#if i think about it any harder I'm legit gonna get teary eyed

[lover-of-skellies]

Buckle up, bros. It's angst hour, and boy have I got something to share with you

So I was just listening to music, and I decided to revisit the song "Gone Away" by Five Finger Death Punch. These were the lyrics that made the wheels in my brain start turning

And I had this absolutely heart wrenching realization: Famine and Pestilence. It's like part of their backstories, since Famine lost everyone he cared for to a genocide run, including his own life and his Papyrus, and Pestilence lost his entire AU, everyone he ever cared for, his sense of self/identity, his life, and his own Papyrus as well

While Famine could occasionally visit his abandoned/empty home AU and pay respects to his dead brother that way, Pestilence has nothing. He might have a familiar scarf tucked away somewhere, but he hesitates to touch it most of the time for fear that he'll taint it somehow

Maybe Pestilence would pay his respects to his own dead brother by going somewhere that he'd always talked about wanting to go. He's just really quiet and uncharacteristically serious for several days before taking off, and he takes the scarf with him. Death and Famine probably know what's going on, but War doesn't, and since no one tells her anything, she gets curious and decides to follow Pestilence. When he reaches his destination and War finally understands what's going on, he reveals that he knew she was there the whole time

He probably says something kinda rude, being caught up in his emotions and all, and rather than fighting back like she would've normally done, she chooses to let go of her pride and hug him, not saying a single word. When he latches onto her and tries to bury his face in her shoulder, she realizes he's actually crying, and seeing someone like him in a state like that probably makes her pretty sad too

Or alternatively, if she were to follow Famine instead, she manages to even slip inside his old house and makes it upstairs. She peeks into the room he went into and sees him sitting on the edge of a racecar bed, a wadded up scarf on the pillow and a storybook of some sort sitting open beside him. He's dead silent, just staring off into space and looking completely lost. When she actually makes her presence known, he's momentarily startled and slides back in front of the pillow with the scarf on it, as if he was trying to protect/shield it

War very slowly approaches the bed, sits beside him, and stays quiet, waiting for him to say something first. At some point, she sees him pick up the storybook and zone out again, and she very gently asks if he could read it to her. He's confused and tries to deny it for a bit at first, but when he starts reading and she watches him slip into it, it's like he becomes a totally different person. Instead of being scary, intense, and dangerous looking, he looks at peace, much gentler than she'd ever seen before, and even happy, to a degree

When the story's over, he doesn't seem to wanna put the book down, and he goes back to looking completely lost and broken again

#undertale #undertale au #rambles #four horsemen of the apocalypse #war.exe #pestilence.exe #famine.exe #death.exe #rip my heart #if i think about it any harder I'm legit gonna get teary eyed #hhhhhh