Warning: This is a tearjerker fanfic that is canon to ZX-TheReset.
Disclaimer: I do not own Mega Man or any of the characters in this fanfic. I do own the names of the Suzies, though.
For a few seconds, Copy thought he was dreaming. He had to be dreaming, after all; he hadn't seen any of his family in who knows how many years, and for one of them to suddenly turn up like this? It was even rarer than winning the lottery game that humans played.
Copy had been hiding from the Dimensions, not too sure that he really wanted to bump into them, but they had been fairly quiet recently, and he had been hungry. So the not-so-young robot had snuck out of the Weapons Research Center and went hunting for some food or at the least something that he could sell in order to buy some. But it seemed that he had hit the jackpot.
"Hey... Quint? That you?"
The other robot's head snapped up, and Copy took a step back. This kid did look quite a bit like Quint; however, the armor was the wrong color, being a more silvery-green than actual green. The gold parts hadn't changed, but the boy's hair was brown instead of black.
"...C-Copy...?"
Yep. That was definitely Quint. Excited at seeing his brother, whom he didn't know was actually his original self from the future (in fact, all Copy knew was that Quint had been stolen from the future and that he was a Copybot), Copy ran to hug him tightly. Quint let out a surprised reflexive squeak, gripping Copy as if afraid that the other was going to leave him.
"C'mon, let's go somewhere safer."
Quint looked as tired as ever, but he looked a lot better than the last time Copy had seen him. The last time he had seen him, years ago in Skull Fortress, Quint had been like a scared rabbit, squeaking and fleeing everytime someone came near him. Some of the jerk Robot Masters and their creator hadn't helped in the slightest, bullying the kid.
Copy didn't know what for, but Quint was a Megaman clone just like him, and Copy be damned if he let someone else get picked on just like he did. So he'd taken to defending the kid, only to get beaten up himself. At one point, Quint hadn't been able to take it anymore, so he had run away, with Copy quietly commending him for mustering up the courage to do so.
"Where've you been? I haven't seen you since you ran off!" Copy said, affectionately brushing some hair out of Quint's eyes.
Quint actually flinched a little when Copy brushed his hair, causing the boy to raise his eyebrow and move his hand back. Man, this was weird.
"N-Not sure... j-just that i-it wasn't h-here." He honestly did seem confused, seeming much more relaxed when Copy was by him.
Copy just stared at him.
"...You're weird. But you've changed quite a bit. You used to be so much more, uh..."
"A c-coward?" Quint said a bit dryly.
"...Yeah. You're still a coward, but at least you're not running away from me anymore. I just wanted to help you! We're both Copybots! We have to stick together!"
Quint paused upon hearing that for so long that Copy thought that he had frozen up or suddenly shut down without the proper procedures. But after a little bit, the silvery-green robot smiled up at Copy and hugged the other.
"...Th-Thanks Copy."
It was like having a shadow. Wherever Copy went, in and out of the Weapons Research Center, Quint followed him, sometimes even hanging onto the scarf that was around his neck. He hadn't gotten much out of Quint, only that the other had ended up somewhere incredibly strange. Come to think of it, wasn't that Dimensions group or whoever they were hunting for him?
"Hey, Quint."
"Y-Yeah?"
"Have you ever heard of a group called the Dimensions? Because I think they were looking for you. They're not here anymore, though, they vanished a few years ago." Copy placed his hands on his hips, looking behind his shoulder at the scarf-clinging childbot.
"Oh... th-them." Quint let out a sigh, as if wistful about something. "Th-They're not gonna be looking for me anymore... it's too late."
"Too late for what?" Copy blinked, not comprehending what Quint had said in the least. Quint just shrugged, though, and toyed with the scarf.
"Nevermind."
Thank goodness for the Suzies. Even a pair of robot children could get very lonely at times, if it hadn't been for Copy's pet Suzies. Quint had been nervous around them; he'd pointed out that he had been chased for miles by some vicious Suzies once, though he didn't specify when.
Copy was a bit puzzled on that. Suzies were generally pretty affectionate; all they wanted to do was just snooze on their favorite person at the time, and cuddle with said favorite person. Thankfully, Quint had managed to warm up to the group of Suzies that Copy had.
They varied in color and model, with the smallest one being a male R Suzy called Jason that Copy had rescued during the Roboenza incident, with the largest being a rebuilt Giant Suzy named Alma. The Giant Suzy, in particular, tended to treat Copy and Quint like her own children; anyone that threatened them or the other Suzies got a glare and a near stomping by the giant robot.
To Quint's distress, the original one, simply named Suzy, had been the Suzy that had silently snuck on him, stuck to his back, and had chased him for miles. Copy had bust out laughing at that, saying that Suzy would never do such a thing if she hadn't really been determined to mark Quint as her favorite person. Regardless, Quint continued to regard Suzy with some wariness, even if he was perfectly content snuggling against Alma for some comfort.
Most evenings ended up with Copy and Quint splitting whatever they had found between themselves and the group of Suzies, who were at least self-sufficient for the most part. Health-wise, however... Quint and Copy both knew how to do repairs, but parts were far and few in-between. They were lucky if they ever found anything.
As a result, both children were slowly dying from lack of maintenance. Quint was dying faster than Copy; the boy had already died once not too long ago and had been revived by a man with his own goals, though he never mentioned this to Copy. The lockdown program that he had had that had killed him the first time might have been gone, but the damaged programming it had left was still there.
It wasn't long before Copy came back one day to find Quint barely able to move and nearly dead himself.
Copy hadn't said anything; in a sense, he had known that one day, he would likely come back to find the boy he considered his little brother dying. Instead of crying and panicking, he had picked Quint up and set him on his lap, just holding him.
"You're not gonna be alone when you die, okay? I'm here for you, Quint. So're Alma and the Suzies."
As Quint weakly clung to him, shivering a little, Copy honestly didn't know what he preferred; for the two of them to get blown up by the idiot Megaman, who had vanished years ago, or to just die like this, with each other, peacefully.
The group of Suzies circled them, almost as if shielding them from the world; it would just be the two of them for now. For a moment, the scarf-clad childbot wondered; he'd been alone with just the Suzies for so long, that when Quint had reappeared, a part of him had felt like he had had something to live for, for once.
"...C-Copy?"
"Hm?" Copy petted Quint's hair, so much like his own, a bit, looking down at the blue eyes. Blue eyes... Quint had seriously been the first, and only Copybot, that he had seen with blue eyes like the original. How odd.
"I d-don't want t-to leave you alone."
"I'll be okay. I-I'm Megaman, remember~? I'll be fine!" He tried to joked about it with a smile, but the emotion didn't quite make it to his voice.
"M-Me too, Copy... me too. I... I don't w-want to l-leave you alone. Y-You're all I have right n-now. A-And I'm sorry, C-Copy."
Blinking, Copy hugged Quint a little tighter, looking down at the boy. His eyes had faded, and Copy was mostly supporting his weight, but he still seemed to be working. Quint would die soon... and Copy was terrified of being alone. He wouldn't be able to fix Quint, and then he would really have nobody left but the Suzies. Maybe if he was lucky, he would join Quint soon. And probably Shadow Man... Quint and Shadow Man.
Starving himself suddenly sounded like a great option. It would probably make him die a little faster.
"What're you sorry about?"
"A-About... wh-what happened."
"Whaddya mean?" Copy seriously was having trouble figuring out what Quint meant. What the heck was the kid apologizing for? It was Copy's fault for not having taken care of him better!
"Y-You know... th-the two times... that I... k-ki-"
Quint stopped talking, and Copy's eyes widened as he found himself supporting all of the other kid's weight. "Quint? Quint!"
Gently, he closed the other's eyes and set him down on the rug. What had the other been trying to say to him? Copy got the feeling that he would probably never know now, not now that his brother was dead. The kid was numb for a moment, not even noticing a few of the Suzies cuddle against him and Quint. He'd expected it, but it still hit him like a Rock.
Quint was dead.
Once the initial shock wore off, Copy latched onto Alma the Giant Suzy and started crying.
True to his own word, Copy did eventually starve himself. He was used to feeling hungry, but after losing Quint, he'd felt this empty hole in his core that he hadn't ever really remembered feeling before. Darn emotions, why did he have to have them? It wasn't fair! He hadn't been a bad boy, really!
The Suzies remained with him as he moved over to where he had put Quint's body, not having the heart to disassemble it for anything else. Yeah, he was dying now, he knew that, and quite frankly, Copy was ready. No wonder goodie-two-shoes constantly clung to their families, if this was how they felt when they lost people they cared about...
"Hey, guys," he said to the Suzies, letting himself lean on Alma. "Y'all can go. You don't have to stay here with us. No one's gonna feed you if you're here..."
The Suzies didn't move as Copy's breathing slowed down, and for that he was secretly grateful. The Suzies were much nicer, and much more loyal than most of his own family. As Copy's systems shut down for the last time, one fleeting thought went across the boy's mechanical brain.
At least he would never be alone now.