Happy Easter!

It's flashback time!

Chapter XXVI: A matter of choice

'We could be happy here, together.'

.

Her words, so bitter… Gaster remembers. Her face was twisted in anger, an anger he deserved. An anger he still deserves… What would have been his life had this fatal letter never arrived? Would it have been happy?

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'Myriad, you have to understand! I can't refuse!'

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The opportunity… So tempting. Too tempting. If only he had been more rational… Perhaps it wasn't worth it after all. Or, at least, it wasn't worth as much as he thought.

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'You can't?' Her eyes were glowing orange as her chin started trembling. 'No one is forcing you! You said you would quit!'

'This is my chance- our chance to be free!' He had to convince her, she had to understand! 'If we can use the determination to change the timeline, we could avoid ever being stuck here! Imagine! No war, no barrier! We would be free! How can you not want this?'

'How?' Her voice became weak, almost a whisper of disbelief. 'I don't want to lose this. None of this.' She paused, locking her eyes into his. 'If our timeline is altered, we have no guarantee we'll still exist.'

.

Gaster couldn't believe it! The king had finally decided to let his team work on the project, he finally got the fundings and papers needed… for this? For Myriad to tell him she didn't want him to do it? He couldn't accept it. Yes, she wasn't wrong: there was a risk for their existences to be erased. It wasn't nonexistent, but it had to be taken! Besides, why would it matter? They wouldn't die, they wouldn't suffer — they would just cease to be. The world would be as if they were never even there, they wouldn't lose anything for they wouldn't have had anything in the first place. Their kind could finally be free without having to kill for the missing souls — those souls Myriad refused to take.

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'We could avoid killing more humans, isn't that what you wanted?'

She looked at him with cold eyes, her jaw firmly clenched as she spoke. 'I want to live my life as I wish to.'

'Trapped down here for the rest of it?'

'If it has to be, yes.'

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He remained speechless for a second, too confused to even argue. Realization was slowly hitting him: Myriad didn't care about saving monsterkind, neither did she care about his attempts to convince her. He heard cries coming from another room, cries which almost covered what he whispered to himself.

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'You'd rather stay here, doing nothing, than saving our people…'

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Myriad had heard them too, those cries. She was ready to go. She was ready to leave, deaf to his words despite everything. As her hand grabbed the doorknob, he saw her look down.

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'I'd rather raise my son, than changing History,' she said.

'Don't you dare bringing Papyrus into this! Don't you dare-!'

She glared at him, and he knew he had lost. 'Don't you dare what? Teaching him that what you're doing is wrong? Teaching him to hate you? I won't need to do that, he'll do it all by himself.

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She opened the door.

It closed behind her.

The cries stopped.

His hope of keeping her by his side vanished.

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oOo

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He was standing in front of the porch, waiting for the carriage to pick him up. She was standing in the door frame, their son napping in her arms. He held a suitcase and a couple of papers. She had a pacifier and a teddy in her hands. He chose duty over family. She chose family over duty.

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'So you're leaving.'

He didn't look at her, he lacked the strength to do so: her look was too hard to bear. 'I have to.'

.

She was glaring, he could feel it. Her eyes, usually so soft, surely had an orange fire inside of them. From her disgust and disappointment was borned hate, and this hate would linger on for years. There was no going back for neither of them, not this time.

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'You'd rather erase your son from existence than refusing to play with a power you know you can't control.'

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Arguing had become useless, futile. Why should he even try? Myriad wouldn't give up her beliefs, and neither would he. They were both stuck in a situation where they were both right, yet they couldn't let go. It wasn't a question of good or bad decisions, a question of right or wrong: it was a question of beliefs.

And those questions can't be answered by a simple yes or no.

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The carriage arrived, and he opened the door to go in. However, before he even set a foot inside, he paused and remained silent. He needed words he couldn't find, he needed one last argument. He needed another chance to convince her, even though he didn't stand one.

He didn't stand one.

He didn't need those words, only to let go.

So he sighed, resolved to lose what he had to lose, and spoke to the one he had loved with all his soul one last time.

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'You can't understand.'

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He thought she wouldn't say anything more. However, as he closed the door of the carriage, he heard her voice getting muffled by the wood.

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'No. No, I can't. And I don't want to. Don't you dare ever coming back, Gaster.'

My university is closed for the rest of the school year, so we're gonna have hell of a time for our tests this semester since we can't show up to non existent exams :/ Welp, I guess it can't be helped...

So, to those who bother to read my rambling (and the others too, but it's not like you could know), I wish you well :)