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For what it's worth, Mettaton actually does make good on his plans this once. He leaves. He tells nobody. He knows the back route through Waterfall that nobody will ever see him in, that no one else will ever know, and in the time he was gone it has not changed. It has not failed him. And from wrangling the old security camera system together he knows Blooky is not at the snail farm today, that every other week or so they look outside the little space of Blook Acres and settle down in the old ruins, so far and away from the center of their world...
The point is: they are not around to see him grab the handle of his old door and be stunned silent that it gives way.
Someone has been here.
That's not possible. When he left he'd locked the door and threw away the key somewhere that no one could ever reach. Even if someone had found it, washed up on a shore somewhere, who would know that it goes here? Who could possibly know his key goes in this lock, and not any other lock in the whole wide Underground? Why come looking in this house at all? Only someone who knows him. Only someone who knew what he was before and the trail that connects to who he is now. But he has long since scrubbed that trail out and covered it in glitter, made his image so large and grand that it will never matter what used to lie beneath, so who would even know to—
The door gives way.
There are no footprints left behind.
Everything in his old house seems like it's shrunken two times since he last saw it. Or has he become too big for it all? But there are no footprints in the floorboards, and the carpet is perfectly unruffled and his bed is still nice and made and all his diaries are still neat and untouched on the floor, his only admission of guilt – and if Blooky had gone looking they wouldn't even have needed to use a key. Maddie would've thrown all his diaries everywhere and left his house in a right mess, and wouldn't have bothered cleaning up any of her cotton stuffing. Undyne is dead and gone and didn't know, surely. Alphys is—
...the lock must've rusted. It's a simpler explanation. A nicer truth he can stomach. No one he doesn't know went looking and no one he does know would open that door. It's fine. He's fine. His secret is dead and buried and he is no longer a ghost. He will never have to be a ghost again.
He will never have to be a ghost again, sat in front of his old television, longing for a body and a life that he never thought he would ever have...
Terrible. The carpet is soft on his knees. It's not wet there. It's definitely not wet there. The dark splotches on it could be anything, but it simply can't be his tears. He's Mettaton, His Royal Majesty and King of the Underground, and he is too big and too grand to be this upset over a house that he doesn't even live in, anymore.
His house is very, very small.
Was it always this small? Was he always so small before, and so he never noticed until he became too big?
Something wet rolling down his cheek. An empty space next to him where someone should lie. A TV that has been off for so long but if he squints he can see the last edges of the sun setting on it, a sunset pink and gold and nothing like what he sees when he sits in his throne room, and stares up into the sky. The sun barely grazes the top of his little window and sets so far away, sometimes cloudy and sometimes from orange to deep violet to darkness, and the stars above twinkle and shift in the sky as the days change. Sometimes he stays in that chair to watch the world turn, all night long, until his back aches and his joints complain when he sits up and grogginess hangs over him like a shroud, which is nothing that he's not used to. It can join everything else that hangs over him, and unlike everything else it will go away within the day.
It's better than it is on TV. It's better on TV than it is really, just a little scrap of sunrise and sunset and stars. It would be better if there were someone by his side, around to count stars and make up constellations in the shape of his face...
(It's the best of the sunset that he is ever going to see.)
That's a terrible thought. He's here to decide to demolish this old house, had come here with full intention to sign a contract by the end of the day to raze it to the ground, and here he is. Here are his feelings that he should've already grown past, feelings of television and sunsets and laughter and a house that used to be a home that used to be not-empty. That used to be where him and Blooky and Maddie would gather around for movie nights, with what they did find in the dump. That used to be the prime meeting place for his Human Fanclub. That used to be where he'd spend long nights staring into the TV screen, to feel its sharp static crackle when what he needed was a hug, and...
He. He can do this. None of this means anything. None of this should mean anything to him anymore. He's Mettaton, King of the Underground, and he has the body of his dreams and all the wealth and fame and power that he could ever want and he is loved by all. Adored by all. He is in control of everything, everything, including the means to scrap the entirety of this run-down house and make sure it doesn't exist anymore, like it never existed in the first place, and he is bigger than all this pain in his chest and he is bigger than this entire room and this entire house and he is
very alone.
The carpet seats two, after all.