It was an incredibly good thing that Gaster had reunited with his creations when he did, as it meant he had somewhere to go to calm down on the rare occasions that his work became too aggravating.

When he finally managed to shove aside the lingering thoughts and ideas about the DTW project, and finally moved on to other ideas to break the Barrier, only to come to the conclusion that he had no other ideas, and inevitably got fed up with the whole thing, it meant he could slip away from the True Lab, and come to the little hotel room in New Home, and, at least for a little while, forget all the problems besieging him.

It used to be that his favorite place in the Underground was the True Lab. He knew it well, knew every inch of space, knew what every single funny-looking switch and large red button did. The place was his place, it obeyed his command, it followed his orders.

But now, Gaster's favorite place to be was the hotel.

Well. No. That wasn't true.

His favorite place to be was with Sans and Papyrus, wherever they may be, whether that was New Home or Hotland or Waterfall or Snowdin.

And it was to the brothers that he went when things at the Lab got too chaotic, or when he made things at the Lab too chaotic or too frustrating.

They helped him. Immensely.

There were questions, of course. Never directly to him, but he could still hear them, the questions and the rumors, whispered by nervous employees, behind his back.

Where does he go?

What does he do?

He never used to leave the Lab. Now he does on a daily basis, sometimes even in the middle of the day. Why?

...What went wrong?

But it never bothered him. It was none of their business, and he did nothing to make it their business.

By the time Sans was twenty one and Papyrus seven, (Papyrus being almost half an inch taller than Sans now,) something occurred to Gaster.

"Hey... Hey, boys."

They both looked up from what they were doing (Papyrus homework, and Sans napping) to look at Gaster.

"You know, I have a perfectly good house in Snowdin. All expenses paid, bigger than this little hotel room."

"are you suggesting..." Sans trailed off.

Gaster looked at Papyrus, who was just looking confused. "Hey, Papyrus. Wanna move to Snowdin? There's a big empty house there, one that needs some occupants."

"Oh, can we?!" He looked at Sans.

Sans nodded. "sure, if ya want."

Papyrus grinned.

~o0o~

Moving commenced that weekend. The brothers had lived in that hotel room for a good few years, now, and had amassed a considerable collection of odds and ends. Sans found it had not been the washing machine at the laundromat's that had been swallowing all his socks, but, in fact, the depths of the darkness under his bed. When they learned that, Gaster got a good few laughs out of it by pulling the dusty socks out from under the bed and throwing them at Sans.

Sans made a lot of puns about getting socked in the skull.

Papyrus wished Sans would stop with the puns, and was annoyed that they were getting dust everywhere and had Sans really bought that many socks and lost them all UNDER THE BED?? but that was all outweighed by his happiness at seeing his family so happy.

Eventually, Sans grabbed a mismatched pair of socks and stuck his hands in them, then tackled Gaster, shouting about the socks wanting revenge for being thrown around without their consent. For a moment, they tussled on the floor, and then Papyrus thought it looked like fun, so he jumped on top of Sans, and it turned into a three-way wrestling match. Papyrus was unanimously victorious.

Sooner or later, packing got underway again. And really, the brothers didn't have too many possessions, just a lot for living in a hotel room. About three boxes per person, not to mention the fact that they didn't have to take the furniture since it belonged to the hotel.

They spent the night, their last night, in the hotel. It was already late, and no one wanted to be carrying boxes in the dark.

And in the morning they slipped out the door, each of them carrying two of the six boxes.

The hotel owner was sad to see Sans and Papyrus go. They had been living in the hotel for five years, and, granted, while it had become more of an apartment-type thing for them, the hotel owner had always been able to count on a bit of money from them each month.

But then they were trekking through New Home, Hotland, Waterfall, and, finally, as it began to get dark, into Snowdin.

Papyrus hadn't been to Snowdin often, just once or twice, and never for very long. He hadn't known the big house just outside town was Gaster's, and was pleasantly surprised when he learned.

Sans had only been inside Gaster's house once before, eight years ago. He found things really hadn't changed much at all: it was still sparsely furnished, and everything still had a fine layer of dust on it.

Of course, Papyrus refused to let this stand. He found a few rags, from where, no one but he knew, and drafted his family into helping him clean the house.

They hadn't done more than just grabbed the rags  before Sans passed out on the couch, exhausted from the long walk. No amount of shaking could wake him up, so it was just Papyrus and Gaster.

Gaster was astonished with not only the vigor and enthusiasm that Papyrus came at the task with, but also his efficiency. He instructed Gaster to start at one side, and he at the other, and work towards each other. Gaster hardly needed to look at Papyrus's work afterwards to know that he had done an excellent job.

Gaster found himself musing that Papyrus would one day make an excellent lab assistant. Then he mentally chided himself. Of course Papyrus would be a good lab assistant. He would be a good anything! Gaster had made him, so of course he was the greatest.

Gaster told him so. Papyrus had been quite happy with that.

Papyrus had also wanted to tackle the upper floor, but Gaster had said they should get some rest. It was Papyrus's first day at his new school, of course, and Gaster had to go to work.

So, reluctantly, Papyrus settled down, snuggled between Sans and Gaster on the couch.

~o0o~

Monday evening, Gaster showed up at the house with a bit of homework for himself. There had been an idea about rerouting the CORE's power into the Barrier, and doing... something with it to break the Barrier. But what that something was, he didn't know.

So as Papyrus worked on the homework he had acquired in school that day ("it was great!" He had told them. "I made friends with everyone!") Gaster worked on his own homework, while Sans... Sans was Sans. He alternated between seeming to be asleep, or cracking jokes.

After a while, Gaster got fed up with it and decided he needed a break. Papyrus had long since finished his work, so Gaster offered to help him clean up upstairs. Of course Papyrus accepted.

When they got up there, it appeared that Sans had already taken up residence in one of the rooms. They could tell because the box that had been completely filled with Sans' formerly lost socks had been upended in a corner of the room.

Gaster had taken Papyrus by the shoulder and guided him out. "Come. We'll leave Sans to his own devices, alright?"

Papyrus agreed.

Eventually, Sans came upstairs, and "helped" them clean up.

And then, once they had gotten all the dust swept away and situated Papyrus in the second room (he had asked where Gaster was sleeping, and the response had been "I'm happy with the couch.") it was back to work with Gaster.

He was having a very hard time with it.

"aw," Sans encouraged, "i'm sure you'll get to the core of the issue sooner or later. there's no barrier that can hold the great dr. gaster for long! you'll figure out how to get by it eventually."

Gaster had paused. Looked at the paper. Looked at Sans. Looked back to the paper.

"What if..."

"yeah?"

"What if that's it? What if we can't break the Barrier?"

"aw, dings, you can't be so pessimist-"

"What if we just have to get by it, instead? Bypass it somehow. Jump over it. Take a shortcut around it."

He lapsed into silence, and Sans realized he wasn't going to be doing much talking at the moment, so he left to go play with Papyrus.

~o0o~

The next morning, Gaster gathered up a few of his scientists.

"I have an idea." He told them.

"Oh no." Jeff mumbled, recognizing the wild glint in his employer's eyes.

"We're not going to break the Barrier."

"Oh no."

"We're going to fold space over it."

"... What."

Grinning, Gaster grabbed up a sheet of paper. "Let's say this piece of paper represents the plane of space, right?" Pulling a pencil out of his lab coat pocket, he drew a line down the center of the paper, and carefully labeled it "THE BARRIER." On one side, he drew a dot, and labeled that "US." On the opposite side of "the Barrier," he drew another dot, and labeled it "THE SURFACE." "So we're here, and this is the Barrier. Now, we can't break it, and we can't get through it. But, what if..."

He picked up the paper and folded it, then folded it again, so the "US" dot touched the "THE SURFACE" dot, and the "THE BARRIER" line was lost in the folds.

"See? We fold space."

"W-what, like t-teleportation?" That was Alphys, the newest intern. She really was intelligent, a budding genius with mechanics. She was incredibly shy and self conscious, and normally Gaster couldn't stand that, but in her case, it made her think things through and she avoided doing stupid things like blowing stuff up in order to keep attention away from herself. Really, it only just brought Gaster's attention to her, but in a good way since he was getting her to join projects instead of kicking her out.

"No. Not teleportation." Gaster started in what Sans called his "Royal-Scientist-lecture-mode" voice. "Teleportation is instantaneous. No delay, nothing in between. It's not even you're here, and then you're there. Teleportation is the immediate disassembly of molecules and reassembly of said molecules in a different location. It's your here-there. This, though... You'd be stepping out of space, then back in. There would be an instant where you would not exist in the plane of space, and then you would exist again, in a different spot. This is... folding."

Alphys glanced at Jeff, who just shrugged. It made about as much sense to him as it did her.

But Gaster seemed confident it would work, so they would have to make it work.

§

A/N

A quick visual reference for Gaster's "folding":

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Remember, votes and Comments are not only always welcome, but always appreciated, too!