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The boy is conscious when he finds him. The fire has taken away his left arm, is chewing slowly at his left cheek and the lower half of his body is hidden under a burning wooden beam, crunched under its weight.
But the boy is conscious and his blue eyes —eye— follows him without falter. Who are you? The sharp gaze asks him, are you with him? Are you with the robot?
Are you going to kill me?
No, he hears himself say, kneeling on the ashes that gently hold his fall. No, he hears himself repeat, doubtfully holding a hand to the boy, stroking his right cheek with the utmost of cares, like it will break.
The boy's stare doesn't waver at his touch, he just stares at him indecipherably, piercing him with the immeasurable steadiness of his gaze, even at the brink of death.
Maybe that's why he talks. Maybe is that blue, unwavering sharp eye what makes him talk and say what he says.
Or maybe it's that when he carefully strokes the boy's golden hair the scalp follows his hand, separating from the boy's skull. And the boy doesn't seem to care.
"I…" he starts, the sound of burning wood filling his silence "I'll take care of you." Dr. Kuseno says.
It's a promise he shouldn't make.
The boy sighs and closes his eye, and Kuseno doesn't know if that is acceptance of his words, or resignation to his fate.
Kuseno knows his way about cyborgs and robotics. He has created numerous parts to update the already working machines, and he has work dutifully on the software that allows the brain to control metal, and he also has produced weapons. All the work he's ever done in the field has always been with fighting cyborgs and robots, never on the medic ground.
He has some idea of it, of course, since the science of cyborgs developed for the need to create more sufficient prosthesis for disabled people. It was, in the beginning, a science born to care, to cure, to give people a second, a third chance.
But that was a lot of time ago. And how it usually happens with all what men touches, humanity found a way to pervert it and become it in something it wasn't meant to be. It was men like himself, Kuseno knows, that made the science of biotechnology what has become today. It was them and the never ending quest for knowledge what has transform people into killing machines.
Kuseno has taken into that responsibility, that's why he searches for the mad cyborg, and that's why he has to take care of the boy.
But he may be a doctor, and he may know how to attach weaponry into people's body and he may know how to carefully craft life into a binary code, but he is no healer.
He has put the boy in an induced coma and what's left of his body is floating in a suspended animation machine to keep him alive for as long as possible.
Kuseno looks at the boy, at his half melted face and makes a call.
"How long since you put him there?"
"Five days. You took your time."
She looks at him with a raised eyebrow.
"I came as fast as I could, and let me remind you I am the one doing you a favor here."
"You're not doing me a favor" Kuseno says, looking at the boy floating in green water "You're doing him a favor."
She hums contemplatively and returns her gaze to the boy. Her name is Chieko, she is a biotechnologist specialized on reconstructive and prosthesis work, she's a longtime friend of Kuseno and truly the only one to whom he would entrust such a task.
"You have all his data, right?" Chieko asks "We must start to work on his prosthesis immediately, he has hold on pretty good so far but he won't last with half a body."
"Yes, of course. All the data is already sorted out, most of it is just an estimated thought, begin his status."
"I don't like working with estimates" She hisses "But it will have to do."
They work on the new body for the boy for three weeks. Considering they had to reconstruct his whole digestive system they did pretty good, Chieko comments. She also says that the boy surviving so long, artificial help or not, is a miracle in itself.
"He really wants to live…" She says, making corrections on the 3D model of a leg in the computer.
Chieko does most of the theory work and Kuseno does most of the mechanical work. She tells him what she needs for the new body and he complies. She says they cannot know if the size, the volume and the weight will be correct until the boy tries them on, but she is positive about it.
Both of them know the trickiest parts will be all the internal organs. When Kuseno works on them the tension in the lab is palpable, one mistake could cost the life of the boy. The ultimate success of such parts, however, depends on how well they can make the boy's brain to control them. Kuseno doesn't sleep working on the chips and circuits that will make it possible.
When they finally finish all the parts, both of them work for thirty six hours over a surgical table. Pretty fast, if someone asks them. After metal and plastic are attached to flesh they put the boy on suspended animation to quicken the healing and wait.
Kuseno dreads the day the boy wakes. He doesn't know what he will tell him, how he will explain all that happened to him, how he is gonna justified what he did to him. Matter not it was to save him, Kuseno and Chieko practically reconstructed him whole without consent. The ethics of what they did haunts him while he watches him sleep in his liquid, green bed.
"Isn't a little too late to be having such reservations?" Chieko tells him. Her tone is even, almost uncaring, but he can hear the irritation on her voice anyway.
"Better late than never, or so they say."
She laughs, humorlessly.
"Don't worry, maybe he won't even wake up and you won't have to busy yourself with bioethical questions."
It's true. Despite everything they have done, he may still not wake up.
And if he does, Kuseno doesn't even know if the boy will really be okay. The scans and all the tests he did, didn't show brain damage but is true the brain is the fiddliest of organs, one can never truly know. So maybe the boy won't wake up, or maybe he will but won't be able to use his new body.
Chieko stays with him for all the time they wait. He knows she has business to attend, a life to come back to, but she never lets a job a half done.
They wait, patiently and after six weeks the boy finally opens his eyes again: One is blue, one is yellow.
The screaming still echoes in the laboratory, a reminder of his careless decisions. The scattered equipment and broken instrumental lying on the floor add to the tense, heavy atmosphere.
It was not going to be easy, Kuseno knew.
He kneels slowly; the crack of his joints echoing too, a reminder of his old age. With inappropriate calm he picks up some of the things on the floor and puts them on a nearby table.
On the stretcher lays the boy, sleeping. Chieko leans over him, checking his vitals and guarding his artificial, induced dreams.
He woke up slowly, going from conscious to unconscious a few times. They took him out of the machine and put him on the stretcher, waiting for him to really come around, ready with any medicaments or instrumental they would need; the boy could woke up in pain, or disoriented, or some prosthesis could malfunction and they needed to be ready for any eventuality.
In a way, they weren't ready for him to flutter his eyes open and be so aware of the environment. He even remembered Kuseno taking him away from the fire. And for a moment it looked like that would be all, that the boy was okay and that they would be able to explain what had happened to him.
"I feel weird…" he said in a small, hoarse voice.
Then he tried to get up, and saw the new synthetic skin covering his new, metallic body, and he screamed.
And he screamed and he screamed and he screamed…
They had to use a sedative to stop him from harming himself or destroying the lab further.
"He will be out for another hour at least" Chieko says suddenly, turning her back to the boy and looking at Kuseno. He's still kneeling on the floor, picking this and that with an absent gaze. "This isn't the time to be sulking around."
"I'm not sulking around" Kuseno retorts but doesn't get up. There aren't any more things on the floor nearby for him to pick up, though.
They stay silent for a moment, the low humming of the lab machinery finally drowning the echoes of the screams.
"We should prepare" Chieko musses.
"Of course" He still doesn't get up.
An hour passes. The boy wakes up. And he screams.
Chieko is gone. Eight more weeks have come and go, and Chieko is gone. So far there doesn't seem to be any problem with the boy's new body, or not one Kuseno can't deal with himself, so she goes.
The gap she's left in the lab goes unnoticed to the boy. He has been alright, mostly. Kuseno finally got to tell him what happened, why he's here and why he's like this. Kuseno tells him a rampant cyborg attacked his town and that he happened to be there. He found no one alive but him and did all that was on his power to help him; it doesn't seem to have sink in at all, but Kuseno knows the boy needs time.
His body is functioning well enough, but it still is too much for his mind. He has nightmares, and flashbacks, and he's having dissociative crisis on weekly basis.
[This is not my leg, this is not my arm, this is no my hand, this is not my…!]
Kuseno has been trying to track the mad cyborg. He had to pause the search for weeks but right now he has found some good leads. And that adds another problem to his current situation.
He just can't simply leave the boy alone, and he can't just simply take him with him. Kuseno has been also researching organizations that could help the boy out, a place in where he can get the medical and psychological attention he needs, where he can start anew.
He explains this to the boy. He tells him he has to go, that he can't stay here with him and that he can't take him where Kuseno needs to go. He hopes the boy understands; despite the tool the whole ordeal has had on his mind the boy shows signs of being highly intelligent, so Kuseno hopes that helps him to understand his very logical explanation; it is for the best, after all, that the boy cannot stay with him.
It, obviously, doesn't go as Kuseno would like. The boy screams, and cries and he throws Kuseno's tools to the ground, and he hits the floor with the cane Kuseno gave him to help him walk and calls him names. Why did you help me then? The boy demands, why did you make this body if you were going to abandon me?
He's not abandoning him, Kuseno assures, but he just can't stay with him. The boy asks for an explanation, so Kuseno complies seeing there's no other way for the boy to understand.
Kuseno explains that he's chasing the cyborg that destroyed the boy's town, that his journey is not for him to follow. The boy's face shifts and the look on his mismatched eyes is reminiscent of the one Kuseno saw so many months ago on his half-melted face. It's the gaze of a survivor he realizes now, they're the eyes of whom has seen too much too soon.
They are the eyes of stone-hard determination.
"Then let me help you!" the boy screams "I can chase him too, I can help you!"
Kuseno says no, of course, he is still in recovery he is in no condition of chasing anyone, he…
"I've seen your work!" the boy insists, leaning forcefully on his cane "I know you do weapons for cyborgs, you can put them in me! I can fight!"
Kuseno says no again. He doesn't want to put him in danger, he didn't help him to transform him into a weapon, he…
"You've already changed me enough" The boy says, voice soft and low and not quite the one of a fourteen year old.
The silence that follows isn't as heavy as the statement, nor as heavy as the guilt in Kuseno's chest. Nor as heavy as the boy's grief.
"I already lost too much" The boy continues, tears running down his cheeks "Don't take my right of vengeance as well."
He burst into tears then and tries to hide his face behind an artificial hand and chokes on his too human sobs. Kuseno would like to approach him, to embrace him and wash his tears away but he has not right to do so. He doesn't even call the boy his name, fearful of attachment.
"Please" the boy cries, broken and desperate ", please it was my town, it…it was my family, please…"
"All right" Kuseno says, voice cryptic "All right I…I'll do it."
The boy doesn't smile. His eyes doesn't shine with the hope of his wish being fulfilled. He just looks at him dead in the eye, his unwavering resolution shadowing the blue and the yellow of his gaze, and nods his thanks.
Kuseno works restlessly on the, yet again, new body for the boy (still no name to call his fearless stare). The delicate, meticulous task keeps his mind away from questions that threaten the task itself.
He shouldn't do this, the unvoiced back of his mind whispers with desperation, he shouldn't do this, the boy shouldn't go in a quest for revenge and Kuseno shouldn't enable him, but what else does the boy have now, anyway? Why deprive him of the only thing that will give peace to his soul? And what does it cost Kuseno to do as he pleads?
The intricate of the machine he builds mirrors the labyrinth of his mind. He is being irresponsible again, he's doing this without considering fully the consequences of his acts, and isn't that what has put him in these circumstances? Isn't his recklessness what has put the boy in a situation where vengeance is an option?
[And isn't his thoughtlessness what has put the responsibility of the Mad Cyborg on his shoulders? Wasn't he the one that…?]
But who is he to deny the boy? Who is he to deem what he should or shouldn't do? He has breathe new life onto his broken body, and as the boy said with that he has done enough, if the boy wants this, if is this what he seeks to do with his new opportunity at life, Kuseno is no one to dissuade him about it.
Kuseno has no right over his life.
Almost two years had passed since the last time Kuseno saw Chieko. He wouldn't have like their reencounter to be like this but if he is honest, he can't think of any other way in which their paths would have cross again.
She is silent beside him, acting a disturbingly familiar scene. She is watching with interest the suspended animation machine, her eyes wandering through its content and betraying no emotion.
"Care to explain why am I here?" She asks, her voice flat.
"Because I need you. He needs you." Kuseno answers matter of factly.
"He?" She asks and her eyes widen a little "You mean he is alive?"
Kuseno nods.
"The damage to his cybernetic body was too extensive, so I had to put him into a coma. That's all the organic matter I could save."
She seems taken back and his eyes go back and forth between the machine and Kuseno.
"Is…is he still in a coma?"
"Of course. If he were to wake up…I mean, I don't think is even possible for him to wake up as it is, without sensorial input he wouldn't even know he is awake."
"What happened, Kuseno?" Chieko asks, looking directly at him "What put him like this?"
It's a question Kuseno would rather not answer but has to. He tells her what happened, how the boy asked him for a body to fight and he complied. How the boy was reckless in his rage, how his inexperience both in battle and on his body costed him high. He tells her that when he found him, there was even less of him that the first time.
"You let him fight?" Chieko asks, shocked "You allowed him to go with you in your suicidal quest and…?"
"He wanted to" Kuseno replies too quickly. He licks his lips and says "He begged me for the opportunity to fight, and I had already made too many decisions for him, I couldn't deny him this."
"Because a teenager decisions are always well thought" She shots back "I can't believe he's even alive, I…" she bites her lower lip, silencing herself.
"What?" Kuseno pushes, because if he wants her help she needs to speak her mind.
"Why…why didn't you let him die?"
Chieko works on a hospital. She works on the cybernetic and rehabilitation ward but in a world like theirs there is always a need for extra hands on the emergency ward, and once upon a time she was an intern too. She has seen a lot of different kind of injuries and through the years she has lost many patients too, and she learnt the most difficult lesson a medic has to learn in order to do their job: when to give up.
Kuseno looks at her, bewildered by what she asks. Such idea never crossed his mind, he has the resources, the genius and the skill so why let the boy die? Why let his life go to waste when there was a still a way to save him?
If the life you can give is not of own choice? If the life you can give will be live to its fullest? If…?
Their eyes lock. And both know there is no use on disputing this, that whatever answer they can give will not be satisfactory, that there is no way they, as human, can be right about this.
Chieko looks at the machine and says:
"I thought humanity was over this playing god bullshit."
"We aren't playing, my dear" Kuseno answers.
Both of them stay silent while they watch the brain and the half spine floating in the tank.
Humanity will never be over the playing god bullshit, not as long as men like Kuseno walk the earth; wasn't men like him and their never ending quest for knowledge what allowed the old dream of Frankenstein to become real?
But, he thinks as he works over the stretcher with Chieko across him, this isn't quite like that old, gothic dream, because Kuseno isn't doing this for him and his glory, he is doing this for the boy and his right to live, for the boy and what fates owns him.
Matter not that Kuseno thinks about his old age while works, that he thinks about who will chase the Mad Cyborg if he doesn't catch him. It doesn't matter, because this isn't about him.
When they are done Chieko goes. I can't do this, she says, I can't stay and see this, I can't be part of this any more than I already am. Kuseno lets her go, despite she never lets a work half done, her principles had suffer enough.
Eventually, the boy wakes up. Both of his eyes yellow now. Thank you, thank you, Doctor, the boy says, and now the boy has a name too, a new name to go with his new body and his new life.
Thank you, thank you, Doctor, Genos says.
And this is not quite like the old, gothic dream since the beast in it never had a name.
Haha ambiguous finale ftw.
It took me forever to write this, I have like other two OPM fics in progress but this one wouldn't let me alone, this haunted my sleep. Genos and his backstory fascinate me and I wanted to play a little with the possible ethical implications of what happened to him so here is this. In the other hand it seemed to me very important to take an outsider perspective to analyze the whole thing I hope why is that can be perceived along the story.
Anyway, I hope you liked it, thanks for reading, every comment is highly appreciate!
(Also, fuck I need gen OPM fanfiction like I need air)