A/N: Written for:
The Prompts in Steps Challenge, 3.19 - ficlet, opiate
5Ds bingo: the non-flash version, #098 - Aporia
Diversity Writing Challenge, b28 - write an angsty piece
Disassembling a Robot
Dissociation is the only way you can deal with this world, isn't it? There's almost no-one to connect with and you've given yourself in your entirety to them as it is because there was no other choice, and there still isn't except forsaking them and you can't do that, not when you are one of four people left in this wide wide world. But you also know they're all going to die and you're going to die too and none of you are going to accomplish anything meaningful by the end because you're all men and there's no-one who's going to be born on this world after the lot of you. You're going to all just waste away.
Maybe you'll solve the world's equation before you die. Maybe Z-ONE will pull it off. He's the scientist, after all. He's the one who found you, who found the three of you, and you've thrown away your names because they've v died along with everything else you lost, everything else the four of you failed to save⦠Actually, you don't know if Z-ONE ever had someone to lose - or the whole world to lose because he was one of those scientists who wanted to save the whole world and didn't manage it.
They didn't even know what the real Z-ONE looked like, because he tried to recreate a hero, tried to provide a vessel by which to resurrect the long dead and buried and wasn't that funny, because he was a scientist and that reviving the dead stuff was mystic at best but he tried to do it anyway because he believed the world needed a miracle. But he wasn't good enough. Not even the fabled hero could save the world. He saved four people in the end.
And now the four of them waited for the end of days, still trying to unearth that miracle. But it hurts too much to hope. You've hoped before, and for each of those hopes, you've been granted legions of despair. It hurts to hope and you don't bother hoping but you try anyway because Z-ONE is still hoping, still trying, and it's only Z-ONE and the three of you and the three of you aren't quite ready to give hope again but also can't abandon him.
And that's the important part. You can't hope and throw every fibre of your being into the effort that will probably fail you all in the end, but you can't leave Z-ONE and you can't break Z-ONE's dream - and, honestly, you don't want to either because you can sacrifice a little bit of hope and that's for that dream and really, it's all keeping the rest of you going, working for a dream that's not yours because not one of you feel yourselves strong enough to take on that dream yourselves. You just hop onto the shoulders of Z-ONE and he lets you because he needs you guys too, because you're his only successes in a sea of failure, and you guys are his only supports as well.
And then you start dying one by one, and all you've accomplished by then is a sparse immortality. But you take it further. You split yourself, because you've broken so many times already that it doesn't matter to you but it matters to Z-ONE, it will matter to Z-ONE, to have more voices encouraging and more hands helping him and for you, you'll only have to deal with a third of your life at any one time, and before the tragedy that broke off another piece of you and it's a partially selfish suggestion but that's okay, because tragedies are useless in this world that's only filled with tragedies. You and the others and Z-ONE are looking for a miracle.
