Oh, look! A bed! It's calling me...
Chapter XXXXII
Rocky sky
Some may say books are the way to knowledge. Some may even say books hold all the knowledge in the world. It is a lie. Books merely hold as much knowledge as their authors were willing to put in them. They only contain what was deemed worth writing about.
More importantly, books can only tell so much about the unknown.
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There were no books explaining the Big Bang before the theory was thought of, no books telling the tales of legendary heros before their stories were imagined. Even then, how much credit should be given to books found in a dump? How much has been discovered on the Surface when their eyes cannot see beyond the rocky sky?
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Her gaze ventures toward the window, looking upon the phosphorescent rocks they came to call stars, wondering how it would feel to see the real night sky. Would she see the stars flicker? Would she see them move? She once read the so-called constellations, formed by those same stars, could change their place in the sky: how fast do they do so? And the moon… Is it as majestic as in the pictures she saw?
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'Alphys?'
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She twitches at the sound of her name, not expecting to hear it. She is not used to this, to not being alone with her books… But those are not her books, this is not her room. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, she is not reading alone in her room or at a library: she is at a friend's house. She has a friend. She has friends. For once in her life, she is fitting in — and she had never thought such a thing could have made her so happy.
Sans is sitting near her, back leaning against Gaster's desk. He has not bothered to cover, and even less to wear a mask — it is resting in the wardrobe of another room. Alphys is not scared of showing when she does not know, or when she does not understand what she reads. For the first time in forever, they are both sitting on the floor together, just being themselves — no secret, no expectations, no risks.
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'Do you think we'll get there one day?' Sans says. 'On the Surface?'
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He too is looking at the rocky sky, but she knows what he sees is the real sky. The one full of tiny shining dots called stars, and where the moon baths the land with its light. The one she wishes, one day, to see. A wish she knows has little chance to come true…
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'I…' No, she cannot say it. She still has to hope. They all have to... 'I ho-hope so…'
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Sans and she remain silent for a couple of minutes, both looking by the window. Alphys knows it is a sensitive subject to evoque the Surface, yet she has so many questions. She would love to ask about the life up there, about how different it is from what she read, but…
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'You… You miss it, uh?'
'Yeah…'
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Sans's answer is but a mere whisper. Of course he misses it! Despite always avoiding the subject by ignoring the questions or by giving evasive answers, Sans did tell her — indirectly, that is, but he still did. He insisted there was nothing waiting for him, and by that she suspects he might mean "someone"... He has been in the underground for months now, no wonder he thinks whoever was left up there must have stopped waiting. However, not having anyone waiting home does not make one wish to never go back…
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'Gaster's team is wor-wor-working har-hard for it.' She offers Sans a smile she wants reassuring — she, too, wants to believe in her words. She waits a second, taking a deep breath to calm down. Slow and calm… If she can manage her stuttering now, it is one step toward dealing with it in general. 'And even without that… We only miss two-' She freezes, realizing what she was about to say. 'S-sorry…'
'Two souls, I know.' Sans sighs, and Alphys can see he knows it all too well. Gaster must have told him... 'It's okay, Alphys, I know what we need to break the barrier.'
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She does not say anything. Instead, she simply turns back to her book, fidgeting and unable to focus on the text. Her eyes keep darting back at Sans, waiting for him to say a word. He does not.
Then, a book's cover catches her eyes: a children's encyclopedia. She reaches for it, admiring its cover full of pictures of places and animals she has never seen. With a smile slowly forming on her face, she flips through the pages, catching glance of the greenest forest and biggest cities.
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'It looks so big,' she starts off whispering, 'does-doesn't it?'
'It is…'
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Surprised but not displeased by the answer, Alphys drags the book closer to Sans, readjusting her position to look at him. He observes her doing so, not getting the hint she wants him to say more at first. Eventually, her insistent look makes him understand that she is indeed waiting to know more — and she is not expecting this knowledge to come from a book.
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'The Surface, it's… It's big, and with many people, and…' His voice faints — he does not know what to say. His eyes venture over the cover, noticing one particular stretch of water... 'There is the ocean too. It's…' He laughs, knowing well how stupid it would sound to say something so obvious back up there. 'It's really huge.'
'Huge how?'
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With a gleam of malice — Alphys will be so impressed if he finds what he wants — he skims through the encyclopedia straight to the ocean part. He finally settles for a picture depicting the different oceans and seas — one double page illustration with some of the distances written out. With a smirk, he draws the trip from Europe to the USA with his finger to show Alphys.
'This,' he says while joining the two points, ' must take about ten hours or something.'
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Ten hours is not a lot, especially to cross what he described as huge. However, Alphys must certainly think he means ten hours by boat — he does not. He does not even know how long it takes for a cruise to cross the ocean… Months? No, people would not spend months on a boat. A couple of weeks? It seems too little, but he cannot know for sure. Boats aside, he fixes Alphys to see her reaction to what he hopes will be the explanation equivalent of a punchline.
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'By air,' he says, slamming the book closed to show Alphys the picture of a plane on its cover. 'Sure is high tech compared to plain boats?'
'This th-thing… c-can fly?'
'It sure does!'
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On the other side of the door, Gaster listens to the muffled conversation. A smile carves its way on his face: his plan worked even better than expected. Small pieces were finally starting to fall in place… One by one. Not pieces of one clearly crafted plan, but pieces of multiple small ones that, perhaps, would one day become parts of each others. He hopes so, after all he made them all in order to have the best outcome — albeit he had to work around some already existing details instead of being able to plan everything accordingly to the situation he wanted to aim for. If everything goes smoothly, regaining their place on the Surface should be easier than Asgore could have ever possibly hoped for.
After going back downstairs, Gaster reaches for the phone on the living room's console table — if only his colleagues could manage to find a way to make the so-called cell phones found in the dump work, it would spare him the trouble of always using this old thing! The phone already in hand, he dials a number written in the notebook always kept on the console. The ringback tone beeps for a dozen of seconds, before the phone on the other side of the call is picked. A familiar voice is heard on the line — one he is growing more and more used to hear over a cup of coffee.
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'Ms. Triceri?' he asks, more by habit than to get an actual answer. She does answer, though, sounding pleasantly surprised by the voice she hears. 'Yes, good evening to you as well. Tell me… Would you be so kind as to let Alphys sleep here for the night?' She asks what activity her daughter might have possibly gotten herself so caught up into, with a glimmer of malice she does not try to hide. 'They are having as… study session, if I may call it this way.' She laughs: what could they be studying? How to stay up all night without looking like ghosts in the morning? 'No, nothing of the sort, I'm afraid. I lent them some books about the Surface, they don't seem to be ready to let go of them anytime soon.' She nods, Gaster knows it, adding that she will bring Alphys her vanity case and a couple of changes — that is, if he offers a coffee. 'Ah, thank you, the coffee pot is waiting for you. See you in a minute then.'
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Satisfied, Gaster goes back upstairs. After knocking on the door of his office, he partially opens it only to be met by a sudden interruption of the laughs and chatter he heard before. An interruption that leaves two young and somewhat bewildered people staring at him with paper planes in their hands, stopped mid-motion and clearly waiting to know why the door is not closed anymore.
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'Try to keep it down, you two,' Gaster warns them, unable to stop the creeping smile on his face, 'Papyrus is sleeping.'
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This quite mild warning is welcomed by an apologetic "sorry" mumbled by the concerned party, as they slowly put down their childish replicas of planes.
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'Alphys, I asked you mother if you could stay for the night. She's bringing you some furniture.'
'Really?' the reptilian girl exclaims.
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Gaster nods, and he can see her exult at the news. It really is a change to see her like this, instead of reserved from all of her classmates — sure Sans is not one of her classmates, but he does not fall far from it. After all, they both studied together on multiple occasions, and explaining her major to Sans did help Alphys to pass her exams. Besides, seeing her befriend a Human after having heard how afraid of them she used to be only makes Gaster prouder. She is his best student, not for her grades, but for the way she thinks — and he knows someday she will be the one to fill his shoes. He wants to do his best for her to be ready for this day, even if some may call it favoritism. As for Sans… He needs to finish calibrating one last thing before he can think of taking another student under his bonny wing. As of now, however, he has one request…
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'Sans, mask on if you go downstairs.'
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The boy stares for a second, turns to the wall separating Gaster's office from the room where Papyrus is sleeping, winces, shrugs, and eventually nods. They both know how much trouble it would be to get caught on their little "hide the Human" game, so risking waking up Papyrus is worth it — besides, Gaster knows he will not be the one to endure the whining. As he closes the door, he hears Alphys's muffled laugh: Sans must have made a remark upon what he said.
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It is nice seeing them talk and laugh as if everything was okay, as if he had never told them the results of the blood test. Gaster would have never thought he would one day see the two of them sharing their knowledge of both the Surface and the Underground, sitting on the floor as if there was nothing strange for a Human and a Monster to do such a thing. He had doubted Sans would even live long enough for such a thing to happen — after all, he could not believe he could live at all. Yet, here they are, proving there is still hope for Humans and Monsters to live side by side… Only, he does not know how much time they have left.
For there is one thing he still has not told them about the tests he ran a couple of days ago, and he would rather not say a word before he has, at least, a temporary solution.
And this is how Gaster ended up caretaker of his son and 1.5 adopted children XD
Now, I'm off to die for 3 weeks straight and I should revive by Easter. Maybe... If the 3 hellish weeks don't end my poor little life. Unless I can escape Paris and then it will be hell, but hell with a garden, a cat, and people (as opposed to hell in an apartment, alone, and with poor insulation)