She'd stopped Undyne from melting. She'd extracted her excess determination, and now her friend was out of danger. Undyne would pull through...
if Alphys could muster the energy to do anything about those three gunshot wounds still slowly leaking grey sludge onto her sheets.
It took a moment to get it through Alphys' tired mind that she needed to eat, but then she was walking downstairs, and that prickling, urgent, worried feeling soon came back as she was finishing a cup of instant ramen.
Undyne had been bleeding for over an hour, despite Alphys' best efforts to staunch the flow. She had one bullet wedged in her head, another in her stomach, and a third had likely broken her right lower leg.
If she was going to survive losing that much blood, she'd need healing magic. Lots of it. And as much as Alphys knew about medicine from gaining her doctorate, she was not the right monster for that job.
The scientist felt like she'd already asked Mettaton for far too many favours today, but his tone was subdued as he agreed to just one more. The rosy glow of his ghostly form lit up the room as he exited his robot body, preparing to channel strong magic.
Sparkling pink light turned to warm green, and Undyne's HP slowly ticked upwards as Alphys splinted her leg and removed the bullet from her abdomen. Even Mettaton, who was so closely connected with his magic, could only do so much against wounds inflicted by a human with violent intent - he could stop the bleeding and restore magical energy, but Undyne's injuries themselves would take time to heal.
By now, Undyne's HP was almost fully restored, and Alphys tried not to think too hard about the grey that coated her gloves as she carefully extracted broken pieces of metal from what had been her friend's eye. Now, it had been reduced to a barely recognisable mess of dust, tissue and damaged manalines.
Undyne would never see out of her left eye again, and Alphys couldn't help but feel responsible, as if she could have fixed it. Could have done something sooner, something better, something different to what she did.
But almost as loudly as the voice of an imaginary Undyne in her head was berating her for ruining the warrior's life, another was thanking Alphys for saving her. For doing all she could.
Deep down, Alphys knew she'd done all she could, and so she let out a calm, deep breath as she finally finished dressing Undyne's wounds.
She quickly thanked Mettaton for his help as he re-entered his robot body, then curled up in the spare quilt she kept in a nearby cabinet, watching the glowing screen of the soul monitor until her eyes grew too heavy to keep open.