Broken Souls

Chapter 10 - Wingdings Gaster

He woke up feeling pleasantly warm and comfortable. He lay on a bed, nestled in blankets with a soft pillow propping up his skull. He opened his eye sockets, finding that the right one seemed broken and wouldn't open more than half way. Looking around, he saw that he was in a large, tidy bedroom, decorated almost childishly with figurines and a skull flag. The door was ajar, allowing him to hear voices coming from beyond the room. He couldn't see into the hallway beyond, however so he tried to get up.

Emphasize on "tried". His arms didn't seem to remember how to move and nor did his legs. After a lot of struggling and generally flopping around, he finally managed to sit up and force his arms to support him as he swung his legs out from under the covers. He appeared to be wearing some sort of cargo pants and a cream turtleneck sweater, all looking vaguely familiar. He stumbled as he stood up, falling backwards onto the bed twice before achieving a steady position. Now upright, he forced one foot in front of the other and began to stagger over to the door, falling at least three times before he managed to grab the door frame. He stopped as the door opened, glancing down at the black pile by his feet.

Carefully sitting down in front of the pile, he picked up a slip of paper that was nestled between folds of black fabric. The writing was not in the roman alphabet but instead in a different font. One that he understood much better. He read it with a growing smile.

"hey dad, i remember you used to wear this all the time so i got it washed. pap and i'll be downstairs when you wake up.

-sans"

The pile of cloth turned out to be a long black lab coat, which, upon standing up again, he put on and marvelled in it's comfortable embrace. He continued out into the hallway, looking up and down to find the stairs. There seemed to be two other rooms along the corridor, one had strange flame lighting underneath the door and the other had a large sign reading "Bathroom". He smiled, guessing the other room as Sans' bedroom and he'd been in Papyrus'. He slowly approached the stairs at the other end, leaning heavily against the wall and not looking forward to having to climb down them.

Indeed, he did stumble a few times as he went downstairs but managed to catch himself each time thanks to fast reflexes. As he reached the bottom, the voices died down and were replaced by a couple of mutters. A skeleton peeked it's skull around the corner to the stairs and smiled up.

"Wowie! Dad is awake!"

He smiled back at Papyrus, carefully stepping down the last of the stairs and coming over to hug his son, perhaps using him too much as support. Sans appeared a second later, his eye sockets widening with happiness and his hands trembling.

"dad. y-you're back... you're really back..."

He hadn't used his voice in a long time. Not properly at least. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to reply, nodding his head as he imagined the words in his mind. Opening his mouth, only weak croaks escaped and soon became irritated grumbling. His two boys gave comforting smiles and he raised his hands instead,

"I... missed you... boys." he signed.

"we missed you too dad." Sans replied, using his hands

"Even if I can't remember your name!" Papyrus interjected, somehow joining in on the silent conversation, despite having no former knowledge of the language.

"My... name?" he signed confused. Sans frowned,

"i can't remember... sorry dad"

He smiled at his sons,

"And... I wouldn't ... expect you to. It's Gaster... Wingdings Gaster."

===

The three skeletons spent the rest of day on the couch, snuggled against each other and relishing in being together again. Gaster was endlessly curious about what had happened when he didn't exist as he explained that for most of it he wasn't even conscious. He also slowly began to use his voice rather than his hands, although he kept signing along with his hands, a habit he'd had since before the War. His voice still remained shaky however, and more often than not all three of them would revert back to hand signals; sometimes even the teeth chattering language that had mostly been used by younger skeletons.

After a few hours, Papyrus began to insist that eating food was very important and that Gaster really shouldn't miss his first meal in existence, Sans and Gaster got up from the couch and wandered into the kitchen. Papyrus was hesitant to allow Gaster to help cook, especially as he hadn't seemed to have regained full control over his arms and legs, but gave in when Gaster mentioned being able to learn how to cook from the Great Papyrus. Sans, true to himself, did not help cook and instead delighted his father and brother with puns, the latter getting eventually so annoyed that Sans found an empty packet of spaghetti hurling towards his skull.

A rather eventful cooking period later, the spaghetti was finally ready. The three tucked in, as Sans remarked it was Papyrus' best dish yet (he'd improved in the four years on the surface but his cooking could still be considered a health hazard). Gaster followed on from that saying that it was because he had helped and anything he helped with was obviously great. The rest of the meal was taken up by a string of banter between Sans and the Royal Scientist, to which Papyrus tried to calm down but failed.

And then, as the sun set on the monster city, the now larger skeleton family retired to bed, Gaster sleeping on the couch as there were only two bedrooms and he refused to let either of his sons sleep anywhere other than a bed. Gaster bid goodnight to both his sons, giving them each a loving hug before heading back downstairs. By now, he'd managed to get used to walking and didn't stumble as much. He lay on the too short couch with his legs dangling off the end and closed his eye sockets with a contented sigh.

===

Later that night, Gaster would be awoken by a flash of pain in his Soul. He would sit up, one working eye socket aflame with a blue light. He'd peer through his rib cage at his Soul and see the upside down, white heart with the two chunks missing, just like it always had been. Nothing obviously wrong then. He would settle back down, falling asleep once again, blissfully unaware of how much damage his Soul had really taken when he was erased.