Disclaimer: Last I checked, I'm not the owner of Capcom, so I don't own Megaman. I'm just tinkering with some bits and pieces.

Names: I'm using the English names, but Megaman was originally Rockman and Protoman was called Blues in the Japanese version.

Formatting: "Spoken words are in quotes." Internal character thoughts are in italics.

Love

It's not an emotion that a regular robot can feel. Despite his many heroic actions and advanced upgrades, Megaman knows that he's just a regular robot, a well designed lab assistant built with an ingenious tool copying system and an unfailing desire to help. Whether it was busting misbehaving bots or making a quick dive to catch a precious falling test tube, Mega was exactly as happy to hear, afterwards, "Good job, my boy. You've really saved us this time."

That's not to say the simple pleasure of accomplishment was all that motivated him. No, his programming went deeper than that, which was what allowed him to feel this warm, gentle vibration through his core when returning Dr. Light's familiar, approving gaze. It was a feeling that had, to him, no equal in all the realm of experience, though he knew it wasn't love. Not quite.

Still, when he tends the grounds and puts flowers on that quiet grave, there are these stubborn little distress signals shooting through his mechanical brain that simply refuse to shut off. He knows, intellectually, that this pain is not refined to the level of true human grief, though how can he really understand the difference, when he's never experienced the other side? He only knows that he feels pressed down, made low, and he supposes it is not so much sorrow as a winding down of the purpose that had always animated his life: help out.

Perhaps, to a robot, sadness was simply a consequence of failing to meet an objective: I cannot help you if you are dead.

It distinctly bothers him, though, that there will be no more kind, encouraging words, no more surprise upgrades, no gentle old fingers carding fondly through his hair, reminding him that wars and helmets are done and over with. Dr. Light is not the only one he misses, either. Protoman, his fatally flawed power source having finally given out, has also been reduced to a mere sinking feeling in Megaman's chest. Roll and Rush, having no one to perform necessary maintenance and indeed, no one to perform for, have shut down, as well. Megaman would shut himself down, too, except...

I cannot help if I am dead.

...But I am dying.

He is, slowly, so slowly that human eyes would not be able to detect the progression, but the years have been hard on him. Although there is peace now, the fighting extracted a toll he's not done paying for. Yet being a robot with only the most unrefined of emotions, he does not know exactly how to grieve for that, and so he does not try.

He simply lets himself wind down.

He could find someone else to help repair him, he supposes. Let some stranger open him up and poke around, try to figure his systems out. Somehow, perhaps because of a logic error due to lack of proper maintenance, he does not want to allow that. He wants to protect his precious hardware system, which Dr. Light built with such loving care, from cold fingers and carelessly prying eyes. He wants to protect that other one, too, for Dr. Light and for the future.

So that's where he goes, every time he leaves the grave: to the capsule.

He likes to look in on him, the next generation, every piece of him crafted with painstaking care: the true love and faith of a courageously optimistic father. Megaman knows, suddenly, that someone in the future will have to open this precious child up, to poke and pry and prod at him, to figure out the mysteries of his carefully crafted systems. He hopes those fingers will be kind.

He presses his own hand to the viewport.

My little brother.

He may be an old model now, but Megaman wonders, he wonders, because Dr. Light programmed him to think for himself as much as possible...

There is a specially designed hook up, so that he can connect to check on the mental processes of the deeply sleeping boy, whose incredibly sophisticated mechanical mind is trying to form itself into something stable, to integrate so much emotional potential with such incredibly complex logical circuitry. Megaman knows he will never be as advanced as that, but he's been around for a long time, had a chance to learn to think and feel so many different things, even if they aren't very many layers deep. He wonders if maybe he could lend a hand?

It can't even be properly called a decision, when it's written on the core of him: help out.

And so he hooks up, because he has years, yet, before he'll need to shut down, especially if he just sits here, quiet and still. Megaman closes his eyes next to the sleeper, and he dreams, dreams of bunsen burners and new siblings and warm fingers in his hair.

This is what robot dreams are made of: warm, gentle vibrations.