Author's Notes: Second Dimension AU where Doofenshmirtz captured Perry, OWCA's best agent. Perry was not Doof's nemesis in this AU. Based on the excellent concert band song of the same name (look up Gently Blows the Summer Wind on Youtube). TW's are as follows: Torture, Stockholm Syndrom, Cybernetics, Emotional Manipulations, Dark Themes
Originally posted on AO3 04/12/2020
Perry sits on the creaking, twisted fire escape, his legs dangling over the edge.
Technically, his mission is over. The threat is eliminated. He should report back to Doofenshmirtz. He hasn't been ordered to, though, so he won't.
When Doofenshmirtz calls, he will go back. For now, he will stay at the remains of this building, staring out over a Danville he had once sworn to protect.
Now, he works actively against that oath. Swearing a different one, one to kill anyone in the way of Heinz.
Whatever Heinz Doofenshmirtz wants, Perry the Platyborg does it.
That's all their relationship is. That's all it will ever be. That's all it ever has been.
Heinz wanted a general, so he kidnapped OWCA's top agent.
Perry had refused to go without a fight. Norm-bot after Norm-bot had hit the floor, but soon they were coming too fast. Perry had pulled his pistol in desperation, but even then, the bots were too much.
His injuries from the battle left him debilitated. The torture brought him to the brink of death.
Burns and cuts covered his body, wounds reopened daily and splashed in salt water. Drugs that made his mind go foggy and limbs go numb. Noises and lights that kept him out of sleep, then followed him into his nightmares. Agents brought in, and shot at his feet.
Heinz didn't even bother torturing Perry himself. The Norm-bots did it. He was never in the room.
After the Norm-bots were done, he would play the face of a kind man. Praising Perry for his strength, his spirit. Perry knew the tactic- designed to make him think that Heinz is gentle, sparing, perhaps even loving.
His conscious thought saw through the ruse every time. His subconscious didn't care. The two sides of his mind fought again and again, but human nature wins every time. In loneliness, the human body craves attention.
It craves love, no matter how false.
When he couldn't take any more pain, when his body was almost through, he was thrown in a white room for days on end. The only marking of time being a plate of food and medicine, delivered once a day.
Days turned to weeks, and still no one came. His mind slipped. First, he couldn't remember his friends, then his fellow agents, then finally his family slipped away from his brain. Perry started to refuse first the medicine, then the food and water.
But Heinz would not let him die. After almost a week of this self-afflicted torture, the door opened and he was taken out and given treatment.
Heinz was the first face he saw coming out of the room. He had embraced Perry like an old friend. Hoping to trick Perry's mind into associating him with kindness.
It worked. Psychology, science doesn't lie.
Perry hadn't bothered to treat any of his wounds, so his right leg and both his arms had to be amputated, replaced with cybernetics. One eye replaced with a cyborg one. Metal plates throughout his body, protecting vulnerable places. A microchip, just in case, at the base of his neck.
He didn't get the luxury of anesthetic.
Heinz had said that it would hurt himself more than it would hurt Perry.
The two sides of his mind again went to war, but the logical, OWCA agent side grew weaker by the day. His fragile human nature believed Heinz. It believed him through the blinding hours of pain, it believed him through the brutal re-training.
Slowly, even his logical side starts to believe him.
What else is there to believe in?
Eventually, Heinz got what he wanted. A ruthless killing machine, willing to do anything he says.
Perry was put up in Doofenshmirtz Evil, Incorporated, in his own suite of rooms.
He shattered every mirror on the first night, unwilling to see what the unknown surgeons had done to him.
He saw anyway, bit by bit. A glimpse of his new leg in a window. The feeling of his cold metal hands on his face. His cybernetic eye reflected in the shiny helmet of a Norm-bot at his command.
Perry used to be proud of his scars, back when he was a cop? a spy? A secret agent, of the OWCA, that's what he was.
Every scar a reminder of a life he had saved, a tyrant he had brought down.
Now the majority of his scars have come from torture. He can't be proud anymore, he is a fallen hero with no chance of redemption.
He's heard whispers of an underground rebellion. Groups that have set up away from the eyes of the Norm-bots that Perry commands.
Groups like the Firestorm Girls, the Resistance, the Wind Runners.
He is the one to deal with them. He leads the teams of super-strength bots into hideouts, finding and killing the leaders.
It isn't just Doofenshmirtz's orders that compel him to do this.
What happens if the rebels win? He can't go back to his old life, not with the metal in his body and the blood of his former peers on his hands. He can't ever be a normal civilian again. He'll be even more of a goddamn outcast.
Here, at least, he has Heinz.
So he kills the rebels, if only to keep the life he knows.
The first mission he had been given was to hunt down a junior agent of the OWCA and bring back his hat.
Perry had done it. He had snuck up behind Agent Iguana and slit his neck.
Held him in his arms while he died.
He vaguely remembers training Agent I, and now he's killed him. Every terrible step in the circle of agent life.
Heinz had praised him that day, had hung Agent I's hat proudly on a wall by his desk.
Perry would do it over and over again, just to hear Heinz say that he did well.
And he does.
Some of the agents recognize him, and they beg for mercy.
Perry spares them, in a way.
He has been told to bring back agents, dead or alive. An alive agent, though, means another cyborg, another general, another victim. He can't let them live like this.
And he can't let them be better than him. He can't allow them to outshine him, can't allow them to be Heinz's shining generals, because then where will he be? He'll have nobody. He'll have nothing.
It's a fucked-up mix of jealousy and kindness.
Perry convinces himself that it truly is kinder to kill them. Whether it is kinder to himself or the agents, he doesn't know.
At night Perry lays in his bed, trying to ignore the phantom pains in his metal limbs that remind him achingly of his former self. He will never be able to go back.
He can't even remember if there's a place to go back to. He had to have family at one point, friends, maybe even a lover.
Whoever they were, he's lost them. He tries to force his fingers to spell out their names, but the only name he can sign in its entirety is Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
He doesn't even remember if he had a last name. All he knows is Platyborg.
Occasionally, he hears voices in his head, or sees bits of faces. A girl with red hair, a boy with green. Towering inventions. A bass line echoing around and around his head, driving him mad.
Perhaps it's for the best. If he can't remember his family, they're safe.
Part of him hopes to never see them again.
He can't even throw himself off this fire escape to end it all. Heinz will come and save him, put him in the room of medical tech, and keep him alive. He'll say tut-tut-tut, Perry the Platyborg, can't you be more careful? Maybe I need a new Platyborg, this one's getting old.
And the scrapings of human still left in Perry will beg him for a second, third, fourth chance. Beg for approval, from the one man who matters most and least.
Heinz will smile and allow Perry another chance, just to be 'generous'.
Another nail in the coffin.
If the logical side of his mind had its way, Heinz would be dead by morning. Yet his instincts fight to impress Heinz for just a bit of praise, just a bit of proof that he's not quite alone.
The soldier part of him, the part beaten in through training, keeps him neutral. He will do Heinz's bidding. That is all he is supposed to do. There will be nothing else. Orders will be followed.
Perry stands up on the fire escape, staring out over the city of Danville. The sun's just beginning to set, causing the air to be tinted a faint orange.
Gently blows the summer wind, and with it, a life long gone.