#dingsaster

So the premise is this: There’s a universe where Gaster and Asteri are humans living in (approximately) the modern day. They’re a bit younger than the canon versions of themselves, more like early/mid twenties and late twenties/early thirties, instead of like, ~32 and ~40. They are friends. Maybe even work in the same building (for some reason?). They’re sort of at that “we’re friends but maybe there’s something else too…?” stage but neither of them have acted on it. It’s all very tentative.

Human!Gaster, still being an engineer (among other things), ends up making this machine that, solely for plot convenience, connects with alternate universes. Long story short, for plot reasons, something happens and both human!Gaster and human!Asteri get transported to something approximate to the ⁂ universe. Idk how, or why, but they get separated. And both fall into the underground. I think they might have been separated before they even landed in the ⁂ universe, tbh. Idk.

Anyway, h!Asteri falls into the underground first. She is confused and distraught and doesn’t understand anything going on, and she thinks that her Gaster is either dead, still in the other universe, or somewhere in this universe but who knows where, and now she’s fallen into a cave and god she’s going to DIE because no one will ever find her here, least of all him, if he’s even here (and alive) at all!

Well. Obviously Toriel finds her. The whole thing. Asteri is INCREDIBLY alarmed at seeing a 7 foot goat dragon monster, and she’s not quick to trust. But c’mon. It’s Toriel. You can’t not like her. So she spends a little while there, gets the low-down. She really doesn’t want to go any farther into the cave, tbh. She wants to wait for rescue. But once she learns about the barrier and stuff, and that there IS no way out from where she fell in, well… yeah. So, she wants to find a way out. I feel like she’d explain to Toriel that this isn’t even the right universe, but I’m not sure how much Toriel would believe. Asteri wouldn’t blame her for not believing it. But she needs to get out. She has to find her way back home. If not to her own universe, then to some kind of human civilization. …Not that Toriel hasn’t been lovely! Honestly, though, Asteri is no scientist, she says. Her friend, who built the machine that brought her here, is probably dead or lost… (She starts crying. It’s not the first time she’s talked about h!Gaster, or grappled with the fact that she might never see him again, that he might be dead. But she doesn’t like to think about it if she can help it.)

Toriel hesitates, but tells her that she once knew a brilliant scientist. He might still be alive… but he lives at the other end of the underground. If he’s alive still, he might be able to help her. But it’s dangerous, there’s Asgore, etc etc. Asteri isn’t thrilled, but if the other monsters are like the ones here (Froggits, Whimsuns, etc) then… maybe it won’t be so bad. She asks about the scientist. What’s his name? What does he look like?

You can imagine how floored she is when Toriel tells her his name is Dr. Gaster.

But it gets her hopes up. There’s a Gaster in this universe. He could send her home. All she has to do is find him. Now she’s excited! But also curious. He isn’t human, right? If he’s underground? What does he look like? (She wonders if he’ll look strange, like a Loox, or if he’ll resemble her Gaster at all.) Toriel tells her: He is a skeleton.

Asteri is… a bit put-off, but still determined! (Heh, no, not like that.) She MUST find him. Maybe she even tells Toriel that in her universe, she and Gaster were friends. Not sure. Also not sure if Toriel would be extra hesitant to let her go given that Asteri is missing a hand, and the fingers on the hand she does have don’t always respond when she wants them to. Idk. But Asteri is very capable. And a grown woman, so… yeah. Also I I imagine she gets at least a scarf or something since she’s in a tank top.

So! Asteri leaves the Ruins and begins her trek through the underground to find this universe’s Gaster.

And she does! I don’t know if she even has to go all the way to Hotland. She might meet him when he’s visiting Grillby’s, or at the dump in Waterfall. I don’t know. But they do meet. (In this universe, Gaster has not met his Asteri, so there’s no confusion there.) She’s very thrown off because 1) Skeleton, 2) TALL, 3) how does his face move like that, and 4) he acts just like her Gaster. And god, it hurts. It’s like he’s there but he’s not. After the initial surprise on both of their parts, she explains her situation. He signs, (of course, she thinks, he’s just like her Gaster) and it’s similar enough to the sign language she’s familiar with that she can mostly understand. At first he’s hesitant to believe her, but the more she talks about it, he realizes that she’s absolutely telling the truth (rather than just being mistaken/confused/concussed.) So he agrees to help her. I don’t think she necessarily tells him that the “scientist friend” who sent her here was her version of him.

She stays with him (it’s safer that way), and he does what he can, but it sounds like her friend was far ahead technologically. He can only do so much without blueprints or any idea of the math that was used. Even if he built the machine, he explains, there are after all infinite universes, he could easily send her to the wrong one. She asks what the chances are that her friend is okay. Gaster tries to be gentle about it, but admits that without knowing more, he can’t really say for certain. Her friend could be stuck between universes, even. He doesn’t know. But he’s probably back in their universe! Working on a solution! He’s probably fine!!

Asteri is all but inconsolable. Her Gaster is probably dead, and even if he’s not, she knows deep down that she will never see him again. There’s no way home. She’s stuck here. And it’s not so bad, not really, but it’s not home, and all she has is a disconcertingly tall skeleton who is exactly like her friend but has none of the memories. But, after a grieving period, she starts to work on accepting it. And really, how can she not like this Gaster? He’s him. It comes so naturally that it would be more difficult to fight it than anything. He’s a little confused, I think, that she seems to know him so well, that she doesn’t misunderstand the things he expects her to— like she’s already accounted for his idiosyncrasies. But he just shakes it off and enjoys getting to know her. He has to come home regularly now, with someone else there— it would be rude to just leave her on her own when she has no one else to talk to, after all. He starts to actually listen to his followers assistants and take days off. He eats better— with little else to do, Asteri spends a lot of time cooking. And although he does do his best to find a way for her to go home, in the weeks that become months of living together, he starts to wish she didn’t have to go.

And actually, neither does she.

I’m sure that, over the months, Asteri has slowly been introduced to other monsters (Carlope, whatever local grocer, Grillby, probably even Alphys (who is beside herself with glee, ofc)). She gets accustomed to monster culture and the way things are here. And Asteri is… happy. She still misses home (god she misses the Mediterranean sun) and she still mourns human!Gaster, but for being stuck in an alternate universe, she’s doing pretty well. She has friends, and food, and several entirely new branches of linguistics to study, and a… a partner. They never really talked about it beyond “I will miss you when you go,” and “I’ll… really miss you, too. Maybe I don’t have to?” and the incredibly tender headbump that followed. But they kind of cuddle sometimes, and he looks at her Like That, and she’s crawled into his bed to talk him through nightmares, and sometimes they hold hands, and she isn’t sure but sometimes those headbumps really feel like they’re equivalent to kisses. So one day she kisses his cheekbone for real, to see what happens.

What happens is Gaster gets all glittery-eyed and stuff and they finally talk about their freaking feelings. Which are mutual.

And they’re happy.

MEANWHILE—

Human!Gaster is not dead. Nor is he stuck in some other universe, nor back home. No, he’s there too. But like I said in the beginning— they got separated. Probably some time-space shenanigans, where he doesn’t get spit out into this universe at the same point in time that Asteri did. He falls into the underground a few months later.

Toriel finds him, and he is actually a lot less alarmed by her than one would expect. He asks about Asteri, and, recognizing that this must be the friend Asteri mentioned, Toriel fills him in: Asteri left to look for a way home a few months ago, after Toriel told her about the royal scientist, Dr. Gaster. Human!Gaster is, obviously, flabbergasted that he has a counterpart here (fascinating implications, he thinks), but manages to keep it together pretty well. He convinces Toriel to let him out of the Ruins to track down human!Asteri. All things considered, he’s in the Ruins only a couple days maximum as opposed to human!Asteri’s having been there several days minimum. He figures that his Asteri probably went straight to this universe’s Gaster. If it’s been months, then he has to hurry.

Well. Things do NOT go as smoothly for him. Honestly, he gets the shortest end of the stick here. It goes SO badly.

Wouldn’t you know who’s in Snowdin studying Dog language, but this universe’s Asteri.

I would like to remind you that normal (monster) Asteri has some serious trauma about humans, and that she and this universe’s Gaster have never met. (Or, maybe they have, but only briefly. Idk.) From here, “Gaster” is gonna refer to human!Gaster, and “Asteri” is refer to regular, monster Asteri. Their counterparts aren’t in this (yet).

So. Human!Gaster runs into her somewhere in Snowdin forest. It goes extremely badly. He unknowingly and unintentionally initiates an encounter. She panics. He also panics. Asteri assumes he means to kill her, and goes all out with the bullet patterns. Gaster has never done this before and keeps getting whacked. He keeps trying to explain that he just wants directions and he’s doesn’t know what’s happening or how to stop it. Asteri is having none of it. She’s so locked into her fear response that reason just isn’t going to work. Gaster’s really taking a beating here, but he’s surprisingly sturdy. It’s only when one of her sharper bullets hits him square in the face and does some serious damage that he realizes he can flee. It hit him directly above his right eye and zipped all the way up into his hairline, and he’s bleeding. Eye/head injuries are… kind of a trigger for him, so when it hit, he started to really panic. The blood is what really scares him. He doesn’t know if it took out his whole eye or if it’s just that there’s so much blood streaming down his face that if feels like his eye got hit, but he can’t open it and he goes weak in the knees, almost collapses, but manages to flee the encounter upon realizing that this monster is not going to stop, and he runs into the forest as fast as he can with one hand clasped over the wound.

Asteri is pissed. She’s terrified, yes, but she also knows that a human his size could leave real carnage in his wake, and she’s not about to let a human take someone else’s parents from them— or worse yet, someone’s child. So she takes off after him. Now, she doesn’t do well in the cold, but she can also change her form at will (and she did, actually, as soon as the encounter started: she got all spiky). So she catches up to him. He’s ducked behind a tree and is curled in on himself trying to stop hyperventilating and get his head/eye to stop bleeding. (He’s unsuccessful on both counts.) When she catches up to him, it’s kind of an, “AHA! FOUND YOU!” Gaster reflexively curls up when she pulls her tail back (to hit him, presumably), and, thinking he’s going to die, cries out, “I’m sorry Asteri!”

Needless to say, she freezes. How the hell does he know her name, she demands. He’s confused. She’s angry. But fine, he wants to talk? Now she knows he can. She demands his hands. He tries to sign that he needs them, he’s bleeding, but she interrupts that she doesn’t care, give her his hands or else. He complies, and his head is still bleeding. She wraps his wrists together with her tail, and is careful not to touch any blood. She thinks it’s like, poison or something— some kind of human defense mechanism. She barks at him to stop oozing, or she’ll kill him right there, and frickin, poor Gaster, he’s so beat up, he doesn’t even know how to begin to explain that he can’t help it. It doesn’t go well. She drags him closer to town, but doesn’t turn him into the guard yet. She wants to know how he knows her name and what the hell he thinks he’s doing in the underground. He ends up on the ground, still restrained with her tail, still bleeding (and crying), while she demands answers.

The short of it is that Gaster manages to give some explanation that makes Asteri reconsider turning him in. He needs to talk to their royal scientist, huh? Well Dr. Gaster is a busy monster, what makes him think that he’s worth the time of someone that important? Human!Gaster tells her that his friend fell first, and she will be looking for the… royal scientist… as well. He needs to find her, needs to make sure she’s okay, so they can get back home somehow!

Asteri spits that his friend probably got captured by the royal guard already. She hasn’t heard anything about another human on the loose. King Asgore has probably already killed her.

Gaster goes completely unresponsive. Is his Asteri dead?? Is he too late? He never meant for her to get roped into this, it’s all his fault!

Not sure what all happens from here specifically, but these things happen:

Gaster realizes at some point here that this is this universe’s Asteri. He tells her that his friend is also named Asteri. She chalks it up to a very strange coincidence.

Gaster does not get medical treatment for his head/eye injury until Asteri is satisfied with his answers/explanations. That’s a pretty significant chunk of time given that he’s panicking, traumatized, bleeding profusely from a gash on his head, restrained on the ground in the snow with no coat, can’t sign, and struggles to speak aloud.

Asteri ends up deciding that she will allow him to look for his friend… but not without supervision. Can’t have two humans running around. The guard will just arrest him, so she takes it upon herself. She is still very afraid of him, but she wears her fear as anger and hostility.

Asteri continues to be unfamiliar with and highly suspicious of human anatomy, so she just kinda wraps his head up once she gets some supplies in town, and heals him the absolute bare minimum so he doesn’t die on her after he starts explaining hypothermia.

She makes it explicitly clear that if he ever tries ANYTHING, she will kill him. She realizes he seems genuinely afraid of her and uses that to her advantage.

They stay at the inn. Asteri procures some rope and informs Gaster that he will be sleeping restrained and on the floor. He’s too beat down to protest.

Asteri agrees to help him search Snowdin forest for his friend the following day. They don’t find anything. Gaster is still pretty weak and very rattled, and very much in pain. He wants to ask around, but Asteri adamantly refuses. The last thing they need is a panic going through the underground that a human is loose. She probably did tell the guards that there’s a human suspected to be running around, but it might have already been captured. But she doesn’t tell them about Gaster. Maybe. Idk exactly.

It doesn’t really matter. The important part is that once Gaster realizes this is Asteri, (and he’s recovered a little), he’s a lot less afraid of her and a lot more friendly. This really freaks Asteri out. She thinks it’s some ploy. If he’s not afraid of her, then she doesn’t have any leverage. So she keeps trying to crank up the intimidation, but Gaster just keeps responding with patience. It’s like the world’s most unproductive contest. They also end up staying at her place while searching Waterfall. He gets tied up a lot (at night), and Asteri is very short with him, very mean. And she’s extremely jumpy. She treats him like he’ll kill her if she turns her back on him. He can’t do anything unless she’s watching like a hawk.

He pushes about meeting the royal scientist, but Asteri 1) has no idea how to really get ahold of him, and 2) isn’t sure she WANTS a human meeting someone that important. Meanwhile, he’s been trying to tell her about how he’s from an alternate universe and just wants to go home, and all of what happened. Asteri doesn’t believe him, but mockingly asks how he even knows his friend is here at all. Maybe she got tossed in some other world, or died in space. After all, like she said, there’s been no reports of another human. And that’s a pretty big deal, actually, so… his friend is either dead, or really good at hiding and going to be dead soon. Gaster doesn’t like that she has a point, it troubles him that his Asteri might not even be here, but… he’s almost sure that she is. She has to be. Asteri (still mockingly) suggests his friend already met the royal scientist and went home without him.

Now, Gaster knows his Asteri, and it absolutely helps him navigate this version of her. He knows that she gets angry when she’s afraid, and that’s all this is. It has to be trauma. It hurts, but she’s acting like this because she’s scared. That’s all. It isn’t personal. But as time goes on, and they aren’t making any progress in finding his Asteri, he starts to get discouraged. This Asteri has… slightly relaxed around him. She doesn’t keep his hands tied when they go out, for one. By now that gash on his face has healed and scarred— it wasn’t too bad, but it didn’t get treated properly. He probably needed stitches, tbh. Days become weeks, and then a month, then two. (They do search Hotland at one point, which is an entire trip since it’s not worth walking back and forth to her house every night. It’s miserable, hot, and Gaster still gets tied to something at night. They don’t find anything.)

After spending more or less every single day together, Asteri has gone from “constant high alert” to “if you startle me I’ll tackle you, but you can walk around the house I guess.” (NOT her room though.) And she has absolutely tackled him, fangs bared, for accidentally sneaking up on her because he was walking too quietly. He’s not allowed in the kitchen (because knives) unless she’s there and he asks, and he’s absolutely not allowed to touch her, ever— but she can touch him. That’s less of something they agreed on and more of a stipulation for not being mauled. Gaster is, naturally, quite miserable like this, but he understands. She’s just afraid, he reminds himself.

So, this is where there’s kind of a split in my brain about how I want this to go. I’ve played out two versions of this, and they’re both just different flavors of angst. One is more based in the characters’ mental states and trauma, and one is more based in drama. Both are good, honestly, I just can’t decide which one I want. And this is how I keep getting AUs of AUs. Right now I’m editing this draft, and there’s a ton of stuff below this, which is from the original take: the trauma-based angst. It’s heavier because it touches on more elements of how someone who has been hurt can hurt others. It’s not simple, it’s not black and white, and I did/do worry that it might come across as romanticization of unhealthy relationships, which it is not intended to be. I mean granted it’s also not written to be groundbreaking or anything, it’s just. Something I made up in my head. That’s tricky because I know the intentions and nuances, even when I don’t/can’t quite convey them in writing. This is mostly me writing for myself, and using fiction as a means to work through some similar stuff that I deal with, but still, I worry how it might come across without like. Full access to my brain.

So uh! I’m gonna write out the other version of events I came up with after this first, then maybe include the original version.

Alright so. Human!Gaster’s with ⁂!Asteri. She takes a long time to warm up to him at all, and it’s very slow, but there’s really no pretending, after a point (like three or so months), that he’s literally any kind of threat. But Asteri doesn’t accept this consciously. No, no, he’s a human, he’s dangerous, etc etc. So she keeps up the antics. I want you to think of that character who’s like, an antagonist/bad guy, but if they actually killed the hero they’d be devastated. Or the villain who has to team up with the protagonist(s) and keeps acting like they hate them but definitely doesn’t. And it’s just kind of understood but never talked about. The kind of character who’s like, “well obviously I can’t kill you right now, we have a truce. I may be evil but I have standards.” Or “yes well. This plan wasn’t even one of my better ones. If I captured them now I can’t show off my REALLY good scheme next week that shows how evil I REALLY am. So. In the spirit of evil, I’ll have to pass.” Or, the one who threatens everyone constantly and doesn’t want to partake in your stupid celebration because we’re MORTAL ENEMIES and they HATE YOU WITH A PASSION THAT WILL NEVER DIE AS LONG AS THE SUN BU— Oh you brought them a plate of cake? Oh… well. Maybe they can have some. Because you were FOOLISH enough to approach them. …Oh that’s pretty good. BUT THIS DOESN’T MEAN THEY LIKE YOU!

Even if you toned that type of character down to just brooding and irritable rather than dramatic, that’s kind of what Asteri ends up having going on. She still threatens to kill him, but she does it without getting up from the couch, that type of thing. She tries very hard not to let him grow on her. She refuses to laugh at his stupid jokes (but sometimes she accidentally lets a smile slip), she still locks him in his a spare room at night, she still insists he’s too dangerous to let leave the house alone. Don’t be mistaken— she is still somewhat afraid of him, simply by virtue of what he could do. But he’s always pleasant, and he never tries anything (goodness knows he’s had countless opportunities to “escape”; he’s very much there willingly), and he always gives her that same knowing, sad smile. It used to infuriate her, now it just makes her feel something she doesn’t understand. They never talk about it, but she makes coffee in the morning more often even though she rarely drinks it (she likes the smell is all), and she’s sewed his clothes (it looks more suspicious of he’s going around in torn up clothes, that’s all), and she finally let him shave his face (the beard was just too much for her, it’s not because he wanted to shave). Still, she keeps up with “you’re a threat” and “I’m sure you’re just waiting to kill because that’s what humans do” and the like.

She doesn’t take him out searching for his friend as often as she knows he would like (too conspicuous), but come on. His friend is almost certainly dead by now. Or not here at all. If there had been a human, surely the whole underground would know by now, right? Getting a third human SOUL would be a big deal.

It’s that thought that makes her stomach twist. She has a human. But! It’s not like he’s getting loose! It doesn’t matter when he dies, as long as it happens eventually! It’s not like four other humans are suddenly going to fall down here and die before he does— there’s no rush! Right? Right. And she’s keeping an eye on him. It’s fine.

(She can’t let herself think about any of it too hard or too long because she quickly runs out of ways to justify any of this.)

But, she still takes him out “searching,” though never in New Home. (“Do you WANT to be arrested?”) It’s not difficult to see the hope beginning to fade from his eyes. (Every so often, she CHECKs him, and although it had previously never faltered, one day he has just one or two less HP.) He doesn’t act much different, but sometimes, just for a moment, he almost looks hurt when the same old insults roll off her tongue out of habit. She tries not to think about it.

Then, one day (it’s been about, idk, three and half months?), they’re out walking in Waterfall. They run into what I assume to be a Royal Guard. RG recognizes Gaster as a human, it’s very chaotic. I don’t remember exactly how I had this play out in my head but they fling bullets toward him and start an encounter before Asteri can do much of anything besides protest verbally. Now, Gaster hasn’t been in an encounter since he first met normal!Asteri (and that went b a d l y), so he’s kind of freaking out. It’s made worse when the guard gets frustrated that Asteri is trying to convince them to stop, and sends bullets faster, and one slams into Gaster’s face. It collides just above his mouth, the force of it tilts his head back, and it flies all the way up his cheek and across his eye, cutting his bottom eyelid. Haven’t decided if this just happens, or if it’s because Asteri tried to get involved and he pushed her out of the way of the bullets (because he has no idea how normal encounters are for monsters, or how much HP she has, he just doesn’t want her to hey hurt). Well, needless to say, having his face torn open, he drops immediately. Now, I mentioned before that face and eye injuries are a trigger for him, so if he was freaking out before, he’s straight up panicking now. He’s on the ground, clutching his face, eye filled with blood, unresponsive.

Asteri gets mad.

Oh, she loses it.

If she wasn’t there already, she slides in front of him, wings flared, tail ready to whip out in front of her, teeth bared, looking very spiky. You know how people will draw the skeletons putting up a fence of bone bullets like a shield? She does something like that, but they’re exclamation points. They manifest when she yells at the guard. She has to be careful about how she uses her turns, though, because she can’t tell how badly Gaster is hurt yet, just that he’s crumpled and not good. The fence is her turn (>Defend). She and the guard yell back and forth, while she dodges their bullets, about him being a human. Asteri doesn’t have a very good defense, but does insist that he’s not going to hurt anyone, and that she’s the one keeping an eye on him. She uses her next turn to try to talk to Gaster. He’s conscious, but hyperventilating and obviously in a lot of pain. He doesn’t really respond to anything Asteri asks, which just worries her more. She tries to talk to the guard through their turn, but the guard is angry and won’t concede any point. They send orange bullets at Asteri, which are easy enough; she just moves back and forth through them. But she’s defending Gaster, and orange bullets don’t dissipate unless they do damage, so although they move through her, they keep going. The guard is smug about it. Asteri realizes just in the nick of time and manages to whip her tail between the bullets and Gaster. She tanks the damage (it’s just magical, it hurts but it’s fine), and glares at the guard. That’s it. She wanted this to end quickly, and it’s already her third turn. That’s enough.

She casts purple magic (rings) and traps the guard, has a moment of glowering intimidation, and manages to end the encounter. The guard freaks out that they’re still trapped even though the encounter ended. Asteri carefully scoops up Gaster and goes to leave, with the guard shouting after her. (“You’re just going to leave me like this!?” “It’ll wear off.”) Once they’re around a corner she turns into something that can move much faster and zips home. Gaster had explained quite a lot about humans by then (such as the fact that blood isn’t poison, but it does belong inside the body, and losing too much can kill them; or that open wounds can get infected because of… something or other), but there’s still a lot she doesn’t know. She slams the door open, runs into the kitchen, yanks the table closer, shoves everything off of it, sets him down but keeps him propped up with a wing, boils water with fire magic, pours it over a dish rag (then runs it under colder water— she does remember that humans are susceptible to heat), and tries to wipe blood away so she can see what she’s dealing with. Gaster is still panicked and his eyes are screwed shut and he won’t let her move his hand away so she can help. She tries to talk him through it but he’s not exactly reasonable right now and so she ends up having to straddle him so she can hold his hands down. Which does not help his panic. But she manages to wipe enough blood away to see the gash: it’s pretty thin lower down, surprisingly; the worst of it is his eyelid. But his mouth is full of blood and his eye is full of blood and he’s panicked and sobbing and the blood just keeps coming, god, why won’t it stop? She tries to get him to summon his SOUL so she can heal him, but he doesn’t understand, and she’s freaking out, so she’s like, “I’m just gonna pour green magic into the wound okay?”

She starts to, and he calms down a little bit as his eyelid heals, but as the healing works its way down he suddenly cries out in pain and starts struggling again, trying to get his arm free. He manages to say, “Wait, stop!” so Asteri does, and figures it’s probably okay to let him go… When she does, he reaches up into his mouth, whimpers, and then yanks a tooth out. She’s like “AAAAA????” and there’s a quick, not exactly comprehensible exchange about putting it back, but Gaster still isn’t entirely with it, so Asteri finishes healing him best she can.

One thing I haven’t gotten to include in the actual fic yet is how shapeshifters can mimic some forms perfectly but others only superficially, and a lot of it has to do with touching. It’s unconscious, usually, but they get something like a biological and magical “scan” of a being. If it’s a large being, it might require conscious effort, and multiple “scans” of different areas, especially if they’re very complex. So in this case, Asteri doesn’t understand why Gaster was suddenly in pain until she took a second to focus on how his head works (since she was touching him), and realized that she was trying to heal a loose tooth back into place when it was already separated from his skull. (Yes she doesn’t have a “HUMANS HAVE BONES!?!?” moment internally, but she doesn’t really have time to think about it.)

Once his face is healed, he’s calmed down somewhat. She gets some of the cooled water, turns his head, apologizes, and pours it over his eyes. He flails, but it successfully flushes the rest of the blood out of his eye. Now, for most of this, Asteri has been half or all the way on the table with Gaster, either leaning over him, keeping him propped up on her lap, or bent around him in some weird position that allowed her to help. Right now, she’s got him cradled in her wings while she finishes wiping blood off his face. He’s more or less calmed down by now. She hasn’t really stopped talking to him this entire time. She’s mumbling something or other while she gives him another look over and wipes his face off. He opens his eyes, a bit, to watch her. When she realizes he’s looking at her (he looks exhausted), and he’s smiling a little, and he’s got some… some look in his eyes, she gets flustered.

“What? What the hell are you smiling about‽”

And he moves his hands up to sign.

“You care.”

She almost drops him on the table, but he’s still hurt. So she sputters and scoffs and wipes at him a little harder than strictly necessary,

“I do not! You’re a human, and I’m a monster, and there will never—”

As she was working her way down his face with the washcloth, she had reached his jaw. And, never breaking eye contact, Gaster cranes his head back, baring his throat. The gesture completely halts whatever Asteri was about to say. She just stares down at him for a moment. At his throat, in this vulnerable state, where she is in complete and total control, where her tail is gripping a washcloth and could wrap around his neck before he would have time to shout. And she’s frozen. She meets his eyes, and immediately looks away because how can he look at her like that, and her jaw clacks shut. Whatever she was going to say died in her throat. She tentatively returns to wiping the blood away. It’s all down his neck, from crying while his mouth was full of blood, and his shirt is spattered with it too. Not to mention soaked with water.

When she looks back up at him, his eyes are closed. He’s starting to fall asleep. She shakes him (gently), worried that he’s dying or something. He wakes up enough to loosely sign that no he’s not dying, or… falling down, whatever that means? Humans take a lot of energy to heal, and she just made him heal really fast, so he’s just tired.

Oh. Well. If he’s going to sleep, then… he shouldn’t be in a wet shirt. Give it to her and she’ll wash the blood off. Gaster raises an eyebrow but unbuttons it— well, he tries, but he can barely stay awake, so Asteri ends up doing it and then peeling it off him. He mumbles something about blood stains and cold water and vinegar. Asteri just throws his shirt in the sink and leaves it for tomorrow. She’s so unfamiliar with how he… works, so she wants to keep an eye on him. Plus he needs a new shirt. So she carries him to her room and sets him on the bed, then roots around for a shirt he can put on. (He could have walked, he mumbles; she throws back that he’d fall over if he tried to stand.) He smiles at her when she pulls a shirt over his head, careful not to let it press on the bad side of his face, and it makes her want to run away.

She just wants to keep an eye on him! He’s in no condition to be left unattended!

He doesn’t argue, but he does thank her.

She spends the evening sitting there staring at him and occasionally trying to heal the scar that’s left. It’s not nearly as bad as the other one, but it’s still there. It’s hard to look at the one on his right side, because she did that to him. After today, all she can see is him lying there bleeding in the snow, hands tied, bawling, begging her. Or him falling to his knees when that bullet hit him, hand flying to his face, and that expression of immediate terror. His attempts to clarify that he was just looking for help. His apologies, even though all he had done was run into her. He was scared.

And she saw it again today. Terror. He… He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, who is she kidding?

The rest of the night is similarly reflective, and the guilt builds up in her like a poison gas.

(At some point the next day she asks him about his tooth. It hasn’t turned to dust yet, so they can probably put it back now that he’s awake. Right? This leads to a whole discussion of “what do you mean “turned to dust?” and Asteri’s subsequent horror after his explanation that human body parts don’t disintegrate when they’re severed/dead. They just. Keep existing. But they’re dead now. She is horrified by his dead tooth just sitting there on her table.

Also, in the morning, after he wakes up and realizes he’s in her room (and they briefly acknowledge that), he ends up seeing a picture of her and her parents on the wall (which is something I have written into ch 10 but it’s not finished yet AUGH) and she solemnly explains what happened to them and why she feels so strongly about humans.)

AND THEN AFTER ALL THAT—

Things don’t change much.

Asteri knows she cares but she doesn’t want to because she’s not supposed to. She knows Gaster’s harmless but if she accepts that then she has to confront her entire opinion of humans. She knows she was wrong to be so mean to him but if she acknowledges that then their dynamic will change and it would be so much easier to just pretend nothing is different, to just let everything be unspoken.

But now that she’s had to think about it, she can’t go back to willful ignorance. There’s no avoiding it, it’s already there. But hell if she isn’t going to try to keep avoiding it anyway. Even though things feel nicer between them, even though sometimes she smiles back at him a little, even though it feels like they could almost be… friends— No. No. She can’t. (And especially not with this poison that’s eating her up.)

He’s somehow more subdued, though. And yet more frayed at the edges. The facts that he hasn’t heard or seen anything of human!Asteri, and there’s seemingly no way to find this universe’s version of him because in this universe, Asteri doesn’t know him, really begin to weigh on him. He’s never finding his Asteri. He’s never getting home. He’s going to be stuck with a someone who’s so like her, who he keeps almost connecting with, but who keeps shutting him down because she’s afraid. The next day after he got hurt, he wanted to go looking for his friend again. Asteri told him no, it would be too dangerous after getting on that guard’s bad side. Waterfall will be swarming now that he’s been reported. Still, within the week, he’s convinced her to take him looking through some caves they haven’t been through yet. And on the way there, wouldn’t you know who they run into: Themselves.

Human!Gaster and normal!Asteri meet normal!Gaster and human!Asteri.

(I was going to have it be ⁂!Gaster and ⁂!Asteri, but the thing is that they aren’t quite the same as they are in the fic (i.e. Asteri knows how to use purple magic on purpose). So they’re just “normal” because they’re still monsters.)

Human!Gaster spots her first and calls out to her. (Normal!Asteri is like ???). In turn, human!Asteri, upon turning and seeing him, lets go of normal!Gaster’s hand and calls out too. They run toward each other, teary-eyed, and hug. There’s a lot of talking over each other. “You’re alive!” and “How are you here?” and “I thought I’d never see you again!” It’s very… tender. Very familiar. Both monster versions are stunned and can’t do much best watch. Normal!Asteri has this pit in her gut, like her heart dropped into her stomach, and she doesn’t know why. Normal!Gaster has a similar feeling, but he knows exactly why: human!Asteri never told him that the friend she had been looking for was him.

It’s extremely chaotic. Normal!Asteri is overwhelmed by the facts that there are two humans, human!Gaster’s friend is alive, his name is actually Gaster (she thought he made that up but she couldn’t think of anything better to call him so she played along) And. The goddamn royal scientist, who she’s pretty sure fought in the war, is walking around with this one human. And they were holding hands?? There’s a lot for everyone to take in. So normal!Gaster (who has put his own internal relationship crisis on hold), says that he and human!Asteri were going to go “camping” (under the “stars”) so maybe they should all sit down at their campsite and work this out.

They do so. Normal!Gaster confirms for normal!Asteri that yes, these really are versions of them from an alternate universe where they’re human. (Normal!Asteri feels like she got hit by a truck but doesn’t have the opportunity to come anywhere near processing that. Human!Asteri is PSYCHED about this and really wants to meet this version of herself, but there’s too much going on to do that right now.) The humans compare how long they’ve been here: Gaster’s four months to Asteri’s “at least nine, maybe closer to a year?” Then start with her side since she’s been here longer. She explains how she found this Gaster pretty quickly, and she’s been staying with him. She also tells, somewhat uneasily, how, upon going over some of the events, this Gaster explained that it was unlikely that her friend (human!Gaster) would have ended up in the same place, or even the same universe. If he was transported at all. Normal!Gaster adds onto this that he also realized there was likely no way to send her back home. Human!Gaster agrees that these are reasonable conclusions. Human!Asteri then, very awkwardly, explains to him that she mourned him; she thought she would never see him again, or that he had died, and she knew she would never get home. And so… since… she’s been here… It’s just, she realized that she was happy here! It— It just came so naturally…!

She’s awkwardly gesturing to normal!Gaster while she talks. Human!Gaster doesn’t get it at first, but then it dawns on him. Oh. “You’re together.”

She nods. Normal!Gaster, who is sitting beside her, adds, “Although you never told me that the friend you wanted to find was me.”

This is super awkward for everyone present, and the two humans have to explain that they were never together. They… well, they might have gotten there, eventually, if they hadn’t gotten separated, but they never actually…

And human!Asteri is frantically trying to smooth it over with normal!Gaster, but he’s not about to have that crisis in full until later. There are things that need to be addressed. (But good lord, the tension and awkwardness between him and human!Asteri could be cut with a knife.) So tells her they can work it out later on, after the other issues have been addressed. (This is the equivalent of “we need to talk later” and she is so anxious she feels like she’s going to throw up.)

Human!Gaster is very supportive, but you can bet he’s dying inside. He can’t quite keep the pain out of his eyes but he’s trying so hard. Asteri is happy. That’s all that matters. Yes, it hurts, but he was never entitled to her affection. Alright, yes, it hurts worse that it’s literally an alternate version of him, but he completely understands why it happened. Outwardly, he’s still smiling as pleasantly as possible (and it looks fine, unless you know him well, like human!Asteri, who is now cringing even harder because she’s managed to upset both Gasters.)

Normal!Asteri is just sitting there taking it all in. She’s at a loss for a number of reasons. How could the Royal Scientist of all people shelter a human!? How is this okay!? Also, alternate universes!?!? What?? She’s… she’s had the human version of the Royal Scientist in her house for almost four months!? And that’s the human version of her!? All of it is real. Every time human!Gaster talked about an alternate universe where they were friends. She thought he was making that up, or that it was some bizarre human joke. But no, she’s actually had the human version of the freaking royal scientist in her house and oh god she beat him up when they first met.

Human!Asteri does indeed ask human!Gaster what the hell happened to his face. Normal!Asteri’s stomach does a triple axle. He just says that he had some trouble, he is very clumsy you know, and laughs it off. Normal!Asteri feels even worse because he’s protecting her and she absolutely doesn’t deserve it, and the worst part is that he’s smiling so genuinely at human!Asteri (who clearly doesn’t believe him but isn’t going to push it right now.)

They all do take some time to talk to their counterparts. Human!Asteri is excited to meet normal!Asteri. It is not mutual, but they work it out. It’s pretty immediately obvious to normal!Asteri once they start talking that her human counterpart really is just like her (if a little less jaded). Once backstory and specifics of character and preferences come up, it’s basically irrefutable. And honestly, normal!Asteri knows, deep down, that there’s no threat. She relaxes somewhat, but she can’t stifle the guilt when she hears this other version of herself talk about human!Gaster so fondly, knowing ‘I hurt him.’

Meanwhile, normal!Gaster kind of understands why human!Gaster is upset (and trying not to be). Human!Gaster understands why normal!Gaster is upset. They talk about it. Human!Gaster tells his counterpart that he and human!Asteri were just friends. It… felt like it might have grown into something else, it felt right at that threshold, but… obviously nothing came of it. He sort of steels himself and takes a deep breath and pats normal!Gaster and tells him that his Asteri is nothing if not loyal. “If she loves you, then it’s not because she loves me,” he tells him. That does help. Normal!Gaster asks if human!Gaster and normal!Asteri have hit it off, then. Human!Gaster wiggles his hand in the air. Sort of? He explains that she’s just afraid, and hurt. He worried at one point that she might really hate him, but he knows now that she doesn’t. She’s just… unsure. But he knows his Asteri, and how she gets mean when she’s scared or hurt, and that’s all it is. She still cares. He knows it. She’ll work through it. Normal!Gaster is understandably concerned about how that sounds, but human!Gaster chuckles and assures him that he’s in no danger, physically or emotionally. It’s not like that.

They all end up staying together (they get another tent) for the night, and then the next day, to clear everything leftover up. Human!Asteri and normal!Gaster have a long talk in private about why she never told him who her “scientist friend” was. He’s upset, and asks if he was just a stand-in for who she thought she lost?. She assures him that no, that is absolutely not the case. The reason she never brought it up was because it hurt to think about human!Gaster, at first, and it was hard to mourn him when someone so similar was right there— it was easier to just fall back into friendship with someone who she already sort of knew, and learn it all over, learn the differences, and… fall in love with them. Alright, yes, at first, she saw only the similarities, but she didn’t see him as a replacement. From the beginning, she saw her friend. Just in a different form. But she didn’t fall for her friend, out there in the other tent. She fell for him, here, in front of her. And she has no intention of leaving.

He appreciates this, and understands the complexities of the situation being a factor. But she’s very reassuring that she loves him.

So they’re all cute and stuff.

Meanwhile in the other tent, human!Gaster has tucked himself all the way into a sleeping bag, facing the tent wall, in an attempt to have some degree of privacy while he has a small breakdown. His Asteri is alive. She’s safe. She’s happy.

Without him.

Yes, but that never mattered, did it? He just wanted her to be okay. This is more than he could have hoped. He should be happy for her. And he is!! But it still hurts. Stars, it hurts so much more than he ever thought. What is left for him? The last several months he’s been focused on finding her, and gaining the trust of this universe’s Asteri, but he never considered what he would do when he found his Asteri. It’s true that it’s unlikely they will ever be able to go home. She wouldn’t want to anyway; she’s happy here. And he doesn’t want to live a life without her in it. He’d stay too, of course he will, even just to see her sometimes.

But that’s not viable either. The guards know him now. If this alternate version of himself has kept Asteri safe this long (and was willing to bring her to Waterfall despite the guards??) then she’ll be okay. But there isn’t much hope for him. This universe’s Asteri that he has been staying with might have grown to tolerate him, but now that she doesn’t have to worry about another human running around, what’s stopping her from turning him in? He wasn’t able to truly befriend her.

He’s broken-hearted and he’s got no hope for the future. He’s not doing so hot.

Meanwhile, also sitting in the same tent, is normal!Asteri, who is just. awkwardly existing there and trying to pretend she can’t hear him sniffle every so often. He probably needs some privacy, but where the heck is she going to sleep then?? In the tent with those two lovebirds?? Absolutely not. Gross. It’s weird enough that they’re just an alternate version of them. (Which has all kinds of implications she isn’t ready to address.) No, she’ll tough it out in here, thanks.

But she does feel bad. She saw the way human!Gaster looked at human!Asteri. She could see the light in his eyes die when human!Asteri told him she was with normal!Gaster. God, that must suck. He’s harmless, he’s heartbroken, he’s trapped here, and the only person he knows has already made a life for herself. She doesn’t really want to comfort him, but the guilt of everything has been eating away at her since earlier this week when they met that guard, and there’s just no escaping it anymore, and god it’s the least she could do.

So she reaches over with her tail and kind of. awkwardly pats where she thinks his shoulder probably is in the sleeping bag. He startles a little, but then rolls over and, head still tucked down inside, sticks his arms up through the head hole and offers her his wrists. It takes her a second, but then she’s like, “What? No! I’m not— I’m not tying your wrists! I’m trying to be nice to you!”

This is met with some confusion, and he pulls his arms back inside, then shuffles around until he can poke his head out, and he has the most pathetic, kicked-puppy-looking brown eyes. She would laugh if she didn’t feel so bad for him. Especially because he looks genuinely confused, and that really throws her off. Before, he’s always looked so confident that she would be kind to him; he always acted like he knew all along she would choose to do something nice. Not in a smug way, he just always acted like he was so assured of her character that he never doubted. But right now, he looks genuinely confused and unsure. And that hurts in a way Asteri doesn’t expect. She didn’t think that she cared about what he thought of her, or whether he trusted her. (Except she knew that wasn’t true from when he bared his throat to her, she just didn’t let herself think about it.)

And so her heart melts when he looks up at her, and she’s suddenly at a loss again. She was going to try to be gruff but encouraging, but he looks so… small.

She drapes her tail over him and turns to face him better. She tells him that hey, it’s… it’s not the end of the world to get your heart broken. That other Asteri definitely still cares about him. He’ll find so—

She has to cut herself off because no, he won’t find someone else. This is the underground, and he’s a human. It hits her, then. That kind of is the end of the world, for him. He’s got no one.

He gets his arms out of the sleeping bag and signs despondently, “There is no one else. And besides that, it is only a matter of time before I am arrested. He has kept her safe, so I am…” There’s a pause, and he blinks away the way his eyes sting. “…A loose end.”

Well. Normal!Asteri is having none of that. They end up having a discussion about the outlook of things, and she tries to cheer him up a little. (The matter of normal!Gaster’s position making it easier for him to protect human!Asteri comes up at one point.) Eventually the conversation forces normal!Asteri to both acknowledge and admit aloud that she has no intention of handing human!Gaster over. He’s… He’s harmless. There’s no reason to let him be killed.

This surprises him, but he is relieved. He admits that he didn’t thinks she cared that much. Or, rather, that she wouldn’t allow herself to. This brings a more serious tone to the conversation. Asteri works up to apologizing. For everything. But especially for how she treated him in the beginning. Gaster keeps trying to explain it away— She is traumatized, he startled her, she was acting out of fear, etc. They go back and forth. Finally she slaps her wings down on the blankets and huffs, “This isn’t about me! You’re the victim!”

He argues, “You were a victim too.”

She goes through a face journey as the guilt and remorse all swirl and come to a head and brings tears burning at her eye sockets. “But that doesn’t give me the right… to hurt someone who was begging for mercy!”

And it’s quiet. He looks down at his hand, then touches the scar over his right eye. “No,” he murmurs. “It doesn’t.”

The silence is heavy.

“I’m sorry… that I hurt you,” she says finally, and it comes trembling from her SOUL. “I was afraid. But that doesn’t make it okay. Right from the get-go, you tried to explain yourself, and I remember you were so…scared. You were hurt, and I didn’t help you. It was like some messed up power trip. And— And I’ve been fighting it for weeks now, months maybe, the obvious truth that you didn’t deserve any of this, that I was so, so wrong. But it felt too painful to accept, except now, I’ve been forced to accept it, and it’s even worse! I could have spared you more pain if I had just been willing to endure some myself. I wish I could undo it so bad, but I can’t. I didn’t want to have to change, I wanted to just let it stay unspoken, so we could just exist like that and I could pretend I didn’t like you so I never had to address why it made me so uncomfortable! But now it’s worse and now we’re both sad! If I had just confronted it, and said I was wrong, maybe I could’ve… We coulda…”

She can’t bring herself to say “maybe we could have been friends.” Instead she swallows to compose herself and then says, “I’ll keep you from the guards. I’m… I’m so sorry. I know none of this fixes anything, but anything I’ve done to you… you can do to me. It’s only fair.”

He doesn’t say anything until she looks up. She can’t read his expression. “Anything?”

She gulps, but nods.

His expression softens a little. “Can I make a request instead?”

She isn’t sure what to expect, but nods again. “Sure.”

The intensity in him looks like he’s trying to hold back a flood with his eyes. His hesitation feels like it might shatter the earth. Finally he relieves her, and when he signs she doesn’t even know how to describe the broken hope in his expression. It’s like staring into a hole and seeing a few shards of stained glass at the bottom. “Can we start over?” His eyes water. “Could you see me as someone you might become friends with, one day?”

It’s everything she realized she wants, and everything she doesn’t deserve, so the question feels like being knocked over by a wave. Like she hadn’t already cried enough while apologizing to him, this brings her to tears all over again. “I don’t deserve that,” she whispers.

“As the one being apologized to, I think that I get to decide that.”

It’s… a joke. Almost. It’s lighthearted. How can he be lighthearted at a time like this?? How can he smile at her when he still looks so sad underneath it? She doesn’t know what to make of it. But she does know that if she’s going to keep him safe from the guards, it would be nice if… if they could, despite everything, be friends. She laughs, just a quiet, disbelieving sound through tears, and nods. “I’d like that a lot better than this,” she admits.

He smiles, and this time it looks real, but then he gets serious again. Hesitant, maybe. “Are you still adverse to being touched?”

“No.” She sniffles and shakes her head. “You can do whatever you want. I don’t—”

His hug knocks the wind out of her. Not because it’s especially forceful— in fact it’s quite gentle— but because it’s unexpected, and desperate.

“G-Good, becaaause I reallyyy n-need oooone of th-these.”

It takes a couple seconds, but she hugs him back. It’s funny, how small he feels. It’s funny how he’s still so much more powerful than her simply by virtue of being human.

It’s funny how much she doesn’t care anymore.

(They talk later about how she can’t replace the person he actually cares about. He tells her that he doesn’t want her to. He just wants to be friends. That’s enough for her.)

The next morning is full of more clarifications. Normal!Asteri, relieved from the cathartic conversation (and sob session) with human!Gaster last night, is more at ease. She watches how human!Asteri and normal!Gaster interact, and it’s so strange, because she can absolutely see that they are the same people as herself and human!Gaster, but they’re so… in love?? Even when they aren’t really doing anything. They aren’t blatant about it, but it’s just so clear in everything they do. It’s like it rolls off of them and seeps into the air. She hasn’t had much chance to speak with normal!Gaster (partly because she was intimidated by the whole “royal scientist” thing), but watching him now, she realizes no, he’s just goofy, it’s fine. But it does make her wonder about human!Gaster. What would he look like, this happy? What would he be like if he had the resources that this Gaster does? It’s strange.

At one point she ends up talking with human!Asteri while they make coffee over the fire. It starts pretty friendly, but human!Asteri almost beats the crap out of normal!Asteri when she finds out that she’s responsible for the scar over human!Gaster’s right eye. Both Gasters have to intervene (possibly with blue magic). Fortunately human!Asteri didn’t actually land a punch, because she was angry enough to have done real damage. Human!Gaster clarifies that they worked it out, she already apologized, and he’s fine, it’s fine, it was when they first met. Human!Asteri is mad that he lied to her about it yesterday, but… she understands. Once it all gets cleared up, she apologizes to normal!Asteri, who, despite having been mortally terrified for a minute there, can’t really hold it against her. She would do the exact same thing for her friends.

So the morning is going great.

The Asteris (Asteries?) actually end up chitchatting again like nothing happened. Meanwhile the Gasters talk science and agree that it’s unlikely that there’s any way back to the other universe. Human!Gaster thanks normal!Gaster for keeping human!Asteri safe, and quietly (so as not to worry the Asteris) expresses his concern about his own safety and shares his experience with the guard. Normal!Gaster tells him that part of why he and human!Asteri came to Waterfall was because of a rumor about a human being spotted. He also tells him that he’s had an idea, but wasn’t sure whether to implement it. However, circumstances as they are, he thinks it would be best. He explains it to human!Gaster, and they agree to share with the Asteris.

Normal!Gaster is quite close to the king. Asgore does not really want to kill anyone. So normal!Gaster will go to him and explain: these two humans have fallen down; they are happy here, and respect monsters; he loves one of them, and the other, her friend, has vital scientific knowledge. They have no desire to leave the underground. When they die, their SOULs will be here to go toward the breaking of the barrier. Killing them now would do no more good. So he asks, both as the Royal Scientist, and as a friend: please let them just live here. Either let the people know, or turn a blind eye, but please, don’t make them fear for their lives. There is ample evidence that they are good people.

He also tells them that, depending on how it goes, he will explain the whole “alternate universe version of myself” thing to Asgore, who will believe him even though he won’t understand.

In explaining this to the others, normal!Gaster also finally explains the situation of the underground, and the strength of human SOULs, to the humans properly. Human!Gaster very much wants to contribute to the underground. He would love to have a job again. They don’t even have to pay him!

So. That’s probably what will happen.

They all stick around for a while longer. Normal!Asteri watches human!Gaster and human!Asteri chatting from across the campsite, and sees how his anxiety dissolves the longer they talk. (Since when has she been able to read him like this…?) They seem to have addressed the lingering issues. Now, it looks like any potential awkwardness about their relationship has evaporated, and they’ve slipped right back into what their friendship used to be. She’s glad. She also takes the opportunity to talk to normal!Gaster; after all, it seems reasonable to assume they could be friends too. (She is, of course, correct, and yet despite everything is still blown away by how well they get along.)

By the end, everyone exchanges contact info, and they agree to meet up again in a few days to talk about how to proceed after normal!Gaster talks to the king. Human!Gaster and human!Asteri gives each other a big hug, and she tells him she’s so glad he’s alive, and safe. And that it’s going to be okay. She won’t let anyone hurt him. He smiles. He knows, he says. It seems she takes care of him in every universe. She kisses him on the cheek, and glances at normal!Asteri. Yeah. It. seems like she does.

Human!Asteri does give normal!Asteri one last “friendly” threat about being good to human!Gaster. Normal!Asteri gives her word.

From there, things only get better. As expected, Asgore calls off the guards. Human!Gaster gets a “job” working with normal!Gaster. The Asteris collaborate on linguistic studies. Normal!Asteri eventually introduces human!Asteri to Sembie and Kelinn.

Normal!Asteri and human!Gaster are friends. It takes effort, but she genuinely wants to make up for everything. And he’s a forgiving person (plus, he already knew her, to some extent.) There’s a lot of trauma to unpack, and they both have things to work through, but it steadily gets better. And yeah, as you would expect, they eventually end up together. It’s cute.

I’m ignoring lifespans and other angsty things. Maybe being immersed in ambient magic and eating magic food extends human lifespans some. Maybe humans live longer in the universe human!Gaster and human!Asteri are from. Don’t think about it too hard. They all just get up to shenanigans together forever. But this is the gist of the AU and how it goes down in my head. Sorry it’s so freaking lONG. There’s lots more that happens tbh. But this was the foundation. The possibilities for shenanigans are endless now. There is a lot more to human!Asteri x normal!Gaster btw, but I haven’t had the brainworms for their side of this like I have for normal!Asteri x human!Gaster.

Also I know I said earlier that there were two versions but honestly I kind of mixed them together and I think I like this better. I don’t touch as much on the psychology of “hurt people hurt people” or normal!Asteri’s choices in the beginning of her interactions with human!Gaster, but believe me I’ve explored them. Similarly, human!Gaster’s resulting trauma from encounters and bullets and facial injury. I’ve also explored that but this is so long already and all I really meant to do was give the gist of this AU but instead I wrote a wHOLE FREAKING THING. I had to keep pulling myself out of “real writing mode”. Ughhh. Maybe now that this is out of my brain I can work on THE ACTUAL FIC. (I have so much of ch 10 written I just can’t get it all together.)

Also uhhh please remember that this is mostly me exploring regret and redemption and reparations and how somebody might fix stuff with a person that they’ve hurt. Except extremely fictional because alternate universes and the person hurt has a deep understanding of the one who hurt them and all that. Obviously none of that was okay, that’s the point: trying to do better after realizing you’ve been awful. And addressing that rather than let the surface vibes of a relationship ease your conscience so you can keep ignoring your guilt. Tbh I did not do Asteri’s apology and that whole conversation justice to how it went in my head but it… was very comprehensive, and there was more to it, on both sides of the conversation.

ANYWAY UHH yeah so things. Only get better. Because this is made up and I get to give it a happy resolution regardless of whether it’s realistic. Maybe I’m overly worried about it, but I just. Don’t want to give the wrong impression here. In this AU, Normal!Asteri is a good person, who made bad choices, that were fueled by trauma and fear, and that doesn’t make them okay, she’s absolutely still responsible for her choices, and it absolutely would have been within human!Gaster’s right to not want to be friends. But he did. Because he knew her better than she knew him (alternate universe friendship), plus he’s very forgiving to begin with. His decision isn’t meant to come across as a moral precedent, that’s just his character. Look just please give this the best faith interpretation ok im working through some stuff and it’s coming out in my story ideas.