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The Ruins are exactly what you would expect them to be: ruins. Drowned in the nauseatingly 'regal' purple hue, the broken pillars, the dry leaves, reminiscent of seasons of death, serve only as a reminder to the former queen of her past memories, now covered with dust and bitter promises. Toriel knows far too well that these memories will never return, sees them only in the night skies of her mind. And unfortunately, she is sure she won't return to them either, as much as she'd pray.
Toriel spends most of her days alone, would cook, would read like she always did, but this time it was for no one but herself. Everything she does here is for herself, every bite she takes feels insensitive, every word she reads feels inconsiderate, each breath she takes, no matter how hesitant, feels like a textbook example of selfishness. How could she have the nerve to live a life when her children will never be able to live again? She is no one without her children, and her children is no one.
These days, she can't do much but think, walk down the roads aimlessly pacing and panicking as if she had finally lost herself in a stream of regret after the many years, spent hours of each day sprawled on the ground, begging for forgiveness under blinding rays, above the gleaming glow of gold, because it was all she could afford. She grieves because it is all she is capable of now. The loneliness had finally gotten to her, she thinks.
But there was a day. Maybe out of pity somehow, she had been given a chance to redeem herself, to prove she still held altruism within her, that she was capable of living a life of love and laughter despite her bitter past. It was the first time she smiled in so long, standing upon her saviour, still bruised and bleeding, still terrified but relaxing under her motherly presence. She felt at home again, she felt loved, and yet her desperation still sheathed its claws, growled and threatened her hopes openly as if only to taunt her; she had always been the best at self-sabotaging, afterall.
And now, although she can keep disguising her flaws as "love", "affection", "attachment", it wouldn't change the fact that it was clear, even in the naive eye's of a child, that something wasn't right with her, that she depended on a mere child more than a child would ever need to depend on her. And so as that very "saviour" took a step out into "freedom", into their inevitable end, it tore her up inside. She couldn't stop them.
She failed, and she will continue to fail time and time again for the rest of her miserable life, filled only with the temporary companions she would devote her world to, if only for the very few hours they stayed and the never-ending time that followed.
The graves of her victims grew, the pool of guilt dug deeper into her. Soon she would drown in it, turn into the very substance suffocating her home, and perhaps join those she had failed, but for now she will live a life of misery, accompanied by the ghosts of children who passed because of her own carelessness, her own faults. Her rebellion proved useless now, it seemed.
But even then she keeps holding onto the hope of saving a child one day, sees it as her will to live only because she knows that she will never be able to save herself from what she's become.