[She's closer now and she's steady and warm and solid and Mettaton clings to her. His soul flares a bit, it's color changing and for a moment it feels like he is reaching out with his magic to her, looking for reassurance, for something familiar and viscerally real but when he registers what he is doing he wrenches back immediately from her as if burned.

No. No he can't do that. He can't reach out like that to her, he can't, he's not allowed and

he doesn't want his mirror to see. He doesn't want him to know. This is something special between him and Alphys and it's wrong to keep secrets but he needs this one, he can't lose it. He can't!]

I shouldn't have trusted him. I shouldn't have let him in. It's my fault. I knew he was a trap but I gave in anyway.

[His words feel oddly doubled. Like there is more meaning there than he intended. He's shaking again.]

I'm sorry, Alphys. This was a mistake.