The Time Before (Undertale)

34 ~ Don't Forget

Sans and Papyrus had long since gotten better, and still Gaster visited them.

Granted, he was no longer at their home all day every day, as he was still the Royal Scientist, and did still have a job to do, but he stopped by for a few hours most days.

Papyrus absolutely adored Gaster, almost as much as he did Sans. He always greeted Gaster with a hug, and an enthusiastic "Hello!" Or "Nyeh-heh-heh!!"

Had anyone asked Gaster, he would not have admitted it. He would have said Papyrus was far too loud, far too excitable (despite acting similarly himself when faced with the prospect of an interesting project.) But the truth was, he was overly fond of Papyrus. Sans too. He loved them.

Jeff was a little surprised when one day he came to see Sans and Papyrus, and found Gaster there, too. Sans explained, though, that everything was alright.

Gaster's Lv continued to drop, too. By the end of two months, he was at Lv: 27. And it was quite obvious that he was happier than he had been in a long time.

~o0o~

It was Saturday.

Gaster had astonished all his employees at the lab by starting to take weekends off. Why he did this, where he went and what he did, he never told anyone, and, as they were all still quite intimidated by him, no one asked.

It was because of Papyrus. He didn't go to school on the weekends (much as he would like to,) and Gaster decided he was going to try to make up for all the pain he had caused them, regardless of whether or not Papyrus remembered it. So, he came to visit every weekend, typically ending up sleeping on the couch instead of just going to his house.

By now, at six years old, Papyrus was nearly as tall as Sans. It had appeared that Sans had come to terms with the fact that Papyrus was going to be taller than he was, and even started cracking jokes about it. Papyrus found this rather annoying, though. It was possible this was because he felt bad about outgrowing Sans and was only reminded of this by Sans' jokes, but it was more likely that he just didn't like puns.

When Gaster came into the apartment, Sans was snickering, and Papyrus was groaning. Both stopped, though, when Gaster came in.

The look of annoyance instantly left Papyrus's face, replaced by a wide grin. "Gaster!" He jumped up and ran to hug the Royal Scientist.

Being almost as tall as Sans, Papyrus was right about lower chest height on Gaster, but Gaster still bent down a bit to hug Papyrus back. "Hello, Papyrus."

"hey, dings." Sans' grin widened as Gaster straightened up. "so, pap 'n' i were about to head over to hotland today, since he's never been there before. we were just waitin' for you."

"Hotland, hmm?" Gaster looked at Papyrus. "Sans hasn't taken you there yet?"

"Nope!"

"Sans, why in the world have you not taken Papyrus to Hotland?"

Sans leaned forward at the kitchen table where he was sitting. "you don't wanna get into that, dings. we already had a pretty heated debate about it."

Papyrus shot Sans an annoyed look.

"Ah. I see." Gaster responded, voice totally even. "I suppose I wouldn't want to get that fired up again."

Papyrus just let out a frustrated shout as Sans laughed.

Eventually, they did make it out the door, and into Hotland.

Papyrus did seem to be enjoying himself, despite the puns. At Sans' warning, he was quite careful not to near any of the edges of the paths, for fear of falling in the lava. And at Gaster's insistence, he neared the edge anyway, holding on to the much taller skeleton's hand, peering out across the magma pool at the hazy shape of the CORE, standing in the distance.