[post deaging] what if your hinges all are rusting

[mettaton_rex]

Everything's back to normal.

The hallways are as run-down as ever, the decorations and the music all gone. Mettaton wanders through them, not clear on where he's headed, only knowing he can't bear to keep still. His mind catches up with him, if he tries.

He's himself again. Why doesn't he feel like it?

He made it back to his room last night, after coming to himself again where he'd been stargazing out in the gardens, and after the ensuing bout of hysterical cackling finally wore itself out. At least he's dressed now, ruffled shirt hiding the cracks in his core. More or less - it's buttoned up wrong, letting little glimpses of pink show through. His crown isn't on straight either (the new one, the diamond-studded circlet he found abandoned in a dusty bedroom, not the one he gave up for lost in the library months ago). He's aware of all this. He doesn't plan to fix it.

A door looks familiar. He opens it, and finds himself stepping into the ballroom. There it is, same as ever - grand and empty, tables piled high with confections. Mettaton pauses by one of them, looking up at the massive tiered cake in its centre. And then further up, to a dusty spiderweb hanging from a corner of the ceiling.

"Not so young and beautiful yourself, now, are you?" he hisses, to the room, to the whole awful castle, something hot and vicious boiling up inside him. He raises a leg, braces his foot against the edge of the table. "Nobody wants you any more, darling! Nobody wants to be here! Nobody cares!"

His voice rises to a shout as he kicks, hard, flipping the table over. Cakes and pastries smash against the floor, plates shattering. Mettaton strides into the wreckage, grinding his heel into anything he sees left intact. There's frosting all over his boots. It doesn't matter.

None of it matters now.

Comments

[mettaton_rex]

"I've never literally made anyone do that, Sans, what do you take me for?!"

Oh, that wasn't an accusation? He's not thinking straight, on edge, on the defensive. He wants to be left alone, yes, but, but. Somehow the words won't come out. (He doesn't want to be left. He doesn't want to be alone.)

"I'm just saying. They loved me. They all did."

[trombones]

That's a joke, buddy. It's okay.

Sans slides off his seat and disappears. He reappears a second later behind Mettaton, not wanting to bother with the whole seven steps it'd take him to walk across the room. He grabs another chair and sits.

"A lot of people liked your show."

The skeleton has a feeling that isn't what Mettaton is talking about. He has a feeling the whole story isn't pretty to begin with. It never was, if somebody had to take over for Asgore. But Sans' perspective was the only one he had - or even remembered. Who knows. He didn't.

[mettaton_rex]

Sorry, Sans. This monster doesn't seem to have a sense of humour.

He's expecting it, but he still twitches a little when Sans is suddenly right behind him. Does he have to do that every time, really?

"Everyone liked my show. I was a star. I was the star. Without me, the Underground would have just been - lifeless. Empty. I made it sparkle."

[trombones]

The bomb puns say otherwise, but there's a time and a place for that. Sans crosses his legs in his seat and dips down. He grabs a couple of eclairs, one of the few slightly-less-smashed pastries that just barely survived Mettaton's boot.

"Hm."

If the skeleton were honest, he wasn't sure what to say. The bad feeling was holding him back, and Sans tends to trust his gut.

"Can't say I ever liked your show. But my brother does. He's a huge fan."

He holds an arm out. Can he offer you an eclair in these trying times.

"Guessin' being king didnt work out, then."

[mettaton_rex]

"And just what makes you so sure of that?" Mettaton steps closer, looming over Sans, glaring disgustedly down at him and his battered eclairs. No, he's not going to touch that thing, get it away from him. "You don't know. You weren't there. Maybe it was working out beautifully, until I was ripped away from it all."

Of course, the fact that he just phrased that as a maybe implies it's not really the case, doesn't it?

[trombones]

"'Maybe'."

He parrots it back, not answering a question but testing out the way Mettaton says it. Yeah. He's not convinced. Sans doesn't look away, but wow. This is getting kind of uncomfortable.

"And to answer your question, no. I don't. That's why I'm asking."

[mettaton_rex]

Mettaton looks down at Sans for another long moment without saying anything. Discomfort intensifies.

Then he shakes his head, looking away with a soft laugh. "...now I remember why I liked having you as my agent. You never worshiped me. You were the one I could count on to be honest. When I wanted you to be."

Which wasn't often, but it was sometimes. This might be turning into one of those times. He's not sure yet.

[trombones]

"..."

He takes it back. This is really uncomfortable.

"Kinda hard to know what to say when I wasn't there, but. I dunno if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I never liked your show, anyway."

[mettaton_rex]

"Yes, you said." He rolls his eyes. "My Sans also knew when not to push his luck."

It's not like this is surprising information. Maybe that's why it doesn't seem to bother him as much as he'd have expected, or maybe he's just beyond caring.

He picks up another chair, turning it backwards to sit astride it, and gives Sans a crooked smile. "Am I making you nervous?"

lmao oh my god i kind of want this to get spooky somehow

[trombones]

"Did I? Whoops."

Sans closes one eye. Less of a wink, more of a cool, laid-back anime thing. The rest of his body, not so much. It's not much to say Sans hasn't moved a lot since the conversation got weird, but his shoulders are a little too straight. He hasn't leaned back to his default slump.

Less on the edge of his seat, more like he's just a little stiffer.

'My' Sans, huh. It's not an uncommon phrase here. Worlds and timelines collided all the time. Sans usually tried to avoid it, made it sounds like he somehow owned somebody. Here, though, just hearing it from this Mettaton was weird.

He chuckles anyway.

"You don't exactly send chills down my spine, if that's what you're askin'."

does the reveal that your weird friend created a horrible sparkly dystopia count as spooky >_>

[mettaton_rex]

"I don't?" His tone might sound perfectly casual, to anyone who hadn't just seen him throw a violent cake-destroying tantrum. "Well, of course not! That's not what the MTT brand is about, is it? I don't do scary. I'm all about beauty, and glamour, and love. Putting smiles on people's faces. Making all their dreams come true! Isn't that right, Sansy-darling?"

...yes, he is intending to creep you out at this point, Sans. Listen to your instincts.

psycho strings

[trombones]

#UNCOMFORTABLE

"Until you break out a chainsaw."

[mettaton_rex]

"Ohh, the chainsaw. That was a big hit, wasn't it? Haha..." His fingers drum idly against the back of the chair. "You know, it's funny. Everyone always talked about how dangerous and violent humans were, how their SOULs didn't need any love or compassion or hope in them to exist. But we monsters were all pretty eager to solve all our problems with murder, weren't we? Look at kindly old King Fluffybuns."

[trombones]

Sans goes quiet for a good five seconds. It feels like forever.

"... Yeah. I had a feeling he didn't just hand you the title."

[mettaton_rex]

"Well, of course not. It would have been Undyne, don't you think?"

His tone is quieter now, slightly distant. He's not quite looking at Sans.

"Everyone assumed she'd be the one to take over. She's the one they looked to first, when they heard the bad news. But she was nowhere to be found."

As the saying goes. It's a polite fiction, a thin shred of hope in the face of the obvious. (Alphys is still just missing, though, and don't you dare claim otherwise.)

...not that it matters. No one back home talks about Undyne any more.