Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The cute monster in the lab coat standing on the pier made Undyne’s heart do several vigorous back whips, the kind that Asgore taught her so she could land safely that involved a lot of landing all spread-eagled first before you could get up.
“Hey there!”
She made a noise that was something between a sob and a squeak, and her tail got tangled around her leg.
Undyne jumped down to land on the pier next to them. From where she was standing, she had an extreme close-up view of the terrifying Abyss that roughly constituted her backyard, in fully saturated, high definition, precise vision. As she watched, something she was pretty sure was a soda can washed under the pier and into the endless darkness.
The other monster gulped, looking at it, then at Undyne, then slowly back into the abyss. Slowly her tail seemed to relax and lie casually on the ground.
“Where do you think it goes?”
“Um.” Their tail wrapped around one of their legs; it was long and golden, and tipped with a wide spike like a dinosaur tail. “It, well, nobody knows. I have some hypotheses, but nothing solid. I’d love to know whether it hits magma and turns to steam, but every time I sent robots down, they don’t give me any readings. And not like, in a turned to steam way, in a stupid broken junk way.” She spoke with a cute stutter, almost like she wasn’t sure of what she was saying, Undyne noticed.
Then again, Undyne wasn’t sure either. “Robots can turn into steam?”
“Eheheh… yeah, anything can if it gets hot enough. I test mine in Hotlands, though, they don’t sublimate until way higher temperatures than would be in the Abyss naturally.”
“Whoah, that’s so cool! I usually can’t patrol into Hotland, it makes my armor heat up too much. Do you live there?”
“Y-yeah! I-it isn’t that bad once you g-get used to it.” She looked away, towards one of the massive stacks of trash. “I didn’t, uh, I didn’t c-catch your n-name.”
“I’m Undyne.”
The dinosaur monster stuck out one clawed hand. “I-I’m Alphys.”
“So, were you here to send a robot down there?”
Alphys averted her eyes guiltily. “N-not today. Hey, m-mind if I, uh, bounce some i-ideas for what could be down there off you?”
Undyne’s eye widened. “Yeah!”
“R-really?”
Undyne slung a casual arm around Alphys and adjusted her eyepatch. “Yeah! You seem really cool, and you don’t use weird big words I can’t understand like some scientists. Do you work for Asgore?”
“Y-yeah, uh--”
“Me too! I just got to join the Guard a few months ago.” Undyne was nowhere near as oblivious as she acted. She had one very clear motive: to get Alphys away from the edge of the Abyss and excited enough about sharing her research that she’d forget about what she was doing when Undyne arrived. “So, wanna find someplace to sit? I don’t want my armor to get super rusty and all.”
“Oh! O-of course. Uh, I think I know where there’s a bench in here somewhere?”
“Nah, I know a better place to hang out. There’s a guy I know who was talking all about his plans to make a homemade ice cream store near here, wanna grab ice cream while you tell me?”
“S-sure, um, eheheh, y-you’re sure you really want to, um, h-hear about it?”
Undyne started to lead the way out of the dump. “Yeah, of course, come on!”
“W-well, I just, I’m r-really sorry if I b-bore you, it’s okay if you wanna b-bail or anything--”
Undyne stopped in her tracks and crouched down to level with Alphys. “You’re not boring! Anyone who says you’re boring is just being jealous. Who wouldn’t want to hear about sublime robots or whatever the thing under there was?”
“S-sublimating, it m-means turning from s-solid straight to a gas.”
“Yeah, that! It’s really cool! Come on, let’s see if we can find Bleuey and get some ice cream, alright?”

Chapter Text

“Hey, don’t worry.”
Alphys seemed on the verge of tears. “I’m s-sorry, I-I’m so sorry, I w-wasn’t even thinking, of c-course that would make you feel dysphoric, I’m so sorry--”
Undyne threw her arms around Alphys. “It’s not a big deal, honestly! I’m not mad at you, Alph, really. I think it’s such a nice gift.”
She sniffed. “Y-you’re n-n-not mad at me?”
“No, Alphys, not at all. I love you. Um, platonically of course. I love you, Alph, I’m not mad at you over a stupid thing like this.”
Alphys turned beet red and buried her tear-soaked face in Undyne’s shoulder.

“Ugh, we’re n-not gonna get this done tonight, Undyne?”
There was a pause. Alphys hoped that smell wasn’t coming from the woodburning torch she was using to decorate her cosplay. The little digital clock on her workbench said 2:35 AM, but it couldn’t be that late, could it?
“Undyne?”
“Undyne?”
Worried, Alphys powered off the torch (setting it on the stand to cool) and looked over where Undyne had been sitting and painting the details on the big sword she was going to use. The paintbrush had fallen out of her hand onto the floor, and Undyne was asleep with her chin in the air, snoring softly.
That couldn’t be comfortable. “Oh m-my.” Carefully Alphys pulled the chair out from the table, maneuvering it onto the little dolly she used to move her equipment around the lab. She pulled Undyne over to her little box bed and opened it up, thankful it was big enough to fit her. Then, she lifted Undyne carefully out of the chair and set her gently on the bed, pulling the comforter over her, then carefully untied her eyepatch and set it on the nightstand. She looked much more comfortable in a real bed, and she barely even stirred as Alphys carefully pressed a goodnight kiss on her forehead, though Alphys immediately retreated to the sofa and spent the night worrying about it. After all, they were just friends, right?

Undyne flopped upside down on Alphys’ sofa, making a miserable noise at Alphys where she sat writing code for Mettaton. “Alphyyyy, I have to go to the guard dinner on Thursday, and I don’t waaanaaa, it’s gonna be so boriiiing!”
“Ew.” Alphys grimaced. “Official dinners s-suck.”
“And I have nothing to weaaar,” Undyne continued.
Alphys grinned nervously. “I c-can’t really help you t-there. M-maybe wear that b-b-blazer you wore t-the other day?”
“Yeah, I guess. I’m just gonna have to sit there the whole time, though, and nobody wants to talk about anything but politiiiics.”
Alphys made a sympathetic face. “I wish I c-could g-go with you and k-keep you company.”
“I guess I could bring you as my plus-one,” Undyne mused.
“W-w-wait, y--, wha--, I, uh, geez, y-- your p-plus one?”
“Yeah, as a friend date! 01 and 02 do it all the time!”
Alphys’ claws were quivering a little as she closed up her coding for the day. “O-okay! It’ll b-be like that time Mew Mew went to the prom with Tamaki, only she actually was just friends with him and she really wanted to get to Riu Riu so she could use her Mew Mew Laser on Benio so that she could stop her from being seduced by the alien prince! Only I’m probably not gonna get pressured into kissing you and it wouldn’t cause the end of the world if I did, hopefully.”
“Yeah! That was such a good arc, I was really mad when they retconned it at the end of episode forty-five.”
“Oh, do not talk to me about episode forty-five! I swear, I was so mad. Do the writers have no taste?” She shut the laptop and went to look in her wardrobe. “Oh m-man, now I have n-nothing to wear!”
Undyne hauled herself off the couch and followed Alphys up to the wardrobe, sitting on her box bed. “You could wear that cute dress with the polka-dots?”
“Oh, uh, I mean, I’ll t-try it on! I don’t know if it still f-fits me.” Alphys had known Undyne for years, but it was only recently that she’d grown comfortable enough to change around her. They’d recently gone on a camping trip in Snowdin Forest, and there had been hardly any privacy in their tent without stepping out into the cold, so she figured it was all water under the bridge now. It wasn’t like she could fix her tuck in front of somebody and still have any shame around them, even as anxious as she was.
“Oh, wow, Alphy, that looks really nice on you! I don’t think I’ve seen you wear that before!”
“Eheheh, I d-don’t r-really wear it v-very often. I mean, I, um, I’m not s-super confident about it, honestly--”
“Why not? You look great!”
Alphys blushed bright red. “Y-you’re just s-saying that, right?”
“Nah, you look good. You should wear that dress more often.”

“DID YOU REALLY BRING DOCTOR ALPHYS TO THE GUARD DINNER?”
“Pap! Who told you that?!”
“DOGAMY. ARE YOU TWO DATING NOW?”
Undyne buried her head in her hands. “NO! It’s just a friend thing! I told you, she doesn’t like me that way!”

“Mooooom, you weren’t home last night and my charger broke! Burgerpants had to go find my spare.”
Alphys jumped. “Eheheheh, I’m so sorry, I was at the-- I was out-- I, I’m sorry!”
“You were at the guard dinner, weren’t you?”
“Um! N-n-n-no, I was just--”
“Alphysy, don’t lie. It doesn’t suit you. I’m so glad you and the Captain are finally together, though.”
“I-it was j-just a f-f-friend thing! She w-would n-n-never l-like somebody l-like me t-that way!!”

“ARE YOU SURE? AS GREAT AS I AM, I CANNOT CLAIM TO KNOW MUCH ABOUT DATING, BUT I BELIEVE THAT EXCHANGING “VALENTINES” IS AN INDICATOR THAT SOMEONE WANTS TO GO ON A DATE WITH YOU.”
“Ugh, how many times do I have to tell you it was just because she thought the Mew Mew valentine was really funny?”
“I’LL STOP IF YOU ASK HER AND SHE ACTUALLY TELLS YOU THAT’S WHY INSTEAD OF JUST GUESSING.”
“HEY! I know Alphy way better than you!”
“DID YOU JUST CALL DOCTOR ALPHYS ‘ALPHY’? DO YOU KNOW THAT HAVING A ‘PET NAME’ LIKE THAT IS GUARANTEED TO INCREASE YOUR DATING POWER BY AT LEAST--”
“Oh my god!! Shut up!!”

“Alphysy, she liked every single one of your selfies on Undernet!”
“S-she’s just a supportive friend!”
“She’s always buying you nice creams!”
“She knows the n-nice cream dude!”
“What about the time she asked you to help her fix that training dummy and when you went over it was already fixed and it you just watched anime?”
“She s-s-said Papyrus fixed it!”
“What about her having all those heart emojis in her phone in your contact name?”
“How do you know that?”
Mettaton rested an arm across Alphys’ shoulders. “I’m a robot, dear. It’s my job.”
“That d-d-doesn’t even make s-sense.”
“Alright, fine. I saw it by accident while she was over at the lab. Can you believe me now?”
“It’s probably just f-friend hearts, anyway. She’s r-r-really affectionate.”
“Alphysy, even I, the most overly affectionate monster in this kingdom, do not have hearts by your name in my phone.”
“Um…” Alphys lunged for his phone. “N-not for long!” She tapped out a long string of heart emojis into her contact name and smugly returned it, pretending not to see him shaking his head at her.

“Did Frisk even do anything?” Mettaton asked Papyrus, relaxing at the beach and watching the victim of Undyne’s affection over a MTT-brand cocktail.
“OH, THEY DID. FOR ONE THING, THEY GOT ALPHYS TO YELL ABOUT KISSING UNDYNE IN THE DUMP, AND THEN SHE WAS WILLING TO LISTEN TO MY EXPERT DATING ADVICE.” Papyrus took a sip of marinara sauce out of his coconut and sighed. “AND THERE WAS THAT TIME THEY STOLE UNDYNE’S PHONE AND SENT ALPHYS THAT TEXT WITH ALL THE HEARTS.”
“Really? My darling co-star is more of a rascal than I had thought.”
“IT’S FOR A GOOD CAUSE.”
“Indeed, darling. In fact, I think oblivious gays might be the best cause there is. I should run a charity segment--donate to my effort to convince the two of them that they should ask each other on a date rather than staying home and fretting.”
“I’D CHIP IN.”

Chapter Text

Why did you leave me all alone?
I think of you every day. We searched and searched, and Alphy, sometimes I wish I wasn’t the one who found your dust. All alone, in the dark, an empty pill bottle and a pile of dust and your glasses, broken on the floor where they fell. At least Papyrus is here, even if he doesn’t understand.
Why did you do it?
I don’t understand either. I keep thinking there was something I could’ve done, something I should’ve done. I should’ve been better, I should’ve gone after you faster, I should’ve killed the human before they could get to you, I should’ve helped more and taken care of you better.
Why didn’t I tell you?
There’s so much I didn’t get to say to you. It hurts me every second that you died thinking I’d never love you. Oh Alphy, I always did. I was an idiot, I tried not to destroy what we had, and I ended up failing you. I wish I could’ve told you that I loved you, and you were so good, always, so smart and kind and funny and beautiful. Alphy, everything you wrote in that letter broke my heart. If anything, I didn’t deserve you, not the other way around.
Why couldn’t you stay?
The only thing that keeps me going at all is the thinnest hope. Sans says there’s something wrong with time, and the human can wind it back and try again. I hope it happens soon. I’m losing my hope, Alphy. I can’t keep going without you. I keep going back to the place I first met you. You were thinking about it then, too, weren’t you? I… I hate to tell you this, Alphy. It breaks my heart, but… I am too. Then, at least, we’d be together, right? There’s no way to bring you back, but if I could see you again… even if it would mean leaving Papyrus…
Why couldn’t things have gone better?
It’s all my fault, I know. I feel so guilty, but it’s probably what I deserve. I hardly ever leave Papyrus’ house nowadays, except to come here. Some of your dust is here, and it’s the closest I can get to you. Alphy, I need you. I can’t leave Papyrus, but I don’t want to do anything anymore. I’m the coward here, Alphy, not you. I miss you so much, but I’m scared. I just… want to see you again. I love you, Alphy. I wish I’d let you know.

Chapter Text

“H-h-hey, I may be evil, but I have standards.”
The kid looked at her blankly, then looked back at the crossbow bolt lodged in their upper arm, tears rolling down their cheeks.
“I a-always w-wanted to use that line. Come on, m-my friend can p-probably patch you up.” Alphys took the hand that didn’t have the stick and began to lead them under the arch.
On her comm, she heard Undyne’s voice.
[I c-can’t kill this kid! T-they’re half blind, they c-can hardly w-walk, they c-can’t talk, they c-c-can’t hurt anyone]
[We need their SOUL, Alphys! It doesn’t matter if they can defend themself or not!]
[U-undyne, I c-can’t do it. You take a look at t-them and t-tell me if you could!]
Her comm went silent as Undyne stalked to the door and threw it open. “Alphys, how dare you--”
There was a pause. Undyne, tall and imposing in her crisp lab coat and welding mask, stared down at the two of them. Alphys, in her jet black, spiky, armor, not a scratch on her, with a human child a whole head shorter than her leaning on her for support. Their face was smeared with blood and grime, their striped shirt torn and tattered, and in their arm was a bolt from Alphys’ crossbow, sunk straight into the bone, with blood leaking from the wound. There was a long pause--Alphys noticed that Undyne CHECKed both her and the kid.
“Oh. Geez, how old are you, kid?”
They shifted the stick in their good arm so they could show five fingers, then four.
“Nine?”
They nodded.
“Alright, come on in, punk. You too, Alphys, make yourself comfortable.” Taking her mask off, Undyne brought the child through the lab, up a short escalator to a bed. Alphys watched her gesture for them to sit and bring out a medical kit from a cabinet against the wall. Handing them a bottle of water and a white pill, she spoke as reassuringly as she could.“Here, punk. This’ll knock you out, then I can get the bolt out of you.”
They nodded resolutely and took the tranquilizer. Almost immediately, the magic medicine had them unconscious, and Undyne used a glowing blue scalpel to cut into the shoulder and remove the bolt. She applied a salve, then placed one hand over the wound and used green magic to close it. Finally, she bandaged it and left the kid to sleep off the medicine.
Alphys flinched as Undyne descended the escalator. “U-undyne, I’m r-r-really s-sorry I--”
“No, Alphys. I’m sorry. Geez, I can’t ask you to beat up a nine year old!”
“I-I know it’s the l-l-last SOUL, I-I just, I--”
Undyne sighed. “Alphy, I’m not mad at you. They-- damnit. They seem like a good kid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them hurt anybody, and I thought they were just doing it to hurt folks, but I-- if they wanted to hurt you, they could’ve done it. I just feel really bad that I yelled at you.”
“No, I-I understand! A-and, I, I don’t want Toriel t-to g-g-get hurt either. B-but I j-just, I couldn’t hurt a kid. E-especially not a k-kid who w-w-wasn’t hurting anyone Eheh. Heh.”
“Alphys, I-- well. Um, I wanna just, uh, say. You’re really noble. You’re like, a real-life anime hero or something. I--” Undyne sighed. “I probably would’ve kept fighting and killed them, even though they’re so little, and they totally don’t deserve it. I mean, I saw them helping that kid, and they, well, when they were fighting you, the little punk took two more bolts. In their wrist and in their leg. I patched those up too, but they… they were hiding them from you because they didn’t want you to worry about them. Even though they only had like, two HP.”
Alphys seemed distraught. “You m-mean, I could’ve k-k-killed them? Oh my g-god, if they’d d-died, I don’t think I c-could’ve l-lived with myself.”
Undyne sighed. “You’re a r-really good person, Alph.”
“Y-you are t-too, Undyne.”
“I’m really not, Alphys. I was really going to let them die, right up until I checked you. Alphys, your AT and DF were low, because you were sparing them. They could probably have killed you with one hit, even with their 10 AT. But they didn’t, and… Alphys, I don’t want you to get hurt fighting a human. And… I think that human doesn’t want that either. So, uh, I decided I could trust them. But Alphys, you barely knew them, but you SPARED them.”
Under her helmet, Alphys blushed bright red. “U-undyne, that’s n-noble too! A-and y-you’ve always b-been here for me, that’s really important.”
Both of them jumped as they heard a record scratch, followed by some clanking. “oh… um… sorry… i was just going to get charged… but i can leave you guys to it…”
“Gah! Napstablook! Good to see you! Uh, your charger’s, um, upstairs. There’s a human in the bed but don’t worry about it.”
“yeah… anyway… you guys have fun…” He started to walk away. “uh... if you were going to kiss… i wouldn’t tell anybody… i know you’re shy about it…”
“What?! We haven’t kissed!” Undyne chased him up the stairs. “I told you, she doesn’t like me that way!” She smacked him across the back of the head affectionately, making him drop his charger, then stormed back down. “Man, the nerve of that guy!”
“Uh… Undyne… I, uh…” Alphys was pretty sure if she blushed any harder, her armor would start melting. “Y-you, uh, like me?”
Undyne blushed to the tips of her ear fins. “Um… uh… I think you’re really, uh, neat. And, uh, cute.”
“Oh-my-god-I-like-you-too-okay-I-um-just-uh-thought-you-wouldn’t-like-me-back-because-I’m-you-know-trans-and-all-and-I’m-really-sorry-I-just-I-was-scared-but-I-like-you-a-lot--”
Alphys found herself suddenly two feet off the floor, picked up and in Undyne’s arms, and then Undyne had her helmet off and were kissing and they heard Napstablook playing the Mew Mew theme, so Undyne put her down to hurl a Cup O Noodles at his head before picking her up and kissing her again. “Alphy, I-- it really is like an anime! Oh my god!”
Alphys’ tail wrapped around Undyne excitedly. “I know!”
“I’m so happy you SPARED them, if it lead to this!”
Alphys pressed her face into Undyne’s chest. “I’m so happy y-your weird robot finally d-did something good!”
Undyne laughed. “Hey! Cherish the sound tech!”

Chapter Text

Every monster and every human has their SOULmate. The voice of their SOULmate, linked through the SOUL, can reach into their mind like a voice. Undyne never knew life without the voice at the back of her head. It was quiet, lacking confidence, and occasionally longwinded, and the fact that it had two years on her was a sore spot through most of her youth.

But one time, it saved her life.

It wasn’t often that the Underground had bad guys for her to actually beat up. In general, everyone respected Asgore, and feared her, and liked the rest of the guard, and even when they didn’t, life wasn’t so bad that crime was worth risking earning someone’s killing intent. So Undyne was surprised when Gerson came to her with an assignment--track down and bring to justice the mysterious Snowdin Kidnapper.

She was game for anything, though, so she packed herself a lunch (spaghetti) and some healing items, sharpened her spear, and headed to Snowdin. The spate of kidnappings, she learned, had been going on for about a week and focused on the teenagers who lived in Snowdin Forest. The local guard was mostly combative focused, with only three members who could communicate effectively with the locals, one of whom could not see things unless they were moving and spent most of his time lying on his side in his sentry station having a panic attack.

So she headed out into Snowdin Forest alone, barely more than a teenager herself, but eager to prove herself. Her plan was to camp in the forest like a teenager, using her youth and small, wiry, frame to trick the kidnapper into thinking she would be an easy target. When the kidnapper came for her, she’d attack him, beat him up, and make him tell her where the teens were. Of course, that meant no fire, which meant cold spaghetti, which was pretty gross, and she was sitting in the snow reading a book about cars she’d borrowed from the Snowdin Librarby getting colder and colder when she realized it would probably be easier to lure her target out if she took a nap. She rolled herself up in her bedroll, feeling thankful that the Royal Scientist had recently come out with a material that retained her body heat and Gerson had made it standard issue.

Suddenly, she was jolted awake by the voice in her head yelling. <<WAKE UP!>>

<<...wha??>>

<<Undyne, wake up! He’s near your tent!>>

That got her awake. “Who’s there?” she demanded, feeling a pair of arms wrap around the bedroll and hoist her over something’s shoulder.

“Hey! Put me down!”

“Quiet!” said a voice. Damnit. Everyone knew Larry, the obnoxious older brother of Jerry. Unlike Jerry, Larry could attack, and was actually good at it.

“I’m warning you, put me down or I’ll have to use force.”

Larry chuckled. “Kid, go play with someone your own size. I’ve got loads.”

“Alright, you asked for it!” Undyne slung her weight to her left, freeing her hands to break her fall and rolling to come up on her knees. She formed her spear, using it to cut her bedroll wide open so she could free her legs, then jumped into a fighting stance and started a FIGHT.

As was customary, she took the first attack, turning his SOUL green and firing smaller spears at him from all sides. Larry blocked them all with the shield she’d given him to turn him green, then retaliated. His first bullet pattern was faster than Undyne had anticipated, and she ended up taking a few hits here and there, but not enough to worry her. She should’ve been worried.

The FIGHT lasted only a few more turns, with Undyne dishing out major damage with her trick golden spears, and Larry being able to land only a few scratches. Suddenly, though, the FIGHT was brought to an end, but instead of running away, Larry rushed her, drawing a knife and stabbing her, hitting straight in her left eye.

Undyne howled. The pain was indescribable. She shoved him away from her, but the knife came with him--and so did her eye. She nearly blacked out right there, her hot blood hissing on the snow.

<<UNDYNE! S-STAY DETERMINED!>>

<<It… hurts… it hurts so bad…>>

<<I’m not gonna l-let you die! Undyne! Keep fighting!>>

She ground her teeth together and called her spear back to her hand. “You’re gonna have to try a little harder than that!”

She trapped him in the FIGHT again, turning his SOUL green and fighting with all her magic to keep it that way.

*You used the HANDCUFFS! Larry was captured!

*You used the ROPE! Larry was tied to the tree!

Undyne, breathing hard, fell to her knees in the snow. Darkness was creeping over the edges of her consciousness.

<<Undyne, you g-gotta keep going. Y-you need to use the h-healing items!>>

<<... can’t… hurts so bad… can’t move…>>

<<I know it hurts, b-but you n-need to keep going. Can you get them out of your inventory?>>

Undyne fumbled, but pulled out a potion from her inventory. She managed to drink most of it before her hand shook so hard she dropped it, and some of her HP was replenished.

<<Okay, y-your HP w-won’t drop any further now. I’m c-calling ASGORE. Don’t move, okay?>>

<<I… couldn’t… if I tried… so tired…>>

<<Oh no. Don’t g-go to sleep, okay?>>

She was so exhausted. It would be okay, right? Just a little nap, to sleep the pain off?

<<Undyne, you’re g-going into shock. I need you to stay awake, alright?>>

<<Alph… I can’t…I’m so tired…>>

<<C-can you keep talking to me? Please?>>

<<I can’t… think of anything…>>

<<Um… T-tell me Asriel’s story! Everyone knows that one!>>

Undyne breathed heavily, lying on her side in the snow. She could do that. Alphys was right--everyone knew Asriel’s story. <<A long time ago, a human fell into the RUINS…>>

Alphys listened to the story, occasionally interrupting where the listener was supposed to, or encouraging Undyne to keep going. Mostly, though, she listened quietly. Undyne was reaching the end of the story when Asgore arrived.

<<Undyne? Keep g-going, okay?>>

<<D… dad’s here… I gotta…>>

Later, hours later, she woke up in a hospital bed, Asgore watching over her. She was weak, barely strong enough to speak; her hands shook and she grabbed the sheets to still them. “...dad?”

“Oh! You are awake, little one?”

Undyne gritted her teeth as the pain in her head hit her again. “...yeah…”

“Are you in pain?”

She nodded ruefully, hating to rely on the pain medication. Asgore carefully adjusted the IV bag so that the pain medication would run instead of the saline solution, and she felt slightly better. “...my eye?”

“It… you will be blind in that eye for the rest of your life. But it is not that which I worry about. The doctor says you had DT poisoning.”

A million thoughts struck Undyne at once, overwhelming her. She shut her working eye and took a shaky breath before she spoke. “How can I be a warrior if I’m blind in one eye?”

“My dear, Gerson is practically blind in both of his. You have always known that you must learn to be more than your limitations. I have full faith in you, little one.”

She sighed, relieved. If Asgore said she could do something, she could. “How long have I been out? Did Larry…?”

“Around two days. Larry was… brought to justice. The children are back with their families. They send their gratitude and appreciation.”

“And… DT poisoning?”

“I should probably let Doctor Alphys explain it to you.” He raised his voice. “Doctor Alphys? Undyne is ready for you.”

Undyne’s mind reeled as the door opened and in walked a short lizard monster with vivid golden scales. “T-thank you, your majesty! I-I can take it from here!”

Asgore bowed his head and stood. “I will wait in the lobby.”

When the door closed behind him, Undyne carefully sat up in the cot to see Alphys better. <<Are you my-->>

The voice in their head spoke along with them. <<SOULmate?>>

<<Whoah! That’s so cool!>>

<<Y-you really t-think so?>>

<<Yeah! Hey, I owe you a story. Do you want to grab coffee in New Home when I’m discharged?>>

<<I-I’d love to! Eheh...heh…>>

<<What’s funny?>>

<<I just n-never thought I’d m-meet my SOULmate in real life by being a doctor.>>

Undyne grinned. <<Well, you know me. I’m accident prone.>>

Chapter Text

“HI METTATON! ARE YOU READY FOR OUR EXTRA SPECIAL, EXTREMELY ROMANTIC, DOUBLE DATE?”

Undyne was already having second thoughts. Surely it wasn’t too late for her to scoop up Alphys in her arms and run very, very far away from her best friend and his obnoxious robot boyfriend.

Mettaton, in the doorway, flipped his hair and extended a gloved hand to take Papyrus’ hand. “Never readier, gorgeous! Shall we?” He stepped out of the doorway to give his boyfriend a kiss.

Behind him, the reason Undyne had come, was Alphys, wearing a cute dress and looking flustered. “H-h-hey Undyne!”

Undyne put her arms around Alphys’ waist to lift her up, planting a kiss on her snout. “Hey, cutie!”

“O-oh m-my gosh,” Alphys said, turning bright red.

“METTATON, I GOT YOU FLOWERS!” Papyrus yelled, startling everyone. He coughed. “SORRY, I, ER, DIDN’T MEAN TO SHOUT. UM, HERE!” He drew out a fistful of golden flowers and presented them to Mettaton. Undyne grinned--Mettaton was the only one who got Papyrus flustered nowadays. His confidence training with Alphys had boosted his sunny mood further than ever, and he could almost always be found crowing at humans around the embassy about something or another.

“Oh my! Darling, these are wonderful! Let me just put these in water quickly and I will be right back.” Mettaton, cheeks running a sophisticated blushing program, raced back into the apartment he shared with Alphys.

“P-papyrus, I d-d-don’t think I’ve, uh, ever, s-s-seen Metta this, uh, e-excited about something! He’s been c-counting d-d-down the m-minutes!”

“WOWIE!! I WAS WORRIED I WAS THE ONLY ONE!!”

Undyne noogied him affectionately. “Aw, Paps, never change,” she said, trying to play it off like she hadn’t been counting down the minutes as well.

“DON’T WORRY, UNDYNE! I AM EXTREMELY CONFIDENT IN MY CURRENT DEMEANOR.” His statement, however, was undercut by the bright blush that his magic painted on his cheeks as Mettaton returned.

“Lo, I return! Who missed me?” Mettaton had placed a single golden flower behind his ear, and posed to accentuate it as he came into view.

Papyrus staggered backwards in surprise. “AAH! METTATON! HELLO AGAIN!”

“Not me, toaster. Come on, get in the car.”

“UNDYNE, BE NICE.”

She grinned to show him she wasn’t being serious. “Fine. Get in the car, please , you unnecessarily glamorous staple gun.”

Mettaton sighed glamorously, but took Papyrus’ arm and led him to the car with a flounce. He would be driving, because he had the extreme advantage of being able to plug his system into the car’s mainframe and drive without using any of his limbs. Undyne rolled her eye at the two of them (currently trying to get Mettaton’s cord into the cigarette lighter, having misidentified it for a HDMI jack) and slipped her hand into Alphys.

“H-h-hi! S-so, uh, how’ve you b-been?”

“Doing better now that the week is over,” she said with a laugh. “Did you know there’s like, five different types of schools for humans? Toriel’s trying to get us taxed as a charter school, but the D-of-Ed wants us to get taxed as a religious institution for some reason? Anyway, the upshot is that I can’t buy new equipment until we get the official new budget, and the kids are getting tired of all the stuff I can think of for us to do without equipment. Tori says I can’t teach them Greek wrestling either, so that’s out. You?”

“Oh, y-you know. QA’s going a-as well a-as we can expect, b-but it’s rough. A-are you excited for the movie?”

“YEAH! I hear she lifts a tank!”

“W-what? That’s s-so cool!”

“UNDYNE! GET IN THE CAR YOURSELF! WE’VE GOT METTATON PLUGGED IN!”

Alphys started running over. “U-um! N-no, you d-don’t p-plug him in there!”

Undyne tagged along reluctantly. No chance that Alphys would decide to ditch, and she never backed down from a challenge, even one that involved the stupid robot. So she jumped into the car along with Alphys, and enjoyed the ride to the theater once Alphys got Mettaton plugged into the right slot.

They ended up getting a bucket of popcorn that could’ve quite comfortably fit Alphys like a cat in a box, a soda for Alphys, water for Papyrus, and some kind of fluorescent orange beverage for Undyne that she claimed she liked. Mettaton, who had trouble drinking without short-circuiting his mouth, got himself a chocolate bar just for him, in case Undyne and Papyrus started hogging the popcorn, and Papyrus bought MINDBLASTINGLY SOUR TONGUE DESTRUCTION CANDY FROOT to dare Undyne to eat.

They piled into the back row, first Alphys, then Undyne, then Papyrus, and finally Mettaton. True to form, Undyne immediately grabbed a massive handful of popcorn, beginning to make horrific crunching noises as she lowered her massive fangs into it. Papyrus took that as his cue to scoop up some popcorn for himself, which would’ve gone better if he’d not somehow managed to get a piece of popcorn into his nasal cavity. “HELP! IT’S IN MY NOSE! OH! THE HUMANITY! EITHER THE CURTAINS GO OR I DO! TELL METTATON I LOVE HIM! ALAS! POOR PAPYRUS! I KNEW HIM WELL!”

“Darling, hold still! I can’t get it out if you keep writhing!” There was a quick flash of light, and Mettaton straightened up. “There we go, gorgeous! I vaporized it!”

Undyne laughed out loud. She hadn’t pegged Mettaton as the type to use a magic attack to do that, and she was kind of miffed that she hadn’t done it first. Then again, Papyrus seemed to regard her dislodging things from his bones with her spears as “extra” and “undignified”, probably because he had no idea how metal stabbing rocks out of your foot bones was. But Papyrus gave Mettaton a grateful kiss, before screwing up his facial bones in a sneeze.

“Darling, you have such a dainty sneeze!”

Undyne laughed. “That’s the dorkiest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Undyne, darling , you tend to deafen people when you sneeze. Let him be better than you at this.”

“Hey! If I do, it’s only because I’m having an EPIC BATTLE with the germs!”

“Alphysy, darling, tell her that’s not how colds work.”

“Hey, you’re a robot. What do YOU know about colds??”

“Um, U-undyne, it, uh, M-metta’s r-right, it, uh, t-technically, um, d-doesn’t work that way.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“I BELIEVE DOCTOR ALPHYS IS ON THE SIDE OF SCIENCE, UNDYNE!”

“Ugh, Papyrus?! Not you too!! I’m gonna serve you up with a ‘side of science’, nerd!”

“Darling, the movie’s going to start soon. Can you just admit that you were wrong?”

Undyne rolled her eye and took another massive handful of popcorn, but stopped arguing.

“S-so, um, Undyne, d-d-did you end up r-reading the comics I sent you?”

“Oh, crap, totally forgot.”

“Oh, i-it’s okay! J-just means y-you’ll g-go in fresh!”

“Alright, if you’re not mad about it--”

“N-no way! B-but you s-should probably stop eating s-so much p-popcorn, I d-d-don’t want you to, uh, throw up d-during the movie! C-can’t have you m-missing any of it!”

Undyne made direct eye contact with Alphys and began munching another massive fistful of popcorn, trying to get a reaction, but Alphys just sighed. “F-fine. B-but you g-gotta puke on Papyrus i-if you do.”

“Aw, Alphy. You know I’d never puke on you.”

“That was so touching I almost shed a single tear… ah, yes, here it is--” he traced a finger down his cheek, then flicked his hand to show her his middle finger.

“Ugh, shut up, you overblown vending machine with delusions of grandeur.”

“Excuse you! I am grand.”

“METTATON, UNDYNE, DO SHUT UP. THE MOVIE’S STARTING.”

Chapter Text

Undyne was leaning against a stack of old, beat up, TVs with her spear out and her hair in her face, and Alphys nearly fell over from fright. “What’cha got?”

Alphys held up her plastic bag defensively. “Oh! Um, uh, c-c-c-crystals!”

“You mean, like, from the ceiling?”

“N-no, f-for my, uh, Craft!” She pronounced the word Craft with a capital C, intriguing Undyne.

“Craft? You mean, like, art?”

“Eheheh, n-no, like Witchcraft!” She rooted around in the bag and pulled out a pretty, rectangular, crystal. “I w-was looking f-for m-more like this one in the dump! T-they’re really useful f-for protection spells, b-but they’re r-really tough to find Underground!”

“Protection spells? You mean, like magic shields?” Undyne was no stranger to magic shields--in fact, her style of fighting depended on using green SOUL magic to anchor someone to one. But she’d never used a crystal to make one before. She wondered if she could learn how.

“N-no, like for keeping you s-safe! I-it’s a different kind of magic. Humans can’t d-do the same kinds of m-magic monsters can, b-but anyone can learn w-witchcraft! It’s, uh, r-really interesting! There’s lots of kinds of spells, like sigils, and wards, and intentions, and spell bottles, and um, it’s really cool!

“Wow, what do they do?”

“Oh, um--” Alphys tried to get at her phone without putting down the bag in the water, but ended up falling over, kicking her clawed feet. Undyne knelt down to pick her up before she could get too soaked.

“Hey, why don’t you come to my place? You can show me this wichcraft stuff, and I can give you something warm to change into! I don’t want you to get too cold!”

Alphys seemed to be on the edge of passing out right there, so Undyne brooked no argument, carrying Alphys gently to her home and being certain not to damage the bag she carried. When she arrived, she set Alphys on her bed and pulled out a dress shirt, which she knew would fit Alphys well enough, and went to go make tea.

When the tea whistled, Alphys was up, wearing Undyne’s shirt like a dress, and looking sheepish. “Oh! Y-you’re making t-tea?”

“Yeah! You gotta be careful in the dump, the water gets cold!”

“...y-yeah.” She blushed. Undyne thought she had the cutest blush--it spread from her cheeks up to her spikes and down to her toes. “C-can I, um, practice r-reading your tea leaves?”

She poured the boiling water over the golden flower tea blend. “Sure! What’s that?”

“S-so, uh, it’s a kind of d-divination magic. If you l-look at the tea leaves, you can see things in the future. Or a-at least that’s what the books say. I-I’ve kind of never gotten to try it.”

“That’s so sick! Do you use crystals for that too?”

Alphys grinned and laced her claws together, warming up for the upcoming infodump like Undyne might warm up for a race. “No, but you can use them for other kinds of divination, like making a pendulum! Pendulums are really interesting because there’s science and magic in them. Like, there’s lots of physics that you can do with a pendulum, but you can also make a pendulum to ask about the future! And there’s other ways to tell the future too!” She launched into a discussion about divination magic while the tea steeped, Undyne listening with interest and the occasional question. Undyne loved to listen to her best friend when she infodumped--her stutter disappeared almost entirely, her eyes lit up, and she’d often flap her hands and jump in excitement just when she was reaching the best point. It was like seeing who she might’ve been if she’d never been made to feel ashamed of herself.

When she was nearly finished with her cup of tea, Alphys helped Undyne make the cup ready to be read, with all the careful swirling and turning that had to happen. For a few minutes they sat in near silence, Alphys occasionally humming softly as she considered the cup and Undyne occasionally bouncing a leg (perhaps caffeinated tea had been a mistake, she felt practically wired for sound).

“U-um, so, there’s a lot of big symbols in here! S-some important stuff g-going on, clearly. Uh, y-you’ve got an outstretched arm here--” she pointed with a claw at a clump of leaves-- “which means that someone’s coming into y-your life soon who’ll b-bring you, uh, j-joy and love. A-and armor! W-whoah, that actually does look like y-your armor!”

“Cool! What’s that mean?”

“D-difficulties and dangers, in the t-two week zone. I-it means you’ll n-need courage.”

Undyne refused to be scared of armor in her tea cup. She had lots of courage, so it would just mean she would get cool scars! Probably.

“A-and over here you have the Mars sign, which is, um, r-really good for soldiers.”

“What’s Mars?”

“I-it’s another planet. It’s s-supposed to be red and really sandy.”

“Like Hotlands?’

Alphys had to think about that. “N-no, it’s r-really cold t-there. But the h-humans have put a r-robot there!”

“That poor robot! He must be freezing!”

“R-robots don’t feel c-cold, Undyne.”

She ducked her head in shame, ear fins burning. She knew Alphys was probably shaking her head internally about how uneducated she was already, and here Undyne was rubbing it in her face that she was way too dumb for the cool scientist hang out with.

“A-anyway! N-near the handle, y-you have a b-b-bird, and the let--, um, t-two birds. That m-means two i-important, um, l-letters, or p-pieces of n-news! A-and it’s up n-near the rim, so they’re s-soon!”

“This is so cool, Alphys!” Undyne peered into the teacup, trying to make out the shapes. She saw something that looked kind of like circle with wings, and pointed at it. “Hey, is that one of the birds?”

Alphys squinted at it, turning her head. “Huh, it does kind of look like a bird. O-or a delta-- no, it hasn’t got the triangles. M-maybe it’s supposed to b-be an angel? I m-mean, it doesn’t look like it does in the book, b-but if I was g-going to make a picture of an angel f-for a monster, I-I’d start with that s-shape, I t-think. A-angels are s-supposed to mean, uh--” she gulped nervously-- “G-good f-fortune in l-l-love.”

“Huh, maybe I’ll finally get a girlfriend. Twenty-one gayteen, that’s where it’s at!”

“Y-yeah.”

“You’re still freezing, aren’t you? Did you even drink your tea?”

Alphys looked sheepishly back at Undyne. “Uh--”

“Come on, you gotta keep warm! Here, I’ll heat it up for you.” Undyne raced back over to the stove and heated up the teacup, frustrated at herself for not noticing. What kind of best friend would she be if she let Alphys get away with not taking care of herself! She was gonna have to learn this witchcraft, if only so she could throw crystals at Alphys when she forgot to take care of herself. That was what friends were for, right?

Chapter Text

The first, irrational, thought that crossed Alphys’ mind was that it was so much better than anime. The sunlight made Undyne’s scales shimmer, turning blue and red scales into a rainbow of hues. She knew, although she’d never had the chance to prove it, that no light source underground gave a full spectrum of light; the vast majority of their lights were primarily blue and green, and filtering through the barrier gave the sunlight she’d seen a yellow cast.

Undyne turned back to her excitedly. “Hey, come on, Alphy! Look at all the trees! And the sky! It’s so cool I wanna punch something!” She jumped up and down, full of energy. The light caught on her ponytail and made it glitter.

“W-well, don’t punch me,” she said, rushing forwards.

Undyne groaned. “Aw, but Alphy! I wanna punch you in the mouth! With my mouth! ‘Cause I like you!”

Alphys rolled her eyes, but she was blushing. “H-how long have you been w-waiting to use that line?”

“Uh, like, six months? Paps thought it was really clever.”

Alphys sighed. “It is pretty clever.” Her feet left the ground and swung through the air as Undyne picked her up. “Come on, you gotta come look at the surface!”

When she came fully into the sunlight, she looked around, taking in the brush on the sides of the mountain, the distant skyline of Ebott Town, the endless blue of the dawn sky, everything she’d never even hoped to see. The sun warmed her scales and made a glare on her glasses, and she looked as close to it as she thought was safe.

“Whoah…”

“I know right? I-it’s so beautiful! It’s better than an anime!”

“No, Alphy--you’re sparkly! It’s--whoah! Turn your head again?”

She obliged, looking at the scales of her forearm while she did. The natural light brought out a glint in her scales like she’d bathed in glitter. “O-oh! I, I guess I a-am! I b-bet it’s r-reflecting a, um, wavelength o-of light that we d-didn’t get Underground!”

“That’s so cool! Wow, you look nice!”

“R-really?”

“Yeah! Hey, uh, I never got that punch on the mouth from earlier. Quick, before the queen sees us?”

Alphys rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. When their mouths met, Undyne was grinning too.

Chapter Text

Even as a child, Alphys couldn’t remember holding hands with people. Her claws were sharp enough to draw blood without even trying, and the scales of her hands were coarse and often pinched the hand-holder if she shifted her grip. Besides that, her hands were knobbly and small, shorter than her claws with thumbs that moved like she was triple jointed. She’d resigned herself not to try, linking arms with her classmates on school trips if the teachers were insistent and convincing herself it wasn’t a big deal.

Undyne was a clingy kid who never quite kicked the habit into adulthood. Holding hands with someone was the only way to keep her hands from wiggling and stimming with a mind of their own, and she’d always been a touchy-feely kind of girl anyway. From her earliest lessons with Asgore, she’d hold his hand when she wanted to bring him over to see something, or if they went out walking in public. When she was upset, he let her squeeze it out on one of his massive paws, and when she was happy, she’d often rush over and grab his paw and shake it up and down. Papyrus was a frequent victim of her vice grip during Guard meetings, as her trainee (and also the Guard affiliate with no nerve endings in his hands). He liked to have his hands busy too, so they’d thumb wrestle, or he’d trace the webs of her fingers with one bony metacarpal freed from his glove, because otherwise he’d end up squeezing Undyne within an inch of her life.

The first time Undyne and Alphys held hands, it was when Alphys was having a panic attack. True, it had been to stop the hand from going after a knife, but both of them considered it a proper hand holding: Alphys because it was the first in her memory, and Undyne because technicalities were for dorks and weenies like Papyrus who liked to ask questions like “When was the first time you and Alphys held hands” during truth or dare. Alphys had jumped when Undyne had grabbed her hand, and jumped again when she changed her grip so they weren’t fighting, just holding hands as Alphys sat on her lap. Undyne’s fingers, rough and calloused and strong as they were, found comfortable purchase on Alphys’. And as she assured Alphys, she wasn’t worried about being scratched or pinched or about having her joints bent oddly. She just wanted Alphys to be comfortable.

Alphys soaked up Undyne’s physical affection like Hotland’s parched soil soaked up rain from the cavern’s ceiling. For months, she was terrified to ask. When she started to panic, though, Undyne’s strong, webbed, fingers would slip between her nervous claws and give a gentle squeeze to remind her that her best friend was there. Eventually, when she needed a hand to hold, she’d signal to Undyne by putting her hand out, trusting it would be held. Undyne always, always fulfilled that unspoken promise, careful eye trained on the slightest movement so she would never let Alphys down.

When things got worse and she hid from everything, Undyne only got more affectionate, trying to cram a week’s worth of comforting touches into an afternoon at the dump. In those days, Alphys’ hands were rarely empty, whether they held Undyne’s or fistfuls of flower seeds. More and more though, she went to the dump alone, hands empty except for whatever she scavenged.  When she wasn’t at the dump, she’d sit by the cameras, warming her hands on a Cup O Noodles and watching Undyne, wishing she could hold Undyne’s hand without explaining why or needing to tell lies. Undyne filled her hands with her weapon and occasionally with Papyrus’ hands, but every few nights when she went to clean the nicks in the scales of her hands, she’d notice no new cuts at all and miss Alphys’ tiny, sharp, hands. Papyrus offered to sharpen his bones, but the thought of that was both horrible and unhelpful, so she stopped mentioning it.

Frisk’s hands were tiny, smaller than Alphys’, and stubby. They bit their nails back beyond the quick, and their fingers were covered with thick calluses and scars. Their knuckles, especially, were scarred, even more so than Undyne’s (a fact which she found terrifying about the kid). It was Frisk’s hands that taught them how to hold hands again.

The first time Frisk held Alphys’ hand was in the dump. Their hands were not as impenetrable as Undyne’s, but they held her hand resolutely and with great purpose as she led them to the dump. Just before they had reached the Abyss, Frisk had squeezed Alphys’ hand gently, a tiny gesture that nearly overwhelmed her. Then they ran their thumb over the back of her hand, a touch all their own, and she made a resolution to tell them the truth. They were being so kind to her that she could barely speak; she owed them this.

The first time Frisk held Undyne’s hand, it was cold as ice. Static buzzed over her face, but they had known it was her; they’d called her by her name when even she’d forgotten it. She remembered it as the first feeling she’d understood when her SOUL came back--tiny fingers threaded through hers, thumb brushing against the web of her hand, scar tissue pressed into the little cracks in her scales where blades or claws or rocks had worn against her. Then the sight, the little punk holding up their interlaced hands so she could see their brown fingers woven into her blue ones and signing with their free hand. “A-L-P-H-Y-S. I P-R-O-M-I-S-E.” She’d swung them up into her arms and spun them around, but the truth of her feelings were held tight in her right hand, squeezing Frisk’s little human hand tight and not letting go until Asriel pulled her SOUL away like a jealous child.

When they were reunited, before she even met Alphys’ eyes, she saw her hand, ever-so-slightly opened and seeking comfort. Alphys didn’t even realize she was asking when Undyne reached out and grasped her hand with that comforting touch she knew so well. When their fingers met in that golden flower patch, they were finally home.

Chapter Text

Alphys pointed up at the ceiling of the cave. The crystals were just beginning to glimmer. “Whoah, I d-don’t think I’ve ever been here at night before.”

“Well, c’mon, Alphys! Make a wish!”

She jumped. “W-what?”

“That’s what we do in Waterfall! When the crystals start shining, we wish on them, like humans wish on stars! I love this room. You can really feel everyone’s hearts beating as one!”

“Oh! U-um, okay!”

“What’cha wish for?”

Sweat started beading on her forehead. “I-if I t-tell you, w-won’t it n-not come true?”

“Who told you that?”

“I-I-I--”

“Nah, it’s okay. I’ll tell you what I wish for. I wish I could make everyone’s wishes come true!!”

“A-are you sure t-that’s how it works?”

“Yup! Pretty sure!”

“H-hey Undyne! The crystals are out! M-make a wish!”

“Oh… yeah, I guess I should.”

“W-what’s wrong?”

Undyne sighed. “My eye hurts. And… I just… the surface just feels farther and farther away every day. Do you ever think that if the entrance just got blocked off at some point, we’d never even know?”

“D-don’t think like that. I-it could totally b-be soon too, right?”

“But that’s even worse, Alph! I don’t wanna have to fight another human. W-w-wh--” She gestured vaguely at her eyepatch.

“But you’ve only g-gotten stronger since then!” Alphys gave Undyne’s hand a little squeeze, then let go. “O-okay, if you don’t have a wish, then I d-do!” She rushed ahead up to one of the clumps of glowing crystals and stage whispered into it, “I wish for U-undyne to g-g-get her confidence b-back soon and f-f-feel excited again!”

Undyne rubbed a gentle and affectionate noogie on Alphys’ head. “You’re a dork, you know.”

“H-hey, is it w-working?”

“I mean, I can make somebody’s wish come true, right?”

Alphys grinned up at her. “Undyne, you could make a-anybody’s wish come true.”

“Hey, come over to the wishing room with me, okay?”

Alphys jumped at the sound of Undyne’s voice, nearly landing her in the Abyss.

“Alph, I’m not gonna hurt you. J-just come away from that edge, ok? I don’t want you to slip.”

Guiltily, Alphys walked down the boardwalk towards the wishing room. “What’s wrong, Alph? This is, like, the third time I’ve seen you here this week!”

“N-nothing’s w-wrong.”

Undyne knew she wasn’t getting anything more out of Alphys by the way she said that. “C’mon, make a wish, Alph.”

Alphys sighed, but screwed up her eyes to wish silently. “A-alright.”

“I’m worried about you, dude.”

“D-don’t be, o-okay? It’ll j-just make it w-w-worse.”

Undyne shook her head sadly. “Just, you… you know it’s never a burden for me when you talk to me, alright? You can talk to me about anything.”

Alphys averted her eyes guiltily. “Y-yeah.”

“I mean it, Alph. C’mon back to my place, okay? I’ll put on some anime, we can have some junk food and just chill, yeah?”

“U-um, I--”

“We could watch Mew Mew!”

“O-okay. Sold.”

Undyne let Alphys clamber onto her back and catch a ride back to her house. She had an anime to watch!

“Alphy?”

“Y-yeah?” Alphys panted.

“Look!” Undyne pointed upwards and Alphys saw that the crystals were beginning to glow. “Make a wish!”

“B-but I a-already have everything I could wish f-for!”

“Well, I don’t! I’m hanging out with a super cute girl, who likes me back, but where are all the kisses!” She pulled an exaggerated distraught face. “Anime lied to me!”

Alphys’ face fell. “D-don’t you mean ‘y-you lied to m-me, Alphys’?”

“Nah, I know what I mean!”

“Um. W-well, uh--”

“DOCTOR ALPHYS, YOU SHOULD GO BACK TO RUNNING AT SOME POINT! ALTHOUGH OCCASIONALLY TAKING A BREAK COULD BE HELPFUL, YOU SHOULD STRIVE TO ALWAYS KEEP GOING! LIKE ME!”

Alphys sighed, stretched out her back again, and ran off. “L-later!”

“... damnit, Papyrus.”

“U-undyne?”

“Yeah?”

“C’mon outside for a m-minute, okay?”

The sky above them was a rich black, like the endless Abyss, but it was speckled with shining stars--the real thing, at last. “Wow…”

“M-make a wish, Undyne!”

And Alphys finally, finally got hers as their lips met for the first time

Chapter Text

ENTRY NUMBER **
The flower’s back.

ENTRY NUMBER **
The flower, um, talks? It says it’s called Flowey, which is kind of a dumb name, but ok! I’m not judging!
It says other stuff too. Like that it, um, knows how to “RESET” the timeline. Yeah, he says it like that, in all caps. He pulled up this little star thing so I could see--he calls it a “SAVE point”, like in a video game. It works, too--he asked me to tell him what I’d name a cat if I got one, so he could get a random answer, then said before I answer that he did this once before, reset to his SAVE, and that we would say the answer together, on three. And he did know what it was, despite me totally making it up on the spot. I’m inclined to believe him for now.

ENTRY NUMBER **
He says he’s got a plan. Apparently the flower’s a he and not an it, and he says he used to have a SOUL and that’s how he knows. I feel like I messed up big time, but he seems really nice.
He wants to help get the Amalgamates back to their families. He’s… kind of like an amalgamate? His face is made of the same goopy dust-stuff they are (he showed me how he can morph it) and just like them, he’s got too much DT for his body. He’s just coping better because it’s just him and the flower. Apparently aside from the urge to photosynthesize, it’s all him.
He says that he can help them go home, and the families will forgive me if that happens. I don’t believe it, but you know. Time traveller.

ENTRY NUMBER **
Endogeny is home. Since the SCU is mostly all family already, that was the easiest one. Besides, they’re both mostly corporeal and mostly friendly among themselves, so they’ve come out of it… well, better than the others. Anyway, I got a hug from Doggo, who was so excited that he could see both me and Endogeny, he thinks he might be able to kick the dog treat habit.
Makes me feel like I’ve done something good in this world. Even if I am avoiding any, um, legitimate authorities about what I’ve done. Next are the memoryheads, actually. They… don’t have families, so they’re going to live together. Flowey can talk to them without the phone on, and they apparently just want phones of their own so they can communicate. I hooked them up with voice synthesizers, and they can always come to Flowey if they’re having trouble. Apparently he hangs out in a lot of places.

ENTRY NUMBER **
I actually saw Undyne today! Mettaton sold his house on Blook Acres to the Memoryheads, and Flowey and I went down to help them move in (after all, they don’t… really… have limbs? They can move things but I’m not sure how and it’s not very efficient). Flowey said just judging by how she was talking to me that she was into me, and I should go for it, but…
I mean, he’s a time traveller, right? He knows what’s up. Might as well give it a shot or something. Can’t know what’ll happen if I don’t try.

ENTRY NUMBER **
I’VE GOT A DATE WITH UNDYNE

ENTRY NUMBER **
IT WENT REALLY WELL I TOTALLY ONLY HAD LIKE TWO PANIC ATTACKS AND SHE WAS REALLY NICE EVEN WHEN I DID?

ENTRY NUMBER **
Sorry I haven’t updated the log in a while--I actually haven’t been down here! All the amalgamates are back home, and guess what, the families actually don’t hate me! I have friends (kinda) and Undyne and I have been going steady for a couple weeks! I’m going to start experiments with using artificial objects and DT to see if something without a SOUL can exit through the barrier. He says he’d try it, but his time powers wouldn’t work outside the barrier. I don’t know how he knows that, but I trust him. After all, he did totally get me my girlfriend!!

ENTRY NUMBER **
Well, the DT constructs aren’t going well. It’s not a big deal though. I’m pretty busy working with Flowey. He says he can’t feel anything positive, and we’re trying a mix of traditional therapy and magic infusions to see if we can get anything to react with the essence in him and create a new SOUL.
Oh, and Undyne and I are going to get married!

ENTRY NUMBER **
We’re having a kid!! The egg is going to hatch probably late in the year. Flowey still doesn’t have his emotions back, but he says this is a “promising timeline” and that he hasn’t reset it since he showed me how it worked. He says he wanted to try spending some time “naturally”, which I think is a pun. He’s been hanging out with Papyrus a lot, getting him into shape to help him join the guard, but he still spends a lot of time with Undyne and me. I don’t actually think he sleeps, so he and Papyrus hang out late at night when they’re the only ones up.
Asgore says he’s hopeful that Flowey will get his emotions back. I haven’t told him that he has some… delusions… of having been the prince at one point. No need to break his heart. But I’m not keeping it secret either. Flowey will tell him if he wants Asgore to know.

ENTRY NUMBER **
Things aren’t going well. The amalgamates aren’t looking like they’ll ever be able to go home. But I’m not sure what to tell their families, either. I wish I knew what to do.

ENTRY NUMBER **
I don’t know what to write. Undyne hasn’t been texting at all lately. I’m worried about her. I see her less and less on the cameras too. She just sits in her house and plays the piano.

ENTRY NUMBER **
She doesn’t even play the piano anymore.

--TO BE CONTINUED--

Chapter Text

“H-hey Undyne!

A-are you having f-fun?”

“HELL YEAH! I’ve eaten like six of these ‘kugel’ things!”

“U-um, s-six whole kugels?”

Undyne showed her shark-toothed grin. “Yeah! Papyrus said they were made of noodles! I got in an eating contest with this kid who Frisk knew back when they lived in the Jewish youth hostel, and I totally trounced him!”

“G-geez. A-anyway, Frisk is g-going to start t-the dancing p-part s-soon. W-wanna come, uh, d-d-d-d-dance?”

Undyne finished her piece of cake in one bite, tossed the fork into her mouth, crunched it down, and grinned. “Thought you’d never ask!”

On the cleared dance floor of the embassy ballroom, Frisk had just taken Toriel’s hand and Napstablook had put down a slow song.

“What’s this nerd music?” Undyne whispered, managing to be quiet enough that only Alphys heard.

“It’s a slow dance! D-don’t you know w-what those are?”

“Um…”

“T-they’re traditional. A-at a b’nei mitzvah, the p-parents slow dance w-w-with the kid, but t-there are also r-r-romantic slow d-dances. T-there’s t-this, then we’ll d-do the one where w-we lift Frisk i-in a chair, t-then the dance floor o-opens up.”

“Oh yeah! Hey, Toriel’s a pretty good dancer!”

Alphys looked back at the dance floor at Frisk and Toriel. Frisk looked as focused as ever, carefully picking out the steps of their dance. They barely seemed to be favoring their weaker leg. (She knew that Mettaton had choreographed the slow dance specially so that they would be able to dance easily, but she could admire that they made it look as if it was no different than any other dance.) They wore a pale purple suit, with the new Delta Rune (without the triangles) on the lapel, and a slender gold chain with a six-pointed star pendant, and over their shoulders was draped their brand new tallis, with its blue stripes and long white fringes. Their kippah was pinned carefully to their unruly hair. Toriel wore her traditional purple robes, and the small gold circlet that marked her as the once-Queen of monsterkind.

Halfway through the song, she brought them across the circle of their friends, and out stepped their father, King Asgore, to continue the dance. Some of Frisk’s hostel friends looked at each other curiously, but the dance continued as before, only with him as Frisk’s partner. He wore his ceremonial golden armor, Delta Rune clasp closing his purple cape. He’d left off his gloves, and his massive paws dwarfed Frisk’s hands as they danced. On his brow was his gold crown, but pinned under it was a kippah of his own, knitted for him by Frisk. His large and floppy ears occasionally got in his face when he turned, but he danced with the majesty of someone who’d trained for royal balls and events of state.

As the song drew to a close, Toriel and Asgore each came out to bow with Frisk, and then all three took one bow together. Undyne, next to Alphys, picked up a chair in one hand and rushed onto the dance floor, eliciting giggles from the hostel kids. Alphys distinctly heard a girl say “She knows what we’re all here for,” and she had to muffle her own laugh. Napstablook put down the track they’d all been waiting for--the hora. Linking hands with Sans to her left and one of the ambassadors to her right, she celebrated with all of Frisk’s friends. Undyne demonstrated that she could easily lift Frisk in the chair with one hand, and after the dance, she was mobbed by their friends, reaching a total of seven children lifted at once.

Later that night, back in their apartment, Alphys approached Undyne, who was nursing a kugel-related upset stomach. “H-hey, Undyne. Y-you said you d-d-didn’t know how to s-slow dance. D-d-do you w-want m-m-me to, uh, t-t-teach you?”

“Uh… yeah, sure!”

“C-cool!” Alphys said, trying not to spontaneously combust on the spot. Her brain had immediately inundated her with feelings that could only be described with a prodigious keyboard smash followed by the word GAY, in all capital letters. As she was pretty certain it would not be cool to say that kind of thing out loud, she just stood there blushing harder and harder until she was pretty sure Undyne could feel the heat radiating off of her.

When she recovered enough composure to do so, she rushed over to their MTT-brand speaker (a joke they’d pulled on Mettaton by painting a speaker to look like him and informing him it was his merchandise; they were still waiting for the other shoe to drop about him not ever selling any such thing) and put on a song she’d picked out earlier. She rushed back to Undyne, who was standing up with her ear fins alert, meaning she was listening raptly to the music, probably to see if she’d be able to play it on the piano.

Her ear fins immediately blushed almost maroon, though, when Alphys instructed her on how they would stand. It was a little awkward for the two of them, with Alphys needing to stretch awkwardly to her full height and Undyne hunching her shoulders, but they quickly got used to it and rocked slowly back and forth, moving with the soft music.

“Hey, this is fun. But we could, um, move faster…”

“N-no, Undyne, t-t-the point of the slow dance i-is that it’s, um, slow.”

“Why?”

“U-um, it’s s-s-supposed to be r-romantic, usually.”

“Oh. Do you, um, like, kiss, then?”

Alphys was immediately back in Gay Panic Mode. She stuttered out a long string of syllables with no relation to each other, blushing bright red.

“Alphy? You ok?”

“Y-yeah!” she squeaked out. “I mean! We could! K-kiss! I-if you wanted!”

“Oh! Great!” Undyne leaned in, closing the already small space between them, and Alphys was pretty sure a literal exclamation point appeared over her head as her brain wordlessly pumped pure excitement into her system. She’d only kissed Undyne a couple of times, and none of them had been like this. Undyne’s strong arm was around her waist, and the fingers of her other hand were laced between Alphys’ claws. The tiny, fine, scales of her lips met her own lips, and opened slightly, and distantly she felt her blush reach the very tips of her crest.

Her eyes slid closed as Undyne deepened the kiss further, and a soft noise escaped her chest. She was going to have to dance with Undyne more often if she started doing things like this.

Chapter Text

She hates to admit it, but Alphys is exactly the kind of scientist with one of those red string conspiracy maps.

It helps your memory, if you’re immortal.

She’s not… really sure what happened to make her that way, something to do with someone called Gaster way back before monsters were forced underground. (No, not that Gaster. It’s either a common name, or a reincarnation chain she isn’t particularly interest in.) But she’s lived for a long time. A few millennia on the surface, and twenty-one hundred years Underground. Besides the King and Queen, some turtle monsters, and the short-lived Prince Asriel, she’s the only monster who knows what sunlight feels like.

It’s, well, surprisingly less angsty than that vampire anime makes it seem. She keeps her claws busy, mostly with science, but every so often she gets a special interest and ends up doing things like following manga and anime from the creation of their art form to the present day. She speaks a few languages (so easy to look up and realize it’s a hundred years since you’ve spoken Latin and you can’t conjugate a single verb) and she writes fanfic. A lot of fanfic.

And she tracks Undyne.

There’s two kinds of immortal, see. There’s the kind that lives and lives and lives and doesn’t ever die or get old, and there’s a SOUL that just keeps existing. Undyne is the second kind--there’s always one, born almost immediately after the last one dies. The SOUL just doesn’t move on, or shatter, or whatever SOULS do when a monster dusts. It goes right back into the world, and another hot-headed, tough, trans girl springs up.

She has some rules about it. Undyne always comes to her, given enough time, and since it’s pretty messed up to go up to a kid and go “HEY YOU’RE THE REINCARNATION OF MY SOULMATE”, she never seeks her out. They usually meet, eventually, once Undyne’s old enough to remember. In between times, she looks through history and picks things out that remind her of her lover.

It’s not always obvious. Undyne’s not always the only person in the area who’s named Undyne, and sometimes she gets shy and never comes out as trans and Alphys ends up looking the complete wrong way, even though she should know better, because she isn’t expecting that the cute “boy” who’s into her is the same person as her SOULmate, and sometimes they stay “just friends” for so long that she thinks that this is the reincarnation where Undyne finally moves on and falls in love with someone else or just in general not with her, or any number of things.

None of which really explain why she’s currently on a date with a kid who can barely talk while her estimate on their age slides closer and closer to nine, who’s human and kind of tough and a little hot headed and hasn’t told her their name or their pronouns. But it’s looking less and less like the red string map has gone wrong and more and more like neither of them actually know what they’re doing ankle deep in scummy water with the person she was pretty sure was the Undyne on the other side of a pillar of trash.

If only she’d had the backbone to actually ask any questions to make sure and not just sort of accept the weird circumstances as SOUL science finally coming back to get her for her crimes, they could’ve… well, not been doing this.

Oh well. She could always go back home, and do what she always did when stuff got like this--kill herself and be dust for a few decades and then come back together because her shitty immortal body refused to die, and then pretend that she was coping in any kind of a healthy way.

Wait, the kid was… helping?

She really wasn’t used to this. She stayed away from mortals! They died, and got old, and changed really quickly on the scale of years, not like her. They didn’t know how to handle ennui when they lived for decades. How could they help when her usual sort of problem could last for centuries!

Roleplaying it?

How was this nine year old human having ideas she hadn’t thought of in several thousand years?

Okay, she could handle this. Just a calm, reasonable roleplay. Just like online.

“YOur cute,”

Damn, the kid did do a good Undyne impression. She panicked, trying to think of a reply that wasn’t “I’M A FIVE THOUSAND YEAR OLD MORALLY QUESTIONABLE DUMPSTER FIRE AND YOU MAKE MY HEART GO DOKI DOKI.”

“THEN SHe Kisses YOu”

Whoah, whoah. Talk about immersion breaking. Yeah, Undyne was hot-headed and passionate enough to do this kind of thing, but this Undyne? No way! She would never! Especially because the Alphys she knew wasn’t her immortal lover but a trash bag in a lab coat with weird taste in fifty-year-old anime and debilitating social anxiety covering a deeper layer of something that was looking suspiciously like it was turning into PTSD about the ruined subjects of her medical experimentation, and--

She was in a trash can with the sinking suspicion that she’d had a panic attack and yelled a bunch of things she hadn’t meant to say. Well, at least death was looking nicer and nicer.

Except, Undyne was talking, and not rejecting her? And trying to get her to work out her issues because she loves her? After all the bullshit?

And she might’ve had another really bad panic attack right after and said a bunch of things that fell all over the scale from “meant to say it, didn’t mean it” to “said it, meant it, immediately realized it was a dumb idea”, but somehow she was about to kiss Undyne, and not even the terrifying floral proof that she was a real-life Victor Frankenstein was bringing her down.

She was closer than she’d been in millennia to the sun, with Undyne, and with the kid who had helped her and kept helping even though by all rights they should’ve left her with all the other ancient trash in the dump, and maybe, finally, she was going to be able to look forward to the kind of decades that she only got once in a few eras.

Funny how immortality was only a curse when she forgot how to live.

Chapter Text

“Undyne? Are you alright? You never sleep this late!”

You realized that, mercy of mercies, your phone had not been stolen and it was currently lighting up like a gyftmass tree. You scooped it up and struggled to type out a coherent return message. “ye i’M fine btu fukcing tobydog got in adn took my stUff”

“Omg Undyne!! Why didn’t you say? I’ll be right over =*^u^*=”

Frustrated, you threw the phone back on your bed. Your clumsy webbed fingers were no good for texting, no matter how Alphys tried to shape the keyboard. You returned to your search, upside down, through a pile of clothes you’d pulled out of your dresser.

*DING DONG!

“Ugh! COMING, ALPHY!” You tore across your tiny apartment and opened the door.

“U-undyne, d-do you need a-any help cleaning up? O-or I c-could help you figure out what exactly t-the dog took, a-and then we could g-go shopping and replace it?”

“Um, besides like all my nice underwear and the frozen pizza from the fridge, it’s, um, not something that we can, uh, go shopping for?” You said, feeling every inch the idiot. The important thing the Annoying Dog (Papyrus had named him Toby, and the name had sort of stuck) had taken out of your messy apartment wasn’t something you could admit to having if it wasn’t on hand. After all, it wasn’t like cool anime love interests proposed with a sticky note that said “IOU one engagement ring (stolen by a kleptomaniac dog)”.

“U-undyne, I d-d-didn’t know y-you, uh--”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah, Alph, not that! I, uh. Geez. I guess I’m gonna look like a dweeb however I do it, aren’t I.” You took a deep, bracing, breath. “So, um, I bought a, well, I-bought-a-ring-and-I-was-gonna-propose-for-our-anniversary-and-now-the-DOG-has-it-and--!” You noticed that you were crying, like some kind of dork, where all the neighbors could see, and you broke, bolting into the living room and burying your face between the sofa cushions with your arms crossed over your head, protecting you.

You felt a soft pressure over your shoulders and jumped, lashing out with your hands, which makes it worse because you hit her and now you’re going into a full meltdown-panic attack- thing over nothing, and--

Alphys said something you could barely process in a calming tone and then squeezed you gently in a hug. It was like wearing your weighted blanket, or using a stim toy to help you focus--something that draws some of the hornets out of your mind. You collapsed against her, sobbing, trying to explain about losing the ring and then panicking, and RSD, and how you didn’t mean to hurt her, and she listened, the whole time humming softly to you until your flare-up quieted.

“U-undyne, it’s o-okay. T-the dog never takes anything t-that he w-w-won’t give b-back. A-and in the meantime, I-I’ll just have t-to be the one who proposes!”

You sniffed a little, confused. “What?”

“U-um, I, w-well, I was p-planning o-on proposing on our a-anniversary t-too, and, um, well, s-so we can s-still get engaged then! I-if you want to.”

“Oh, um. Yeah! Uh, yes! Um, uh, um, geez.” You tripped over your words, which makes two of you. Man, you were wishing you had Frisk’s kind of determination where you get to redo shitty days, and not the kind that makes your eye socket run down your face like butter in the sun when you get pissed and makes your muscles twitch for a fight even when you’re not. Even if the official proposal was going to be on your anniversary, this was when you actually said yes and you practically choked on it. You sighed. “I love you, Alphy.”

“L-love you too. L-let’s play some v-video games and f-forget all this, okay?” Her amber eyes were huge and worried, and how could you say no to smashing someone like that at Mario Kart?

“Yeah, I guess. Thanks, Alph.”

Somehow none of this makes your anniversary preparations any easier. You were in for a cozy romantic dinner, j-pop on the stereo because no one was there to judge, you in your leather jacket and nice eyepatch and her in the dress you picked out with her back when you lived underground, and you were almost relaxing.

Your ear fins twitched so hard you felt it, milliseconds after the sound. The subtle scritch of claws on linoleum. Too fast to be Asgore, and Toriel always kept hers and Asriel’s clipped so they didn’t scratch the floors. The guard was out at the barrier fireworks, so it wasn’t them.

The sound got faster and louder, and you reacted like any warrior. By pulling out a spear at the dinner table--catch Alphys’ stunned face, maybe thinking it was your proposal--and turning to guard the door so fast that your chair flipped and skittered across the floor. The sound of your determination played in your head, the song that matches the fire in your blood whenever you fight. You threw open the door, barking out a “Stand and be identified!” that didn’t get answered right away.

Instead, your gaze had time to go down past Asgore’s eye level, past where Toriel or Asriel’s heads would be, shorter than Alphys or Sans, shorter than the kids, barely knee high even without your boots. A white dog.

It wasn’t there when your spear flashed. Instead, the ring it had taken lay on the ground, with a card. “Happy anniversary! --Toby”

“U-undyne? W-what’s going on?”

You shut your eye and took a breath. Another. The song faded from your ears and you dispelled your spear, sending it back where it went when you weren’t fighting. “Alphy, I--”

“J-just a flashback?”

Tempting. You had lots of them, whether you were seeing the last sight your left eye had, or dusting in a time that Frisk had only ever told you about, or just plain snapping into action to fight in a war that was only scant years finished. “No, I, um, Alphy, you’ll never FUCKING believe this.”

She was at your side quickly, bending down to hug you and press her face into your neck. “U-undyne?”

“It gave it back! Alph, Alph, it gave it back! Alphy, look!”

“The ring?”

“God, do you know what this means?”

Alphys’ face lit up. You wanted to save that sight forever, burn it into your eye and your SOUL and etch it onto your armor and-- “Undyne, y-you better be asking me to m-marry you.”

“HELL YEAH! I mean, uh, if you’ll have me!”

“Y-yeah! U-um, obviously, eheheh. I mean, we t-talked about this? Right?” Her hand went into the pocket of her dress and drew out her own ring. You slid the rings onto each other’s fingers, dinner forgotten. She was the only thing in your mind right now.

Which made it that much worse when the dog barreled back through with your underwear, the month old cold pizza, and the blasting sound of Dogsong. You fell over, face-planting onto your fiance with all the grace of Frisk falling off a bridge, but that was okay. You were together.

Chapter Text

You’ve seen death undo itself. You’ve seen monsters melt into each other, screaming, damning you or begging you for help. You’ve looked at nothing itself and thought about jumping in.

There is nothing scarier than the droplet that forms on Undyne’s face as she fights right now. Right over her ruined left eye, like a bead of sweat, but pale blue, the color of her scales. You scream out loud, staring at the monitor. Your claws skittered on the floor as you ran, tears in your eyes. Damn the consequences; Mettaton could deal with the human. You didn’t want to see them, anyway. Not after what was happening to Undyne.

You think you see them crouched behind Sans’ sentry station, but it doesn’t matter. Undyne needs you. You drop to your knees beside her, tears so thick you can barely see. “Undyne! Undyne, oh my god--”

She’s lying in a puddle of herself, thick and dark blue, her eye barely still open. “...Alphy…”

“I’m so sor--”

“D… don’t be… Alphy, I d… I didn’t want to tell you… I don’t wanna… break your heart… but I… Alphy… I can’t die without saying…”

“No! No, no, you’re not g-g-gonna die! U-undyne, I just have to g-get you back to the lab, a-and--”

She holds one dripping finger to her lips. It’s gone slate grey with the color of her gauntlet bleeding into it. “Alphy… I’m dying… I can’t hold on m… much longer… Alphy… I love you…”

You can barely hear it. You need to fix this. “Undyne, we can get you a DT transfusion! I can save you, I can fix this! Undyne, please, let me g-get you back to the lab!”

She laughs sadly. “...Alphy… you’d need to put me in a bucket… i...it’s alright… as long as I have these few moments…”

“I can’t l-l-lose you!”

The hand that clasps your wrist is more like a paw, with how the fingers have melted into each other. “Alphy… promise me… don’t hurt yourself…”

“U-undyne, don’t! I can help you!”

“When… I’m gone… you’ll have… Sans and Mettaton… stay alive… don’t… don’t follow me…”

“Undyne, I need you! I-- Undyne, I love you. I c-c-can’t live w-without y-you!” You’re sobbing now, holding her melting hand in yours, shaking like a leaf.

“Alphy… please… d-don’t… please… promise me…” Her jet black eye finds yours beseechingly.

You take a shaky breath. “I-- I p-promise, U-undyne.” The part of you that wants to join her now yells, but you’ve never been one to keep your promises. Just another lie.

You hate telling it, but you can’t bear the look on her face. You don’t want her last moments to be like this, and you know now by the way her lower limbs have lost all form and become fluid that you’re too late. Always too late.

She takes a rasping breath, melted flesh in her gills making it hard to breathe. “I love you…”

You try desperately to clear her airways, but the gills themselves are collapsing. She doesn’t have long. “U-undyne, I love you t-too,  I--”

She coughs, trying to get breath. “P… please… before I die… could you… kiss… m…. me?”

You do, pressing a kiss on her lips that has to make up for the millions of kisses she’ll never get now, that you’ll never have from her. As you break away, she chokes once more, melted arm coming up as if to claw at her gills, and her eye widens as she dies. You brush a hand over it, closing it as she turns to dust from the puddle on the ground up to her head, leaving nothing but her eyepatch behind for you to remember her by.

With shaking hands you scoop her dust into a pile and transfer it to a specimen bag for safekeeping. You’ll deal with the human, and then you’ll scatter Undyne, whether you do it on the surface or below it with Asgore’s.

Chapter Text

Alphys took a sip of her drink. Blech! Who even drank their coffee black, anyway? It was boiling bitter bean juice with no redeeming qualities, and she stuck out her long, prehensile tongue to claw at it in agony, getting a snort from Mettaton, who was charging in the outlet at their table while enjoying some ghost scones. She looked around. Clearly she’d taken someone’s coffee, but whose?

She was pretty sure nobody in this cafe ordered their coffee black. It was mostly frequented by undergrads and the other people in her doctoral program, all of whom had complex coffee orders that featured a bunch of whipped cream and flavored espresso shots. She had ordered a hot carob (like hot chocolate, but without the killing-her thing), and mistaken the black coffee for her drink of choice, which meant it was someone else’s and they, likely, had her hot carob.

There! By the window was someone she’d never seen in this cafe before, looking confusedly into their drink. They wore a leather jacket and a t-shirt, and their left eye was covered with a black eyepatch with something embroidered on it in silver. Their skin was shockingly blue, and they had pretty red fins where many monsters had ears, the same color as their long hair, which was tied back in a ponytail. She cleaned her glasses off nervously and approached them. “I-I think I p-p-picked up your c-coffee by m-m-mistake, I’m r-really sorry, I--”

“Aw, hey! I bet this is your drink, then. What is it? It’s so sweet!”

“I-it’s h-hot carob. U-um, h-here you g-go.” She handed the black coffee over to the newcomer and watched them take a massive swig from it.

“Mmm! Wakes me right up!”

“I h-haven’t seen you here b-before, are you n-new to DU?”

“That’s the university, right? No, Asgore’s doing a history lecture here this afternoon, and I’m doing security for it with the guard.”

“O-oh! You’re w-with the g-g-guard?”

The stranger grinned. “Yup! Lieutenant Undyne, at your service!” They stuck out a hand.  Alphys took it and immediately got her fingers squashed.

Ruefully she extracted her claws. “I-I’m A-alphys. Um, s-she/her pronouns, please.”

“Oh yeah! Right, she/her for me too. Thanks for reminding me. So, you go to uni here?”

“U-um, I’m w-working on my doctorate a-at DU. I-in engineering. M-my, um, thesis wanted scones this m-morning, so here we are.” She gestured vaguely at the robot finishing his scones at their table.

“*MOOOOOM HELP I CAN’T RETRACT MY CORD!”

“Aaaaaand there he goes. I t-told him not to plug in at the most awkward outlet in the whole place, but he likes the view, and you w-were by the window, s-so. Um.” She started edging away to go help him, then broke into a quick walk. “Coming, Metta!”

She was almost done fitting his cord into the emergency compartment (she’d fix the retraction mechanism at home, because Metta liked being… awkward during repairs) when she heard footsteps. “Hey, you forgot your hot carob!”

Undyne set the cup on the table as Alphys got to her feet. “O-oh! T-thanks!”

“Hey, no problem. Hey, you and the mech wanna sit with me in the window seat? You said he liked to people watch, and, I, uh, um, well, what I mean is--”

“*SURE! I’M JUST GOING TO GET MORE SCONES, AND I’LL BE RIGHT OVER. GO AHEAD, ALPHYS!”

Alphys felt like she looked like a deer caught in headlights. It was certainly how she felt. Why did Mettaton push her to hang out with cute girls instead of letting her just run away like a coward? Why?

She picked up her hot carob and headed over to the window table with Undyne. She picked a seat on the sofa next to Undyne, leaving a big squishy chair for Mettaton as his punishment (he’d definitely get stuck in it).

“So, you made that robot dude?”

“Y-yeah! Mettaton’s m-made of metal and magic, and h-he has his own SOUL!”

“Whoah, really? That’s so cool! I should totally tell Asgore about that, he said he was looking for a new Royal Scientist!”

“W-w-what? T-there h-hasn’t b-been a Royal S-scientist since, uh, since G-g-gaster!”

“Yeah, but he wants someone to study the SOUL! Apparently, since we have five SOULs, he’s hoping that someone will try and find a substitute for SOUL power. Hey, is that Mettaton guy ditching us?”

“I hope n-not. I’ve g-got his charger.”

“Hah! Fiendish, I like it! You’re pretty sharp, aren’t you?”

Alphys blushed and ducked her head. Clever, yes, she heard a lot, but sharp? Fiendish? She had the social IQ of a plastic ficus!

“Hey, you totally figured out who had your hot carob. I was so lost, I was trying to psych myself up to just drink it.”

“Y-you’re the only n-new person in the cafe.”

“I totally wouldn’t have noticed, though. Hey, are you coming to Asgore’s talk?”

Alphys thought about it. She’d been planning to spend the day at the cafe, working, but if her thesis had decided to leave her to talk with Undyne, then she wasn’t too mad about ditching the dissertation and the robot for a few hours to hear the King give a talk. And Mettaton was a grown-up, he could find something to do. “Yeah! I t-think I will.”

“Great! I’ll see you there, then.” At that moment her phone went off in her pocket. “Ugh, I have to go set up the puzzles outside the lecture hall. No thanks, honestly. Anyway, thanks for giving me my coffee back! I gotta run, but I’ll see you there!”

“A-alright!” Alphys found herself grinning like a fool as Undyne walked out of the cafe, holding out a hand that suddenly held a blue energy spear as she went. She took a sip of her hot carob. Huh. It had gotten cold. She wished heating it was the sort of thing she could do with her magic, but no. She started to hold it out towards the trash can, wondering if she could toss it or if she’d have to get up, when she noticed something written in sharpie on it. Call me later? And below it, a phone number. She knew that Undyne would’ve had to write it before she thought of telling Asgore, so why would she write that?

To ask Alphys to call her? Like, romantically? She’d written fanfic with this premise, she knew, so people must do it, but she’d never been asked out before! What did people do? She tried to think of what she’d written Victor doing, when Yuri had done that to him in the 800,000k coffeeshop AU she’d written.

It couldn’t be calling her, could it? That would be ridiculous and intimidating. Well, she’d ask if that was what she was supposed to do at Asgore’s talk.

Chapter Text

“SHE’S MISSING, NOT DUSTED, ALPHYS. SHE’LL TURN UP AT SOME POINT. DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME I THOUGHT SANS WAS DUSTED, BUT HE TURNED OUT TO JUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP ONSTAGE AT THE MTT RESORT?”

“P-papyrus…” Alphys sighed. “J-just, don’t, a-alright?”

“BUT DOCTOR ALPHYS! WE HAVE TO STAY POSITIVE!”

“I can’t, ‘Pyrus. I j-just can’t, okay? Have you s-seen Sans yet today?”

“HE’S UP. HE WENT OUT TO SELL HOTDOGS TODAY.”

Alphys flopped on the couch, feeling a spring bite into her leg but not caring enough to move. “Really?”

“YES. WOULD I LIE TO YOU, ALPHYS?”

She didn’t bother to answer that. “Good on him. G-good to see him g-getting off his a--um, butt.”

“YES! HE’S BEEN VERY PRODUCTIVE LATELY. IT’S GOOD TO SEE HIM PUTTING EFFORT INTO SOMETHING, EVEN IF IT ISN’T HIS AGENT JOB.”

She thought about what he was likely doing at his hotdog stand. Burgerpants would be there, of course, and some of the other regulars. She was the only one who wasn’t updated as to his whereabouts, because she was hiding in his house and only got to come to revolutionary meetings when they were there. She’d shown up to give Papyrus the bad news about Undyne, but Sans had gotten to her first, and told her not to.

Papyrus was hanging on by a thread, he explained, and it was the human. He knew about Reset Theory, Sans explained, and held on in the hopes that they would reset, bringing back his friend, who’d gone missing, if he was able to ask them to. The only other thing that kept him going was being Mettaton’s agent. Sure, the robot was using him, and playing him for a fool, but it kept their bills paid and kept Sans’ revolutionary plans secret.

Mettaton had been using his TV show to brainwash everyone, he’d explain. The problem with this, was that it gave monsters hope, but not the genuine love and compassion that Asgore had shown. The already depressed population of Snowdin had trickled out of Grillbys, too morose to even pretend to smile. Even the jesters and politics bear had shut their doors and stayed inside. He asked Alphys a favor--let him bring her equipment for studying SOULs to his lab, and test the core values of the some folks against healthy baselines. She’d said yes, of course, because it would keep her mind off Undyne if nothing else.

The subjects had an array of AT, DEF, and even LV. They’d had universally elevated HP, as expected, but they’d also ranked in the twenty-fifth percentile or lower for brightness. Nacarat, in particular, had such a dim SOUL that under any other circumstances she would’ve thought she had measured the SOUL of a monster who had already fallen down. Sans, however, had gained almost ten percentiles in brightness since she’d last measured his SOUL. In fact, she informed him with some surprise that his SOUL brightness no longer qualified in the  diagnostic range for depression.

“it’s that show,” he said. “it’s sapping their brightness. mine is just up because i finally had to grow up and give a fuck. we haven’t had any timeline disturbances since the anomaly fought asgore, so i can’t sit on my ass and not care. ‘sides, mettaton’s using paps and he was remembering more and more across resets, way more than me. i don’t want that dumb tyrant fucking up my brother permanently, and i can’t count on it being undone.”

So she’d moved into the skeleton house so Mettaton wouldn’t find her. Dire tidings reached her every day through Sans, even when he didn’t leave his bedroom. “what?” he’d said. “everyone has my number. you go out to read tarot for five minutes and everyone has to tell you how much they’d worried. thought i’d disappeared.”

Alphys hadn’t tested her own SOUL, but she knew it would be worse than the last time she looked at it. As Papyrus wandered into the kitchen to cook something up for Mettaton’s state dinner, she curiously drew it out to take a look at it. It was dim, she’d guess around the fifteenth percentile, and shot through with ugly black sludge that looked like veins. She shoved it back into her chest, breathing hard. Whatever that was, it wasn’t good.

She walked up into Sans’ room, using the silver key he’d given her to get in, and collapsed on his mattress, staring at the trash tornado. She lay, unmoving, too exhausted to think, for hours. Suddenly, she heard the sound of a shortcut being taken and Sans walked in.

“get up, alph. i need you for something.”

“What.”

“we’re going to waterfall. down in the dump, i found human equipment for communicating with spirits. i need advice, and you’re the only person i can think of that she’ll show up for.”

“What?”

“you know damn well what, alph. get in, loser. we’re communing with the dead.”

Alphys stared at him. “Was that a fucking m-mean girls reference?”

Sans winked, looking at her with his right socket. “come on, are you coming or not?”

She hauled herself to her feet. “Sure.”

The shortcut took them to the bridge that lead to the arch where she’d died, and Alphys took a moment to be sick over the side. “Why Undyne, Sans?”

“there’s three dead folks who i could use the advice from. asgore would appear for anyone, i’m sure, but i can’t risk the castle. the old lady from the ruins would come for me if i asked, but i can’t get to the spot where she died. undyne, though, i have both a living link to and access to the place. ‘sides, you look like you need your spirits lifted anyway. how long were you crashed in my room for?”

She gave him her best guess, trying to make it sound like no big deal.

“cripes. even i didn’t spend that long dissociatin’ in solitude. at least i’d hit up grillbs and get drunk while i was doin it. monsters ain’t made to spend that much time alone.”

She just sighed.

“c’mon alph. help me set this crap up at least. ‘parently we’re s’post’a get this pentagram on the ground, and then make the offerings at the points?”

They marked out the star and circle on the ground, then set the little altars with mysterious herbs on the points. Sans went around to each of them and lit them with a cheap cigarette lighter, muttering under his breath as he did so. “aight, alph. go stand in the middle. you’re gonna be the medium.”

“Um, S-sans? What--?”

“Do you want to hear from Undyne or not?” His eyes were gone.

“S-sans, I d-d-don’t think this is--”

“Go, or I’ll make you.”

“F-fine.” She stepped into the circle, and Sans’ chanting rose to a fervor. She knew that she didn’t recognize the language; if it was Latin, it was nothing like it was in anime. Her glasses fogged up, and she removed them. She could barely see anything even with them anyway.

She heard a booming voice, echoed with her own, but she hadn’t spoken. “Who goes?”

She heard Sans say his name, hers, and Undyne’s interspersed with the chant.

“Sans?” It was Undyne’s voice, echoed from her own throat. Her SOUL ached for hearing it again.

“undyne. i need your help.”

“What the hell do you want, Sans?”

“mettaton became king when asgore died, and he’s been brainwashing the underground. we’re seeing monster souls weakening across the kingdom.”

“So why did you decide to get off your ass, Sans? Never thought you were one to give a fuck about anyone else.”

“papyrus. mettaton’s been using him. a figurehead, something. i dunno, maybe even sex. but since things started being for real i’ve had to start a rebellion. we’re quiet for now, but we gotta get loud fast. i don’t wanna start seeing suicides. the narcissist in chief wouldn’t take that well, and i don’t want paps caught in the crossfire.”

Alphys heard Undyne’s withering sigh. “Let me think about it, okay? Fuck off now and let me talk to Alph.”

“aight. please, though, undyne. don’t write us off because of me.”

“Fuck off, I said!” A loud noise struck near Sans, and he strolled off to the bridge.

“Alph… I’m so sorry.”

Tears came to her eyes. “I c-can’t do this, Undyne, I can’t! I-I miss y-you, Undyne, so m-much. I j-just want t-to end it a-and be with you p-permanently.”

“Alphy, don’t. Please. I can’t see what you’re going through, but if you dusted, I’d be crushed. Please, keep living, okay?”

She smiled sadly. “I’ll try. B-besides, someone has to l-look after Sans and Papyrus, right?”

“Aw, fuck Sans. Bastard doesn’t care about anyone but his damn self.”

“He b-brought me out here to talk to you,” she offered.

“Because he knew I wouldn’t listen to anyone else but Paps, and he’s never told Paps a damn thing!”

“U-undyne, everything he s-said is true, though. It’s m-my science he’s u-using.”

“No, don’t get me wrong, Alph. I agree there should be a rebellion. But he’s the wrong person to lead it.”

“W-well, who else is doing it?”

Undyne sighed. “I would be, if I was alive. I don’t know, Alph. Just… just don’t let him use you, alright? And… come back, every now and then, alright? I’ll feel better knowing you’re alright. Tell Sans I’ve made my choice.”

Alphys took a deep breath, preparing for the feeling of being spoken through again. “SANS!”

He walked back in. “had a good chat?”

“Sans, stop pretending you care. I’ll help on one condition.”

“and that is?”

“Once you take the throne, you yield it immediately .”

Sans answered immediately. “done.”

“You need to take his influence away, so that you can coup through the guard. You’re still in that sentry position, yeah?”

Sans shook his head. “i took a job as mettaton’s agent to make paps happy. the guard’s been disbanded anyway.”

Undyne gave a growling shout of frustration. It sounded strange in Alphys’ throat. “Disbanded??”

“yeah, that’s what i said. you got another plan ‘sides a coup?”

There was a long silence. Alphys cleared her throat nervously. “I-I d-d-d--” There was a loud hum next to Sans, and a massive white blob appeared in her blurred vision.

“Shut up! You’ll break the ritual, you--”

Alphys’ body suddenly stopped shaking and stuttering and snapped to furious attention. “TALK LIKE THAT TO ALPHYS AGAIN AND I WILL DUST YOU.”

Black darkness punched two holes in the shape of Sans’ face. “You’re anchored to this world at my mercy, Undyne!”

“Fine! See how far you’ll get without me, Sans! You haven’t had any ideas in weeks, have you?! You only came here because you don’t know shit about what’s going on!”

“oh, i don’t know shit about what’s going on? you fought the human after seeing them decimate the canine unit and kill half of waterfall. i’m not the dumbass here. the dumbass is the dead asshole who still thinks she knows more than me.”

Alphys bristled with rage herself. “S-say that a-again, Sans, a-and it’s n-not Undyne you’ll be i-in trouble with!”

“alph... don’t make me fire this. i don’t know what will happen if i use my magic right now.”

“Then you had better stop acting like you want to and treat her with respect, damnit!”

“i’m not aggressing, undyne. i’m trying not to hurt her, you dumb fucking fish! but sure, i see why you think everyone else thinks with their AT when you have about two fucking brain cells to rub together and nothing better to do than scare kids with your spears to try and forget about the one in your pants! you’r--”

Alphys dropped her head and growled furiously. The roar of a Gaster blaster rang out, and she felt the beam scorch across her back, but she didn’t stop as she barreled towards Sans, dropping to all fours like the dinosaurs from which she was descended. Her eyes flashed a bright justice yellow as she slammed her spiked head into his rib cage, catching him by surprise, then there was a bright spark of integrity blue as she tossed her head, launching him along the rocks.

<<What?!>>

She reeled as the sound of Undyne's voice struck her mind like a spear.

<<What’s happening? Alphys?! ALPHYS! HELP! ALPHY, HELP, ALPHYS, WHAT’S GOING ON?!>> Undyne’s panicked voice rang in her mind, and she dropped to the ground. There was so much going on in her head. Her back burned with pain, and her eyes were filled with flashbacks. Syringes filled with sickly yellow liquid, monsters waking up and melting into each other as they screamed, wrists slick with dusting blood. She blinked suddenly, and realized her right eye was seeing something different. A chest, warped around a spear, pink-sleeved arm reaching up, future scars bleeding on arms that weren’t hers. Long, thin, blue scaled arms. No, those were hers! No, her arms were little and yellow and stubby, with long sharp claws at the end! No, those claws belonged to the girl she liked! No, the girl she liked had deft pianist’s fingers with red webs between them. That’s what her fingers looked like!

She yelled wordlessly in confusion. Her voice broke, and the panic in her brain grew louder. <<ALPHYS! I’m coming, don’t worry!>>

“Get away from her!” She hadn’t meant to say anything, why had she spoken?! Why wasn’t it her voice yelling that?

<<Alphys, what’s going on? Are you alright? Alphys?>>

Her claws locked over her head as she shut down. Why was this happening? What was going on?

Why was she panicking over a shutdown? This happened all the time, didn’t it?

Did it? This had never happened before. If it happened during a fight, she might be in danger!

<<Alphys! Help, I can’t move!>>

<<Undyne? But--you’re dead, right?>>

<<I don’t know! I remember dying, but I’m not dust, right? I can’t see very well, but I can see, and I can feel--ow! There’s, like, claws digging in. Alphy, are you climbing on me or something?>>

<<No, I-- I think I’m having a shutdown! Where’s my glasses?>>

<<I can’t see them! Geez, Alph, is this what not having your glasses is like?>>

Her claws twitched violently. <<U-undyne, are you, like-- in my head?>>

<<I don’t know! How would I know?>>

Alphys tried to calm her racing thoughts. <<Well, u-um, what do you remember?>>

Something forced her jaws into a snarl. <<Sans was being an ass, and you-- Alphy, you were mad, and then I don’t remember anything until suddenly I was, uh, on the floor and I’m not really sure what I was doing, but Sans went flying! And I wasn’t sure what was going on, and I was having a really bad flashback, but what I was seeing with my bad eye wasn’t me!>>

Her stomach dropped. <<Undyne, I-- okay, okay, breathe. I think when I broke the circle, it got you stuck in my brain, and we’re both hearing each other’s thoughts.>>

<<What?>>

<<Do you remember what was happening when Sans was being a dick?>>

Slowly, Alphys found the focus to unclench her claws and lie on the ground, breathing hard. Sans was gone, and Undyne had fallen quiet to think, and she could hear the blood pounding in her veins.

<<Um, no? It was, like, dark, but I could hear you and Sans. Man, did he really say that shit?>>

Alphys grinned darkly with the memory of tossing Sans like an empty DVD case at the dump. <<Yeah. I dunno what’s going on with him, but he’s gotten way more focused and it’s, l-like, not in a good way. He, well, he went from being a laid back kind of dude to, well-->>

<<A bitter, jealous, asshole who’s such a control freak he can’t bear to admit that he’s wrong about which one of us could help him with his coup while still not managing to give a fuck about anyone other than himself?>>

Alphys laughed. <<Damn, Undyne! Tell me how you really feel!>>

<<Alphy, um… how long have I been dead?>>

<<About six months. Why?>>

<<Geez,>> Undyne thought, which didn’t really answer the question. <<And Mettaton’s already…?>>

<<Yeah, it was brutal. He’s been, um, ‘disappearing’ people if they don’t like his show.>>

She hunted in her pockets for where she’d put her glasses, then cleaned them violently and put them back on. The shapes and colors around her resolved back into the arch that separated Waterfall from Hotlands. The circle she’d helped draw was broken cleanly by the deep gash of a Gaster blast, and the tiny altars lay broken around the points of the inscribed star. She saw Sans’ footprints leading up to a rock and disappearing; clearly he had shortcut away. The marks of Undyne’s last battle were still on the rocks--cracks in the stone, spatters of the human’s blood, and the scuffs of their feet on the earth as the human had mercilessly kicked the life out of her.

<<This is so trippy!>> Undyne exclaimed. <<Your head is way lower than mine is, this looks so weird!>>

Alphys didn’t have a chance to reply. She turned her head quickly, tracking the sound of boots on dirt.

<<Alphys! Run!>>

She trusted Undyne, so she rushed towards the arch, away from the direction of the sounds, falling to all fours in her rush. Distantly she felt sharp panic over running into Hotlands, and realized why--of course, Undyne’s experience of this run was in armor that overheated her and dried out her fragile gills. It was hard for her to keep her grip on her own knowledge that she had run through here a few times a week without overheating in the face of Undyne’s overwhelming instinct, but her fear of the consequences of being caught kept her going. She pulled out her keycard and buzzed into the deserted lab, slamming the door behind her and rolling under her big monitor to hide and catch her breath.

<<How are we already exhausted?!>>

Alphys apologized, sweating hard.

<<No need to be sorry, Alph. I just wasn’t used to, um, being you, yet.>> Alphys felt a sudden urge to shake her head apologetically.

<<Hey, was that you?>>

<<What?>>

<<Try, um, raising your left hand.>>

Alphys felt an urge to raise her hand, but it didn’t move until she reached into her pocket, pulling out a little spiral bound notebook. She wrote “ENTRY NUMBER 01” across the top in a messy scrawl. “After whatever Sans did, Undyne is conscious in my head?? She remembers dying, seems to be able to feel but not use my body. Having difficulty acclimating to being shorter, different physical limits. Seems to be difficulty separating who is thinking what unless we try to communicate with each other. Lost S/L testing equipment, may not be safe to return to Sans’ house until he’s calmed down.”

<<Alphy, um, can you tell me something?>>

Alphys flinched nervously. There was so much that she’d wanted to keep secret that Sans’ karmic retribution had put on clear display, and she didn’t know what Undyne had seen of her mind now she was inside it. <<Um, sure, I guess.>>

<<Did you, um, hear what I was thinking at the very start? When, um, you were taking the damage from Sans’ blast thing?>>

Alphys cheeks flushed. <<Sort of? You were panicking, you, um, didn’t know what was going on, and you were worried because of the memories I was, um, seeing, weren’t yours.>>

<<Oh. Aw, geez. Well, uh, if you know I, um, like you, then-->>

She nearly fell over. <<WHAT?>>

<<Oh FUCK-->>

<<Wait, Undyne, you--? Because, um, I-->>

<<I know, I’m trans, it’s-->>

<<No, no! Undyne, I like you back! I’m not-- I mean, it doesn’t matter now, you’re, um, literally stuck in my head and-- I mean, um, Undyne, I like you a lot! For a long time!>>

<<You do?>>

She hugged herself, hoping Undyne would feel it. <<Yes! I thought you’d never like somebody like me, and, um, I still don’t get why you would, but, um, yes!>>

<<Oh, Alphy. You’re clever, and pretty, and cool, and you know so much about everything, and-->>

<<Undyne… I lied to you about a lot, okay?>>

<<Dude, if you’re talking about the anime thing, I kind of figured. Nobody from anime would fight like that, especially once I was melting, and they were still kicking me, and, uh, yeah. I’m not mad, though, Alph. Even if it isn’t human history, the fun part is that it’s cool to watch! And, um, uh, that you, um, look really cute when you’re ranting about it.>>

Her glasses nearly fell off. <<I what??>>

<<Yeah! Dude, your eyes light up, and you flap your claws and sometimes you start rocking back and forth like it’s just too big a rant to fit in your little body! I just wanna pick you up and squish you!>>

<<Aww, Undyne! Oh my gosh, that’s so sweet. Um, that’s not what I lied about, though.>>

<<Wait, what?>>

She got to her feet, nervously chewing on a nail. <<Just… don’t panic, okay?>> She walked into the elevator and pressed the lowest button. For the True Lab.

The doors opened, and she stepped out. She took out a dog whistle from her inventory and blew into it hesitantly. Why couldn’t she hear tha-- oh, right. Not her ears. Alphys was always laughing when she’d start listening to things outside the audible range. Hey, she wasn’t laughing to be mean! Undyne’s ear fins just wiggled in a cute way, like a cat’s.

Then Alphys heard sticky footsteps on the tile floors. <<What’s that?>>

“Hey, Endogeny. Come and meet Undyne!” Her tone was falsely chipper.

<<What is it?!>>

Alphys, carefully stroking Endogeny’s sticky fur, told Undyne about the DT experiments. As she spoke to Undyne in her head, the other amalgamates came out, and she showed them attention as well.

Undyne listened patiently. <<Alphys… that’s horrible.>>

<<I know, I’m sorry. I know I should p-pay with m-my life, b-but I’m too much of a c-c-c-coward-->>

<<No! No, Alphys, not at all! That’s not what I meant at all, Alphy! I’m so sorry you had to go through this alone! I should’ve been there for you!>>

Lemon Bread drew close and laid a sticky, muscular arm over her shoulders. With twelve voices, it spoke consolingly. “We’ve felt this before.”

“Lemon? Y-y-you’ve never b-been this affectionate b-before!”

“Welcome two a special hell.”

“O-oh! You c-can tell that Undyne’s h-here?”

“You think I’m pretty??”

Alphys laughed nervously. “Yeah, yeah it’s her.”

“You think I’m pretty??”

She blinked confusedly. “Wait, you mean--?”

It grinned happily. “Stay here with me!” The muscular arm twitched, fingers making a claw and shaking up and down.

“Y-you’ve been trying to say that the whole time?”

“That’s what they all said!”

She laughed. “Well, we’re together now. Undyne, is there anything you want to say?”

<<Say it’s so nice to see you all again, and I’m going to need your help with something.>>

Curiously, she relayed the message and found Undyne waiting with another, and another, and another. As she spoke, she saw the sense in Undyne’s simple plan. On Mettaton’s live news segment, she’d arrive on Endogeny’s back, and send him packing, dismantling his rule but publicly pardoning Sans and him and his political prisoners.

“H-hang on a sec, guys. I h-have to ask Undyne something.” She shut her eyes. <<Undyne, who are we going to make king?>>

<<Oh, duh. You, obviously! You’d make a great queen! And I can help you with the public stuff, don’t worry!>>

<<Undyne! M-monsters could n-never accept a queen who’s d-d-done what I have!>>

<<Just ask them! I bet that Lemon Bread dude would follow you to the ends of the Earth. And their families will be happy to have them back, I promise you, Alphy.>>

Alphys cleared her throat. “Um, y-you guys, U-undyne says t-to ask if you’d support m-me as, um, Queen?”

Twelve voices spoke as one. “Stay here with you!”

Three voices on top of each other. “Nod, nod/Courage.../That’s right!”

The memoryheads screeched encouragingly in binary, eyes wide and eager. “01010000011100100110111101100011011101010111001001100101001000000110011101110010011001010110000101110100001000000111000001101100011001010110000101110011011101010111001001100101”

A soft, once-strong voice. “Supp...ort... you…”

“BWOOF! Yip yip yip yip yiiiip yip BOOF!”

<<See, Alphy? You’re already a queen to us!>>

<<U-undyne! You’re gonna make me cry again!!>>

Chapter Text

“Dada, why can’t I stay home and get a prince?”

Asgore sighed. “Because that isn’t how it’s done, Undyne dearest. If you’re going to be a girl, then you have to do it right.”

She stamped her foot angrily. “I AM a girl! But it’s still stupid and dumb and I don’t get why having a stupid dragon capture me makes it better for princes!”

Asgore reached out and adjusted the tiara on her forehead. “Dearest, I doubt it would make you feel much better to know I found rescuing your mother a ridiculous process as well.”

Toriel returned to the throne room, now carrying the delta rune robe Undyne would be expected to wear. “Mama, why can’t I wear my armor?”

“My child, that would be highly irregular!” She bent down to whisper in Undyne’s ear. “Which is, of course, why I have put it in your trunks. I am certain that the dragon will allow you to wear it and to continue your training, you merely have to dress nicely today.”

“My armor is nice! And I hate dresses! You can’t kick people while you’re wearing them, or run around, or--”

Asgore sighed. “I know, little one. But please, play along for today. The dragon will certainly not mind if you don’t choose to wear a dress. I know your mother’s didn’t.”

“Mama, you didn’t like wearing dresses?”

She laughed. “Certainly not! I was quite the rebel when I was your age as well! Now, come along, my child. The tournament is beginning, and it would not do for us to be late.”

Undyne wriggled into the dress, pouting, and walked out to the tournament ground. In only a few minutes, she’d be abducted by a dragon and have to live in its tower or whatever while she waited to be rescued by a prince. In the meantime, she was bound and determined to enjoy the tournament.

Sat on her small throne between her parents, Undyne fiddled with a few links of chainmail in her lap. The knights on the parade ground paraded out, in full kit, presenting their shields: Sir Gaster, the skeleton lord, in his black armor with the sword he made himself, Sir Grillby, the fire elemental, his helmet off to showcase the flames that made up his face, Sir Elderblook, the ghost, haunting his suit of armor, and even the Hammer of Justice, the noble Duke Gerson.

The sky went dark suddenly, and Undyne balled up her fist, hiding her toy. Down swooped a golden-scaled dragon, sharp claws extended and lightning arcing out of her nostrils into the sky around her. “W-where--” it squeaked, then cleared its throat to speak more commandingly-- “Where is the princess Undyne?”

Undyne stood from her throne, shaking slightly. No! She wasn’t nervous! She wasn’t going to let some dragon get her scared! She steadied her hands as her mother stood as well. “Foul beast, get thee gone from this place! I will not see you take my daughter from me.”

The dragon blinked, eyes sliding away from her mother. “Uh-- More fool you, then! For I will not leave without my prize!” With a beat of her wings, it drew near enough to wrap one massive claw around her waist, lifting her into the air. “I defy you! No mortal prince could deny me what I have taken!”

Undyne’s thoughts slid to her adoptive brother, Asriel--an im mortal prince, though he was currently several kingdoms over with the princen he’d agreed to retrieve, a human who he considered more of a cousin or sibling than his supposed wife. Maybe she’d get a prince like that, or a trans girl who was playing the part of a prince, and she wouldn’t have to marry some smelly guy! That sounded good, right?

Asgore’s voice rang out. “I beg of my people, and of the princes of our neighboring lands--my daughter must be rescued! Though not of my blood, she is my child, and by tradition her rescuer shall have his share of the kingdom and his place in line to my throne!”

Her mother looked like she could slay the dragon right there. She’d made no secret of how she detested the tradition, and wished for Undyne not to have to leave, but as Asgore said, rules were rules. “Get thee hence, or I myself will return the child of my heart to her place. This is your final warning!” Fire flickered around her paws as the dragon took to the open air, away from the castle.

She found herself no longer rudely grasped in her claw but sat on her broad back, just behind the spikes on the back of her head. The broad, flat scales provided a comfortable perch, and she did have to admit that she was having fun flying. The wind whipped at her face, and the world below sped by as they approached the dragon’s tower. Her trunks, with her spear and armor as well as some other belongings, would already be there according to the agreement.

The dragon turned its head to look at her. She seemed much less fearsome now that she had controlled the lightning she was breathing, and now that she was no longer trying to play the part of the vicious captor. She smiled, and Undyne noticed she had broad, flat teeth--herbivore’s teeth, not at all what she had expected. “Um, hi! My name’s Alphys, and I’m really sorry I nearly messed up your capture. This probably wasn’t at all what you were expecting, eheheh.” Her voice was kind of high and thin, not at all like the powerful boom she’d spoken in at the tournament. She even stuttered! It was a kind voice, too, one that seemed to match her gentle appearance.

“Hi, I’m Undyne. Uh, you probably already knew that, didn’t you?”

“It’s okay! It’s really polite of you to introduce yourself. Did you, um, already know this was going to happen?”

Undyne was taken aback by the question. “Uh, yeah? Do some princesses, um, not know?”

The dragon--no, Alphys--laughed nervously. “Yeah, you’d be surprised what royalty don’t tell their kids these days. Sometimes I have to teach kids, um, how to get dressed for themselves, and how to even do anything other than sit and be quiet all day! I swear, they better watch out or I might just keep those kids if their parents aren’t going to treat them any better than dolls!”

She’d hit on a topic that Undyne adored. “I know! Everyone in the castle treats me so much worse now that I’m a princess! When they thought I was going to be a prince, everyone wanted to hang out with me, and play jousting, or tag, or just anything, but now all they want me to do is have stupid tea times and dances!”

“Well, I’m not gonna make you do any of that! Eheheh, I don’t even think I could dance. Do they make any dances for dragons?”

Undyne thought about it. “Hmm… I dunno. I can’t really pay attention to the dance instructor. Could you let me still practice with my spear, though?”

Alphys looked interested. “You use a spear? That’s really cool!”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah! Hey, you’re only, like, my fourth princess, but I’ve never met one who liked fighting before!”

“Oh, wow! Hey, when we get there, I can show you my forms! Nobody ever wants to see them, but I promise they’re really good!”

“That sounds pretty cool! Hey, we’re almost here. I just have to focus for a bit, then we can talk more!” She swung her massive head around to look and folded in her wings. “Grab on tight to the spikes and don’t let go, okay?”

Undyne wrapped both hands around the spike nearest her and linked her legs around Alphys’ neck. Suddenly, they were falling like stones out of the sky. As they neared the plains below, she spread her wings and they fell into a swift glide. She beat them, once-- twice-- thrice-- then folded them and landed on her strong clawed legs outside a large cave.

“Well, here we are! Your new home.” She reached out with her tail and rolled a large boulder away from the opening of the cave.

Undyne clambered off her back. “That was SICK!!”

“Watch this!” She took a deep breath, and exhaled pure blue lightning into the cave. Each bolt struck a twisted bronze wire on the wall and lit it like the firmament of a light bulb, the brightest point running up and down its length as though being endlessly conducted through it.

“Wow!!” Undyne watched, mesmerized.

“Come on in! Let’s get you settled, alright?”

She walked into the cave. It was a nice enough place, she supposed. On one side of the room was a large nest of blankets and bedding, and next to it was a large and dishevelled stack of scrolls and codices. There was a large bale of straw against one wall, which had several bites taken out of it, but there was also a more monster-sized icebox, and a bed with a wardrobe near it. There was a bookshelf near the bed, which wasn’t as packed as any of the others in the room, and on top of the bookshelf was an old cast-iron frying pan. Kicked under the bed, she found a padded leather glove and a wooden dagger, and in a box of toys by the wall there was a crossbow missing its string. “Hey, I thought you said you didn’t know any princesses who liked fighting! This is a pretty cool crossbow!”

“Oh, that’s one of the local humans’,  probably. There’s six of them, they’re magicians or something. You’ll probably see them around. I, um, brought your things in, but my claws are kinda too big to put them away for you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Undyne said, kicking the trunk open and starting to move her clothes into the dresser. “Wanna see my spear forms now?”

“Sure! Let me just, uh, show you around, okay?” She pointed with her tail at the side of the room Undyne was on. “That’s, um, your room. There’s a curtain you can pull around it, and if you want the lights off, just touch them with that thing on the table. The metal part will pull the lightning out and store it, so you can put them back whenever you like! I, um, designed it myself, actually. I just had a human put it together so it was the right size.”

Undyne picked up the little wooden box and touched the metal rod to the light. The bright spark travelled through the rod and into the box, and the wire cooled and went dark. When she reignited the light, the spark leapt eagerly back into the wire and resumed its travel.

“There’s food in the icebox; it’s perpetually cold so you can keep whatever you like in there. We can go to the market at some point, although I usually have to stay on the outskirts. I just eat straw, really. Sometimes I’ll go outside and graze, but I don’t really like to leave all by myself. There’s, um, other dragons who fly over and sometimes pick on me, but they won’t bother me in front of a princess. It’s, um, bad for business.” She ducked her head nervously and a spark jumped between her spikes.

“Anyway, here’s my bed--” she flicked her tail towards the nest of bedding-- “And my hoard. It’s, um, novels. And some, uh, visual novels. They’re made in the East, and they, um, tell a story with art.” A bright blush lit her scaled cheeks. “Feel free to, um, check them out! There’s also some books on your shelf. Most of them are from the other princesses.”

Undyne walked over towards the shelf and looked at a book. It was in French. She looked at another book. This one looked like a cookbook, and she paged through it with interest. Cooking was one of the things she did like to get to do as a girl. There was something just so satisfying in putting all the things together and having food at the end! She looked at another--a sordid romance novel. She put that one back without even reading the title and walked over towards Alphys to check out the books in her hoard. She picked one up and looked at the human on the cover with interest. It had strange reddish armor with a scary mask, and held a large shining sword in one hand. The title was written in a language she didn’t know.

Alphys looked at her investigating the books with interest. “Want to get your spear and show me your forms?”

“Oh yeaaah! Sorry, I can be kind of forgetful. Just don’t let me forget to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom, okay? I can get pretty focused.”

Alphys laughed nervously. “Actually, I do too. Maybe you can help me out too?”

“Sure thing!” She scampered back across the room and pulled her wooden spear out of her trunk. “C’mon, let’s go outside where there’s more room!”

She ran out into the valley near the cave, where the hill above it started to slope up into the next hill over. “Alright! This is, um, spear form one!”

She stood to attention, spear in hand, then turned sharply, conjuring a handful of magical spears as she moved. From there, she was in constant motion, switching from physical spear attacks to magical projectiles as she advanced in each direction. She finished with a loud cry and a flourish of her spear, then returned to attention. “What’cha think?”

Alphys’ eyes were wide. “Wow, that’s really impressive! Did you study with a knight or something?”

“Yeah! Do you know the Hammer of Justice? He’s always hanging around in the court, and I always used’ta get sent to study with him and the knights when Mama and Dada were busy with making laws.”

“Oh, wow! I have a book about him, actually. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making a manga about his adventures, if I could only get enough parchment! Um, that’s what the visual novels are called,” Alphys said, blushing.

“Well, maybe I could help you draw it! You could tell me what to draw, and I could draw it little like the other books!”

“Are you sure? It might take a while.”

“I’m not in a hurry to get rescued. If we can tell everyone I can’t be rescued until we finish making this manga thing, then maybe we won’t get bothered by stinky princes!”

Alphys’ stutter grew more pronounced as she tried to understand. “Wait, you don’t want to be rescued?”

“Yeah, princes are stupid! I don’t wanna get married to a prince. You seem really nice, actually. I’d totally be okay spending a few years or more with you. You seem really nice, and I can show you all about spear-fighting, and maybe meet these humans, and--”

“Oh my god! I’ve never had anybody, um, think like that before! I’d love to have you for as long as you want to stay!”

Chapter Text

Alphys’ tongue flickered out pensively as she mixed the next shade of pink. “A-almost done!”

Undyne shot her a thumbs-up, careful not to move her face. Face paint was a delicate business, after all.

Chara piped up with Frisk’s voice. “Alphys? Would you perchance do us next?”

“U-um, sure, guys! W-what do you w-want?”

“A nonbinary flag, and a neurogender one, if you would?”

She smiled, finishing the even edge of the lesbian flag on Undyne’s cheek. “S-sure! Here, U-undyne, what do you think?” She held up the little mirror.

“Sick! Thanks! Alright, I gotta go find my flag, okay Alphy? I’ll be right down, promise.”

“O-okay! D-don’t rush, I still have t-to do the kids!”

Undyne kissed the top of Alphys’ head and rushed off as Chara and Frisk walked over to her and sat patiently as she painted the flag on their cheek.

Mettaton entered the apartment with a flourish. “It is I! How are you all today, darlings?” He was wearing a large pan pride flag over his shoulders, and his chest plate had been replaced with one painted in the trans colors. A magnet attached to his chest had his pronouns on it, and his whole outfit bore a liberal dusting of glitter.

“Excited!” Frisk signed. “Chara’s excited too, we just have to keep still.”

The ever-quiet Asriel piped up from the corner, where he’d been reading a comic book in his aromantic-striped sweater. “Golly, I’m pretty hyped up myself!”

“And you, Alphysy darling?”

“O-oh, I’m p-pretty excited too! Just a l-little worried about a-all the crowds.”

At that moment Undyne came thundering down the stairs, pride flag wrapped around her like a cape. “Oh, hey Mettaton! What’s up?”

“I just got here. We are leaving at nine-thirty, right?”

Alphys looked at her watch anxiously. “Oh! U-um, right! I’ll j-just wrap up with the kids a-and we can g-go!”

Frisk flapped their hands happily.

They all piled into Mettaton’s fancy car, and Alphys plugged him into the dock so he could use his driving programs. They had a few stops to make, so Asriel and the kids piled into the back while Alphys insisted it only made sense for her to sit practically in Undyne’s lap, right next to her in the middle.

Their first stop was the skeleton household, where Papyrus was waiting outside in a rainbow baseball cap and a crop top that said COOL NB. He’d swapped his characteristic red scarf for one Chara had knitted him, in the ace colors, and his booty shorts said “SPOOKY” across the butt. “HEY! SANS! GET DOWNSTAIRS AND GET IN THE CAR! YOU TOO, MEW! WE DON’T WANT TO BE LATE!” He had painted his skull with a rainbow over each eye as well.

The door of their house opened and Mad Mew Mew came running out. She’d finally bonded with her new body--Frisk had been right, love was a good catalyst for it, and once she’d met her girlfriend it had been easy. She headbutted Papyrus affectionately, and he scratched gently behind her ears. Behind her, Sans strolled out in his usual hoodie and slippers, but with a demiromantic pride t-shirt on and a sloppy ace pride flag on one cheek. His skinny wrist was wrapped with many pride bracelets, and he’d spray-painted the ratty fur of the hood in a rainbow. All three piled into the car, Papyrus next to Undyne, Sans in shotgun, and Mew Mew in the back seat awkwardly.

“heya. ready for pride?”

“YEAH!”

“I sure am!”

“Most definitely!”

“Yes! Yes!! YES!!!”

“H-hell yeah!”

“great,” Sans said, “because i’m ready for sloth.” And he was asleep in the passenger’s seat.

“Oh my god!!!” Undyne yelled, but the car started moving again before she could spear him.

Their next stop was the new Blook Acres, to pick up Napstablook. He was in his new robot body for the day, wearing a t-shirt that said “Anxious Ace from Outer Space” and ripped skinny jeans. His wild shock of white hair sported a lock wrapped up in friendship bracelet string in the colors of the aro pride flag. “hey guys… thanks for picking me up… i hope it wasn’t too much trouble or anything…”

“No, darling, not at all! Come on, pass me that mixtape of yours. I think I can get it in around Sans!” The CD went into the car’s disk drive and the notes of Napstablook’s latest album filled the air.

Their last stop before the parade was at Monster Kid’s house. They were waiting outside, and jumped up and down when they saw the car. They were wearing a sweater in the nonbinary flag colors and a ribbon in their spikes. “Heya, dudes! Is there room in the back for me?” They clambered carefully over Mad Mew Mew to sit next to Chara and Frisk. “Yo! Are you excited for Pride?”

“Yeah!” They signed. “Did you hear Mettaton’s gonna be singing Beyonce this year?”

“Whoah, Mettaton! You’re doing the talent show?”

Mettaton laughed. “MCing the talent show, you mean! You’re all certainly welcome, of course!”

“Right, but first!! The PARADE!!! I’m gonna show everyone how PUMPED I am to be at Pride on the SURFACE, with my GIRLFRIEND!”

Alphys turned bright red. “O-oh my…”

Chapter Text

Undyne arrived at the lab early, wearing her blazer and white turtleneck over black slacks. Alphys nearly fainted on the spot. They were just friends, she had no right to be reading so much into it, but there she was in her just-in-case-of-a-date dress, and Undyne was dressed up nicely, and she was going to be bringing her as her plus-one to the Guard dinner!

She was still quivering slightly as they stepped off the Riverperson’s boat outside the place where the dinner would be. As far as she’d gathered from Undyne, the purpose of the dinner was to show that the Guard was doing well, and raise funds for the Snowdin Canine Unit to have their sentry stations redesigned. This would be done, somehow, by having the whole Guard and a bunch of rich people eat expensive food and listen to a bunch of boring speeches.

Undyne spoke to the fancy concierge and showed her tickets--for Captain Undyne, plus one (Alphys, her supposed date). They were waved into the ballroom, where Undyne made a beeline for the Waterfall table. The only person sitting there was old Gerson, because Waterfall could boast neither wealthy residents nor a large group of Royal Guards. It was just Undyne.

“Hey, old man!”

“Ach, don’t you old man me! Wahahaha!” The old turtle picked her up in a crushing hug.

Alphys caught up to them and meekly waved hi. Knowing that her friend had trained with the Hammer of Justice and actually seeing the two of them give each other the business were very different experiences, as it turned out.

“Aw, Alph! Don’t be shy! Gerson, this is Alphys, Alphys, this is Gerson.”

Gerson stuck out a wrinkled hand. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, wahaha! Any friend of Undyne’s is a friend of mine!”

She shook his hand. “G-good to meet you too!”

Gerson peered through his thick glasses at Undyne. “Good to see you finally putting yourself out there! I’d begun to think you wouldn’t ever find yourself a lass, wahahah!”

Undyne blushed brightly. “Gerson!! She’s just my friend, promise! I just didn’t want to be bored at the dinner!”

He grinned crookedly. “Whatever you say, lassy.”

Undyne settled into her seat as a fancy waiter came by with cocktails. She grabbed one and downed it. “Mmm, orangey.” Alphys’ eyes widened. She took a sip of her own cocktail slightly warily.

Every so often, guardsmen would come up to say hi to Undyne, or she’d be recognized by an old university friend, but largely the Waterfall table went ignored. She could see what Undyne meant when she said it was boring. The food was expensive, and not a lot else--there was a large steak that wasn’t made of steak, and some vegetables that had been boiled within an inch of their lives. The speeches were beyond dull. Asgore came up and mumbled into his beard for fifteen straight minutes, Sans walked up on stage and told a pun that needed three minutes of setup and she didn’t even realize it wasn’t a legitimate speech until he was nearing the punchline.

Undyne was kinda buzzed by the time that some rich old wereboar had finished his speech about supporting increased security around Snowdin town. Gerson had clearly noticed as well, because he leaned over towards her, speaking in a reedy whisper. “If you young’uns wanted ta sneak off an’ do, y’know, couple things, now’d be a pretty good time for it.” He laughed quietly.

Undyne looked at him, thinking. Then she turned to Alphys. “Wanna?”

She very nearly imploded on the spot. “What?”

“No! No, Alphy, I’m just kinda, um, getting overloaded here.” She looked sadly down at her hands. “Should’ve brought something to do, but y’know.”

“O-oh! A-alright, come on! W-we wanna be out b-before the next speaker comes, r-right?” She got to her feet, tugging on Undyne’s hand.

They decided to hang out a couple of hallways away from the bathrooms, so they could claim they’d gotten lost if they were found. Undyne sat exhaustedly against the wall of the hallway and made a magical spear to fidget with, and Alphys sat down next to her. “A-are you o-okay?”

Undyne forced a smile. “I hate these, honestly. Fucking dorks. If I had to give a stupid speech, I’d at least make it exciting.”

Alphys put an arm around her broad shoulders. “U-um, how w-would you do that? I-it’s pretty boring stuff, r-really.”

She lay her head on top of Alphys’. “I’d probably blow something up on the stage, honestly. Ooh, or I could make it a puzzle! I could put all the information on note cards, and then stick them to the roof with spears, and the puzzle is to get them down!”

“T-those both sound l-like they’d, um, c-cause some pretty s-serious property damage, Undyne.” Her hand was currently on Undyne’s bicep, and she was finding it kind of hard to focus. Undyne could probably crush her head like a soda can, and that was, in her most scientific opinion, extremely hot.

“That’s the fun, Alphy! Besides, it’s not like it would be that hard to put back together. They could put a permanent puzzle on the ceiling, then I could focus on that at dinners. I mean, puzzles suck, but I’d rather do a puzzle than just fall asleep where I’m sitting.”

“I-it’s actually kind of difficult t-to put puzzles on the ceiling, b-because they have to go on u-upside down! B-but I’m s-sure they c-could put a sudoku up there!”

“Yeah, probably.” Alphys was pretty sure Undyne didn’t even know what a sudoku was. “Man, Gerson probably thinks we’re, like, making out right now.”

Alphys laughed nervously, trying to hide how much she wanted to be making out with Undyne at that moment. Just friends! Just friends! Just friends, on a friend date, because the guard dinner was boring! Not a real date!

Undyne gazed off into the distance. “I mean, if you liked me back, we probably wo-- ohhh, fuck. Did I just say that out loud?”

Alphys’ brain spent an embarrassingly long time trying to process that. “W-wait, U-u-undyne, you, um, l-like me?”

Her eye flared. “Shit, uh--”

“U-undyne, I, um, I l-like you back actually! I-I-I--”

Undyne turned, looking her in the eyes hopefully. “You--, Alphy, you l-- you, um, you--?”

Alphys smiled, pressing her face into Undyne’s shoulder to hide her joy. “YES, Undyne! I like you! A-a lot! R-romantically!”

Undyne gathered her into her arms, nearly squishing her with the force of her hug. “Alphy, I love you!” Tears ran out of her eye onto Alphys’ crest.

“I l-love you too, Undyne!”

“Alphy, are you sure I’m not, like, passed out drunk and dreaming right now?”

Alphys laughed. “N-not unless I am t-too, and I’ve b-been pretty careful!”

Undyne was laughing too now, face pressed into Alphys neck. “Oh my god!” Then she lifted her head and looked Alphys in the face. “You know what this means?”

“T-t-that this was a r-r-real date?”

“Yeah, and! We should totally make out like Gerson thought! Uh, if you’re okay with it, of course.”

Alphys couldn’t hide her joy. “Y-y-yes! Yes, I’m o-okay with i-it! M-more than o-okay!”

Undyne lifted her in her arms, and they kissed for the first time, hardly believing their luck.

Chapter Text

“UNDYNE, I DON’T THINK THE DATING HANDBOOK SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT ENGAGEMENT RINGS! WHAT SHOULD WE DO?”

Undyne slammed her head into the countertop in frustration. “I dunno! Ugh, this is so stressful!”

“WHY NOT ASK ASGORE? HE KNOWS EVERYTHING!”

“Yeah, I guess. Thanks, Paps, you’re the best.” She hung up the phone and started to stroll in Asgore’s general direction.

She found Asgore down at the Blook Family Snail Farm, inspecting the snails. “Hey dad, can I get some advice?”

“Sure, dear! What is it that you need?”

“I need an engagement ring for Alphy, but I don’t know how to get one!”

Asgore looked at her, deep in thought. “Well… I made Toriel’s ring. So I am afraid I cannot recommend you anywhere to look.”

“Wait, you can make ‘em?”

“Well, anything metal can be molded with fire magic, so--”

“Aw, thanks dad! That’s perfect!”

“--well. If you say so dear.”

Undyne tore off up the road to her house. She had a ring to design.

Surprisingly, it was Papyrus who was her best resource for the ring. He helped her plan out the engraving for it, and showed her how to add the tiny pieces of crystal to the metal. Puzzle engineering, it turned out, took a steady hand and a sharp eye, both traits he was happy to lend to helping her. He was more than willing to work with her clever plan, too.

It wasn’t too long before they had what they wanted--a strong but light metal band, set with gold and deep blue crystals in an alternating pattern with delicate engravings linking them together. Papyrus made a few final careful markings on it and gave it to Undyne, who slipped it into a pocket. “OPERATION PROPOSE IS GO!”

“Hell yeah! I’m gonna ask her on our big date this Friday night!”

“THAT SOUNDS PERFECT! DON’T FORGET TO TELL ME EVERYTHING!”

“You’ll be the first in the know, man.”

It was finally time. Undyne reached into her pocket nervously and brought it out under the table, then produced it with a flourish--a long, thin, silvery cylinder set with gems. It flashed in the romantic candlelight as she bent it into a ring with a practiced motion, stretching the engravings just so, so they reached the symmetrical dimensions she and Papyrus had planned. “Alphys, will you marry me?”

Alphys squeaked happily, nodding as words failed her. Undyne turned her metal-shaping muscles to an even better purpose then, scooping her up and kissing her. She was overjoyed that her plan had worked, and the ring had come out nicely, and seeing it on her girlfriend (soon-to-be wife )’s finger made her heart leap. It probably wasn’t what Asgore had thought she’d do, but she thought he’d approve, as well. After all, how could you argue with hand-shaping the engagement ring right in front of your awed girlfriend? You just couldn’t. That was, as Alphys liked to say, “peak butch”, and you can’t argue with peak butch.

Chapter Text

Undyne lifted her piano over her head, just because she could.

Alphys was trying to remove the door to their apartment so that she could move her massive articulated canon accurate Mew Mew doll (mark 2) in without disassembling it.

Papyrus was halfway out of their window, asking whether they’d like rotini or spaghetti for lunch, which would be less worrying were it not 7:30 PM.

Sans was asleep in the doorway, a box of manga resting gently on his ribcage.

Toriel was attempting to unpack inside the apartment, but had been foiled by the fact that they currently had far more anime, manga, videogames, and paraphernalia than fit on their current bookshelves and was now struggling with an IKEA catalogue.

Asgore was holding the screws for her despite her not needing that at all and them being small enough to get tangled into his paw fur. Sans had abandoned a hoodie on one of his horns, but also seemed to be wearing his.

Mettaton was helping himself to their Switch, and was designing himself a “suitably fabulous” user profile so he could play Mario Kart.

Frisk was lying upside down on top of one of the stuffed bookshelves and flirting with Mettaton as he tried out avatar options.

Asriel was lying halfway under the couch, snoozing on the floor. One of his arms was out in a beam of sunshine, allowing his floral part to photosynthesize while making rude comments at his parents.

Chara was probably watching, lurking, like they often did. Frisk’s eyes weren’t open, but that didn’t always mean Chara wasn’t paying attention.

In short, it was business as usual in the Alphyne (ship name copyright Asgore) household.

Undyne was happy to have her very big, very weird, family at her house for the day, but it couldn’t be denied that they weren’t getting the moving done very quickly. Something had to be done, and knowing her, it was going to involve the energy drinks Alphys didn’t know she had. Hey, she couldn’t help it if getting banned from a substance outright just inspired her to try it at a terrible time! She pulled them out from her inventory and found somewhere isolated to chug them.

Alphys was getting pretty overwhelmed. After half an hour of inspection, she discovered that the doorway was not in fact designed modularly, and she would get nowhere trying to make the entrance bigger. She took apart Mew Mew sadly and clambered back and forth over Sans to bring her through the doorway.

As she went, she noticed that despite appearances, all that remained was Undyne’s piano, the Mew Mew doll, and the box that was on top of Sans. Most of her books and anime were even already put away, and the new bookshelf was looking slightly lopsided and scorched, but workable and growing steadier as Toriel worked. Even Papyrus’ spaghetti was mostly made of edible food and had the side effect of getting all of their kitchen equipment out and away, and probably even where Undyne liked to keep it.

When Toriel and Asgore finished the bookshelf, they looked at the clock and realized that it was long past the children’s bedtimes. That night, Toriel took the humans and Asgore had Asriel, but they both agreed to get ice cream before bed and left together, which meant that Alphys got to check off another classic encounter on her mental torigorey checklist.

Mettaton got bored of the Switch before even making it to Mario Kart, and wandered back home to charge after giving Alphys a hug goodbye and pretending he’d helped a lot. Alphys made him promise to come and visit tomorrow and have his ass handed to him on Rainbow Road, and helped him pack Monster Kid into his car to go back home, as they lived in the same apartment complex.

At last it was just her, Undyne, and the skeleton brothers. As Sans helped her extricate Papyrus from the kitchen, she realized something. “Sans, h-have you seen Undyne l-lately?”

“uh, no? this a lead up to a pun or somethin’? i was sleeping, but i kinda assumed she was around.”

“U-um, Papyrus? Have you seen Undyne?”

“I MUST CONFESS THAT I HAVE NOT. HOWEVER, WHEN YOU SEE HER, REMIND HER THAT THERE IS HOUSEWARMING SPAGHETTI WAITING FOR HER IN THE KITCHEN!”

“c’mon, bro. let’s leave alph to the rest of the housework and get you to bed, it’s late.”

“YOU’RE JUST TRYING TO GET OUT OF LOOKING FOR UNDYNE!”

“yeah, prolly. give her my best, alph.” And the two of them disappeared.

“UNDYNE?” Alphys looked through the house, but there was no Undyne and no piano. Maybe she’d been stuck outside?

Opening the door and peeking around the corner, Alphys saw Undyne passed out, curled up in a ball on top of the piano. “U-undyne?”

“...whuh?”

“Undyne, y-you’ve been asleep for hours! What h-happened?”

“Really? …I dunno what happened. I was just getting pumped, too, dangit.”

Alphys retrieved something from next to the piano’s leg. “U-undyne, is this an energy drink?”

“Um, maybe?”

She sighed. “Undyne, those a-are made of, like, p-pure caffeine. A-and it j-just makes you k-knock out b-because of your ADHD.”

“...Oh.” She stretched and yawned. “Man, now I’ll never get to sleep.”

Alphys grinned. “Y-you know, I h-have j-just the solution. L-let’s break in our n-new couch by watching a-anime all night!”

Together, they manhandled the piano through the door and left it in the middle of the living room while they set up a blanket fort and put on an anime. By three AM, Alphys had fallen asleep in Undyne’s lap, but she didn’t care. It was nice to cuddle with her girlfriend and finally be the one with the spoilers instead of the other way around.

Chapter Text

Alphys’ claws shook as she gathered her materials. Asgore wasn’t wrong, she was on the bleeding edge of Determination research, insofar as no one else was even studying it, but he didn’t know what was wrong. He didn’t even know about the Amalgamates, and now she had an acute case of DT poisoning on her hands.

Trace amounts of DT were normal for monsters, but the quantities that were currently coursing through Undyne’s blood were highly toxic and dangerous. Instead of bleeding dust like a normal monster, her eye injury had melted around the foreign material, and within hours the whole upper left of her face was the consistency of a sponge. Although it meant Alphys had been able to reach into her ruined socket and remove the shard of metal that had lodged there, she was terrified that it was the beginning of an irreversible transformation into one of the horrors of the True Lab.

In her anaesthetized slumber, Undyne muttered and groaned. “S-s-sorry, U-undyne! I-I’m a-almost ready to g-get started!” she replied nervously. Holding up a test tube, she took a sample of melted flesh from Undyne’s face. Her metal tools sparked as they touched her as if pure lightning magic was being conducted through Undyne’s cells. When she finished taking the sample, the small depression in her skin slowly evened out as her flesh melted into the cut. Alphys gulped.

Testing felt like it took a small eternity. The material was like nothing Alphys had ever worked with. Though it was still made of cells, the cell walls were weak and permeable, and the whole thing was the consistency of putty. There was no trace of muscle tissue or scales, and it looked like it had been dyed the brilliant blue of Undyne’s skin. Already, it had some of the properties of the amalgamates’ biological material--it was immune to both physical and magical damage, and could not be melted with acids or bases, nor did it react to electrical stimulus or changes in temperature. Between the cells, mixed with the blood, flowed the the sickly yellow-white fluid Alphys knew so well--Determination, in its most refined state.

There remained one test on the sample that would determine Undyne’s fate--the DT extraction machine. Undyne’s left eye and the area around it were already lost, but if she acted quickly, she hoped she would be able to save her life. If the prototype could remove Determination from the sample like it could from a tiny segment of human SOUL, then perhaps Undyne could be put under the DTXM and have the excess DT removed from her safely. The prototype was the size of Everyman’s skull--small enough to fit in her claws as she carefully put the sample under the jaws, holding it in place so the laser would hit accurately. She pushed her electricity magic into the dangling cord, eschewing the search for an electric socket. The blinding golden laser shone from within the machine and struck the sample, and Alphys’ heart raced remembering the first time she’d seen that laser, back when she’d thought it was cool.

Heart in her throat, Alphys took the sample out of the prototype and put it back under her microscope. The cell walls had burst entirely, but she knew that they would do so without the DTXM. No, what she was focused on was that the DT left in the sample was dilute, mixed with blood and magic like a normal monster’s DT. She could be saved!

She burst into action, transferring Undyne to a gurney and strapping her down. Terrified of what would happen if Undyne woke up under the DTXM, she quickly renewed the dose of anaesthetic with as much as she was certain would be safe, praying it would buy her long enough for the extractor to work its magic. Her hands shook violently as she positioned Undyne’s face directly under the beam. A few inches off, and she’d destroy Undyne’s remaining vision and likely leave her too weak to resist the DT poisoning, so she measured every angle as if her own life depended on it. When the beam was positioned exactly, she locked the jaws on the side of the gourney and said a prayer to any angel or power that was watching, then ran for the controls.

She set the exposure as long as she dared, then, claws trembling, pressed the button to start the laser. The sound of it was ingrained on her nightmares forever already alongside the the desperate shivering in the cold lab, the liquid she’d fed so eagerly into those syringes, the sick yellow-tinged light that shone from any cut they suffered until it healed. It went on forever, seconds dripping into minutes into what seemed like years.

Finally, the final seconds on the timer ran out and she raced into the extractor room, falling to all fours in her haste. On the gurney, Undyne lay unmoving, breathing shallowly, the left side of her face almost entirely grey. Alphys jumped down into the pit where she lay beneath the jaws of the extractor, clambering up the side of the machine so she could reach her face. She lay both quivering hands over the grey flesh, heart leaping as she noticed that it had already begun to solidify, and opened her SOUL, pouring green and gold healing magic into Undyne with panicked fervor. Beneath her claws, she felt new scales grow out of the ragged edges of Undyne’s wound, willing them to cover the dead flesh, calling the natural processes of her body to break down and flush away the ruined cells, letting her tears fall without even noticing as she saw the wisps of bright magic envelop her hands and speed the healing process as much as they could.

She stopped only as she felt the pang in her SOUL that meant that her magic reserve had run empty. She collapsed onto the floor of the lab, exhausted and spent, sharp pains running through her limbs as her body tried to collect its strength.

Distantly, she heard Undyne’s voice, weary, weak, and thin, but undoubtedly alive. “...Alphys…”

Alphys tried to say something, but her throat screamed as if she’d swallowed fire, and she only coughed.

“Alph… you have… you have to run… no… Alph… you have to… you have to get away…” Her voice sounded wrong somehow, as if reaching her from the bottom of the ocean. She heard Undyne wheeze, trying to draw breath into her lungs. “Alphys… no!! What’s going on?”

The sound of something dripping, far away, stole Alphys’ breath like she’d fallen from the Waterfall cliffs. No! It couldn’t have not worked! Not after she’d tried so hard, not now.

The drip-drip-drip turned into a sound like a faucet, but over it was a still worse sound. Undyne’s hoarse screams, crescendoing and breaking off in time with great flashes of blue light. Alphys blinked the afterimage of a blazing blue spear out of her eyes and saw something that tore her SOUL in two--Undyne, rising out of a puddle out of herself, clinging to her flashing spear with golden magic burning the side of her face, crying with her one good eye, gone as pitch black as the amalgamates’. She tore at the side of her neck, her dripping gills making her choke on her own thick, liquid, flesh. “A… Alphys… why? W… w… why didn’t you just k… kill me when y… when you had the c… chance… why did you do this to me…”

Alphys shook on the floor where she lay, covering her head with her hands as if it would erase this sight. Her fault, her fault, her fault, she reminded herself. If she hadn’t tried that gambit with the DTXM, if she’d just admitted defeat and laid Undyne to rest and returned to Asgore with her dust and a story, this wouldn’t have happened. She’d failed, yet again, and she could only pray that what was once Undyne would dust her for it.

Sharp pain struck her chest and she screamed out, panicking, tearing at it. She couldn’t feel the spear, but she knew she was cut wide open, that Undyne was doing her a favor and ending it for her so she wouldn’t have to do it herself, wouldn’t risk DT poisoning from trying to save her or have to explain to Asgore. She couldn’t help but feel fear, though. Her dust would lie in the True Lab forever, unbeknownst to anyone, and her essence would be stuck in this horrible place for eternity. It was what she deserved, she knew, but she couldn’t help but scream in pain and fear even though it was probably scaring what was left of Undyne.

She woke suddenly, clawing at her chest so hard she’d torn her lab coat, enveloped in Undyne’s strong, solid arms. She could hear Undyne’s voice, still rough and harsh but solid and real, murmuring in her ear. “Ssh, Alphy, it’s alright. You’re okay. You’re okay, Alphy, just breathe. You’re right here with me, Alphy.”

She drew a shaky breath, wincing as the pain in her ribs hit her. “U-u-undyne?”

“Ssh, Alphy, just try and breathe. You were passed out pretty bad, you were having a nightmare. Just breathe slowly for me, there you go.”

Still trying to sort out what was real from her nightmare, Alphys took a slow breath, then another. Beneath her ribs, her SOUL ached deeply, and her head swam, but the deep wound of her nightmare was gone.

“Good job, Alphy. Can we do some grounding?”

She nodded, swallowing hard, and let Undyne talk her through focusing on just what was around her. Gradually, her racing heart slowed and her claws stopped shaking so violently. “U-undyne? W-what--?”

“No idea, Alphy. I know I passed out in Snowdin, and woke up here under whatever that was. My vision’s all fucky too, and I had to, um, break your bed-thing, but it’s not a big deal. Let’s just get you calmed down, okay?”

Alphys knew Undyne as the type to baby a little cut or whine about a cold for weeks, always milking the most she could out of any injury, so this oddly calm Undyne was a startling break from the one she knew. She understood in that moment exactly what made Undyne captain of the Royal Guard, and it would have been terrifying if it weren’t that every atom of her was focused in that instant on keeping Alphys safe. In Undyne’s strong arms, she was finally able to understand that the nightmare had passed. “U-undyne, I-I’m alright. I n-need to, um, r-run your vitals s-so I can check h-how you’re recovering.”

Undyne gave her a small squeeze before letting her go. When she turned around, she drew a sharp breath at the sight of where her left eye had been. New, healthy skin had grown over the wound, but it had grown out messily, forming thick scars like knotted cords where new scales had grown into each other. There was no longer either eye or eyelid--the spiderweb of scarred skin grew cleanly over the side of her face with no indication that she had even had an eye there in the first place, not even the band of red scales that marked her eyelid. Her eyebrow was mostly intact, with only a few scars breaking the smooth line of red hair, but below it to her cheekbone was a scar unlike any Alphys had seen.

“Alphy? What’s wrong?”

“U-undyne, y-y-your eye!”

“Oh, yeah, I did take a physical attack there, didn’t I? How bad is it?” She brought one hand up to check it, and froze. “Shiiiit, Alphy. What happened to it? Why can’t I see?”

Alphys took a deep breath and spoke in a strong, if stuttering, voice. “There’s a part of the SOUL that we call SOUL power, okay, and the official word for it is Determination, or DT for short. When you got stabbed in the eye, your body used its Determination to try to heal the wound, but it was too serious, and it ended up essentially poisoning you. When Asgore brought you in, your cells were breaking down, and the Determination was spreading. I was able to put you under and extract it from your bloodstream, but it basically destroyed that side of your face. I was able to stop it from draining your HP further, but it meant, um, that I couldn’t save your eye. It was probably flushed from your system with the dead cells.”

Undyne took a deep breath, tracing the scars with one finger. “So I l-- I lost the eye?”

“Y-yes, I’m s-s-s-so sorry, I--”

Undyne put a hand on Alphys’ arm, stopping her in her tracks. “No, don’t be, Alph--, I was gonna dust, right? And you, you, you saved me, A-- Alph, you saved me. I don’t care about, about the eye, really, I’m just happy to be alive. You... you had to get me checked out, right? Do my vitals and all? Let’s, um, go do that.”

She nodded, tears in her eyes, and led Undyne to the infirmary. She sat patiently on one of the beds and let Alphys take her temperature and blood pressure, check her breathing and her stats, run a few simple magic tests, and take cell and blood samples both from her wound and a control (from her right hand). She was exhausted already, so Alphys let her sleep while she tested the samples, thanking the stars and angels that the Amalgamates had been scared of the stranger and hidden away. She locked the doors, though, so they would remain undisturbed.

The tests ended up taking longer than she’d thought, because she worked ever so carefully on both samples from the wound to avoid injuring herself with any remaining SOUL magic or DT left in the samples. The last thing she needed was to be hurt herself, right when Undyne needed her. And Undyne would need her--the wound would need careful checkups to ensure that there was no Determination buildup in her bloodstream, and the source of the Determination that had caused the poisoning would have to be isolated and studied to ensure it would cause no further harm. Furthermore, a wound of that sort would almost certainly be traumatic, and as she was the only person with anything like a mental health background in the whole Underground (unless the Queen was somehow still alive) she would likely end up treating that too. She took out a notebook from a cabinet and started writing out her notes longhand in preparation for the entry she’d have to write, although probably not where anyone could get to it.

She was so engrossed in her notes that she didn’t notice when Undyne woke up. When she yawned for the second time in thirty seconds, though, Undyne came over to her, shaking her head softly. “Alph, you look exhausted. That nerd stuff can wait, right? It’s not gonna explode or anything?”

Alphys couldn’t think of anything to say. Yes, technically, her lab notebook wasn’t going to explode. She was struck with a wave of affection for her best friend, ridiculous as her question was.

“Great, I’m taking this. You can have it back when you take a nap.” Alphys felt Undyne *CHECK her, and the stats she heard were so low she could barely argue as Undyne pulled her notebook out of her hands and closed it up.

Now that she was thinking about it, a nap sounded nice, as long as there weren’t any more nightmares. But what was her chance at that? She shivered, thinking about how real the one before had been.

“C’mon, curl up with me, Alphy. I’ll keep the nightmares away from you.” She picked her up like a baby, clearly not accepting no for an answer, and laid her gently on the bed, curling around her protectively and pressing her face into Alphys’ shoulder. Alphys’ strength failed almost immediately, and she fell into a soft and dreamless sleep in Undyne’s arms.

Chapter Text

Undyne’s voice was cold, all trace of mirth gone from it. “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t just kill you right now.”

Alphys took a deep breath. Underneath the mask, her eyes were jet black from sclera to pupil. “Y-you don’t have to bother.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Pain wracked her side. “DT. Lethal injection.” She laughed desperately. “I’m the only one I t-trust with my justice, b-but that doesn’t m-mean I won’t suffer for my crimes.”

Undyne’s good eye travelled over the wreckage of the public park. It all made sense now--the flashing lightning, the way the normally almost timid Alphys had pursued and pressed her, the feverish heat she felt through her armor when she and Alphys had struggled hand-to-hand. “Up until today, you hadn’t done anything you deserved to die for. I don’t understand. Why did you do this?”

“Lemon bread d-died.”

None of those words sounded like they were supposed to be together. “...Lemon bread?”

Alphys laughed coldly. “For a hero, you sure don’t know the monsters of your jurisdiction. Lemon bread was my… creation. M-my amalgamate. She a-attacked herself and d-d-died before I could m-make a cure.”

“Why did you try to kill that kid, though? Doctor, you’ve always been rational around civilians.”

The mask on Alphys’ face dispersed into nanobots so that she could fix the Spear of Justice with her broken, black-eyed, stare. “In my way. Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it. I know you have your own determination. Do you feel it physically like I did? Is it always like that?”

Undyne’s hands shook on the spear at Alphys’ neck. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Her laugh was touched with madness. “I doubt it, Undyne, but it doesn’t matter. I’m going to die soon anyway, eheheh. There’s enough DT in me to make sure I’ll suffer, but I’ll stay down. It’s what I deserve.”

“Alphys!” Undyne sounded affronted. “I don’t know anything about Melon head--”

“ Lemon bread! ” she growled.

“--Lemon bread, whatever, but today’s the first time I’ve ever seen you hurt anyone! Heists, yeah, and we were nemeses, but you certainly don’t seem to me like you deserve to die in pain!”

“That’s n-not your decision, though, eheheh! Hah! Hah!” She raised a clawed hand and looked at the drip of flesh that ran down it with a grin. “Anything you just absolutely have to say to me before I lose my g-grip on this m-mortal coil altogether?”

“Yeah, actually! But sorry, it’s gonna have to wait.” And before Alphys could ask what that meant, she threw her head back and yelled for SANS! Sans, who was selling hot dogs casually during their whole fight.

“what.” He was next to them, the sparks in his eye sockets flickering casually.

“Take us to Alphys’ lab. We need to get her stable.”

“i’m not river, you know. teleportation isn’t my superpower, just a cool side effect.” But he grabbed Alphys’ slowly dripping hand and Undyne’s gloved one and suddenly they were in Alphys’ lair.

“go somewhere. i don’t need you underfoot while i’m doing a fourth dimensional transposition.”

Undyne saluted him and went to sit in Alphys’ villain chair. It was a tall backed chair, perfect for menacingly turning to face an intruder while stroking a cat. The evil cat was somewhere, and it would probably go after the smell of sushi after a while, but right now she was alone with her thoughts.

She’d wanted to kill Alphys because she’d attacked that child in a blind rage. But seeing the way Alphys had laughed in the face of death reminded Undyne of… why she’d fallen in love with her in the first place. Made Alphys her nemesis so no one would stop her with lethal force when she stole supplies. The things she stole never made it into her weapons, anyway. While Undyne was passionate about dishing out justice, Alphys was a scientist first and a villain second.

She made a choice. If Sans saved Alphys, as the Judge he’d want to try her SOUL with Karma and execute her. She wouldn’t let him do that. Alphys would stay with her, and she’d help her get what she needed without crime.

The voice in the back of her head wondered if that would stop her from being a hero, but she found suddenly that it didn’t matter. There was no justice that she could serve after letting Alphys execute herself without trial or saving her only to abandon her to the streets.

It was a long time before Alphys woke up. Sans induced a coma so that the DT would break down faster than it could change her molecular structure, and then sped time around her so that she would heal quickly, but her left hand was ruined and it was several hours before she could be safely awakened.

Alphys ended up needing to be restrained from trying to inject herself with DT again. She strained uselessly against her bindings. “W-why?”

“You didn’t kill that kid. And whatever’s going on with the cure you were trying to make, I’m sure you weren’t trying to hurt anyone. There’s no justice in killing you. So I’m putting you on a kind of probation. You keep living here, under my watchful eye, and as long as you don’t hurt anyone, I’ll make sure you get funding and materials. Capiche?”

“B-but how can you b-be a hero if you’re l-looking after me?”

“I’ll just have to be your hero, won’t I?”

Alphys groaned. “Your lines are a-as cheesy as ever, I see.”

“Love you too, nemesis~” Undyne said jokingly. But noticing the rise it got out of Alphys, she decided to pry further. “Unless you’re not into that…?”

“T-that’s not fair!”

She’d take mercy on the scientist one more time today. “Don’t fret it, Alphys. I’m pretty into it myself.”

Alphys seemed to be pleased with the news but deeply embarrassed. “Oh my GOD!”

Chapter Text

The only warning they got was from Frisk themself. “Run.” The text reached their phones in the wee hours of the morning, while they were awake watching anime, and startled them both.

“You got it too?”

“Y-yeah, b-but what does it m-mean? W-what are we r-running from?”

Undyne’s face darkened. “I don’t know. We should go check on them.”

Alphys switched off the television and went to put on a lab coat over her pyjamas. “Y-you’re, um, p-probably right.”

Undyne tied on her eyepatch and started putting on her armor. She was suddenly very thankful that her warrior’s instincts had prevented her from leaving the old armor behind, because on the surface she was supposed to leave her Guard uniform at the station and she didn’t have any way of getting to it. It was the wrong design--the delta runes etched on her epaulets were the old design, and the whole suit was much more plain than the one they’d commissioned that showed off her position as Captain of the Guard on the surface, but it didn’t matter to her. What mattered was putting solid steel between her and whatever was scaring the little punk, and going to kick its ass.

From the other side of the cul-de-sac where they lived near Frisk, Toriel, Asgore, Flowey, and the skeletons, she heard a horrifying laugh, and then screaming. She couldn’t make out the words, but as she picked up Alphys and ran towards them, they turned to sobs before cutting off abruptly. Her ear fins twitched, triangulating. “Something’s in Frisk’s house!”

Alphys attached herself like a koala to Undyne’s chest, freeing her hands to draw her spear as she ran. “I’m coming, Frisk! NGAHH!!” Eschewing the handle, Undyne kicked the door clear off its hinges and ran into Toriel’s house, where Frisk was staying that night.

She raced up the stairs and threw open the door to Frisk and Flowey’s room, only to find it trashed with Frisk standing over Flowey’s remains, knife in hand and red eyes wide open. “Punk, what’s going on here?”

They didn’t even reply, moving with inhuman speed towards Undyne and swinging the knife upwards.

She caught the blade on her spear and twisted it aside. “Okay that’s not normal. That’s not good. Frisk, kid, you in there?”

They laughed. It wasn’t Frisk’s giggle, though--it was a high-pitched, creepy laugh that sounded like it belonged in a nightmare. Undyne had to dodge another blow, the knife seeming to glint red in the light of the room.

“U-undyne! G-g-get us out of here!” Alphys’ terrified squeal drew another bout of laughter from the human, whose bloody eyes caught Undyne’s eye as if to say that she had better start running. She’d never back down from a challenge, but Alphys needed to be brought somewhere safe so she started yielding ground, letting the human press her back towards the door and through the upstairs hall. At the top of the stairs, she broke and ran, using the bannister to speed her way out of the house with Alphys in tow.

Undyne set her down in the road, assuming a fighting stance as the human walked leisurely out of the house holding their knife. “Run for it, Alphy. I’ll hold them off.”

Alphys looked like she wanted to, seeing Undyne hold them warily to a distance, but she stood her ground. “N-no, Undyne. Y-you have to run t-too.”

Sparks flew as Undyne turned the knife so it shrieked along the blade of her spear, jarring the human’s hand. “I can do this! You have to run, Alphy!”

“I’m n-not leaving without y-you.” The human grinned madly and lunged not for Undyne but for Alphys, evading Undyne’s attempt to parry, but Alphys’ face hardened and she swung her heavy tail, hitting them on the chest and knocking them back before they could get their knife into her. “A-and I’m not so w-weak as I l-look.”

Growling, the human pulled them into a FIGHT. The first strike went to the aggressor, and took a shocking amount of Alphys’ HP.

Undyne hovered briefly over *FIGHT, but chose instead to *FLEE, ending the fight and lifting her injured wife and running for her life. The human pursued them, but even Undyne carrying a bleeding Alphys was faster than them on their weak leg and they were able to escape into their house. Undyne laid Alphys on the couch and whirled around to ram a chair under the door handle. For now, they were safe.

Undyne began to see to the wound the human had caused. A gash bit into her arm, six inches long and several deep, where she’d taken the knife blow in the FIGHT. She worked quickly, not bothering to remove her armor save for her thick gloves, stemming the blood flow and working healing magic over the wound. Alphys’ blood flowing over her hands and drying into grey dust made her want to cry or puke but she had to hold it together. She spoke quietly to her, trying not to let her go into shock, and kept her spear at the ready.

When Alphys needed to sleep for the healing magic to set, Undyne got up and fortified the house further, single-mindedly focusing on keeping out the human she saw waiting outside the door with their red eyes and red knife blazing in the streetlights. She boarded up the door, shut the curtains and moved furniture over the windows, laid traps to alert her if a human got through, and started running water in the sinks and bathtub so they’d have some if the human poisoned the water supply. She was in the middle of looking for somewhere to mount a ballista when Alphys stirred, and she was by her side in an instant.

“U-undyne…”

“Alphy!” Undyne said, tears coming to her eyes as she wrapped her wife in a hug. “I was so worried about you.”

There was a resounding thud against the door. “W-what--”

“I don’t know, Alphy. The human was still out there a minute ago, but I closed it up pretty solidly.”

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Alphys and Undyne stared at the door in pure terror. As they watched, the red-hot blade of a knife slammed through six inches of door and board and left a smoking cleft in it.

“T-that’s not g-gonna hold.”

Undyne went to pick up Alphys, but she shook her head and pushed her hand away. “I c-can run on m-my own.”

“It’s not an issue, really, Alphy.”

Alphys looked warily at the door. It had gone strangely silent, despite there being a hole big enough to put a hand through in it. “Y-you’ll n-need both hands. F-for your spear.”

Suddenly there was a crunching noise as the whole door burst off its hinges and into the room. Undyne grabbed hold of Alphys, backing away from it. “I don’t, um, I don’t think my spear is gonna help.”

The human stalked into the room. It drove its knife into the wall near the light switch, and the room dropped into pitch blackness save for its shining red eyes. The sound of the knife coming out of the wall made them shake.

Undyne lost no time in fleeing out the back door, into the yard. The moon hung in the sky, illuminating the human in silhouette in the doorway, knife out and eyes mad. “What the hell are you doing?!” Undyne demanded.

It shoved its knife into its sheath and signed very deliberately, “Finishing what Frisk began.”

“What?!”

“The murder of every monster and every human in this world. My partner was very thorough, but their sentimentality nearly ruined us. No more.”

“Frisk would never!” Undyne spat.

The thing in their body made grinning eye contact. “Undyne… you should know how you died. It was so very interesting.”

“I don’t listen to bodysnatchers!”

They drew their knife. “I was not asking. You MELTED. Your determination overcame you while your darling wife WATCHED, knowing it was all. her. fault. I think we should do that again, do you not? It is always more fun when I do not have to kill her. She does it herself. Every. Time.”

On Undyne’s back, Alphys shook like a leaf. She balled up her claws in Undyne’s shirt and pushed her face into her neck, hiding her eyes.

“Don’t listen to her, Alphy. I’m not gonna let them do that.”

“You do not have a choice, CAPTAIN Undyne. I just killed Asriel. And I will go on to kill the King and Queen, and Sans, and your precious little Papyrus, and I’ll watch your wife kill herself, and I’ll dust every last one of your people just like last time. And then the humans, and then--”

Undyne growled, spear flashing as it appeared in her hand.

Alphys pulled on Undyne’s spear arm gently. “Just r-run, okay? They’re t-trying to goad you, d-don’t let them.”

Undyne resisted. “I have to keep you guys safe.”

“We’ll g-get through this. T-together. B-but you have to r-run now. Y-you can’t d-d-defeat them in a straight f-fight.”

“I c--”

“I’m n-not saying that to c-challenge you. I w-want to keep you safe.”

The human rolled their eyes. “Are you two done? I am growing bored, and Undyne? When I tire of you, I will kill you.”

Undyne’s eye travelled from Alphys to the human, then back to Alphys. Her expression softened, though her spear did not vanish. She took a deep breath and turned back to the thing that was once their friend. “Great. See you around.”

Before they could react, she took off running, leaving the human to chase them. She ran them up Mount Ebott, then down into the King’s throne room, and through it towards Waterfall. She left Chara trapped pretty solidly in the heart of her territory, fenced in by water on all sides, and only then did she slow and stop, carrying Alphys to safety at last. She was right. It was better to fight smart than be goaded by some kid.

For example, if you fought smart there was the significant option of distracting your cute gf from making battle plans by smooching her, and even if you didn’t get to look buff defending her.

At least, Undyne was pretty sure that was what fighting smart was all about.

Chapter Text

It was a bitterly cold morning. Undyne was wrapped up in blankets old enough to not show any trace of their original color but still warm, chewing on the end of a pencil. Dawn was pushing its bright fingers into the subway station where she sat in the information kiosk like an empress on her throne and strategized on the back of a torn envelope.

Her gang, the Queens Guard, was waking up from their sleeping bags all around her. Her inner guard, the Royal Dogs, had fallen asleep to a man in a cuddle puddle around the kiosk door, for which she could hardly blame them. It had been a boring night, like most nights, and they had been so cold that huddling for warmth had been the only reasonable option.

Doggo, the nearly blind head of the Royal Dogs, knocked on the door. “You awake, boss?”

“Yeah, I’m up. Quiet night? No zed?”

“I didn’t see anything. Maj?”

Maj stretched and yawned. “All quiet,” he signed.

“Mino, did’ya see anything?”

“Nope,” Mino signed, cracking her neck.

At that moment, Papyrus rushed up to her kiosk. He seemed to gangle still more than he had yesterday or the day before, and was rapidly approaching her height. He was still wearing that black leather jacket over a hand-designed crop-top that said “APOCALYPSE SWAGGER”, which meant he’d been up all night and forgotten to change clothes again.

He saluted sharply and spoke in a shout. “Captain Undyne! I have detected an intruder on our Eighteenth Street territory!”

Undyne rolled her eyes affectionately. “At ease, Paps. Intruder and not zed, right?”

“Absolutely not a zombie! I saw her shivering and she attempted to hide from me! She was not armed, so I did not pursue her, but I did arm the traps!”

Undyne extricated herself from the blankets and threw on her kevlar vest. She picked up her spear and walked out next to Papyrus. “Mind showing me, nerd?”

“Certainly!”

“Pap, I’m right next to you, you don’t have to shout.”

“I’m not shouting!” Papyrus yelled. “You all are just quiet!”

Tying on her eyepatch, Undyne sighed. She’d never be able to tame her right-hand man’s lungs, and she’d mostly given up on trying.

“That reminds me, Captain Undyne! Why do you wear that eyepatch?!”

“That way if I have to go back under in a rush, I won’t have to readjust to the low light, I can just switch to my dark eye.”

“Should I wear one?!”

Undyne looked at his pale face and shook her head. “You’d just look dorky with one. Like a skeleton with only one eye socket.”

“Okay! Here we are!”

They stepped out into the snow on Eighteenth Street. Snow was swirling in the air, and the cold wind nipped at Undyne’s ears and fingers despite her many layers of clothing. Papyrus, oddly, didn’t seem to be cold at all despite having his skinny stomach exposed.

“Close your jacket, Pap. You’re making me cold just looking at you.”

“But I’m not cold!”

“I don’t want you getting frostbite on your stomach.” Undyne’s eye roved over the building until she found what she assumed she was looking for--a short, blonde, survivor cowering behind a trash bin. She walked briskly over. “Who’re you and what’re you doing in my territory? Don’t you know the Queens Guard doesn’t like intruders?”

“A-a-a-alphys. I’m s-s-sorry, I j-just hurt m-my leg a-and I c-can’t w-walk fast a-and I-I’m s-scared to k-keep g-going u-until I’m w-well enough t-to get p-p-past the z-zombies. I k-know I’m o-on your t-territory, I j-j-j-just--”

Undyne’s heart softened immediately. She was wearing a torn and dirty lab coat with fingerless gloves and thick glasses, and her feet were wrapped in dingy flannel rags in place of shoes. “Come on inside, Alphys. I’m the Captain. My friends call me Undyne, but we aren’t friends yet, punk. That doesn’t mean I won’t put you up at least until it’s stopped snowing out here, though.”

She brought the shivering survivor back underground into the subway system. She was nearly a foot shorter than the imposing chief, with straw blond hair pulled back into a ragged ponytail and a hunched demeanor which shied away from Undyne even as she allowed Undyne to take her small, knobbly, hand and lead her onwards. Deeper underground it was warmer, and by the time they had gotten back to the Queens Guard’s base near Twenty-Second Street she was shivering slightly less.

Er, her bruiser, came up to her curiously. “Like, who’s this, Cap?”

“I found a survivor. Do we have any shoes we can give her?”

“Probably. Come on with me.”

Undyne tagged along with them down to their stash. Just about anything they raided ended up down here--survival knives by their tens and fifties, canoes, medicine, reading glasses, folding chairs, ammo for guns they hadn’t had working copies of in months or years, violins, and a box of forty ball-peen hammers were just some of the stuff she could see from the entrance. Alphys found a pair of steel-toed work boots that fit her and allowed Er to take her through the maintenance tunnel to their infirmary, but Undyne stayed in the stash for a while.

She hunted through a box of books idly. She was going to go check in on Alphys, but she didn’t want to let her tough facade drop too thoroughly, so she grabbed something off the top to read while she went through. The next book of that Mew Mew manga she’d tried reading, great. She could get into that.

She put another knife in her belt thoughtfully. Alphys would need a weapon, whether she stayed or went. Wait, stayed? Was she really planning to offer her a spot in the gang? She barely knew her! She’s cute , Undyne’s mind supplied.

She wandered into the infirmary. Maybe it was just the cabin fever talking, but she didn’t want to go patrol or send out the Guard Dogs until the snow stopped, and this was the next most interesting thing. Alphys was lying on a bed, a long scratch on her leg bandaged and her lab coat on a chair next to her drying while she rested under an old blanket. Yi, her scout (and Er’s best friend) was where he’d been for weeks now--recovering from a zombie bite that had required his left leg to be amputated below the knee. She sat on the bed next to Alphys and opened up the manga to page through it.

“O-oh! H-hello!”

Undyne smiled, barely even realizing how her normally brutal demeanor had slipped. “Hi! Are you feeling any better?”

Her face fell. “I g-guess so. A-are, um, d-do you want m-me to head o-out?”

“What? No, I’m not that cruel! It’ll probably keep snowing at least until tomorrow evening, and I’m not gonna put you out in the cold.”

“Oh. Um. T-thanks,” she stuttered.

“So, tell me about yourself. Have you been alone all this time?”

“Yeah. N-nobody w-wants someone w-who’s as dependent on m-meds as I a-am.”

Undyne wrinkled her nose. “Ew, whoever told you that sounds dumb as fuck. I’m the most powerful gang boss in the city, and I still need my adderall. Fuckin’ social darwinists determined to kill us all before the Zed get to us.” She kicked the leg of the bed disdainfully.

Alphys smiled sadly. “T-that’s w-why I was out in the s-snow. T-they w-wouldn’t even let me t-try to p-prove myself.”

Undyne cocked an eyebrow. “Prove yourself, huh? You a fighter or something?”

Alphys ducked her head. “N-no, I’m a d-doctor. A-and an engineer.”

“Even better. Say, if you want to stick with us for a bit, would you mind taking a look at Yi? He’s been incapacitated after we had to amputate his leg when the zed got him, and if you could take a look and see if we could get his pain down enough for him to walk with a crutch, I think we’d all be indebted to you.”

Alphys nodded. “I-if you’d l-like me to, uh, s-sure! Hey, is that, u-um, M-mew Mew you’re r-reading?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“That was my special interest before the Fall! I’ve never been able to scavenge any, b-but u-um, I love the first arc especially!” She launched into an excited tirade about them, and Undyne’s chest clenched strangely to look at her. She looked… alive, in a way Undyne had rarely seen in their base. Even Papyrus’ vivacity was a thin veneer of energy over insomnia and suicide jokes, even when he was talking about his own special interests. She didn’t exactly blame them--it was hard to stay positive with Zed at the doors, but it was lovely to see someone who was still that happy.

Eventually, though, Dogamy and Dogaressa came down and dragged her upstairs to settle a dispute between Sans and Goner about Sans’ dad, which ended in her sending Sans to re-inventory the whole stash and Goner to the infirmary with a nasty looking stab from Sans’ bone club. Nobody really trusted Sans except Papyrus--he was pale as death with platinum blond hair and jet black eyes, he wore nothing but thick hoodies with graffiti on the back, basketball shorts, and Nike slides, and he fought not with a knife or a gun or even an axe or spear but with a large leg bone that was flared on one side for clubbing and sharpened and splintered on the other side for stabbing.

To treat herself for having to deal with that bullshit, she wrapped up in winter clothes and grabbed her spear and plunged out into the bracing cold. She decided to walk towards the Sixteenth or Eighteenth street entrance, killing zed as she went, and make a little raid somewhere on the way. She brought Papyrus along for backup at his insistence.

“So, how’s Alphys?!”

“She says she’ll take a look at Yi. She’s a doctor.”

“Interesting! Do you think she knows anything about puzzling?!”

“Maybe.” She heard a sound behind them and turned, bracing her spear, but it was just a limping Alphys, leaning on a building and dragging her hurt leg so she could run.

“H-hey C-captain! I j-just w-wanted to t-t-tell you, I h-have a f-fix for Yi! I-if I can m-make him a p-prosthetic leg l-like my f-friend has, it’ll u-use the nerves a-a-and he’ll s-stop feeling phantom pains!”

Undyne nearly leapt for joy. “That’s great news! What kind of parts are you going to need?”

“U-um, welding tools and c-copper wire, m-mostly. T-the r-rest I can make from scrap of any sort.”

“Paps, can you escort her back? Home Depot’s very, um…”

“Infested!” Papyrus supplied.

“Yeah, infested. And I don’t wanna bring Alph into danger.”

“B-but Captain, are you g-gonna be alright?”

Undyne laughed and twirled her spear. “Of course! I’m the scariest fuckin’ gang boss in the city. Don’t underestimate me.”

Alphys shied back. “O-of course! S-sorry.”

“Fuhuhu, no need. I’ll get you those supplies, then!” Undyne rushed off before Alphys could see her blush. Under any other circumstances, she’d rather eat her spear than go into the Home Depot area, but she didn’t want to explain to Papyrus why she wasn’t mad at Alphys, mostly because she didn’t understand it herself. She jogged so fast she almost fancied she’d escaped her feelings, whatever they were.

Outside the Home Depot, she took a shortcut through a burned-out grocery store to come up on the back entrance. The greenhouse was shattered, and if she could sneak in through those indefensible doors, she might be able to get what she needed and leave before being spotted. She flattened herself to the icy ground as she approached the doors, army crawling into the patio furniture section. She clambered to all fours in the woodworking section and slunk off to find the welding supplies. Copper, welding supplies, extra wire of a lot of types and grades just in case, and a few tools just to have around the base. In the appliance aisle, trying to find her way out, she briefly caught a glimpse of someone. Whether it was the rival gang or just a zombie, she was trying to be stealthy, so she flattened herself against a refrigerator and didn’t stab them.

On her way home, she went by Eighteenth Street. In the road, she saw a satchel, abandoned and soaked. She picked it up. Inside was a few pretty rocks, some tools, a can of corn, a manga, and a letter. She didn’t read the letter--she didn’t have to. It was addressed to Alphys, and sealed with a purple heart sticker. Not knowing exactly what she was doing, she put the stachel in her own bag and went inside. She handed Alphys the tools and went immediately to bed in the information kiosk, despite it being only seven in the evening. She lay face-down in her blankets and screamed into her pillow.

Over several weeks, not only did Alphys design and make a prosthetic for Yi, but she also spent most of her free time hanging out with Undyne. She was always timid, calling Undyne Captain and cutting off any explanation frequently to see if Undyne was still interested. Every time Undyne came back from patrol and saw her, she felt her heart flip in her chest and her eyesight practically tunnel on her.

Then, one day, she found the bag she’d brought back with the tools and Alphys’ satchel, and looked into it curiously. She hadn’t stopped wearing the knife in her belt, but neither had she given it to Alphys. She’d never found a good time, she told herself. She’d be able to ask Alphys to stay any day now. But seeing the satchel made her think about that letter, and she resolved she’d just have to let her free. Someone else loved Alphys, so it was probably wrong for her to think of her like she did.

Alphys knocked on the door of the kiosk and eased it open. “H-hey Undyne. H-how are you d-doing? Um, h-hey, can I t-take a look at t-that satchel?”

“I just found it outside,” Undyne lied. “I think it’s yours! Lucky thing it, um, got kicked into the subway opening!”

Alphys took it and leafed through it. “U-um, t-thanks.”

“Hey, I’ve got something else for you too.” She brought out the knife. “Everyone in the Queens Guard has one of these. You can, um, take it and stick with us, or, um. If you want to leave, if there’s somewhere else you want to go, at least you’ll have a weapon.” She handed it to Alphys carefully, hilt first, so that the motion could only be read as non-threatening. She’d learned the hard way that Alphys was jumpy, especially around blades, the polar opposite of her considering how she liked to swing around her spear.

Alphys took it and looked at it, starstruck. “T-this is s-so n-nice of you! U-um, c-can I stay?”

Undyne wrapped her in a hug, careful not to impale herself on the knife. “Yes! Of course! And can I ask something else?”

“U-um, yes?”

“I like you a lot. Like, romantically. Want to date me?”

Alphys blushed brightly. “Oh! U-um, I l-like you too! Y-yes!”

Undyne disengaged so she could flail her limbs happily. “Alright! Hey, can I teach you how to use that knife?”

“I’d l-love to l-learn!”

Chapter Text

Their eyes met. “Wait--”

“U-undyne?”

“Alph?”

“I’m g-gonna kill Mettaton,” Alphys grumbled. “Hell of a ‘b-blind date’, if I a-already know you.”

“I know! Hey, we should totally get revenge on him.”

“R-really?”

Undyne grinned big. “Yeah! Let’s declare a prank war on him!”

This was going to be great. Alphys nodded, feeling a devious grin spread across her features.

The first step of their plan was grabbing burgers and shakes in New Home while they bought all the supplies they needed. Then, using her security clearance, she and Undyne rode the elevator all the way up to Mettaton’s penthouse suite. Knowing he’d be out at tech week for Mettaton the Musical until the early morning, she buzzed them in.

“Ready?”

“Y-yeah. I’m gonna hack his p-printer so I can g-get all those photos of the annoying dog, you s-start blowing up t-the balloons for his b-bathroom!”

Undyne had a huge lung capacity, so the balloons were done before the dog pictures were finished printing. Instead of leaving Alphys to her work, however, Undyne scooped her up and together they corralled the huge, bouncing, balloons into his bathroom and shut the door. She didn’t let Alphys get back to watching the printer afterwards, either, setting her down on the other side of the curtain that separated his bed from his living room and dining room. Undyne brought her the tinfoil, and together they tinfoiled everything in his bedroom from his four-poster to his nail polish.

When they went back to check on the printer, the photos had printed and Alphys settled in with an exacto knife to separate them. Undyne took stack after stack of them over to his wide window and plastered it with them.

“So why did Mettaton set you up as my blind date, anyway?”

“Um, uh, w-well--”

“I mean, wasn’t he taking you seriously when he said you were looking for a date? He must know you don’t feel anything like that about me, right?”

Alphys’ hands were shaking, so she put down the exacto knife before she spoke. “U-um, actually, U-undyne, I d-do e-e-e-experience r-romantic a-and, um, p-physical attraction t-to you. P-p-please don’t be m-mad!” She squeaked, seeing Undyne walking back over as if deep in thought.

“Wait, um, you mean--?”

“I l-l-l-like you! I’m s-so s-sorry, please d-don’t be mad--”

Undyne shook her head. “Why would I be mad? I, um, Alphy, don’t take this the wrong way, but I, um, totally like you back! I think you’re really neat! You make my heart go doki doki and all!”

“O-oh! W-well, I m-mean--”

“We should totally go on a real date too! But for now, let’s get our revenge! NGAHH!”

Alphys picked up the knife again and made a decisive cut, freeing the last set of annoying dogs from their margins. Thinking fast, she took the scraps and cut them into confetti, then asked Undyne to lift her so she could put it on top of the fan.

Finally, they layered the kitchen three inches deep with marbles and shut the door. They turned on his speaker to Never Gonna Give You Up, and giggling, they fled. Alphys keyed a password into her phone that would set the cameras in the suite to record until she turned them off, and they decided, since the night was still young, to get insomnia cookies in at the lab and watch anime.

After a few hours, an alarm went off on Alphys’ phone and they switched the TV over to Mettaton’s feed.

Mettaton opened the door, and his posture slumped visibly. He turned off the music and started tearing down the photos. Some of them were layered two or three deep, and by the time he got near his bedroom he was laughing despite himself. When he turned around and saw his tinfoiled bedroom, he looked straight into the camera and set his LEDs to the image of a middle finger up. He ripped a slit in the tinfoil and crawled into bed to lie in it like a pat of butter on a baked potato. After a few minutes, though, he got up, looking curious. He opened the bathroom door, looked at the balloons, looked at the camera, looked back at the balloons, and tossed a tiny bomb into the room. He turned away as it landed and exploded, taking out most of them but also revealing the tiny amount of glitter hidden inside each. Sighing, he scooped up a handful of it and rubbed it on his head, resigning himself to his fate. He opened the kitchen door, and let the marbles overtake his apartment like a swarm of ants with tired eyes. He pulled out the milk from his fridge, took a long swig, and headed back towards bed.

Tearing the rest of the tinfoil off the bed and pillows (though he left the other items for a later date), he lay in bed and casually extended an arm to turn on the fan while he slept. The camera was suddenly blocked by swirling paper, and she heard a quiet, defeated, “darling… why…” before she cut the stream giggling.

“You, Alphy, are a genius.”

“You k-know, we should g-go out to a coffee shop t-tomorrow.”

Undyne looked at her, confused.

“B-because you’re the N-napoleon of crime!” They both burst out laughing. “A-also, I want t-to, um, h-have that date!”

Undyne squeezed her tight. “Of course, Alphy! Come on, snuggle in and get your sleep. We should get in good shape for our date tomorrow!”

“Y-you just wanna c-cuddle me, d-don’t you?”

“Fuhuhu! Maybe, but I bet you wanna cuddle me too!”

Alphys buried her face in the pillow as Undyne curled around her. “Y-you’re n-not wrong!”

Chapter Text

Golden sunlight shines

Deep within midnight caverns

You are my freedom

Crystals kindle scales

A thousand refracted fires

Dance on sodden trash

Justice glints my eye

Horizon, sings my spear-- but

Only you gild SOUL

Surface lights dim, sad

Earth trapped their brightest sister

Star I battle for

Your eyes shine so bright

You fill my ears with your wealth

Joy turns you to gold

Justice is vengeance

Sunlight is but a mob’s torch

If I lost you, love

Shine, and gild my SOUL

What need have I for sky, when,

Alphys, you are light

Your sad eyes ache me

My love, what makes you mourn so?

I’ll turn it to dust

Why should we mine gems?

The truest earthen treasure

Is your sparkling smile

UGH! I’m just so gay

Gay gay gay gay gay gay gay

Haiku’s fucking hard

Chapter Text

“O-oh my g-god! Freaking O-otakucon is half the c-country a-away!”

Undyne came up short. “Well, that can’t be that far! We can just take the truck!”

“I-it’s looking like, um, a f-fourteen hour drive!”

“Well, we’ll stop at a motel! Come on, don’t you wanna go?”

Alphys sighed. “Y-yeah, but--”

“Hey, humans do this all the time! We can get some red bull, some good music… Oooh! We can play punchbuggy!”

“W-w-w-what’s punchbuggy?”

Undyne grinned toothily. “Frisk and Flowey were telling me all about it! If you see a car called a VW Bug, you can punch the person next to you! You have to yell what color it is, and if you say no punchbacks, they can’t hit you back!”

Alphys buried her head in her hands. “T-there will b-be no p-punchbuggying the d-driver, Undyne.”

“Oh, fine. What about roadtrip bingo? Or musicals! We could listen to the musical about monster liberation!!”

“Y-you r-really like that one, d-don’t you?”

“Hell yeah!” Undyne exclaimed, bursting into the song from her fight.

Alphys smiled, watching her wife enthusiastically shadowbox. “A-alright. B-but we’re only l-listening t-to it once on e-each trip.”

“Aw, alright. I’m gonna start packing now!”

Alphys shook her head. Her wife really was the cutest. “I-it’s not for a m-month, Undyne!”

“NOW!”

Undyne had thankfully been talked down from her original plan of using caffeine to marathon the fourteen hour trip in one go, and they’d made reservations at a motel halfway along their route. She was wearing just a tank top and jeans for the trip so she didn’t overheat in the car, and over one shoulder she had slung a bag full of everything she could think of to do on the trip. She flopped happily in the passenger’s seat--Alphys was the better of the two at city driving, and since they were leaving during the morning rush hour they’d agreed it would be better to let the road-rager sit shotgun at least until they were out of city traffic.

Of course, this meant she was bored as soon as they were out of the driveway. She pulled out her first car activity--a list of fifty US states. She peered out of the window. “Um, I see a Texas!”

“U-undyne, we l-live in Texas.”

“First of all, shut up, nerd.” Undyne grinned. “Secondly, tell me what music to put on or something? I’m so understimulated I think I’m gonna die in real life.”

“M-maybe the J-pop mix?”

Undyne hunted through their CDs and put it on, bursting into song with the first one. Alphys started singing too, although she didn’t take her hands off the wheel or her eyes off the road. Traffic was bumper to bumper, and their exit was three streets away, but the first song on Napstablook’s mix for them was a bop. They all were, actually--she and Undyne had picked out all the songs that he’d picked out herself, and she thought he’d made some pretty good choices.

After half an hour, though, Undyne was bored again. The traffic hadn’t gotten much better, and she’d only found four states. “Alphy, can we play a game?”

“U-um, okay! Here, l-let’s play many questions! I-I’m thinking of a-an anime character, you c-can ask me y-yes or no questions!” Many questions was like twenty questions, but Alphys had discovered that neither of them actually liked running out of questions, so they just had as many as they needed. It made stumping her opponent much more satisfying anyway.

As the sun finally dragged itself decisively above the clouds, they pulled off the highway to switch drivers. Since Undyne would be driving for several hours, she got to pick the music, and she put on her favorite musical. Monster history was largely an oral history, and told through songs and plays, so it hadn’t taken long for Asgore to commision a musical of Frisk’s journey, like any major historical occurrence. The difference between older musicals and this one, however, was that humans and monsters had worked together to make one that Undyne actually found nice to listen to, especially because it was about her.

She steered them onto the highway and looked happily over to her wife, who was already exhausted and starting to fall asleep. “eyes... o-on the r-road… love…” she muttered, smiling sleepily.

Undyne grinned. Her wife was the CUTEST. And when she slept, she slept so soundly that Undyne would be able to turn up the music and sing along in a few minutes without waking her.

A truck cut her off and she cursed amicably at it. It was a lovely day for a drive with her cute wife and not even an arse-licking, dickheaded, everfucking bastard in a shitpile truck that was apparently lacking its motherfucking angel-damned blinker was going to ruin it. She marked off Hell on her mental list of states and passed him on the right, singing along with Flowey’s part in the musical as she went.

After the truck took an exit a few miles down the road, it was pretty clear driving for Undyne. Around the two-hour mark, Alphys woke back up and joined Undyne in singing, dancing, and occasionally shouting “Horses” at nearby horses. Final Flowey was defeated before they pulled off the road for lunch at a tiny diner miles from any civilization at all.

Undyne ordered a huge burger, and Alphys got a wrap, and they amused themselves by telling stories about the tchotchkes on the walls. Alphys got her extremely into a discussion about a hypothetical anime about a group of construction workers who moonlighted as magical girls, and they ended up accidentally planning three seasons of an anime before they got to the next rest stop, where Alphys took back over the driving so she could get them to their motel.

The motel room was nothing fancy, but it wasn’t too dingy, like some places Frisk had told them about. There was one double bed for the two of them, and their first order of business was to cuddle up in it and turn on the TV. The only good thing on was the human game shows, so they started watching some Jeopardy. Alphys knew a lot of the answers, and Undyne felt taken aback by how smart her wife was. She suggested Alphys should be on the show, but Alphys just turned bright red and stuttered something about not doing well under pressure.

They munched on car snacks while watching the next show, which neither of them really understood but which had a great deal of ads for beach resorts, which Undyne liked to watch. She teased Alphys gently about going there and getting treated like princesses, a reality which was a little out of their price range but made Alphys blush when she talked about couples’ massages and candlelit dinners. She resolved they’d have to do something really romantic for their next anniversary, even if they both usually liked playing a video game with sushi and just the two of them instead. Alphys’ face when she talked about some of these things was just too good to ignore.

She ended up pulling out her laptop just to make matters worse, which eventually turned into putting away the laptop and turning off the television and paying some attention to Alphys only, because she’d successfully pulled a romantic challenge out of her and that kind of thing got her blood burning and her stomach tied up in knots.

The next day would be another long trip, but she couldn’t wait to face it with her wife. And afterwards, they would take the con by storm and return home only once they’d exhausted every opportunity that awaited them in what Undyne had termed “Nerd Heaven”.

Chapter Text

Undyne knew as soon as she got home that something was wrong. Alphys’ laptop was sitting on the sofa, an anime paused on the screen, but no Alphys. She never let that laptop out of her sight. “Alphy? You okay?”

No answer. Panicking, she drew her spear and held it in one hand while she opened the door to the bathroom. “I’m coming in, Alph!” But the bathroom was empty. “ALPHY!”

She ran into the bedroom. It was empty as well. “Alphy, where are you?!” A thought struck her, and she reached into her pocket for her phone. Ignoring the handful of notifications from Papyrus (she’d look at them later), she called Alphys.

She could hear Alphys’ ringtone for her (the soundtrack for the Mew Mew date in the videogame) distantly, and grew frantic. She pulled the covers off the bed. No Alphys. She opened the closet and dug through the laundry bin. No Alphys. Under the bed. No Alphys. The ringtone stopped abruptly as she was hung up on.

Undyne stopped, breathing hard and leaning on the windowsill. Had she just imagined hearing the ringtone? Was Alphys alright? Heart pounding, she resolved to call again. This time, the ringtone sounded closer, and on a whim, she stuck her head out the window. It grew louder before it cut off, and looking up, she saw Alphys’ clawed feet, several stories away. She was on the roof! The outside of the building didn’t look very climbable, so she put away her spear and started in on the stairs, taking them two at a time.

She was about to slam through the door onto the roof when she realized that she’d probably startle Alphys, and she didn’t want her to fall over the edge. She eased it open instead. Her boots crunched on the concrete roof as she walked over to Alphys and sat next to her. She didn’t notice at first, but when Undyne made a tiny concerned noise, she looked over.

“Hey t-there. W-where do you think it g-goes?”

It was the first thing Undyne had ever said to her. They had been standing on the edge of the Abyss, and Undyne’s heart had been in her throat as she’d stared into the darkness. Seeing the scientist stare into it without a glimpse of emotion had made her more scared than even the Abyss had, and she felt just the same now as she had then.

She took a shaky breath. “Alphy, honey, come away from the edge?”

She was quiet for a long while, flexing her claws in the open air. Underneath, cars shot along the busy highway. Undyne’s chest was tight. “I-I’m n-not gonna d-d-do it. I j-just… l-looking at it f-f-feels better. L-like the compulsion i-i-isn’t a-as bad.”

Undyne put an arm around her shoulders, half comfortingly and half to grab her if she moved suddenly. “Come inside, Alphy. I’ll take care of you, it just… it breaks my heart to see you out here.”

She kicked her feet noncommittally. “J-just… g-go ahead of me, o-okay?”

“Please just don’t freaking lie to me, okay? I know you won’t come in if I go inside.” Undyne sighed. “Sorry, I-- it’s just, I’m worried about you, and you won’t let me help.”

“I--” Alphys struggled for something to say. “You’re r-right, I’m s-sorry.”

“Don’t be, love. Just come in with me.”

Alphys’ gaze was on the skyline, but it was clear her mind was still locked on the highway below. “Why?”

Tears came to Undyne’s eye unbidden and she wiped them away with one hand. “Because I love you loads, Alphy, and I don’t want you to fall, even on accident. I’d be crushed. Come in, okay?”

“Y-you wouldn’t. Y-y-you don’t n-need me.”

“Alphy, I do! I would never be here if it weren’t for you, Alphy.”

She shook her head sadly. “N-n-no, U-undyne. Y-you’d be alright. Y-you don’t need me. Y-you n-never did.”

Undyne sighed. “Alphy, you freaking saved my life the first time I went into Hotlands in my armor. You fixed my eye when I got DT poisoning. When I had those panic attacks after taking the green SOUL, you told me what was going on and helped me deal with them. You’ve helped me find a place on the surface, and every day seeing you when I come home makes me happier than anything else.”

Alphys’ resolve was wavering. “B-but I also h-h-hurt you so much, a-and I lie, and I--”

“And I’m a whiny, noisy, bitch who can’t stop teaching the kids swear words and causing property damage, but you aren’t letting me drop twenty stories into traffic, are you?”

“Undyne--!”

“Let me finish, Alph. Nobody’s perfect. But I-- your good is bigger than your bad, Alphy, so much. Come on in, love.”

Alphys’ chest shook as she started to cry silently.

Undyne wrapped her in a hug. “Oh, Alphy. I love you so much. Come in, let me make you some tea, and we can watch some anime until you feel better, alright?”

“W-w-w-why do you l-l-love me i-if I d-d-do things like t-t-this?” Alphys choked out through her tears.

“Oh, love. You’re just-- you’re just neat, Alphy! You make me wanna punch stuff, and I can’t even imagine my life without you, and you’re just so full of energy. Here, let me pick you up?”

Alphys nodded, and Undyne picked her up, savoring the feeling of Alphys affectionately nuzzling her snout against her neck. To think that she might have lost that feeling forever… no, she would never let that happen. She would always be there to when Alphys found herself looking over long drops. She swore it.