-Warning-
Reader discretion advised, some material in this story may be sensitive for some individuals because of details into topics such as suicide, depression, and anxiety.
A/N: Wow it has been quite some time since I've been on here. Wonderful to be back and part of another trash fandom! :D Anyways, should be back for now and once again it may be daily updates? Maybe.
Disclaimer: All of Undertale goes to Toby Fox. If you haven't played the game yet, seriously do. But, this story contains no spoilers of the game. You're safe from that here!
Special thanks to my beta: Amicus Mortis! (Bless your dear soul)
Chapter One= Anxiety
Opening your eyes slowly, you find yourself staring at the white ceiling above your bed until you feel a stinging sensation in your eyes. Quickly, you lift your hands and rub your eyes to get rid of the feeling. Even though you had a full night's sleep last night, you can still feel exhaustion weighing heavily on you. A yawn escapes your lips as the rubbing seems to have satisfied the stinging feeling and you stretch, lifting your small arms into the air. You watch your lucky blue shirt's sleeves fall down to your elbows as you stretch.
The smell of a good breakfast cooking is the next thing you notice as you drop your arms by your sides. You roll over on the top bunk of the bunkbed you share with another orphan and look to the door where the smell is coming from. You can hear your roommate still snoring loudly underneath you. The bright sunlight streaming through between the cracks of the blinds causes you to squint in order to see the rest of the messy room.
Pictures of Mt. Ebott and other nature places cover the walls, none of them straight and organized. Clothes, yours and your orphan roommate's, are scattered along the floor. Drawers with clothes hanging out of them line one wall and two desks next to them full of schoolwork and sketches remind you of what's to come for the day.
A sudden feeling of dread settles on you as you look at the homework on your own desk. It wasn't like you forgot any homework. In fact, you're ahead in class for once and on top of all of it. Not like the teachers noticed, though. Yet that thought seemed to cause the feeling within you to grow. You can feel your stomach drop in fear and your heart pound as you grip the white bedsheets. School. You don't want to go to school. You didn't like school at all.
Yet it is an easy thing to accomplish. You sit there, pretend you're paying attention, write notes, go home, and do the homework. Repeat until the weekend. It's an easy day to day thing to do. Completely perfectly fine.
So why do you feel like this?
The dread within you doesn't seem to be comforted by your thoughts of how easy school is as you find your breath starting to pick up like you are about to hyperventilate. What's going on? Your hands shake as you grip the bedsheets while feelings of anger and confusion flicker through your mind. Why are you acting like this? Why are you being like this? Why are you thinking like this? This is completely ridiculous.
You force yourself to take deep breaths until your breathing settles. After a moment or two of giving yourself motivation to move, you finally drag yourself out of bed. Your whole body feels weak and limp as you slide off the top bunk and onto the floor in front of your sleeping bunkmate. You stare at the child as they sleep, peaceful and blissfully unaware of the horrors of school.
Now what was that thought about?
More deep breaths. It's okay. You are going to be fine. It's just school. You remind yourself of this constantly as you start to move towards the door. Carefully, you avoid the clothes scattered on the floor like your room became a minefield. It's just school. You continue to assure yourself that everything will be fine over and over again as you reach the wooden door and pull it open. As you do, you are almost blinded by a stream of sunlight pouring through the windows. What was so hard about going to school? It was never this hard before.
Shaking your head, you try to swallow your unknown fear and dread about the day, but to no prevail. You force your way down the long hallway marked with other doors for other orphans. It's fine. Everything's fine. Everything is perfectly fine. It's just all in your head. You remind yourself this over and over again as you carefully move down the stairs. Your hand runs along the peeling wallpaper to your right as you hear the sound of laughter from the other children awake below you.
You find your way into the mess hall and stand in a long line to get food behind a group of giggling girls as they talk about the random crush of the week. You were never interested in this kind of stuff. Maybe that was why everyone considered you an outcast.
The feeling of dread is still within you as adults hand you a plate of pancakes. Your hands are shaking and you're starting to feel sick too. You move away from the line and to an empty table in the back corner of the room. As you sit down, you notice people starting to avoid your table entirely to sit with their friends.
The syrup drips off your pancakes and onto your plate as you grip your chest, feeling your heart pounding. What is wrong with you? Seriously. This is just a normal day at school. You need to get it together. Breathe. Everything is fine. You're fine. You're just overreacting.
Someone suddenly sits at the table in front of you, causing the entire table to shake. You jump in fear at the sudden change, looking up quickly and grabbing for your plastic knife as a weapon of defense. Your hands shake as you grip the knife tightly before releasing it when you see it's just your roommate. Oh. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. You're okay. You're okay. You remove one of your hands from your heart and grab your plastic fork to try to eat.
"Did you see the sunrise today?" your roommate asks. You glance down to their plate as they quickly rip apart the pancakes with a fork and start devouring them in big bites. They already have their backpack on their back and adventure gear on with water bottles and bandanas. In the back of your mind, you wonder if they're going to try to find a way up Mt. Ebott instead of going to school again. "You can see the ocean glistening in the sunlight! So did you? Did you see the sunrise?"
You quietly inform your roommate that you hadn't seen the sunrise. Yet as soon as you finish informing him, you realize that talking suddenly seems to be very hard as the dread continues to eat at you from the inside out. It feels like there's something stuck in your throat and it's stretching uncomfortably, threatening to rip out of you and be free. What if it came out and was actually a monster like in the stories the adults would tell the kids to scare them? The thought makes your breath come out just as fast. More irritation pricks at you as well as the fear and dread as you grip the checkered tablecloth. Deep breaths, you remind yourself. Deep breaths. It's fine. It's just school.
"Just school?" The voice in your head is back and you grip the tablecloth even tighter than before as the voice laughs in delight at your fear. "It's not like you're going to have to deal another day alone again! Or that you'll have teachers ignore your pain and other students give you all those weird looks! It's going to be a wonderful day full of more suffering for the both of us!"
Everything seems to go into slow motion as you take shaky breaths. Your roommate continues talking in front of you about adventure and sunrises, but you can't focus on what exactly they're saying. Everything they say begins to blur together and doesn't make sense anymore. Soon it all fades into a faint and distant echoing sound. Can they not see what's going on to you? Are they that blind and ignorant that they can't notice you're practically hyperventilating? Can they not see your signs of distress? You feel sicker now. You feel like you're drowning. You can't breathe. You feel tears coming into your eyes as the voice in your head laughs again.
"Oh come on. Stop being such a big baby. It's just school. What's so bad about being there with all these people who hate you? You're such a crybaby. Suck it up."
The lump in your throat is suffocating you as you try to keep down your tears. Through the haze, you can hear yourself breathing heavily. Tears are dripping down your face and they feel like they're on fire from how hot they feel against your cold face. You can't see anything anymore, just a black room with a green little hill in the middle of it. There's someone on the hill. Someone you can't make out through the blurriness in your vision.
Suddenly, the lump in your throat feels like it's trying to jump out. To escape by force. It's burning your throat and it rises into your mouth, filling it. You can't breathe at all now. You're drowning on land. You're dying. Is this what it feels to die? You quickly turn your head and release the lump, throwing up.
You vision suddenly comes back and you find yourself staring in confusion at the mess you have made all over the floor and on the table. Your body is trembling as you grip the tablecloth and feel the tears on your face. You're sniffing, trying to keep the snot from falling down your face as well. An acidic taste is left in your mouth and you're panting heavily.
With the sound of you panting, you realize there's an uneasy silence in the room. You lift your head slowly, realizing there's drool running down your chin. You wipe it away in disgust and slowly look through your short brown hair to look at the other orphans in the room.
Your heart drops deep into your stomach and the dread returns ten times as hard as you see that everyone is silent. They're all staring at you. Looks of disgust and annoyance sit on many of their faces. The rest have looks of pity. Even the adults have similar looks as they watch you from afar. Nobody makes the first move to help you out, all seem content to stare at you first.
Finally, a few adults come over to help you with concern on their faces now. They put up signs for the other children to watch out for the slippery floor and one leaves to grab a mop. Another adult helps you to your feet and they continue to help you stay standing.
You find your voice shaking after a few moments of silence and ask the adult if you have to go to school. The other children are whispering to each other now. They're talking about you, you just know it. Were they making fun of you?
"No, you're sick." Was the simple answer and with that, all the tension leaves your body. You almost collapse to the floor from relief, but the adult helps you stay standing. The dread and the fear had left your body like they had suddenly sprouted wings and flew away. The sick feeling had left just as quickly with it. You find yourself almost crying from relief. You aren't entirely sure why you feel relief when school isn't hard anyways and quickly you scold yourself for feeling like this. This is ridiculous. You could've put up with another day of school.
"How pathetic." The voice taunts quickly. "Make an impression on the adults so you don't have to go to school. What a useless wimp."
With their words, a feeling of sadness settles in on your soul and you lower your head to stare at the marble floor beneath your feet. They're right. You did make an impression to not go to school.
As the adult helping you stay standing starts to lead you back to your room, your roommate quickly asks you if they can have your unfinished breakfast.
-XXXXXXX-
You find yourself unable to get up and out of bed hours later. Lying on your side, you stare blankly at the pictures of Mt. Ebott in front of you. Rumor had it that everyone that goes up the mountain never comes back. You're not sure why your roommate finds such interest in a death mountain when every adult tells children to stay far away from it.
The room is dark now that the sun is high in the sky and no longer shining through your window. You look at your hands, staring at the lines running through them before putting your face in them. A sigh escapes your lips as you feel dread starting to settle in for going to school tomorrow. Not again.
"You know…" The voice starts to say.
You quickly tell the voice to go away. It is not helpful.
"That's what you always say, but deep down you're listening to me. Sooner or later you'll see that I'm right."
You find yourself unable to respond.
"I can't believe you can't handle something as simple as school. Really. I bet I could go to school and do a better job than you could."
Some part of you wants to challenge the voice's words, seeing how it's just imaginary, but you are also too tired to even try to argue with it. You decide to say nothing again to the voice. Besides, if you started talking aloud to an invisible voice, people were going to start to think you were crazy. You take deep breaths and try to think of happy things, like the last time you saw your parents when they visited you.
But you can't. Why did you act like this today? It's never happened before. Sure over the past few months you had started to feel sadness every time you went to school, but that didn't explain what happened today. What was that? And why was it attacking you against your will? Maybe you were sick and after a bit of rest, everything would go away.
You drift to sleep slowly, the voice still taunting you in the back of your mind, reminding you of your worthlessness to not being able to handle a single day of school.