The Time Before (Undertale)

14 ~ Things are Difficult

Gaster was sitting at his desk, tapping a pen against the desktop.

Things weren't going well.

Sans had been pretty badly wounded in the fight-- he was still unconscious. Granted, he had done enough damage, enough that when Asgore had arrived, he had killed the human in less than a minute, but...

As it turned out, the Determination was so thick in Sans' bones, that when he had finally been brought down, when he had finally begun to let go, it had started seeping out of his wounds.

Sans had bled Determination. And that hurt, apparently, a lot. Gaster had had a difficult time lifting Sans off the ground; he started writhing and screaming the second anything touched him.

Nonetheless, Gaster had carried him back to the lab and bandaged up his wounds in an attempt to stop Sans' loss of Determination. There was still a lot left in the small skeleton, Gaster knew, but it looked like Sans had lost almost fifteen injections' worth of it.

Gaster couldn't imagine the pain.

On top of that, there was just the general brokenness of Sans' body. His ribs had been all but caved in, there was a webbing of cracks across his skull, and his entire right shoulder was just a mess, not to mention the myriad of other smaller breaks and cracks and scrapes.

Currently, Sans was passed out on the operating table, but all of Gaster's machines showed that his vitals were more or less stable. Sans would live, and, with the amount of healing Magic Gaster had poured into him, with very little scarring.

This whole thing, though, was just... difficult. The loss of Determination; more than a year's work wasted. The time waiting until Sans healed.

The fact that Sans hadn't been strong enough.

Gaster had gone back and watched the recording of the battle, filmed through his network of cameras.

Sans had put up an impressive fight, there was no denying that. But, at the end, when it mattered most, he had failed to use Blue Magic. He could have saved himself, won, if he had had Blue Magic.

Gaster sighed, rubbing the ridge of his nasal bone.

Sans hadn't been strong enough, and now they were not only set back because of that, but Sans was badly injured and would probably be in pain for a long time.

And then, as if this weren't enough, there was an issue with the CORE. Some of the metals hadn't been pure enough composites, and a bunch of stuff had turned molten in the heat. It was going to take a long time to repair the damage.

Gaster groaned again, smacking his hand against his skull.

Why, why had everything gone so wrong?

And then Sans let out a strangled cry, writhing as he woke up. Gaster rose from his seat and walked over. He grabbed up Sans' hands and tried to hold the small skeleton down, tried to keep him from injuring himself more, but that was challenging when grabbing ahold of him almost anywhere meant jostling some broken bone or another.

Sans only cried out more, choked sobs slipping from his mouth.

Still struggling to keep Sans still, Gaster summoned several pairs of hands and sent them about the room, getting a sedative ready to calm Sans down.

Gathering Sans up in his arms as carefully as he could manage, Gaster held Sans' skull against his chest. He had found that one of the things that helped Sans calm down was hearing the beat of his Soul, and this now was what he was hoping to use.