Work Text:
Alphys woke up at her desk to the sound of her cell phone ringing next to her head. She lifted her head up from the keyboard and looked at the caller ID—it was Asgore. She let it ring, waited a minute, and then played the voicemail message.
"Hello Alphys, did you receive my last few messages? I know that you are busy with your research, but everyone is eagerly waiting after you said that their families could come home. They are worried, and I am worried, worried about you. Would you like to stop by for a cup of tea? I never see you at the castle anymore. Please call back when it is convenient."
sorry, i'm still busy. there have been some complications, but tell the families not to worry. Alphys texted him. maybe i can have that cup of tea some other time.
What complications? Asgore promptly texted back.
Alpyhs stared at her phone for a while, claws hovering over the keys. She didn't know how long she could keep lying to him before he got suspicious.
nothing i can't handle.
Alright. Just keep me up to date, please.
"Alphys, you should hire an assistant," said the voicemail that she got from him after about a month of these evasions. "I have already posted notices saying that you are looking for one. I think that you will find things to be much easier if you have a helper around the lab. I am trying to make a test to give to the applicants, and I would like your input."
It was framed as a suggestion, but she knew that it was an order, since he had already put up the notices. Of course he meant well, but...there was no way that she was going to let someone in on this mess. It had already ruined her; she wouldn't let it ruin anyone else. But how to prevent this without blatantly denying Asgore? Some dormant part of her brain stirred, the puzzle-loving part of her that hadn't had a chance to stretch in a long time. She thought back to a certain physics teacher that had made her life hell in college. Oh, this was going to be fun.
She picked up her phone.
actually, i'd like to write the test myself.
* * *
"Wake up, lazy-bones! The king has issued an important announcement!"
The springs of his mattress creaked as Sans sat up and stretched, shoving aside his balled up, creasy blanket.
"Hmm? What's up, Pap?"
"He has posted a bulletin stating that the royal scientist is looking for an assistant, and I thought: what better person for the job than my brother!" Papyrus clasped his hands and looked down at Sans with an earnest, dreamy expression. "Just imagine—me in the royal guard, and you the right hand of the Royal Scientist."
Sans stood up and wiggled his feet into his slippers.
"Wow bro, that does sound cool, but I'm not sure what makes you think that I'd be a good scientist."
"You're always reading science books, like that physics book in the living room."
"Actually, there's a joke book inside of that."
"But inside of the joke book is another physics book."
Sans tried to make his voice as deadpan as possible.
"Yeah, and then inside of that..."
He had to suppress a laugh at Papyrus's exasperated huff.
"Sans, I am not getting into this with you right now. The point is that you like science, no matter how much you try to pass it off as joking."
"Okay, you got me, I like science. So what? The king won't be looking for a hobbyist."
"Aw, Sans, can you at least try? All you have to do is take a test, and then the king will interview you if you score high enough."
"Ah...Well..." He looked up at his brother's shining, hopeful eyes. "Okay, I'll try, but there's no guarantee that I'll be able to pass."
Papyrus pumped a fist in the air and then wrapped an arm around Sans's shoulders.
"Yes! I knew you would take to the idea eventually. You have seemed very...bored with your sentry job." He gave Sans a squeeze. "I think that you will be happier there."
Sans looked away; normally he would just laugh it off as laziness, but now he was too grateful to protest. Papyrus was more attentive than he gave him credit for.
"Anyway, the test will be given in New Home, a week from now."
He stepped back, looking critically at Sans's sweatpants and faded old t-shirt. Then he snapped his fingers.
"Now I've got it! You need a lab coat!"
"I don't think that's necessary for the test."
"You've got to look the part—it will give you more confidence! I will acquire the necessary fabric as soon as possible. Now, where did I leave my measuring tape..."
A few monsters gave Sans odd looks when he walked into the test room wearing his lab coat, but he ignored them. Papyrus had put a lot of effort into making it, and he had to admit that it had come out looking surprisingly good. In addition to Sans, there were four other monsters in the room. He sat down near a nervous-looking slime monster that he vaguely recognized, and they bobbed their head at him in greeting, shaking some green goo onto their desk as they did so.
After they waited a few minutes to see if anyone else was going to show up, the proctor handed out their tests. The first part was just a survey (give your name, address, preferred pronouns, etc), while the second part was...well. Sans leaned back in his chair, eyebrow ridges rising in surprise. Someone behind him gave a low whistle; another monster cursed, and after ten minutes he heard the sound of a chair being roughly pushed back and a door slamming. No one else gave up, but occasionally he heard groaning and furious erasing.
Sans really just wanted to doodle a picture in the answer bubbles and leave, but...Papyrus was waiting outside, probably bragging about him to some random bystander.
He flipped through the question booklet and shook his head. Damn, this royal scientist didn't mess around, did she? Some of the problems were actually pretty interesting, questions that he might have tackled for fun, once upon a time. He cracked his knuckles—more slime slopped off of the startled monster near him—and got down to it.
A week later Papyrus came flying into their living room with a letter in his hands.
"Sans, look what I got in the mail!"
Sans took the letter from him; it had the Delta Rune on it, and was addressed to him from Asgore Dreemurr. Since he never checked his mail box, he had put down Papyrus's box number.
"Well, are you going to open it?" Papyrus said, practically dancing in front of him.
"Oh, uh...yeah," Sans said, slipping a phalanx under the seal and tearing the envelop open.
He read through the letter silently, Papyrus waiting tensely in front of him. When he was finished he folded it up, placed it on the counter, and sat down on the couch, putting his skull in his hands.
"Brother," Papyrus said softly, and Sans felt him sit down next to him. "I'm sorry that it didn't work out."
Sans waved him away.
"That's not...well, read it yourself."
Papyrus got up, and a minute later he heard a joyful cry.
"Why, Sans, you did it! You got the interview!"
Sans felt hands on his shoulders.
"But then why are you acting like this? Ah, I've got it. You're overwhelmed by your victory, aren't you?"
Sans looked up into his brother's concerned face.
"You're right, Papyrus. It's a lot to take in."
"Of course! Would you like to talk about it?"
"No thanks. I just need to think it over for a while."
Papyrus nodded.
"In that case...I have some important news to spread."
Then he marched out of the house. Within the hour, all of Snowdin would know about this. Sans rolled over and groaned, pressing his face into the saggy cushion. There was no going back now.
* * *
Alphys was feeding Endogeny when she got Asgore's text. She set the heavy dog food bag down with a grunt and pulled her phone out of her lab coat pocket.
The interview is done. Your new assistant, Sans, will join you whenever you are ready. I will contact him for you if you wish.
"What?" she said, staring at the text in horror, reading and then re-reading it. "No. No way. According to my calculations, no one should have been able to get a passing grade in that amount of time. Did he guess them correctly? Ugh!"
Endogeny, who had been eating—well, absorbing, not really eating—its food with enthusiastic sucking noises, looking up from its bowl with a concerned whine. She stroked its perpetually vibrating head.
"Shhh, it's okay."
Something slimy wrapped around her hand affectionately and then retreated into its orifice, leaving a trail of black liquid on her scales.
"Haha, thank you," she said, wiping the gunk off on her lab coat.
While it finished eating she continued frowning at the text. Maybe she could tell him to come next week, put it off, then put it off again, and repeat this until Sans got sick of it and gave up. Or she could outright tell Asgore that this had all been a mistake, that she was sorry for wasting his time, but she just wanted to work alone. However, as gentle and lenient as he was, Asgore was almost at the end of his patience with her. If she rejected this plan then he might just demand that she show him her progress immediately. She glanced across the room at the happy slurping of her "progress," and shuddered. No one could ever see this, especially Asgore, not after he had put so much faith in her. If she took on this assistant, then maybe he would back off for a while. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it would have to do.
tell him that he can come in two days.
For two days she thought about cleaning the lab, and for two days she repeatedly put it off. Finally, on the morning that he was supposed to arrive, she hid the stacks of dirty dishes in a cabinet and dragged the dog food bag down to the basement. That would have to do—maybe he wouldn't mind the dust and sticky soda residue.
There was a tap at the door.
"Just a m-minute," she called, attempting to smooth the wrinkles out of her lab coat. It automatically creased up again as soon as her hands passed over it. She sighed, and pressed a button to open the door.
It slid open with a smooth whir, and a big-boned skeleton in a lab coat walked inside.
"Hi. Dr. Alphys, right?" he said, extending a hand.
"Yeah," she shook his hand, and if he noticed that she was trembling slightly then he didn't show it. "N-nice to meet you Sans. Or is it Dr. Sans? Asgore didn't say."
"Just Sans," he said.
"Okay. Well, just Alphys is fine, too."
Now that he was closer, she could see that he was wearing sweatpants under his lab coat. Who wore sweatpants on their first day of work? There was something about the way he held himself that was familiar to her. He acted casual, but not insolent. Instead of being offended by his informal attitude, she felt pacified by it. She had unconsciously been expecting some fastidious, slickly-dressed genius, someone who represented everything that she was not.
"That was some test you put together," he said, pulling her out of her musing. Ugh, she had been staring at him, hadn't she? "You had me stumped on a few of those."
A few of them?
"You got eighty percent of them right," she blurted out. "Everyone else got less than fifty percent. You're the only one that passed."
"Really?" he said, and while his voice showed only mild surprise, she didn't miss the way that his fixed smile grew slightly cheekier.
Suddenly his calmness pissed her off instead of soothing her.
"Yes, really. It's funny; eighty was the minimum score you needed to pass. You wouldn't be here now if you'd scored a point lower."
She glared at him, her checks burning. Oh, what hell, she couldn't let this question eat at her forever.
"Did you cheat?"
"C'mon, you're accusing me of cheating because I passed? You're almost making me think that the test was rigged or something."
He winked at her. She turned away from him and rubbed her eyes in calming, rhythmic circles, claws clacking against her glasses as she did so. Behind her he shuffled his feet uncertainly on the tile floor—in addition to the sweatpants, he was wearing slippers. This guy. Honestly.
"Alright," she said, turning back to him. "Fine. Y-yeah, I rigged it. No one was supposed to be able to pass it. Which leads me to the question of how...?"
He looked uncomfortable for the first time, not meeting her eyes.
"I've gotta way of, uh, stretching out time, I guess you could say."
"Hmm. I've heard about some humans that were able to do that, to a certain degree. Something about slowing down their heartbeats. I'm n-not sure if it's true though, since we don't get much information about them these days."
"Eh...I suppose that you could compare it to that."
"W-well, then. That was a variable that I hadn't accounted for."
Alphys sank down into her desk chair and watched resignedly as he pulled up a chair that had been resting against the wall.
"Heh, don't feel too bad, you nearly got me. I'm still scratching my head over all of those that I did miss. Hey, now that the test is over, could I see the answers?"
Alphys perked up.
"Oh! Would you like a f-full explanation? I could show you the proofs that I wrote."
"Even better."
The vague plans Alphys had made went out the window, and they spent the rest of the morning going over the test solutions and talking about puzzles. When their lunch break came Alphys ate her usual cup noodles and Sans took out a brown paper bag—wait, where had that come from? Maybe he had stored it inside his clothing, since he had all that extra space around his bones. He opened it, made a face at the contents, and then closed it again.
"What is it?"
"My brother wanted to make me lunch for my first day of work, and I told him to surprise me. It's a...spaghetti sandwich."
"Ah. That's, um, very creative."
"Normally I admire my bro's creativity, but I think I'll have to pass on this one."
"I've got some extra noodle cups, if you want them."
"Sounds great."
The bag went back to whatever hidden location it had previously occupied—she didn't see him put it away, but when she came back with the noodles it was gone.
"Alright, so it looks like I've wasted your morning," he said when they were done. "What do you want me to do? The job description just said 'assistant,' which could mean a lot of things, although based on that test I assume that you're expecting some pretty rigorous work from me."
"Um, listen, Sans...I don't actually want you to work with me. I just made that test really hard so that Asgore would think that I was taking this assistant thing seriously; it was his idea, not mine. It's better if I work alone."
"Oh," he seemed disappointed for a minute, then he chuckled. "Well, I've been told that I'm great at doing nothing, so it looks like you picked the right monster after all."
"Actually, there are still a few things that you could do. Like, a-answering the phone and checking the mail."
"Your phone is unplugged."
Alphys scrambled around behind the desk and plugged the landline back into the wall outlet, blushing as she stood back up.
"Well n-now it isn't!"
* * *
Sans spent the rest of the day sitting at Alphys's desk while she worked in the main part of the lab, below the entrance level. The door locked behind her when she went down there—he found that out when he tried going in to ask her a question, and it wouldn't budge. He thought about taking a shortcut, but...no. She had been firm about her need to work alone. If the door was locked, then that meant that she didn't want him bothering her at all.
When she had plugged the landline in twenty unread messages had popped up, but after hesitating for a while he had deleted them all. He was in charge of receiving new ones, not combing over old ones, and he didn't know what kind of personal stuff could be in there. No mail came, but he did get one phone call toward the end of the day.
"Hey, this is Sans, assistant to Dr. Alphys. What do you need?"
"Oh, yeah, I remember Papyrus yelling—I mean telling me that you were going to work with her." It was Snowdrake, one of the teens that hung around the forest outside of Snowdin. "Is she around?"
"No, she's busy. Want me to take a message for her?"
"Nah, that's fine. Just tell her to call me back." His tone became softer than usual. "I'm getting really worried now."
"Alright, I'll let her know."
When the work day was over, Alphys still hadn't emerged from the lower floor. Sans waited five minutes, then ten minutes, then half an hour, and gave up. On one of the scraps of paper lying on her desk, he left a note: snowdrake wants you to call him back, says he's worried.
Looking at the note, he tapped his pen contemplatively against his teeth. Worried about what?
"How was work, Sans?" Papyrus asked when he walked inside, looking up from the pot of noodles that he was watching sternly. It wasn't spaghetti this time—Undyne must have finally been branching out.
"I'd tell you, but..." Sans winked. "Then I'd have to kill you."
"Sans, please! You're a scientist, not a secret agent."
"Sorry bro, it's all classified. My lips are sealed—or they would be, if I had any."
"Really?" Papyrus narrowed his eye sockets suspiciously. "Because you're giving me that look."
Sans's grin widened.
"What look?"
"That one! Right there! Argh, you know what I'm talking about."
Exasperated, Papyrus waved the fork that he had been using for stirring, flinging pasta that stuck to the wall. Sans didn't think that pasta was supposed to ooze like that.
"Alright, you got me. I'm essentially just a secretary. I sat at a desk all day and answered a...a single phone call. That's literally all I did."
"Oh," Papyrus set down the fork. "That's not what you were expecting, I guess."
Sans looked down at his feet, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, and shrugged.
"I'm sorry. I thought that this would help you, but you're still not where you want to be."
"Hey, Pap, don't lay this on yourself. It's not your fault that they did a crappy job advertising this position. And anyway, there's no harm done, because it's the same thing that I was doing before, you know? Waiting at a sentry station all day, waiting at a desk all day...it's basically the same thing."
"I suppose."
"Hey, it's not all bad; I had fun joking around about nerdy stuff with Dr. Alphys."
"Wait, I know!" Papyrus said. "Maybe she's just getting to know you first, before she trusts you with the science stuff."
He had picked up the fork again and was stirring the pasta vigorously, almost violently, as he thought.
"Yeah, you're probably right. Then I'll have to start hiding stuff like a secret agent, so you'll never know the difference."
Papyrus paused in his stirring and gave Sans a wry look, then turned back to his cooking with a sigh and a shake of his head.
You're already hiding things from me.
He didn't have to say it.
"I'll call you when it's ready, alright?"
Sans hovered by his elbow, fidgeting, thinking of all the things that he wanted to tell him.
"Yeah," he said, finally.
He would never tell him.
In his room he took off his lab coat and threw it down with all of his dirty socks—he wasn't sure when they had started accumulating, but they were an unstoppable force now; they had conquered half of the floor and were continuing to gradually expand their reign. Then he felt guilty and draped it over his dresser, which actually wasn't much cleaner, but at least it was safe from the socks.
Looking at the socks, he thought about what he had found in Alphys's lab. While she had been down in the basement he had gotten bored, and thinking that she had some food stashed somewhere, he had started poking around the cabinets. One of the compartments had been haphazardly crammed full of dirty dishes, so many that he hadn't been able to get the door shut properly again until he had done a lot of rearranging and shoving. So she was haunted by dirty dishes, and he was haunted by dirty socks and...other things.
In a flash he was down in his own lab, and he had an old photograph in his hands. The picture showed Sans, [REDACTED], and a few other scientists, plus a curious yellow blur at the edge of the frame—a certain shy lizard who didn't like to have her picture taken. As Sans tried to remember his skull ached, but dammit, he was sure that it was her, and he thought that she knew it too, however vague that feeling was for her. He had seen the brief recognition on her face when he walked in, followed by confusion and then dismissal.
How was he supposed to explain this to her?
Hey Alphys, did you know that we were friends in another timeline? Just thought that you might want to know. Oh, you don't remember? Haha, sorry, that was a joke, I guess that it wasn't a very funny one...
* * *
Alphys looked up from what she was doing when a beep told her that the front door was open. Startled, she dropped the screwdriver that she had been using and hurried to the nearest surveillance monitor. There was no one inside the lab, but when she looked at the outdoor camera feed she saw someone walking away. Who...? It was Sans. She glanced at the timestamp on the feed. Oh, that was right, normal people kept regular hours and went home to their families and such.
"Whoops."
At first she had kept an eye on what he was doing through her monitors, but as the day had dragged on she had become engaged in her current robotics project, to the point where she had pretty much forgotten that he was up there.
After making sure that the amalgamates were settled in for the night, she rode the elevator up and looked at the desk where he had spent the day. There was a note by the phone: "snowdrake wants you to call him back, says he's worried."
So, they were still calling. Alphys held the slip of paper in trembling hands, staring with wide, unblinking eyes at the phone, her heart drumming in her ears and sweat breaking out across her forehead. Hesitantly, she reached out toward it, then drew back as if it had bitten her. She took a few deep, even breathes.
The note floated to the bottom of the trashcan and landed face-down.
Their days fell into a simple pattern after that. She greeted Sans, they chatted for a bit, and then she retreated down the elevator. Usually she joined him for lunch, since most of her food was up there, but sometimes she made do with chisps. Some days she said goodbye to him, and some days she didn't. Usually her absence was due to her focus on her experiments, but some days...some days she curled up in her comfiest desk chair with her face shoved into the armrest, and the thought of showing her face to him made her nauseous. She would pay intense attention to the surveillance feed at the end of those days, waiting in agony for him to leave.
Then there were the days when she didn't feel terrible, but was too anxious to get any work done, so she procrastinated by watching him. It wasn't all that interesting, since she hadn't given him much to do, but it was better than accidentally electrocuting herself because her hands were shaking and her mind was wandering. When he wasn't answering the phone or adding mail to her growing stack of neglected correspondence, he was sleeping. Damn, that guy could nap, although for someone who napped so much he had some intense dark spots under his eyes. Maybe he didn't sleep at home—she knew almost nothing about his home life, except for the fact that he had a brother.
Sometimes Alphys went down to the garbage dump early in the morning, before Sans got to work. Today she had found a lot of useful things to sort through—metal scraps, miraculously intact electronics, a whole set of manga—so she was in a hurry to get back. Her wire shopping cart clattered loudly as she pushed it down the road, her treasures sliding across the bottom as she almost missed a turn and had to take a sharp right. Finally Hotland was within sight. Then she blinked, and Sans was on the road before her. Huh, she could have sworn...well, she probably just hadn't been paying attention.
"Hey, Sans, wait up!" she called breathlessly.
He paused, turned around, and waved.
"Have you been...down in the dumps this morning?" he said when she caught up to him.
Alphys snorted.
"I've felt fine this morning, thanks. More than fine, actually, since I found all this great junk."
As they walked toward the laboratory she noticed that he was strangely tense, walking upright instead of slouching like usual, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
"Y-you okay?"
"Huh? Oh, I just don't really like walking through Hotland. Looking down at all that magma makes me feel...dizzy."
She glanced over the edge of the path and tilted her head, trying to see if she felt anything similar. Funny, before now she had never tried looking down there for long.
As she stared vertigo seized her. She felt nauseous and, for some reason she didn't understand, afraid. Not afraid because of the height, but because of some association, like the magma reminded her of an old nightmare that had left an impression on her mind but not a distinct memory. She stumbled and almost lost her grip on the cart.
"You alright?"
"I—I think so," she said, stopping and rubbing her hands, which were suddenly sweaty, on her lab coat. "But I think that I know what you mean about the magma now, heh. Definitely not looking down there again."
She rubbed her forehead and groaned.
"Headache?"
"Yeah, don't where that came from. Must be connected to the vertigo."
When she glanced over at him there was a tender, sympathetic look in his eyes, but it dropped almost immediately.
* * *
Sans wanted to be hopeful about her reaction to the magma, but it could have been an average fear of heights, or a fear of experiencing a painful, fiery death. Couldn't blame anyone for that. The next day he decided to test her.
"Hey Alphys, did you hear about that monster who fell into the core?"
"Mmmph?" she said, her mouth full of noodles.
He waited while she held up a finger and finished chewing.
"Yeah, I remember hearing something about that. I think that it was just a rumor though, because when I asked Undyne about it she said that she'd never heard of something like that happening. She's the head of the royal guard, so I figure that she'd be right about that sort of thing. She knows, like, e-everything that goes on down here." Alphys blushed briefly, then hurried on to cover it up. "It's weird, right? You'd think that by now someone would have had an accident and fallen down there, but they haven't. Whoever designed it did a really good job of making it safe."
"Yeah. Strange. Where'd you hear that rumor?"
Alphys scratched one of her head spikes thoughtfully.
"Hmm. I can't remember where, exactly, so it was probably on undernet. Come to think of it, I don't know when I heard it, either. Not recently, I'm sure, since then I'd remember who told me. Ugh," she messaged her forehead. "That headache is back. Why were we talking about this again?"
"I'd heard that rumor too, and I wanted to see if you knew anything more about it." He leaned forward. "Do you remember who was supposed to have fallen into the core?"
Her eyes developed a dull, faraway look. Sans watched in frustration as she frowned, fighting against mental fog. The look cleared and she shook her head.
"Nope. Sorry."
Sans leaned back in his chair with a heavy sigh. Ah, well, this was better than nothing.
"Well, thanks for letting me pick your brain. You're the only person that I've talked to who even knew that the rumor existed, actually."
"Really? Not much of a rumor then, is it?"
"Ha, I guess not."
* * *
Alphys awoke one morning to find that she had slept through her alarm.
"Ah, shit..." she muttered, clawing around in the dark for her glasses and bumping the light switch. She pressed a button to make her bed fold into a cube, threw on a lab coat over the outfit which she hadn't bothered changing out of last night, and then hurried down the escalator.
Sans wasn't there, which was odd, since she had given him the entry code after it was apparent that he wasn't quitting, and he hadn't skipped a day of work yet. Well, maybe today would finally be that day. How lucky for her.
Then she saw that there was a new addition to the pile of mail, which had now migrated to the floor due to its size. It was a purple envelope, impossible to miss on top of the other standard white ones. Alphys picked it up and looked at the thin, dainty handwriting on the outside—it was from Muffet. She must have been making the rounds with her bake sale advertisements again.
So he had been here, but where was he now? It was about an hour after he usually arrived, so maybe he had gotten the mail and then left. She thought that he would probably have left a note in that case, though. Well, either way, she needed to go down and feed the amalgamates. They would be getting antsy by now.
The door slid open automatically, before she could enter the password.
"Oh hell no."
She went over to the monitor, entered a password, and scrolled through the channels. Not there, not there...ah, there he was. She bit back a scream of frustration.
"How could I let this happen? I must've been so exhausted last night that I forgot to lock it. Wouldn't be the first time."
As she rode the elevator down she tapped her foot impatiently.
"C'mon, c'mon...he hasn't been down there for long, so maybe he hasn't seen anything yet."
There were no amalgamates wandering around, which was odd, since usually they started pestering her for food as soon as she came down in the morning. Maybe they were hiding because of Sans? She grimaced as she walked through the room with the beds. What would he make of that? She had never told him that she was working with live patients, letting him maintain the assumption that she was focusing on robotics. It wasn't entirely a lie, since she was still working on Mettaton's other form.
"Alphys?" A strained voice called from the direction of the room with the fans.
"Sans? Just stay where you are, okay?"
Endogeny was leaning over him, whining and dripping black liquid all over his skull. Sans was visibly shaking and his eye lights were gone.
"Hey, stop that! He doesn't have any food. I'll feed you in a little while, okay?"
Endogeny backed away reluctantly and she shooed it out of the room. Even with the amalgamate gone, Sans seemed reluctant to leave the corner that he had backed into.
"I recognized that monster," he said hoarsely. "Well, parts of that monster, anyway. Alphys, what's going on down here?"
He was scared, still trembling a little, but his eye lights were steady now, fixed on her face. He looked prepared to face whatever answer she had to give.
That was too bad.
"Follow me."
"Uh...alright."
They rode the elevator back up in silence. He watched with a blank expression while she wrote out a paycheck and handed it to him.
"I don't understand."
"This is what Asgore would have paid you for your next month of work. I'm giving it to you in advance."
"You're firing me."
She nodded.
"Ah. Guess there's no use in trying to explain myself?"
"Sorry, but after that, I c-can't have you around anymore. Don't tell anyone what you saw down there, okay? I-I'll give you however much money you want. Asgore's more than willing to give me whatever I need. He won't miss a hundred gold h-here or there."
"I don't want any money, and I've got no reason to go spreading this around, either. But are you sure that you don't want me to stick around and help you deal with...all that?"
What the hell was with that look he was giving her?
"I've got everything under control, okay? I'm fine! Everything's f-fine! It was all going great until you showed up and made everything so c-complicated!"
His eyes widened in surprise and he held up his hands.
"Okay, okay, I'm leaving. Just...take care of yourself, okay?"
Alphys sighed and felt herself deflate. Anger was too exhausting.
"Y-yeah. You too."
* * *
Sans lay awake on his mattress that night, listening to Papyrus practicing a monologue in the adjacent room. After getting home he had immediately told him about his being fired for snooping, to get it over with, and of course Papyrus had been disappointed in him. Then he had tried to lighten the mood by telling him that it was okay, since he would have gotten fired for sleeping all the time anyway, but for once Papyrus wasn't willing to share in his laziness jokes. He seemed genuinely hurt by this, which made Sans even more pissed at himself.
"I really messed up this time, huh?" He said to the trash tornado beyond his feet. It had been going for a week now—almost a new record! The small dog that was riding the swirling air currents winked at him. "Yeah, you're right, it's still not my worst screw up."
This was the excuse to quit the lab that he had been looking for to start with, so why didn't he want to take it? It was because somehow, Alphys was part of the convoluted puzzle that he was trying to solve, another piece of his receding memories of that other timeline. There was that drawing in his lab that said "don't forget." He wanted to laugh every time he looked at it. Don't forget what? Whatever he had been trying to hold onto, it had slipped from his mind already. He had some guesses, sure, but nothing concrete. He tried to not look at the drawing—it was grotesque, somehow, and not just because of his shitty drawing skills, assuming that he was the one who drew it. He wasn't even sure of that.
He thought of calling her, but he knew that her phone was likely to be unplugged again. She was probably down in her lab, tending to...whatever that had been.
* * *
It was midnight and Alphys felt like she was on the verge of having her third anxiety attack of the day.
"Dammit Alphys, dammit..." she muttered to herself. "It's okay. It'll all blow over soon, right? He said that he wasn't going to tell anyone, and it looked like he really didn't care, so...it's fine. It's fine it's fine it's fine fine fine."
She tucked in her knees and hugged them, causing her desk chair to spin from the shift in weight. She let out a low moan, and then bit her hand to stop the thin scream that was building in her throat.
"But what the hell will I do if he does tell Asgore?" she mumbled around her scales. "Ohhh I shouldn't have let him leave. I can't have him wandering around out there knowing things that he shouldn't know without my supervision."
She stilled the chair's gentle rotating and went over to the large monitor near the escalator. She flipped through the channels until she found her Snowdin camera. His house was right at the edge of Snowdin before the path that led to Waterfall, so she had a good view, since she happened to have cameras at both ends. She had thought that they would be most useful there, so that humans could be seen coming and going from the little town.
It was a large two story house decorated with red and green lights and covered with thick, fluffy snow. Warm yellow light came from the bottom story window. She wondered who was awake at this time of night—Sans or his brother? A shadow passed by the window and, based on the height, she thought that it was Sans. Then the light went out.
So, if he was awake...she walked over to her desk and stared at the phone, which she hadn't unplugged yet, although she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep it on once the calls started again. As she stared, she began sweating. Oh, not this again. She clenched and unclenched her fists, claws stabbing her palms, and then shuddered and abruptly turned away.
Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. She would just have to stand there and take it when the time came.
Waiting turned out to be impossible, because each day that she waited her anxiety grew, and her work slipped even more. Eventually, she decided that just picking up the damn phone already would be a lot less painful in the long run.
"Hello, this is Papyrus speaking. What can I do for you, strange caller?"
Alphys licked her lips and cleared her suddenly dry throat.
"H-hi Papyrus, this i-is Alphys speaking. Is S-Sans there?"
"Oh, hello Alphys! Hmm, I'm not sure where he is at the moment. He's been spending a lot of time in our basement lately," Papyrus paused. "He always locks himself in there when he's feeling down."
"Why the basement?"
"He has a workshop or something in there, although what he uses it for I have no idea. I'm not allowed in it."
"I-I see. Well, could you, um, go look for me? If it's n-not too much trouble."
"It's no trouble at all!"
There was the sound of a door opening and boots crunching on snow, then knocking.
"Sans, are you in there? Hello? Ugh, he's not answering. I'll try his room upstairs...No, he's not in here either. Aha, I know where he is—Grillbz!"
"Papyrus, you don't have to—"
"It'll take just a moment!"
A minute passed. Alphys heard distant conversation and a crackling fire that sounded a bit too close to the phone to be safe.
"No one in Grillbz has seen him today either. Or seen him much at all, lately. Which is odd, since he's usually in here a few times each day."
"Oh. T-that's too bad. Can you tell him that I called, and that I'd like to talk with him?"
"Of course." Papyrus lowered his voice, and it took on a worried tone. "Alphys, can I ask you something?"
"Er...sure?"
"Is there any chance that you might take my brother back?"
"I've been considering it. That's o-one of the reasons why I called, actually. Um...do you think that he'd really want to come back? You said that he's been acting down lately..."
"Yes, I really do think that it would lift his spirits."
"Ah. Well. I'll keep that in mind."
"Thank you, Doctor. I'll be sure to pester him until he calls you."
"Don't pester him too much, okay? Haha."
"I can guarantee no such thing. Goodbye!"
Papyrus must have had mighty powers of persuasion, because Sans called her within the hour.
A day later Alphys heard a ding, and Sans walked in through the lab door. She stood up to meet him and he extended a hand, raising one eyebrow ridge ironically.
"My name is Sans, Sans the skeleton. I don't believe that we've met before."
Alphys rolled her eyes.
"It's nice to meet you, Sans the skeleton, but I should tell you that I can see that whoopee cushion in your hand."
"Dang. It was worth a try."
He pocketed the prank and extended his hand again.
"Really though, we got off on the wrong foot last time. I think that a do-over is in order."
"Heh, you're not wrong there."
They shook hands, then she led him into the elevator. As they descended she kept glancing at him and then quickly looking back at the control panel whenever he caught her eye.
"Hey, there's no need to be nervous," he said. "I've already been down here."
"Yeah, but you didn't see everything. You have...you have no idea what I've done."
"Whatever it is, I won't run away."
She searched his face, looking for any sign of regret, and found none. She nodded, and then led him through the winding corridors to the DT Extractor.
"This machine is the main thing that I've been working on. It can extract something which I've named Determination—the element of human souls that allows them to persist after death." She paused, took a deep breath, and pressed forward. "I injected Determination into monsters that had fallen down to see if it would cause their souls to persist after death as well. It didn't work, though. Those monsters woke back up after they were injected, and it seemed like everything was fine until...until they started melting. Then they merged to become beings like that one that you met the other day."
Sans was quiet for a while as he contemplated the machine.
"Damn," he said at last.
"Yeah. Damn. It's a damn mess."
"I can see why you'd want to keep this from Asgore. I guess there's no use in telling you that he'll find out eventually."
"Trust me, I've thought about that many, many times."
"Well, whatever's gonna happen, I want to help."
"I'm not sure what you can do to help at this point, but...thanks."
Sans was still staring at the machine, his eyebrow ridges pressed together, although whether in concentration or frustration she couldn't tell. That expression...
Sans and Alphys were in a lab much brighter and cleaner than this one, and assembled before them were blueprints and styrofoam cups of coffee on a broad metal table. Through a window she could see the red glow of magma lighting up the cavern walls. It was late, and Sans was nodding off, a pencil in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other, covered in half-finished calculations. Usually his face was endearingly sloppy as he slept, but tonight he looked irritated about something as he dozed. A bad dream, she guessed. Alphys got up from the table, stretched, and looked down at Sans, tempted to just let him sleep. However, she would need him when it was time to report to G—
"Alphys?"
"Huh?" Alphys said. Her head swam like she was coming back to her senses after being anesthetized. "Sorry...I just...For a moment there..."
Sans still wore his perpetual grin, but there was something about the way his eyes tightened as she spoke that made it look like he was in pain.
"Alright," she said. "I have something to admit. When you first stepped into my lab I thought that you were familiar. Not like you were just someone that I passed by sometimes, but like I knew you. Do we know each other, somehow?"
His laughter startled her—his laughs before had always been low chuckles, but this laughter was loud, delighted, almost wild.
"Um..." she said as he tried to recover his composure, his shoulders shaking as he continued to laugh, but now silently, with a hand over his mouth. This was more than a little unsettling. "Are you okay?"
"Aha...oh man, I'm sorry. It's just that I've been waiting forever for you to say that so I didn't have to. And you finally did!"
Alphys smiled uncertainly.
"So, back to my question...?"
"I have something to show you at my house that will help explain this. Do you mind if we take a shortcut there?"
"Uh, no, I guess not."
"Alright. This might be a little disconcerting, so brace yourself."
"Okay then."
She followed him down the corridor, and...
...Suddenly there was snow under her feet, and the ambient hum of electricity in her lab was replaced by the sound of wind blowing through pine trees. Alphys stumbled to a halt and leaned against one of the mailboxes by his house, her vision tilting in a way that made her feel dizzy and a little sick.
"Did we just teleport?" she panted.
"Yep."
"Sans, what the hell? You could have warned me."
"Would you have believed me?"
"You'd be amazed at what I'm capable of believing now."
"Fair enough. Sorry."
Alphys snorted.
"Whatever. Let's get inside before my tail freezes off."
They went around to the back of the house and Sans fished a key out of his lab coat pocket.
"Oh yeah, Papyrus mentioned that you had some kind of workshop in the basement."
"I guess that you could call it that. Don't get much work done in it these days, though."
They stepped into a concrete room that wasn't much warmer than the outdoors. It was empty except for a row of drawers set into the wall and some huge, bulky thing covered by a dusty sheet.
Sans removed the sheet. Alphys shivered, and nodded when he asked if she recognized the machine. No more new memories came forward, however, so then Sans told her a story. A story involving multiple timelines, three ambitious scientists, and an experiment that went catastrophically wrong. For what seemed like hours they sat in that basement while he patiently answered all of her questions. Then she inspected the damage—of the two of them, mechanics had always been more her thing—and answered his questions. A lot of headshaking was involved.
When they had interrogated each other to the point of exhaustion they went to Grillbz, where Alphys tried to surreptitiously thaw her hands in the heat of their host's head while his back was turned, making Sans almost snort ketchup up through his nose hole.
"So you really think that it's hopeless?" Sans said, unscrewing the lid of his third bottle of ketchup. Alphys tried not to gag as he tipped it back. She had thought that she had the worst eating habits in the Underground, but Sans outranked her there.
"I'll see what I can do, but it's not looking good. It'd help if I had G..." she flapped a greasy hand in exasperation. "Dr. Whatever's original blueprints."
"I tried recreating them from memory, but my memory of that timeline isn't much better than yours where it counts," he sighed. "Every day, my memories fade a little more."
"Well, I'll see what I can do before they go away completely. Heh, I guess we're both just gonna be trying to clean up each others' messes from now on."
"Looks like it," he raised his bottle. "A toast—to being absolute messes."
She grinned and raised her glass of soda.
"To being absolute messes."
Clink.