"Undyne!. UNDYNE!"
Alphys followed the angry scientist out the clinic into the late afternoon chill. Under her arm, she was carrying Underswap Papyrus rather unceremoniously. The skeleton just allowed himself to hang there, resigned to be yelled at for at least the rest of the day, if not the rest of his life.
Undyne stopped. Her shoulders were shaking as she murmured to herself. Alphys wisely stopped a full body's length away, having a really good guess on what was coming next.
"SEVEN DAYS!" Undyne finally exploded. She turned around to face them. Alphys did a "keep it down" hand gesture at her girlfriend. It was bad enough that they were both just finding about Papyrus and Sans' troubles, no need to bring in the rest of the town in before they knew the full story.
" SEVEN DAYS!" repeated Undyne in what could only be described as the angry baby of a resentful hiss and a vengeful whisper. She paced away a couple of steps then came back three, so now she was mere inches away from Papyrus' face.
" Sans was kid .. kidnapped by a monster that almost KI...KILLED YOU, and you waited seven days to tell us?! " she summarized through clenched teeth.
"In my defense," Papyrus said lifting a weak index finger at the scientist's wrath "I was unconscious for most of that time" He was saying that more for his benefit than anyone else's, of course. He would deal with his gnawing guilty conscience later, as he really didn't have luxury to wallow in self recrimination right at that time.
Undyne pulled on her ponytail out of frustration.
"Why didn't… you… aahhhh?!" she asked. "Don't you trust us?"
Papyrus looked away ashamed. He still believed he had done the right thing, just ...maybe not in the right way.
"I … " he started then stopped. "Alphys, could you let me down? I can't be heartfelt being held like this"
The large lizard warrior chuckled a little embarrassed and let him down. She then proceeded to bop him on the back of the head with her hand.
"We care about you!" she stated echoing her girlfriend's outrage.
"I know. I KNOW!" Papyrus rubbed the back of his head. He knew she had pulled her hit, otherwise he would have been sent flying across town and, while he was grateful for that much consideration, he wished she had waited until his back was fully healed to do it. As it was, he could already feel his knees shaking under him.
He sighed and put his hands inside his orange hoodie. He hung his head.
"I'm sorry" he said looking at the ground. "I do trust you guys …. It's just …. It's just that …."
Several reasons went through his head. "I'm afraid" "I seen you die before", "I don't want to keep losing friends and family", "This is my fight"
.
..
…
"This is my fault"
He remained silent.
To his right, he heard Alphys give a long sigh and sat down with a heavy thud. She patted the ground inviting him and Undyne to do the same.
She looked at both of them intensely. A look that Sans had learned from her, or maybe she had learned it from him. Either way, it bore into Papyrus soul.
"We're friends" she said. "Let's BE friends"
Undyne took a deep breath and brushed her hair out of her eyes slowly, giving herself time to calm down. She put her palms together in front of her face, as if she was praying, then tilted her hands towards Papyrus.
"Ok. From the beginning. What happened 7 days ago?" she said.
Papyrus explained as best as he could based on what he knew.
Alphys and Undyne stayed quiet during the entire explanation. Alphys' tail thumping and Undyne's obsessive note taking on her phone, being the only clues to their concern and want of action. When he was finally done, there was a bit of silence that whispered doubts into Papyrus mind. The feeling that his friends didn't quite believe him poked him here and there in his soul. Why should they anyway? After all, he had kept this horrible thing to himself even though he had been too weak to do anything about it.
"I'm sorry about your friend" Undyne's voice cut through the fog of doubt. He looked up and saw her pushing her glasses closer to her eyes.
He gulped.
Alphys grunted to his right. She was discreetly wiping tiny tears from the corners of her eyes.
Then Papyrus realized…
"I promise you Papyrus, we're going to find out what happened" added Undyne somberly.
"Yeah… AND we're gonna get Sans back!" roared Alphys, totally forgetting her earlier apprehension about being too loud.
Undyne smiled at her proudly.
"Y..yes! You can count on us Papyrus!"
Then Papyrus knew he was not weak. That his true strength was with his friends.
Breathing was hard.
The air was too thick. Too stale. Not enough. Not enough for lungs that rejected it as soon as it made in.
His body fought itself. It hated itself yet yearned to be accepted.
His hands trembled over his mouth stifling his whimpering.
-Quiet. Just be quiet. He'll hear you. He'll find you.-
He was anxious and afraid. His thoughts led him nowhere.
He was lost.
And deep inside the thorny forest of his soul, he was angry .
He sat by the edge of the river. Relatively speaking, this was the same spot him and Swap had used as a fishing spot just a few (really?... had it only been days?) days ago. In his world, however, there was no large, shady tree and there was no life in that river. Just a rock, accompanied by more rocks.
He might as well be one of those rocks.
He messed up. He messed up so badly….
Breathing was so hard. The lump in his chest just grew with every passing moment, with every single, everlasting tick of the clock.
-Why was he still breathing? -
His hands were scorched. Well that happens when you grab a fire elemental with your bare hands, he guessed. Especially an angry one.
He flexed them expecting pain.
They hurt. But they didn't hurt enough.
"SANS!"
His body tensed up. His brother still sounded far away, yet he could already hear the harshness in his voice.
No, no. Not now. Not today.
-Never again.-
He paced about. He knew he messed up. He knew that his brother was furious.
"SANS! COME HERE!"
His brother sounded closer now. Sans didn't remember deciding to walk away or to follow the river. He just suddenly found himself ducking under low hanging tree branches and clumsily climbing over rocks wet from the river's spray.
He had no destination in his head. All he knew was where he didn't want to be.
He reached an old and small wooden bridge. A vague memory of him and his brother playing swords on it came to him. Papyrus had declared it his new fortress with Sans as his second in command.
The unstoppable skeleton brothers.
Once upon a time. A long, long time ago. A fantasy never meant to be true.
He put a hand on one of big posts anchoring the bridge. Well. Papyrus … everyone …. Were going to find out soon anyway. It wasn't a secret that he wasn't really made to be a royal guard. He never had even the smallest of chances. The only reason he even made it as a sentry was because of Papyrus. He insisted he be made one.
And at the beginning, that had been great. It didn't matter that he was small or that his magic didn't work quite right. Papyrus believed in him. He took time to make sure to train him. To correct him, if he made a mistake or fell asleep because he had been too tired from the previous day training.
He even defended him from other monsters.
He cared about him. Papyrus was the only monster that did so.
Until he didn't any more.
Somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong. Papyrus spent more and more time training on his own or hanging out at Grillby's. Whenever he was home, he increasingly ignored his younger brother unless it was to get him to do chores around the house or do his sentry job.
Papyrus was always a driven skeleton, constantly claiming that he would become the next captain of the royal guard; it was his dream having hundreds under his command and being feared by everyone.
Somewhere along the line "we" became "I".
"We" became wrong.
He became "wrong".
Dismissed.
Dismissed from being a sentry and soon, surely, as part of Papyrus' crew.
On top of everything … on top of fucking everything …. The portal was gone. Perhaps for a few days, perhaps forever. He was trapped.
It was so hard to breathe.
He leaned over the edge looking at the rushing water under him. His left hand clawed at the wooden post. It hurt but it didn't hurt enough.
"SANS!" his brother's voice was behind him now. Maybe just a few feet away. He didn't turn around.
"WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?" He didn't see his older brother's smile. His brother never smiled at him. "GRILLBY IS OUT COLD!"
"Fuck Grillby" said Sans fascinated by the current 'FUCK HIM!" he yelled at the water.
"What is going on with you?" He heard suspicion in Papyrus' voice. He was coming closer. He knew, he knew.
One... two … three steps.
Wood against bone. Bone against rock.
Breathing …. How do you breathe?
It hurt.
But it didn't hurt enough.