To be something you always were, and somewhere you were always meant to be
Context: Second Chance AU, after the fight, and the fall. Metal takes a long time to come to terms with his new place in this world, and why he chooses to stay. Shadow is, unsurprisingly, a large reason.
~1,806 words
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In the few hours following his retrieval, repair, and subsequent reactivation, Metal Sonic was an empty shell.
Compared to the temperamental, impatient, and indecisive entity in the reports and firsthand accounts of the Starfall Expedition team, he was calm, impassive, and obedient. When who would be later coined as his new caretaker had removed him from the emergency "care" of engineers acting as doctors (altogether lacking bedside manner and not a clue how to handle a sentient, sapient robot), he stared only blankly forward. When his to-be caretaker took it upon himself to finally have a peek deeper into the mountain of coding and circuitry, he had found Metal's memory data in disarray.
On a surface level, everything recent had been there: he remembered waking up on a steel table (par for the course), being brought into the waiting room of an unfamiliar facility (unusual), and the faces of those he could not quite place (mysterious).
He should have remembered the face of his to-be caretaker from the expedition prior to this. He did not. He should have remembered the faces of the two others who had been on the expedition, and the few scraps of sign language they had taught him. He did not. He did not remember the name Sonic in a singular context, did not remember what had dented his chassis or what had sent him hurtling toward the ground as if from space itself.
For a few bleak, empty hours after his revival, Metal Sonic had known peace.
When his to-be caretaker had brought him to his own workshop, the rest of the unfamiliar faces had followed. When his to-be caretaker had interfaced with his systems and managed to untangle the half-backed-up memory from its corruption, he remembered everything. The frustration, the fights, the desperation, the reality of what "home" was like.
He was in no hurry to go back. "Home" had a persistent child—a "little sister", and the source of his jealousy and desperation. "Home" had a father who chose to love her but not him, who chose to wield him like a knife and never hold him like he would hold her, who chose to never look at him or acknowledge his occasional feats while fawning over and praising her for even the most mundane tasks.
This place, this new home, had a safety net. It had his caretaker, his new mentor, a potential second chance.
It had a neighbor he knew but also did not know.
The Shadow he knows stands at three feet, three inches tall, and has three bullet scars peppered across the front of his chest. He is solitary with an edge of restlessness and a hair-trigger attitude, and a mystifying sense of empathy.
The Shadow in front of him now is almost none of those things. He lacks the scars and the height, and there is a roundness about his face that Metal does not recognize. He is not identifiably restless that Metal has so far seen, he is not virulent—but he is solitary, and he looks at him with the same bewildering empathy.
Metal remembers some point in the deep past being paired on a mission with "his" Shadow. The taller one with the scars and the habit of mumbling and the concerned look in his eyes, the one who had startled and pleaded when Metal had pried open his own frame for a stashed-away Chaos Emerald to save them both.
He remembers how it felt to be worried after for a change, for a reason outside of simple utility and expectation; for the simple fact that he is a person, too, maybe, and "his" Shadow had seen him as such. He likes to think he still remembers it, anyway. The data is the only that exists in this specific context, and has never been replicated. The sensation has long since faded, and revisiting the recordings does little to remind him what it was like, for just a few brief moments, to be regarded as a person.
Some part of him is still coded, or perhaps it's simply his own choice, to regard Shadow, at any capacity, as his responsibility. He follows this new, shorter, unscarred Shadow, without much reason beyond a vague sense of familiarity and obligation. This new, calmer, somehow even quieter Shadow, never argues. He allows Metal into his home like he had always belonged there, takes him along to new places, looks at him with that same care and illogical empathy.
For days following his repair and reactivation, Metal Sonic is an observer.
He observes his caretaker tinkering away at tiny inventions or his own mechanics. He observes "this" Shadow's nuances in comparison to "his" Shadow. He does not exist with them, from his own perspective, as a person. They acknowledge him, and he does not acknowledge them. He is too busy sorting and defragging and recording and coming to terms with his new existence.
He is free, and yet he is rooted in place.
Unless they move him, he is stationary.
Unless they ask him to, he does not exist.
Lacking the capacity to wonder what if, he does not think about whether or not it would have been better had he never recovered his backup memory. It exists now: that is all he knows. Reality is all that matters. Logically, the present is all that is relevant. And yet illogically, frustratingly emotionally, the past still threads through his coding like a ghost wanders a graveyard.
He will observe, and record, and sort, and pick apart, and observe again as long as it takes for him to make sense and come to terms with it all.
"You know that you don't have to stay all the way over there, right?"
Metal can barely hear this somehow-even-quieter Shadow sometimes. This smaller, softer, rounder-faced version of his old charge speaks by default at a volume barely above a whisper, stands in the marginally more lit section of the den of his (their) home, and is acknowledged only with a silent, set gaze of pixelated red.
Metal knows, in a way that he can only perceive as logical, many things. He knows he is a weapon. He knows he is an item, a thing, anything but a person, because he was never treated as one. He knows not to get underfoot, knows not to be seen when he does not want to be seen—which is always, unless he has succeeded at something recently. He has not succeeded in anything in the last several months. He knows his feelings do not count. They do not matter. They, like him, are not real.
And so he does not "feel" left out any more than he "feels" he is doing the right thing by sitting in this dark, empty corner of a room in a place that does not belong to him, that he has, on a logical level, been trespassing in, but for some reason has been allowed to stay in.
"Metal?" This too-quiet not-his-Shadow tries again. "Are you feeling alright?"
What a stupid, illogical question.
How infuriatingly, dreadfully, warmly pained it makes him feel.
Some old file, some old fragment of data, the memory of being a person, stirs to the forefront of his processors.
Metal does not need company. Shadow pads toward him anyway. Metal does not need to be checked up on. Shadow crouches before him anyway with a worried tilt of his brow and a frown to match. Metal does not...
"Need anything?" This Shadow asks. His hand hovers close to the outer side of Metal's right arm, but does not touch. Metal wonders why; it's not like anyone has hesitated or asked permission before. An item does not need permission to be touched or tampered with or broken apart and put back together.
It has been three days since the two of them have largely stayed at the house. Three days of Metal staying out of the way, processing, silent, unassuming. Three days Shadow has given him the space—ignoring him, Metal had originally thought, but would later come to learn it had been out of respect. Three days Metal had unintentionally ignored him in turn, too busy not existing and too overwhelmed by existence.
"It's really dark over here," Shadow observes. "Do you prefer it? If it's more comfortable for you, I'll leave you be, but if it's not..." He turns his head to glance back toward the light spilling in from the kitchen area, then drifts his gaze in the other direction to settle on the massive wall-to-ceiling window facing stars and more stars. Finally, he focuses back on Metal after his moment of consideration. "... It's alright to sit anywhere else."
That is new. Metal lifts his head just enough to better regard the not-his-Shadow in front of him, just enough to better perceive the still-concerned expression plain on his face. That is also new. "This" Shadow, behind closed doors, wears a lot of his emotions on his sleeve. Emotions Metal can barely place, barely cares to place, but this one he knows. This one, he has seen before. Countless times before, but only ever on the face of someone carrying the name "Shadow".
Oh, how much it makes him illogically ache.
"If it's privacy you want, we can ask to have a new room installed," the owner of the house says, "or I can bring you some curtains."
How very, very new.
Metal lifts his hand just to point to the spot where he sits with silent rigidity. He signs, 'Stay. Here'.
Shadow does not know sign language, at least not fluently, not yet, but he is in ways alarmingly perceptive. "Okay," he says, and sits down.
Unfathomably new.
Not even the taller, older, "original" Shadow was like this. He was worried, but never attentive. He was respectful, but never so willing to (wrongly) perceive in the interest of comforting an item that did not need to be comforted.
Stay here had meant to be an indication he intended to remain in this spot—with or without the offered decorations or additional comforts and considerations. Not Stay with me.
And yet, Metal does not object. He only watches as not-his-Shadow situations himself in the space beside his own cold exterior, unbothered by the chill, unbothered by the impersonal and sleek plating. He only listens as somehow-better-than-his-Shadow speaks of this and that in the interest of finding what might make Metal more comfortable.
It marks the start of... something.
Metal cannot quite place when or why it happens, if not just this very moment, but vague obligation and familiarity settle into fondness and the beginnings of devotion.
It takes time, like all things do, but "Shadow's house" becomes "their house". "Trespassing" becomes "housemates". "This Shadow" becomes "his Shadow".
"An item" becomes "a person". Again, and never again anything less.
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