ENTRY NUMBER 19:
* oh god no please no not this not again no no NO
* UNDYNE!
That bug kid sure was taking their sweet time.
In fairness, navigating Waterfall could be tough for a newbie, but the Riverperson was docked literally right outside the lab. Maybe they did get lost, or they just got cold feet once they reached Snowdin. Whatever. Alphys would show up sooner or later, and the delay was buying Sans the time he needed to cool down.
He should've guessed she would pull something like this, should've connected her regular disappearances to the time she used to spend sitting alone with that jar when she thought he wouldn't notice. Instead he'd veered off into conspiracy theory territory and screwed himself over. Again. And so now, again, it was going to be his job to just fix this mess somehow, even though he wasn't the one who started it. He didn't even like cleaning up his own messes, let alone the ones anybody else made... but he'd already accepted the task by sending Cabbage off to go bug Alphys, didn't he?
Dammit. Jeezus. If they didn't already catch onto the full meaning of what they'd glimpsed, they'd figure it out soon. Then what? They weren't the first to think of seeking her help, and she wasn't the only one to keep a jar of dust around too long. Nobody would be happy with this. Even if they'd liked Undyne.
Sans ran a hand across his face as he set aside the medical chart he'd been, at some point in the distant past, reading. His skull felt like two giant hands were squeezing it, thumbs pressing into his temples until just looking at the words on the pages made him want to find out what would happen if a skeleton barfed. His fingers ran down to his chin and he finally noticed that he'd been grinding his teeth—a bad habit from when he was a babybones. He relaxed his jaw and waited for the soreness to fade. Breathed in. Held it. And back out.
...Then there was, well... Undyne. She was always too self-assured to hide her emotions, visible-from-orbit crush on a certain lizard lady notwithstanding, and it was that bold quality his brother always tried so hard to mimic. Sans had no idea how much of that person was left, and the vacant emptiness behind her eye freaked him out to a frankly embarrassing degree, but his knee-jerk reaction was wrong after all. Somebody was in there, somebody with enough awareness to feel the kind of palpable despair that choked the oxygen from a room. He could've walked in blindfolded and still sensed it. What was he supposed to do with that? He had a little more going for him than the average monster, he guessed, but at the end of the day he was just a weirdo who played pranks on his friends and did math like a kid smoking their dad's cigarettes, hiding in the shed behind the house. He wasn't cut out for this stuff.
in. count to five. out.
(Or was that just his excuse for avoiding responsibility?)
Sans quit counting. It was just old habit, anyway, from the time when he might actually flip out over a thing like this. It wasn't that he didn't care anymore, out of laziness or some other reason, but what would flying off the handle accomplish? The human, or the anomaly, or both, or whatever was going on in there—they had the power to fix all this. Even if his efforts to get through to them in that last hallway failed, eventually they'd get bored enough to erase their crimes from existence. He knew that type. Then Alphys would lose her crown and turn back into a self-hating recluse, which was probably bad, but she'd be a self-hating recluse with a best friend who wasn't dead, and that was clearly a tradeoff she'd be okay with making. Undyne could go back to the Sisyphean task of teaching Papyrus how to cook, and the also-sorta-Sisyphean task of suplexing boulders for fun. Sans would be with his brother again. Or they'd all be replaced with new versions of themselves, if that was how it all worked.
The important point was that nobody would even remember, and while there was nothing he could do to make that day come any sooner, nobody would remember however long it took to reach it. They wouldn't remember anything, in the end...
The weight of Undyne's misery pressed against his neck.
Cabbage never showed. Neither did Alphys.
Undyne (or whatever/whoever was in the tank) didn't give a damn about his presence, which was understandable and also maybe due to her still being whacked-out on pain meds or something. But it did nothing to reassure him about her mental state, much the opposite. Quietly ignoring people was never her style, and the old captain of the royal guard would've snapped him in half and eaten him for breakfast for seeing her in a situation half as vulnerable as this one.
Without any better ideas, he parked himself in front of the glass, falling back on his tried and true method of doing literally nothing in the face of tough situations. Since she'd kinda-sorta acknowledged his arrival and looked just a little too tense to really be asleep, he chose to believe she was just fresh out of damns to give about anything; other issues aside, she was about three times as big as the fishtank's originally intended occupants, which left her hardly any room to swim even if she'd wanted to try.
Funny enough, Sans was about 99% certain that the fishtank wasn't bolted shut when he last saw it.
So he stayed put and studied her, since there was no point in playing koi and pretending he wasn't. She was a pale but reasonably accurate imitation of herself; one eye, teeth like a busted zipper, and stubby ragged bits where ear fins belonged. But those features and remnants of features were visible only in glimpses from behind her crossed arms, and without them—like the crayon-scribble hairdo or glasses a little kid would include to identify one stick figure as mommy and another as daddy—she melted right back into the tangled pale blob he'd first seen. Less like a drawing, really, and more like one of those snow sculptures Lesser Dog used to make, with lovingly detailed expressions devolving into sloppy nonsense below the neck.
Which, in isolation... whatever. None of the Amalgamates (the other Amalgamates? Was a one-monster Amalgamate even a thing, purely by definition?) seemed upset about their looks. And even the lack of legs was a small issue in the, uh, long run, with a robotics genius like Alphys involved.
The lights flickered, veiling the room in dark and then half-light and dark and half-light before settling somewhere in the middle. The droning of the water filter cut off, then rumbled back to life. A shudder ran through the-monster-that-kinda-looked-like-Undyne, and she squinted over her arm up to the ceiling as if to locate the source of the disturbance. As her gaze slid past Sans, she paused for just the briefest moment before turning away and putting her head back down.
Sans remembered those signs he'd seen at the aquarium way back when he was little, and since he couldn't remember why you weren't supposed to do it, he scooted forward enough to reach the glass and knock on it. Three times, politely, like he was knocking on a door.
Undyne/maybe-Undyne twitched.
"sup, boss," Sans said.
It took her a minute to trace this new sound, and once she did, she watched him with the dull incomprehension of a person still half-asleep. It could have passed for a flat what is this dude's major malfunction kind of look, sort of, so Sans took what he could get and smiled back. In other words, his eyes crinkled a little.
"hey. you remember me, right? y'know. that guy always hanging around papyrus' place."
No response. But he couldn't really justify expecting otherwise, given that she was underwater and he didn't even have lips to try and read. His vertebrae were getting stiff from holding one position too long, so Sans slowly stood, feeling her inky-dark eye following him.
"i'd ask what's up, but... poor taste even for me, i guess," he said. And then he didn't know what else to say, beyond that. All they'd ever had in common was Alphys and Papyrus, but they liked Alphys in two drastically different senses of the word "like", and Papyrus was impossible for any well-informed person not to love. Sans had a healthy respect for Undyne and tried not to legitimately piss her off too often, and she never pulled rank to get him fired even though she should have, and she quit trying to slap him on the back or throw furniture at him after Papyrus informed her that MY BROTHER IS DISTRESSINGLY BREAKABLE!, but that was as deep as their bond ever went. And then the human stabbed her to death. Twice. So.
"..."
She blinked. And maybe she didn't hold their lukewarm non-friendship against him after all, or she didn't remember it, or she just was in no position to care, because she continued watching him long after the point at which she'd previously went back to fake-sleeping. Or zoned out. Or whatever else she was not-doing. It wasn't much, but whatever, it wasn't nothing.
Sans pressed his hand against the glass. It felt kind of hokey, but not the kind of hokey that would be worse than nothing. He wondered if there was some other way to communicate with her. Signing, maybe? A few of her guards weren't verbal (unless barks counted) so it was possible she might have picked up a little, but he'd never asked. Maybe that was okay, though. Not all gestures needed precise meanings.
The two monsters considered each other.
Maybe-Undyne's posture loosened up by degrees, enough for her to flick her tail and propel herself within reach of the glass. One mitten-like hand poked at where his fingers rested on the other side, leaving a sticky spot behind.
Slowly, her expression changed. It was subtle, the kind of change you might see only because it was what you hoped to see, but overoptimism hadn't been a concern for Sans in a while now. The facial features themselves weren't quite hers, more evocative of another skeleton than even a distorted fish monster, but there was the faintest spark of realization, recognition.
As if solely to confirm that he wasn't imagining it, her mouth moved. Once. There was no way to hear anything above the mechanical drone of the tank, but he saw the one syllable.
"...yeah. that's right. you do remember," Sans said, and even though this was all pointless and whatever recovery of self she might make would just be erased once time unwound, the relief was like a weight lifted from his SOUL. This whole scenario was still screwed up, definitely, but at least Alphys wasn't unintentionally torturing what would've essentially been an infant cloned from her dead friend.
Just... just the friend, instead. Maybe.
Undyne watched questioningly, eye narrowed and mouth downturned in a familiar faint scowl. Despite the squint, there was still something slightly unfocused about how she looked at him, like he was standing a little farther away than he really was. What was up with that? Did the other Amalgamates end up with messed-up vision, or did this have to do with being underwater for an extended period? That made no sense, she was a fish, it was literally her element. Maybe it had to do with the room's size, though he couldn't remember ever being bothered by that kind of thing.
"i know. you'd rather see papyrus," Sans said, quietly. "...heh."
"i wish he was here, too. ...sorry. i dunno what else to say. maybe he'd know, but... whatever. i dunno. sorry."
Still nothing. Sans jammed his hands back into his pockets. Undyne blinked at him. The whole self-conscious shtick of talking to somebody that couldn't hear you was kinda dumb when you thought about it. Cheesy at best and emotionally masturbatory at worst, like some human movie character talking to a gravestone, a dead body, et cetera. ooh, look at me, aren't i compassionate and emotional for talking to myself? And was he? There wasn't anything he could do to help her, even if he wanted; that ship sailed a long time ago. Even trying to help was pointless. Way too little, way too late. If Alphys couldn't convince her not to fling herself into danger, then Sans didn't have a prayer. No point. No point. Anyone could see that.
But as he backed away from the tank, she watched him with an intensity he wasn't sure he liked, any more than the blankness that had been there just a few minutes earlier. Like she expected something from him.
"alph won't like me being here, let alone trying something," he said. To himself. Even when Undyne made further attempts at words or maybe just noise, he heard nothing. She didn't hear him, either.
Yet it was like she really did hear, or maybe she just picked up on what he was thinking just from visuals alone. She wasn't dumb. As Sans backed away from the glass, Undyne burbled more and banged on the glass with both hands. Sans caught himself clenching his jaw too hard again. Tried to relax. It didn't work.
And even if he did, for however short a moment after entering the room, if he really did think about how simple the notes made it sound—bring the dead back to life, just add Determination!—then he didn't think about that anymore. His brother was safer as he was right now.
In comparison, Undyne...
...welp.
Judged, pinned down by that awful look, Sans remained balanced between two possibilities, neither any better than the other in the long run.
Eventually, with no easy method or strong desire to communicate what he planned, Sans left the room and tried his best to ignore Undyne as she frantically banged against the glass, unable to stop him. He didn't look back.
The aroma of butterscotch and cinnamon wafted up from the empty spot in the tin where a slice of pie had been cut away. By the doorstep, a monster lay crumpled like an abandoned doll. Bleeding to death.
Alphys leaned over the sink, not really in the kitchen or outside, or the RUINS at all. Her eyes were closed and she was watching the monitor, in her lab, waiting for another friend to die. It had been hours since Undyne collapsed to her knees and smiled and disintegrated, and Sans just vanished again—he'd evaded the human before, but his brother was gone and now she wished she'd tied him up in a sack or sat on him or something as soon as he set foot in the lab, if that was what it took. Now it was Mettaton's turn, and while the mercenaries who'd gone with him all did their best to hinder the human's progress, she knew it wouldn't be enough. The human dodged or tanked hits like it was all nothing, their knife flashed red, and the luckier monsters turned to dust instantly. The ones who were just incapacitated, unable to flee or fight... the human made it uglier than it needed to be.
And then Asgore would be next, she supposed. He never did pick up when she tried to call him.
Alphys couldn't say how long she stood there, claws pressed into the edges of the sink until her nail-beds ached, looking down at the bits of white fur lay clumped in the drain. The unreasonably beautiful pie was still on the counter, and somehow smelled even better than it looked, though she'd been kind of lightheaded for most of the morning and felt queasy just at the thought of food. A universe or two away, a monster in a wizard hat floated in the doorway, speaking to her. Or, she guessed they had to be talking to her. Her name was in there somewhere, though the rest went in one ear and out the other and splatted against the wall.
"I'm sorry," she said. She'd missed most of what was said, but this was the same Madjick who'd volunteered to guard her during the venture into the RUINS, and their voice went up at the end. Plus, she'd literally sprinted past a grievously injured person, so it wasn't like the wizard was asking about the wifi password. "I was just thinking, ahh. That I should... uh."
The answer was close enough to on-topic, she guessed, because the looked only the tiniest bit confused before answering: "The green magic isn't helping very much. We, hmm... two of us tried to use it."
Oh. Right. She sometimes forgot that other monsters could just throw magic around whenever they wanted, free of the performance anxiety and self-doubt that partially motivated her interest in robotics, and Madjicks were especially good at what they did. Even so, healing a monster's SOUL only did so much to stave off the effects of physical damage.
"Okay. That's fine, we'll just have to. Uh. Do s-something else? Too?"
Alphys grabbed a dishcloth the size of a small bath towel from the cabinet, pulled open the utensil drawers in a row, then gave up on the pie when she couldn't find any knives. If magic hadn't helped then food wouldn't either, and shoving a slice of pie down an unconscious person's throat would only be helpful in the sense that they might choke before whatever was already killing them had a chance to finish.
Meanwhile, the Madjick looked like they expected something to leap out of the cabinets at any moment, and followed Alphys outside so closely that they bumped into her when she stopped to open the front door.
In the time they'd both been gone, one of the other Madjicks had remained at the moth-monster's side, while the other, understandably, hid behind the withered old tree in the middle of the yard. It was what she would be doing too, if she could, if she didn't have an obligation to take care of the monsters who were now her subjects.
Not that she ever did a very good job at that, but...
Despite her companions' efforts at healing, the mothlike monster looked horrible, their clothing torn and stained silvery-green where cuts and gouges still bled. The sight brought back images that had been buried deep in her mind for a long time, but she hoped the sick feeling might go away if she ignored it long enough. Something about this didn't match up with what she'd seen, anyway—though painful-looking, the injuries all looked too small to be from the kind of knife the human had used. Not that she was any kind of expert.
The Whimsalot also had a familiar look to them, though they obviously weren't one of the monsters who went with Mettaton to the Core. She had to have met them recently, but now wasn't the time for trying to remember that. They were breathing only shallowly, the sound rattling ominously beneath the metal helmet, fairy wings shredded and wilted, a freaky version of those sparkly streamers on the handles on little kids' bikes. She wasn't sure which was worse, though there was no sign of dust yet. How much HP did this kind of monster even have, at most?
The guard-Madjick who'd followed Alphys out of the castle kept shooting nervous glances back inside. "This isn't safe, your majesty... they might still be nearby."
"Who?"
"The one who did this."
"Oh." Duh. Alphys grimaced. "There's no way another person would do this... and nobody should even be here except for us, anyway. And a human... well, we came in from this direction, and the door was locked, so. We. We would have had to pass by them at SOME point. ...I think." Unless they really were lying in wait, somewhere in the old castle, watching for some unlucky monster.
There was another reason to assume it wasn't a human, though. "Plus, y-you guys heard that voice. They said something about Chara, and, um, Sans? Which, kind of makes no sense. But they wouldn't know who they are, so..."
It seemed like the most reasonable thing to point out, but an uncomfortable silence settled over them all.
"You shouldn't touch them," the second Madjick stage-whispered from behind the tree, which would've been a funny image if somebody wasn't badly hurt. Even as they spoke, Alphys was already unfolding the towel and trying to put gentle pressure against one of the larger cuts in the small moth's side. "That voice near the flowers... the name, 'Chara'... it's a very bad omen."
She didn't have an answer for that one. Alphys slept in Chara and Asriel's old room, so it seemed to her that any evil ghost versions of themselves would be going after her instead, but she didn't know anything about omens, whether good or bad. Was that kind of ghost even real..?
The Whimsalot shuddered underneath Alphys' hands, startling her.
"H-hey!" she said. "Can you hear me? What happened?"
"We shouldn't have come here..." muttered the other Madjick.
The towel was beginning to soak through. Alphys folded it over and pressed down with just the slightest bit more force. The Whimsalot let out a pained squeak as she felt something give, crumpling beneath her hands with a wet crack. She gasped and recoiled, moving to cover her mouth with her hands before realizing how bad of an idea that would be. "Oh g-god, I'm s-s-sorry!" Even the quiet Madjick by her side grimaced.
"We aren't wanted here."
"That voice near the flowers... it sounded like it had been hurt. The one speaking. Whoever it might have been."
Looking again, it now seemed blindingly obvious that there was something very, very wrong with the shape of the moth monster's chest beneath their dress. Whatever had happened to them must have damaged their exoskeleton, cracking it badly. How would that translate to vertebrate terms? Broken ribs? No, not exactly, broken ribs weren't usually fatal. Now Alphys might have just made things worse. What could she even do, about the bleeding, or anything else? It smelled. Coppery, despite being a different color than what her own would look like. At least, watching from the monitor, she hadn't been able to smell anything.
Her hands were sweating, leaving damp patches when she wiped them against the bloody towel. What was she supposed to do? With Undyne, more Determination was a viable answer if only in the short term, but...
The moth shivered again and whispered faintly, "flower..?"
"The prince?"
Unconsciously, Alphys touched the hidden vial she carried with her, around her neck. Determination wasn't enough to stop the human at the bridge, and the lowercase-d determination of monsters like this one failed to help them, but all this one needed might be just a little extra time, a temporary solution. For such a small monster, it would just take a little. Undyne needed it more, but the amount might be so small that it wouldn't make a difference for her.
She really did consider it. For a few seconds. But then she'd have to find a way to explain what she was doing and where she'd gotten the vial, with three other witnesses right here. Memories of dying monsters in the Core haunted her now, called up again like that kind of ghost, but she'd seen worse.
"Possibly..."
"A-are you guys going to keep talking or, you know, actually HELP me?" Alphys snapped, sitting back on her heels in one big lurch that would have sent her toppling backwards if not for the extra balance provided by her tail. She hadn't meant to sound so harsh, but both Madjicks did shut up. Instantly. Both froze up while the third chuckled nervously, like a kid watching their teacher yell at somebody else. "We, we need to get them out of here. R-right away. There's a hospital in Hotland th-that we might be able to reach quickly."
The Madjick by the door hesitantly approached, and even the one by the tree came out of hiding. Alphys wasn't a naturally intimidating monster in any possible way, but being covered in blood did tend to "help"...
They rode to Hotland in the Riverperson's boat, all squished together to fit in the small vessel. A lizard in bloodied purple robes, three wizard monsters in varied stages of fear or anxiety, and a small, damaged moth-monster swaddled in towels, like a babydoll that fell into a trash compactor. The Riverperson said little to them after they boarded, and did not make any comment.
Unless their song about needing to buy extra birdseed was in some way relevant. Which it probably wasn't.
"It was nice of you to, ahh. To stay here," said Alphys, keeping her voice low. Too low, it seemed, because the Madjick sitting across from her in the waiting room did not answer. They held their hat on their lap, pinching the wide brim and turning it over and over in their hands. Two little kids in stripes ran past, one of them banging into the side of Alphys' knee before they darted off again. She pulled herself in tighter, trying to take up as little space as she could. Spin, spin, went the hat.
"Because. You didn't have to. Not that I think any less of your friends for leaving! B-but I appreciate it."
"Please and thank you?"
The drumming of running feet stopped as the kids' mom snagged one of their arms and whispered, eyes on Alphys herself from across the room. She responded with what she hoped was a reassuring smile before looking away, and wondering just how committed her companion was to the whole only speaking in magic words thing. Since there didn't seem to be any way to ask without being mean, she pulled her phone back out and pretended to be reading, although she hadn't touched her Undernet account for ages and Sans, true to form, wasn't answering any of her text messages.
She sat quietly. After peeling off her bloodstained outer robe, she was getting cold, even though the gown underneath was thick fabric that fell to her ankles. She waited.
Funny. Public spaces like this one always made her a little nervous, even before she became a total recluse; it always felt like people were secretly judging her for her clothes or for talking too loudly or moving in an awkward way without realizing, but she knew on an intellectual level that she was being too self-conscious. Now that the receptionist really was sneaking curious glances from over the page of her crossword, the old reassurance didn't hold water anymore. But for now, she didn't even care. Much.
Keeping the way into the RUINS open was a mistake. They'd all decided it was best to keep an escape route open with magic, because if the universe hated them enough to let a human suddenly appear just when they happened to be in the RUINS, the spell would dissipate with the life of the spellcaster. The door would slam back shut, sealing any human intruders inside the RUINS to starve. She hadn't counted on a monster trying to come in, though. Why would she? They had no reason to try, and no way to know the door would even be open.
Then there was the voice. Or voices, maybe. Curses and omens and those kinds of things seemed like nothing but the stuff of creepy stories, but something dangerous was in the RUINS. Not a human, and definitely not a monster.
Flower..?
Alphys stared at her phone until the screen shut off. Then she put it away.
The doctor returned, waving for Alphys and the remaining Madjick to follow.
A nurse shaped like a patchworked teddy bear hurried in the opposite direction as the three monsters left the waiting room. A spider monster brushed past them with several trays of medicine of some sort; down the hall, a SOUL monitor beeped.
After ushering both wizard and lizard into an unoccupied room, the doctor pushed the door shut with hands wrapped mummylike in white bandages beneath the sleeves of their lab coat. The sounds from the hall became muted, if not totally blocked out.
"Okay!" they said. "I'm sorry we couldn't meet properly until now, but, hello!" The Madjick waved, though the other monster's back was still turned. "My name is Dr. S, which is short for Sucre, you can just call me that if you'd like—but you want to know how your friend is before we get very social, right, your majesty?"
They talked quickly, even by Alphys' standards, and in the kind of aggressively cheerful, bubbly voice that always made her a little suspicious as a kid. Bubbly was a completely literal descriptor, too, since this monster's head was shaped like a glass pitcher of lemonade.
"Y...yes?"
Sucre nodded solemnly, which somehow didn't end with them spilling. "They're stable, first of all, so don't worry about that. Although I'm afraid... well, their wings are... a bit of a problem. Delicate areas like that don't always heal very well, particularly if they've already begun to heal up with magic. But there's no way to be perfectly certain about what could happen."
"...Oh," said Alphys. Beside her, the Madjick was cringing like a sad puppy. It seemed like that, anyway, since the angle of their hat meant she couldn't see much above their shoulders.
Noting their reactions, the doctor fluttered both hands. Slosh, slosh. "Oh, I hope you aren't... please don't hold yourselves responsible! From what I heard and saw, you both did very well. I'm sure they'll be grateful to you for saving their life!"
There was a nice idea. But was it even true? The Madjick tried to help, whereas Alphys... well, she'd had time to think about quite a few things in the waiting room, including just where she'd seen that Whimsalot before. She remembered now—remembered how they'd showed up at New Home just a few days earlier, asking for help that they didn't get. How they knew where she'd be today, she wasn't sure, but their reason for doing it was easy enough to guess.
Determination. It all came back around to that. Would using the vial have fixed the moth's wings, or would it have killed them? Would they have been angry if she'd used it on them instead of the person they most cared about?
The room was beginning to smell like an air freshener. Alphys made a face.
"...But, on that specific topic," said Doctor-Lemon-Scented. "There wasn't much time to talk, before, about what precisely happened. We were able to help your friend, but I do have to admit, those kinds of injuries aren't, hmm, something that I've seen for a long time. Their SOUL had sustained quite a bit of damage, too."
Alphys' mouth open but no words came out. She glanced instinctively to the Madjick for help as she tried to think, but was agonizingly aware of each second passing between the (implied) question and the answer she should give, like she'd been called upon in class when she was too busy doodling robots in her books to pay attention. What was there to say? I don't know and I'm like ninety percent sure it wasn't a human were right answers but also very, very, VERY wrong.
Those monsters. In the Core. Alive but not for more than a few moments longer, their SOULS wrecked, breaking apart...
"The prince. The RUINS," murmured the Madjick.
Poor Sucre looked as if the wizard had just blurted out a magical swear word or five, and Alphys pressed a hand to her face.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not sure that I understand..?"
"Don't l-listen to that," Alphys said. "We're still not sure ourselves—" (oh boy, the royal "we"!) "—but we're going to f-f-figure it out s-soon. So! Ahh, don't worry! But also, um, maybe don't... don't let anyone go near the RUINS right now. Not that, ahh, you should be doing that, anyway..."
"Oh." Sucre said hesitantly, but even their gaps in speech were short. "Well... in that case, I can contact you once your friend wakes up. Maybe they can help shed light on what happened. Why were they near the RUINS?"
Because they were dumb. Because Alphys was dumb. Or the universe really did just hate everyone in the Underground. The doctor-monster sounded suspicious, but Alphys was also willing to make herself believe that that was just her paranoia and nervousness talking.
"That's a good question but, ahh, I couldn't really say y-yet," Alphys said. Then a new thought struck her, though that was a little too passive of a way to put it, since she would have happily started talking about anime to change the subject if she had to, and she didn't even like thinking about anime very much anymore. Also, maybe a little more importantly, it was... actually important. "...But, ahh, that reminds me! They have a sibling who recently Fell Down, and I'm not sure if they might be here? I don't know if they brought them in or not..."
A pause. For real, this time.
"I could find someone to assist you with that, but there are quite a few monsters like them with the same... condition."
Of course. Of course. Alphys pulled her glasses off to rub her eyes. "...Okay."
Alphys had just enough time to return home for a change of clothes before it was time to go back to the lab. Your day just flew by when you spent it dealing with the aftermath of a near-murder, as it turned out.
For just a second, she was tempted to ignore her duty and just sleep. Undyne was indifferent to whatever Alphys tried to give her, anyway. But it was the kind of temptation that she felt to hide under the blankets and just refuse to leave no matter what, or to blurt out the most awful thing she could think of for no reason. The kind of thing you thought about for no good reason, knowing you wouldn't really do it. She wouldn't just neglect her friend like that, she'd done bad things but she was never as bad as that.
And even if she was, the idea of being alone in the castle didn't appeal so much at the moment. The room where she slept had belonged to Asriel and Chara, once upon a time. Their crayon drawings were still taped to the wall, and rows of their scruffy stuffed animals watched her with scratched button eyes as she slept. Desecrating that space by moving in seemed preferable to—oh god—to the idea of sleeping in Asgore's bed, where he actually slept, but at the time, the thought of getting attacked by hypothetical vengeful kid ghosts was just something to joke around about with Sans. Now it was, somehow, not even the scariest possibility to consider.
That little whisper: flower. Why had that stuck with her, of all things?
Sans was waiting for Alphys in front of the elevator.
Just as he'd shown up six months ago, at that very same spot. Hands in pockets. Eyes bright, relaxed as ever. Like everything was perfectly fine, though in reality he was no closer to being okay than Alphys herself.
She wasn't quite so happy to see him, this time.
"hey. seems like you've been busy, huh?"
"I did say I would be. In case you wanted to get in touch. ...Speaking of which, you really should check your phone more often." She did her best to sound perfectly natural, which went about as well as most of her best efforts.
"eh. haven't had service," Sans said. He made no effort to take his phone out to actually check.
Alphys clutched her hands beneath the sleeves of her robe. Without really thinking she began to inch over to one side, but there was no way to get to the elevator door without shoving Sans aside. She stopped, and waited, and grew more nervous when Sans didn't move. He was good at picking up on that kind of cue, even before she consciously thought of them, which meant he was choosing to stay in her way.
But he had no reason to suspect... well, no, he had to realize that she was up to something, lately, but she never mentioned a single thing about Undyne, or that there was any Determination left. It wouldn't be the first time that Sans acted weird just to get a rise out of her for the sake of some joke, yet the thought did not reassure.
Even if he wasn't, screaming and flailing and running away would do her no good, and the fact remained that Undyne needed her down in the lab. She'd already delayed much too long. And it was possible, still possibly. Most likely, even, that he didn't really know anything about what she feared.
"Ahh, so... did you. Um. N-need anything? Because this seems like a really r-random place to just, y-you know, hang around... eh-heh heh..."
Were the edges of his smile curling wider, or was Alphys only imagining it?
"well... i've been doing some thinking. you've been really busy these days, and for once, i've even got my own important junk to worry about." Sans winked. "...so i figured now would be the perfect time to loiter around here and keep you company instead. you're up for it, right? or... down for it. that works too."
"Um. Th-that's. Something we could do. But, ahhh, m-maybe not... not right this second?" Alphys stammered.
"..."
"Sans? C-can you... move?"
"yes."
The bright points in Sans' eyes were fixed on her with laser-like focus, but the rest was just bone, inert and mostly unmoving, and her guesses at what he was thinking were only guesses. Alphys waited. Sans still didn't move.
Alphys dug her claws into the scales along the palms of her hands. "Are you mad at me for something?"
"i wouldn't be mad at you for nothing. that's just plain rude."
(Undyne. Undyne. Undyne. Undyne. Undyne.)
She awkwardly scooted toward the door and Sans, as if maybe he'd go away and this would all just end as soon as he was out of sight. As if he wouldn't just follow her.
God. God. Oh god. This was a joke. This wasn't happening. She'd tortured herself thinking about this happening all along and somehow it was worse than what she'd feared.
"Wh-what do you want?"
"i could ask you the same thing."
"That's not an answer."
"maybe."
Alphys was close enough to reach the keypad, but just getting the door open wasn't really the issue. "...S-Sans?"
He slouched back, as if he might just doze off. Right there, standing up. She'd seen it happen before.
"how'd you do it?" Sans asked quietly. "the flower thing, that made sense... but this was straight dust. so, what, did you just pour in determination like cake mix? 'cause it obviously worked, somehow, but there's no way that shoulda brought her soul back."
So. That was that.
Alphys felt herself trembling, but only distantly. There wasn't anything she could do to change this. Just like you couldn't reach into a video screen and change what you saw there. It wasn't the same thing as being calm.
"How long h-have y-y-you known?"
"hmmm... a few hours. guess you never ran into my new pal, then."
"...W-what?"
"eh, just somebody. some bug kid i met. that's too bad," Sans said. "they seemed ok."
The spell that froze Alphys in place now and kept her from turning into a useless wreck all those months ago broke, and her voice quavered when it was supposed to be demanding. God, why was she so useless? "You s-sent then to the RUINS? Sans, they almost... ...wait, so you told them, too? When? Wh-who else knows about her?!"
His smile was definitely bigger than before. "nobody." His slippers, well, they slipped, quietly across the tile. He backed away as if he already knew exactly where this was going. "but hey, i'm no mind reader."
"Sans."
"what's the worst that could happen if somebody did tell somebody else, though? hypothetically."
"SANS."
"sure, that could be embarrassing, but it's not like anybody would try and bump her off again. that's what you're worried about, right? that's why she's down there?"
He was gone in a blink, even before Alphys lunged for him, stumbling over the hem of her robe until she had to grab the wall to keep from faceplanting. She was breathing too fast, close to hyperventilating, overwhelmed by a hundred different versions of what would inevitably happen after something like this did. Angry mobs, or just as bad, the quiet hurt and disappointment of people who'd already granted her forgiveness beyond anything she'd ever earned. Or Sans, the only friend she had left, telling her just how stupid she'd been all along—and there was Undyne, who she'd dragged into this without there being any possible way to ask. What would happen to her if something happened to Alphys herself? Nothing good was coming anyway, Alphys wasn't stupid or optimistic enough to expect otherwise, but at least with her help, it wouldn't have to be as bad as it could be, when the Determination ran out, and... no. No. No, no, no, nononono no.
Alphys covered her face, nevermind how far askew she pushed her glasses, hands sweating and claws scratching against her forehead. She tried to think, tried to think of anything at all, failed at that. Her scales hurt.
She fumbled around for the keypad and pressed it this time, powering the elevator on.
(Deep breath. And another. She had to keep calm. For Undyne's sake, if nothing else.)
Beep. The door opened. Alphys walked inside, waited for the door to close again. She pressed the switch inside to send the elevator down, then stepped slowly away, without turning around.
If Alphys had to give an explanation for her action, she might have said that she'd felt the displaced air brush the back of her neck, or strategically noted that there was only so much space within this closed elevator for a person to go without crossing her line of sight. The actual reason for her to spin suddenly around and fling herself toward the wall again was that she and Sans had both watched entirely too many anime shows where magical teleporting swordswomen delivered cool one-liners before stabbing their rivals in the back.
Her shoulder rammed into the middle of Sans' ribcage as her hands closed around two big wads of hoodie, knocking him back—she'd forgotten just how light he was, nothing but bone—until his skull clattered against the wall, and they both gasped. Alphys would have let go right then, but the shock made her hesitate long enough for Sans to recover, or at least, fail to show any impending signs of death, or fear of death. Not that she knew what that would look like, since he never seemed to get scared about anything. Or anyone.
"Do y-y-you think this is funny?" Alphys growled, or tried to growl, because she still sounded (and maybe sort of felt) like she was about to cry. "'Cause I d-don't care if. If we've been friends for a long time. If y-you ever, EVER try to hurt her, I'll. I'll do what I should've done to them."
Already big, Sans' eye sockets had somehow grown bigger. One of his slippers slipped off and landed with a little thwap, at which point Alphys realized she'd lifted him off the floor. Pinned against the wall, Sans dangled like a cat held by the scruff of its neck. She could feel his ribs move with his breathing.
"They hurt her b-badly enough, and she c-can't protect herself anymore. Now, I... I j-just... wh-what else do you want?"
Silence.
Then the elevator beeped again as they descended.
Without breaking eye contact, Sans gently rested his fingers around her wrists, frail bones cool and slightly porous against her scales. "...sorry, al. alphys. that was out of line, and you're completely justified in being pissed off. i didn't mean to... ...you know i wouldn't do somethin' like... that."
It sounded more sincere than nearly anything she'd heard from him in a long time, free of any humor or double-meanings or tricks that usually made her laugh and now made her want to do something that was probably horrible. He also had every possible incentive to play nice and sound nice, to convince her that he really was the harmless skeleton he always was. But whose fault was that?
The person who kept hurting all her friends, that was who.
Alphys let Sans go and turned away, her breath hitching. She hunched down to try and subtly wipe her glasses free of fog while he was busy shuffling around to fix his slippers. She wanted to apologize, but didn't trust her voice. She wanted to say something that could, if not exactly break the tension, then at least reassert that they were friends, but didn't really know what to say.
Before she could think of anything, the floor lurched and Alphys staggered, nearly losing her balance for the second time in as many minutes. The overhead lights pulsated and then died, plunging the interior of the elevator into darkness save for the green flash of the emergency light by the door and the white dots of Sans' pupils.
"WARNING! ELEVATOR POWER LOST!" announced a computerized but distinctly feminine voice. (One that was definitely not based upon voice clips from a visual novel of any kind in any way, shape, or form.) "AUXILIARY POWER INITIATED."
"...S-seriously?" Alphys said, with the weird gratefulness that came with having an excuse for a cracking voice.
"welp." The green light flashed, on and off and on. Sans' eyes twinkled like tiny stars as he blinked. "don't think that was supposed to happen."
The part of Alphys that was small and mean and still not entirely dissuaded by what had just happened wanted to say something like, duh?, but she bit her tongue, knowing she'd already been mean enough. Resigned, she shuffled toward the emergency light and fumbled for the control panel. "No, but th-this has happened before. It's a hassle, but I can just—"
"WARNING! AUXILIARY POWER FAILURE!"
Oh.
That wasn't a voice clip she'd heard in a while. Not since she'd put in the new alert system, in fact.
The exact implications of that didn't sink in for half a second, which was still probably longer than it should have been, but then it did and Alphys made a desperate lunge for the panel. Before she could act, the elevator car shook like a gift box in the hands of a giant bratty kid, sending her sprawling to her hands and feet. Sans stumbled too, tripped up by her tail, though she hardly felt him.
"oh shit." (That was Sans, not the alert system.)
"EM TETHER STABILITY—!" (That was the alert system.)
The rest of the warning was partially drowned out by a high-pitched screech of terror. (That was Alphys.)
"SEE YOU IN HELL!"
Alphys and Sans rolled in a tangle of arms and legs and fabric and bone in the near-total darkness that had abruptly swallowed them both, before the floor pulled out from beneath Alphys and she screamed again—there was nothing wrong with the elevator system, she'd checked it and there was no reason for this to happen and why now, not now, it was just her luck that this would happen and what did the warning system just say, who even cared she was LITERALLY ABOUT TO—
Two bony arms clamped around her waist, and there was a sensation of immense weight as her vision went entirely black, this was it they were hitting the bottom at that instant they were OH GOD—
—both sprawled across the floor in the front entrance of the true lab, though Alphys had only an instant to process this new information before what sounded like an explosion shook the room, rattling the vending machine and the fake plants in their pots in the corners.
The sound and lingering vibrations died away, and all was quiet, except for the ringing in her ears. The floor was grimy but cool, and Alphys pressed her forehead into it as she tried to get a grip, despite feeling like her heart would tear itself out of her chest at any second.
Nearby, something else was rattling, quietly. A blue-and-white blur. She squinted and reached up to fix her glasses, but felt only scales.
"A-are... are y-y-you hurt?" she asked.
The sound quieted.
"don't think so. though i guess i'd, uh..." (A shuffling noise, like Sans was brushing off his clothes.) "i'd know if i wasn't. you... good?"
Alphys picked herself off the floor and felt her face, the sides of her head. It didn't feel like anything was bleeding or broken, exactly, but she couldn't stop shaking either, nor would her heart stop pounding. A thought nagged at her. The voice in the elevator, had she heard it there? Well, yes, because she'd programmed it, but she hadn't programmed it to say a thing like that. And even if she did, somehow, the way it sounded...
"…alphys?"
"I... I lost m-my glasses," she mumbled as she sat up. Nothing really felt broken, but the floor didn't seem like such a bad place to be at the moment, so she stuck around. The room still felt like it was spinning, but if it looked like she had some kind of catastrophic head trauma then Sans would have noticed. They were okay, they were okay, they were both fine... "What j-just happened?"
"elevator broke. or... uh, something like that. unless you're asking rhetorically," Sans said. "not sure what to say about the end, there, though."
"Uh. I don't... ahh... really kn-know, either." She'd also specifically made sure that the elevator wouldn't completely fail at the same time even the backup generator failed, killing whatever massively unlucky people were inside. And look at how well that turned out. "Um." Alphys hugged herself, and tried to think. "Um. This is going to sound really stupid? But I think, ahh, either we're, um, cursed, or something, or there's some kind of... I d-don't really know what, but somebody th-that... ...in the RUINS, earlier today, that bug monster that, ahh, I guess you sent them? It s-seems like they got attacked, or, something. We heard this voice, and then... oh god. Oh no."
"wait, al. slow down. what?"
Her eyes snapped wide open, far-sightedness be damned. "Oh god. Damn it."
"al?"
Alphys scrambled back up and, without another word, sprinted past the blurry blob that was Sans and raced down the hallway as fast as her long robe and short legs would allow.
The voice. The threat it made that at the time, didn't even make any sense. Whatever "it" was, it had targeted a moth monster first. Then Sans and herself. First a tiny monster that played dress-up as a knight, then two monsters that hardly ever used magic, one of which was so dangerously frail that any amount of damage, even accidental, might kill him. Now they were here, in the lab, where Undyne barely clung to life even with Alphys' assistance. All along she'd kept the lab sealed off to maintain a secret that, if she was being honest, Sans was right about—one that was for her own benefit. Because, well, why would anybody want to hurt a sick person, let alone Undyne?
It had never occurred to her that Undyne would need to be kept safe from anything except her condition and her own confused and self-destructive behavior. And now here she was, completely vulnerable. If she'd been hurt, in all the time Alphys had been wasting on other monsters, other things...
Alphys skidded to a stop and nearly bashed against the door rather than bother waiting for it to slide open, the adrenaline from the elevator finally having found a use, Sans probably still standing around the lobby in total confusion, which she was aware of in the abstract but could not have cared less about.
She gasped for air, nearly doubled-over by the time she reached the tank, and looked up with her eyes squinted nearly shut, as if that might fix them somehow.
The details were fuzzy, but Undyne was still there, unhurt, looking back down at Alphys. Her face was obscured by pale lines running across the glass between them, radiating out from where her hands rested against it.
That was all Alphys could see. But she could hear water trickling down the cracked glass and dripping into a small but expanding pool on the floor.