You still have nightmares, after it all. Sometimes you still wake up in a cold sweat, fragmented images of Gaster poised over you with a weapon still flitting vaguely in the shadowy corners of your waking mind. But they're... not the horrible kind of nightmare. Granted, they're still bad; all nightmares are bad, but these aren't really bad ones. You don't wake up in a panic, you don't sit up through the night, waiting for the sunrise.

Sure you still have nightmares, but they're normal nightmares.

So you roll back over and go back to sleep.

The first warmish, not-completely-muddy day in March just happens to fall on a weekend, and Toriel and Asgore decide it's a good day to have a picnic in the park. Everyone is invited, Alphys, Undyne, Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster, all showing up at the park with a dish to contribute to the picnic.

While Gaster seems to have forgiven the misunderstanding, he certainly hasn't forgotten it. He seems... wary around you. He keeps giving you sidelong looks, his expression one you can't understand.

You suppose you can't blame him. You did remind him of That-One-Time, and, well... you're willing to bet he likes thinking about it as much as you do.

He also hasn't given you your fauchard back yet, meaning you get to have the experience of explaining to Undyne that no, you cannot practice summoning your weapon, because you don't have it.

You try to be coy about the reason why; you don't want to bring up the whole you're-a-genocidal-maniac thing again, but Sans' slyness with words you do not possess, and your deflection of her questions refusing her answers but not diffusing her curiosity, she decides to go ask Gaster for that which you had so tried to deny her, for the sake of everyone's mood.

It's the first nice day outside, after all, and you'd rather be having fun than constantly apologizing and feeling like the awful person that you try to tell yourself you're not but Flowey constantly reminds you that you are.

Thankfully, while Gaster remains as much an anomaly in behavior as he seems to think you are, he can still be relied on for a clear and blunt answer to a difficult topic.

"Frisk and I had a-... misunderstanding," you overhear him saying to her. "And I realized that perhaps giving a human child a war-worthy weapon, as well as encouraging the aggressive use of it, is not necessarily a particularly wise decision."

Well. Blunt it may be, but you suppose, out of context, that's actually kinda vague. Undyne goes away from the conversation looking a little herself like a metaphorical cat.

But, well, there's not a whole lot you can do about it. And besides, it's a nice day out. You should be enjoying it!

And you do. You spend all day playing with your friends in the sun, running around and laughing, and even Gaster joins in for a little while. That's definitely the most intense game of freeze tag you've ever played.

Evening comes, and after watching the sunset, you all head home.

The next morning, you wake up to find your sheets are all sweaty, and you have a lingering sense of dread. But, you can't directly remember any nightmares, and it wasn't enough to wake you up, so that's good.

It being a Sunday, you decide, after eating and getting dressed, to go visit the lab. Yesterday, Gaster said something about getting ready to build the new CORE- apparently, he's been working on some of the smaller parts of the CORE for the last few months, and was testing them out one more time today to ensure comparability before beginning work on the whole thing.

It's always exciting to watch Gaster test things out. It'll either work, which will get him really excited; blow up, which might get him excited or get him into one of those insane angry rants; or fail catastrophically, in which case you'd like to be there to comfort whoever gets fired.

On your way out, Flowey convinces- okay, maybe it's a little more like guilt tripping for always leaving your oh-so-important sidekick behind- you into taking him along.

You're not sure what Gaster will have to say about that, but at the very least, you're happy Flowey has finally accepted the role of your sidekick.

When you get to the lab, the handful of staff that come in on the weekends are in a flurry of activity. You can't understand most of what's being said- it's all sciencey technobabble- but everyone's excited. Eventually, you find Gaster, Sans, and Papyrus at the center of it all, and they're all grinning excitedly as they make final adjustments to the machines.

Or, at least, they all are until Gaster sees you and Flowey. Then his expression shifts into a furious scowl, and he stalks over to you. "Frisk," he growls through clenched teeth, looking at you and having a finger in Flowey's direction, "why have you brought this thing into my lab?"

"Hey!" Flowey  interjects before you can respond. "I'm a person!"

"People," Gaster hisses back, his glare shifting to the flower, "have Souls."

Flowey gets a sulky look, and you get the impression that if he had shoulders and arms, they would be, respectively, hunched and crossed. "Yeah, well, I have a Soul, it's just-..."

"Just what, weed? Gone? Missing? Dead?" Gaster pauses, sneering. "All the more reason that you should be k-"

You hear something clatter, and Gaster snaps to attention, whirling around, his good eyesocket widening. It seems someone's dropped something, cut something, broken something.

Suddenly, Gaster is lunging forward, screaming at the top of whatever serves him as lungs, "GET DOWN!!"

And it almost happens in slow motion. The blossoming orange and red and black from one of the machines, ripping apart and pushing aside the twisted chunks of warped metal. Sans, quite near to the exploding device, seems to be dodgeing most of the shrapnel with the same skill he dodged you That-One-Time, but Papyrus—

Gaster suddenly appears out of nowhere, in front of Papyrus, just in time to block a chunk of the control panel from ripping his son in half.

Instead, it just about rips straight through Gaster's chest, lodging itself rather firmly in his upper body.

You have just enough time to see his face contort into something that looks like pain- actual, real pain- before he collapses.

§

A/N

Did you know that if you want to be more productive, you should listen to video game music? It's specifically designed to keep you motivated, but at the same time, remain in the background and demand very little of your processing power.

I was listening to these while I wrote this:

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[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

\/ \/ these two are my favorites \/ \/

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Comments and votes are my Favorite Things, and every notification I get makes my day!