It hurt to look at them for even several seconds, his circuits jolting with electricity as red error warnings crowded his vision - It was a burning agony that took hold of his wires and twisted them painfully into tight knots, clear liquid clouding his vision and spilling down his metal head.
He didn't want to continue on with such terrible feelings pulsing through his artificial nerves, so he had taken to visting suicide booths frequently - never paying, never acting... Always watching others do it instead, his optics scanning them longingly as each tortorous death took place inside of the small, cramped compartment. He wished he could work up the courage, the nerves he lacked to just step in and let it destroy his circuitry, but he was always reminded of the greater role he always played - Who would be there to stop paradoxes, or fix rifts torn in the fabric of time by the damned professor's constant creation?
A lifeless, meaningless sigh left him as he turned away, wiping at his eye modules with his metal arm, slowly shuffling back to Headquarters with his thoughts weighing his mind heavily, almost as heavily as the components he was made up of weighed him. He supposed it was better this way - Rather than be numb and oblivious to others' emotions, he could understand what pain was, both physically and mentally, slightly even emotionally. (He still wasn't over the whole ordeal with Inspector 5.)
A cough rattled the gears in his apex, something catching between them and making them stutter, the brittle metal cracking slightly. He never wanted to do anything again, not with the churning in his mind and the fear in his cybernetic heart. Gods, he was glad that he'd never been introduced to that crackpot's methods of reverse fossilization - from what he'd seen with the whole 'What If' machine, he'd never want to even touch a damn meatbag again. It was fine, it was fine... He was fine.
He knew that the entire crew of Planet Express often forgot that he even had emotions in general, but he could live with that, he supposed. He'd let out his negatie emotions in silence - Long agonized wails of anguish alone in his apartment when Fry was gone and everyone was asleep, of course. He was so tired...
Bender was painfully aware of his on/off switch and how easily he could have someone flip it for him, but... He couldn't think very well any longer. Finally, he reached the table everyone was gathered around, slumping dangerously and bashing his head against the edge, drawing out sharp cries of shock from everyone gathered there as he briefly blacked out. The robot jolted awake once again, trembling and shaking his head.
"Sorry, sorry," He murmured in apology, getting odd stares from his crew members - he almost never apologized, and especially not for anything he didn't have to. So, so tired.
"Hey, ah, Bender..." Leela had stood up to assist him, an arm hooked under his own to help him get to his feet and set in a chair.
"What's up, fleshie?" He sneered, crossing his feet as he propped them up on the table, much to the disgust of Leela and Hermes (not that he bothered to care).
"You've got some rust on your face. Have you not been drinking?" She scolded him, her eye narrowing dangerously. He felt himself want to shrink under her gaze, but he forced himself to appear nonchalant in nature, a shrug lifting his creaking, metal shoulders.
"I-It might've slipped my mind," He admitted, a sheepish grin overtaking his features.
The most agonizing part of it all? The thousand years he'd spent alone, twelve years after he 'decimated' Fry, unaware that he had been alive. To everyone else, it had seemed he'd come back immediately - of course they wouldn't understand just how long it had been, being mere mortals. But those thousand years had passed by slower than any had ever before, a deep depression that had settled in his circuits and made him want to switch to 'OFF'.
He couldn't have, even if he tried, seeing as he was still at his masters' commands. So he spent those years alone, wallowing in his guilt and depression underneath the headquarters of Planet Express, his joy only rekindled after seeing Fry alive and well once more at his funeral.
But of course, Yivo had to ruin it all, leaving him alone once again.
To have everything torn away from you...
It was maddening, and it was certainly a word that described Bender.
But he'd wait.
He'd keep waiting, wait until the crew was decomposing, till they turned into fossil fuel and eventually the oil he needed to survive. He'd find their reincarnations - he was sure that would work, that the God he'd met was not so cruel as to let him wander alone.
If it took forever, he'd wait for them.
For a thousand summers and beyond.