Got a request for some Asgore and Toriel in the war angst, and couldn't let up the chance.
Also: implied Asgoriel, just so you know.
He comes to her after, when silence has returned but the air smells of blood and dust and their foes are waiting, somewhere out of sight. Planning their next move.
It's what he should be doing as well, Asgore knows. But right now there's only death on his mind and pain in his bones, and they're much too young for this.
Toriel waits for him, red stains that he wishes he could wipe away, but he knows will soak in, taint her. Knows that she won't be the same as before this happened.
Neither will he.
So they sit, like in the beginning, when they would talk all night and dream of their future. Dream of a castle full of flowers and children and the smell of freshly baked pies.
A dream that not seems possible anymore.
"We won't survive this..." she says, voice hollow. Asgore feels it in his heart, feels her slipping away.
She has too much love for war, ironically.
"We will," he says, voice hardened in resolve, and when he grabs her hand he realizes. He never relished the thought of killing but he could have done so for her and he would do it again, over and over. "We'll live."
"Not us," Toriel says, but she doesn't pull away and it's a small mercy on his brittle soul. "We… won't survive this."
Her eyes shift over the battlefield and it's a mess of half-gone Monster bodies and dust, definitely more dust, and Asgore knows it is not the two of them she is talking about.
It is all of them and what they stand for. Ridiculously outnumbered and overpowered and dwindling before him.
Soon he'll be a king without people, a realmless ruler.
And none of this shall have been worth it.
"I know," he says, but he doesn't know what to do about it.
Or he does, but it would be condemning all monsterkind to a miserable existence, and what sort of king would he be then?
"I know you'll do what's right," Toriel tells him, leans in close and she's so much warmer than he can ever be. So much more than what he deserves.
He cherishes that, cherishes her, but wonders if in time she will be saying the same thing.
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