A/N: I love this pairing so much it kind of hurts. Sadly, nobody else seems to be reading it lately... oh well. Please don't read unless you've read the chapter of volume 9, "Gunmetal Hound", or unless you don't give a damn about spoilers.
His design, he had been told, is flawless.
Professor Wordsworth cannot see a single problem with Tres's memory card or his logic board. Tres's shots are perfectly aimed (he's never missed), his speech was up-to-date and his physical body was fully functional.
Tres knew that, with the Professor's credentials in dealing with machinery, he should be a credible source of this kind of information. But something kept telling him that the Professor, this time, was wrong.
Flaw was certainly not something Tres had ever allowed for, not once since his first time coming online in that lab. Baribaldi had never programmed him for flaw, just as he'd never programmed the other nine for it either. Unus, Quattuor, Quinque, Sex… All the way down to that final creation, Decem, they were flawless products designed for destruction and following orders.
Until Duo, he'd believed this of himself as well.
Duo was like the others, and Tres had felt more than prepared back then, raising his gun with just the right percentage of a tilt, taking the wind into account, the atmosphere, the boxes and barrels surrounding them. But Tres… hadn't been wrong, no, not exactly. Duo was like the others, in a way. Still that emotionless, flawless, perfect being that he had been back with Baribaldi. The basic programming hadn't changed since then.
The only difference, really, was that Duo had changed his designation – Brother Bartholomew – and that Duo had been remastered to be… more perfect, if that was possible. Blessed with better weaponry, better targeting, and simply just better than Tres was.
Tres should have focused on simply deleting Duo on the spot without any kind of thought process as to why, why, why Duo would do something like this to him when they were of the same model… in human terminology, of the same family. But instead, his mind kept racing back to Cardinal Sforza, to Father Abel Nightroad, to the Vatican and his masters.
These thoughts and memories shouldn't have been prioritized, but he couldn't help the belief that they were important, somehow.
It was when Duo pinned him to the floor of that storage house, hand crushing the center of Tres's face until he heard the delicate circuitry beneath crack, that he first noticed it. The flaw. He'd looked up into Duo's eyes and saw his own face reflected in the deep, intelligent brown… and he'd seen it.
The flaw. The look of sheer panic and fear on his reflected face. The emotion apparent there.
But… HC units didn't show emotion. They were never meant to. That was all he could think about, that and that he would be leaving the Cardinal behind, as Duo slipped that jack into his neck. HC units had never been programmed for emotions. They just weren't, simple, to-the-point. But despite the facts, he could feel it: a twinging cold deep inside of his receptors, the fear of dying (not 'die', only break), the panicked thought of leaving everyone behind, the fleeting, brief glimpse of Father Nightroad sparking… regret.
Regret, panic, fear, sorrow, pain – all of these and more, leaping out at him from what had once been perceived as perfection.
"You're perfect," the Professor had told him countless times over. "I can't find a single flaw."
"As long as you fail," Duo had whispered to him, "you are not a machine."
I am not a machine.
I am not a machine as long as I fail, and I do fail, inevitably, by thinking these thoughts as of now.
I am not a machine anymore, am I, Duo?
As long as I feel, I am…
I am…
It had been simpler than he had anticipated, Duo's defeat. Without another word, he'd gotten back on track and followed what he was originally supposed to do there. The thought of Duo turning on him, another HC unit from Gepetto Baribaldi's lab, was nothing more than a numb cold in the back of his mind.
Emotionless. He had no emotion, none at all, he was an HC unit and was thus flawless… just as the Professor had said.
"Perfect. Can't find a single flaw."
I am machine. I am perfect. I am a flawless model who does not feel 'concern' or 'fear' or 'panic' or 'regret'.
I am a machine who does not feel. I do not care what Duo said.
I do not care. I am a machine.
Like everything else, the battle had been imbedded into his memory core, and he could not forget the emotions he had felt, no matter how hard he tried to. No matter how many nights he lay recharging, fueling himself, thinking back to that battle and trying to rewrite what had happened, the data was there and undeniable.
Looking at Duo, Tres had felt fear and betrayal.
Looking at Duo, Tres had felt.
As long as I feel (as long as I fail) I am not a true machine.
As long as I feel, I am…
As long as I feel… I am at least something like human.