SeasonTale - Chapter 1
THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!!!
TW: Contains slight gore and abuse
Masterpost
~o0o~
He was told to never go to the mountains.
They always captivated him. He would gaze in wonder at how they stretched up to the sky every day without fail. Their mineral chunks worked skillfully together to reach above the dark clouds. The snow that clothed them always made them look like angels and smell like elevation. He envied their strength to continue standing despite the winds that attempted to knock them down. They called to him as if something was there for him.
Circumstances forbade him from venturing there.
“Winter!” A voice boomed behind him.
Winter shuddered. He would hate that voice for the rest of his life. He slowly turned to stare at the creature who attempted to raise him. He hated his father with everything in him, but he couldn’t do anything to fight him.
He was afraid of his father.
The creature loomed over him, his eyes dark, as usual. Unlike Winter’s round skull, his skull stretched upwards, and his snowflake eyes always pierced his soul. He wore a navy Eskimo jacket with black undertones. This creature had his way with the snow, as the fingers—on the dozens of hands he had that appeared and disappeared at command—were always covered in ice, and his head had many snowflake prints on it. He floated off the ground, often to where Winter could see his thin boots. Evil was written all over his face; it wasn’t hard for Winter to know his father was horrid.
“Winter!Gaster,” Winter replied in the most stoic tone he could muster, refusing to show his anger towards his dad. He was never allowed to call his father ‘dad’ or the latter. It was always Winter!Gaster, or W!Gaster for short. Winter knelt on his knees, bowing to the king of the Winter Kingdom, enraged that he would never inherit the throne himself.
“Did you take care of them?” His voice boomed in Winter’s head. W!Gaster’s eyes narrowed as he lifted his head and looked down at Winter!Sans.
“Yes, sir, their bodies were buried successfully,” Winter did his best not to shiver while keeping eye contact. He hated killing people, but he had no choice.
W!Gaster turned away. “Good,” he smiled wickedly. “I have a meeting today. I would like you to—” he paused. “No, you’re required to attend.”
Winter rolled his eyes, shoving down his emotions once more. He didn’t want to sit with all the Gasters again. All of them reminded him too much of W!Gaster. He wondered if they would all be there. Summer!Gaster most likely would, the mad scientist—and ruler of the Summer Kingdom—never missed a moment to converse with his father. Spring!Gaster and Fall!Gaster would show up if they saw a need to. W!Gaster didn’t expect much from the slave master and thief anyway.
He just hoped HE wouldn’t show up.
“Are you coming, you waste of air?” W!Gaster barked, not turning toward his son.
Winter gazed at his hands, trying his best to remain still as the blood stained them. He couldn't afford to deal with his emotions now since he knew they would make him weak. Winter was aware that he fought to stay alive and follow orders. Orders that would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. “Yes sir,” his stoic gaze locked on W!Gaster as he followed right behind him.
“Look at what you’ve done!”
“You’re a psychopath!”
“How could you?! We trusted you!”
“WINTER!” W!Gaster’s voice broke through the screams in his head as he slapped him across the face. “Pay attention, idiot!”
Winter nodded apologetically, snapping back into the cruel reality he lived in.
“You looked stupid during that entire meeting,” W!Gaster rolled his eyes. “Did you even hear what the others said about your potential?”
Winter didn’t meet his eyes. “I did, sir.”
“Well, what do you think?”
Winter despised that particular question. W!Gaster seemed indifferent to his opinion. His father only seemed interested in knowing his plans through his son's words. Winter loathed the designs that the Gasters discussed for his future. They were dreadful, awful, and gruesome. They intended for him to become the most skilled assassin of those who dared to defy them in SeasonTale.
“I’m taking your silence as an agreement,” Winter wasn’t surprised by the Gaster's response. “Rest up; you’ll need your energy for tomorrow. You will be attempting to hunt down the rebels again.”
Winter gave his salutations before he civilly ran up the stairs. Once out of sight, he booked it to his room and locked the door behind him.
A soft wind blew the white curtains into his room. A large window before him was open, creaking from the storm's aftermath. The room was dusty, musky, and smelled of books and metal polish. The room had little to no light, causing an eerie feel to the area. A small pile of snow lay below the window and in front of the bed frame, an extravagant throne that Winter laid his head on every week or so if he could rest. It wasn’t comfortable by any means, and he couldn’t remember the last time he slept through the night.
He placed his swords in the barrel next to the door before setting his notebooks that he wasn’t supposed to have on his desk. The picture of his father loomed over the desk with his big icy crown resting on his head. There was a slight tear in the photo, and behind it showed the rebel leaders. Winter never learned their names, but they looked like lovely leaders. They had fur like the Winter!Toriel and Winter!Asgore, but their outfits included all of the seasons. It reminded Winter how badly he wanted to visit the other seasonal kingdoms.
Tears started to flow from his eyes. He cursed and hit himself for it, but the sobs escaped his throat. Everything in his chest tightened as his head felt like it was about to explode. His hands shook as he went over to the snow below the window and rubbed his hands in them, desperately trying to get the blood off them. He rubbed his hands until the blood became wet again, trailing off his hands into the snow. The snow turned into a crimson-red liquid as it melted through the wooden floor. He stumbled back, his gaze disrupted by the water flowing from his eyes as he laughed between sobs. His hands were white bone again, giving him a brief moment of innocence from the lives he took earlier that day.
He hated killing. He hated hearing the screams of innocent people rush through his head as he drove his knives through them. He didn’t understand why he had to kill them either. W!Gaster only told him that their incompetence to follow orders was punishable by death. He didn’t know what those big words meant, as he was never taught in school. He didn’t go to school at all, W!Gaster said he was too young to. His father suggested he could go to school when he was seven.
He obeyed his father like a puppy would its master. He desperately wanted to be independent and for his father to be proud of him. However, he was never given the chance to prove his independence. W!Gaster watched everything that he did. What he read and wrote, who he interacted with, and how much he was outside. There was no life without W!Gaster, but the constant torment, abuse, and daunting tasks lit a firey anger towards him, and he wanted nothing more than to escape.
But he didn’t know how.
Winter Sans wiped his tears from his skull before he collapsed on the bed, using his forbidden magic to move his books into the desk drawer. He would have to return those tomorrow if he could find the time and if he could sneak out properly. Thankfully, Winter!Toriel—the librarian—understood his situation. She was the one who told him W!Gaster was evil and taught him how to read. Before her, Winter obeyed everything W!Gaster told him to do without remorse. She showed him what an evil person he was, and ever since then, he hated his father. She told him she had a surprise for him tomorrow. Winter promised to try his best to get to the library without getting caught.
His tears had finally stopped. Winter felt his soul harden like ice as he stared at the cloudy sky. His ceiling was glass, which he didn’t like. He tried not to drown in self-pity. I have to do the dirty work… he thought. I don’t want to hurt people… I just want him to be proud of me.
He debated over and over in his head what he wanted more: his father’s approval or to do the right thing. He didn’t want to question his father, as he had no idea what he would do without him. How could he survive in the big scary world without someone to look after him? And that doesn’t involve someone dying…
His thoughts raced as the night endured. He figured he wouldn’t get much sleep. It would often hurt his head and affect his eyesight; he didn’t know how to tell W!Gaster that he was having vision problems when he got hit in the head or was slapped. He grunted, gripping his head. Why does my entire life involve him?! Why can’t I just be free? He broke into a fit of rageful sobs, pounding his bed. The screams started to come back again; if he fell asleep, they would become much more vivid. He got up and paced around his room quietly, clenching his head harder and harder until his vision blacked out. He fell onto the floor, unable to see anything.
Visions of his father hurting him and Winter hurting others flashed through his mind, leaving him paralyzed on the ground. His body shook like he had hypothermia. He couldn’t move, nor did he want to move. Winter wanted the pain to be over, he wanted to be done with it all, and he hadn’t even reached his seventh birthday.
I can’t take this anymore… Winter shuddered, curling up into a ball on the ground. I have to escape, I have to flee. I don’t want to kill or train to kill anymore…
His vision slowly returned as the picture on his wall became less blurry; he fixated on the two goats. Somehow, they’re caring gaze gave him a glimmer of hope, hope for him and his future.
For that brief moment, he felt at peace when he stared at the photo behind his father’s photo. He felt as if he was an innocent boy, able to be redeemed. He felt like he wasn’t so lost and broken that forgiveness was unimaginable for him. For a moment, he felt like a child, and he felt… happy.
Reality came back to him with a thud as a loud Gaster Blaster was shot downstairs. He reached for that feeling of hope, but it slipped right out of his fingers. His soul thumped in his chest as the screams returned as he wished once more that he could escape, and a single thought echoed through his mind.
Am I ever going to heal?