushing his churning flame into something cooler and less panicked. He didn't move until he'd managed to calm himself back into yellows and oranges - though he couldn't stop his shuddering no matter how hard he tried.

Just a dream, he thought to himself as he shivered, hugging himself as if it could bring some comfort, you have nothing to be afraid of. You're not hurt. You're okay.

When Grillby finally managed to compose himself, he realized his light wasn't the only kind lighting the darkness around him. Laying on his back outside the tent, isolated from Grillby and Amathea, was Gaster. The skeleton's soul was hovering between his hands, highlighting Gaster's delicate finger bones with hues of shifting purple. As Grillby watched, Gaster started unraveling pieces of his soul, delicately pulling long cords of the magical soul-stuff apart and shifting through them, making sense of something Grillby couldn't see. He would pull one cord away and tear it apart - Grillby watched the skeleton flinch as he did - only to turn around and weave that broken cord together with another. It was mesmerizing to watch, and for a while Grillby just quietly observed, flickering in muted blues and purples of absent wonder, waiting for the changing colors to lull him back to sleep.

When they didn't, the elemental shuffled to his feet and then made his way over to his friend. Gaster barely glanced up as Grillby sat beside him.

"You're awake," he observed coolly, getting back to whatever work he was doing on his soul. Grillby nodded, quietly watching once again as Gaster unraveled a pair of cords only to weave them together somewhere else again. Now that Grillby was up close, he noticed the strange network of soul-stuff looked almost like a spider's web, or maybe several webs hung close together. Every cord connected to another, shining purple yet somehow still opalescent, several shifting threads of color glossing across the cords of magic that Gaster wove.

"Did you find out what was wrong?" Grillby asked after a long pause, and Gaster scowled. He pushed a few of the cords around, rearranging his pulled-apart soul back into some semblance of form again - or at least a form Grillby could recognize. The magic was molten, congealing back into its regular shape, shimmering lightly purple. And then suddenly it was solid, like glass, and latticed with imperceptible cracks. Grillby marveled at it, how it worked, how it could exist that way.

Gaster drew a finger bone delicately across the glass-like surface, tracing the deepest crack in the soul and giving the slightest of shivers as he did, "That's what's wrong."

Grillby blinked at the unassuming crack. It was small, smaller than most that Grillby had seen when he'd helped Gaster heal. Gaster noticed the elemental's confusion.

"It used to be a lot deeper," the skeleton explained, his voice low and disgruntled, "But we've been healing a lot over the past few days, so it's started to heal itself back up again."

Gaster moved his hands, and in a flurry of motion his soul pulled itself apart, splaying in a disheveled mess of cords and colors. He traced one of them, and leaning closely Grillby could just see cracks spiraling along the cord until it ended abruptly in ashen colors of greys and blacks, as if the end had been burned out.

"Can you fix it?" Grillby mused, flickering worriedly. Gaster shrugged, glaring forlornly at the broken piece he held between his fingers.

"Yes...?" he finally answered, letting out a long sigh, "If I fiddle with it long enough. I remember how I wove it the first time, so that helps."

Gaster let out another heavy sigh, blinking miserably at the sky high above them, "This just makes me so angry. I'm useless without blue."

Grillby gave a quiet laugh, "You're far from useless Gaster."

"Yes I am," the skeleton spat, his voice heavy and bitter, and Grillby's flame flickered lower in dismay, "I'm not like you Grillby. I'm weak. I was born weak. And I will always be weak. I'm a pathetic mess when I fight anything. Blue magic is the only thing that's kept me alive. I would be dust a thousand times over without it. It's my strongest, most reliable magic. I spent over a year writing it into my soul and teaching myself how to use it the first time. And now it's gone."

Grillby watched his friend in troubled silence for a moment before saying quietly, "Gaster, you're not weak."

Gaster answered him with a harsh laugh, "I'm a skeleton, Grillby. I have no choice in the matter."

"But you do," Grillby flickered in concern, "And you are strong. You've healed hundreds, you've saved my life more than anyone else I've ever met. You killed an unkillable human. You taught yourself magic nobody else knows how to use - think of those bone monsters you make for heaven's sakes!"

"Oh right," Gaster scowled, "You mean the healing I can't do on my own, that I have to have help with? Or the human that would've dusted me if Amathea hadn't intervened? The blasters that can't even break a human ward?"

Grillby blinked at his friend, dismay coloring him in cool and dull reds.

"Oh I know! How about me breaking up my own soul because I couldn't heal you right?!" Gaster continued, hands jerking with every angry sign, "Or the blue magic that was too weak to carry anyone across that stupid river? Or the bone attacks that are so measly and small, it takes ten attacks just to kill a single human?! And then there's you and Amathea, striding forward in all your glory, taking out whole battalions on your own."

Grillby felt like his soul was sinking in his chest, dismay and dread turning his stomach in knots, "I didn't-"

"You're a real monster, Grillby," Gaster interrupted, scowling, "You don't feel pain, you don't take damage, it takes you ages to get tired. If you choose not to, you can go without food or sleep until your magic runs out. Your only weakness is water, for heaven's sakes! It's not fair. You can protect people!"

Finally Gaster seemed to be running out of steam. He heaved out a defeated sigh, the rapid and angry motions of his hands finally starting to still, "I can barely protect myself."

Silence ate up the world around them, silence where Grillby sat worriedly and Gaster begrudgingly got back to work on his soul, tying ends together and untying others. Grillby didn't realize it, but he'd started shaking again. Just subtly, sparks flittering about him in shivering paths before fizzling out again. He… didn't know what to say. But there was one thing that Gaster had said that stuck with the elemental, and after several minutes of pensively watching with knots twisting in his stomach, Grillby finally asked.

"The crack… that broke your blue magic," he said, voice soft and as neutral sounding as he could manage, "That's my fault, isn't it?"

Gaster's hands stopped moving. His angry expression twitched and broke, a rueful grimace sliding across his teeth like a wince.

"You were dying," Gaster finally said after a pause, looking distractedly at his unraveled soul, "I had to do something."

"... is there anything I can do to help you fix it?"

Gaster sighed, finally dropping his hands away and letting his soul sink back to where it should be, "No, Grillby, there's nothing you can do."

A pause passed between them. Grillby did his best not to let the melancholy feeling twisting in his soul turn his fire different colors. The last thing he needed to do was make Gaster feel guilty, especially now that Grillby knew this was his fault. With a smoking huff, the elemental pulled himself to his feet.

"Firefly, you should go back to sleep," Gaster frowned, sitting up to watch the elemental as he began to walk away, "Where are you even going?"

Grillby shrugged, "I'm gonna see if someone on night watch needs the sleep more than I do."

He paused, frowning one last time in Gaster's direction, "Uhm… good luck fixing your magic."

"... thanks," Gaster hummed, confused and a little worried as he signed, "Don't let any humans sneak up on you."

Grillby offered a half-hearted chuckle before moving away again, his soul feeling heavy in his chest. Heaven's alive. What was he supposed to do now?

Author's Comments:

* this paragraph is actually a reference! The fanfiction referenced here (for anyone who'd like to check it out themselves) is "What Friends Are For" by IchikoWindGryphon on AO3 (or Ichiwashername-oh) on Tumblr. It specifically references a scene in Chapter 5 where Grillby/Gaster in that story are discussing the Western front being exterminated. The fic itself is a Gasterblaster AU fic about Papyrus/Sans, and a delve into Gaster's motives in creating them. It's pretty cool!

I had actually told myself I wouldn't read any wartime fics in this fandom until mine was done, since I didn't want to sponge up ideas from other people by accident. But this one took me by surprise! Ahaha I didn't realize flashbacks were going to be a thing. Even still, I quite enjoyed the read! It's unfinished, but still being updated, and the author is a pretty good one!

*ahem*

I would also like to apologize for not posting on Monday this week. I won't go into detail, but I was in a pretty dark place. Still am, though not as bad. The last few weeks at work have been pretty stressful, and I've been feeling kind of dark lately. I'm working through it. I think.

It didn't help that there was so much discord in this chapter though :')