A twist in the whole 'brotherly relationship'…thing…and more besides…
Summary: There was a very good reason why Rockman never claimed or wanted to be Saito, even if it broke his creator's heart. Because Netto's words held the most importance and some memories were better off buried.
It is cool in the room. Soft tendrils of parental fuss and excited anticipation breathe into the walls, the blue stains of freshly pasted wallpaper taking on a life of it's own. Frankenstein's monster perhaps.
It is meant to be playtime. Recreation. The laughs of children must surely tumble off those same walls that watch and wait with the impassive nature that gives them structure, one thing a human being will never have.
But surely human emotions make us better than that? Surely it is better to feel, to breathe, than to stand….watch….wait…
One boy would disagree with this thesis though it will be years before he is able to argue the point. If, indeed, he ever learns to argue the point. He is huddled in the corner of the otherwise cheerfully decorated room, body caving in on itself as he picks at the thin carpet. Smirking brown eyes watch him.
Another child is in the room, the owner of the watchful gaze. He is good at observing, even at this early age. A fast developer too, he only crowed out his first word a week back, his mother hanging onto the memory with blooming eyes and a rattled tongue that brought the news to the darling father. Long distance communication. Naturally.
He peels himself away from the toys he has surrounded himself with, like a fort. But it is not a form of defence….it more like the miniature playground of a tyrant arranging his armies and making plans to quake the lands he owns.
The other flinches as the watcher approaches. Those toys were for sharing. Sharing. What a queer principle. He reads the strangeness in his brother's eyes. And then he is here.
The watcher does not say a thing, merely lets his hands travel down the other's arms, pinching roughly without heed or care to the other's flinching. He glances up finally, contempt written all over his face.
"Weak", he pronounces.
Weak, weak, weak…amazing how vocabulary is stretched and traded in the shortest of times.
He grins. And for a second, it is like a light bulb is shinning, nestled behind his jaw bones.
Netto reads the expression again.
Playtime.
There are no words for horror. But the danger lies in the having of the 'no words'. Was not silence a form of repression? Did not Philomele lose her tongue to the gleam of the rapist's knife for daring to usurp a ruthless tyrant?
Yes. But Netto has not lost his tongue. Saito is not old enough to play with knives. He just hasn't learnt to speak yet. And once he learns…he will never let go. He will never let silence wash over him again.
And so Saito taunts with his tongue. He bullies and pulls off the head of a stuffed giraffe, pulls himself upright and lets the stuffing float out and trickle through his fingers into his brother's hair.
Netto cries and Saito smiles. His brother is so cute sometimes.
And then Saito brings forward the execution of the elephant, the penguin, even the fox. Netto is an animal lover after all, so he yanks them apart, limb from limb, daring Netto to stop him with his eyes.
Years later Netto will see those same eyes again, bathed in red and seeking power.
But now they are brown and that is even worse. Because there is no devilish imprint on them, no outside forces at work. No dark chip, no twist in biology. Saito is Saito. And Netto hates him, even though he is too young to hate…at least not in the way of the great poets or even the broken-hearted schoolgirl who will flounder after him in the future as he becomes her personal Saito, though unwittingly.
Saito is his demon. And he must bear it.
But when that evil hand is on his headband, when he tugs it off and away, teasingly letting it dangle out of reach, Netto crawls after it. And those gleaming brown eyes sparkle in their malicious mischief and shine through as the Hikari symbol breaks, breaks…and tears in two. The flapping ends of blueness touch the ground.
Netto is lost in emotion for the first time. His fist comes up, grubby hands into Saito's surprised face and blood flies asHaruka comes into the room, eyes widening as Netto's first words rise out in a terrible scream.
Lay a flower. Lay a flower. She is telling him to lay a flower on his brother's grave.
He looks up at her then glares heatedly at the daisy he has in hand. The stalks trembles and tears in his transparent fingernails before her throws it down and walks away. She is sobbing, falling over mounds of grass as her heart comes up for air it cannot bear.
He stops. Turns. And runs back, pressing his head against the cool marble of the tomb. He imagines his brother underneath, scrabbling to get out, clawing at the earth, screaming and pulling out worms and insects, tearing out their insides, lost in a gothic nightmare. Netto smiles, still safe in the sunlight and sky. He has no brother.
Young lips brush the stone, not entirely sure of their actions. But motherless, Netto Hikari breathes his forgiveness into the rock.
One day the prison gates opened. But perhaps not, Yuuichiro merely brought another soul into life and gave it Saito's memories, called it son. He never understood why after the first few minutes of downloading an old life into the unnatural veins of the navi, why it rejected him.
"I'm not Saito. I am not him. You are not my father, just my creator, one I am grateful for. I am…Rockman.exe? Yes, and I will stay that way."
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Netto never understood a lot of things. Like why he felt a familiar chill when Dark Rockman looked at him or why Rockman never tore into him the same way all the other boys did when they first came into his life. Granted they were his friends or eventually became his friends…but Rockman was the only male who immediately accommodated him, was warm to him…almost…gentle? Yes, accepting.
Perhaps that was why he was his best friend. He had called him 'Netto-kun' right off the bat.
But even so, when he slept, Netto would toss and turn, sweating through agitated sheets and strips of worry of a voice calling for him and a young boy snarling in the earth, clawing his way back into his nightmares.
Amazingly enough, one night the dream didn't come. The night Rockman was deleted.
But he came back from the dead, did the one thing Saito could never beat, watched over him at the night with worry and chased away the ghosts when the sun rose. He didn't know it, but one day his actions saved his net-op a lifetime of distress.
For when he met Dark Rockman's eyes as his spirit streamed forwards after his futile wrap-around Slur…he saw the tear trail marks of a boy lost in the dark. He accepted Saito into his soul. And Netto's nights never bled out in pain any more.
And Rockman was not Saito. That he knew. But one, perhaps one day, he would take Netto's humanely soft hand and let the part of him that was Saito, the part of him that he hated and tried to throw away…well maybe he would let him tell Netto-kun he was sorry.
Or God help him, he would rip that part out of him forever and let him rot in the darkness.
Rockman had run out of forgiveness long ago. He never wanted to hear Netto utter those first words again…even if the memory belonged to another person.