Number All my Bones: There and Back and There Again

chapter two: the machine

Coma. Coma.
Everything inside of me wanted to follow him. No. NO. How cruel could someone be to bring him back only to snatch him up, dangle him by the strings of his hoodie between heaven and earth?
But I couldn't. I couldn't.
I would have expected myself to rush off to the lab, to yank Sans in one hand and Papyrus in the other, sprinting off, almost trampling over everyone in my path. To run the tests, to turn on all the devices I needed to, to run my hands through all the paper I needed to to prove that no, he wasn't in a coma.
But I didn't.
I didn't.
I stayed there, and Papyrus' face fell, and I ran more tests, all of them proving to be arbitrary. I glanced over at Papyrus, and he fiddled with the floor, feet- a tossin' up the floor, tossed one of the read threads in his scarf up and down in his hand. I was so proud of him. So proud. Whenever I looked at him, I could feel my smile brighten, my heart swell. He was my son, and he had bonded us in an unshakable certainty. I was so proud of him. So proud that I would write a book about him later...
Right to the moment. I had to do something, but I wasn't quite sure what it was. Eventually, Papyrus whimpered. Once was enough.
With a brisk little, "C'mon, let's go to the lab," we were off. Papyrus didn't even think of asking me if it was the same lab as in the Underground. Taking us there would be a relatively long journey. A half a mile. Relatively long. Not a short distance to someone tall, someone limber, someone who could run at least two miles without stopping and could run a half a marathon if they pushed themselves to insanity. But to someone whose lungs had already seen too much of the cold, it was more than enough.
We were at the barrier, the top of the mountain blaring in our vision. What a sight. The foundations that built up my limbs all but toppled, and I embraced Papyrus, the bundle still in my hands.
I could still feel that breeze even when we were far inside the barrier, could feel it even when the purple door closed behind us. I could still smell the must here and there in the ruins, and with each step I walked inside that mountain, I could feel that bundle in my arms get lighter and lighter, light enough to where it felt like I could let it go with it flying up in the air like a balloon.
My brain mistepped. That doesn't happen often. I've been in this lab for years, and the password always shone out to me, clear as day. But not now. Anytime but now.
But as I stared at the door, there was something coming back to me. At first, I didn't know what in the world it was, but as I opened the door, as I laid my bundle down in the bed and took a seat in the recliner, I knew for certain that something was amiss. And then it grew worse and worse. At first, it was only a flashback that lasted for a second. But it was alarming; what the flashback was of, I didn't know. It was as if someone else's memories were being injected into me, that I was being used as a hijacked plane for someone else. It continued to worsen until I buried my head into my hands without knowing it, and it didn't stop until Papyrus had to be the one to hook up Sans.
Yes. Logic had to bring me back now. There were no memories with logic.
I looked over Sans, made sure the IV tubes were all in proper working order. Logic seemed to shake off these thoughts, these terrifying thoughts. I vowed to myself that I would get those thoroughly analyzed later. Later.
As I fired up the computer to analyze Sans' condition, I heard Papyrus rummaging to the back of the room. As the diagnosis was almost complete, I, fearing the worst, mumbled for Papyrus to get me a pencil in the back room even though I'd brought at least three pencils with me.
All I remember was clutching that chair, looking at the little boy to my left, hoping against hope and praying against God that everything would be alright. But the words "FALLEN DOWN" still appeared on screen; I hadn't hoped enough. I hadn't prayed enough. My suspicions were still confirmed.
And when Papyrus came back, I remember shaking as I turned off the computer. When he asked why the machine had broken, I remember shaking without saying a word.
______________________________________
I remember still shaking after taking Sans back home... recoveries from comatose states tend to be more prompt when one recovers in their one home... still shaking after dinner, still shaking after a shower, almost slipping and falling on the shower floor, still shaking as I got ready for bed, still shaking as I slipped under the covers.
That night, I remember that being the only night that I tossed them up and slept in the fetal position, almost freezing, the wind hollering like a banshee against the windows.
Because I was scared that if I fell asleep exactly how Sans was, with the sheets still on him, with the pillow under his head, then I would never wake up again, either.
And I didn't sleep.
I didn't sleep, because each time I tried, I felt sleep sucking me in, and I kept on panicking that sleep would take me in for much too long, that I would be pulled into Unconsciousness.
This battle, pulling me in, pulling me out, pulling me back in, pulling me back out, lasted until at least 2. Sleep was dodging me left and right, and following my instincts first, I went into Papyrus' room to make sure he wasn't awake, either. He wasn't, but he shivered almost as much as I did, and when I looked for a crack in one of his windows, I couldn't find any.
I went downstairs, back to Sans' room. I toyed with various compounds, combed through the first few of Alphys' entries, her having received patients in that state. None of the compounds worked, but one did prove to block pain signals without having too harsh side effects, so I dripped a few into the IV tube and ignored the little twinge inside of me that told me to expect him to smile.
As I was tossing the idea of going back to somewhere, somewhere, and grabbing some Determination, working the schematics as to how I could obtain something so volatile, I heard the chair on the other side of the room dragging out.
Chara apparently had sleep evading him, too.
"Hey, G." I almost told him not to call me that, but I managed to bit my lip, to toss the sheets in a rambunctious little fit in my hand.
I turned around, asking him what it was, and, wouldn't you know it, his little brown eyes were all sad. They seemed to be looking into the distance, into the floor, into something that I was sure wasn't me. His sword was almost scraping the wits out of the bottom of my poplar floor, and before I could tell him no, he retracted it as if he knew what I was going to say all that time.
All was quiet. The heart monitor gave a cadence to everything.
"I... I think I may have something to add to your research."
Beat. Beat. I nodded. Beat. Beat. Beat. He opened his notebook, where I found a few short entries, looking to be hastily done, looking as if the signatures that Jessica had scrawled all over her business cards had multiplied all over Chara's paper.
In the entries, Chara had confessed that a little smattering of Hate had gone all over his SOUL. He'd done some fiddling around with some of the microscopes at the nearby school, and from what it looked to me, some of the nuclei appeared convoluted. While it didn't metastasize to his SOUL, I didn't want any of that happening.
I had accompanied this problem once, exactly once, and that was years and years ago. Asgore himself had once stumbled down the stairs, hand on his SOUL, complaining of some sort of "green devil, a terrible miasma" he'd seen before he'd started to feel the pain. I was about to analyze him, to put a few compounds into his system, but a high-pitched wailing from a piece of metal being sharpened neutralized at least some of it.
So I put a hand around his back, and he slumped against my shoulder. I looked back for a second, just a second, and I held my breath. After five seconds, I released it when I realized that, yes, there was still a beep echoing in the room every second or so.
Do scientists think it's alright to kill people in comas?
The question stayed with me until the lab, but I asked Chara about his family to distract him from the pain until we went there.
By the time we were there, I learned two things, and two things only: one, that Toriel had once been in a pie contest and had won second place, the first being the judge's son, and two, that once Asgore was excluded from a school event just because he didn't have a blue shirt.
And I smiled.