Chapter Text
They get better eventually.
Slowly but surely, May begins to see itself out the door, and slowly but surely, normality settles down again, as best as it can. The days are changing, and even if there are still shadows stretched to the far corners of the room, eventually, they remain as just that – shadows. Day after day, there are fewer bad memories waiting to ambush them for going about the completely arbitrary, and oftentimes, what they do have to be more wary of is April yowling her battle cry and ambushing them from the cat shelf, because she has not gotten the memo that they do not appreciate being knocked over like a jenga tower every time she wants her meals.
(Or she does it to spite them, which is far more likely – Napstablook has not gotten that much better at balance, despite their attempts to, and they are running out of fingers to count the meetings they’ve had with the floor. This cat is going to be the death of them, one of these days.)
And so the days continue to change.
Time flies by on the calendar, and it occurs to them one day, as they’re flipping back the months, that they’re still here. Somehow. Against all odds. This time a year ago, they were just beginning to understand that nothing would be the same again. They’d just found out they would be stuck in his body for the rest of their days. There was no going back to the snail farm. There was no returning home, to a time before. And before that – and one too many times after – they had been so convinced that they would not live to see another day. There were so many times they thought they were going to die, and somehow, despite everything, they’re still here.
Against all odds, they had a future, and now they’re living in it. Like it or not, they have that chance to figure out what they want to do with it.
Tomorrow comes.
Napstablook stares at the date a moment longer, fingers maybe about to leave a dent in the paper, and they can’t help but smile, tired and sad as it is. They’re still here, even when—
“Mraa?”
The keyboard on the bed makes something akin to a dying wail when April steps all over it, and then goes back around again to hear its noises underfoot, and, well, if that isn’t a sound. April herself, clearly cross-eyed at their keyboard’s existence, bats at a note several times and grows even more confuzzled with every passing smack, and, oh dear, this is so stupid – they almost manage to hold back a laugh and not ruin the moment, and then fail. As they tend to do.
“Mraow,” says the cat, turning to look at them and acknowledge their existence. As if to emphasize her next question, she smacks the keyboard again. “Mrrp?”
“Oh! That’s my keyboard… wanna see what else it can do?” they reply, and hey! Maybe they have a future, against all odds – and in it, right now, they’re teaching a cat how to play piano.
And tomorrow comes once more.
“Oh, hey! Mettaton! I-I found this new anime that—”
The melody they’re playing trails off the second Alphys bursts into their room, and they look up in time to see the excitement fizzle out of her, the cassette tape in hand falling to her side.
“Uh…” Napstablook starts, and nothing really comes – there is a vacuum building pressure around them, in the same way there’s the crack of a gunshot before the pain strikes, in the same way the wind picks up before a storm, before the pieces click into place—
Oh. So that’s how it is.
“I…” They can barely hear themself over the quiet, can they? “I’m not…”
Maybe it’s the way their chest feels like it’s caving in, or maybe it’s the way Alphys looks at them – like she was expecting someone else – but they’re suddenly, acutely aware that they’re not supposed to be here. A cold shiver runs down their back. This is not their body. This is not their place. This is not where they belong, and it never has been, has it now. “I—”
“I’m sorry,” Alphys says instead, her voice all choked up, and she wipes at her eyes with her sleeve. “I – it’s nothing, a-alright? I-it’s…”
It really is nothing. There is a silence that’s fallen, when they weren’t paying attention, and it’s so much heavier than they’re used to.
(A vacuum building pressure.)
“Doctor…?”
Is there really anything else to say? They leave it at that because there isn’t, (because there should be something), and even now, even after they’ve been with her for a year, been her friend (can they really say that?) for months – they’re still no better at offering comfort than they were that first day, and clearly their presence is making all this worse. They give April a quick scratch behind the ears and set their keyboard aside, though beyond that, they don’t quite register sitting up from the bed and creeping, inch by inch, towards the door.
Well, no matter. They’ll come back for April later. Right now, they just need to—
“I-it’s fine, you know…? You can stay…” Alphys turns to them, and they freeze on the spot. You’re not supposed to be here, remember? chimes the old, twisting guilt in their head, but there is no way out of this. Just like last time. Maybe Alphys does want them here, for some unfathomable reason, even if their mere existence is a painful reminder to her, (maybe it always has been), and slowly, slowly, they dig their fingers into their elbows, and attempt to use the pain to distract them from this unfolding scene. If they just hold on tight and wait for this to pass, then everything will blow over and they’ll never have to speak of this again, right?—
So of course they don’t expect the hug.
Of course they don’t expect having to squeeze her back, but they do anyway, holding her as close as they can as she sobs into them.
Of course, they don’t expect: “I-I can’t… I can’t lose you too.”
You won’t, they want to tell her, the first thing that comes to them before any other thought or reason, and then wait. I don’t get it. Why… doesn’t she want them to give her space, given the circumstances? Why keep around a constant reminder of what’s been lost? Why do they matter?
Why should they matter?
They hug her back a little tighter, despite not knowing that, and hope it gets through. I’m here, if you want me to be. I’m here.
Eventually, when her breathing isn’t as ragged and her eyes are still a little puffy, but slightly more dry, Alphys lets go, as she wipes at a stray tear and fixes up her glasses with a free hand. “I… I’m sorry.”
“It’s…” They stare down at the floor. Is it really fine? Is it not?
“I-I miss him, and I miss him every day, b-but… this? God, I thought I’d have gotten… used to this, but t-this shouldn’t have…”
This shouldn’t have happened. There’s a long list of things that shouldn’t have happened, yet here they are – they try for a reassuring smile, and ignore how forced it all is.
“It’s… it’s okay.” Their voice drops a little quieter. “I… I’m sorry, too…”
“N-no, don’t be? I-I brought all this up in the first place, and…” she trails away, and her gaze falls on the cassette tape in her hands. “I-it’s nothing. I just… was reminded of him, b-but it’s nothing to… i-it doesn’t really matter now—”
“Do you want to… to watch it with me?” they ask, and very hastily tack on, “I mean, uh, n-no pressure if you… if it’s too—”
“S…sure.”
Maybe the wound is still too fresh. Maybe it still does hurt, and this flashy anime about magical boys and way too much glitter makes the scars across their soul ache a little more. But Alphys is right – he would’ve liked this, and that’s what they can’t help but think about as they sit through scene after scene, and maybe, one day, the loss will start to hurt less.
They try their best to ignore the phantom tears welling up in their eyes, and carry on.
April has that telltale gleam in her eye again which looks a lot like “murder”, and Napstablook, for the life of them, has no idea what to do about it.
She is not actively plotting their demise — they know this much, or at the very least hope that isn’t the case whenever their brush pulls on a tangle in her long fur and she gives them the stink eye. They would very much like to not go through near-death experience number four anytime soon, thank you very much.
“I trust you not to be the death of me,” they had told her on one lazy day, which had started out relatively peaceful and then quickly escalated to April knocking over the laundry list of Alphys’s papers piled high on the living room work table when they turned their back for approximately two seconds, the culprit in question wearing what looked like a self-satisfied smirk that somehow, somehow, did not need words to tell them try me.
Thankfully, April’s decision to wake up every day and choose violence has only ever resulted in several knocked-over objects (themself included), one couch with half its side ripped open, and a few mishaps involving charging wires, so they can’t say they have evidence that she’s trying to kill them. Or if she really is plotting murder, her weapon is slowly driving them up the wall with all the mischief she gets up to.
(They heard a saying once, about someone getting grey hairs from stress. So far no one they know has hair, and they don’t think this robot body is capable of wearing out from something like that, but they had to check in the mirror at least once.)
Hence: the walk.
Because a common reason for cat misbehavior is a lack of stimulation, or so the online forum has told them, and admittedly, they haven’t given her much of that since their mental health flashed them the peace sign and vanished a month ago, so that’s on them. In that case, their next best solution was to sling the cat on their shoulders, leave a note saying that they’ll be back in a couple hours, and make the trek to their old home again – so that’s what they do.
They let her frolic once they’ve gotten past the obnoxiously large “Welcome to Hotland” sign with its endlessly sidescrolling letters, and the bridges that hang over too much abyss for them to feel comfortable about letting her loose, and the second they’re safely within range of nothing but submerged grass and echo flowers, April leaps off and takes to the water like a cat possessed. There are minnows in the shallows, packed together in tiny schools, and she pounces upon them with a fervor they don’t expect, sending fish scattering outwards like an explosion. Some dash between their heels, and they look up to find April staring at the water, as mildly disappointed as a cat could ever hope to look, but no less deterred.
It’s for her own sake that they lift her out of the water, several minutes later, when she simply can’t catch anything – or that is, at least, how they justify it to themself. April is a wet, sodden creature that is cold to the touch when they pick her up, and they half-worry, with a shiver, whether she’s going to catch some sort of illness if she remains wet for too long, and half-wonder if it’s possible to squeeze their cat like a soaked towel to wring all the excess moisture out.
“You,” Napstablook chides, “are soaked.”
“Mraow!”
April squirms in their grip and attempts to make her escape, paws thrashing at the fish darting off into the middle distance, completely ignorant of the worrying realizations that are beginning to settle. Sure, she’s fine now, and she’s likely survived being waterlogged for a good while before they found her on that doorstep, but they can’t help but think about it. What if she does get sick? Just because they didn’t bring anything that they can dry her off with? And later on, maybe they aren’t able to spot the symptoms and get her to the vet in time—
Hey, hey, it’s okay! Slow down for a second. Breathe, says the stray thought, and it sounds a little like Shyra. April may be soaked, and maybe you don’t have a towel on you, but is there anything you can do now?
“Not… not really,” they start, and they take that deep breath. April lets out a “mrrt?” when they cradle her close to their chest, and she tentatively reaches up with a paw to give their chin a light smack. It’s still wet from her romp in the shallows, and maybe she knows all too well how to use this info – she reaches up with her other paw and strikes again.
“Hey—”
“Mraa,” chirps the cat, like that’s supposed to explain everything, before she has the gall to start purring.
The nerve.
“Why must you do this to me,” they half-sigh, half-laugh from the exasperation – as if April is going to answer that with anything other than her little kitty smirk and a slow blink. I worry about your health and this is how your treat me, so clearly, this cat is going to be the death of them.
Fun.
(But now they aren’t panicking about her being wet like they had been a moment ago, so.)
See? Even if you can’t find anything you can do, that’s okay. She’s not going to fall apart just because you didn’t prepare for this situation, isn’t she? April’s been soaked before and she lived. She’ll be fine, the stray thought hums, and, well – if they aren’t inclined to believe that.
In the end though, Napstablook still has a sopping wet cat, but all they can really do about it is to let her air for a few minutes as she attempts to groom herself in their arms, until she looks dry enough (or simply not wet enough) to not catch a cold if she’s left the way she is for the next few hours. Eventually, she’s allowed to clamber back onto their shoulders, and they carry on.
All it really takes is one look at Mettaton’s old house for them to start feeling a little sick.
Okay. Yeah. No. Maybe this isn’t where they want to be, at least not today – if they stay here any longer they’ll notice how the color looks like it’s faded a little more since their last visit, and they’ll notice the door, and then they’ll notice the handle, and these sorts of things take time and courage to get to, because of course they do, but they do not have the latter.
(April squirms and demands to be held and for a moment, for as long as they want to, they don’t have to look straight ahead. It doesn’t make this better, but it helps.)
But they do have time, and so they very carefully keep their eyes on their cat and back away, back down the path leading to Blook Acres, and start looking for another place to bring April to.
(They’re putting this off again.)
Of course they are. There’s no denying this, and it’s yet another piece to add to the ever-growing pile of evidence that they haven’t really done a good job at getting better since the incident(s), and of course that hurts. But hey, they came out here to let April burn some energy in a way that doesn’t involve ruining the furniture, and overcoming their fears was nowhere in that plan, so there.
(There she goes, purring again. Like she knows when they’re mulling on things that they should do.)
(Hm.)
At least their next destination is practically a hop and a skip away – or, to put it in terms for fellows like them who can do neither without tripping and dying dramatically, a tiny river gap and a small bird away.
While it is a gap they can wade through without much complication (though that’s mostly just a guess), the bird has been very insistent on carrying them across every time they’ve come to this stretch of river, as small birds are wont to do, and they have not figured out exactly how to tell it “no” yet – if they even want to refuse it, that is.
So the bird stands there with that signature sparkle in its eye, completely undeterred by the murderous chittering coming from the half-soggy cat in their arms, and they hug April a little tighter as the bird flies onto their head and carries them across the tiny gap. By some miracle, April makes no attempt on the bird’s life at any point of the trip – though she is sending it death glares the whole time, and she looks to be contemplating murder even as they apologize on her behalf, once they’ve crossed the gap.
(“I-if she’s made your feel… um… threatened, or anything at all, I-I’m—”
“Mraa-ra-ra-raaa.”
“April, no—”
“Mrow.”
“N… no, we’re trying to be sorry, not not sorry—“)
The trip gets a little easier once they actually reach the river.
Possibly because that’s when they can let April down and watch as she proceeds to run right to the water and splash at fish in the slower, shallower currents, and possibly because there is no one here that they need to keep her from attacking.
Napstablook sighs.
For now, at least, April should be fine as long as they’re keeping an eye on her, and making sure that she’s not terrorizing the local wildlife too much. She bats at the water, most definitely still on the hunt for fish, and they step back – maybe now they can relax and find somewhere for them to—
“What’s the point?”
Whoever said it sounds like a child, or the somber echo of one, and they turn around expecting to find that – but it’s just an echo flower they must’ve bumped into along the way, teal petals and all.
“Whatever we do here… it ain’t gonna decide nothin’. Will we make it to that surface, someday? Or will we stay down here ‘till the day we dust? That’s not dependent on our actions,” the flower continues, all worn out and melancholy and somehow, so vaguely, intensely, intimately familiar. “What can we do? What can any of us do?”
What can anyone do, really? They settle down next to the flower, legs all criss-crossed-applesauced, and they try to focus on April, playing a short distance away. Try not to think about what can we do? and what can any of us do? when all they’ve been encountering lately is accidents, and incredibly terrible circumstances, and—
(And see, that’s the thing. What’s the point in trying if whatever they do doesn’t change the inevitable in the long run, or their efforts only end up making things worse? Accidents happen, and that’s how the events of that terrible day happened, and that’s how many other incidents happened, and it’s bound to happen with anyone – including the cat. Do they want any of it to happen? No, of course not, but when has wanting ever prevented anything? When has a good intention ever done something good? Really, is there anything they can do to change anything for the better?)
(Maybe they don’t have an answer to that, and that’s—)
“Mrow!”
When Napstablook looks up they can’t see April, which means they weren’t paying attention, which means something’s wrong, and they’re on their feet in seconds. Where is she? The spot she was at previously shows only a trail of wet pawprints and puddles leading along the river, up until a point where it abruptly ends, and—
Down the river, there’s a splash that follows. Familiar ears that poke out from the undertow before the rest of her resurfaces – attempts to resurface – all while the current has her strung along for the ride. When did they take their eyes off her? Why? She’s trying to paddle to shore, she really is, but the currents here are deceptively strong and once again, she’s pulled under—
Accidents happen, don’t they? This is yet another mistake they’ve made. This is yet another one to add to the list – they don’t remember when they start running, legs working on autopilot, but maybe they can reach her if they’re fast enough. Maybe if they try hard enough – remember the last time you tried to reach someone in time? Remember that? – she’s in the middle of the river, and they can’t pull her out from the riverbank, and there is a waterfall dangerously close downstream.
(And here’s what they know: they’re not meant to be in water, not like April is. They don’t know what to expect if push comes to shove, but they can only guess the worst.)
And here’s what they know, staring down the river: hold on, I’m coming, but really, what can they do? What can anyone do?
What can I do?
(Maybe they can’t change what happens to them, what happens to anyone, in the long run. Maybe there isn’t a point. But right now, their cat is in danger, just like how their friend was in danger once before, and wouldn’t they do anything for their friends?)
They dive in after her – and there is barely a decision that needs to be made.
(They don’t remember what happens, after that.)
