Royal Blue

The Deal (Chapter Twenty Six)

There was a light in his heart; the drifts of dawn still fluttering in over the horizon, softly shining through. Birds chirped softly from outside the window.

Within their little oasis, Sans matched his breathing to his brother's slumber. Cradling his younger brother's head in his lap, carefully caressing his skull. Relishing in the feeling of Safety that his brother brought.

"You still hold him the same way," a familiar, slightly static voice spoke.

Sans looked up to the edge of the bed; watching as Gaster —no longer just a shadow of ichor and blackness, but now a far more well formed monster— smiled down at them.

Sans raised an eyebrow.
He wasn't shocked that Gaster was here. But he was confused as to what that... meant.

"Back then; when we first met in that cave," Gaster continued, moving and sitting down at the edge of the bed.

He straightened his grey turtle neck and smoothed out his white lab coat. He seemed... well put together. In every sense of the word.

"You were starving half to death, but refused to let anyone help you, and you held him that same way." Gaster recalled, watching Papyrus napping in his brother's careful hold.

Gaster looked up at Sans, who's eyes had gone grey and cold.

 "It makes sense you'd be protective," Gaster quickly amended, "your parents had just died. The orphanage they sent you to, burnt to the ground by humans... its shocking you came out of it alive at all," he recalled somberly.

Sans said nothing. And Gaster just paused for a moment.

There was a heaviness that filled Sans' soul; part of him wondering if he had really made the right choice.

The other part of him reminding that there really was no choice involved. There was no fork in the road; only a twisting path that he knew was the only way down.

Gaster sighed sharply into the silence of the room.

"Oh don't be that way, Sans."

 "What way am I being, Gaster," Sans muttered irately, still gently petting across his brother's head.

 "You know as well as I that I'm not... real," Gaster said, looking down at his hands, tracing the holes that had never healed.

"Not in your narrow view, anyhow."
Gaster flopped backwards onto the bed, letting out an almost... happy, hum.

The feeling of being solid; of feeling real sensation... it was one that he had greatly missed.

"Just because you're not real," Sans muttered, "doesn't mean-"

Gaster sat up again, the movement abrupt.

"It means that due to the bonds of our..." he gestured vaguely, "our arrangement. That I can be here to help you," Gaster said.

"To help him." Gaster gestured to his sleeping brother.

"...Sure." Sans muttered.

He may know that this deal was the only way to truly... to really make things work.

But that didn't mean he was gonna forget all of the strain of their past.

And that certainly didn't mean he was gonna be happy with all that it required.

Gaster flopped back down onto the bed, once again smiling at the feeling of being solid.

Of existing again.