AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey all. The rarest type of fanfic for me...a true one-shot (only eight pages). For Christmas 2017 my friend asked me to write her an "Undertale" fanfiction, but it took me an entire year to finally think up one and this is what I came up with.

This story is post-Pacifist Run with some spoilers.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Asgore had always believed that; truly and completely. And because of that he had long awaited today the same as he did every year.

It had played out much as it had during the previous decade. December had waned and so around this time of year there was little need for gardening. His normally busy occupation was now reduced to occasional raking or, on certain days, hanging up holly and wreaths. Although he continued to come to work with a smile and perhaps a bit more cheer and spring in his step than one would think for such an old monster, it was nothing too exciting or sophisticated for his normal business around the school. No, what made him light up progressively more every day was the same thing that made the children light up. What was coming. What seemed to build in joyful anticipation and eagerness with each little notch on the calendar marked off.

Just like in previous years, he had made it back to his small apartment in half the time today. That was even accounting for his yearly tradition: asking Toriel if she would care to stop by for a mug of hot chocolate or even a glass of cider. (And Toriel, of course, had responded with her own yearly tradition—politely declining while at the same time giving him that look that he knew from years of experience meant: "You have exactly five seconds to start walking away before I start summoning fire.") His step was just that brisk. In no time at all he found himself inserting his key into the lock and opening up into his almost miniscule three-room domicile. The kitchen and living room were cramped in one chamber, the bedroom in another, and in a third room which was more of a closet sat the tiny restroom. One would have thought a monster the size of Asgore would have felt rather like a sardine in a can even sitting in a place like that, but he didn't mind.

It was cheap, and he had spent enough of his life in roomy houses. When there wasn't anyone to share them with, they were lonely places.

He still wore the smile he had at school as he rapidly took off his coat and made his way to the closet. He opened it straight up and his eyes gravitated toward the back. A black zipper bag hung there. He had learned quickly that for as open as the upper world was it seemed to get dirtier faster, and after one particularly disastrous year in which he walked in on a group of children so layered with dust that one would think he had just gone through a massacre, he took better measures to keep his special suit clean.

Now he rapidly pulled it out, hung it on the door hook, and unzipped it. He almost beamed at what was on the other side.

His own Christmas tradition.

Looking at it made him think of that word. It was one of the funniest things to him. Who would have thought that the humans would have had a tradition so close to what his own had been? He supposed he must have heard it from somewhere long ago when he was a boy, before the wars and before the Barrier. He had to have reinvented it for the Underground without even thinking. Yet hearing that his time-honored tradition was by no means unique to his imagination or exclusive to monsters on emerging from the Underground did little to stifle Asgore's spirit for the holiday. He didn't care if it was called Christmas, Red Suited Man Brings Presents Day, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever. It was the spirit that was important to him. The feeling he got from it.

Of course, he thought as he began to remove the coat from the bag, that isn't how I always saw it.

The suit he removed from the bag was far nicer than the one he used to have in the Underground. Toriel had made that one for him years earlier and, to be honest, he was always a better gardener than a tailor. It had gotten beaten up over the years. The elbows and knees grew shabby, the white trim grew discolored, and putting a fur-lined red suit on a fur-covered monster wasn't a good way to prevent it from stinking of sweat. And it wasn't as if New Home was very close to any place that offered dry cleaning services.

Even without Toriel around it was only a few years into noticing its deterioration to start thinking about what she would say. She would scold him for putting so little effort into it. That if he was going to make a big show to brighten up the day for the kids in Snowden then he needed to at least put the effort into keeping up a decent suit. None of the kids wanted presents from someone who would look like a smelly, crazy hobo. Eventually, it grew so bad that he didn't even hear Toriel scolding him sometimes but rather his own voice. And yet he kept wearing it just the same.

One year it got especially bad. Originally he let children sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted, and he would hand-pick their gift for him. Yet there came the one year where the first child sat down and Asgore saw him immediately wrinkle his snout in disgust, looking right at him with a look that said "pee-you".

After that, he didn't let the kids sit on his lap anymore. He simply handed out their gifts to them without asking. Yet still the suit remained in its poor condition, and still he continued his yearly tradition.

Now, of course, that suit had long since been abandoned. The one he pulled forth from the garment bag was magnificent. Hollywood wouldn't have produced a Santa Claus with a better suit. The fur trim was groomed, the red velvet brushed clean, and the ties (not buttons) were brass that gleamed like gold. Custom-tailored for him too. Right down to the hemmed hole in the back for his tail. It had cost about three months worth of his meager salary, but he didn't mind. The kids were worth it. Today was worth it.

That was a much different attitude from what he had ten years ago, although he found himself doing the same things he did above ground as he did below it. As he finished removing the suit, he turned back to the closet and opened it a bit more, exposing the mirror that was on the door's backside. The room he stood in now, obviously, was different than how it was then, but always the same figure always looked back at him; exactly the way he was last year.

Exactly the same.

After thinking about it for years, he supposed that was around the time he let the suit start to deteriorate. It wasn't Toriel leaving him, taking away the last remains of his family with her, but when he noticed it. When he opened the closet up to don the red suit again as he had every year, and he noticed that he was still the same…and he first realized that he would be the same forever now. From then on, he kept smiling, he kept gardening, he kept humming to himself, and he kept putting on the suit and handing out the presents. Something, however, had changed that day. Something inside him grew dim.

And it kept growing dimmer with each hollow box in the basement that was filled—no matter how much he kept smiling, how much he kept gardening, how much he kept humming to himself, and how much he kept putting on the suit and handing out the presents.

There was a time he thought of quitting it, he recalled as he began to take off his shoes. Like most monsters, he had expected the day the Barrier would fall to be one of the happiest ones in his life. Perhaps not quite as happy as it would be for everyone else, but happier than he had been in a long time. And emerging from the Underground, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face and seeing the sky stretching as if it were truly endless, did indeed make him feel bright for a few wonderful minutes.

Then he noticed it. Something clinging to him. A darkness. A shadow cast by the warmth of the sun. A hollowness ringing in the endless sky. A feeling that clung to him like a persistent cold chill at first, and was dismissed just as easily, but, as time went on, he slowly began to discover no warmth could chase away.

He remembered everything happened exactly as he had dreamed it, as he undid his belt and removed his pants and shirt next. The humans had largely forgotten that monsters even existed, and they were so few in number and so innocent and akin to them that forgiveness and reconciliation happened almost instantly. He received his quiet job of doing the only thing he wished to do now, garden, and was at last able to shed the burden of king and to put down his trident forever. He could enjoy the laughter and smiles of human as well as monster children whenever he wanted and never have to feel the weight of that grim sentence hanging over his head dictating his actions.

And yet it wasn't enough. The chill stayed. The feeling of acceptance and forgiveness was like a sour medicine in his stomach. His gardening which had once chased off his melancholy now offered him no relief. Each smile and laugh felt like a bitter sting in his flesh. Slowly he began to realize the truth.

Being out of the Underground hadn't freed him from the haunting feeling he felt walking around his empty house, so meticulously handcrafted to resemble his original. It didn't take away the sound of the echo that resulted each time he opened the door to that empty bedroom where his two children once slept. And no amount of shrubs or flowers could erase from his memory their six faces…faces of innocence…faces who had never wanted anything more than to go home just like every other monster in the Underground. Their fear…their pain…their last few moments of misery knowing they would die in that dark hole never seeing their families or friends again and that they would never even know what had happened to them…

Those were his gifts to them.

He remembered what happened next as he put on the red suit's pants. As it became more distinct in his mind his shrubs had grown irregular. The walk between his apartment and school took longer each day. His humming grew quiet. And even Toriel, who used to scold him every day, stopped her endless criticism and began to ask about him in the voice she once had when they still had their two children. He said nothing, though. He only put on that smile. The sad, empty smile of a foolish, weak man realizing he had nothing left but a look designed to drive away anyone's pity for him.

But by the time the leaves had fallen and the last of them had been raked, and the last shrub had turned into a bundle of sticks and twigs for the season, it had grown hard indeed to hide it under the guise of happy and cheerful work. It was then when Toriel had told him about the human holiday of Christmas for the first time, as well as the persona of Santa Claus. He smirked at the thought. He had to have been low indeed in spite of his smile and upturned chin if Toriel herself would come up to him and suggest he don his red suit again and hand out toys to both the monster and human children alike. Nevertheless, he was glad it had been her. If it hadn't, he wasn't sure if that would have been the first time ever he had said no to the tradition.

However, he had no suit. He had been eager to leave the Underground like all the others and had taken little with him. The old shabby suit was still down there, and he realized that meant he had to go back for it. It took him three full days to work up the courage to finally start heading back to the hole at the base of the mountain.

It occurred to him as he finished buttoning the coat and went for the dress boots that New Home had always been a lonely place. It was only him there, after all. Somehow, that day, it was even lonelier. He swore each footstep he took echoed so loud and long that it went all the way to the ruins of Home before coming back to him. It scared him, to be honest, but that only made him push himself on. Fear was a very small penance. Everything was there just as he left it. Each in its proper place, as it had been for countless years. Every creak of every loose floorboard, every slight chip of paint, and even the same scratch on the corner of his mirror. It didn't even look as if it had gathered much dust. Even the flowers seemed to be growing the same size and the same places, without him tending to them at all.

The Barrier was gone, all monsters now lived in the daylight, and yet it was still there. None of what had happened changed any of it.

The boxes in the basement were still there too, he was sure. He hadn't seen them since the day Frisk walked into his garden, and he hadn't wanted to. Frisk, however, went down there, and the child told him there was nothing inside but piles of old rags; like butterflies that had hatched from cocoons and flown away.

But the boxes were still there. Boxes that he himself built, put in his basement, and slowly but surely filled. Them being empty now didn't change that either.

The suit was right where he left it too. Still shabby, still dirty, and still in the corner. He thought he had to have gained some weight since he went to the surface, what with how better the food was up there…and lying to himself with another happy smile as he knew in his heart of hearts he was thinner now. He took the suit out piece by piece as he always had. He pulled the door open wide to see himself in the mirror as he always had.

Then, as now, he took off his shoes, removed his belt, pants, and shirt, leaving him standing only in his skivvies, and then donned the pants, the coat, the dress boots, and finally went for the last piece: the hat.

Countless times over countless years he had always done it the same way. Putting on the crown was always easy. It fit neatly in between his horns. The hat was something else. To be able to navigate it around so that the cap portion would fit on his head just right and not stick out awkwardly above his curled horns, he always had to tilt his head forward and use the mirror to place it on his head. At no other time of the year did he get a sight like that. His full head of hair, each one in its place, each one still healthy, blond, and growing; on the verge, perhaps, of beginning to show age but arrested just before it could begin. Each time, a shower of gold. Never changing. Never waning. The same shower every year, right before he pulled a hat over it.

And once again, he lowered his head to put it on, expecting to see the same thing he had seen every year. And then he froze, the hat toppling out of his grasp. New Home grew deathly silent again save for one long gasp from him, before he pressed his head close to the mirror to make sure his eyes weren't seeing things. He checked and rechecked a hundred times before he was certain of it, and when he did he collapsed to the ground like the red hat.

A gray hair.

Hours passed with him sitting there. He asked himself again and again if he had ever seen it before, but always the answer came back the same. He never checked his hair except once a year, and that was when he put on the suit. He had not been ageless for so long as to not know his own appearance so well. No monster did. That hair had never been there on any of the times before he had done this. It was there now. A part of him had aged. Maybe only a short time. Maybe no more than an hour, or ten minutes, or even five seconds. Yet it had aged. There was only one thing in the world that could cause him to age.

There was no red suit at Christmas that first year. When Asgore recovered enough of his composure, he went back through the long, lonely, dark, empty Underground and turned it completely over. He found nothing. Not the slightest sign of sentient life. Even the Froggits had left by now. He wasn't sure how many days he spent down there looking it over, but when he did finally reach the surface again it was snowing and Toriel, once again glaring, began to give him a lecture on how he had missed the holiday. Yet for the first time he could recall, during or after their marriage, he interrupted her to show her the hair.

For a few brief seconds, she was speechless. She looked almost as taken aback as he had. They passed, however, and she eased. She told him he had to have missed it. His hair was so thick it would have been understandable, even in the span of hundreds of years, to never see the one gray hair on his head. He insisted this was the first he had ever seen, and that there was only one way for this to be possible. He said some miracle had to have happened. Perhaps Dr. Alphys' work had succeeded somehow. Perhaps breaking the Barrier somehow did it. He went on and on until at last her face again took that firm expression, she placed her hands on his shoulders, and she looked him straight in the eye.

"Asgore…Asriel and Chara are gone."

He didn't believe it or, more succinctly, he wouldn't. And he looked on the upper world. Monsters hadn't lived underground for so long in the same space to be so eager to commence a diaspora as soon as they had more room than they knew what to do with, but even so it was foolishness to think he could find everywhere a monster had gone since the Barrier fell. It didn't stop him from trying. He completely neglected his job and his apartment, so say nothing of his appearance and health. He looked everywhere for them. Every road he turned down, every tree he looked behind, and every building he stepped into, he was certain that he would see him standing there. If he just kept going and kept searching, he'd find him. Today would be the day. This hour would be the hour. He stopped only to look at his hair time and again. The gray hair urged him on, but always he searched for more. For confirmation. For a sign. For hope to not give up.

But the days passed, and only that one gray hair remained. And as winter continued, his energy and enthusiasm was slowly spent. He gradually made his way back to his apartment. He went in, locked the door, and sat in a darkness far deeper and more overhanging than that of the Underground.

He propped the mirror in front of him and spent hours, perhaps even days, staring at the gray hair. It never changed, and neither did any of the others. Why? Why was it here? His spirits sank. They hadn't been that low since the time it happened; when he first made his rash row and swore things that his gentle soul could only utter when wrapped in the flames of a father's grief over the loss of his family. He longed for his garden. The garden he had tended for so many years. He used to have strange dreams that, if only he would keep tending the flowers, keep watering them and making them grow, that someday he would find his sons among them. Perhaps that was what made him keep tending it rather than peace of mind. Some hours, he would do nothing but weep. Weep and whisper the same futile vow into the darkness of his chamber—that he would gladly give up his own life a thousand times over if it would mean his son would live for just one more day.

Why now? Why when everything was done? Why when he and everyone else had finally left the Underground? When they were finally free to move on?

It was on that final thought that, after so much time sitting in dark and gloom, he realized the truth.

He wasn't free to move on.

He might no longer live in New Home, but he was still in the Underground. He had never departed. Every time he planted new bulbs he was in his old flower garden. No matter how open the sky and the air he still heard his cheerful humming echoing off of cave walls. And no matter how many cheap shirts and pants he wore he could still see himself in his attire of state with a crown on his head. He could even feel it. He was still there because he couldn't leave. No, because he wouldn't leave.

Everything about him…the sun, the birds, the clouds, the open skies, the feel of daylight on his skin, the endless ocean of stars, the scent of grass, the rustling of trees, the roar of the ocean…the laugher and smiles of children most of all…he didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve any of it. Frisk had walked from one end of the Underground to the other not killing a single member of the monster race, but the child should have slain at least one. There was one death that should have gone into breaking the Barrier. That one more than anyone's.

It was what he deserved…and more importantly, what he wanted. How could he ever have any joy here? King Asgore: Ruler of Monsters—Murderer of Six Innocent Children. Children who had been someone else's Chara. Children who he had cowardly hoped would be the ones to end his suffering and absolve him of his obligation to his people, and yet he never had the bravery to either finish the job or let them finish him. Toriel was right—he was, first and foremost, a coward. And he saw a coward looking back at him every time he put on that red suit. Someone who didn't deserve the love he had in his life. Certainly not someone who deserved to so magnanimously hand out gifts to children no older than those six.

He thought he would see that person looking at him every time he looked in a mirror for the rest of his life. Every day, he would always see himself exactly as he was the very day he watched one of his sons crumble to dust holding the body of the other. The exact moment when he lost everything. Frozen in time at that very day and that very hour. That was the real reason he knew the gray hair was new. It was the one imperfection compared to that same guilty face he had seen all the times before.

And when he realized that, he realized maybe that was why it was now there.

He was out of the Underground, but just as everything else was still the same to him, he still wished some child would come along and finish him. He still wanted to die for what he had done, and now he no longer had the excuse that he had to live for the sake of his kind to stop him. He felt he didn't deserve this world and he had slowly been realizing he didn't want to be a part of it. That he couldn't take the happiness of trimming hedges, watering flowers, and seeing the smiles and laughter of children knowing who he was and what he had done.

Maybe this small gesture, this single hair, was trying to tell him something. He wasn't in the Underground anymore. He wasn't King Asgore anymore. He couldn't go back and keep himself from filling those boxes in the basement, but perhaps the reason he was here, perhaps the reason he was still alive, perhaps even the reason Frisk let the dagger fall to the ground even knowing who he was, what he did, and what he had intended to do if he had won that fight, was to be someone else. To let everything that was down in the Underground stay buried there. To truly forget about the days of the Barrier and what it meant for everyone.

The fact that he had a gray hair was nothing short of an impossible miracle. It might not have meant that he'd ever see Asriel again, but that didn't mean somehow he hadn't made it possible. Perhaps, he had now thought, he was trying to tell him something.

To let what happened go. To let his memory of him, the Underground, the children, and all the time spent living in fear and hopelessness go. To realize that a new life for the Monster Race included one for him.

To stop letting some old, worn-out suit fall apart…hoping one day that someone would tell him he couldn't do it anymore.

Every year since then he looked at the gray hair. This year, just like all the others, he stood there looking in the mirror with the furred cap in his hands staring at it and unable to look away. And always, when he broke at last and slip on the cap, he would smile. No longer the smile of a man trying to chase away sympathy or concern. Now it was the smile of the man who remembered the greatest gift he had ever received.

The hat on, he stepped back and looked himself over. Perfect. The suit looked almost like new without the slightest wrinkle or thread out of place. He ran his fingers through his beard a few times, making sure it was properly "fluffed" out. He had thought of dyeing it in the past, but he figured if the human children didn't mind a Santa Claus with horns and goat-like face, having one who still had almost all of his original hair color wouldn't disturb them.

He nearly turned to go, but caught himself. He had to remember to bring his "list" along with him. Tonight he'd just be asking the kids what they wanted. He'd bring it to them in two weeks for the holiday proper. Honestly, he couldn't tell which moment he liked more, the wonder on being able to talk to "Santa" personally or the amazement on getting a gift from him, but he did know he didn't want a repeat of four years ago in which he had forgotten to bring something to write their gift requests down with. It had been a rather stressful end of December trying to remember exactly what 300 or so monster and human children had requested, and he'd rather be free to enjoy both the moment and the season.

He had to rummage a bit, but he finally found a set of special stationary that he purchased eight years back that looked sufficiently "Christmasy" to pass for something that Santa Claus might carry around. Tucking that into one pocket, he headed for the door. As he got out his keys to lock it behind him, his hand went for the light switch.

Before he hit it, he looked back to the mirror one more time. Though the cap was on his head, he could still see the gray hair in his mind's eye underneath it. The thought made him smile all over again.

"Merry Christmas, Asriel. Merry Christmas, Chara."

And Merry Christmas to you all. (Luke 2:1-14)