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His shaky hands picked up the needle and the tiny bottle of barbiturate. The gentlest euthanasia cocktail he had at his disposal. It wouldn’t hurt, it would be like falling asleep. Like falling asleep, he mentally repeated to himself as he filled the barrel with the dosage needed to kill an infant. The poor creature, the poor, poor thing. He wouldn’t use words like ‘child’, it wasn’t fair to this little creature to call it that. He’d never kill a child, for all his bravado about being a sociopath, he couldn’t ever bring himself to hurt even ordinary lab rats. No, he was helping this little creature take a very long and permanent nap. Certainly not killing anyone, certainly not a child, certainly not his own child. He looked from filled syringe to the soul of the tiny creature. It was glowing soft but strong, clinging to life with everything it had. Hours ago, there was one skeleton monster in the whole world. Now there was two. In a few minutes, there would be only one again. He smiled sadly. Well at least it would finally put his survivor’s guilt to rest, knowing he was just as instrumental as the humans in the extinction of skeletonkind. Murdering an infant. He accidentally let himself see the face of the babybones. It really did look like him. It had his cheekbones, his jawline, his forehead. Surprisingly, it didn’t look exactly like him, either. His chil-no, the creature, had smaller eye sockets, a proper set of carpals and metacarpals instead of his own misshapen palms, a nasal cavity and septum. All its father’s positive physical traits, and none of his deformities. The child looked perfect in every way.
But he knew better, he’d seen its soul readings. A skeleton with a quarter of their correct magic pool was as good as dust; a strong and constant magic flow was what kept a skeleton’s bones bound together. He wasn’t murdering this child, he was saving it from a long and painful death. He had played God and now he had to clean up after himself. It wouldn’t even feel it, just a tiny pinch of the needle and it would be all over. He could put the dust somewhere nice. A jar over his work table, maybe. Get Asgore to write a note on it that said, ‘Wingdings you egghead, try having babies the regular way from now on!’ Or maybe something respectful like ‘Unnamed experiment WDG. Lived unassisted for two whole hours.’ Two whole hours. He’d been keeping hourly logs. One of his magical hands was actually in the process of writing down the second log. This one would say “Subject shows physical signs of unique genetic structure from soul donor. Magical levels unorthodoxically low for skeleton at this developmental phase. Healthy now, but will cause severe limits on magical ability in adulthood. Termination recommended.”
Two whole hours. He’d created life. He’d created life and it lived on its own for two whole hours. That was a miracle, wasn’t it? He sighed at the infant skeleton sleeping peacefully on the operating table as if a very evil scientist wasn’t currently contemplating murdering it. Miracles, what a joke.
Sentimentality was going to be the death of him someday.
He dropped the barbiturate in the trash can. He couldn’t do it. Whether it was guilt, cowardice or a ‘miracle’ that stopped him hardly mattered. His magical hands wrote an addendum to the log: ‘Soul donor has become emotionally attached to subject. Adequate professional skepticism compromised. Conclusion: Experiment failed. Low likelihood of future attempts.’ Then the magical hand tossed the logbook to a corner and dropped a fresh journal on the table. His real hands were busy digging around under the makeshift crib for the swaddling blanket Asgore had given him. When he found it, he wrapped it around the little skeleton like the king had taught him. The baby opened one eye socket a crack and then closed it again. His child. No, his son. That’s what he’d written in the logbook weeks ago, right? Male, obvious by the number of ribs and the pelvis structure. His son. He cradled the little bundle in his arms, humming the words to some lullaby he vaguely remembered hearing Toriel sing to her own child so many years ago. A pointless effort since the child was already obviously asleep, but he found the action strangely soothing. He hadn’t even noticed his magical hands reaching for the telephone and putting it to the side of his skull.
“Wingdings, is that Asriel’s lullaby you’re singing?” He pulled himself from his reverie upon hearing the king’s voice on the line. He had to be professional.
“The subject is living without magical support now, your majesty. Two hours now.”
“That is marvelous, Wingdings! Is he well? Can I come to visit him?” He was the King of Monsters, he could come visit anytime he wanted regardless of what Gaster said. Which when combined with his love of children meant he was probably already throwing on his jacket. “I am so happy for you! I remember when Asriel was born, I couldn’t stop crying every time I looked at him. He was so wonderful, I just couldn’t-“
“The experiment was a failure, your majesty.” He could practically hear Asgore’s frown from over the phone. “The subject is healthy, but his magic levels imply he has not inherited my more…useful magic abilities.” The Gaster Blasters. The ability to slightly alter spacetime. Maybe even blue magic. Maybe even the ability to not cave in on himself in a pile of bones. “I had every intention of disposing of the subject, sir.”
“Oh…” The hesitant disappointment in his closest friend’s voice made Gaster feel like complete garbage. He realized he was talking to a man who loved children, who had his own children forcefully ‘disposed of’.
“I’ve since changed my mind. The subject is far from perfect, but…” He was not about to utter the word ‘miracle’. No way in hell. He stammered, trying to think of the reason for his change of heart, but found nothing. Asgore took this in stride.
“You fell in love with him immediately anyways, didn’t you?” How did Asgore always understand him, even when he didn’t understand himself? Love. Was that what strayed his hand from euthanizing his son? It sounded ridiculous, but less so than ‘miracles’, at least.
“An interesting theory, your majesty.”
“None of this ‘your majesty’ business, Wingdings. I am not acting as the king, but as your friend. You said yourself the experiment was off. I will be at the lab in ten minutes, and I am expecting to talk to Dr. Dingbat Egghead and meet his beautiful baby boy, not Dr. Wingdings Gaster, the Constantly Brooding Royal Scientist and his failed test subject. All the science mumbo-jumbo can wait for tomorrow, today is a day for celebration!” That was exactly what he had hoped Asgore would say. If anyone could get him out of his mind for a while, it was him. Give him some perspective, make it somehow ok that he was keeping a probably doomed creature alive for purely selfish reasons. Not that he wouldn’t have been murdering the child for equally selfish ones.
“Only if King Fluffybuns the Crybaby promises to bring a cake and some of his golden tea with him.”
“If you were a more social monster I’d be bringing half of the Underground with me, but perhaps a smaller celebration is better for you. I’ll be right there!” The phone clicked off.
He found himself humming the lullaby again, looking down at his sleeping son. Newborns did not usually sleep for long periods of time. He would be awake soon. Crying, undoubtedly. He would need things, easy things like food, clothing, and shelter. Harder things like attention, reassurance, and affection.
Especially hard and especially necessary was the affection. He couldn’t even remember what it felt like to actually love something. Besides Asgore, but that wasn’t the right kind of love. That kind of love was called “millennia-long suppressed unrequited pining” and was not an emotion he was hoping to ever feel for more than one person; he was not particularly excited to feel it for the one person he did. Any other love was foreign to him, something he could observe but never participate in. It was just another thing he’d done away with over the years.
There was a loud knock at the door. The infant skeleton was finally woken up by the sound, letting loose a piercing wail that made Gaster jump.
“Oh my, I’m sorry! Did I startle him?” He sent a magic hand to let the king in while he tried not to drop the screeching baby. How were you supposed to soothe a scared child? He panicked, holding the bundle of crying bones at arm’s length, trying to remember anything Asgore had taught him, or anything he’d seen Toriel do, but he found all he could think about was how terrified he was. It was only the sudden feeling of big furry paws on top of his hands that brought clarity to his mind.
“Here, hold him like this.” The paws moved his hands slightly so that he was cradling his son very close to his sweater. “Now rock him gently. Very gentle, Wingdings.” The paws guided him through the motions. The baby’s crying slowed down. Asgore moved his paws to Gaster’s shoulders. “Good, good. You are a natural. Just keep rocking him for a while.” He obliged. His son was only weakly sobbing now. “He is beautiful, Wingdings. What is his name?”
“I haven’t named him, your majesty. Skeleton tradition is to wait to name them until you know their dialect.”
“What should I call him, then?”
Gaster said “child” in his own dialect, which of course sounded like garbled nonsense to Asgore.
“Hmm, how about a pet name instead? ‘Little Egghead’?” Such an Asgore thing to say.
“Golly, Wingdings, you’re crying. I haven’t seen you cry in a thousand years.” Was he crying? He ran an incorporeal finger down his cheekbone, and sure enough there were tears. Strange. “Are you ok?”
“I feel…something.”
“And what is that feeling?” No Asgore, you silly goat, he thought to himself. The impressive thing was that he was feeling anything at all.
“I was going to murder him, Asgore.” He felt more tears drip from his eye sockets. Ah. Raw shame.
“But you didn’t.” At some point he had moved in to hug Gaster from behind. He leaned into the hug, only just enough to ground him. Always only just enough to ground him, he would never ever allow himself more.
“I should have. Read his soul.” The king did so, reaching one paw to the top of the babbling skeleton’s skull and loosing a crackle of probing magic.
“I don’t understand, Wingdings. He’s perfectly healthy. You were worried about his magic level, but even that is remarkably high for- “
“For a normal monster. Skeletons need much more magic. Most of it goes into keeping us from falling apart. Not a problem now when he’s the size of a football, but as he reaches his adult size, his bones will struggle to receive enough magical current. He’s going to-he’s…” He slipped into his dialect again, swears and apologies and prayers. His son’s eye sockets drifted to his mouth. It stopped him short. Someone could finally understand his language again, after a thousand years. Hopefully not completely yet, considering the curses he had just been uttering.
“Mercy is never the wrong answer.” He buried his fluffy blonde beard in the back of Gaster’s neck. “Though I suppose that is a meaningless statement coming from me.” His wife had called him a soulless coward, a child murderer. She left him a broken man. It ate at him. It ate at Gaster. “You are the smartest monster in the Underground. If anyone can help him, it’s you.”
“I don’t think I can love him.” Gaster did not want to admit his lack of empathy to the one monster he wanted to value him. But, what choice did he have? He would rather confess sociopathy to his most beloved person than have his son suffer under it. “I’m not sure I can love anyone, sire.” It stung hideously to confess to such a thing while holding that tiny miracle in his arms. Asgore nuzzled him.
“What else would make you cry for the first time in a thousand years, if not love?” His teeth clenched involuntary at the idea. He couldn't love, hadn't loved.
“I am…afraid. Afraid that I will let him down, I have let him down once already. If my calculations had been better, his fetus would’ve had more magic going to it. If I had given him a bigger chunk of my soul, he could’ve developed more magic on his own. I am afraid of what other monsters will think of him, he’s the first skeleton born in eons, and he was made in a lab instead of born like a normal monster. I am afraid of how he’s going to feel about me when he realizes I can’t love him, how I almost killed him. I’m afraid of-“
Asgore cut off his rambling.
“You, afraid? You, the same Wingdings Gaster, who when barely out of your stripes, stood before the freshly-crowned King of Monsters and boldly proclaimed to him that you had solved the mystery of magic. You, the same Wingdings Gaster who just a month ago came in here telling me you were going to cut your soul in half so you could make life from nothing?” His voice lost its gentle tone and became surprisingly regal. “You are not a monster who knows hesitation, you dingbat. So, tell me, egghead, what is so different about this experiment than any of your other half-considered harebrained schemes?”
He hugged his son tight to his chest. “This is not an experiment, this is my child! And…”
“And you love him. You are afraid because you care about him. That is love.” Love. Stupid, unscientific love. It was impossible.
“But what if I ruin him? What if I can’t love him as much as he needs? What if he resents me for creating him?”
“Parenthood is going to be the toughest experiment you will ever attempt, Wingdings. And it can end in tragedy.” He sucked in a pained breath, thoughts of his own children clearly on his mind. “But all you can do is your best. Love your ‘Little Egghead’ with everything you’ve got, and hope it will be enough. For what it’s worth, even knowing what happens in the end, I wouldn’t trade my time with Chara and Asriel for anything in the world, not even a thousand centuries on the surface. Children are wonderful creatures.”
A silence fell over the room. The centuries-dead princes’ ghosts hung in the air, reminding one man of his past failures and the other of his possible future failure. His very likely future failure, considering his lack of empathy and his son’s deathly low magic. Foregone conclusions are the enemy of curious scientists, and reminding himself that kept Gaster from giving up at that moment.
“Do you think I will be a good father?”
“When we were still on the surface, you told me that you wanted to have one hundred children. Do you remember what I said to you then?”
“’Wingdings, you egghead, if you can pull your skull out of your pelvis long enough to find someone who will put up with rubbing souls with you a hundred times, you will be the most unbearable, quirky, cuddly, lovable father who ever had a hundred baby bones.’” He omitted the next sentence, which was about how he would be more than willing to assist Wingdings with his goals if worse came to worst. Those thoughts were too painful for him and probably too embarrassing for Asgore.
“Your memory is as infallible as always, and I haven’t changed my mind one tiny bit.”
“You still think I’m…cuddly?”
“You’ve been petting my arms with your magical hands since I started hugging you.” He killed off the magic summoning them, orange blush dotting his cheekbones. This baby business was causing him disturbing lapses in judgement.
“…they’re very soft.” Asgore laughed, that beautiful wholesome sound that scared away any fear his kingdom could have about a monster as outwardly menacing as him. For just a tiny second Gaster let himself pretend the king loved him the way he loved the king, that it was genuine affection and not a sense of duty to his oldest friend that kept him around. He smothered those feelings; he knew better.
“You always think the worst about yourself, but do you know how the monsters outside your dungeon of a laboratory feel about you?” Gaster knew very well. They feared him. If Asgore, with his bright smiles and his flower gardens, was a reminder of the beauty and hope the surface represents, then his royal scientist was a reminder of the horrors that pushed them underground in the first place. He was a relic of the war, unfeeling and cruel, the final living example of a subspecies known for their enigma. He knew too much and spoke too little. He should be dead, they knew. He should be dead, he knew. He should be dead.
His son cooed softly, snapping him out of his self-loathing. Should or shouldn’t, he couldn’t die anymore. He had someone who needed him.
“No,” he lied. “You know I don’t leave the comfort of my lab often enough to hear the local gossip about myself.”
“Have you considered how they will feel when they find you’ve, pardon my pun, brought your kind back from the dead?” Disgust, more fear. No monster in their right mind would submit themselves to what he did to his own soul for this experiment. It was nothing short of torture. Only self-hatred and scientific curiosity had even made him able to do it to himself.
“I intend to keep the nature of this project classified.”
“Skeletons were not the only monsters to go extinct during the war, Wingdings. I would hope a biologist such as yourself would remember that.”
“Four hundred and two known species of monster, and an estimated thousand odd unknown species, your majesty. I could list them for you if you think my son looks like he needs a nap.” And every species name was a reminder of how little the twisted sociopath of a skeleton deserved to be amongst the survivors.
“Boss Monsters, for one.” Asgore admitted. Gaster flinched. “Can you imagine the hope knowing we can have another Boss Monster soul to break the Barrier with would give our people?” No, never, not even if he ever perfected the method. The damage it did to a soul, the painful agony of the surgical process, he’d never be able to do that to the person he loved most in the world.
“The experiment was a failure, need I remind you.”
“Only a failure so much as you failed to make a physics-warping super soldier. You made a very wonderful child.” He smiled wide and gentle at ‘Little Egghead’, nearly goring Gaster on his massive horns as he pushed his face up close to the baby. Though there was now a mass of blonde fuzz blocking the view of his son, he could hear him making tiny ‘nyeh heh heh’ sounds at the king. “Isn’t that right? Aren’t you just precious tiny bones? He’s got your smile, Wingdings, and your quirky little laugh!” He couldn’t believe Asgore remembered what his laugh sounded like, it had been at least a thousand years since he had found anything much funny about the world.
Asgore and his son continued exchanging baby babble pleasantries for a bit. Gaster summoned a magical hand to help himself to some cake. Ganache drizzled extra heavy over devil’s food, his favorite. Asgore always knew him so well.
That wasn’t anything special, he knew all of his subjects well. Nothing special, he repeated to himself. He was nothing special to Asgore. Just an obligation, like watering his flowers. ‘Make sure the Royal Scientist hasn’t accidentally or intentionally killed himself or anyone else this week’. Asgore knew he was unstable.
‘Do you love me?’ he wanted to ask, or maybe ‘How does love come so easily to you?’ Those were foolish questions that would betray what little dignity he still had. He wasn’t a teenage girl, he didn’t need to love nor be loved by anyone. He only needed to understand love just enough that he could care for his son.
He ate his cake and watched the man he loved more than anything play peekaboo with the son he had no idea how to love. Without fail, the baby would ‘nyeh heh heh’ ferociously as soon as Asgore whispered “Howdy!” and peeked out from behind his big furry paws. He found himself smiling and he wasn’t sure which one of the two was making him smile more.
…That was a strange feeling.
“Why don’t you try for a bit, Wingdings? You have a much sillier face than I do. I’m a big mean scary Boss Monster, but you’re a friendly, goofy skeleton.” Asgore might’ve had those two mixed up.
“Humans literally use my kind’s likeness as a representation of death, sire.”
“He's not a human, he's a skeleton! Babies imprint on their parents, they love seeing their faces. You know that, Dr. ‘Three Hundred Books on Monster Biology’.”
“I am not his parent, I am his creator. There will be no maternal bond between…” Asgore tapped him on the shoulder. His son was looking up at him with his tiny eye sockets half-open. Sighing at the futility of trying to get through to the baby-mad goat, he summoned a magical hand over his own eye sockets and dissipated it. The baby stared at him blankly and then broke out into the loudest and clearest stream of giggles yet.
“Well, it seems Daddy Dingbat does not know everything after all, hmm, Little Egghead?”
Gaster attempted to remind himself that his son was laughing because he didn't understand object permanence yet, not out of familiarity or love or any of those illogical feelings. The logical conclusion had never seemed so blatantly wrong before in his whole life.
The creature looked up at him expectantly, undoubtedly waiting on another peekaboo round. He was only a few hours old and already was able to recognize faces and his father’s dialect.
A little genius. His little genius, who loved him. He had created something just like him, except perfect in every way. Something that could love, and did love, unconditionally.
...So much for thinking logically.
He summoned a hand over his face and dissipated it again. His son’s warm giggles washed over him like he had been sitting inside Asgore’s fire magic.
He pressed his teeth against his son’s browbone. A skeleton kiss, another tradition he always believed to be dead.
“I love you. Now, always and forever. And forever is a very long time to a skeleton.” Gaster peered up from the baby to the king for just one second, all he would allow himself.
Asgore’s shoulders were hunched up and his face looked pained. He looked back down. “I am not a good man, but I will try my best to become someone who is deserving of your love.”
He heard the scratching sound of big paws stepping away from him, but kept looking at the baby in his arms.
“Wingdings…” There was a quiet agony in the king’s voice, the sound of a broken man. “Wingdings, you are the most wonderful man I have ever known.”
Gaster said nothing. He wouldn't allow himself to, lest a thousand years worth of feelings pour out of him.
“I am so sorry. This is not the right time for…” For a ten foot tall demon goat, the king sounded awfully like a scared child. It made Gaster feel nostalgic. He missed his big scaredy crybaby desperately.
“An interesting theory, your majesty.” Asgore sighed. His footsteps became more distant.
“I worried about you for a very long time, that perhaps you were losing your way. Had I truly seen the last of my odd, energetic, caring, smiling, radiant Dr. Dingbat, the most wonderful man in the world? But it is I who lost my way. You showed mercy, Wingdings. I did not. You created a family from nothing. I buried mine.” His big scaredy crybaby was dead. The shell of a man before him buried his oldest friend the day he buried his family. And yet...
“I love you. Now, always, and forever.” In his incomprehensible dialect this time. Words better left unsaid. “And forever is a very long time to a skeleton.”
“Please tell me if you need any more of Asriel’s baby things, or you need help watching Little Egghead. You work yourself to the bone as it is, and if he is anything like his father, he will be quite a handful.”
Gaster only hummed the prince's lullaby to his son in response. His magical hands were reaching for a pen to start writing down in that journal. He had a lot on his mind.
'Monsters are made of magic, magic and love. Today, a miracle of magic and love entered my world and single-handedly disproved every theory I have ever had.’
He couldn't love. He didn't deserve it. But he would do his best.