Be Not Proud
Third: Savior
by Lady Virgo
"Do not let
pride
Stroke
your anger."
///
Her feet echoed noiselessly down the empty halls, darkened by the late hour to a blue-hued black. The broom's bristles scratched lightly at the fine polish on the floors, scattering the small dust-bunny habitat that had sprung up in the stretched room. It had been a while since she had last cleaned down the area, apprehension and a small price of fear keeping her away. But now she felt too restless. She needed something to do and cleaning always helped to clear her mind. /Actual/ cleaning, not just pretend where you think you see dust filming the glass of a picture or under the seat cushions. She had to find a large mess and fix it. Mild obsession with cleanliness perhaps, but it kept her occupied when it was needed and that's what she cared about.
Besides, if she wasn't the one to clean.... like the doctor or Rock really would.
But as she stepped into the underground lab, reinforced doors whooshing passed, acknowledging her clearance, her body tightened up. Seeing those Robot Masters in their tubes frightened her. Even the knowledge of their restraints didn't make her feel any better. But, determined she was, and with false bravado, set about cleaning, gradually, very, very gradually, sweeping her way towards the first of the tubes.
Perhaps what had happened earlier had given her a sense of bravery. Though frightened as she was, Roll worried how Slash would fare after Light had gone through his memory. She was told that he may be slightly disoriented after the ordeal, but she had stayed and watched the clawed Robot Master, floating in his tube. Not once in the three hours she watched over him did he move. Not once did his eyes flutter and only by the monitors of the computer did she know he was even breathing.
If Light found her in his lab at this hour, Roll wasn't certain what he would do to her. She wasn't certain of anything her 'father' did anymore. Her family, her brother, everything had changed and she was still trying to reorient herself to the way her world had suddenly turned.
A part of her loved Light, but a part of her feared him. A part of her feared Slash, but a part of her worried for him, with his broken voice and his strength crumpling in his eyes.
He heard her come in, opened his eyes as the doors closed behind her, shinning its bright red lighting as they locked. He saw the way she stood, determined but equally afraid, how her body tensed and shivered so very slightly. He watched as she clutched the broom handle to her chest, breath wobbling passed her quivering lips. She went about her business, cleaning, albeit gingerly, as if one of the Robot Masters would suddenly thrash against the tube's casing if she did anything. But something about the way that she moved, the way that she acted, even in an area she hated, he knew something was bothering her. All that time, trapped in a liquid prison with nothing to do but watch does wonders for one's observational skills.
"Can't sleep?" He asked, voice rumbling through the air bubbles. She didn't appear to hear him, just kept sweeping. "Bad dream?" There was the slightest hint of a flinch in her shoulders. "If you want, I can listen."
All she did was keep sweeping, but slowly, he noticed, she began to move her way towards him. Inside she scoffed that suddenly, as if he didn't know the true reason for her being there (he doesn't, she told herself, he doesn't know anything that had happened) and was worrying over /her/ instead. A few yards away, she stopped, broom held tight in her hands, head bowed.
"Why do you want to know?" She asked, her voice soft, having trouble carrying through to his side.
He looked at her with brown-dulled golden eyes. "Because, at the moment, I have nothing else to do."
"If you were a better person," Roll said without conviction, "you wouldn't be there."
"If you knew me, you wouldn't think what you do."
She wanted to say that she did know, that he wasn't as horrible a monster as her father, as the people made him out to be. She thought maybe if someone as feared, even among his own ranks, as Slash could be someone that looked kindly upon a distant memory, perhaps there were others just as brutally misjudged.
"Tell me." His voice was a soft rumble. "Maybe I can help."
"Everything is a bad dream." She whispered. "All of it. It used to be nice. Tosan, Rock, Rush, Tango, Auto, Beat, even Blues when ever he was around... everyone was so happy and everything was so beautiful. And then... everything... everything just went to hell... Everything just turned into a bad dream."
"I understand." But she didn't hear it as that. She could hear it in his voice, in the very depths of it, she could hear that he understood, that he wasn't saying it how everyone else said it, for the sake of being said.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold herself from spilling. "I was built to help Rock. To do housework and keep Tosan from forgetting the world and to keep everyone in line. But now... Rock is gone, Rush is gone, Tango, Blues, Beat, Auto, everyone's gone . And Tosan... he won't listen to me anymore. He just works on that... thing in the back, and he checks on you. And because of Dr. Wily, everything is just so awful now. Everyone's attacking each other and they don't care that they hurting everyone else. All I can do is clean, but how much longer do I have until that's taken away from me, too? How long will it be until I fall to... to frightened humans or homicidal Robot Masters?
"I...I don't have anything now. I have no purpose left in life." She looked up at him, eyes pleading. But he looked away, an echoing pain throbbing in his memories.
"I'm the wrong person to ask for a reason to live." His past screamed their haunted cries ever louder in his ears. "I lost my most important people, I've killed the man that ruined my life, the other..." his hand clenched and unclenched, a stray air bubble blooming to the top of the tube. "The other is pretty much dead." He looked back at her eyes, as broken and needing as his. "I don't have anything left. I might as well be dead myself."
"Don't say that." She said in a hush.
In the CLP, he shrugged. "Everything's taken away from me. My purpose, my freedom. Put on display like some sort of dissected animal. The only thing I have to do here is just wait. And watch you."
As he said that, she shrunk away slightly, an indescribable look on her face. "What do you mean, 'watch me'?"
He shrugged again. "Like I said, not much else to do. And you're much nicer to look at than the old man."
She couldn't help but to giggle a bit at that. Though still not entirely comfortable, she felt a bit more at ease. "I remember when you first came in... you were frightening." She shivered unconsciously. "And when you fought Rock, and the stories I've heard. You could've kept from being captured. Even now I'm surprised you're not trying to escape. All the others," she waved a hand around them, "have tried, but you never had. I'm amazed how calm you are."
"NO2 is a very effective retardant against surges." He admitted. He cocked his head slightly at the sight of her yawning, failing to hide it. A strand of spiky hair floated in his view. "Are you feeling tired?"
"A bit."
"You better head off to bed."
She shook her head. "No, I'm okay."
His eyes seemed to take on an amused gleam. "You don't have to keep me company."
"Who's keeping you company?" A thin smile formed over her lips. "I'm sweeping."
"And you're doing a very good job of it, I see." He nodded to the broom where it rested against a computer panel.
She watched him watch her, considering. "You don't... seem like a bad person." She said experimentally.
"Perhaps I'm not."
"But you scare people. I saw the way the other Robot Masters looked at you when you came in. When you were fighting. They were just as afraid as the rest of us. Why?"
"Because maybe I am a bad person."
"You said if I knew you, I wouldn't think that."
"And what do you think?"
She watched him again, as if the answer would come to her the more she stared at him. "...I don't know."
"I don't know what I am either." He breathed, inclining his forehead against the tube siding. "Maybe that's my problem."
"Maybe we're just our own problems."
"Maybe we are."
They looked away from each other in the silence. Their sense of loneliness grew, feeding off each other. Slowly, Roll stood to her feet, hand sliding on the familiar wood of the broom handle.
"I should be going to bed."
"Of course."
She turned and placed a hand on the container. "Thank you for listening to me." As her hand lingered, he brought up his own, pierced with wires and tubes, and placed it over hers. "Good night, Slash." She turned around again, quietly shuffling out of the lab.
He lightly caressed the tube, marveling at how small and fragile her finely constructed hand seemed against his large palm. "Good night. Sierra."
///
If Dr. Light was surprised that Roll had greeted him at the lab door, passing through it with him, he made no note. He checked each Robot Master in turned, did diagnostics on the monitoring systems before he left for the room locked away only for him. Where only his eyes worked on that strange creature that had swallowed what was left of her brother.
In their tubes, the bioroids leered at her, but she ignored them. On occasions she'd glare at a particular remark, but continued her duty, cleaning the thick armor of dust. When one of them had gone too far with his harassing, Roll jabbed the thick point of her broom at the tube, connecting with a crack that had put the lab's sensors on a mild alert. She smirked to herself when the Robot Master jumped though no damage was done to the tube. The others let out partly intrigued, partly jesting hoots at the action. But afterward all of them just watched her silently.
She stopped at the foot of Slash's tube, looking up at the towering robot. His eyes were closed and he looked to be asleep though the crease in his brow indicated the plagues his mind picked his sanity apart with. The tension in his face worried Roll, wishing she could talk with him once more though she didn't know what she could say. For a moment she wanted to be the one to smooth out the pain that dug permanent lines in his expression. Though he hadn't done much to guard her from her own nightmares, the mere thought that he cared was enough. And for a moment Roll wanted him to know that she did, as well.
But his eyes remained closed, hair wrapping around him in their serpentine length.
She shook her head and continued to sweep.
In a detached way, Roll was actually happy in the lab, because she had something to do. If she forgot that her father was slaving over another robot, if she didn't notice the Robot Masters with their eyes tracing her movement, if she told herself the reason for this empty quiet was because everyone else had gone out of errands, she could think of this as any normal day.
Subtly her hands tightened on the handle of the broom. Never had she wished so strongly then to go back to same, mundane routines that used to bore her so terribly. She remembered crying and complaining that there was nothing to do. Her father just chuckled and told her that there was plenty to do but she just said right back that it was boring. And Rock would look at her with wistful eyes and say he wished every day were like that day.
She wished it were, now, too.
Something in Roll's mind tugged at her, drawing her further into the world, pulling her awareness even wider around her. She could feel it, another set of eyes on her, cold and piercing, a thin veil that distorted a threat in mist. Slowly did she turn and suddenly all the other Robot Masters felt dangerously far away. The only things around her were the broom and the tube that housed Slash. The tube in which Slash looked down at her from, pinning her terror with the sword in his eye.
Gone, somewhere, was the gentle warmth she never knew she needed. Gone was the friendliness, the support, the voice that told her someone cared and someone noticed her. Another part of her crumbled inside and Roll didn't know how much of her was left.
"Slash....." She said softly, almost too afraid to step closer to him. "You...." everything she thought she could say to him tasted like dead ash on her tongue, ".....you're awake."
His eyes narrowed somewhat, voice slightly muffled between the fluid in his mouth and the speaker that linked from the mask to the base of the tube. "What do you want?"
"I-I wanted...." She bit her lip. "I wanted to see you."
"What for?"
"To thank you. For last night....."
"Che." He snapped his head away, annoyance fed through to his very fibers. Roll felt like she was glass about to be shattered. "Don't be stupid. As if you haven't wasted enough of my time."
Roll's jaw dropped. Before she could help it, she spluttered out, "What else are you going to do, trapped in there?"
"Not having to deal with your babyish problems for one thing." He snapped back. A growl raised in the back of his throat. "Dealing with the nightmares is better than you."
"How can you saw that? After-After what you said last night-"
Slash cut in like three blades. "I said don't be stupid! Why the hell would I care what your problems are? I have plenty of my own to deal with, I don't need to baby sit /you/ while I'm in here."
Roll's mind whirled, unable to comprehend what he was saying. Or rather, why he was saying it /now/ after the night before. "Why are you doing this?" She asked quietly, trying to ignore that her eyes were starting to sting. "You said-"
"I didn't say anything. /You're/ the one that thinks 'I'm not a bad person'." He mocked. "You're the one that thinks that I'm just 'misunderstood' or that maybe I need a fucking hug but I /don't/." His hands clenched and flexed in pulses. The claws in his wrists poked out in the pause of every beat of her heart, just because he could do it. "I'm a killer, I'm a murderer. That's all I was ever meant more, that is my only purpose in life, that is the meaning of my existence. Find your own damn excuse to live because I'm not the one to give it to you."
Roll's ears picked up a near inaudible crack, causing her to tear her gaze away from Slash. Her hands were starting to crush the broom handle in her fear. Somehow it was a little bit easier regaining her thoughts without looking at the clawed bioroid. "This..... This is the nightmare speaking, isn't it? You're like this because the pain is making you."
"Maybe." Slash grinned. "Or maybe it was the memories that made me kind last night. Maybe I truly am a horrible person. Maybe I deserve to die. After all, I killed, haven't I? There wasn't one person who's died under these claws that I've ever thought about again- except maybe my wanting to kill them again." If it weren't for the mask Roll would've seen how full of sharp teeth his mouth was. "I even killed my own creator and I revel in his screams everyday. I've never felt such satisfaction in feeling his bones snap in my hands and watching his withered skin split open in front of me. His blood was vile, but at that time, there was no sweeter meat than his in on my tongue. And every time I remember, I want to tear in to him more and more."
As he spoke Roll had backed away, unconsciously, imperceptibly. "Then why do you still hate?"
"Because I /hate/," he growled out behind the breath mask, "your brother. I /despise/ him. If he weren't pretty much dead as it is, I'd rip him apart, bit by bit, with my own claws." His fingers tried to tear grips into the tube. "I'd flay his skin and tear his innards, bathe in his blood..." His eyes tried to glow its golden hue, but the NO2 fought it, tranqs pumping quicker into his system.
Roll's breath came out in frightened huffs. "Y-You're mad. I can't believe I thought you were /nice/."
He nodded to himself, and she could see the fanged grin under the mask. "Yes..." he hissed, "you should stick with your original conception."
"I hate you."
"You /fear/ me." Slash replied. "You fear me because of what you know, of what you saw in my battle with your brother. Because you know I killed Wily, because I /let/ Light take me, because I could escape if I so wished and kill everyone in this house. You fear me because at night, you dream of what I can do to you and you fear because you know I could do worse."
"W-What would you know," she tried to defend defiantly, but feeling his words strike a chortling cord somewhere deep, "about what I feel?"
"Enough to know that you hate yourself." He drawled out. "Because deep down, far, far down where you hide it away but it still eats away at you..." He pressed against the side, eyes boring into her very mind. "You want someone- you want /me/," her heart stopped, "to kill you."
The look and command in his voice when Slash said it made Roll's blood freeze. She tried so hard to deny it, but something inside screamed at her, agreeing with each thing he said and didn't say.
So instead of denying or confirming what he said, Roll turned and ran in fear and horror.
And that was confirmation enough.
///
Nearly two weeks passed before Roll braved the lab once more. Or rather, pressured the lab into braving her. She strode with purpose, air around her holding the pressure of a storm about to break. She didn't take notice of the Robot Masters as they shrank into the corners of their tubes. She had her eye on something else. And she would not be swayed from her destination.
Rapping the clear siding with the handle of her broom, Roll felt a twinge of satisfaction as the sharp noise jerked Slash out of what drowning dreams he found himself in that moment.
For a stretched moment, he said nothing and they stared at each other, gauging. Then, finally he quietly said, "You're back." Roll could see the edge of his eyes crinkle, but she couldn't see what kind of smile he had under the mask.
"Even if I do fear," she told him with strength in her conviction, "I will not fear you."
A golden eyebrow rose at that. "Oh?"
"I know what you can do to me. I know what you're capable of. And maybe that tube really can't hold you, but you're in there now. There's a reason for that. There's a reason that you put yourself in there." Her jaw clenched. "It's because you're afraid of yourself."
Slash's lips pulled back in a thin grin, humorless but edged with a sort of satyr.
"I don't have to be afraid of you," she continued, "because you won't bring yourself to hurt me. If you wanted to, you wouldn't be in there now."
He shrugged. "I could just be bidding my time."
Softly Roll shook her head. "What would be the point? If the only purpose of your existence is to kill, why would you spend your time here?"
"Not every creature meant for killing wants only to kill."
The sudden, soft contrition took Roll by surprise. Looking up at the tall bioroid before her she could peer unobtrusively into his face made up of nothing but tired lines.
"But you have." Her once righteous anger was beginning to falter, but she still tried to cloak herself in it desperately. Because without it, she was just small and timid in his presence. "If you don't /want/ to kill, then why have you?"
"Just because I had my reasons to doesn't mean I enjoy doing it." He bristled under her accusation. "Maybe I could've made a different choice, but this is the path laid out for me now. There's others out there I wouldn't mind tearing apart, but I'm tired of it. I'm here because I want something better in life than just killing, all right?"
Roll watched him for a moment and turned away, broom gripped tightly in her hands. "I wish I could hope for something better in my life."
"You should be glad you are what you are." Slash snarled. "You don't have to deal with this, day in and day out, with a foreign anger where you don't know where you begin. Or twisted memories that you can't tell apart from the present. Each day we have to live with our minds pulling itself apart by our own masochistic desires. No matter how much we try to stop it, how we try to deny it, it's taking apart our sanity bit by bit. Be glad you have what you do, because this isn't the sort of life people should be asking for."
"Well no one /asked/ what I wanted! Maybe I do want someone to kill me! Maybe I wish I were killed with the rest of my family! Or that I was the one that was put into that body that'll sleep for God knows how long! Maybe I'd rather be kept in a tube with only thoughts and nightmares to entertain me! At least there I'd be safe! At least I wouldn't have to live, paranoid that one day I'll be found and torn apart by people that're too afraid to think straight! I /want/ to be saved! I /want/ to be killed! I just want some sort of certainty in my life! Father's too gone in his work to think about me, there's no one else that cares- I just.....," Roll put a hand to her face, trying to stifle a sob. "I just want to know if there's a purpose to my existence....."
Abruptly, Slash's demeanor changed. "Sierra....."
She pulled back, shaking her head. "Don't call me that." Both hands were to her face now. "I'm not her, don't call me that." That name wrenched at her heart and she couldn't understand why. It just hurt hearing him speak a memory's name as if it were her own. It seemed her entire existence had been forgotten by the world.
"Have you ever thought," Slash's smooth baritone overrode the hysteria in Roll's head, "that I'm here for your sake?"
Roll came to a halt, slowly turning back to the tube. "Wh-What do you mean?"
"That I'm here to make you stronger."
Her brow furrowed. "Stronger? What do you mean?" She asked again.
In response, Slash tilted his head. "Would you have come into this lab for any other reason than to get upset at me? Or to make sure I was okay?"
"I....." She tried to find words but the eluded her, angels off to find a better place. "You're here because you want me to gain strength? That..... That doesn't make sense."
"Or maybe you're here for my sake."
She tilted her head down, looking up at Slash through her bangs and confusion. "And what would that be?"
He paused for a moment, then sighed, the bubbles rising as he let his head fall back and his eyes fall closed.
And in that simple movement, the bubbles told her: "To save you."
by Lady Virgo
"Do not let
pride
Stroke
your anger."
///
Her feet echoed noiselessly down the empty halls, darkened by the late hour to a blue-hued black. The broom's bristles scratched lightly at the fine polish on the floors, scattering the small dust-bunny habitat that had sprung up in the stretched room. It had been a while since she had last cleaned down the area, apprehension and a small price of fear keeping her away. But now she felt too restless. She needed something to do and cleaning always helped to clear her mind. /Actual/ cleaning, not just pretend where you think you see dust filming the glass of a picture or under the seat cushions. She had to find a large mess and fix it. Mild obsession with cleanliness perhaps, but it kept her occupied when it was needed and that's what she cared about.
Besides, if she wasn't the one to clean.... like the doctor or Rock really would.
But as she stepped into the underground lab, reinforced doors whooshing passed, acknowledging her clearance, her body tightened up. Seeing those Robot Masters in their tubes frightened her. Even the knowledge of their restraints didn't make her feel any better. But, determined she was, and with false bravado, set about cleaning, gradually, very, very gradually, sweeping her way towards the first of the tubes.
Perhaps what had happened earlier had given her a sense of bravery. Though frightened as she was, Roll worried how Slash would fare after Light had gone through his memory. She was told that he may be slightly disoriented after the ordeal, but she had stayed and watched the clawed Robot Master, floating in his tube. Not once in the three hours she watched over him did he move. Not once did his eyes flutter and only by the monitors of the computer did she know he was even breathing.
If Light found her in his lab at this hour, Roll wasn't certain what he would do to her. She wasn't certain of anything her 'father' did anymore. Her family, her brother, everything had changed and she was still trying to reorient herself to the way her world had suddenly turned.
A part of her loved Light, but a part of her feared him. A part of her feared Slash, but a part of her worried for him, with his broken voice and his strength crumpling in his eyes.
He heard her come in, opened his eyes as the doors closed behind her, shinning its bright red lighting as they locked. He saw the way she stood, determined but equally afraid, how her body tensed and shivered so very slightly. He watched as she clutched the broom handle to her chest, breath wobbling passed her quivering lips. She went about her business, cleaning, albeit gingerly, as if one of the Robot Masters would suddenly thrash against the tube's casing if she did anything. But something about the way that she moved, the way that she acted, even in an area she hated, he knew something was bothering her. All that time, trapped in a liquid prison with nothing to do but watch does wonders for one's observational skills.
"Can't sleep?" He asked, voice rumbling through the air bubbles. She didn't appear to hear him, just kept sweeping. "Bad dream?" There was the slightest hint of a flinch in her shoulders. "If you want, I can listen."
All she did was keep sweeping, but slowly, he noticed, she began to move her way towards him. Inside she scoffed that suddenly, as if he didn't know the true reason for her being there (he doesn't, she told herself, he doesn't know anything that had happened) and was worrying over /her/ instead. A few yards away, she stopped, broom held tight in her hands, head bowed.
"Why do you want to know?" She asked, her voice soft, having trouble carrying through to his side.
He looked at her with brown-dulled golden eyes. "Because, at the moment, I have nothing else to do."
"If you were a better person," Roll said without conviction, "you wouldn't be there."
"If you knew me, you wouldn't think what you do."
She wanted to say that she did know, that he wasn't as horrible a monster as her father, as the people made him out to be. She thought maybe if someone as feared, even among his own ranks, as Slash could be someone that looked kindly upon a distant memory, perhaps there were others just as brutally misjudged.
"Tell me." His voice was a soft rumble. "Maybe I can help."
"Everything is a bad dream." She whispered. "All of it. It used to be nice. Tosan, Rock, Rush, Tango, Auto, Beat, even Blues when ever he was around... everyone was so happy and everything was so beautiful. And then... everything... everything just went to hell... Everything just turned into a bad dream."
"I understand." But she didn't hear it as that. She could hear it in his voice, in the very depths of it, she could hear that he understood, that he wasn't saying it how everyone else said it, for the sake of being said.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold herself from spilling. "I was built to help Rock. To do housework and keep Tosan from forgetting the world and to keep everyone in line. But now... Rock is gone, Rush is gone, Tango, Blues, Beat, Auto, everyone's gone . And Tosan... he won't listen to me anymore. He just works on that... thing in the back, and he checks on you. And because of Dr. Wily, everything is just so awful now. Everyone's attacking each other and they don't care that they hurting everyone else. All I can do is clean, but how much longer do I have until that's taken away from me, too? How long will it be until I fall to... to frightened humans or homicidal Robot Masters?
"I...I don't have anything now. I have no purpose left in life." She looked up at him, eyes pleading. But he looked away, an echoing pain throbbing in his memories.
"I'm the wrong person to ask for a reason to live." His past screamed their haunted cries ever louder in his ears. "I lost my most important people, I've killed the man that ruined my life, the other..." his hand clenched and unclenched, a stray air bubble blooming to the top of the tube. "The other is pretty much dead." He looked back at her eyes, as broken and needing as his. "I don't have anything left. I might as well be dead myself."
"Don't say that." She said in a hush.
In the CLP, he shrugged. "Everything's taken away from me. My purpose, my freedom. Put on display like some sort of dissected animal. The only thing I have to do here is just wait. And watch you."
As he said that, she shrunk away slightly, an indescribable look on her face. "What do you mean, 'watch me'?"
He shrugged again. "Like I said, not much else to do. And you're much nicer to look at than the old man."
She couldn't help but to giggle a bit at that. Though still not entirely comfortable, she felt a bit more at ease. "I remember when you first came in... you were frightening." She shivered unconsciously. "And when you fought Rock, and the stories I've heard. You could've kept from being captured. Even now I'm surprised you're not trying to escape. All the others," she waved a hand around them, "have tried, but you never had. I'm amazed how calm you are."
"NO2 is a very effective retardant against surges." He admitted. He cocked his head slightly at the sight of her yawning, failing to hide it. A strand of spiky hair floated in his view. "Are you feeling tired?"
"A bit."
"You better head off to bed."
She shook her head. "No, I'm okay."
His eyes seemed to take on an amused gleam. "You don't have to keep me company."
"Who's keeping you company?" A thin smile formed over her lips. "I'm sweeping."
"And you're doing a very good job of it, I see." He nodded to the broom where it rested against a computer panel.
She watched him watch her, considering. "You don't... seem like a bad person." She said experimentally.
"Perhaps I'm not."
"But you scare people. I saw the way the other Robot Masters looked at you when you came in. When you were fighting. They were just as afraid as the rest of us. Why?"
"Because maybe I am a bad person."
"You said if I knew you, I wouldn't think that."
"And what do you think?"
She watched him again, as if the answer would come to her the more she stared at him. "...I don't know."
"I don't know what I am either." He breathed, inclining his forehead against the tube siding. "Maybe that's my problem."
"Maybe we're just our own problems."
"Maybe we are."
They looked away from each other in the silence. Their sense of loneliness grew, feeding off each other. Slowly, Roll stood to her feet, hand sliding on the familiar wood of the broom handle.
"I should be going to bed."
"Of course."
She turned and placed a hand on the container. "Thank you for listening to me." As her hand lingered, he brought up his own, pierced with wires and tubes, and placed it over hers. "Good night, Slash." She turned around again, quietly shuffling out of the lab.
He lightly caressed the tube, marveling at how small and fragile her finely constructed hand seemed against his large palm. "Good night. Sierra."
///
If Dr. Light was surprised that Roll had greeted him at the lab door, passing through it with him, he made no note. He checked each Robot Master in turned, did diagnostics on the monitoring systems before he left for the room locked away only for him. Where only his eyes worked on that strange creature that had swallowed what was left of her brother.
In their tubes, the bioroids leered at her, but she ignored them. On occasions she'd glare at a particular remark, but continued her duty, cleaning the thick armor of dust. When one of them had gone too far with his harassing, Roll jabbed the thick point of her broom at the tube, connecting with a crack that had put the lab's sensors on a mild alert. She smirked to herself when the Robot Master jumped though no damage was done to the tube. The others let out partly intrigued, partly jesting hoots at the action. But afterward all of them just watched her silently.
She stopped at the foot of Slash's tube, looking up at the towering robot. His eyes were closed and he looked to be asleep though the crease in his brow indicated the plagues his mind picked his sanity apart with. The tension in his face worried Roll, wishing she could talk with him once more though she didn't know what she could say. For a moment she wanted to be the one to smooth out the pain that dug permanent lines in his expression. Though he hadn't done much to guard her from her own nightmares, the mere thought that he cared was enough. And for a moment Roll wanted him to know that she did, as well.
But his eyes remained closed, hair wrapping around him in their serpentine length.
She shook her head and continued to sweep.
In a detached way, Roll was actually happy in the lab, because she had something to do. If she forgot that her father was slaving over another robot, if she didn't notice the Robot Masters with their eyes tracing her movement, if she told herself the reason for this empty quiet was because everyone else had gone out of errands, she could think of this as any normal day.
Subtly her hands tightened on the handle of the broom. Never had she wished so strongly then to go back to same, mundane routines that used to bore her so terribly. She remembered crying and complaining that there was nothing to do. Her father just chuckled and told her that there was plenty to do but she just said right back that it was boring. And Rock would look at her with wistful eyes and say he wished every day were like that day.
She wished it were, now, too.
Something in Roll's mind tugged at her, drawing her further into the world, pulling her awareness even wider around her. She could feel it, another set of eyes on her, cold and piercing, a thin veil that distorted a threat in mist. Slowly did she turn and suddenly all the other Robot Masters felt dangerously far away. The only things around her were the broom and the tube that housed Slash. The tube in which Slash looked down at her from, pinning her terror with the sword in his eye.
Gone, somewhere, was the gentle warmth she never knew she needed. Gone was the friendliness, the support, the voice that told her someone cared and someone noticed her. Another part of her crumbled inside and Roll didn't know how much of her was left.
"Slash....." She said softly, almost too afraid to step closer to him. "You...." everything she thought she could say to him tasted like dead ash on her tongue, ".....you're awake."
His eyes narrowed somewhat, voice slightly muffled between the fluid in his mouth and the speaker that linked from the mask to the base of the tube. "What do you want?"
"I-I wanted...." She bit her lip. "I wanted to see you."
"What for?"
"To thank you. For last night....."
"Che." He snapped his head away, annoyance fed through to his very fibers. Roll felt like she was glass about to be shattered. "Don't be stupid. As if you haven't wasted enough of my time."
Roll's jaw dropped. Before she could help it, she spluttered out, "What else are you going to do, trapped in there?"
"Not having to deal with your babyish problems for one thing." He snapped back. A growl raised in the back of his throat. "Dealing with the nightmares is better than you."
"How can you saw that? After-After what you said last night-"
Slash cut in like three blades. "I said don't be stupid! Why the hell would I care what your problems are? I have plenty of my own to deal with, I don't need to baby sit /you/ while I'm in here."
Roll's mind whirled, unable to comprehend what he was saying. Or rather, why he was saying it /now/ after the night before. "Why are you doing this?" She asked quietly, trying to ignore that her eyes were starting to sting. "You said-"
"I didn't say anything. /You're/ the one that thinks 'I'm not a bad person'." He mocked. "You're the one that thinks that I'm just 'misunderstood' or that maybe I need a fucking hug but I /don't/." His hands clenched and flexed in pulses. The claws in his wrists poked out in the pause of every beat of her heart, just because he could do it. "I'm a killer, I'm a murderer. That's all I was ever meant more, that is my only purpose in life, that is the meaning of my existence. Find your own damn excuse to live because I'm not the one to give it to you."
Roll's ears picked up a near inaudible crack, causing her to tear her gaze away from Slash. Her hands were starting to crush the broom handle in her fear. Somehow it was a little bit easier regaining her thoughts without looking at the clawed bioroid. "This..... This is the nightmare speaking, isn't it? You're like this because the pain is making you."
"Maybe." Slash grinned. "Or maybe it was the memories that made me kind last night. Maybe I truly am a horrible person. Maybe I deserve to die. After all, I killed, haven't I? There wasn't one person who's died under these claws that I've ever thought about again- except maybe my wanting to kill them again." If it weren't for the mask Roll would've seen how full of sharp teeth his mouth was. "I even killed my own creator and I revel in his screams everyday. I've never felt such satisfaction in feeling his bones snap in my hands and watching his withered skin split open in front of me. His blood was vile, but at that time, there was no sweeter meat than his in on my tongue. And every time I remember, I want to tear in to him more and more."
As he spoke Roll had backed away, unconsciously, imperceptibly. "Then why do you still hate?"
"Because I /hate/," he growled out behind the breath mask, "your brother. I /despise/ him. If he weren't pretty much dead as it is, I'd rip him apart, bit by bit, with my own claws." His fingers tried to tear grips into the tube. "I'd flay his skin and tear his innards, bathe in his blood..." His eyes tried to glow its golden hue, but the NO2 fought it, tranqs pumping quicker into his system.
Roll's breath came out in frightened huffs. "Y-You're mad. I can't believe I thought you were /nice/."
He nodded to himself, and she could see the fanged grin under the mask. "Yes..." he hissed, "you should stick with your original conception."
"I hate you."
"You /fear/ me." Slash replied. "You fear me because of what you know, of what you saw in my battle with your brother. Because you know I killed Wily, because I /let/ Light take me, because I could escape if I so wished and kill everyone in this house. You fear me because at night, you dream of what I can do to you and you fear because you know I could do worse."
"W-What would you know," she tried to defend defiantly, but feeling his words strike a chortling cord somewhere deep, "about what I feel?"
"Enough to know that you hate yourself." He drawled out. "Because deep down, far, far down where you hide it away but it still eats away at you..." He pressed against the side, eyes boring into her very mind. "You want someone- you want /me/," her heart stopped, "to kill you."
The look and command in his voice when Slash said it made Roll's blood freeze. She tried so hard to deny it, but something inside screamed at her, agreeing with each thing he said and didn't say.
So instead of denying or confirming what he said, Roll turned and ran in fear and horror.
And that was confirmation enough.
///
Nearly two weeks passed before Roll braved the lab once more. Or rather, pressured the lab into braving her. She strode with purpose, air around her holding the pressure of a storm about to break. She didn't take notice of the Robot Masters as they shrank into the corners of their tubes. She had her eye on something else. And she would not be swayed from her destination.
Rapping the clear siding with the handle of her broom, Roll felt a twinge of satisfaction as the sharp noise jerked Slash out of what drowning dreams he found himself in that moment.
For a stretched moment, he said nothing and they stared at each other, gauging. Then, finally he quietly said, "You're back." Roll could see the edge of his eyes crinkle, but she couldn't see what kind of smile he had under the mask.
"Even if I do fear," she told him with strength in her conviction, "I will not fear you."
A golden eyebrow rose at that. "Oh?"
"I know what you can do to me. I know what you're capable of. And maybe that tube really can't hold you, but you're in there now. There's a reason for that. There's a reason that you put yourself in there." Her jaw clenched. "It's because you're afraid of yourself."
Slash's lips pulled back in a thin grin, humorless but edged with a sort of satyr.
"I don't have to be afraid of you," she continued, "because you won't bring yourself to hurt me. If you wanted to, you wouldn't be in there now."
He shrugged. "I could just be bidding my time."
Softly Roll shook her head. "What would be the point? If the only purpose of your existence is to kill, why would you spend your time here?"
"Not every creature meant for killing wants only to kill."
The sudden, soft contrition took Roll by surprise. Looking up at the tall bioroid before her she could peer unobtrusively into his face made up of nothing but tired lines.
"But you have." Her once righteous anger was beginning to falter, but she still tried to cloak herself in it desperately. Because without it, she was just small and timid in his presence. "If you don't /want/ to kill, then why have you?"
"Just because I had my reasons to doesn't mean I enjoy doing it." He bristled under her accusation. "Maybe I could've made a different choice, but this is the path laid out for me now. There's others out there I wouldn't mind tearing apart, but I'm tired of it. I'm here because I want something better in life than just killing, all right?"
Roll watched him for a moment and turned away, broom gripped tightly in her hands. "I wish I could hope for something better in my life."
"You should be glad you are what you are." Slash snarled. "You don't have to deal with this, day in and day out, with a foreign anger where you don't know where you begin. Or twisted memories that you can't tell apart from the present. Each day we have to live with our minds pulling itself apart by our own masochistic desires. No matter how much we try to stop it, how we try to deny it, it's taking apart our sanity bit by bit. Be glad you have what you do, because this isn't the sort of life people should be asking for."
"Well no one /asked/ what I wanted! Maybe I do want someone to kill me! Maybe I wish I were killed with the rest of my family! Or that I was the one that was put into that body that'll sleep for God knows how long! Maybe I'd rather be kept in a tube with only thoughts and nightmares to entertain me! At least there I'd be safe! At least I wouldn't have to live, paranoid that one day I'll be found and torn apart by people that're too afraid to think straight! I /want/ to be saved! I /want/ to be killed! I just want some sort of certainty in my life! Father's too gone in his work to think about me, there's no one else that cares- I just.....," Roll put a hand to her face, trying to stifle a sob. "I just want to know if there's a purpose to my existence....."
Abruptly, Slash's demeanor changed. "Sierra....."
She pulled back, shaking her head. "Don't call me that." Both hands were to her face now. "I'm not her, don't call me that." That name wrenched at her heart and she couldn't understand why. It just hurt hearing him speak a memory's name as if it were her own. It seemed her entire existence had been forgotten by the world.
"Have you ever thought," Slash's smooth baritone overrode the hysteria in Roll's head, "that I'm here for your sake?"
Roll came to a halt, slowly turning back to the tube. "Wh-What do you mean?"
"That I'm here to make you stronger."
Her brow furrowed. "Stronger? What do you mean?" She asked again.
In response, Slash tilted his head. "Would you have come into this lab for any other reason than to get upset at me? Or to make sure I was okay?"
"I....." She tried to find words but the eluded her, angels off to find a better place. "You're here because you want me to gain strength? That..... That doesn't make sense."
"Or maybe you're here for my sake."
She tilted her head down, looking up at Slash through her bangs and confusion. "And what would that be?"
He paused for a moment, then sighed, the bubbles rising as he let his head fall back and his eyes fall closed.
And in that simple movement, the bubbles told her: "To save you."