Chapter Text
Undyne had been feeling off all week. Ever since that weird skeleton guy that Asgore knew had shown up at the embassy all frantic and on-edge without warning.
She didn't really know the guy personally, there hadn't ever really been much reason for their paths to cross. And whoever he was looking for wasn’t anyone she’d ever known or met. At least, not that she knew of. She was pretty good with names and faces though, so it seemed unlikely it was someone she’d met and forgotten.
So she didn't know what that had all been about, and Asgore had asked her not to pry into it when she'd asked him about it later. He'd told her that it was a private matter.
It had seemed pretty serious though. Some sort of nervous breakdown or something. It had been confusing and concerning and it had stuck with her.
She’d told Alphys about it anyway. She'd been pretty sure she was friends with the guy. Or had been friends with him a long time ago? She wasn’t really sure. It was all a bit vague when she tried to piece it together. They knew each other at any rate.
Alphys had been pretty worried after Undyne had told her what had gone down regardless of their connection, but it didn’t seem like she’d gotten any response to the messages she’d sent to the guy. Or any answers to her attempts to call him.
It must have been pretty serious.
Still, she couldn't help but kind of blame that guy for the weird dreams she’d been having lately.
She had always had some pretty weird dreams, sure, but they almost always involved people she knew.
Not complete strangers she had never seen before in her life!
He’d put the idea in her head that day with his words, she was sure.
The dreams were… odd.
Not always bad. Most of them were actually really fun! Which made the solemn wave of bittersweet sadness that washed over her each morning all the more cloying and consuming. And the dreams would fade quickly, leaving behind only that strange, deep absence that clung.
It would cling and not let go of her even long after she’d woken up.
Colouring her every thought and action as she went about her day.
She sighed and shot off a line of brilliant glowing spears into the empty ocean in front of her. It would be nice to have someone else to actually spar with out here, but Asgore was busy, and now that the Royal Guard wasn't a thing anymore she didn't even have underlings to stretch her muscles against.
Maybe that was why she was having those dreams.
Maybe it was just some kinda delayed psychological reaction to being on the surface this long.
She frowned, trying to remember how they'd all gotten to the surface anyway. It was all kind of a blur now. She knew a lot had happened, but she was sure she should have had a clearer picture of it all than she did.
It bothered her a lot, now that she thought about it.
It felt like there were some empty gaps in her life, but she had no idea what was supposed to fill them!
"GAAAHHHHH!!" She screamed, enjoying the flinches from the few humans walking around on the grey beach nearby.
Most of them were giving her a wide berth, which was fine with her! She didn’t particularly like humans anyway, even if she had to deal with them now.
She let herself fall backwards onto the sand heavily, and looked up at the sky. It was overcast, and it looked as if it would probably start raining again soon.
It had been raining on and off all day.
There had been a tropical storm that had blown through a few days ago, and while the main storm had passed by, the warm rain had continued at a more sedate pace.
Since she’d gotten to the surface she’d immediately fallen in love with the rain. It was amazing to see the water falling down from nothing! Feeling it on her skin, and having it wash away the grime and sweat of the day.
Especially the summer storms! Dry heat was something she’d always had difficulty with, but the high humidity here offset that and gave her a new appreciation for hot weather. She scoffed at how so many humans complained about the humidity, it was seriously the best!
And the warm rain made her feel alive.
But...
For some reason today it didn’t make her happy.
It filled her with that same deep melancholy. Because for some reason it just made her feel like the sky was crying.
She heard her phone ping, and she pulled it out of her pocket.
It was a phone Alphys had built for her, after many broken phones that hadn’t been able to handle being in her pocket on a daily basis. It had a thick shock-absorbing case over it as well, that she had to undo and flip open before she could access it.
Alphys had sent her a meme. It was from an anime that the two of them had been watching together in the evenings after they both got home from work lately.
It was cute, and Undyne smiled. She could always count on Alphys to cheer her up with little things like this. Just some small thing to show she was thinking of her throughout the day. It filled her with warmth at the thought.
She sent back a string of emoji’s, before flicking out of the screen to check if she had any other messages that she might have missed.
Nope, nothing.
She frowned as she scrolled through. She had something saved in her drafts.
She flicked it open in confusion, the date was the same as that weird day at the embassy.
She couldn’t remember writing anything on her phone that day? She skimmed over the words.
Hey!
Just checking in that ur ok?
Call me after dinner if u want to talk some more dude!
I’m here for u!
There wasn’t a number or name where the contact info should be. It was just glitched out white lines that cut through the entire top of the menu. Specks of black fragments of what might have been text were scattered across the top of the screen. She didn’t know the cause, but it looked like it had glitched out or something and only her draft remained. Had she managed to break this phone too?
But also, what the hell?
She couldn’t remember writing this, and no one else ever touched her phone. They wouldn’t dare! She’d clearly never sent the message to whoever the recipient had been, but she had no idea who she would even send something like that to, to begin with!
She wasn’t that close to a lot of people.
Only really Asgore, Gerson and Alphys. She… just really wasn’t that close to a lot of people. A lot of still-living people at least, she thought as a new wave of melancholy washed through her.
Just her small pieced together family really.
Everyone else was outside of that, and most of those people were too intimidated by her anyway.
She… didn’t have anyone that she could imagine sending such an emotionally open yet casually friendly message to.
Sure, she was always quick to get involved and help people if she thought they needed help, but that usually only lasted as long as it took for them to get the help they needed.
She huffed out a sigh, and shook her head, trying to dislodge the weird melancholy that kept trying to settle over her. It was like a sense of loss inside, but an aimless loss, for something that had never existed.
She moved her clawed thumb over to delete the message.
Getting rid of it might help clear this bad feeling from her head. And she really should! She knew she shouldn’t let these sorts of thoughts sit and fester inside. It wasn’t healthy.
But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to press down.
It was stupid, but it was like something deep down inside of her was holding her back. Telling her she’d regret it if she deleted this weird message to nobody.
She felt a strange emotion pooling inside her like dark water as her thumb hovered. Fragile and wet, and also like something that needed to be punched hard and shattered, before that gentle water could erode hidden cracks inside her first and break them open when she least wanted them to.
Screw it!
She made a snap decision, before she could let herself dwell on this any longer.
She closed the app and stuck the phone back in her pocket, safe against her side. It wasn’t like she needed to delete it anyway, her phone had plenty of room! And maybe she could show it to Alphys, she liked weird tech stuff! And she’d made this phone, so maybe she’d want to see the glitch! She might even have an answer about what caused it!
And…
It wouldn’t hurt to hang on to that unsent message, even if it was pointless. Even if it was just some weird tech glitch or whatever.
It wouldn’t hurt to keep it.
She stood up and stretched, staring out at the water as the dark clouds finally broke open and the rain started to fall again in large, warm drops. Large rippling rings spread out and connected on the relatively calm surface of the water, creating unique patterns as they combined into each other and distorted each other, the gentle swells of the cloudy water stretching them and distorting them even more.
It was mesmerising, watching those small ripples spread out and impact their surroundings and each other. Until the sheer amount of them echoing and crashing into each other made seeing where anything started and ended an incomprehensible mess as the rain started to pick up.
That seemed somehow appropriate to her.
She shook her head and turned her back on the water after a few minutes, and started jogging back up the beach as the rain grew heavier still and washed over her.
Alphys would be back home by now. She was going to be waiting for her to get back as too so they could watch something together.
And Undyne didn’t want to miss out on any time they could be spending together!