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Gaster didn’t know when it happened. He’d fallen asleep in his cell - was it a cell? He wasn’t too terribly sure. Though he supposed it was doing a good job of keeping him locked up regardless - and slept for ages, exhausted. It was a deep sleep, maybe even an unnatural one, if only he knew anything about sleeping magics to guess. He awoke on the floor of his little cell, stiff and sore from how he’d been curled up in the corner, expecting the gloom of barely lit darkness to greet him.
Instead, he’d found himself staring at a flickering light.
It took a moment for his mind to process the light, the color, the movement. Another moment for him to register what it meant. And his soul did flips around itself in joy and despair as he realized he had opened his eyes to see Grillby.
His bodyguard was locked in his own cell across from Gaster, arms shackled with stiff cuffs and bars so that he couldn’t bring his hands together. His cell was desolately empty. While Gaster at least had a chair and something passable for a bed, Grillby had absolutely nothing. With a grimace Gaster realized this was to be expected. Grillby had proven time and time again that anything, anything he could get his hands on had the potential to turn into a weapon or a means of escape. The elemental, although quiet, was fiendishly clever. Though currently he only seemed a bit pathetic.
He didn’t look rough exactly. It was obvious he’d been dragged here against his will - and Gaster had to marvel at how in the world they’d managed that - his clothes were scuffed and ripped and torn. His flame flickered low and a bit dim, either from exhaustion or any harm he’d taken, Gaster wasn’t sure which.
Gaster called out to him with a voice that cracked in the silence of the room they were in. It had been a while since he’d last spoken, and besides that, he was loathe to speak too loud for fear someone might be listening to them. But sitting here, watching Grillby and not knowing if he was okay, that gnawed at him like rats in his ribcage.
“Grillby? Grillby, are you alright?”
There was a stir in the flicker of the elemental’s flame, a few sparks breaking loose to flit around his face, and a long, ominous pause. Gaster could feel his soul shaking so hard in his chest from nervousness that it seemed to shake his whole body. For a second, he could be convinced it was an earthquake, small and distant, writhing its way through their cell.
Then Grillby moved, tiredly, heavily, as if the natural movements of his body carried the weight of the building that sat on top of them. He sighed out a breath of softly curling smoke and leaned his head back against the wall behind him, thought for a moment, and then finally tilted his head in Gaster’s direction.
“You’re awake,” he said simply. His voice was low and rough, like maybe he’d just woken up himself, and there was a hard look in his eyes, familiar. It was one of the piercing sorts of looks that always fell about Grillby’s shoulders like a mantle just before he had to make a hard decision. Gaster had seen it several times over the past months they’d been together. When he’d noticed some danger Gaster was too dense to see. Just before he pulled the trigger on a gun. Right before he took a hit. It was… disarming… to have that gaze locked in his direction. Gaster was so terribly used to seeing it focused in the distance somewhere, on someone who most likely wouldn’t live the next few minutes. It scared him. He didn’t know what it meant.
“I’m awake,” Gaster stammered dumbly in response, for a moment his thoughts chased away by the grimness of his partner. Then he managed, “Are you alright?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
It was clipped and abrupt and offered no explanation. It was like Gaster had suddenly been confronted by a brick wall. He stammered for a moment, confused and unsure what to say. And worried. Gods he was worried now. A familiar rope of dread was scraping itself against the vertebrae of his back.
“A-are you…? Did they…?” Gaster stammered to a stop and then looked around the room. He didn’t see anyone. He didn’t understand - was Grillby scared, maybe, that someone was listening to them? He didn’t know what to do. He… he settled on, “C… can you…? Do you have a plan?”
“Not one you’ll like.”
No elaboration. No emotion. A great metal door of a statement slammed abruptly shut.
“So… you don’t think you can get out of here, then?”
Finally, Gaster seemed to have landed on a question that Grillby could elaborate on, though it was a weird one, he thought. If Grillby were so scared of being overheard, why speak so plainly about all the things he’d analyzed since they’d tossed him in here? Why let them know? But he spoke, and despite how dismal it was just hearing Grillby’s voice chased away some of the fear Gaster felt.
“All of the metal in here has a high melting point,” the guard assessed, tiredly, like he didn’t want to admit it out loud, “Higher than I can reach by myself. I can’t warp the lock or the bars, or this - ” he splayed his hands, the manacle and bar flashing dimly in the light, “ - they swept the floors clean before they threw me in here, and they took everything I had stored away on my person. There’s nothing to dismantle or repurpose. They were smarter this time, the monsters they hired carry magic that fights fire and resists heat, and there’s a lot of them. They knew what they were doing when they came after me.”
“B… but why?” Gaster stammered, “They already had me. Were they…? Because they thought you’d try to come find me…? Would that be…?”
Grillby was shaking his head, “No sir.”
Sir. Gaster ignored it, but it was still loose gravel inside his skull, tap-tap-tapping on his nerves. Sir. Grillby had stopped calling him Sir a long time ago.
“And they didn’t hurt you?”
A long pause, that hard look of Grillby’s traced its way up towards the ceiling, “No more than they had to.”
The way he said it, Gaster got the feeling that was supposed to mean something. Like there was gravity in the statement that he was oblivious to. But all he could do was blink confusedly. He wanted to be happy - he thought they should be happy. They were caught sure, and things were likely looking grim. But they were together! They were together. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
Grillby started speaking - more walled up statements, hard and stern, “How long have you been here, sir?”
Sir. Sir. He didn’t like that Sir. He hated it, in fact.
“I… I’m not sure. I haven’t really spotted any clocks or calendars since I-”
“In this room, specifically,” Grillby cut him off abruptly, but not unkindly. There was no impatience in his voice. Just some sort of quiet matter-of-factness that, once again, nagged Gaster with the idea that he was missing something. Was there something about their situation he wasn’t getting?
“Recently,” Gaster answered cautiously, “Since the last time I slept.”
Grillby nodded, and that hard look in his eye sobered into something soft and distant. Grillby was thinking about something, but not in the critical way he thought through things like escape or plans of action. There was a notable slump in his shoulders, the tight curl of his fisted hands made themselves limp. His gaze dropped to the concrete floor.
“Was that when they brought you here? Last night?”
“Yes.”
Tap-tap-tapping at his nerves, this time not from annoyance at how he was called but in the creeping feeling of dread pouring like half-spent acid down his spinal column, dripping and snaking at the back of his ribs. His soul shuddered and with it the rest of his body seemed to throb with nervousness. He could fool himself into thinking it beat hard enough to shake the metal bars his hands were curled around - he didn’t remember when he’d grabbed them and leaned in, looking fervent and hopeless. But for all the loudness in his body, the silence between him and Grillby still managed to devour him. The elemental chewed on a thought for a moment, and Gaster, afraid of revealing himself to be some sort of idiot, or somehow making the situation worse, kept his mouth shut and waited on the bodyguard to decide what he would say next - if he said anything at all.
Finally Grillby spoke, “I must apologize to you sir. I’ve put you in a terrible situation.”
Sir. Tap-tap. Sir. A brick wall building itself higher. Gaster could fool himself into thinking beneath all that fire, Grillby was turning to stone.
“I… don’t understand.”
“They can’t hurt you,” Grillby said, “Not really. If they wound you too badly, they must wait for you to heal before they can start any work, and that’s precious time when someone could rescue you. Or, if they hurt you too badly, they could kill you, or render you useless. Then they’re without an engineer and all their resources have been wasted in catching you. You’re an incredible asset to them, a hinge pin in their planning. Everything falls to dust if you die.”
Grillby leaned his head against the wall behind him, gaze panning idly around the ceiling for a moment, picking and choosing his words meticulously. For the thousandth time Gaster wished the elemental were more readable, that he wasn’t so terribly good at hiding every thought and emotion. As it were, Gaster could feel himself shaking from the weight and fear behind the observations Grillby was making. He spoke so casually of cruelty Gaster hadn’t dared to render into thought yet, and all with the countenance of a tiredly bored rock wall.
“They have put us together to remind you of your sentimentality,” Grillby’s gaze bored itself a hole through Gaster’s eye sockets, and that drip-drip-dripping of acid dread turned itself into a drowning flood of panic in the skeleton’s chest, “They want you to feel isolated and alone, and like I’m your lifeline. And that if we’re together we have some hope of making it out of this. When they think they’ve given us enough time together, they’re going to escort us out of here. I will be tortured, and somehow, you will be forced to witness. They know we’ve grown attached to each other, so they’ll use me against you to force you to do their bidding. It will be long. It will be slow. It will be painful. And regardless of whether you agree to their terms - whatever those end up being - it might not stop until I’m dust.”
Grillby paused to let out one more long, smoking exhale, “I’m s…”
I’m sorry. He didn’t bother finishing the sentence. It was too open. A hole in the wall. A brick he had yet to shove into place. A weakness in his untroubled facade.
Gaster was suddenly a creature of despair and panic. He found himself tilting haphazardly through Grillby’s words, his mind unable to decide if the elemental was lying or if this was a dream, or if this nightmare was really happening. This couldn’t be happening, could it? No, it couldn’t be. This was something out of a horror movie, or some trash action novel floating in a dump somewhere. Things like this, surely, they didn’t actually happen. Not in real life. Not to him. Never to him. He was just a scientist, a doctor working on a cure for the barrier. He was working for the greater good. This badness, this despair, this malicious intent, it shouldn’t be able to exist anywhere near him. And yet still he choked on it. He choked on it as it puddled in his throat and in his eye sockets, as his exhausted and hopeless magic sent aches to the joints of every bone. His whole body seemed to be rebelling against him, tensing his ribs in withheld breaths that desperately reached to turn into sobs, leaking his despair in slow tracks down his face.
Gaster bowed his head, his clenched fists on the bars of his cell the only thing keeping him from crumpling into a ball on the floor.
With a cracked voice he whimpered, “What do I do?”
When he didn’t get an answer, he asked again, louder, not knowing what else to do. And his voice cracked as he spoke, pathetic in the quiet of the room, “What do I do, Grillby? Please I don’t - I can’t - I…” he covered his mouth with a hand, screwed his eyes shut and shook his head, “They can’t do this. They can’t I - this… this can’t be happening.”
Grillby stayed quiet, letting Gaster weep out his hysterics - either because he could offer no comfort or didn’t want to, Gaster didn’t know. All he knew was that he hated the silence. The stoicism. How Grillby could just sit there with his cuffed hands balancing on his knees and his gaze riveted so harshly in Gaster’s direction he could’ve been looking through him. Grillby waited like that for a long time, until Gaster’s initial shock over their situation had crumbled into nothing but harsh breathing.
“It was never my intention to be used against you,” Grillby said quietly, the closest the elemental could get to sounding truly repentant and gentle, given their circumstances, “It’s not my intention to be used against you for long.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever I choose to,” came the painfully vague, brick wall of an answer.
“I thought you said you had a plan?”
“I said it was one you wouldn’t like.”
In spite of himself, Gaster laughed. Pitifully. His voice jagged from emotions that threatened to run him ragged at a moment’s notice, “S-so… what? You’re just… you’re just going to take the cyanide pill like - like in the old movies? You’re going to leave me alone here to just… deal with the fact that I’ve gotten you killed?”
“I’m going to spite them in any way I can,” Grillby corrected him smoothly, emotionlessly, “And you are going to make sure they don’t get what they want.”
“You’re going to die, Grillby.”
“That seems the most likely outcome, yes.”
Gaster glared at the elemental, his hopelessness and fear over their situation slowly burning into something hotter and more bitter against the inside of his ribs, “How can you be so calm about this? You’re going to die because of me. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“I think we’ve had this conversation before,” Grillby said, meeting the scientist’s gaze with quiet resolution, “And we’ve established before, sir, that you hold no weapons and deal no damage.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Gaster shouted, leaning hard against the bars of his prison as though through his anger alone he could barrel through them, “Just you being near me has caused this!”
“Sir, you’re taking this far too personally,” tap-tap-tap on the back of his skull, a brick wall as tall as the ceiling, “Putting myself in danger to keep monsters like you out of the hands of violent monsters like them, is my job. I signed up for this eventuality long before I met you. The fact that it was you who lead to this particular scenario is of little significance.”
Gaster was furious, a scowl twisting across his teeth, magic sparking uselessly as he shouted, “I’m taking this too personally? I’m taking this too personally?”
“Yes. You are.”
The light overhead of them flickered, and this time when Gaster felt the bars of his cell shake, it wasn’t just a fabrication of his senses. He had never been so distraught. He had never been so angry. And he had never been so helplessly beside himself in his entire life. For all the mighty shakes and trembles of his magic, for every ounce of acid he put in his voice, it did nothing. Nothing besides scratch away at his meager reserves of magic and add exhaustion on top of everything else he was feeling.
“Calm yourself sir,” Grillby cautioned, unmoving and unphased, “Before you draw attention to yourself.”
“St-stop calling me sir!” Gaster shouted, stammering pathetically through his heavy emotion, angrier still that he couldn’t speak coherently when he was so upset, “You n-never ever call me that! You’re not just my guard! You didn’t j-j-ust sign up for this. This - this - th – gods damn it – this isn’t a contract! We - ! I - ! I…”
Suddenly he found himself running out of steam, too miserable to continue his outburst, and disheartened by the lack of emotion Grillby gave him in return. A brick wall. He was just talking to a brick wall. He was yelling and screaming at a brick wall. He was taking this too personally, and Grillby wasn’t allowed to care. Helplessly, Gaster turned away from him. He couldn’t look at him. He couldn’t be so emotional and so vulnerable and so normal and get nothing back. Not without getting angry. Not without feeling ridiculous or betrayed.
Taking this too personally. Had he taken everything too personally then?
“If… you would like to make this easier on yourself,” Grillby said, his voice meandering, like he didn’t feel like he should even be speaking, “I would… spend some time reflecting on… anything you might dislike about me. Anything at all.”
Gaster screwed his eye sockets shut. He felt another hitch of emotion tense his chest.
“Arguments. Bad habits. Petty grievances. How violent I am. How scary.”
It took a moment of emotional stuttering where Gaster only managed to get more exasperated with himself, but he managed to ask, “Why on Earth would that make things easier?”
There was a shrug in Grillby’s voice as he said, “Distance.”
Distance. Tap-tap-tap. A brick wall.
“So what? You want me to go into this hating you?”
“It helps.”
“I can’t… I can’t do that.”
His voice was getting watery again and he hated it. He hated how helpless it made him feel. How alone it made him. Sobbing and wailing against a brick wall.
“You don’t have to hate me forever,” Grillby said, “Just long enough.”
Gaster found himself biting on a knuckle to keep from crying outright again, though magic worked its way from his eye sockets regardless.
“In the moment,” Grillby continued, sighing, “Think of puzzles. Poems. A favorite song. I’ve been tried that focusing on a memory can also help, though it should be something recent and fresh on your mind. Try to block out what you’re seeing or hearing.”
“I… I c… I can’t do this. I can’t,” Gaster raked his hands down his face, “I can’t I-”
“The only alternative, sir, is that it’s all for nothing,” Grillby snapped, and the anger filtering its way through the harshness of his words was the first genuine emotion Gaster had heard from the guard since he’d started talking. There was a crack-crack-crack in the brick wall of Grillby’s presence, “All the running and fighting. All the dust spilling. All the harm we’ve come to. They whole point I was hired to protect you in the first place. The bad guys get their engineer, they get all your hard work, and then, sir, many, many people will die. And all because I -!”
He must have realized his temper had gotten the better of him, because Grillby stopped talking abruptly. He had run to his wall with a hammer and paused just before the swing, and now the air was heavy and tense with the jarring halt of momentum. Gaster hesitantly turned to face him, but already the moment of anger and weakness was over. Grillby looked just as he had before, stoic and piercing. Gaster noticed his hands were balled into fists.
“And all because you… what?” he asked quietly, and there was hope at the edge of his voice he couldn’t stifle. He was grasping at straws, looking for a line, for some sort of comfort. Meanwhile Grillby’s gaze searched the floor, as if he’d dropped all his thoughts there. Slowly, his hands pried themselves open of their fists, and he exhaled a long slow breath of smoke.
“I’ve put you in a terrible situation,” Grillby said, and in his words Gaster could feel the elemental pulling into himself, extinguishing the bits of him that wished to roil and rage against their plight, “I will do my best, sir, to make it as short as possible. I suggest you practice what I’ve told you.”
Gaster watched him pathetically. Watched as once again Grillby seemed to turn to stone and felt his own soul sink way down deep in his chest. He didn’t want this to be their last conversation. He didn’t want this to be how he remembered Grillby after - after whatever was going to happen, happened. Gaster wiped away a tear as it traced its way down the jagged edges of his face. Then not knowing what else to do and unwilling to needle away at a wall any longer, Gaster made his way to the back corner of his cell. He curled up there, knees hugged close to his chest, face buried in his arms.
He cried there as quietly as he could manage, feeling nothing short of raw and vulnerable and hopeless. His whole body was a live nerve, screaming against his own touch.
Grillby sat in his cell, quiet, head leaned back against the wall, eyes shut. He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He simply waited. And he repaired his mental wall with the dutiful motions he had used for years, trying desperately to cover every crack. He tried to ignore Gaster’s concern for his safety. Chased away his fondness for the scientist and any weakness that could put in him. He needed to be strong. He needed to be able to do what he had to when the time came.
But… what would Gaster do without him? If they had no leverage left, and Gaster refused to yield. Would they kill him? A dangerous thought, and one laden with emotions he wasn’t supposed to feel.
Crack.
He needed to be there to protect him. He didn’t want Gaster to come to harm. But there was a greater good at stake.
Crack crack.
He needed a plan. He needed another way. He needed to find something else to do. But the longer he lived, the more harm Gaster might come to. The more likely it would be that this would all amount to nothing.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
But if he died, it would tear Gaster apart. And if Gaster didn’t get himself killed, surely without Grillby watching over him, someone else would kill him. He might fall to the same cruel hands that would be coming for the guard soon enough.
Crack.
He should have never fallen in love.
Crack….
Crack.. . .. .
Crack.. .. . … . .
Crack…………… . . … . .. .. . . . .
Perhaps that would have made this easier.