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The bell above the shop door jingles.
Asgore doesn’t look up at first. The midday sun filters lazily through the dusty windows, casting long shadows between rows of lilies and golden chrysanthemums. He’s trimming the stem of a yellow daffodil, careful and precise. The shop smells like soil and memory.
Then— silence.
Too still. He sets down his shears.
“…Hello?” he calls gently. The silence shifts. Then a voice answers.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.”
Asgore turns, and the air stills.
Gaster stands just inside the door, the light at his back making the edges of his coat glow faintly. He looks different. Tired. Sharper around the eyes. And yet, there’s something familiar in the way he holds himself — rigid, coiled, like he expects to be struck.
For a long moment, Asgore just stares.
“…Gaster,” he says.
The name is heavy. Like it’s been pulled from a place no one’s spoken it in years. Because no one has.
“Hello, old friend,” Gaster murmurs.
“Are we?” Asgore asks, the question soft, but pointed.
Gaster doesn’t answer. He looks at the flowers instead. Asgore crosses his arms. “No one remembered you. Not after you fell. Not even me.”
“I know.”
“You were gone, Gaster. Not dead. Not missing. Just… erased.”
“I know,” he repeats. “The Void doesn’t make room for goodbyes.”
The silence stretches again, thick as the scent of petunias blooming behind them.
“And now you’re back,” Asgore says. “And you come here.”
Gaster looks at him, finally. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
A faint scoff. “That’s not true. You went to them first.”
He means the boys. Gaster doesn’t deny it.
“They needed to see me.”
“Did they?”
Gaster exhales through his nose. “Papyrus did.”
“And Sans?”
“…Sans was there.”
A pause.
“You haven’t told me why you made them,” Asgore says. It’s not an accusation. Not quite. But it’s not a casual question, either.
Gaster’s eyes flicker. “No. I haven’t.”
Asgore waits.
But Gaster just walks further in, slow steps between the potted plants. He brushes his hand along the soft petals of an orange tulip, gaze unreadable.
“Do you know what a human soul can do?” he asks suddenly.
Asgore stiffens.
“Of course I do,” he says. Quiet. Controlled.
Gaster nods. “Then you understand why I needed to recreate it.”
The air shifts. The scent of lilies feels too sharp now. Something acidic under the sweetness.
“You made children, Gaster.”
“No,” he says. “I made prototypes.”
Asgore’s breath catches. “Prototypes.”
Gaster meets his eyes. “They were never meant to grow minds of their own. They were never meant to be people.”
“Then what were they meant to be?”
“Human SOULs. Power sources. Souls that couldn’t die. I thought if I could recreate that—if I could make something better—we needn’t fear another war.”
“And when they cried?” Asgore asks, low and bitter. “When they screamed? When they called for someone to save them—did you chart that data too?”
Gaster doesn’t speak. His hands are folded behind his back, tightly. A flicker of something flashes through his expression, but it’s gone before it can be named.
“They weren’t supposed to feel,” he says finally.
“But they did,” Asgore whispers.
“I know.”
Asgore’s voice cracks then—just a little.
“I looked for you,” he says. “After it happened. For years. I didn’t even know what I was looking for, I was…drawn to the CORE. But you just—vanished. No body. Then you reappear, join us on the surface—and now you show up on my doorstep talking about power sources?”
“I’m not here to ask for forgiveness.”
“Then why are you here?”
Gaster falters for a second.
“I don’t know.”
Silence again.
Asgore rubs a hand over his face. “Papyrus is trying to see something good in you. Something left. And Sans—” He trails off.
“I know,” Gaster says again.
“You hurt them.”
“I know.”
“You hurt me.”
And for the first time, something flickers in Gaster’s expression. Regret, maybe. Or the shape of it.
“I didn’t think anyone would remember me,” he admits. “When I fell. Of course, I had no way of knowing the very particles of my being would be scattered throughout infinity—“ he cuts himself off to take a deep, shuddering breath. “I thought I would vanish the same way I lived. Alone.”
A beat.
“And now?”
“I’m trying to understand why that doesn’t feel like enough anymore.”
Asgore looks at him for a long time. Then:
“…There’s a kettle in the back,” he says. “If you’re staying.”
Gaster doesn’t move.
“I didn’t think I was welcome.”
“You’re not,” Asgore replies, turning toward the counter. “But I didn’t think I’d see you again either. And here you are.”
Another long pause.
Then Gaster walks forward. He doesn’t smile. But he stays.
And Asgore doesn’t stop him.
⸻