Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Upon walking into the Void, we were struck by a sudden, paradoxical feeling of weightlessness. I could feel my steps connecting with something underneath me and an attraction to the “floor” that indicated gravity, but the further from the “floor” a body part was, the less gravity it felt. 

There was nothing to see and no way to tell how far we had traveled through the darkness, although despite the lack of a light sourc, we could still see ourselves and the dogs clearly enough to distinguish the hairs on their ruffs. Looking back toward where we had come from, it was like our room had never existed or was swallowed by the darkness, making me glad we’d thought to bring the dogs. I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself if they had gotten pulled through and were lost or hurt because of my forgetfulness. I swiftly became grateful for the various methods we had used to attach ourselves to each other, as the path we followed seemed to make its own rules. 

In some places, it existed like any other surface, with edges we could follow while in other places we might step forward, only to find nothing beneath either foot. In instances of the latter, whichever of us was still standing on the path could pull the other back to the safety of solid ground. Sometimes, one of us would take a step, and be attracted toward what was previously up, flipping in midair and somehow landing on our feet(though not of our own volition). 

From time to time, we could hear… the best way to describe it would be to call them not-sounds, moments that felt like there should be something we were hearing, but we never responded, feeling as though we were out of place already with our non-paradoxical bodies. And that’s how it felt- like life in this place was a series of paradoxes. 

Gravity was fickle; the air itself was heavy on our skin, yet felt like it was so light it wished to leave the body as soon as it was drawn in for breath; there was no light source visible and the region was darker than it could ever be back home, though what there was to see was in perfect high definition; I always knew where we were in relation to each other, even when our lines were loose; we made sure to eat frequently, but there was no sensation to remind us of hunger or fullness, nor the feeling of needing to relieve ourselves; I could feel eyes on me, but even in the emptiness, where one could see for miles, I could see no one else. It was terrifying. Our one comfort was that the gentle, insistent tugging we had felt before entering perpetuated and gave us one consistent direction to go, so we wouldn’t be walking in circles forever in the darkness.

After a period of time that felt long, yet was likely quite short, we came upon a figure in the not-darkness standing in the middle of the path looking off to the side, one whose silhouette I recognized instantly. For a moment, the hysterical thought ‘Gaster blocks the way!’ popped into my mind, and with it the urge to laugh. 

Several of my own theories about our current situation were confirmed with his presence, chief among them being the idea that we really were in the Void referenced by so many Undertale fanfics. It would not make a good impression to laugh as soon as I saw him, so instead I softened my expression, focusing on my own curiosity and normal calmness rather than the ridiculousness that was walking into a spontaneously appearing darkness in my bedroom and finding myself meeting a character from a video game. I couldn’t see my sibling’s expression, but I somehow knew they were doing their best to kill their own hysteria before it burst out. Having no idea as to whether this Gaster would be a help, a hindrance, or simply a curiosity, it was to our benefit to act with caution. 

We knew nothing of where he came from or his disposition, and likely would not until he acted or spoke. Stopping, we waited for him- or her, I internally facepalmed at the potential misgendering here, since the multiverse likely existed and Swap type Gasters could be either genderbent or swapped with the Riverperson(Gaster or the Riverperson were almost always either identified as male or female, only occasionally nonbinary)- to speak first. 

And waited.

And waited.

Stars, they hadn’t even seemed to have noticed us! At this point, signaling to Rain that they should be prepared to anchor me while they were basically making motions asking if I was crazy, I backed up on the path so I was at a bit of distance from them. 

Watching to ensure my sibling was well grounded and passing them the dog leash that had been tied to me, I took another step backward, then lightly dashed at an angle toward the left edge of the path so my momentum carried me out into zero gravity territory. For a few heart-stopping moments, I wondered if my mental calculations had been grossly incorrect. 

Then the rope drew taut, and my trajectory shifted so I started moving in a circle around both my sibling and Gaster. As soon as I landed on the path on the other side of Gaster- which, thankfully, was not in a straight line through them- I slowed myself down in a few steps so my momentum wouldn’t cause me to go straight off the other side of the path and my tether to nudge into Gaster, which would probably be seen as rude. 

Much as I wanted to know if goop-dude was as semi-corporeal as fanfics tended to place him, allowing my lifeline to cross through them would not be the best introduction, nor would it be the best method to go about learning such information.

Anyway, I stopped myself on the path in front of them, and knelt down for stability, starting to motion to Rain that they could start sending the dogs across. It was then that I noticed where Gaster was looking, and my eyes widened as I motioned frantically for everyone in my party to stay back and stay still, in a manner as inconspicuous as I could possibly manage. 

As soon as I saw it, I knew I should look away. My mind was not built to handle impossibilities, and this… void dweller… was a paradox of its own. If it were to be described accurately, it would break the minds of both the teller and the reader, so I shall simply say that its form was constantly shifting, almost fluid, seeming fairly tame right now, though if it were to attack me I would likely be met with the sharpest of claws and teeth, fluidly shifting as it desired. I knew this was a native to the Void, a paradox dwelling in its land of paradoxes, so instead of fully turning so my back was to the creature like my mind was screaming for me to do <strike>to preserve my mind</strike>, I looked away so that I only saw its movement out of the corner of my eyes. It was just drifting, but it felt like the scariest predator I could ever have the misfortune to meet. 

It felt like an eternity as it drifted perpendicular to where the path was going, and once it seemed to me as if it had disappeared from my range of view, I shifted so I could see Gaster. Since they had noticed the creature first, it made sense to me that they would know when it was safe to communicate. 

Once their posture relaxed, I straightened my posture. A voice seemed to come from all around, staticky and distinctly masculine “Well, you seem lost… “ 

I gave a firm nod in response, since words out loud seemed out of place here, and I didn’t know how to respond back in words, so, drawing from the common points of fanfiction, I did my best to focus on the question “Which Gaster are you?... if you are a Gaster”, along with some of my more basic level of multiverse knowledge, and project that to the monster in front of me while tilting my head to the side. I knew my question was received since the next thing I caught was a slight laugh, along with the words “Original. W.D. Gaster, at your service. He/him pronouns, since you seem curious and humans place a surprisingly vast amount of importance on the subject, from what I’ve seen.”

His blend of an old-timey style of speech and normal conversation certainly seemed to fit everything I knew about him, and that made me smile. Then I had a thought. How did he catch my intent and understand what I was asking?

“Out here, in the Void, the Soul is far closer to the surface than anywhere else due to a high ambient magic content. Reading a human Soul is somewhat basic under normal circumstances, though only certain statistics and notes are immediately available without removing the Soul from the human’s body. Here, things are different. Since human Souls are so powerful, anything you do will be amplified. Anything you feel is projected, and what you think in words is like a voice in my ear. Have you noticed anything weird happening with your interactions with your fellow travelers in terms of communication?” 

Huh. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we were communicating even more than before, even though we hadn’t been speaking out loud at all. I could communicate with Rain pretty well, even before all of this, without really talking. However, things felt clearer, more intuitive. The dogs were definitely picking up on more than before. New gestures I had tried with the dogs, along with our idea of getting them to basically tightrope walk across gaps, had been picked up way faster than anything else we had taught them before. 

There were so many other tiny clues I could have picked up on-and would have in most other situations- but hadn’t, though that was understandable, since I was in a weird place and always on alert for any changes in the environment, rather than differences in ourselves. 

I then realized I could feel my sibling’s boredom. I had been keeping Rain waiting on me while I went off to check on a potentially dangerous entity, and while I now knew it was safe for them to come over, they didn’t. While this realization was pretty cool, it wasn’t cool of me to keep them waiting, and it definitely wouldn't be cool if I kept them waiting. That caused me to cock my head and silently “ask” whether it was safe for them to come over now. 

“Oh, yes, certainly.” Based on his tone, he was very pleased with the idea of more people, and didn’t want to get us seperated like <em>he</em> had from… the rest of the universe. Wow, that was a sad thought. Any company would likely be good company, no matter how strange their form or presence.

With this reassurance, I looked around him to Rain, giving a slight nod. At this, they put our now standard procedure to work. With Gaster watching curiously, they carefully loosened the rope where it was wrapped around their waist, and, making sure to never let go, slipped the dogs’ leashes onto it. After that, they re-tied the rope while the dogs waited patiently <strike>why didn’t I catch that before, they were always so chaotic</strike>, then lifted the dogs on, one at a time. 

One of the paradoxes we had discovered was the weird tightness in the rope(one of the reasons why I hadn’t noticed my awareness of my sibling’s position as something more than just the rope itself), so they were able to just walk across, putting one paw in front of the other with no problems balancing. This trick wouldn’t work for my sibling, so once the dogs were across, they just walked off of the current ‘platform’, and I pulled them straight to me. With a lack of gravity and air resistance, it was easy to pull them over, despite my lack of upper-body strength. After that, I removed the dogs’ leashes from the rope, untying and retying it around myself to release our pets from the connection.

Once we were back together, I had yet another thought to share: had Rain heard what we talked about? Their immediate nod of confirmation surprised both myself and Gaster. Really, Gaster’s surprise caused mine, as I had thought Gaster was speaking to both of us at once, whether by projecting to both of us, or some form of audio that wouldn’t alert anything too dangerous. It seemed like they got the hang of that much faster than I did, which was pretty cool. 

That then brought the question of how they were hearing me, since if I knew I might be able to use a similar technique. With a little bit of focus, I brought this question up with the others, also asking if they were just hearing what I was ‘saying’, or if they were getting more than that and wondering if we could keep moving while conversing, gesturing in the direction of the tugs. (I had to focus on what I wanted to communicate because at any given time my brain might be going in a few different directions, which was great for most things in life but not so great when my thoughts were being broadcast to everyone around me.)

A moment later, Gaster relayed my sibling’s message, starting to glide along and saying “They aren’t sure how they did it, but they really wanted to hear what was being said while we were conversing. This led to an internal change of some sort, and right after that they started hearing me, through you.” 

Hmm, that wasn’t a lot of help, but… no wait, that made total sense. In a place of impossibilities where the Soul was closer to the surface than anywhere else and magic was literally in the air, it would make sense that desire played a strong role in shaping one’s reality, especially if the person who is present has a stronger Soul. 

I couldn’t help but internally snicker at the irony. I had just seen a few Superliminal playthroughs before we left, and given that the premise of the game is that perception shapes reality, it felt like that was pretty similar to the present moment, though I was torn between wanting this to be a dream and not. On the one hand, I was far from home, with no clear way to return. On the other, I was in the freakin’ Void from Undertale! One of my favorite fandoms was shown to be a real place, and some of my favorite characters were probably also real, with real lives and wow, this was getting dark, knowing the storylines of some(most) of the big AUs. Trauma creates interesting characters, so usually even the happier worlds had traumatized Judges. 

Well, now I was just going on an internal tangent. Maybe the two of them could have a conversation that I’d then want to join? I took a pause on that line of thought, and that was when I realized that they had been exchanging looks while I was having my epiphanies, obviously having started a conversation on their own, without my input. 

Exchanging my internally focused thoughts for a focus on my surroundings, I took a moment to think about how weird it was to see someone having a silent conversation, knowing that words were being exchanged, but also not knowing what was being said, despite walking pretty much next to the both of them. 

Once I was done with that thought- and how fitting it was, something that I couldn’t understand, even if I learned the language being used, given the level of paradox in the Void, which was still so hard to wrap my mind around- I focused on my desire to hear them. I wanted to interact, I wanted in, I didn’t want to be left out ! 

Contrary to how it sounds, this was all of my focus, all of me , concentrated on one objective: bending reality to my will. I focused on the thought that I didn’t just want to hear, I needed in on this conversation. Logically, with everything that was going on, I was just fine with not joining their conversation, but I made myself ignore that logic (which wasn’t too hard, given our family’s tendency to take logic to its extreme, then flip it on its head) in favor of my own. I lost my focus a few times while doing this, especially due to the internal reminder of the phrase “I reject your reality and substitute my own”, which kept breaking that focus.

Once I felt something shift within myself, I caught the tail end of the conversation they had been having. “... access to my lab right now.” This piqued my curiosity, and I found myself projecting my curiosity about what they were talking about, finding emotions to be simpler and clearer to share than words. Rain then responded with a voice that I could now hear, which had a buzzing undertone under their usual voice. “I told him about what was going on with us, and he was talking about how interesting this situation was, and how he wishes he could have access to his lab to research the differences between Void natives, nonnatives, and those who have acclimated to the Void.”

“Oh, it would certainly be interesting to see, though then the differences checked would also need to include someone from your multiverse, since unless we are a part of the multiverse as an AU where those in the AU know about the details of the multiverse as stories people in the world itself have thought of… this is making my head hurt, but would be totally interesting to see if there is a difference…” and I was rambling again. Great.

That led me to wonder which lab was his lab, since it could be the Lab Alphys lived at, the True Lab under that, the lab behind Sans and Papyrus’s house, or some other lab Frisk can’t access. 

His response(I really needed to get used to my thoughts being broadcasted), about the lab itself being in the CORE, and controls being in the lab behind his house, made total sense. 

Anything with a large power consumption, capable of ripping holes in spacetime, should have the controls separated from the machine, with keys that needed to be used in sync, away from the main lab. These keys would need to be used in a controlled environment, at the same time. As he continued to talk, the little details made even more sense. Since only homes and private places were locked in the story, it would make sense that people would only lock things so others would know not to enter. Every monster knew better than to enter a locked door, especially when that locked door belonged to one of the monsters working on the biggest project since the Barrier was formed. It even had magic-based precautions against non-monsters to prevent even something as small as a fly from somehow pushing buttons it shouldn’t.

Following this to its logical conclusion, I realized that whatever went wrong was likely because of a mistake in the calculations. Was it a case of magic or… wait. I was just asking questions, I wasn’t even letting him ask any questions of his own. On top of that, I didn’t even know how to quiet my mind and basically just shut up for a while, so I would probably just interrupt without even realizing… 

… and I was internally rambling again. Hooray. Okay, next order of business, get my mind to quiet down and stop interrupting. Although… I wasn’t hearing the others right now and they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to me. Could I be quieting myself unintentionally?

Turning toward the others, I pushed the question of whether or not they had heard me in the past few minutes, when I had been riding my train of thought to whichever stations it wanted to go.

“We… actually didn’t hear anything else from you after your thought about the calculations- which was fairly accurate, though maybe not for the reasons you think- were you trying something different?”

Huh. They didn’t hear my undirected thoughts. That could be useful for quieting things down. When this was shared, I felt a synchronized jolt of surprise from the both of them.

“Did I unconsciously mute myself by not focusing on communication? Or was it you guys getting more into your conversation and basically ignoring me? Wait, it couldn’t be you guys because I did just interrupt the conversation you guys were having… I guess my tendency to drift mentally has a purpose.”

“Wait, you figured out how to keep your thoughts to yourself? That’s a first.” came the rather predictable reply from Rain. 

“Ha. Ha. See how hard I’m laughing right now. I can’t breathe I’m laughing so hard. Ha. Ha.” I somehow managed to get through that without fully dropping my deadpan look, though a smile was firmly tugging at the corners of my lips as I did so. After I successfully delivered the tiny monologue, I dissolved into a (still walking) slightly giggly mess, unable to make a comment for a few minutes without restarting the laughter.

“Ooh! Can we share songs?!” I asked after I had gained control of myself. I was so tired of just hearing people talking in my brain, and the usual background music in my brain really wasn’t cutting it in terms of internal variation. Normally, if I had a song stuck in my brain, I would just sing it, but that could have terrible consequences if I did so here. If we could share words, we could probably share tones of speech, and if that was possible, we could definitely share tunes as we remembered them. 

I had an extensive mental playlist, but most of them were- and still are- based in video games. Something based on Undertale could bring up bad memories, and the same could be said of Deltarune or FNAF. Thinking just a little more, I chose a song I was pretty familiar with that only required one voice at a time(for the most part), and started going through “No Mercy” by The Living Tombstone. It was relatable enough that even someone who only saw the world from an outsider’s perspective could laugh at one person intentionally causing another to rage about the character choices they made leading to the team losing. Even Gaster smiled at it, both he and Rain noting that yes, that did work.

As we continued walking while Gaster described what his life was like in the Void, I realized something new: if reality was as we perceived it, we could teleport through the emptiness. If most known laws of physics broke down here (maybe we were at the quantum realm?), all we needed was to think of the space around us as not fully Euclidean. All we might need to help trick our minds’ perceptions would be a feeling that some spot in the distance was actually closer than it seemed, and a landmark of some sort to mentally fiddle with. Once I figured that out, I shared the thought with the remainder of the group. 

Gaster seemed fairly enthused about trying it out, stating that he would “jump to a point in the near distance, if you wish to test this idea out.” At our enthusiastic agreement, he did just that, disappearing from next to us and reappearing a good distance, about a freeway’s width away.

Gathering our thoughts, we each picked up a dog and, linking our spare hands, took a step forward. Without talking about it beforehand, we both focused on a spot right next to the doctor, and went through our first shortcut. It felt no different from the way we had been walking before, since we had been in the Void already. 

If we had been outside the Void and done that, it likely would have been more of a case of creating a way into the Void in that location, quickly moving to the target location’s position in the Void, then re-entering Euclidean space at the shortcut’s desired exit. Due to the dangers present in the Void, the steps would be completed as fast as possible, using one step’s momentum to step into the Void, then placing the target position in the Void immediately in front of the entry position, and the exit from the Void being directly adjacent to that, creating a shortcut as thin as possible. One step into the Void, one to the target location, and one to exit the Void. It wasn’t surprising, then, that Sans called them shortcuts, while Gaster called his own teleports jumps… 

Hmm, my brain was drifting every which way in the moment and leading to some of the best potentially accurate realizations I had had in a while. That… was kind of sad, but it was definitely useful to our current situation. 

As I mentally drifted while we continued jumping, making sure to reorient ourselves every so often so we didn’t get too off-course, I had yet another relevant thought: we seemed to be becoming more and more similar to the Sans and Papyrus from the AU I had created with Rain’s help, at least in terms of abilities. More than just our communication increase, I had designed the skeletons after myself and Rain, and while they were, for the most part, the same as us mentally, they exhibited abilities consistent with what we had been doing.

They both teleported and were able to hold telepathic conversations with each other over a private connection, rather than just broadcasting their intents so anyone nearby could hear, among other things. Upon asking, Rain had admitted that they had been seeing in black and white since entering the Void, something that definitely hadn’t happened to me, but was something the Papyrus lived with. I had been seeing spots of color in those around me that hadn’t been present before which, thinking about it, was a trait of my Sans, based on a person’s Soul and magic colors.

Sharing my thoughts, as well as the thought that we might gain similarities that go a little bit farther than the raw abilities we had gained, brought everyone else up short. That was when I realized something further that made me mentally cringe at my apparent inability to filter myself before speaking. In sharing something that I couldn’t ignore, I had caused both of our perceptions to see ourselves as potential skeletons, which just might make it a possibility. Resigned to my likely existence as a Sans-style skeletal counterpart, I had to ask: if we did gain abilities similar to the characters we created, would Gaster teach us how to use them as we traveled?

“Yes, that would likely be the best option. I would hate to have the Judge’s skills displaying in either of you without warning, as that might gain the attention of some of the more undesirable beings in the Void,” Gaster agreed. “Would you be willing to describe these ‘characters’ for me?”

As we traveled, we both started with describing the characters, both their visuals and magic, and even the basics of the AU. Rain was able to help describe them due to me having sought them out for artistic assistance on some of the smaller details in their character designs and base abilities, the kinds of details that showed who a character was. I wanted to make them both pretty strong, since a tough character would be needed(both in stats and abilities) to survive against the monsters of the Underdark, while at the same time I needed to ensure they were still pretty balanced. I certainly hoped we would get the magic items associated with the two of them, along with their inventory, since those were basically custom designed and fit the AU, in addition to the coolness factor I had created them for.

Going over the magic they were associated with, I could see how some of the skills associated with either skeleton might be accomplished using what we had already learned. However, it seemed like I could only accomplish the things associated with the Sans and both of them, not those associated with the Papyrus. That was just fine with me; I didn’t want to take all of their abilities and weaknesses, just as I kind of wanted to keep the Sans’s unique skills for myself. Knowing all of this, Gaster started having us make a bone or two each to figure out basic magic manifestation.

On one of our breaks in both our crash course in magic and teleporting, I noticed that the tugging had become very strong, and my skin looked way more transparent than it had before, almost like an X-ray. On top of that, when I looked more closely at my hand, I saw that the fine bones one might expect to see in the palm region and reaching out toward the fingers had been replaced with one solid bone plate that seemed to bend and fulfil the same function as multiple bones had on attempts to move them like normal. On top of this, my long hair seemed to be disappearing. Not falling out, just disappearing in front of my eyes. I even watched as one of my hairs faded in visibility before disappearing from between my fingers, another strange experience that was just too weird to have a reaction of its own.

Checking in with Rain, they were feeling similar effects and had grown a bit taller. Using Gaster as a reference and my own memories of their height difference, we could tell that they had definitely increased in size. Not too much- they would probably be one of the shorter Papyruses there- but enough to be that extra little bit annoying about it. I had even decreased in size, which was somewhat to be expected, but really, I was short enough before all of this! Now they were likely heading toward six and a half feet(the height Papyrus was in my world notes), and I was shrinking toward about four feet, eight inches(the difference in height actually being much smaller than the two-and-a-quarter feet the originals had when I looked it up online). 

Progressing further, I noted that it would have taken a ridiculously long time to walk the distance we had been teleporting, too long for the snacks to last. As it was, based on the rate at which the tug had been increasing and the rate of consumption of food, the snacks might barely last the distance.

Even further on, we found the source of the tugging- a light too bright to look at after the darkness we had been in for so long. Barely being able to slow ourselves down at this point, we walked, almost stumbling forward to avoid being dragged off of our feet by a sudden change in gravity. Turning to Gaster as we walked, I told him “If I can, I would like to help out with getting you out… if it’s possible.” Rain echoed the sentiment immediately after.

“You’ll be stuck adjusting for a while, correct?” he asked.

“Two months” was our synchronized reply.

“You can’t assist while you adjust, but before that time comes we can still prepare. Give me a pair of position markers and once you get the chance, I’ll be waiting in a safe space. The only reason why you saw me earlier near the Void-beast is because you two were there, and I was interested in you. Teleporting away attracts attention toward wherever you last were; you would have been noticed and likely killed had I made the jump,” replied the scientist.

“I would advise that you not speak of where you came from, if you do not wish to be treated as though you have answers about that which is occurring. Also, if you could refrain from telling anyone about me, that would probably be for the best. I… don’t want to give anyone false hope.” At this, he sounded sad but resigned.

Creating and giving him a set of bones that were designed to act as beacons, Rain and I solemnly nodded to Gaster as he nodded back to us.

Checking our pockets, we both sighed in relief as we found that at least two magical items for each of us had been brought into play, one of these being the all-important mask-earmuff combo that would allow us to more easily acclimate ourselves to the light and noise present on the Surface.

With that, we took the final few jumps, feeling the last remnants of our “human” looks disappear, leaving only bones behind.