@someguywearingametalmask asked: Alphyne with 18? <3
18 - A Kiss for Encouragement
(tw for suicidal thoughts, depression/anxiety, impulsive actions, and general hard/sensitive topics.)
[are u still up]
[Yea, just got home. You ok?]
[no]
[Gimme five mins and Ill be there. Lab right?]
[yea]
Alphys put her phone face-down on the work desk and wiped her eyes with the back of her trembling hand, skin cold and head throbbing. She forced out as slow a breath as she could manage, which was approximately as slow as a marathonist after a 5k run. Every part of her felt heavy, especially in her chest and in her limbs, as if they were all made of the same goopy material as the things living deep in the secret lab.
Which was where she was currently huddled, uncoincidentally. She knew things were difficult right now, as the Underground only needed collect only one more human soul before the barrier could be broken. Escape was within their grasp, a feasible goal and a foreseeable future, which under any other circumstances would have had Alphys motivated to continue her research through the many bumps in the road.
Unfortunately, though, Alphys had never been a very emotionally stable monster to begin with, let alone having to contain and manage somewhere between four and eight terrifying amalgamations she created out of the dying bodies of her kind. The weight of this secret was enough to force her to the garbage dump most days, away from her work and away from the heavy, heavy weight of her mistakes. Garbage was her element, after all. She felt like she belonged with it. Like she could be herself there.
Though after some thought, she was sure the garbage could at least manage not to accidentally kill, revive, liquefy, and congeal other monsters.
Perhaps the garbage was better off living there in Waterfall.
Alphys snapped her attention back to her lab after hearing pounding on the metal doors of her lab. She was a few floors under it at the moment, but the sheer force behind Undyne’s door knocking could be heard from anywhere. She knocked hard enough to send vibrations down the walls of the true lab, her voice almost entirely obscured, but not quite. Alphys heard Undyne scream her name twelve times or so before anything registered in her mind at all.
Wow, you’ve outdone yourself, Alphys, she thought. This is even more pathetic than usual, calling her over and then ignoring her completely.
What a worthless life you live.
Alphys couldn’t bring herself to rise out of the swiveling desk chair, not now. Her body was too heavy and her head hurt too much and everything was spinning out of control and she was stuck here like a chewed wad of gum on the underside of a school desk. Even just grasping for her phone felt like all the bones in her arm had been replaced with lead ones.
But she persisted, refusing to give up entirely just yet. Undyne didn’t deserve that. Undyne didn’t deserve to be led here for nothing, Undyne didn’t need to—
[go thru the bathroom door]
One more text…
[its an elevator]
Put down the phone. No more of that heaviness.
It’s time for a whole new heaviness, one named Guilt. Guilt likes to rear its hideous, disgusting head anytime anyone else got involved with these mistakes. These horrific failures that drove Alphys deeper and deeper into her lab and her isolation and her mind.
Because the only reason you even make mistakes in the first place is because you try too hard to make friends, isn’t it? You just want to be somebody else who lives a life where everybody loves them because they’re normal, and good, and they don’t even have to try to have lots of friends, or to fall in unconditional love, or to succeed at the one thing they’re even good at in the first place. And look at yourself now, you’re surrounded by garbage and taking care of zombies to avoid telling the truth.
You’re a failure.
Blink.
You shouldn’t have let her in.
Blink.
If you care about your future, then leave.
And don’t come back.
***
“Alphyyyyys!! Alphys, where are you!?” Undyne shouted frantically, cursing as the elevator slowly descended. She had no idea where she was going, but if Alphys wouldn’t answer her phone and this was the only lead she had, she would follow it to the other end of the entire Underground. Having known Alphys through times both thick and thin (mostly thin, she mentally noted, with a burst more anxiety), and having grown closer to her in all her dumb, nerdy glory, Undyne was extremely concerned receiving these vague and almost cryptically simple texts.
The last time she felt this worked up over Alphys was the first time they’d met, with Alphys standing on the very edge of the garbage dump waterfall, just staring into the endless abyss below, watching the trash cascade down with the dirty water. She’d never seen someone else look that hopeless before, and she’d watched humans die in front of her. It seemed…more intense in someone who wasn’t fighting for their life. It was almost like it was the opposite, really. A longing to end it, instead of a striving to protect it.
It was that thought that spurred Undyne to move a bit faster, determined to break her five-minute promise in exchange for a faster arrival.
She arrived in three and a half.
The elevator grinded noisily to a halt on the only other floor available, the basement that Undyne didn’t know existed. She supposed Alphys did need more room to do whatever sciencey stuff she did, but something this expansive (and dusty…) was unexpected. Undyne puffed out her chest and exited the elevator, filled with an intense determination to find Alphys, wherever she was in this eerie basement laboratory.
Undyne ran her hand along the wall to try and find a light switch, cursing when she couldn’t. She reluctantly decided to stick to the right-hand wall. It couldn’t lead her in circles that way, and though it would take longer, she knew it would be effective at getting her furthest into the lab. She wanted to say she wasn’t afraid of anything right now, she truly did, but she was afraid of being too late. So she kept moving, step by sticky step.
A few right turns in, her eyes only just adjusted to the dim light only assisted by the dull green glow of mounted screens, Undyne heard the unfamiliar crunch of glass under her boots. She attempted to step over it, but her efforts were in vain, as the glass continued to splinter for another few paces before Undyne could move forward a bit more stealthily. Everything save for the occasional metallic groan and her own footsteps was silent.
The floors only grew stickier, the walls too, and the bits of glass grew in quantity, along with something softer that stuck to the bottom of the soles of Undyne’s shoes. The rooms smelled of dust and something vaguely sweet, and mirrors appeared just as often as science supplies did this far in. As much as Undyne wanted to call out for Alphys, she felt it was too dangerous to do that – Alphys could get hurt if she was startled, right?
Upon removing another sticky something from the sole of her shoe – a flower petal, she discovered, how weird – Undyne took a step back to find whatever plant she’d just accidentally decimated. However, when her body shifted backwards again, it bumped into something.
Something solid.
Well, almost solid.
Undyne gasped and launched herself forwards, away from whatever’s path she’d inadvertently crossed, and summoned a magical spear. The blue light pierced through the hallway (Way to go, Undyne, she thought, you could’ve saved all this time using magic) and she was face-to-probably-face with something that was definitely not a monster. She took another quick few steps back, holding her spear out in front of her in defense, when she saw the thing shift – lurch – towards her, sputtering out a gurgled moan into the dark room.
Undyne did not hesitate to summon a circle of spears around the beast to contain it. Her reflexes victorious, the hulking being slammed into the spears, but stayed put. The noise was sure enough to alert Alphys, but if this thing was in the lab, it could also belong to her. Undyne decided running was a safer bet here, and continued following the righthand wall, spear lighting the way just enough to make out the cracked linoleum flooring. And as she ran, she began shouting again, shouting for Alphys, hoping to hear a shout back, a voice, a noise; anything at all would have relieved Undyne, but how she did find Alphys was somehow worse than anything she could have imagined.
“Alphys…” Undyne breathed out, spear slipping from her grip as she took a few careful steps forward, towards the lump in the old swivel chair, hunched over in front of five different computer screens. “Alphys, are you—”
“Stop,” Alphys responded tersely, nerves making even her strongest voice sound weak. “I-I’m sorry, but…I shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have called you here.”
Undyne looked confused, and attempted to keep her rough voice low. “What’s that supposed to mean? There’s obviously something going on, your texts are—”
“Yeah, I-I know. My texts are a mess, I’m—nothing’s working out right now, and you don’t need to-to get involved, I’m sorry…” Alphys stumbled over her words as tears welled up in her eyes, her head resting in her folded arms upon her desk. She took a quick breath. “I freaked out, it’s just the same as always.”
Undyne walked a little closer, perhaps to try and soothe the heavy feeling in her limbs.
“Look, Alphys…if you were freaking out, then it’s gotta be coming from somewhere. And if you can’t tell me about it, then I can’t really do anything about it, right?”
“Nobody can do anything about it now,” Alphys mumbled glumly into the desk. Teardrops were balancing on the lenses of her glasses.
“Does it have to do with that thing in the lab?” Undyne asked, mentally cursing herself seconds after the question left her mouth.
Alphys nodded but said nothing. Embarrassment was radiating out like steam, eyes watering and face on fire; she was sitting here crying and wallowing in muddy self-hatred while Undyne was right there! Was this fishing for compliments? Or rather, fishing for company? Fishing for an escape from a problem that couldn’t be solved anymore? Alphys shook as she took in another breath and fought to steady herself, to make herself look anything like what one would expect from the Royal Scientist.
“This—hhhgk, this is…I’m sorry, sorry, Stars above, I—this is so bad, I-I messed up, but I can’t-I can’t do anything about it, and neither can you, and-and neither could the king, or anybody, okay…?”
Alphys swore aloud to herself and lifted herself up just enough to toss her glasses to the side of her desk and hide her face in her hands, holding her breath to try and refrain from scaring Undyne away by bursting into tears right as she walked inside. As soon as she began to spit out apologies again, though, she found herself being lifted under her arms from her desk chair and carried out of her study. Alphys didn’t move her hands from her face, didn’t move her body at all, hardly breathed until she was eventually put back down onto something soft. Even after that, she didn’t move. It was too hard to move, too hard to look, too hard to take in the world right now.
***
When Alphys awoke, she found herself in her bedroom, under the covers of her bed. She looked to her nightstand, put on her glasses, and sat slowly up. Her body ached, her face felt sticky, and it took a few moments for her to remember exactly what she was doing before she fell asleep. Though, her memory was soon jogged by the fact that Undyne’s boots were next to her door…
…attached to Undyne, who was leaning against the door, sleeping.
Alphys blinked twice before she put the pieces together and gasped sharply, quickly covering her mouth with both hands in hopes that she would not wake Undyne. However, Undyne rose almost immediately afterwards, her reflexes and instincts that of a true warrior. There was a brief moment where neither one said anything, and only stares served to convey any clarity to the other. Finally, Undyne got up, stretched both arms in the air like she was punching the sky, and walked over to Alphys’ bedside.
Still, Alphys said nothing. It was a moment where she felt immobilized in her own body, a rare moment where anxiety didn’t just mess her up, it froze her entirely. But she wasn’t afraid – she was just watching Undyne come over, sitting in her bed with a tearstained face and puffy eyes and crooked glasses, her mind perfectly still for once in her life. It felt almost freeing.
It felt especially freeing once Undyne leaned down, placed one hand on Alphys’ shoulder, and pressed her lips to Alphys’ forehead. That moment seemed to simultaneously a lifetime and a split second before Undyne pulled Alphys into a close hug, tight but gentle, and Alphys felt her hair draped over her arm, and everything suddenly came to a quietus from all stimuli. Everything disappeared, silenced, and dissipated, except for her. Except for Undyne.
Alphys felt her arms wrap around Undyne’s back and her claws dig into the fabric of Undyne’s top. Undyne whispered something she didn’t quite understand and Alphys closed her eyes. Not that it really mattered right now. Time stopped, life stopped, color stopped, stressors stopped, everything stopped. And it was perfect like that, frozen in the chronosystem, where nothing needed fixing and no one needed saving.
Alphys tightened the hug, and when she opened her eyes, they were full of hope.
