Where Souls wonder onward

Amare

Warning: Following is a Tearjerking Chappy. Be ready to cry and sniffle

(From the Latin verb amo / amare, meaning to love)

It was a question, one which Ink really should have expected.

He was old.

Older then this multiverse.

Heck, he was older then most of the Omniverse.

There were very few older than he.

It shouldn't have hurt.

But it did.

"Have you ever fallen in love and mated, Ink, or will you in the future?" Blue asked.

That wasn't an easy answer.

"I... have to go," Ink said, and vanished.

"Ink?" Dream asked, but the god was gone.

OoOoO

When Ink was much younger, before he wandered further into the unknown and created his multiverse, he had fallen in love.

They were a Deity, much less powerful then himself, but he didn't mind. Even gender didn't matter, as he was, in truth, genderless.

Hate was their name, and they were a humanoid cat in form. Short black fur covered their body, and they had striking electric blue eyes, but the most amazing were the ram-like horns they, which that seemed to be made of black crystal.

Looking back Ink didn't know if it was truly love, or lust.

Or perhaps Love, looking to try to pair their counterpart up.

He treasured the memories.

Even if it ended on a sour note, when Hate fell in love with another.

They ended it there, not wanting to loose their friendship also.

Ink might have babysat little Destiny and baby Fate after that.

Baby Deities were adorable.

The next one he fell in love with was in his own multiverse.

It was a Sans of course.

His AU was String!tale.

It was there that he leaned to knit and other skills.

The Sans there, who was known as Puppeteer, asked him out with a Puppet looking like his Chaos self, which he still used at that point.

Ink would admit that it was a whirlwind romance, and he was very happy.

It was shocking when he found himself pregnant, when he first held the tiny demigod.

Yet, like with all things mortal, death comes eventually.

Even AUs could fall prey to the clutches of death.

He'd left for a few days, as the One had asked a favor of him.

Then, it was gone.

His puppeteer.

His tiny baby Aster.

String!tale had been destroyed by a fight between Deities that were not even of his AU.

After that, he locked the Deities out, not wanting outsiders to harm his creations again.

What followed was a millennium-long depression.

The next time he fell in love it was short and bittersweet, ashes in his mouth as he was still depressed.

It was a Grillby, but in the end he'd broken it off himself when he found out that the other had figured out he was a god and wanted to use him.

He had raged and almost destroyed the AU himself.

Instead, he made it so that the Grillby in that AU would never be able to find happiness until he realized what he did was wrong.

He never did.

So he wandered off, rarely creating.

It was finding the puppet that Puppeteer had made him that finally snapped him out of it.

He still had the puppet, safely kept in his omniversal box.

He shed the name and form of Chaos, creating the form known as Ink.

Not that he'd named himself that.

He'd started creating for real again, finding himself and learning not to grieve.

Puppeteer had been the nearest thing to a soulmate he'd had.

After that discovery, he had no urge to love like that again, what they'd had was special and unless he found true love again, he would not date.

The many beings of his multiverse were his children, sure, none by marrow or blood, but by the code as he breathed life into their AUs.

Maybe one day he'd have a child he could raise as his own, maybe even a true love... but in the many eons since that day, he'd felt no urge to love in any way but friendship or parental affection.

He could live with that.

OoOoO

"Ink?" A voice said. Ink blinked, coming out of his thoughts, and watching the night sky.

"Heya Dream, Blue" he said quietly, seeing the guardian of positivity and Blue following him.

"You okay?" Blue asked.

"I'm fine, just old memories of why I won't fall in love again," Ink said, hugging an ancient puppet to his chest.

The two stayed by his side watching the stars, giving comfort as only friends could.