Chapter Text
It is late into the evening before he can even find the semblance of an answer.
The king is a kind man. Even after fixing dinner for, offering his home to, and quelling the nearly debilitating panic attack of a (frankly quite unthankful) guest, that temperament never fails.
He’s even been generous enough to draw up a warm bath for his ungrateful leech — erm, temporary roommate. And courteous enough to allow the privacy required despite the Man’s numerous injuries; only ever intruding to help when necessary and with eyes pointed staunchly to the ground. Just so his pride (unlike his body) could remain intact.
It is not a new development. He’s sure there were countless other little kindnesses pressed into the creases of however many years they’ve spent together. What exactly they were… The man cannot place beyond a glowing garden and a grey little room. But they were there. Sweet, soft, buttery things that made him smile on the coldest of days, almost suffocating in their warmth.
But now in the sharpened present, the Man is alone with the only warmth of the water lapping against his ribs. He sinks into it as far as his destroyed spine will allow, heaving a weary sigh as the back of his skull clicks against the rim of the tub.
He admires the king's kindness, but now he can finally breathe. And when he can breathe he can think.
Newer, angrier memories than the garden have been seeping slowly back into his mind; distorted and tangled behind recognition, but there nonetheless.
There were four others in the disaster, he thinks. Faces and names still hopelessly evade him; aside from a splash of feathers or a fanged smile or a scramble of letters that is almost a name tag.
But there were four. He knows it.
Something killed them. Something he caused.
The thought leaves a hollow, nauseating ache deep within his chest.
It’d be easy to feign innocence, convince himself of the opposite and go about living without them. To pretend that it was some great accident that caused the world to splinter around him, leaving only flashing lights and the smell of dust.
A voice nagging at the back of his mind, distant and humming, never fails to tell him otherwise.
They died that day by his folly. And… And he followed.
It makes him sick, but he knows it to be true.
The evidence is carved across his body, so painfully visible now.
He lightly twitches a leg, trying to ignore the fact that that is as far as he can move it without writhing in pain. The suds swirl and twist around it, revealing the thin, hairline cracks maring his patella and femur.
They match the ones dotting in various spots along his entire body, more bone damaged than whole. Tiny black spider webs encasing him in a paper thin cocoon, as if he has somehow grown veins with nothing to cover them. And that’s just the least of his wounds.
He’d come dangerously close to fainting when Asgore helped him from his clothes and revealed the horrific burns covering his back. He’d felt his face go cold and his vision swim at the sight of the vicious crack arching across the pelvis and up onto the lower vertebra. Even his fingertips went numb when he saw how one femur now rested lower than the other, and just how many bandages Asgore had to undo, and how each awful mar led into another; one massive puzzle of bodily trauma-
It will be a miracle if he ever walks again.
It is a miracle that he is alive at all.
He deserves neither. Not after what he’s done.
The man— WingDings. His name is WingDings, he learned this once. — WingDings winces and allows his skull to roll towards the door. A distant little staring contest is shared between the two.
Asgore is on the other side, waiting patiently to be called back in. A thousand more little kindnesses will come when it swings open; the soft touch of a towel that hovers just above the cracks, a bed made fresh just for him, the scent of flowers in chipped vases to banish the smell of sickness and bloodied bandages.
He deserves none of it. And he certainly shouldn’t feel comforted by any of it. Not when he is the only one who gets to enjoy it.
The king is a kind man. And oh what a cruel thing that kindness is when it is spent on one who has done nothing to deserve it. One who has actively hurt and killed and cheated his own death. One who has broken his own bones and not only thrown caution to the wind, but also the dust of his colleagues.
Perhaps that is what kindness truely is: a blessing to the very dredges of society. A beautiful thing, one that shouldn’t exist by the laws of its own nature. A gift to be thrown away, food for the starving that they’ll turn their nose up to, the apple in the garden—
WingDings’s palm shoots up, pressing hard into his good socket. A little, frustrated groan escapes him, and he lets himself sink down to the chin despite the protests of his lower back. The crack running down his jaw burns.
He could run himself ragged going off on a mental tangent over whether kindness is cruel or cruelty is kindness, or he could figure out how to fix this.
So he leans his skull back and he closes his eyes, letting the warmth consume his bones. Just the smell of warm water, just his fragmented memories, just the beat of his soul and the wheezing breath in his chest.
He searches for some solution, some sort of retribution, some way to possibly earn the way lady luck has cast her cruel dice.
… And for the very first time in his life, W.D. Gaster feels completely and utterly helpless .
There is nothing he can do.
A terrible thing it is, how painful numbness can become. He rationalizes the ebbing, seeping greyness flowing through his marrow as his mind finally shutting down after such a devastating day, but it makes it none the more pleasant. His mouth is dry and bittersweet; the chalky kind of sadness that chokes all the way to the ribs and makes it impossible to swallow what you’ve done.
Grief he thinks, if a murderer is allowed to greave his victims.
The truth is a simple one: He is alive and they are dead. There is no changing the past. No fit punishment for his crimes. No reason for his inexplicable escape from death’s grasp.
There is nowhere to go.
He is tempted to sink deeper into the tub. To let his eye sockets with water and finally drown out all the ache and the guilt and the regret. Just him and that distant, humming darkness, batting away thoughts and memories alike with the simple act of closing his eyes and falling asleep.
He will not drown. It is impossible for his kind. He could just shut his eyes and rest for as long as it took Asgore to get worried enough to intrude and wake him….
But he does not deserve that either, does he?
If he wasn’t so spent, he may have barked a cruel, pathetic laugh. Instead he allows a palm to press into his bleary old eyes, sighing ripples into the water.
There’s nowhere to go… nowhere but forward.
Try as he might, he can’t sink away what he has done. It isn’t fair. Not to them , not to Asgore.
It feels impossible to even lift his head but… but …. He will try to move forward. He will try to heal. He will try to see this wonderful new world for what it is worth, even if the very concept of freedom is too big for him to grasp just yet. He has to try . If he doesn’t try he doesn’t know how he’ll live with-
“Excuse me, Dr. Gaster, I do not wish to rush you or anything, but are you alright in there?” The King’s voice rumbles through the door, though whether he’s forgotten WingDings’s lack of ability to actually respond or simply does not expect him to is unclear.
The skeleton does not move. However, he does turn a soft gaze to the mahogany, not entirely caring whether his words are understood or not. “Yes, I will be out in a few more moments, I-“
He sits up hard enough to hear his own back pop, agonized tremors rolling down his spine and into his broken hip.
He pays them no mind, a single, breath stealing and bone shaking thought has consumed every available inch of his mind; setting his jaw agape and eye sockets bulging.
He hasn’t breathed a word of his old credentials since he woke up.