She no longer had a desk. Chara had trashed it in an escape attempt. Now all she had was her bed. The utter lack of anything stimulating was the price of safety. It left them both bored out of their mind and it would be a lie to say they weren’t both stir crazy by now. The stagnant waiting period did not sit well with them since they had long since gotten used to their nomadic lifestyle.

Move through the Ruins.

March through the snow as fast as you can to avoid getting too cold.

Slog through Waterfall and don’t get caught.

Hunt stragglers in the heat of Hotland.

Fight Sans.

Fight Sans.

Fight Sans.

Fight, reset, fight, reset, fight, reset.

Run into an impossible problem? Just start all over again.

Run through the Ruins...

After all that, staying in one place felt wrong. It was nice to be in a relatively safe spot though. No need to worry about wandering monsters finding them, no running from Undyne, no forcing herself to stay awake out of fear of what she may find when she woke up.

For the first few days Rain did almost nothing but sleep. It felt so damn good to sleep. She even started to get used to using a bed again. Sleep was the best thing ever. It was a gift from the gods.

Everything else was much harder to ease back into however.

She had stopped having to worry about basic hygiene. Clothes would mend next reset, dirt would wash away and she had long since stopped caring about the state of her hair. What would have been the point of bothering if you knew the results would just get rolled back?

But now time was progressing naturally. In all honestly it was painfully slow and boring. She had to get used to the basics again.

She had been gifted a hairbrush, towels and a toothbrush now.

Chara tried turning their first toothbrush into a something stabby, like some sort of crafty criminal trying to start a prison riot. But an opportunity to use her Toothbrush of Doom never presented itself and they eventually asked for a new one when Chara got sick of the dirty taste in their mouth and agreed not to do it again.

Every once in a while from some remote location Alphys would lock down the elevators and all the doors except one and Rain would be free to walk down the dreary hall to a nearby bathroom so she could shower and brush her teeth.

It had been a very long time since she had been able to enjoy a warm shower. The smell of shampoo was amazing. Her hair felt smooth and silky again. And her legs! Shaved legs in clean sheets! The first night she got to experience it she couldn’t sleep because she just kept giggling and sliding her legs around under the covers. Even Chara had to admit that she had missed being clean and soft.

It was the little things she had come to love and appreciate having again. They were monumental markers of her progress on the path to recovery.

But there was still so much that was difficult.

With the reintroduction of a natural sleep cycle came nightmares. It seemed that as Rain grew stronger and Chara was slowly forced into a less prominent roll, Rain began to get unintentional glimpses past the veil of darkness Chara shrouded herself in. Behind that dark veil were the huddled the memories of a troubled child.

Suddenly being able to sleep became a little less pleasant. Rain had already survived one abusive childhood, having to endure another was not a chance she was prone to jump at and when she tried to talk to Chara about it, it only made her angry.

...Maybe they shouldn’t be sleeping so much after all.

Days passed. Or at least she assumed they did.

Alphys would sometimes chat with her over the speaker now and then. It usually started out as an update on her progress but it always devolved into talk of anime., which was fine with Rain. She had loved anime up on the surface. Unfortunately it seemed that everything Alphys managed to get down here in the Underground was pretty old. She kept going on and on about Mew Mew Kissie Cutie and how the second movie had ruined the character arc.

Rain had shocked her into stunned silence when she argued that the movie had set things up perfectly for the next season and the third movie, were Mew Mew had discovered she had a roguish long lost twin brother who was working with her rivals.

Apparently Alphys had not been aware of that season or the third movie, even though the series had ended during Rain’s childhood.

Alphys would probably never be lucky enough to find a copy.

Of course once Rain brought up her love of horrible English dubs and 4kids edits Alphys chose to ignore her in favor of work once more.

Rain was staring up at a mark on the ceiling that looked like a little white dog when Alphys’s voice crackled in over the speaker again, interrupting another otherwise featureless day and bringing an end to her silent treatment. “H-hey, are you awake?”

She rolled out of bed and hit the intercom button. “Yeah.”

“I think everything is good to go. We can run our first test today. Sans is heading over to you now. T-thought you may like the warning.”

She turned to look at the exit. She was far from surprised to find the skeleton already peering at her through the haze of energy, smile firmly in place as he gave her a wave. “Thanks.”

“you up for a trip?”

“To the end of the hall and back again?” She asked, voice dry to the point of sounding bored despite her stomach spontaneously tying itself into nervous knots. “Sure.”

“alright. well, here we go.” He took a bracing breath and switched off the energy feed. They stared at each other across the empty space for a few awkward seconds, Sans apparently half expecting her to charge forward and attack him now that there was nothing there to stop her.

She stepped through, waiting for him to offer his hand so they could teleport. Instead he stepped aside and gestured down towards the elevator at the far end of the hall.

“What, no fancy teleporting today?”

“nah.”

Rain had assumed that she was on the bottom floor of the lab but one ride in the elevator proved her wrong. It was a little unnerving to realize how much farther down the facility went. They descended in mutual silence, both of their minds too far elsewhere to consider the lack of conversation awkward. When the elevator slowed to a halt and the door opened again, Rain glanced at the buttons and realized that wherever they were headed, there were still a few floors left under them by the time they got there. She couldn’t help but entertain the uneasy idea that maybe Chara was right. People didn’t have secret labs under their friendly looking ones unless they were doing something that would have made the friendly one look not so friendly anymore.

The rooms lit up for them as they went. The smell of regular dust made the slightly warm air feel all the more stale. Rain scowled at some of the potted plants, reaching out to rub one of the leaves as they passed by. It was plastic. Plastic and thick with dust. Why even bother? Would it have killed them to get some real dirt down here?

Eventually they came to a room far cleaner than the rest. It still reeked of cleaning supplies and the lights overhead must have been recently changed because they were more luminous than the ones that had led them here. There were a few desks laden with papers and old monitors. In the center of the room there was a metal table with straps on a raised platform. The platform was circular and the table’s rectangular shape barely fit on it. Propped up against one of the walls were several feet of removed metal plating and glass tubing that would have once fit one of the smaller, more elevated inner rings atop the rise, had they been intact.

Apparently they had had to mutilate quite a bit of the original device in order to scan a soul still stuck in its meat suit. Like steampunk stalagmites, some bits of the old device still jutted up around the table at awkward points. Some of them still displayed dead readout screens. Several strange pieced of apparatus hung over the scene, looming over the table on long metal necks that bent and remained poised overhead like the curled legs of a spider amidst a web of power cables that hung low around the circle like a curtain. Eventually said cables trailed off into several of the other machines shoved against the walls. Alphys was currently behind one of these intimidating walls of technology, waist deep in a nest of things that still needed to be plugged in.

She peeked over one of the many monitors and offered a friendly smile. “Hey. Give me a minute. I should have this all set up soon.” She pointed a screwdriver at an open box of doughnuts on one of the other desks. “Help yourself while you wait.”

Rain sat down at the desk and nibbled at the doughnut, ignoring its odd mealy taste while she stared at the machine. “Is that thing safe?”

“mostly.”

She eyed the straps. “Is it going to hurt?”

Sans joined in her observation of the rather dodgy looking machine. “no idea.”

“H-hey… don’t say it like that. I think I did a pretty good job of rearranging everything, so…”

Rain put her doughnut down. She was no longer in the mood.

Sans gave her a sideways glance. “how’s the uh… the kid doin’?”

“Chara? Sleeping. There’s not much else for her to do down here.”

He kept his voice light but she wasn’t sure he was joking when he said: “good. maybe we won’t have to use the straps then.”

How encouraging.

Sans ushered her over to the table, giving her a hand up as she settled in on the cold steel. Despite knowing she could reload at any time, her heart still raced.

“nervous?”

“A little. Remind me what this thing is supposed to do again?”

“just takes soul readings. tells us its dominant characteristics, dt levels, stuff like that. if you are telling the truth and there is another human floating around in there, then we will get some pretty abnormal readings. it shouldn’t hurt but it will probably feel kind of weird. on a completely unrelated note: you may feel, see or hear strange things while you are here. unless something is causing you physical pain just ignore it.”

“Yep. Great. Ok. Possible hallucinations. Not concerning at all!”

He chuckled. “relax. machines are alphys’s element. you will be fine. right, al?”

“Right! Just warming things up now!” She called from the back of the room.

Rain drummed her nails against the table and chewed on her lip while she tried not to look directly at the myriad of gutted machinery around her.

Sans was watching her from down below. “you ok up there? you seem a little tense.”

“I’m fine.” She said between her teeth. “It’s just a little uncomfortable is all.”

“oh.” He paused for a second. “want a pillow?”

She frowned and peered down at him in time to see him pull a full sized pillow out from under his shirt. “Oh my god! Are you serious? Just how much shit do you keep in there!”

“what? it’s for taking naps.”

She reached for the offered gift with a snort. “I always wondered how you managed to fill out your clothes so well.”

“uh, it’s called being big boned, missy.”

“It’s called stuffing a pillow down your shirt.” She amended with an amused eye roll. “Figures you would pack the essentials for sleeping on the job. Thanks, I guess.” She punched the pillow a few times before settling back down. That was a little better. At least the gesture itself was reassuring. “First ketchup and now this. I’m surprised you could make it all fit. What other things do you use your Time Lord technology for?”

Sans went unexpectedly still. “time lord?”

“Yeah, you know, bigger on the inside than the outside? Like the TARDIS?”

“the what?”

“It’s a time machine.”

He shifted uncomfortably from side to side. “i didn’t know humans had time machines too.”

“it’s just a TV show.”

“…ah.”

Rain frowned. “Wait, do monsters have time machines?”

“what?”

“you said you ‘didn’t know humans had time machines ‘too.’ do you have a fucking time machine?”

“lady,” he rolled his eyes, “if i had a working time machine don’t you think I would have used it by now?”

She made a displeased face and forced her head to sink deeper into the pillow so he couldn’t see her embarrassment. “I guess.” She grumbled, playing with her thumbs and attempting to avoid eye contact once she realized how dumb she sounded.

They listened to Alphys scurrying back and forth in the background for a while longer, the awkward silence chipping away at the minutes.

“need some help, al?” Sans called in desperation.

“N- no. All I need to do is connect this to this, then switch on the scanner… alright! E-everything should be- wait, no hold on. I forgot to plug in the stabilizer. One m-moment.”

Rain cleared her throat as the lull stretched on. “So… Umm, see any good movies lately? Read any interesting books?”

Sans shrugged. “nope.”

Rain puffed out her cheeks in thought, scrambling to find something else to talk about. “Sooo, what is Earthbound?”

Sans blinked in surprise. “what?”

“That story you have in your room. I think the main character was called Chiller? What is that?”

He sucked in a long breath through his teeth and rocked back on his heels. “i can’t believe you read that.”

Rain gave him a deadpan look. “it’s a fanfic, isn’t it?”

He turned away from her, shoulders hunching and his voice reaching a slightly higher pitch than normal. “i have no idea what you are talking about- hey al! you sure you don’t need any help?”

Rain smirked. “Chiller is totally your self-insert, isn’t he?”

Alphys poked her nose out from a nearby panel and shook her head. “Um, n-no thanks Sans, I-I think I finally-”

Sans started talking over the top of her in an overly loud voice. “what’s that, al? oh yeah, sure! i can help you with that thing you just said!” He spun around and gave Rain a wink and double finger guns as he rapidly backpedaled out of the situation. “sorry pal, gotta bail. lets talk about this never, yeah?”

Rain sat up on her elbow and called after him. “Don’t think I didn’t realize that Chiller is a super edgy font, Sans! you can’t run from the truth!”

“what? I can’t hear you over all this science I am doing all the way back here!”

“your pushing buttons for a screen that not even on!”

“can’t…hear….yo..reaking….up!”

“You’re in another part of the room, not a shitty radio tower!”

As if the world had finally grown weary of their game, all the screens sparked to life one after another as Alphys popped up out of a nest of wires and cables. “O-ok! Everything is green! We should be able to get our readings now.” She wove back and forth between a few panels before settling into her station and resting her hands over a series of buttons. “S-sans, you can get back in position now.” She flexed her fingers and took a deep breath. “Ok. Here we go!”

Rain flinched when the platform began to lift itself up. Sans returned but kept his distance as several spider legs of machinery began to unfurl themselves and peer down at her. Luckily most of the needle-like ones remained offline, looming like shadows in the corners of her vision. Meanwhile, several curved dishes, laser-like pointers and other odd contraptions got right in her face.

“Ok. So, since your soul is shielded in your b-body and the apparatus wasn’t built for s-soul extraction, S-Sans will have to pull it up to the surface for us. Ok?”

She looked over the side of the table to where Sans had moved to, craning his neck to look at her. He held out his left hand, eye beginning to show with faint hints of blue. “ready?”

She grit her teeth. She hated this part. “Go.” She grunted. She felt the wrenching sensation of her soul being yanked to the surface. It was not unlike the sensation of falling awake in a dream. Her soul appeared before her, it’s usually red, heart shaped light wreathed in an eerie blue. She jerked in place, body levitating a few inches off the table before Sans let go, causing her to smack her head against the table. “Ow!” Even with the pillow it still hurt.

“sorry.”

Chara jerked awake, nearly skyrocketing to the surface in alarm. “What was that? What is it? What’s happening?” All her muscles tensed and she struggled to keep herself on the table. Their eyes darted around the room, searching for their opponent.

When the blue dissipated and all that was left was their original shade of red, the scanning equipment powered up with a buzz and a whine and began to circle around their soul, little darting laser lights running crisscross over it. “keep your head down, please.” Alphys warned, just as one of the mechanical arms swerved around and nearly smashed into their nose.

“What the hell is this?” Chara shrieked.

“Calm down. They are just scanning us.”

“Looks like everything is in working order. First round of readings are starting to come in." Alphys frowned. "T-that’s odd. Sans, this says she only has 20 HP. Aren’t… aren’t humans supposed to have more than that? She’s really frail…” Alphys shook herself free of the distraction. “Sorry, we can talk about that l-later. Beginning the second round of tests.”

The first set of arms folded back up against the ceiling and another set came down. They were much louder this time, buzzing with magic instead of electricity. Rain could feel some undefined pressure prodding at her soul, causing phantom sensations that were slowly beginning to build into an uncomfortable feeling of slowly being stretched in an undefined direction.

“I don’t like this.”

“Oh my god.” Alphys murmured, leaning over a screen and adjusting her glasses.

The stretching sensation grew.

“I don’t like this!”

“O-oh my god! S-Sans! Sans come here and look at this!”

“i don’t need to, alph.” His voice was soft and grim. “i can see it from here.”

Rain’s hands gripped at the unused straps, grinding her teeth as Chara began to fight her, a boiling sea of panic trapped inside her head. “H-hey, guys?” She grunted through her teeth,“Whatever the hell you are doing, it woke Chara up and she really doesn’t like it!”

“This is incredible. I have never seen anything like it. Do you think it’s because the soul is s-still attached to a body?”

“don’t think so, al.” Sans said, the words a mere whisper between his teeth.

Alphys continued to whisper surprised remarks as the readings came in. “H-her body is under so much stress! I-I would have thought it would be fatal by now! But her healing is… wait, if she can survive like this because her soul keeps restoring everything then does that mean-”

“Alphys?” Rain’s whole body was trembling, her leg kicked the air against her will, narrowly missing one of the mechanical appendages. “Are you almost done?” She shouted.

“shut it down, al.”

“I-I’m almost done. I just have a few more scans that need to come in.”

Rain tried to keep her eyes screwed shut, forcing down the black cloud or growing anxiety and anger but it was too much. Their eyes flew open and Rain felt her awareness falling backwards. They looked down at their soul. The veins of dark red that had always been entwined with the lighter shades of their soul had begun to pool together off to the side, beginning to bulge like a blister, losing its red coloration in favor of a familiar, oily black.

“Wait, hold on a moment.” Alphys’s claws rattled across a keyboard. “Look at this! Look what her soul is doing! I-I have never seen a reaction like this before! Usually we just keep this field in place to keep the souls separated when scanning more than one at a same time but-”

An enraged, pained scream burned through their throat until it was raw.

Alphys ducked in surprise.

Sans took a step back. “Shut it down, Alphys! Now!”

Chara kicked aside the nearest arm, grabbing on to another that had a much sharper appendage and yanking it from the ceiling in a maddened frenzy, showering the room with sparks.

Every movement was agony. The machine had been designed to keep her soul in place during the scan but her body had other plans. Her soul had other plans. It did not fit into this mold. It did not align with the specifications the machine had been given.

It was not safe.

The second the machine switched off Chara was a loose beast.

Sans’s eye was blue again, his hand outstretched as a panicked and enraged Chara launched herself from the table. She ignored the damage the other arms inflicted upon her and she turned her bulging, maddened eyes upon the small scientist; the glint of murderous intent flashed across her face.

As she jumped off the table, twisted metal in hand, their misshapen soul pulsed blue again and they stopped in midair as suddenly as if they had hit a wall.

They hung there, drifting.

“hey!” Sans barked, his voice louder than anyone could ever recall hearing. “drop it. and let her go.”

Chara cackled at him. “Oh, so now you talk to us like we are two different people? Now you believe her? Took you long enough!” She threw the mechanical arm at him. It was too heavy for her to throw very far.

He glared at it as it skidded past him in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. A single bead of sweat rolled down his temple. “good girl.” He lowered her to the floor. Her limbs strained against the impossible weight he pressed against her soul. Chara clawed at the ground, struggling to keep advancing. After several tense seconds her body gave in and folded under her like paper. Sans nodded his satisfaction. “now: let. her. go.”

Chara struggled and hissed for several seconds. Something inside of her had snapped. Foam coated the corners of her lips as she snarled at anything that moved, spitting out a string of insults. After a few tense, agonizing minute of fruitless struggling, her eyes rolled back into her head and she finally slumped over.

Sans remained tense, the act of keeping her pinned for so long was incredibly draining. “rain, you alright in there?”

For a moment she didn’t answer. Then Rain groaned. The rawness of her throat sent her into a coughing fit.

Sans sighed in relief and slowly lowered his hand, allowing her soul to free itself from the entrapping blue.

Alphys crept out from behind her wall of machinery, fiddling with her hands; her tail wrapped tightly around one leg. She kept taking half steps towards her then moving back, afraid to approach. This was the first time she had seen what Chara was like in this timeline. “I-I’m sorry. I-I’m s-s-so sorry! I got carried away. Oh god, I got carried away. I-I didn’t realize- I didn’t know that...”

“hey, why don’t you go uh, get her something to drink, ok? i’ll handle this.” Sans suggested, giving Alphys a way to go calm down.

“Right. O-ok. I’ll be right back.” She rushed off into the other room where there was a water cooler.

Sans crouched down so he was on Rain’s level. Granted, he remained several feet away from her while doing so. “hey, that looked pretty rough. you ok?”

She slowly eased herself up off the floor and into a sitting position, wincing. “Yeah. I’m good. I’m ok now.” She whispered, her voice like gravel and her shoulders shaking with another cough. She looked down at her chest, surprised to find that her soul was still visible. “Why is it still out?”

“the machine is designed to draw out certain aspects of the soul for analysis. it will take a moment for it to settle back down so your body can absorb it again.”

Rain frowned at her soul, the swirling darkness attached to its side looked like an angry tumor. She reached out to prod it before Sans could warn her against it. “And what the hell is thhhhhi-!” She felt a phantom jab in her side, causing her back to arc and her mussels and eye to twitch uncontrollably.

“Stop that!” Chara snapped, gaining temporary control of their voice. “Stop poking us!”

Rain’s body tried to cringe away from their soul as her voice went back to normal. “Oh my god, is that her?” She pointed at the darkness. “Is that actually her?”

Chara took this as an indication that she was going to poke them again and beat her to the punch, causing Rain’s other hand to fly up and roughly jab at the red of Rain’s soul instead. She shrieked and cringed away. "Not so fun when it’s you, is it?” Chara snapped.

“hate to interrupt your, uh, soul searching- you two really seem to be having a proper heart-to-heart interaction right now- but you should probably stop doing that. as the magical and ethereal culmination of your very being, souls don’t react well to non-magical stimulation or interaction. in short, you are going to hurt yourself if you keep poking it.”

They both relented, rubbing at their face and muttering a curse while their soul slowly began to fade back into obscurity.

Today had been a weird day.

Alphys returned with the promised water as well as the entire box of doughnuts Rain had been offered before. Now that both Rain and Chara seemed to have calmed down, Alphys felt safe enough to approach them. Rain took the water gratefully, allowing Alphys to help her up onto her still-wobbly legs. “H-here. It looks like you really scratched up your arm.” She whispered, offering the box of doughnuts.

Rain looked down at her left arm, finding a long bloody cut staining her torn sleeve. She hadn’t even felt it. “Dammit. I just can’t seem to keep my clothes in one piece anymore.”

“Why do you think i was so eager to get my coat back?” Sans teased, trying to make light of the grim situation.

Rain dropped the now empty paper cup and took a literal fistful of doughnuts. She was suddenly very hungry. And cold. She was very cold. Shivering.

Alphys gave Sans a displeased look over his joke before turning her attention back to Rain. “Again, Rain, I am so, so sorry. I-I wasn’t expecting that v-violent of a reaction. Th-the machine kept registering t-two souls and it wanted to keep them apart during the scanning processes. I-it’s a very minor mechanism, j-ju-just a small energy current, not even a real shield! I-I didn’t think it would be powerful enough to hurt you. W-we don’t have anywhere near enough power to separate a soul from anything but I guess… I guess the prodding was enough to agitate it…her.”

“It’s ok, Alphys.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I’m not mad.” She looked over her shoulder at Sans. “It sounds like you guys finally believe me now, so I guess it was worth it.” She rolled her shoulders and tried to keep her teeth from chattering. Chara’s chill was returning after having been temporarily drawn to the surface by the machine. “So, what did you find?”

“Aside from that sentient p-parasite fused to your soul?” Alphys laughed nervously and helped ease Rain into the nearest chair. “A lot. A-at first I thought there was something wrong with the machine! Your Determination levels…”

Chara sighed and rolled her eyes. She was slowly calming down now and falling into panic-induced exhaustion. “Don’t tell me they are off the charts. We already know they are. Don’t be the cliché person who says ‘off the charts.’”

“They are off the charts!”

“I hate her.”