A/N: Sorry to anyone who's been waiting on this chapter! I didn't intend for it to take so long to finish, but it turned out a bit longer than I thought it would and then it needed more editing than I had the headspace for. That being said, I did finish the next two chapters in the meantime, so those updates should come in a more timely manner. :)
The idea for this chapter hit me out of the blue during brainstorming. It's been one I've been excited to write since the beginning and I only got more excited the closer I got. I think partly because it felt fresh and unique to me. That being said, I really wanted to do it justice, even though it's not a fill I think anybody will be as excited to read as I was to write. I hope it's not too much of a let-down for anybody hoping for more popular characters, but I haven't indulged my inner V-Force fanatic for a while lol
Day 24 | Zeo, Gordo | Rated: T
Memories
It was a Saturday afternoon and Zeo could hear a motorcycle rumbling up his driveway.
"Just like clockwork," he muttered to himself. He closed the book on his lap with a heavy thud and carried it to the edge of the balcony to wait.
The gates at the outskirts of the property were barely visible through the lush trees lining the drive, but he could see the metal move through the foliage as they swung shut. Only a handful of people knew the code to those gates. And only one of them had become a regular weekend visitor, even though he had to have better people to spend his time with. Real people, made out of flesh and blood instead of nuts and bolts.
In a flash of neon orange, the motorcyclist rounded the corner and followed the driveway past Zeo's balcony. He always parked in the same shady spot and left the keys with his bike; it was just Zeo and William here now, and neither of them were about to abscond with it.
The Kawasaki gave one final growl as Zeo's visitor killed the engine and dropped the kickstand. He dismounted and yanked off his helmet in one fluid movement revealing a familiar, red mohawk. Then his eyes locked on Zeo. He greeted him with a nod.
"Zeo."
"Gordo," Zeo replied, mimicking his old teammate's flat tone of voice. "What's the excuse today?"
After all of Zeo's family secrets were spilled at the finals, his father had gone on the record and confessed everything. While his dad's research wasn't necessarily illegal, some of the lengths he went to to complete it – including staging a theft from the BBA itself – were. With their lawyer's help, he was able to negotiate a plea deal, but he was still required to do jail time.
There'd been a lot of conversation about what would happen to Zeo during that time. With the revelation that he wasn't technically human, no one quite knew what to do with him. It had gotten as far as one of the BBA's lawyers suggesting they switch him off until after his dad's sentence, like he was no better than the television, before Gordo stepped in.
It was then that Zeo learned he wasn't just some beyblader selected to wield Orthros and help him win the Championships. He was a robotic engineering intern at his father's company, and directly responsible for a lot of the tech that made up Zeo's body. And he argued that, due to the nature of Zeo's programming, he could neither fend for himself nor be powered down indefinitely.
In the end, it had been the Zagarts' trusty butler, William, that stepped in to act as his temporary guardian and Gordo started spending more weekends at Zeo's house than he did his own. Every time Zeo asked him why, he got some lame excuse, but he was grateful for the company nonetheless.
"William asked me to replace the kitchen outlets," Gordo answered, squinting up at the balcony.
Zeo rolled his eyes.
Gordo grinned crookedly and started toward the front door without another word.
Tucking the book under his arm, Zeo headed inside and downstairs. Just like Gordo pretended he visited solely to check in and keep the house in working order, Zeo pretended he kept Gordo company to be a good host. In reality, it got lonely wandering around the house with only William to talk to. By the time the weekends rolled around, he was starved for company closer to his own age. At least, the age he was programmed to be.
He followed Gordo to the kitchen and settled himself in the sun drenched breakfast nook, opening his book on the table. Gordo tossed his tools onto the counter less gently than he would have done if William had been watching. His leather jacket, he chucked over the back of a chair on his way to the basement to shut the power off at the breaker.
(They'd spent one of Gordo's first weekend stays figuring out which breaker powered each room. All the yelling about which lights turned off when he flipped switches had been a great stress reliever during the early days of his dad's sentence.)
The kitchen got eerily quiet for a few seconds when the electricity clicked off and hum of the refrigerator stopped, until the sound of Gordo's boots climbing the stairs filled the void. He glanced at Zeo on his way past. A twitch of his eyebrow was the only sign he'd noticed that Zeo's book was an old photo album, but he didn't comment and immersed himself in his work.
Replacing outlets was child's play for Gordo and Zeo knew it. It had to be monotonous for him after a project like Zeo – Gordo called him the "weirdest internship ever" when asked, but seemed proud of his handiwork. Zeo didn't know if it was pride or pity that kept him coming around after the fact, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Zeo sighed and flicked his eyes back to the photo album. He'd found it, and half a dozen more, on one of his trips up to the attic. They were in an old box, covered in dust and cobwebs. He wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't been touched since before he was even constructed.
Flipping through the pages, he knew the Zeo in the pictures was the one from Before. He was younger in some photos than others. He was sunburned on the beach. He was holding his mother's hand. Zeo had never been another age. He'd never been sunburned and he'd never met the woman he remembered as his mother.
And yet, sometimes, he thought he could remember.
He remembered wincing his way through his first violin lesson and William's encouraging smile. He remembered his dad helping him launch a beyblade for the first time and how big and strong his hand felt on top of Zeo's. And he remembered the sound of his mother singing as rain pelted down on the glass roof of the conservatory.
But he'd never lived through any of it. Those were the Old Zeo's memories. Memories that should have been buried with him that Zeo stole.
He shoved the album away and turned to look out the window. William was in the back garden weeding, wearing a straw hat and an apron. He had a sprinkler set up near the flower beds and Zeo timed his breathing with its rotation in an effort to calm down. It wouldn't be good if he caused a random electrical surge and zapped the only person who ever bothered to visit him.
Speaking of, he could hear Gordo's footsteps approaching.
"If you're about to blow a fuse, let me know. I have an extra in my saddle bag." Zeo's only answer for him was a glare, so Gordo shrugged and sat down across the table. The photo album was right beside him. He spun it around to take a look, comfortable enough not to ask Zeo's permission. "Where did you find this?"
"The attic," he said shortly. "Guess my dad couldn't stand the sight of them." Zeo couldn't blame him – he'd yet to get the whole way through a single one of them without having an existential crisis. If he'd thought the sunshine or some company would keep it at bay, he was sorely mistaken and one hundred percent regretting it.
"He had you," Gordo responded with a shrug. "He didn't need the pictures."
Zeo's glare intensified as anger crackled, unexpectedly, under his skin. Something to do with Gordo's blasé attitude.
"That's not me," he spat, digging his nails into the meat of his palms. They felt sharp, even though they never grew. The feeling was enough to keep him from overloading. "It doesn't matter how many stupid memories he programmed into my head. I'm not the one in those pictures."
Gordo studied him with furrowed brows. Zeo could see a scar on one from where he'd had it pierced before taking a professional internship. Zeo's only scar was from the patch job they'd done on his arm after his battle against Tyson. His dad promised to fix it, then went to prison. Zeo was kind of glad; there was something about it he liked too much to let go of.
"What's this really about?" Gordo asked. He had a knack for seeing straight through people, especially Zeo. Though, that might have more to do with the fact that he'd helped breathe life into the pile of wires and circuits and scraps of metal that made up Zeo's body than his interpersonal skills.
Zeo frowned. "I'm not the one in those pictures," he repeated, leaning heavily back in the chair. Without thinking, his fingers found the scar on his arm and traced it. "I know that's who I'm meant to be. Sometimes it's even who I want to be. But… I'm not."
"Zeo—"
"You don't get it!" Zeo interrupted. He didn't want to be talked down right now; he wanted someone to listen. "I know who I'm supposed to be, just as well as I know I can't be that person because I'm a robot!"
Those two truths were always at war in his head. Finding the photo albums dragged them kicking and screaming to the forefront. Looking at the pictures felt like putting a puzzle together where each piece was a bit of his past, until he remembered the memories weren't his and the whole thing shattered, leaving him hanging in limbo.
"I have his memories. They feel like mine, which is wrong, but it's all I know." He paused and took a deep breath, conscious of the electrical current rushing through his veins where blood should be. "Sometimes I feel like I'm Zeo and I want to be him and belong here. Other times, I feel like I stole his life. None of his memories are mine; I wouldn't remember them at all if they weren't programmed into my brain."
Gordo stayed silent for a while when Zeo finished. It wasn't like there was anything he could say. The most specialized therapist in the world wouldn't be able to help Zeo navigate life as a robotic replacement for a grieving man's only son. To curb his embarrassment, Zeo watched William out the window some more – he'd moved on to cleaning and refilling the bird bath.
"You're more human than you give yourself credit for."
Zeo could see the reflection of Gordo shaking his head in the window panes and turned around.
"What are you talking about?" he asked, wishing, not for the first time, that he hadn't been programmed with such fluctuant and adolescent emotions.
"Memories are just like that," Gordo said, crossing his arms with a shrug. "For everyone," he added when Zeo opened his mouth to argue.
Zeo snapped his mouth shut and let a sullen look fall over his features. But he didn't interrupt when Gordo continued.
"No one remembers their whole childhood," he said, waving the thought away like it was preposterous. "We hear stories and call them memories, even though they're secondhand. That's no different than what Dr. Zagart did when he programmed you."
"Yeah, but—"
"You're not wrong for making those memories a part of you." Gordo's tone left no room for argument as he leaned forward, elbows on the table. The bad-boy facade chipped away a little when he smiled. "You also aren't wrong for wanting to have your own identity outside of someone else's vision for you. That's a part of being human."
Zeo was quiet for a moment, turning everything over in his head.
"Are you saying it doesn't matter?" he asked incredulously.
"If that's what you wanna take away." Gordo rolled his eyes and stood up. He ran both hands through his mohawk as he stretched. "Well, I'm gonna get back to work as long as you aren't over here frying your circuitry."
Zeo watched him shimmy the fridge out from between two cabinets to get at its outlet and thought about what he'd said.
If it was true that everybody had memories that were more hearsay than anything, maybe his experience wasn't that far-fetched. He didn't think it made him more human, but it did make him feel slightly less guilty for appropriating Old Zeo's memories. Just because he had them didn't mean he couldn't carve out his own identity like Gordo said.
His memories might have been programmed, but so was an impressive degree of free will. If he leaned into that, maybe he'd be able to adapt and grow and move past the person they modeled him after. Live life as himself instead of the shadow of Zagart's son. If he could figure out who he was.
"Gordo?"
There must have been some urgency in his voice because Gordo pulled back so fast he bumped into the fridge, making the contents inside rattle. A brief look of irritation flitted across his features before he fixed Zeo with an inquisitive look.
"What?"
"Will you cut my hair?"
Gordo froze and raised an eyebrow. When Zeo didn't immediately take it back, he asked, "You sure?"
Zeo thought of the photo album and all the pictures he'd seen of the Zeo from Before. He had the same long, green hair. More often than not, it was pulled back into the same braid that hung heavy down his own back. It would have taken him years to grow it – years that didn't belong to today's Zeo. And it would have been a hard color to replicate when crafting his replacement – but he was determined to become more than that.
"Well, yeah," Zeo said, some of Gordo's hesitation rubbing off on him regardless. "Why? Is it important?"
The clouds in Gordo's expression cleared and he shook his head. "Nah, I've seen your schematics. All the important stuff is safe inside."
"So…" He trailed off, sensing some reluctance from Gordo still. With a huff, he slid out of the breakfast nook and grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors from the junk drawer. He crossed the room to stand in front of Gordo and held the scissors out to him. "Will you cut it then?"
"I'm not a professional, Zeo," Gordo said, but took the scissors anyway.
"You did fine with yours," Zeo pointed out as he pulled a chair into the middle of the sunlit kitchen and sat down, letting his braid dangle over the back.
Gordo snorted and yanked a drawer open so he could fish a tea towel out of it. He set the scissors down so he didn't jab Zeo with them and draped the towel over his shoulders to keep the worst of the hair off his clothes. Carefully, he picked up the scissors again.
"All I had to do was cut my rat tail off," he said, moving into position behind. "And sometimes I shave the sides. You don't want a buzz cut do you?"
"Of course not." Zeo rolled his eyes, even though Gordo couldn't see. "Just start by cutting the braid off and then try not to make it look dumb."
"Tall order," Gordo shot back. He didn't wait for Zeo to reply before taking the scissors to his hair.
Zeo held his breath with the first cut. No turning back now. His hair wouldn't grow back like a real person's. But by the third snip of the scissors, he began to feel lighter. And when Gordo finished cutting across and his braid fell to the floor in a thick coil, it felt like he could breathe properly for the first time since that stormy night when he found out the truth about himself.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I gotta make it not look like shit first."
Zeo laughed as Gordo attempted to shape up his haircut and the limitless possibilities of the future unrolled like a red carpet before him. Now, when he looked in the mirror, he'd see more than the boy he was created to replace. He could forge his own path and make new memories to overshadow the old ones. Memories that were his alone.
He'd start with the look of shock on William's face when he walked in and saw Gordo hacking away at his hair and go from there.
A/N: I really enjoyed giving Gordo's character more depth in this chapter. I never gave him much thought before, but while brainstorming I started thinking about how he could've gotten roped into Zagart's plans. I don't think it's a stretch to assume he knew something about Zeo's true nature, given that it was such a driving force behind Zeo's every move once he found out. And I like the idea of him playing a bigger part than anybody realized. It gives his partnering with Zeo another layer, too - rather than being some random blader they chose, he has the technical know-how to keep an eye on Zeo during the tournament. Also, there's some shots in V-Force where he literally looks like he could be ten years older than Zeo, which I always thought was weird. So it gives purpose to that inconsistency, too lol
As for Zeo, poor guy needs someone to be checking on him. I like the idea of William remaining loyal to him, even though he knows he isn't the same little boy he watched grow up. And Gordo doesn't only visit because he feels responsible for his existence - I like to think he actually grew to enjoy his company and sees him as an individual. I had a good time exploring some of Zeo's inner turmoil, but I want him to be happy. He got such a raw deal.
Anyway, thank you to anyone who read this chapter! :)
