Chapter Text
Because Undyne was a creature of routine, she was easy to predict. Gaster knew roughly when she would be arriving home from her shift, and so he was wandering the training grounds around the time she got back. She had a decent set up, lots of room to work on magic without setting fire to everything in the vicinity. His family hadn’t been quite as lucky on that front, and he was beginning to wonder if the Gasters were the leading cause of forest fires in their area.
It wasn’t dark yet, but nightfall was creeping in through expanding shadows. Gaster avoided going out in the dark, it made him nervous now—more than he’d like to admit. Even the evening light set him on the slightest edge. Sometimes the shadows would look too much like shapes he had seen in the Void.
Undyne stopped in her tracks when she saw Dr. Gaster. He was kicking the sand around absentmindedly, and didn’t catch her arrival until she stopped a couple of feet away from the grounds herself.
“Captain Undyne,” Gaster gave her a warm smile, but it didn’t put her at ease. He had been waiting for her, and that could not be good. “I’m glad I managed to catch you before it got dark. I wanted to have a word with you about my son.”
Undyne looked confused and a little taken aback. “You have a son?”
Gaster cocked his head a little and gave her a strange look. “Papyrus?”
“Papyrus’s your—?” Papyrus had never talked about his father, and Sans had bristled every time the topic of parents were brought up, so Undyne had assumed the piece of shit had left them a long time ago. And Dr. Gaster had never seemed like the ‘nurturing father type’. “You’re Papyrus’s father?” She had a lot more questions, but that one made it out of her mouth first.
“Yes,” he smiled, a little disoriented by the fact that this was news to the Captain. “Though I am afraid I spoke inaccurately. I’m more here to talk to you about my wife than Papyrus.”
Arial. He wanted to talk about Arial. He was Papyrus' father, which made him Arial’s husband.
Undyne’s voice caught in her throat.
Gaster paced a little. “You see, when my son told me that he was giving up on being a Royal Guard because he had failed the test so many times, which is virtually impossible unless he has performance anxiety that’s so horrendous it renders him practically useless, I had to wonder why the Captain of the Guard would be trying to hold him back. And then I remembered why your name sounded so familiar to me." Gaster looked back to her. There was something calculated about the look he gave her, like he was still testing her to prove a hypothesis he already knew was right. “You traveled with her troop. You were the girl she rescued and was training.”
Shame darkened her cheeks and Undyne nodded slowly. “I…I am. I’m sorry,” she cleared her throat. “For your loss, and, and everything.”
Gaster shook his head. “Arial was a martyr, and nothing could change that. I knew that before I even knew I was going to marry her.”
“But I was the reason—” Undyne’s voice caught. “She died saving me. When the ambush happened. If I hadn’t…”
He raised a scarred hand to stop her. “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else.” He looked off to where the sun was lowering. “She spoke very fondly of you in her letters. I was sure that if she were to come back home, she’d have taken you with her to be a part of our family.”
She looked up. “She, she wrote about me?”
“Of course,” Gaster smiled. “I regret not making the connection to you sooner with the descriptions she gave me, but I admit I’ve been a little too preoccupied with other things to focus on the past. And you’ve changed significantly. We all have, I suppose.”
“She was the closest thing I had to a mother,” Undyne admitted, almost in a whisper. She thought she might be crying, but she wasn’t sure.
“She knew,” he said. “She loved you.”
Undyne felt like she needed to sit down. She wobbled a little and didn’t steady until Gaster placed his hand on her shoulder. For a moment, she stayed there, leaning her weight into him before he spoke again. “You’re trying to protect Papyrus because you couldn’t protect her then. You won’t allow yourself to lose them both, and you feel like you owe it to her to keep her son safe.”
He nailed it on the head. And he had every right to be upset with her. She had hurt Papyrus, badly, if Gaster was taking the time out of his day to confront her about it. She would have been pissed herself if she had found out that someone had been lying to Papyrus for years.
She nodded weakly, but was still desperate to explain herself. “It’s too dangerous for him. Especially because…”
He was too nice. Undyne knew he didn’t have an untrusting bone in his body. She could picture him all too easily letting his guard down because he believed something he was told and getting himself killed. Undyne could teach him the skills to protect himself, strategy, and law, but she could not teach Papyrus to not be optimistic.
“Captain, I do not need to be reminded of the dangers of being a Guard. I worried over them every day that my wife left for work or spent serving in the Royal troop. I am intimately familiar with what it can do to a person, what can happen. What it can do to a family.”
“Right,” she said hoarsely.
“But I also know there was something inside Arial that would have died if she couldn’t serve. The Guard was her life. It always had been, and nothing could change that. I thought that after we had children, after we started a family, something would switch on inside her, that she would want to be home instead of out risking her life. I even offered to take her place when the war started. They would have let me, I had the training, but she couldn't give the Guard up, no matter what she would be leaving behind at home.
“That same thing, that drive, is in Papyrus. I knew it from the first day he put on her scarf and stated that he was going to be a Guard like his mother. It wasn’t a question or a dream, it was a truth, because for him to not was for him to not be alive.” He sighed. “And I can mourn and fret, but it won’t change him. And I won’t stop him, just like I didn’t stop Arial, because to deny him from this would be to deny a part of him, and I simply cannot make myself do that. All I can do is give him the tools to succeed, and you know just as much as I do that he is more than well equipped.”
“He’s so much kinder than Arial,” Undyne said, tearing up once again. “And he’s so young—”
“He has far more allies than she ever did,” Gaster raised her head so she’d look at him. “Friends that he can fall back on. And I know you were much younger when you were given the Sword.”
Undyne was quiet for a moment. She returned her gaze to the ground and Gaster stepped back.
“Captain, your fear of him dying is killing him. He spent the last three days locked up in his room. He’ll barely talk to me or his brother. That’s not the Papyrus you and I know.”
“He passed the very first time he took it, y’know?” she said. “He was just barely fourteen, I didn’t know what to do, I…”
“I’m not upset with you, Undyne," he shook his head. “I know that panic. I am simply asking you to fight that fear. Don’t let it hold him back. Not for me, but for my son.”
Undyne nodded. “Next time he takes the Guard Test, I’ll, I’ll pass him.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for telling me about Arial. I…I miss her.”
A sad look crossed Gaster’s face for a moment. “I…I do too. You know, I have all her letters still with me. If you ever wanted to read them, I have no qualms about lending some to you. They’re just sitting in storage right now.”
“Really?” Undyne perked up a little and wiped her eye. “I…I would love that.”
“Of course,” he smiled at her. “If Asgore hadn’t gotten to you first, well…you’ll always be welcome in our home.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be seeing Papyrus soon?”
Gaster looked off behind him. It was getting darker. “I made him promise to consider trying again, though he wasn’t very happy about it. I imagine you’ll see him in a couple of days,” he said. “Oh! And please be sure to tell him that I didn’t scare you into giving him the position or anything like that. He’s convinced that I’m blackmailing you right now or something. I’m not sure what goes on in that boy’s head.”
Undyne laughed. “I’ll do my best.” She paused for a moment, looking him over. “Did you really almost serve in Arial’s place? I thought you were a scientist, not a soldier.”
He gave her a sly look. “Who do you think has been training Papyrus?”
She recalled the sudden change in Papyrus’s skill and tactic and re-evaluated the man in front of her. “I take it back, you are scary.”
Gaster laughed and waved her off. “I’ll see you, Captain. Have a nice night.”
“It’s Undyne, doctor," she called out and waved back. When she entered her home afterwards, she felt something lift off her chest that she hadn’t even known she was carrying.