#i will probably widely oscilate between how i write gaster in any given fic

[smells-like-mettaton]

51? you know what for :)

Rating: G Word Count: Prompt: Kingdings +The jittery, sick feeling when you can’t do anything. Read on AO3: here

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Asgore knows of inevitability.

Souls that glowed cyan, orange, blue, violet, green, yellow in his paws. Determination slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. The very fabric of the world bending as each child accepted their fate.

Inevitably, he will kill again. He’s too far gone for mercy to stay his hand.

“...just a minor setback! With the CORE powering the extractor—”

One second Asgore is listening to his friend’s report, and the next he’s crumpling, suddenly feeling small, small, small inside his cage of a throne.

“...Asgore?” Wingdings asks, blinking those wide sockets of his. So full of life. So full of hope, even after all these years of failure. “I promise, I’ll try harder, I’ll make this work—”

Asgore’s claws scrape against his armor.

“It is not you.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Wingdings. Your work is truly remarkable.”

The skeleton has revolutionized the Underground over the decades. Given Asgore’s people light, power, safety. All Wingdings does is give, give, give.

He can’t take Asgore’s burden. No one can.

“...Not remarkable enough.” Wingdings' head hangs low.

“That is not—please, for once, stop blaming yourself.” Asgore can’t bring himself to stand, but when he reaches out for Wingdings’ arm, his friend reaches back.

“Just like you always do. Right?” Wingdings smiles crookedly, showing off the fresh crack his latest project carved in his skull.

Asgore looks away, to one golden flower wedged in a crack in the tile.

“The difference is that our situation is my fault.”

Inevitable. His failure to stop the war. His failure to protect them, to find a way to freedom that isn’t paved in blood.

Maybe claiming inevitability is a way out. A way to dodge the fact that he could have changed things, if he’d somehow been better, if he could still be better—

No. He can’t go down that road again. His soul cannot take it.

“Asgore.” Wingdings squeezes his palm. The skeleton’s hand is so much smaller, the bones solid yet fragile. “Until I break the underlying rules of the space-time continuum, the past is unchangeable. You can’t keep hurting yourself over histories that most of the Underground can’t even remember.”

Asgore sighs deeply, trying to rid himself of the jittery, sick feeling that sweeps through him. The feeling that his particles of dust might lose their cohesion.

The feeling that he might Fall Down.

“It is not just the past,” he murmurs

Wingdings’ face softens as his grip on Asgore’s paw tightens.

“Leave that to me and my team.”

It’s not determination that burns in Wingdings’ eyelights, if only for the simple fact that it can’t be. But he certainly looks… committed.

“This burden isn’t yours to bear alone,” he insists. “Not anymore.”

Asgore studies his face, looking for a trace of doubt. He finds none.

He pulls Wingdings to his chest, and pulls himself—quite literally—back together. Hopefully the hug can convey the gratitude his words cannot.

“I trust you, Wings.”

If anyone can change the inevitable, it is his dear, dear friend.