Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

ab·sence

/ˈabsəns/

noun

     The nonexistence or lack of something.

As a small Froggit hopped towards its home, it came across a poor vegetoid that managed to get itself stuck on a large area of rock, without any dirt or cracks for it to dig into. With barely a second thought, the Froggit helped the Vegetoid onto more soft ground, and the Vegetoid gave it a healthy snack as thanks and promptly made its exit through the dirt. 

It was just another every day moment for the Froggit, and it didn't think anything of it and continued on its way home, ribbiting contentedly. Only a couple rooms later, though, it was stopped again, this time by another monster instead of its own choice. The monster told it, excitedly, that a human had passed through the Ruins some time ago, and now, the barrier was gone. 

The barrier was broken? It paused to contemplate what that meant for it and its family as the other monster left.

That was good, but it was also incredibly daunting to the little Froggit. Its world was small, and suddenly it grew to unimaginable size with those few words alone. Endless possibilities, both good and bad. 

Maybe it could stay in the ruins, with its family. It was already happy there, after all.

[again.]

There was nothing, yet an overwhelming amount of everything. The Froggit didn’t know what was happening-- Just a moment ago it was hopping home.

But now, it was like the world glitched and it was stuck-- in between. It was in between, nowhere, and everywhere. It knew this, though it didn’t know how. The un-reality it was witnessing, being consumed by, grated at its mind, making it cry out. 

And somebody answered, a smiling monster. The monster comforted it, in their own strange way. They were interesting, really. The other had an oddly ambiguous air to them-- the Froggit couldn’t figure out what they were, beyond their smiling face and unusual hands. 

The monster patted it on the head, making it look at them. Somehow, it helped the Froggit focus, and the eldritch world around it became muted.

How odd. The other monster’s smile seemed so sad.

Froggit tried to tell the monster not to worry, it was alright now, but the words got stuck in its throat. It couldn’t remember what it had been doing before now. It couldn’t remember anything but this un-reality, this void. 

Why did it feel like comforting this stranger? 

Oh. Their smile was so sad.

It tried to tell them it was alright, but--

There was a stranger in front of it. They seemed so sad.

A Vegetoid was stuck on a large area of rock, without any dirt or cracks for it to dig into. It stayed there for hours, as the path nearby was rarely used by anyone else.

It wouldn’t learn that a human had passed through, that a few monsters had gone missing and that the King was dead, until somebody came along much later, announcing the sad news to anyone who would listen.

It was grateful for the help, and most certainly saddened by the news. It was a terrible thing, to lose the King. But it had the strangest feeling of wrongness, that something different should have happened.

[again.]

A Vegetoid was stuck, and would only hear the news hours later. A human had come through, and killed the guardian of the ruins, as well as nearly every other monster in any position of authority. 

[again.]

A Vegetoid was stuck, and would only hear the news hours later. A human had come through, and now the barrier was broken.

[again.]

A Vegetoid--

[again.]

Alphys woke up that morning, feeling like something was missing. She laughed at the thought that she’d been expecting someone to call her-- someone loud, and bright. She didn’t know anyone like that. But it was only a small feeling, one she shook off easily as she began her day. 

Though, she got the strange thought to check some data from the old computers. It was a sudden, unprompted thought, but one she followed anyway. It was better than thinking about… other stuff, after all, and it gave her something to do.

So, decision made, she got ready for the day (read: changed into her lab coat and ate a small snack), and headed to the second basement floor. This one was smaller, and only contained various servers, most of which were out of commission from disuse. She’d been able to get a few working, though, when she first got this job. Before everything else.

The poor, neglected machines turned on with a hum, clicking and whirring away. She was happy to see that they still powered up relatively quickly, a testament to her own restorative work and the work of whoever had built them originally. 

Soon enough, the monitor she was standing at flickered to life and gave her a login prompt.

She’d changed the password, since the original was unrecoverable, and the new one may or may not have referenced her favorite anime. Which was definitely not Mew Mew Kissy Cutie and the password definitely had nothing to do with an obscure recurring joke that would often unobtrusively show up here and there.

With a small grin, she typed it in, claws clacking away at the keyboard. 

Once everything loaded, she opened a small program that had already been installed on the computer, from before she found it.

It was a simple thing, really. It would do a quick scan of the fabric of spacetime and print out the raw data. 

Simple.

It wasn’t very thorough, and its reach was limited, but she might as well run it while she was down here.

Once it finished, she set it to print to the one printer she had upstairs, then powered the machines back down and patted them fondly as she left. 

She almost forgot about it there, having realized she had something she needed to do ASAP, and left it on the printer until she could get to it. She got distracted by that strange feeling of missing something, again. It was only around lunch that she actually had a moment to look at it while she was thinking about it. (She had to check in on the amalgamates but that didn’t take much time, even though they seemed a little more agitated than normal -- but then got sidetracked by watching an episode she hadn’t seen before of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie, one that she recovered from a CD she found in the dump the other day.)

But finally, she went over the data over a cup of instant ramen. 

When she had first used the program, the raw data was completely meaningless to her, but it was a mystery she’d wanted to solve. She’d spent days pouring over the seemingly random assortment of numbers until she started to see patterns, and once she found those patterns, she found more and more until she had understood enough to be somewhat confident in her ability to understand what the data was telling her. She’d gotten much better at figuring out what means what, though the specifics were still beyond her.

And though she could only figure out the basics, she was fairly certain that what she was seeing was very, very wrong. 

“... Oh.” 

The data was strange, things were where they weren’t supposed to be or just plain missing entirely. She didn’t know what that could mean for spacetime, but it was certainly not anything good.

What could she do about this? She didn’t have an in-depth knowledge of quantum physics, the kind of stuff she’d probably need to understand some of this. But it was something that probably (quite likely) needed fixing, and maybe it was a distraction from the metaphorical skeletons in her closet, but so what? 

… Speaking of skeletons. Didn’t Sans mention having a busted quantum machine of some kind, during one of their movie nights?

Back then she had offered him sympathy at his plight, but by that point she was much too busy with her duties as the Royal Scientist to help him fix it. Besides, he’d said that it had been broken for years by that point, and seemed pretty resigned about never fixing it. He’d even mentioned it wasn’t too big of a deal, but she also knew Sans would often downplay things for others’ sake, so she was sure to take it with a grain of salt.

But now, it could help her figure out just what was wrong with the data she’d collected. Which hinted towards very bad things. Which would be very good to stop. This could be considered an exception to her regular duties, right? Asgore would totally understand. 

Just then, the alarm, a pleasant chime (set to one of the unique, memorable sound effects from MMKC, of course. She’d changed the default alarm the second she heard it for the first time), for her cameras went off. 

She’d programmed it to ignore Sans and his visits to the Ruins door, as well as most monsters that approached the door, so if it was going off that meant that another monster left the ruins (unlikely) or a human had shown up (even more unlikely).

Alphys hurried over to her computer, pulling up the camera feed.

She dropped her papers on the floor the moment she saw what was on the screen. 

That was definitely, most certainly a human. 

The rest of the day was spent watching them, preparing some anti-human measures, growing attached, preparing some other only somewhat anti-human things. And then they were passing through the CORE, defeated Mettaton, and went to meet with the King, where she didn’t have any cameras set up to watch them.

She had completely forgotten about the data she’d printed off, in the wake of the human’s arrival.

And then--

[again.]

Alphys woke up that morning, feeling like something was missing.

[elsewhere, nowhere, everywhere.]

[...

What?

The monster slowly stood up, trying to get her bearings. 

The world swam before her eyes, and at first she thought it was because she was dizzy, but as the moment continued it persisted. She pushed through it, though, determined to figure out where she was. 

But she had absolutely no idea. Somewhere that didn’t make sense, that made her head hurt if she focused on it too much. An endless-- tiny-- impossible space that she couldn’t comprehend.

So she didn’t try to, didn’t focus on it for now, not after the first attempt. She knew when to push and when to not, and this felt like it was definitely a ‘not push’ situation. Hopefully she would get used to it soon. She was much more preoccupied by her returning memories of what felt like just a moment ago, anyway.

The last thing she knew, she was dying. 

Dying for the second time, after reforming herself out of her determination to stop the thing that was destroying her world. But it had finally gotten her in the end, never giving up despite how many times she killed it.

She had-- been melting, when she was dying. Alphys warned her that might happen. But here she was, completely solid. 

Alive.

Somehow. 

There was nobody around. Her head didn’t hurt as much as before, so she began to look around the-- area? space?

The world around her was endless, but it felt like it stopped right in front of her. It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t light, it wasn’t anything in between, and somehow it was all of those at the same time. The conflicting signals gave her a headache still, but she powered through it now. It wasn’t so bad anymore. She needed to figure out where she was, after all. To find out how she got here, and if everyone was safe from that demon.

She took a step forward, and then another, and another, without running into anything. Emboldened, she began to jog, and then run, and then sprint. She didn’t grow tired, as she ran for minutes, seconds, hours, days.

Nothing. Nobody.

She called out, shouting names of people she knew, and when nothing happened she began calling the names of people she barely knew, and then names she had only heard about from others.]

[But nobody came.]

Chapter Text

Alphys woke up that morning, feeling like something was missing. She laughed at the thought that she’d been expecting someone to call her-- someone loud, and bright. She didn’t know anyone like that--

… Huh, weird. Deja vu.

She shook it off, for the most part, though it stuck with her through a significant part of the morning.

On a whim, she decided to go into the server room floor of the basement to check up on an old program. The machines booted up flawlessly, a testament to her own restorative work and the work of whoever built them originally-- 

She paused, and scrunched up her muzzle. There was that deja vu again. Twice in one morning was interesting, but she turned her focus back to the machines.

She ran the program, printed off the data, then went back upstairs and decided to call her friend, Sans.

They had fallen out of touch recently; both of them had stuff going on in their lives that made it easy to forget. Alphys with her responsibilities as the Royal Scientist, and Sans with… whatever was up with him; he'd never really mentioned it.

But for whatever reason, she felt like calling him today. Maybe it was a good day, maybe she was missing his friendship-- she didn’t know. She didn’t have much to do today, anyway, other than checking in on the amalgamates every once in a while.

It would do her good to have someone with her, even if she felt she didn’t deserve it. Yeah, yeah, she could ask Sans if he wanted to come over. 

Decision made, she opened her phone and texted Sans before she could second-guess herself.

He responded surprisingly fast for him, and only sent off a quick message to tease her before confirming he’d show up. Something must be wrong. But he had agreed, so maybe this was something he needed too. The thought let her gain a small amount of confidence in her decision, knowing that there was a chance that she could comfort her friend.

Or maybe he just wanted to hang out. Either way, he’d agreed, so she wouldn’t let herself agonize over the decision. She’d done that entirely too much lately, and she got the feeling that she knew someone once who would encourage her to take the initiative more often. The thought of someone like that made her smile, albeit with a not-insignificant amount of bitterness she couldn’t help but feel. There was no one like that for her. Nobody that encouraging and warm would ever even look at her.

Well, since she was already going down the “feeling terrible about herself” spiral, might as well check in on the amalgamates for the morning, since she had some time before Sans arrived. 

The elevator ride was a mess of anxiety as usual, but she’d become a pro at ignoring that particular aspect. Especially since the amalgamates could tell if she was upset, and it tended to get them upset.

The moment the doors opened, she was tackled by an agitated Endogeny.

“BWAH! Endogeny? What?” she spluttered, half-suffocated by a giant goopy dogs. They weren’t usually this agitated in the morning, and when they were it was because they were hungry-- even then they usually waited by the food bowls or somewhere else to ambush her while she wasn’t paying attention. 

“Endogeny! Let me up???” She tried pushing against them, and thankfully they complied, taking a step back. She stood up, and saw that the other amalgamates were gathered by the door as well, just behind Endogeny. 

“Guys? What’s wrong?” she asked as she stood up, flicking goo off of her clothes that slowly slid back towards Endogeny. 

Because something was wrong. They were agitated-- anxious, she might even say, if she were more confident in her ability to read their conflicting body language.

Reaper Bird tried to speak, but it came out with their voices overlapping and they couldn’t seem to be able to separate it this time. Alphys could only make out a few words -- “again, forget, circle,”

She sighed sadly, and patted Lemon Bread on the shoulder as she gave up and walked past the amalgamates.

“Come on, guys, let’s get you some food.”

By the time Sans arrived, Alphys had come back up and finished organizing their usual setup for movie nights-- lots of blankets and pillows all piled in front of her TV, the couch pulled out of its hidden cubby in the wall, and enough popcorn and candy to last a 12-hour marathon. 

She knew he had arrived, because the pile of pillows and blankets next to her was suddenly occupied. By now she’d long since given up asking him how exactly he did his appearing-somehow thing.

“So. What’re we watchin today?” he asked, casually, as if it hadn’t been months since they’d seen each other. Good ole Sans, pretending like nothing was wrong like always. He was reliable in that way. Just what she needed. She grinned.

“I found an episode of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie we haven’t seen yet in the dump the other day!” she told him, excited. Her tail twitched slightly in her enthusiasm, and if she had been standing it would have started swishing side to side.

“Well, what’s the holdup then?” he asked, giving her a Look without moving his head. She rolled her eyes, but obligingly hit play on the remote (because she already had the episode cued up, of course).

As they watched the episode, though, Alphys only became more and more confused. It was a good episode, of course, but she could’ve sworn she’d seen it before. There was an agonizing familiarity to it, and she couldn’t figure it out. It was too visceral of a feeling to be a coincidence, but at the same time she was certain that she’d never seen this particular episode.

She finally had enough and growled into her pillow, venting her confusion and frustration.

There was a moment of silence after Sans paused the episode as he turned to look at her.

“Uh.” He said. Eloquent. 

Alphys looked up, glasses askew.

“ALL DAY, Sans,” she said, simply.

“... Look, you’re gonna need to give me more than that,” he responded, obviously holding himself from laughing.

“All day.” She sighed. “ALL DAY, I have been experiencing the strangest deja vu. Way more than what should be normal.” 

Sans’s grin slipped off his face briefly, before he skillfully grinned exactly like he had a moment ago. Alphys wouldn’t have caught it if her glasses hadn’t been skewed in just the right direction.

“That sounds, uh, just like what I’d been feelin’ today, actually.”

“... Huh,” Alphys responded, almost absentmindedly. If she and Sans were experiencing the same thing… Maybe Sans also…

“... H- hey, Sans?” she asked.

“Changin’ the subject?” he asked, but she shook her head as a negative.

“Heh, I’ll bite. What’s up?” He shrugged.

“Do you ever feel like… you’re missing something? Something big ?” she asked, hesitantly.

“... Something that shouldn’t be forgotten?” he completed, expression finally falling into something more serious.

“YES, ex-exactly!” she shouted, sitting up straight. The implications caught up to her, after a moment, and she slumped forward. “Y-yeah… So if we’re both experiencing that, then it’s- it’s probably not just a weird little thing of deja vu, huh.” 

They sat there together in the light of the TV screen for a moment. What could it mean, then? Was it some sort of memory-erasing parasite, like in that one episode of a different anime she’d watched recently? Or maybe it was something more realistic, like… 

“Oh!” Alphys said, jumping up onto her feet and scurrying over to the printer. She had almost completely forgotten about the data she’d printed off earlier that day, with everything else happening, but now it was something that might help give answers. 

She set the printer to reprint its last job, then walked back to where Sans was, skimming over the pages as she went.

“Sans, look at this! You’re the quantum physics guy.” She shoved the papers into his face, then ran back to the printer and grabbed her own fresh copies. She valiantly resisted the urge to press them against her face, since they were still warm.

By the time she’d come and sat back down in her nest of blankets, Sans was skimming the data, his expression growing more and more bemused. 

“I’m… gonna need some time to parse through this, but from what little I can see it’s. Weird.” he said, after he finished the final page. “It’s like... someone took an eraser to spacetime and started smudging things around and removing stuff. Almost. But also completely different and nothing like that at all. So, weird.”

Alphys nodded in response, then slowly set the papers aside and took a deep breath.

“Ye-yeah. Really weird.” she confirmed. “And that description was completely unhelpful. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, it’s one of my many talents,” he said, not even trying to hide his grin.

She whacked him with a pillow.

“Dork,” she snickered, though her levity quickly vanished as she recalled something from earlier. 

“So, you… also felt the weird missing-ness. Is there- is there anything in particular? When I got it, it was. Really specific. For a vague feeling.” she said, fidgeting with her claws.

With a crinkle of papers, Sans leaned back (did he just shove them into his back pocket???) and rested his hands behind his head. It was amazing, and perhaps just a little unnerving, how quickly he could switch between joking around and being serious.

“Yeah, actually.” he said, after a moment of deliberation. “Woke up this mornin’ feelin’ like I was about to be dragged out of bed, for one.” 

Alphys couldn’t help but laugh. It would have been a weirdly concerning feeling, if it weren’t for the obvious fondness Sans felt as he said it.

“Yeah, yeah, weird thing to be fond about, whatever. There’s also the fact that I… my house is way too big for just one person, yanno? And yet it feels like there should be more than just me.”

It didn’t make sense, by all means. But somehow, Alphys felt like she could relate. Not with the house thing, specifically, but.

“S-same here, kinda. This morning, I woke up like… like I was hoping to talk to someone, or something? Someone specific, it’s like her name is on the tip of my tongue…”

“‘Her’?” Sans interrupted, leaning forward to look at Alphys more directly.

She blinked, and tilted her head to the side. “... Huh. Yeah, ‘her’. It definitely feels like I’m missing… ‘her’.” 

Her tone was distant and raspy as she talked. The implications of such a distinct feeling… it was as if these weren’t just random feelings, but that she and Sans really did forget someone who could be important to them.

“Man,” Sans replied simply, voice heavy.

After that loaded realization dropped, they both agreed to think about it overnight and then meet up in the morning to talk about it, as well as go over the data that Alphys had printed off with fresh minds.

It was surprisingly late when Sans left-- they spent the entire afternoon together, and it was well into the evening by the time Alphys remembered to eat dinner. 

When she finally went to bed that night, she could hardly sleep at all. She was kept up by thoughts of just who the person she couldn’t remember was, what happened to cause her to forget her, what did the weirdness mean in the data they had caught as they skimmed over it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 

And of course, there was the sudden, distinct anticipation and dread she began experiencing right after Sans left. It felt like something was going to happen soon, something big , and it wasn’t necessarily something good either.

But finally, after tossing and turning for hours, she was able to fall asleep.

In the morning, she could barely wake herself up.

The thing that finally managed to do so was the alarm she had set up for her cameras.

The alarm that would alert her to a human emerging from the Ruins. 

You woke up on a small patch of golden flowers. They were crushed underneath you, but you only had minor aches despite the faint glimmer of light from the top of the cave so far away. 

They must have broken your fall. 

You smiled. You could always count on those golden flowers. Unlike other golden flowers you knew.

The thought made you frown, though it wasn’t necessarily from displeasure. You shook your head, then stood up and began to firmly walk into the next chamber, a happy smile on your face. 

You always enjoyed meeting your friends for the first time again, and you were feeling a bit down by the last… time around. You thought that maybe you shouldn’t do that again, perhaps. It was intriguing, but the things you had to do to get those reactions from your friends might not have been worth it.

You would just have to make it up to them this time, then.

Chapter Text

[

She had been walking for hours, or minutes, or days. Time felt non-existent here. But it was long enough that she had long exhausted her list of names to shout, and she knew by now her voice would have normally given out.

And yet, there was still nothing. 

Just an endless expanse of impossible nothing-everything-ness.

She'd had a headache at first, trying to process everything, but as whatever counted as time in this place passed, it eventually faded away as she powered through it. She was determined , after all, to get through this. She still needed to make sure everyone had evacuated safely.

After a long-short while, she finally, finally stopped, admitting to herself that going in the same direction endlessly isn't going to do anything for her situation.

So instead, she tried learning more about her surroundings, as well as what had happened to her body.

She first noticed that something was off when she removed her glove. Her skin was a magnificent shade of absolute grey, not a single hint of color. Her whole armor, in fact, was the same, as well as what she could see of her fins. If she had to guess, her eye and teeth would be devoid of color as well.

The only thing that she could see on her person that had any color was the bright red upside-down soul shape on her chest. It dripped slightly, and she could almost say it glowed, if only there was anything like actual light here.

It was clearly similar to her armor from… before she came here, but changed significantly as well. For one, the soul shape wasn't red originally, and another thing was the brand new cape that moved and flowed in impossible ways.

One side was a dark black, and the underside was like a window into-- was that space? The few pictures she'd seen seemed to show that, but they barely held a candle to what she was seeing from her cape. 

It took her a moment to switch focus, enthralled as she was by the cape, but she was good at staying on track. She had to be, as captain of the Royal Guard, after all. 

Her pauldrons were stylized in a nearly impractical way, flaring out and behind her almost like wings. She did admit that it looked very cool, though, and it's not like there was anyone here , nevermind anyone hostile that she would need to fight.

“HELLO UNDYNE!” someone shouted, from directly behind her.

She screamed, instinctively summoning a spear and whirling around before she even realized what happened. 

It was another monster, who promptly took a step back, out of direct spear-range. They looked like a skeleton, and wore a strange outfit almost reminiscent of a superhero. 

A glitchy, monochrome superhero wearing hotpants.

She sighed, and lowered her spear, letting the magic weapon dissipate.

"Sorry, I didn't think there was anyone here," she said. She was just glad that there was someone here after all, if she was to be completely honest.

The skeleton grinned brightly.

"No worries! I should not have startled you like that. I was just excited to see someone else here!... though I guess it does suck incredibly bad for you. I am not really excited about that part."

Huh. A strange guy, for sure, but she found herself oddly fond of him already. There was something about him...

"Hey! Wait!!" she shouted, realizing something suddenly. "You called me 'Undyne,' I… that's my name . How did I forget that?"

She pressed her hands against the sides of her head, and was almost tempted to sit down on the ground. She didn’t, of course, because she wasn't so weak as to completely lose her grip over just forgetting her own name, but it was still a hard thing to realize.

Her name was so intrinsically part of her own self, and she didn't even realize she had forgotten it.

The other monster put his hand on her shoulder consolingly, and she definitely didn't flinch in surprise.

"Don't worry! That is an unfortunate side effect of being removed from our corrupted timeline."

She looked up at him incredulously. "Me forgetting my own name ?"

An awkward expression slipped over the monster's face, as he looked off to the side.

"Well, that, and other things," he said, and did not elaborate.

Undyne squinted, trying to puzzle out what he meant by that. She forgot her own name, briefly (and it really was more than just pulling a blank like what happens sometimes, she actually forgot it until he mentioned it), and there were details of her life that were resurfacing now that she tried harder to think back. It was like she was in a dark maze, and had to light a candle at every corner to regain her memory. It wasn't hard, but it was strange that it was dark in the first place.

And then there was the out of place fondness for this skeleton -- he felt familiar to her, despite her initially being confident that she had never seen him before. 

But that was only initially. Now, he seemed more and more familiar… she could almost recall spending time with him, as she thought back. But it was much harder to hold onto any tangible memories of him than remembering her own life.

"Oh man… I forgot about you! I think you were my friend, and I forgot about you!" she shouted. She slammed her hands onto his shoulders and looked into his eyesockets.

"I'm so sorry I forgot about you, dude. I… feel terrible about it."

He smiled, a comforting smile that was happily familiar.

"That's Okay! It's not your fault, Undyne. Since I Also got removed from our timeline due to the not-great corruption stuff, it had the more-than-just-side effect of completely erasing effectively all evidence of my existence, including memories!" 

A beat, before she responded, "Dude… that does not make me feel better." 

It was a true statement, and yet she found herself smiling. She missed this banter, the half-jokes and teasing she knew would trickle into their future conversations. She missed his goofy mannerisms and way of saying things, and the way he would try to make things sound better than they actually were.

Though she held a tentative smile, she still couldn’t laugh. The reality of her situation threatened to crush her, but there was one fact in particular that was bothering her more than the rest:

"I… still can't remember your name." 

The skeleton only smiled understandingly, patiently.

"Yes, I suppose introductions are in order!" He seemed to be constantly full of energy at all times. She wondered if he even slept, with how upbeat he'd been acting despite everything.

"Hello there!" He waved. "I am Papyrus, nice to meet you!"

Papyrus , yeah, that felt right. Papyrus the skeleton, and-- oh, right, Papyrus had a brother, Sans. The sentry that always slacked on his job, and she could swear she once saw him selling hotdogs from one of his Hotland stations. They were brothers, and though the contrast between the two was distinct, the realization felt right in a visceral way.

She held out her hand.

"Hi, Papyrus, I'm Undyne, it's good to meet you!" She grinned a toothy smile, genuinely excited to get to know her friend again. Papyrus took her hand and began to shake it eagerly.

"Say, are there any other monsters here? In this… not-place?" She figured it was a fair question to ask, what with there being the two of them there already.

But Papyrus grimaced, an unexpected reaction, and let go, reaching up to rub the back of his head (-- was he missing his neck ??).

"Haha, that's… certainly a question!" He said. 

"It's! Yes There Are Others But Not Really. There's one other monster that you can talk to, but the others… we should get into that later. Much Later." 

Well, that was confusing. 

"So there are other monsters, but there aren't ? But there is one other monster?" She did not at all understand what Papyrus meant by all that.

"Yes, exactly! I am glad you understand." He grinned.

Before she could correct him, he grabbed her by the wrist and began to pull her in a direction.

"Now! Is Not The Time For That, Though! There's so much I want to show you, Undyne! I have been wanting to talk to someone else for so long." 

He muttered the last sentence so quietly she almost would have missed it, but the fins on the sides of her head weren't just for show, and this void had literally no other sounds to distract her.

"Oooookay, but first can you tell me what exactly happened to me? In a way that I can understand, preferably." 

Papyrus looked guilty for a moment, before stopping and turning to face her.

"Right! I forgot that you literally just arrived here." He sighed. "It is… Not a good thing to be here, Undyne."

If he was leading with that, she wasn't sure how much she was looking forward to finding out anymore.

"Our timeline, it is… very much Corrupted. Like a computer program. And every time someone manipulates the timeline, it gets… Worse. Just a little bit at a time, but it adds up. And has been adding up for a very long time."

… Right, okay, she just had to process the fact that apparently there were people who could-- manipulate the timeline? Did he mean time travel ? That was so cool, but the way Papyrus was talking about it made her think it was definitely not anywhere near as cool as it seemed. She was sure her expression was a strange one, because Papyrus's own became sympathetic.

"Okay, then. What does it mean for the… timeline. To be corrupted?" she asked, after a moment.

"Aha! Not good things at all. Very much not good things. Objects, People, Memories… they have begun to go missing. Effectively edited out of the timeline. We are two of those people." He smiled, but it was strained. “If the timeline becomes too corrupted, it will write itself out of existence.”

Oh, boy, that was. Heavy. The thought of everything she worked for vanishing, everyone she knew forgetting her… Asgore, Alphys, Gerson. 

It almost made her want to give up. 

HAH! NOT! She shouted a wordless noise of challenge, and threw some magical spears into the endless non-expanse of the void for the heck of it. They vanished as soon as they left her hand, but she watched them slice through the void for what seemed like miles.

As if she'd hear something like that and just give up ! It only made her more determined, determined to fix things.

“THAT’S SOME PRETTY BAD STUFF BUT IT SURE ISN’T DRAGGING ME DOWN!” she screamed, “C’mon Papyrus, there’s gotta be some way this can be fixed, right?” She turned towards the skeleton and grabbed his arm.

“Yeah!” he responded, pumping a fist into the air.

“Wait, really?” Undyne straightened up, attention fully on Papyrus.

“Well, theoretically.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean? If there’s even a chance--”

“It’s because it’s nothing we ourselves are capable of doing!” Papyrus interrupted. He grabbed both of her arms and stared directly into her eye. It stopped Undyne right in her tracks, reminding her that she still didn’t know much about her situation. And she still needed to process it. 

“ Theoretically , there are ways to stop and then ideally fix the corruption, but all of those ways involve having influence within the timeline itself, which we do Not. There’s… not much we can do from here.” 

As soon as he finished talking, he broke eye contact and let her go. She shook her head, and bared her teeth.

“Well then if there’s not much we can do, what’s the stuff we CAN do, Papyrus!?”

She couldn’t understand why he seemed so… not defeated, but accepting of the situation. If there was ANYTHING they could do, she would want to do it right away!

But Papyrus only shook his head, frustratingly.

“Later! I can tell you later. But you Need to take time to process all this, right? You yourself told me that it’s no good to walk into stressful situations, such as battle or cooking for someone you want to impress, with unresolved issues like this! And also knowing more about the situation is very helpful.”

He had a point. She hated it, but he did. Especially learning about her situation, what her body was like now, how the void worked. These were all suddenly unknowns, and walking into a situation unprepared was a recipe for disaster.

She grimaced, and Papyrus took that for the confirmation it was. 

He smiled and gave her a big hug, lifting her into the air surprisingly easy. It was so sudden of an action that she didn’t even have time to sneak in a noogie like usual.

The moment he set her down he was entirely open though, blatantly displaying all his weak spots in his stance that she could take advantage of. She grinned a toothy grin and lunged forward, tackling him to the ‘ground’. Papyrus shouted in surprise, and almost managed to wriggle out of her grasp before she started doing unspeakable things (noogies for skeletons).

Almost. 

The void was filled with their laughter, for a while.

]