Work Text:
Shadow buffed the familiar gold metal at his fingertips with a soft cloth. His mouth was covered by another, tied like a balaclava around his muzzle. Instead of with breath, he blew away the metal filings from tiny crevices with a can of pressurised air, with a touch so delicate it barely 'shushed' the subject to sleep.
"Cosmetic inspection complete?"
"Don't rush me." Shadow snapped. Omega's voice had that tone he'd learned from Rouge long ago - it was almost imperceptible to anyone who knew them any less, as they didn't share anything else about their speech. But that lilt: a waving pitch like a flourish on a page. No robot should have done that. But now it was critical that he'd saved it.
Shadow took his tiny hair brushes to the details - softly they slipped over each nook and cranny of their creation. Once they had danced the whole project over, his pointed tweezers and minuscule star head screwdriver followed to test every tiny join. Screws with heads so small they looked like freckles, but longer than a manicured nail in depth, sat flat or indented under their covers.
"Adjustments to exterior can be made after functionality is confirmed."
"We have one chance to impress her, Omega."
Omega sat back from Shadow, watching him paw obsessively at the tiniest thing. Compared to the gleaming masterpiece, he looked horrible: his fur was thin around the temples were he rubbed them and his quills were months unbrushed, sticking out like a mad professor's moustache to the sides of his face.
Omega's own appearance was, he presumed, pristine. He didn't give it much thought these days, but he couldn't think what that he had done would have degraded him. That was, of course, the whole point.
His implements sat poised in perfect alignment. The final installation - their greatest achievement yet. It was the culmination of years of work and both their very lives, so naturally he could not wait any longer to seat it on its throne. And for all the same reasons, Shadow would find a hundred more excuses to delay this day.
"Reminder: you promised."
"I promised we would if we were ready."
"You are not readying. You are stalling."
"It's not stalling! I think we need to replace this - Aluminium Oxide won't be hard enough: long term-"
"I miss her."
"… and of course I miss her too. But she won't come back if it's not perfect."
Omega made to stand up, which demanded Shadow's attention as he blocked him from the operation table.
"No. Not after last time. You're too indelicate."
"Carbon fibre had fault! Fault was not with this unit's power output!"
Shadow glared at Omega, and stayed between Omega and the subject as Omega tiptoed around to the desk controls. He pressed the tilt and gently the bench rose on one end so that it stood up slowly, and the harsh light of the room and Shadow's head torch winked over its wondrousness.
"She is beautiful Shadow."
Shadow's eyes were dragged to their work. He had never put so much time, energy, mind and body into something. He had barely seen sunlight for months at this point; the gold of their creation in the fluorescent laboratory was brighter than he remembered any star he might once have errantly considered the centre point of the solar system.
"I miss her." Omega repeated.
I'm too afraid.
But he wasn't. Not too afraid. He'd never be too afraid, or too weak, or powerless or slow ever again. He knew this time he could be perfect, looking at what they'd done, and knowing now that she would be perfect too.
"Fine." He said, but it made Omega uneasy. Shadow's moods, his great and mad elation followed by despair and anger that threatened their whole mission, had been as difficult to manage as anything other part of their objective. He didn't like to use Shadow's self-destructive limbic system to his own gain, but it had become a disturbing habit that he told himself he picked up out of necessity and now deployed too readily. But working on himself was not, nor would ever be, the priority.
Because manipulation worked, and selfishness with a veneer of compassion would never be revealed. He missed her so much. It would all be worth it.
Shadow gazed at her, immobilised. Omega took the sum total of all their best friend, computerised and condensed into a sleek chrome button, thick in the middle with a spinner so it could switch gears when needed, and mounted it on the needle in the centre of her titanium chest, framed with gold and set with a dazzling pink crystal.
He pulled the pins out of both of her ears, and shutters snapped and locked tight so no weak point could be exploited. As the connections clinked together in her head, the machine hummed soft as a sigh from a woman just resting her eyes for a moment. Her finger twitched.
Shadow leaned on her stand in awe. He could stare at her forever, and now he would. She was perfect, invulnerable now, with the two of them for as long as they would 'live'. Something whole and undefeatable, no natural born weak link to their chain who would abandon him again. He forgave her, of course, just hearing her voice again would-
She screamed.
Her eyes snapped open, revealing glowing cyan rings around lenses that darted around. The restraints keeping her in place jolted as she jerked, snapping instantly against the unruly power they'd eagerly given her. Metal talons clanked to her core where she expected to find a fatal wound, but found only cold metal and glittering gems.
What was wrong with her eyes? Had her head been hit too, she couldn't make her eyes focus for more than a millisecond on what was right before her - they stretched from the furthest distance of the cold lab before her and beyond throwing everything around her into blurry nothingness. She had been sure she was in more pain than she'd ever felt, but now she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel it. Was she cut in half?
She scrabbled at herself, and strong hangs grabbed her. Throwing her head around wildly didn't stop them, and animal craving took over - she made to bite the cannon arm holding her down.
Bite?
Bite?
Bite with what? She couldn't find her mouth. She screamed again, but her mouth didn't move, because it wasn't needed.
"It's okay, you're okay, you're alive, just be calm!"
That voice was familiarity itself, but sounded so foreign to her. Shadow wasn't himself. Something here was very, very wrong if Shadow was laughing like a child with pure hearted joy while Rouge was in an unknown torment. She willed herself to look at him in the moments between the blur, and saw only a mad man. To her other side, and holding her down, was the blank face of Omega, but somehow that was more intelligible: fear - no, panic - and something complicated like longing. Like he might cry. How could he ever cry?
These weren't the friends she knew. Rouge spasmed for a moment in containment, then burst from them again onto wings that jetted. When she thought simply about flying, they served her perfectly, but the moment she saw that they weren't flapping but gliding and pumping out fire they felt heavy and she couldn't manually move them. She tumbled and crashed against the wall and to the ground, knocking drawers and tools with her.
"Careful! Don't scratch!" Shadow gasped, but she pushed him from her with an arm like a battering ram that gleamed with gold. Gold. White gold, but gold. Her shifting focus found her own hand with horror:
It was a metal prosthetic that moved as fluidly as a dancer could: a joint so perfectly moulded it could roll on itself silently. Talons made of shining pink sapphire shaped like almond nail extensions glittered at her mesmerisingly on the points of fingers that closed so softly but formed a fist that could shatter titanium.
"What is this?" She gasped, and her own voice played from somewhere almost at her own mouth, but not coming from her throat. She grasped at it, and felt nothing but more joints - no hum when she tried to talk or warmth and softness. They stared at her. She tried to stare back, lenses contracting and dilating with tiny whirrs as they tried to make sense of anything.
"Rouge… We've missed you so much…"
Shadow was coming towards her, and for a brief moment in the blackness of his own wide eyes she saw herself. It was only a flash, but her digital mind was so fast that it was enough:
A gaudy monstrosity shaped like a bat. A distillation of the vanity they thought she had, and their own stubborn denial of grief, had manifest into something disgustingly opulent and perfect.
Shadow staggered back towards her, stumbled by love for his best friend made perfect in immortality, but Omega caught him, holding his body in his own large palms back from Rouge. If a robot could sweat, he was sweating bullets when she shivered and stood herself up and spoke without moving her lips.
"What have you done?"