Chapter Text
"You're sure about this?" He asked, a finger hovering over the call button.
She fiddled with her claws nervously, shaking slightly in the frigid night air. The wind was worse from upon the balcony, though the height provided for an ethereal view of the kingdom. Overlooking a such a calm, sleeping city gave the illusion that nothing had happened, like nothing could ever disturb a place so peaceful.
Alphys stiffly forced a solemn nod. "I can't... I can't keep going without some sort of closure." She spoke softly with an underlying quavering in her voice that one who didn’t know her so well might mistake for uncertainty. But no. She was dead-set on doing this, and he didn’t understand why, but he respected her wish nonetheless.
It was around a month after the kid left, and since then their kill count proved to be an inaccurate measure of the amount of lives they took. The underground itself felt dead and empty. The void left by the human and what they stole felt like a thickness in the air, a sickness you couldn’t see but it surrounded you- engulfed you. It was heavy and overwhelming at times if you weren’t used to it. It clung to your thoughts, to your very soul like a parasite that sapped away the happiness that used to flood the underground. It wasn’t as if there weren’t problems before, but this was so, so much worse- dangerous even. Living in such soul crushing sickness was how monsters fell down.
Sans was not an optimistic person, but sometimes he tried to remind himself that things could’ve ended differently. They could have killed everyone.
It never helped.
He turned back to the phone. "As long as you're sure. I'm not talking to them though."
"I know."
He paused for a moment, glancing towards the scientist, noting her unmistakable determination, then pressed the button and waited as the phone tried to connect.
"...Alright, I've got the number."
He didn't stick around. Just touching the phone made him feel sick knowing who was on the other end. He was just getting up to leave and give Alphys some privacy when she expressed her hatred for the human. In all the years he'd known her, not once had he heard such a darkness in her tone. Not that it was unjustified or even surprising, but merely memorable and disturbing seeing the depth of her devastation. She began pouring her heart out into the receiver in a way he wouldn't even with his friends, much less someone so, so evil. But she pressed on, and he couldn't stand hearing her anymore. It hurt knowing she was in such pain. Perhaps the worst most gut-wrenching thought was that she was just like everyone else. He was just like everyone else. No one had been left untouched by the human's brief yet calamitous reign of terror. No one hadn’t felt the sickness.
He exhaled, absentmindedly feeling along the drawstring of his jacket as he wandered into his new bedroom, then tossed himself onto the bed, mildly surprised when he didn’t hear the creak of worn out springs under his weight. Even after a few weeks of being there, he was still adjusting to life at the castle. It was nice. He'd worked hard for a big house when he lived with his brother, but the castle was so much vaster. He sometimes wondered what his brother would think of this place. His mind wandered and he again imagined his brother's excited, innocent reaction to seeing the castle. It hurt, so he stopped. At his own expense, he'd become rather good at forcing down emotion. Dwelling in the past just wasn't gonna work, and at the same time there was nowhere to move forward to; it was more just staying in the same place and not being dragged backwards at this point- just waiting around for a probable reset.
Living with Alphys was also nice, and for a few reasons. They had both lost people they'd built so much of their life around, so they could wordlessly understand each other. They'd known each other for years anyway so it was far easier to have each others backs since they’d had so much practice in the past.
He laid there, staring mindlessly up at the ceiling with one arm dangling off the edge of the bed while he waited for her to come back inside. He wanted to sleep off everything he was feeling or wasn’t feeling, but intended to make sure she was alright first. Sure enough, she wasn't.
After ten minutes of her not coming inside, he got up out of bed and headed back outside to be greeted by the gentle breeze that seemed to radiate around the castle constantly. He found her right where he left her, no longer speaking, just holding the phone in a shaking claw. She didn’t look up as he approached, perhaps not even noticing.
"You okay?" He asked quietly, gently touching her shoulder.
Alphys didn't reply at first and just kept staring at the phone like she didn’t even notice him. Then she murmured in the tone of an uncertain child, "I-It's kind of my fault. I could have stopped them. I should have killed them."
He could relate to that, but the human would’ve just kept coming back. He wanted to tell her there was no point- that the human could not die. But…
"It's no more your fault than mine. What's important now is working with the situation, so there's no need to torture yourself over what you did and didn't do. Right now, you're keeping this world together along with the hopes of everyone within it. Don't you think that counts for something?"
She sniffed and wiped away some tears with the back of her claw. "Thank you... you know I- I couldn't do this without you. I really appreciate you." She said, and it felt good, both to be appreciated and for some sort of brief positivity in the midst of their bleak predicament. Even for just a moment, it seemed to cut through the fog of sickness, and it was a reminder that at least they had each other.
"Heh, ditto Alph. C'mon, let’s watch something.” He said, nodding towards the door back inside. “We can pretend we're getting teary-eyed over a dumb movie."
She laughed weakly and followed him inside, still swiping away fresh tears and made a mental note to work on maintaining her composure since it was one thing having a breakdown in front of a friend and another in front of hundreds of citizens relying on you to be the strong one.
If they were in better moods they might have gathered all their pillows and blankets and thrown them together in a heap to serve as their bed for the movie, but it was well into the night and they were both wracked with physical and mental exhaustion that lead them to settle on the couch instead. Alphys huddled on the far end, knees hugged to her chest, and assured him she didn’t mind which movie he picked, so he went for whichever looked the cutest and popped it into the player.
“Which one is this?” She asked watching as he took a seat on the polar end of the sofa, kicking his legs out into the space between them.
“Didn’t read the title.” He murmured sleepily. “It’s got a cat on the cover though.” Shutting his eyes, he curled up best he could before falling asleep within the first ten minutes.