Work Text:
Alphys hummed a melancholy tune to herself as she entered the secret elevator. She hummed not because she was merry, but because she was afraid. Going downstairs to her hidden laboratory made her scales feel as if they were sliding along her skin, scratching against eachother and getting caught on her clothes.
She shivered at the cold. That's right- it's just cold, she told herself. She was always cold. Being a dragon meant even the depths of the Hotlands were cold to her.
The elevator doors slid open, and a wave of stale air rushed in to fill their vacuum. The stench of rotting flowers hit Alphys like a table corner to the stomach. She really had to clean those up. That was, after all, what she'd come down here to do: to clean up all her old experiments. She could hardly leave such a mess down here while she moved to the surface. Besides, there had to be some equipment down here that still worked.
The first thing she did was step up to the vending machine, kicking it until a bag of chisps fell out the slot. She had to be prepared in case one of the amalgates was getting rowdy. Once she had prepared herself, she stepped up to the nearest terminal, opening the keyboard panel apprehensively.
One of her early logs was displayed in eery green text, and she debated whether to completely format the system, removing any trace of the things she'd done. Still humming, she decided she was better than that, and ran a command that would compress all her old documents into an archive. That done, it was time to clean up the research itself..
Her humming was off-key, but the laws of physics still applied, and so it echoed off the steel walls as she made her way through the facility. By the time she'd reached the room full of rotting flowers, there were twelve boxes of garbage, which she'd left in the rooms she'd filled them in. She would need Mettaton's help carting them upstairs later.
Alphys shuddered at the sight of the flowers. Even brown and wilted, they reminded her too much of the creature who had tried to kill them all. She reached out, fingers trembling, and wrapped her hand around a bundle of blackened foliage. To her disgust, they began oozing out between her fingers. The rot had completely spread through them, turning them into a sticky, black jelly barely held in the shape of flowers. Alphys pulled her hand back, letting out a squeak as a drop of the substance, having been flung towards her by her sudden movement, landed on her cheek. Frantically, she wiped it off with her sleeve. Why couldn't she have thrown them out before this had happened? Back when they smelled nice and didn't feel like they were burrowing under her scales?
Donning a pair of yellow gloves, she got to work piling the sludge into the garbage box. The gloves didn't stop her from feeling the sludge, but at least it didn't get stuck between her scales anymore. Slopping the flowers into the bin would have been easy enough, but the table had a lipped edge, meant to catch spills; this made it so Alphys had to wrap her hands in a bowl around each vomit-inducing handful.
Alphys stopped about halfway through the task, pulling off her gloves and taking a long gulp of water from a bottle in her bag. It was hard work, and it required focus, keeping her mind off of the fact that she was one of the last monsters still in the underground. Alphys sighed as she put her gloves back on. She began humming again, as loudly as she could, in order to mask the sounds of the flower sludge squelching between her fingers. Alphys thrust her hands into the disgusting pile and immediately let out a shriek, glad nobody was there to hear her. A fiery rope of pain snaked through her palm, and she pulled her hand from the table, revealing the cause of her pain. The broken edge of a forgotten beaker stood tall, the red glare of blood shining in the dim light. It had cut straight through the gloves, even her scales, and Alphys cursed loudly, wrapping her other hand around the injured one, applying as much pressure as her hand was capable. Why in the world was there a beaker in the middle of all those flowers? She cursed herself for being so careless.
Cradling her hand, she attempted to open her bag's zipper with her foot. Somehow, she got her first aid kit out and open without falling flat on her face. Alphys steeled herself for the pain, and released the pressure from her hand. It burned, and the blood came quicker than Alphys thought was safe, but she managed to disinfect and bandage her wound using only one hand and her mouth. As she finished tying the gauze down, she let out an exhausted moan. She almost wish she'd asked Undyne to help her.
With her hand in its current state, Alphys could hardly shovel slime, so she decided the flowers could be cleaned up at a later date. She picked up her bag and continued to the next room. Refrigerators lined the floor tiles, though it seemed as if one was missing. At the end of the room, there was a much brighter patch of floor, dusty and cracked, in the shape of a rectangle the size of one of the fridge's bases. Alphys sighed, but figured it only made her task easier. She opened the first fridge tiredly, and started humming. Or, she tried to. She realized she'd forgotten the tune, and instead of a bittersweet melody, she produced a single, drawn out note. With a huff, she tossed the samples out of the fridge and into yet another garbage box. The next fridge was empty, but the fridge after that contained something that shocked her to the point of gasping aloud, not unlike one of the schoolgirls from an anime.
Sitting alone on the shelf was a small Erlenmeyer flask, full of liquid. Its contents were a beautiful hue somewhere between orange zest and peach. She picked it up, cradling it between her hands. The source of all her problems. Alphys sucked in a deep breath, nearly gagging at the smell of the flowers. What should she do with it? It was dangerous, but if she could research it more, it could save lives, she could save the people she wronged. The people she damned to this eternal hell using the very substance she now held in her hands.
A piercing whistle made Alphys jump. It was only a steam vent, she realized, a second too late. In her fright, she had thrown the flask into the air. She watched its lazy arc over her head, and with the sort of split second reaction one can only get from years of clumsily knocking things off of tables, she threw her injured hand out and caught the flask, upside down. Her hand burning, she flipped it onto its base. Thankfully, not all of it had spilled. At least a third of it was resting at the flask's base. The rest, however, had splashed either onto the floor or her hand.
Her hand.
Alphys stared dully at her bandaged hand, which was now stained with both red and orange. Frantically, she tore at the bandage. Why were knots so difficult to untie? Why had she used a knot in the first place? There was medical tape in the bag, and it would have been much easier to apply. Breathing heavily, she finally managed to work the bandage off. Her palm was burning stronger than before, and she felt a terrible heat spread to her arm. The cut, which had earlier been dripping rusty red, now oozed a vicious white.
That hadn't happened to the test subjects… Nothing at all had happened at first. It wasn't until later that they started melting. Melting. Alphys felt bile rise in her throat, burning her soft inner skin. She swallowed it down, refusing to believe she would suffer such a fate. The tests subjects were all nearly dead or dying when they'd been injected. Alphys was perfectly healthy, unless you counted her diet. Tears somehow found their way to Alphys' eyes, and she dropped the useless flask onto the ground. She didn't even notice it shattering as she ran wildly through the door. She had to make it out of here. The elevator was so close.
Alphys' stomach gurgled loudly as she sprinted towards the elevator. She looked down at her hand, but her vision was all ripples on the surface of a deep green pond. She stumbled, landing facefirst on the ground. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. Everything hurt. Her entire body burned as it was filled with concentrated determination. She dragged herself along the ground with her hands. She couldn't remember which one she'd cut. She couldn't remember how she got here. What was her name again? It looked at its hand and recoiled at the sight of a bright yellow mass, dripping apart onto the green tiles.
The nameless lump flopped into an elevator somewhere. It didn't know where. It didn't care. Only one thought went through its mind: Undyne.
The name echoing in the confines of its rapidly degrading brain, it slammed its appendage against the control panel, pressing every button at once. Its appendage slid through the cracks, oozing behind the buttons, and it felt what was left of its fingers fall off. It groaned in unison with the elevator, though it no longer remembered why; it felt no pain as the doors slid open. It fell through the doors, landing with a splat on the sand-colored floor. Undyne…
Undyne…
Und…
…
_____
Gaster was sad. Gaster was a lot of things. In fact, he was everything, always. Despite the fact that he was always filled with crippling depression, there was a particular place in time that gave him a reason to be sad. The royal scientist who had come after him died. She, like everyone, died, but her death struck Gaster as unnatural. It was selfish, but he felt like her death was less deserved than other deaths. He felt a strange attachment to the poor dragon. Perhaps it was only their shared occupation, or perhaps he saw a potential in her to surpass his greatest discovery. If he were in a physical form, he would sigh. As it was, he reached his mind across dimensions, creating a soft blanket, swaddling the events leading up to the Doctor's death, and pressed them into a smaller dimension. He was angry at himself for interfering, but he knew it was the right thing to do.
_____
Doctor Alphys shouted loudly as she sat up. It was dark, and she was tied up in a thick quilt. A dream. Oh god, it had felt so real. Alphys felt herself vomiting too late. She looked at the puddle of vomit that now lay on her favorite blanket. Hands trembling, she picked up the corners of the quilt in an attempt to keep it from spilling anywhere else. God, she was pathetic.
She held the bundle away from herself and ran to the sink, leaving a trail of small drops on the floor. Alphys cringed as she rinsed the previous contents of her stomach down the drain. She would have to sleep without a blanket tonight. If she could even fall asleep. Alphys felt her head spin, and nearly fell over. She realized with a sort of laugh that it was only a fever. She was okay. She'd be fine.
Doctor Alphys dropped herself back into her bed and looked at the glowing LEDs that made up her alarm clock. 6:41. She would have to clean the lab some other day, when she was feeling better. She grabbed her cell phone from the dresser and opened her contacts. It was way too early to be calling anyone. She sighed and opened her favorite television streaming site.