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She could hear them screaming from behind the door. Begging her for help. No matter how she tried to block it out, she could still hear them screaming.
She’d thought it was a miracle when they’d woken up. It was supposed to be a miracle. But now she wished she just let them turn to dust instead.
When Asgore had asked her to start experimenting with the human’s souls, she’d thought it would be fine. Sure, she wasn’t as qualified as he thought she was, but it wasn’t like anyone would be hurt. All the bodies he secured for her had fallen down.
It shouldn’t have been able to go wrong, not really. The worst that should have happened is the determination did nothing to the bodies. The most she should have ever had to worry about was a lack of a reaction. The only thing she had worried about was the lack of a reaction. Which was why she just kept giving them more determination. They were never going to wake up. There was no harm in it at all. She was respectful. There should have been no harm.
But they’d woken up. And she’d done everything right! She immediately stopped all experimentation. She’d monitored them for a week before preparing to return them to their families. She’d been overjoyed. It was more than anyone could have ever hoped for. For a second, she’d thought she’d finally managed to do something worthwhile.
But Alphys was a fraud. A desperate fraud. And that was her downfall. She’d given them too much. She hadn’t known it at the time, but monsters couldn’t handle determination like that. Maybe if she’d been a real scientist. Maybe if she’d actually done the things she’d claimed to. She would have known. But she didn’t. She didn’t know.
They’d started melting. They’d started melting and there was nothing she could do. They held each other in fear as their bodies melded together. They called out for her. They trusted her to know what to do. She’d woken them up. She should know what to do, but she was frozen in place.
It was only when one reached out for her that she moved. She didn’t know what would happen if they touched her, but it couldn’t be good. And she was too pathetic to stay and face what she’d done. Too stupid to fix anything.
So she ran and hid like a coward. They sounded like they were in so much pain, and they were clearly so frightened. But she didn’t move. Didn’t even think about helping until the screams turned into dull whimpers. Until they gave up trying to get help.
It took even longer than that for her to build up the courage to unlock the door.
What she found on the other side made her feel sick to her stomach. They’d melted so much into each other you could barely distinguish any individual monster through the goo. They spoke in broken half sentences, struggling to get things out of what used to be their mouths, if they even had real mouths anymore. They were still dripping all over the floor. Melting away.
For a second she thought they were going to attack. It would be justified, after what she’d done to them. But they didn’t. Maybe they were just too confused or in too much pain to think about it. She’d melted them together. Of course they’d be confused and scared and unsure what happened. They wouldn’t know yet if it was Alphys fault. They were probably too focussed on trying to deal with what had happened to even think about blame.
She couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t be furious once they settled enough to realise that she had done this to them. That her incompetence had given them a few days of hope, of normalcy. Days she’d kept them trapped down in her lab. And then she’d sentenced them to a fate worse than death. All because she didn’t know what she was doing.
From there things only grew worse. They were trapped together. Forced to choke out half phrases, talking over themselves trying to tell her things. Trying to express their pain, ask about their family, convince her to try and pry them apart. Sure, some of them kind of settled. But others suffered.
Then the letters started. People asking for the dust of the monsters she’d been torturing downstairs. People who’d trusted her with their loved ones. People who believed in her lies. How could she tell them what she’d done?
She’d thought about sending them fake dust. She’d thought about just sending everyone home. She’d thought about putting them out of their misery and just splitting whatever dust she got from them evenly between all the families. She’d thought about vanishing and letting everyone find out what she did once she was gone. She’d thought about a lot of things, but in the end she couldn’t do anything at all.
She ignored letters, delayed updates to Asgore. Kept everyone fed and hid in her lab. It wasn’t like anyone really wanted to talk with her anyway. She just hid, like she had that night. She hid from her mistakes. Tried to tell herself she’d done nothing wrong. She didn’t know. She couldn’t have known. She couldn’t.
It had been an experiment. An experiment on lifeless monsters. Monsters who were never supposed to wake up. So what if she put too much determination in them? The experiment was to find out what the determination would do. She stopped as soon as they woke up. It wasn’t her fault.
But it was. She knew it was. That’s why she couldn’t tell. If she held no blame then the thought of telling anyone what happened wouldn’t hurt so much. If she wasn’t responsible she wouldn’t have hid away from it. It was her lies that had caused everything.
She deserved to sit and rot in the dark. She deserved worse than that. But all she could do was hide from it all and wait for the guilt to finish her off.