Suddenly it all came flooding back in a storm of senses. Familiar dark and wetness giving way to oppressive heat. Blood and dust - so much dust - splattered across the ground. A wave of burning pain cut deep into her head, but even it couldn't block out the voices.

"Wh- what are you doing?" one asked shakily.

"Just stop! We don't want to hurt you!"

"Greatest, no!"

"DOGATHAN!"

"I'm not one of you monsters. Unlike you, I would never hurt an innocent person. Unlike you, all I want is for justice to be served."

"I am Jayhawk Wilson, and I will strike you down!"

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, HUMAN!"

They all blended together. Fear and anger and her own battle cries swirled around her until it felt like she was there again, except she barely knew where 'there' was, only that it was dark, and she was burning, and it hurt, it hurt so much, and-

"Undyne?! Undyne, what's going on?"

"Can you hear me?! H-how many claws am I holding up?"

"Who's Jayhawk W-oh."

"O-oh, stars...Undyne, I…"

"I'm here."

"Y-you-you're safe, it's g-going to be okay. The human's gone. E-everyone's alright. Everything is going to be alright..."

Slowly, colour bled back into the darkness, and Undyne saw a concerned-looking Alphys standing over her. She noticed that she'd curled into a ball without realising and grimaced at the fresh pain shooting through her broken leg.

Her chest heaved with gasping breaths, and she could barely form words, let alone try to decipher the swirling tornado of thoughts that crowded her aching head. So for the moment, Undyne focused on trying to calm down.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

In, out.

In,

out.

Eventually, her soul stopped racing quite so fast, and she opened her eye.

"Undyne?"

She turned towards Alphys, who saw the twitch of annoyance on her face and moved to sit on Undyne's good side, where she could make proper eye contact.

"What is it? Is everything okay?" Undyne asked.

"I sh-should be asking you t-that question."

"Oh. Uh, yeah, I'm fine, it's just…

I remember everything now. I saw that human's face days ago, but I didn't think twice about them just because they'd stuck a pair of rabbit ears on their head. I talked to so many people this morning before I went off to train with the king, and now I don't know if I'll see any of them again. If anyone will ever see them again."

She blinked rapidly, digging her nails into her palms to try and distract from the sudden ache in her soul.

"...Then there was Dogatha. She called me just before she fought the human, and…"

A lump formed in Undyne's throat, but she pushed past it to croak out the words,

"I heard them kill her. They were right there in the garbage dump ten feet from my house, and I still wasn't there to stop them. It was my fault she and her husband died.

So tell me. How many other people did I fail today?"

…

There were a lot of things wrong with those words, Alphys thought. She'd noticed Undyne thinking this way before, blaming herself for things she had no control over, but never something as serious as this. Of course, nothing like this had happened since the war that left monsterkind trapped underground.

But Undyne seemed to think it was entirely up to her to protect everyone in the underground, even with only one of her and a million bad things that could happen.

Alphys almost couldn't bring herself to break the news.

"T-twenty-six," she finally said.

"Twenty-six m-monsters are dead. Sixteen civilians and ten guards. You're the only one to e-encounter the human and come back a-alive."

To be honest, it still hadn't sunk in for Alphys. But saying it aloud made it just that little bit more real.

She could never imagine how it had felt to go and confront that human alone.

She could never imagine thinking of that as a failure…but here Undyne was.

"B-but you…you stopped them," she reassured. "You protected so many other people. If that human had gotten into New Home, who knows what would have happened?" They both inadvertently shuddered at the thought.

"Yeah, I know that much," Undyne sighed. "I just feel like I should have done more. Should have been there and stopped them earlier."

Her voice grew lower, and the grief in her tone turned to venomous anger as she muttered,

"Should have done my fucking job."

Undyne turned her back to Alphys, resting her head in her hands, and eventually murmured an apology. Something about "being unreasonable". Alphys' stomach twisted a little tighter.

This felt wrong, like something she needed to fix, but not with healing magic or machines or splints and bandages. Alphys opened her mouth, but nothing she could say felt like enough. In the end, she reached out a nervous hand to rest on Undyne's shoulder. It didn't last long, but the intent was there.

They sat in silence for a few moments before Undyne changed the subject.

"So, uh, you still haven't answered my original question. How did I get here?"