A/N- Just! A note. I do not swear, so whenever there is a profanity in this fanfic, I will replace said profanity with good 'ol (censored) here. Heads up, my parentheses pal will be popping up quite a bit more later on... Ehehehehe.
Undyne bit back the fierce pain in her left arm from where a human had landed a hit on her, looking down at her friend (and maybe more than that), Alphys, as the yellow lizard monster wrapped a long strip of beige bandages around Undyne's wound. Frisk had just left, but both Undyne and Alphys were too tired to stop the insistent child. Undyne's side still ached from the impact of falling sideways.
The blue fish monster wished she could take away the hopeless, shell-shocked look on Alphys's face. She knew that Alphys had a tendency to blame herself for everything that went wrong, and then hide it inside. Undyne had witnessed what that had done to her, the blue woman only ever knowing the nervous, introverted Alphys caused by the DT experiments.
But she'd heard stories from two girls, Batty and Cratty or something like that, who had told her about a carefree, nerdy Alphys from a long time ago. Undyne would give almost anything to see that version of Alphys. Except maybe her prized Captain Lightning figurine...
"Alph."
Alphys looked up, brown eyes flashing in swiftly covered fear as she met Undyne's gaze. "U-Undyne? What's wrong? A-Am I hurting you?" she stammered.
Undyne wrapped her good arm around Alphys, and pulled her close as she gently head-butted Alphys's creased forehead. "Nah, I'm good. Kinda worried 'bout you, though," she said, ignoring the knot in her throat as she responded a bit late to Alphys's question.
"W-Wha?"
"Alphys, I am not going to let you beat yourself up over ANY of... this," Undyne growled, releasing Alphys. "If anything, it's, it's, it's MY fault!" Undyne leaned back, covering her face with her webbed blue hands as she took a deep breath. "Oh God, Alphys, what happened? What happened? Everything was so... it was, well, freedom! I mean, even if it wasn't completely ideal, WE WERE (censored) FREE! And now a good fifth of us are dead! I could've, I could've done SOMETHING, could've gotten there quicker!"
She lowered her hands back into her lap, though her golden eye stayed closed. The other was covered by a black fabric patch, the result of an accident when she was younger. Undyne felt Alphys's clawed hand creep into her own, bandages momentarily forgotten.
"Undyne... I-I... I know I'm a-a-an awful therapist, a-and this probably w-won't help at all... but..." Alphys trailed off.
Undyne's eye opened to see Alphys scrubbing a tear off her scaled cheek. She tightened her grip on Alphys's hand, hanging onto her like a lifeline in the chaotic storm that had drifted over them. Before all of that, the skies were just cloudy. It was hard to see the sun, but in the end, it wasn't raining. Then came the lightning.
"They n-need us r-right now. Frisk, T-Toriel, Papyrus... e-everyone. I d-don't know how thing a-are going to g-go now, but I-I know that the monsters n-need us a-a lot," Alphys continued.
Undyne felt a pang of worry at Papyrus's name. She hadn't seen her weird skeleton friend since she and Asgore had carried him back to the campsite a good hour after Undyne had arrived, with the skeleton still clutching his brother's jacket so hard that Undyne was sure there were holes in the dusty blue fabric.
"...you're right," Undyne admitted. "They need us to be there. Everyone else is a wreck." Her eye flashed with newfound determination, Undyne's posture straightening as she looked Alphys dead in the eye. "Alph, you're the best therapist ever."
"C'mon, Paps, you can do it..."
"I DON'T KNOW, WON'T SHE BE MAD?"
"Nah, she'll get over it. She always does."
"BUT..."
"I could try."
"NO! YOU'RE STILL HEALING!"
"..."
"...UH..."
"..."
"SANS, I NEED HELP! DON'T SLEEP NOW!"
"Sorry! Sorry. Uh, yeah, ok, move it a bit to the right..."
"I FEEL SOMETHING! I FEEL SOMETHING!"
"Good job, bro. Now just... pull it towards yourself. As hard as you can. We don't have the key, so you need to break the lock open."
"WHAT IF IT COMES THROUGH THE DOOR AND HITS US?"
"It won't. Trust me."
"OK..."
"Besides, it wouldn't do much damage. Your attacks do, what, 5 each? We can take it."
"YES, OF COURSE. YOU'RE RIGHT, YOU ALWAYS ARE."
"Heh. Whatever you say, bro."
"...SANS?"
"Just pull."
"NNNNNNNNGH! I-I CAN- ALMOST-"
"..."
"..."
"Papyrus!"
"SANS!"
"You did it! You opened the door!"
"I... I DID IT!"
"C'mon! We gotta get out of here before-"
"Comic Sans Bold. What in the world are you doing?"
"NO! NO! NO! NO. NO. NO..." gasped Papyrus as he thrashed violently in his race car patterned sleeping bag. "NO, DON'T HURT HIM, NO, STOP-"
"Papyrus?"
Blinking hard, Papyrus's vision cleared itself of the black dots and focused to reveal King Asgore leaning over him, a worried expression taking over his usually relaxed features. Asgore looked like he hadn't slept for a week, though a part of Papyrus knew, subconsciously, that it had only been a day since- NO.
"Papyrus, are you awake? You were... screaming. Did you have a nightmare?" The goat-like monster's words were gentle as if comforting a very small child.
Papyrus supposed the habit may have come from the king's children, Asriel and (shshshshsh), no, Asriel and (shshshshsh)... Ugh, what was their name again? Karl? Kayla? Cat? In his haze of concentration, he tuned out the kind words of the king. Papyrus couldn't remember and wasn't sure he was supposed to. It lingered in his mind, a constant buzz of nothing, you are nothing, nothing, nothing nothing nothing- HELP ME-
Desperately, lashing out with the shining magic of his SOUL, Papyrus found the string on the other side, and he pulled. It reminded him of something. Rainbow swirled for a moment, drawing him in. His SOUL ached, but it was a nice ache like he had just been training with Undyne and had gotten a bit closer to winning. Maybe. And then he was back? But it was the wrong place. He was back. But not. Papyrus was confused. You were so confused, always confused.
I suppose you were meant to be confused. "NO, I WASN'T!" Papyrus told them firmly, and felt a strange spark of fear light in his bones. Who was that? Papyrus recognized them, from... somewhere. The shiny place, the place where they had lived...? But he couldn't remember, not really.
He remembered, though. UGH! Everything spun, the world revolving around him like clockwork. For a second, he though he saw something...
He cried out for help. And Nobody came. His eyes hurt. Their eyes hurt. Questioning... Oh, the white. Naturally.
Welcome back. I see the process is starting. I'm glad to see that it works after all this time...
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND! PLEASE, TELL ME WHERE WE ARE! WHAT'S GOING ON?"
You won't understand yet. It shall take a while for him to sink in, at least a few days. I can wait, though. I'm excited to get back to our work.
We can change things, together. We can change everything, S̶a̶n̶s̶.
"D-DO I KNow you?"
You did. You will. I assume he tried to protect you from the blast... No matter. It can't have been long since all of that. Stay in the Lab. I'll be back.
As the shadows collected around him, the darkness ran Red.
