Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are arms around him. 

Everything hurts, a laundry list of alerts and warnings such that it would be easier to list what isn’t broken, but there are arms around him. Crimson-tipped fingers around his upper arm, holding him close to an orange and black chest.

It’s a familiar, awkward hold. Even like this, where the hands have very set places instead of being allowed to drape wherever, he recognizes the familiar tension in uncertain contact. Stolen moments in the near-dark, a one-time encounter that had become a shameful indulgence. Something like relief floods through him, curling at the base of his burning throat in the static imitation of a sob.

This hold means safety and warmth. This hold means that he was found, rescued? Wanted, and the jarring movement that shakes bits of his casing loose are the footsteps home. Even if ‘home’ was actually a cell no wider than the span of his arms, it was still better than this place that had twisted his body until it was as broken on the outside as he was inside. He loses himself in the feeling, letting it carry him along in a half-conscious haze. 

Consciousness returns abruptly when the arms are removed, leaving him laying on something hard and flat that sucks the heat from his shattered body. Blearily he forces one optic online, squinting at his surroundings in a haze of glitched pixels. 

Grey and black and bright light. Shapes that move and shapes that don’t. A twisting nest of cables and wires, like dull snakes with metal heads.

Panting breaths catch in a throat that doesn’t need to breathe, then start back twice as fast. Cables and wires– cables and wires twisting through with staring eyes, the mockery of an animatronic formed from a haphazard recipe. Needle points digging under his casing and into his head and into his chest, to pull and rip and tear–

Distantly, he can hear someone wailing. Distantly, he can hear voices, snappish and growling and weary. 

Hands force their way under his body, breaking off bits of metal that click against the concrete floor with the sound of frozen rain, high and delicate.

There are arms around him. 

It’s a familiar, awkward hold, keeping him close to a chest in shades of light and dark, but he doesn’t need the colors to recognize the person. The panic leaks away, pushed out by safety and warmth, and his throat burns with unformed words.

He doesn’t question the intrusion of plugs in his limbs, the back of his head. Battered systems connected to some distant machine, ready and waiting.

He doesn’t question the buzz of voices, a low growl turned up at the end in inquiry. An answer laced with gravel.

He doesn’t question what is being done, until it’s too late for questions.

Something tugs at him. Little bits and pieces unraveling, letting thoughts fall between ever-widening gaps, vanishing before they can hit the floor. A hollowness inching through his struts, painlessly eaten away from the inside out.

For a horrible, crystal-clear moment, there is realization. A stuttery laugh breaks free, purely from reflex.

-fear-resignation-grief-anger-fear-acceptance-remorse-fear-despair-fear-FEAR- 

He opens his hand and lets realization fall through the gaps.

He doesn’t want to think about it.

There are arms around him. There are arms around him, holding him, and it is more than he could have ever asked for because with these arms comes safety and warmth and peace. A sense of security that he thinks he might not deserve anymore, though he cannot remember why.

He basks in the feeling, letting it soak into his battered frame, easing the pain of a lifetime of struggle. As long as he’s right here, nothing will hurt him.

He was safe.

He was…

Cables fall to the floor one by one, until Eclipse cradles nothing but empty air. He lets his arms drop to his sides and continues to stare blankly at the scuffed concrete ground. 

Behind him is movement and noise: Moon’s frantic activity inside the repair cylinder, pressing buttons and checking the body stretched out in the chair. He flinches at the sound of a voice frustratingly like his own, a reminder of what he was and where he’d come from– but what sounds like Moon honest-to-god bursting into tears smothers some of his irritation. 

They’d done it. They’d succeeded.

Slowly, mechanically, Eclipse raises a hand to his head, unplugging the cable that had siphoned off his magic for the half-ritual, half-science procedure. He feels a bit fuzzy and hollow on the inside, his battery levels low– probably just a few side effects. Moon had been relying on him to shoulder a good portion of the burden, after all. 

Everyone had been relying on him. 

“I would like a hug.”

“Hey.” 

He flinches at the hand that claps down on his shoulder, crimson rays pinning back. Moon seems to have gotten himself reasonably under control, or at least enough to cross the Pizzaplex without attracting attention, but there are traces of wetness caught in the details of his face. 

Behind Moon is a dead man, an imperfect mirror. Eclipse can’t help the way his rays flare in irritation, and hearing a chuckle in his own voice just adds to his sour mood.

“I can’t believe I’m going to owe you for this.” It’s Moon who speaks, rough voice even thicker with unshed emotion. The words thank you are there, hidden between syllables, awkward on the lunar animatronic’s tongue. Solar’s head bobs like a wilted flower about to drop from its stem, his yellow eyes dim with exhaustion and low charge.

Eclipse could begrudgingly sympathize. Coming back from the dead was rough. 

“If you’re about to hug me or something, don’t,” Eclipse sneers. He hesitates, crimson-tipped fingers hovering over the navy and silver hand still touching him, before lightly tapping against it. Moon gets the message and lets go.

“Nah, I wouldn’t do that. Though I can’t say the same for Earth– she’s going to break you in half, so you better be prepared.” 

Conflicting emotions. Moon is clearly overjoyed and Solar still too numb to feel much, yet all Eclipse feels is a bubbling murky soup in his core, and he cannot grasp one thing long enough to identify it before it slips away. 

Pride. Embarrassment. Vindication. Anger. Hurt. Satisfaction. Unease. Bewilderment. 

…guilt. 

A trembling frame curled close against him. Bit of shattered casing breaking away with every movement, crying out in fearful desperation– yet quieting when held in Eclipse’s black and crimson arms. Finding comfort in fleeting contact, the echo of safety.

Crimson tipped fingers scratch against his chest. For a moment he thinks he can feel a lingering warmth, the whisper of something bittersweet, before the metal of his casing absorbs the heat. Now there’s nothing at all, nothing except a few thin scratches in his dark paint. A quick once-over with a buffing wheel and they would be gone completely. 

Like they never existed.

Chapter Text

“I thought I’d find you down here.” 

Gold and crimson rays pin back briefly as Eclipse startles. Steeling himself, he turns around to face the open door into Parts and Service, where his doppelganger leans casually against the frame.

“Congratulations, then. Your prize is my company,” he drawls. “Is there something you need, or are you just bored?” 

Solar chuckles, and the good-natured sound makes everything inside Eclipse’s chest twist up into complicated knots. The other animatronic’s approach stirs an impulse to either fight or flee that seems to be ingrained in his mangled code.

“Just checking up on you.” Solar stops some feet away, well outside an imaginary threat radius. “You’re down here a lot, so I was wondering if you had like, some kind of project or something like that.”

(Awkward attempts at friendliness and inclusion, a shift in treatment from the ‘family’. He'd won a place at the table by doing them a favor, and the price didn't even show up against the black and crimson of his hands.)

“Something like that,” Eclipse parrots, clipping the words off so that they’re just this side of civil. “Solo project, so sorry.”

He turns away, trying to ignore the sense of eyes on his back. A shift in his treatment, yet he finds himself drawn back to the pit instead, avoiding overtures built on false pretenses. They were sincere, he thinks– but dim lights and a scratched concrete floor gnaw at him, overshadowing offers of kindness.

None of them would understand, anyway. Hell, he barely understands. But there was something here– a whisper, an echo.

“Is it because of what you did to bring me back?”

Eclipse freezes. Slowly he pivots on his heel, until he’s once again facing his doppelganger.

“My head was all fuzzy, but right here–” Solar lifts a gloved finger and draws a circle in the air, encompassing the floor they stand on. “-- is exactly where you were standing when I came out of the cylinder. And you've been coming back down here for weeks.”

Static crackles from Eclipse’s chest, words unformed as he scrambles for something to say. He isn’t doing anything wrong, not really, and yet–

“....it's stupid.” The words fall from him, a low growl that he is too tired to keep clenched in his fist. He follows them to the floor, crouching with his knees almost tucked into his chest, arms wrapped protectively around his torso. Golden optics remain fixed on the scuffed concrete.

“It's stupid,” he repeats. “I'm not… someone who cares. Not about other people, their wellbeing or whatever. Hell, I don't even care about myself.” 

Solar makes a noncommittal noise, pants rustling as he crouches beside Eclipse. “Okay, so you don't care. What's the problem, then?”

“This! This whole… thing! It's not right!” Bells sing out in shrill tones as Eclipse gestures at the room. “It doesn't…feel right. What we did…” 

Eclipse lets his hand drop to the floor. “...I think he trusted me. He was in bad shape, cognition all scrambled–  he freaked out when we set him on the floor, so I ended up just…holding him in my arms the whole time.” 

(Earth had delicately remarked on the faint scratches and scuffs decorating his casing, offering to help redo his paint, and she hadn't been able to understand why Eclipse responded with barely-restrained anger.)

“And it's stupid that I can't stop thinking about how he probably thought he was safe –  that if he recognized us, then he probably thought he was going to get repaired, and instead we just–!” Words fail him, collapsing into a leaden tangle in the pit of his chest. Guilt and shame are unfamiliar emotions across all of his lives, and if he could, he would reach into his own torso to rip the feelings from his wires, freeing himself from the loathsome burden.

More rustling, the muted tap of metal against concrete: Solar’s fingers drumming on the floor. His doppelganger has his gaze focused on the cylinder before them. “It sucks that he was too far gone to save, then.”

The words bubble up in Eclipse’s throat, burning his tongue in defiance of a shameful vow of silence. 

“He wasn’t.” 

“Hmm?”

“When… when we got him away from Molten, he was in bad shape but he wasn’t that far gone.” His voice scrapes, like the memory of twisted joints and rusted metal. “You know what state he was in originally, when he came from his own world– it wasn’t much worse than that. He wasn't dying.”

Eclipse keeps his gaze on his hands, watching crimson tipped fingers curl tightly into his palms. Solar doesn’t say anything, and the silence is damning in its own way. 

“You already knew,” Eclipse breathes. “That’s why you came down here to ‘check on me’, isn’t it?” 

Solar tilts his head back, rubbing his neck as if they were capable of getting sore joints. “When Earth and Sun were asking questions, Moon sounded normal enough, but… I just got a feeling, you know? So I figured if anyone would know for certain, it'd be you.”

Silence falls for a few heartbeats, until Solar breaks it with a huff that isn’t quite a laugh, disappointed and painful. 

“I get it. I mean, I get it, really. He needed me to come back. And... I guess I should be flattered, or, or something. I always thought Moon would only put that much effort into doing the impossible if it was Sun’s life on the line.” Battered copper rays pin back, and Solar buries his face in his hand. His voice is tight, choked, like he’s doing everything in his power to keep from gagging on the words. “I am grateful to be here. I just wish... It hadn’t been like this. Not again.”

Something hovers just out of reach, a gap in knowledge that Eclipse doesn’t know if it has ever been filled. He had only met the other Eclipse once before this life, a half-remembered flurry of threats and unpleasant surprises, and he hadn’t exactly cared to learn much else at the time.

Still, Eclipse had begrudgingly learned a little over the weeks spent cooperating. “No, you're the type to throw yourself in front of a bus to protect little old ladies crossing the street, aren't you.”

And Solar snorts reflexively, dropping his hand. “Yeah, something like that.”

Eclipse can’t help the nervous scratching of his fingers against the floor, until Solar stands in a chorus of creaking joints and rustling fabric. 

A hand is shoved into Eclipse’s face, and he follows it up to meet golden eyes.

“Tell you what. I’ll help you figure out some way to bring the guy back.” Solar shrugs. “As far as I know we’re not working on a deadline here, so we can take our time to find a solution that doesn’t hinge on anyone losing their life.”

Eclipse stares at his reflection– the ‘good’ Eclipse, the one that had achieved the impossible goal of belonging. Their faces are fixed in the same mocking grin, so there’s nothing to be read in Solar’s expression. 

Crimson claws dig lightly into worn leather as Eclipse takes the offered hand.

“Everyone is going to hate this, you know,” he practically cackles as Solar pulls him to his feet. “ Especially Moon.”

Solar shrugs again, dropping Eclipse’s hand. There's a hint of defiant amusement in his own voice. “Yeah, probably. It's not like they're going to stop us, though.”

They wouldn’t dare.

Chapter Text

There is no gradual change from isn't to is.  

No slow return to awareness, an impossible dream flaking away like dust in the face of reality– just being, and the fading horror that a moment ago, he wasn't. 

“--thought you said he wasn't in bad shape?!”

“I said he was in bad shape, he just wasn't dying! Look, just shut up and grab–”

Everything hurts.

He's damaged, processor struggling under the weight of countless errors, threatening to tip him over into a much more tangible state of unresponsiveness. There's a high keening sound that vibrates in his battered chest, resonates with his burning throat.

“--you got the–”

“--es, now move, before–”

Voices. An echo playing against itself, back and forth. Twins, perhaps? But none of the twins he knows sound alike, not like this, and it muddles his understanding even further.

Hands force themselves under his broken body, scraping against the cold surface underneath, and–

–and this already happened, didn’t it? How did it turn out the first time? 

He can’t remember. Everything hurts, and there’s a dark, sucking hole where his memory should be, oozing unease and tension. The keening cuts off, replaced by a staccato burst of static. He should twist away, he should escape, except his limbs won’t cooperate and his chest is full of smothering heat and–

-and there are arms around him. Holding him close to a chest in shades of light and dark. Something brushes the fractured remains of his rays, and from the shape of it, he thinks it might be another disk-shaped head tucking over his own.

Quiet muttering, and he stills just to be able to hear it better, because he’s certain there was something novel in that rasping voice. Following the sounds up and down, until a few resolve themselves into words.

“‘m sorry.” 

The hands holding him tighten their grip ever so slightly, because I’m sorry and you’re safe this time and I promise. Concepts that flit through his shattered mind, leaving impressions more than meaning… yet gradually, the tension eases from his frame, bleeding away drop by drop.

He remembers safety, and warmth. The sting of betrayal fades under awkward apologies, leaving behind no more than a dull ache. He cannot remember what happened, but he knows that he was somewhere else, and this hold means that he was found. Brought home.

Home?

Jarring movements cease. Behind a haze of overexposed static he is aware of movement, shadows and sounds. Something touches his arm, the fragmented casing barely registering the pressure. 

“Hey there, buddy. You remember me, right?”

A person, probably; casing split between light and dark, a crest of pale rays. He cannot tell any more than that, and trying to look makes his head hurt worse.

“--’s okay. We're gonna fix you up, so just–” 

It hurts. Focusing, thinking, being. The arms cradling his body are keeping him safe, but they cannot keep the hurt at bay, and his meager energy is steadily depleting.

“--shutting down.”

“I mean, can you blame–”

Darkness and static stillness eat away at him. The temporary death visited upon a machine, systems going offline as they ran out of power, leaving the body at the complete mercy of whoever might deign to turn it back on. A risk he’s only rarely taken in his long life, yet this time there’s no choice in it.

Does he want to wake up? Does he want to be?  

The head tucked over his own presses closer, rasped words barely audible over his own systems. He misses most of them, but the sense of It’s okay sinks in past the static.

Safety. Warmth. 

Everything stops.

“We need to have a serious talk about what you consider ‘catastrophic damage’.” 

“Look, I’m a programmer, not an engineer.”

“No, you’re a mess built out of scavenged arcade machines. I think your judgment is a little skewed.”

Eclipse swipes at the oil-stained rag that impacts his crescent face, balling it up and tossing it back at Solar. It goes wide and hits the floor instead, prompting a snort from the other mech. 

“Judgment and depth perception. I’ve seen old ladies make better throws than that.”

Eclipse rolls his eyes and turns his attention to the frame laid out in the chair. The harsh light of the repair cylinder exposes every bit of damage, and as much as he hates to admit it, Solar might have a point. Still…

“I was right, though.” A black and crimson hand reaches out to gently rest on the shattered chest casing, feeling the slight vibration of repaired fans. 

And Solar just shakes his head, dim eyes flickering briefly. Mild humor laces his tired voice. “Yeah, you were right. Kinda wish you’d remembered anyway, though. Could have saved me a lot of stress.”

“You actually did it.”

The low, breathless voice has Eclipse looking over his shoulder, where Moon stands in the doorway to the cylinder. Unease prickles up and down Eclipse’s metal spine. 

It was fine, it wasn’t like they’d kept this a secret, they hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I am a miracle worker, you know,” he replies with forced nonchalance. Moon doesn’t seem to hear him. All of the lunar animatronic’s attention is on the figure stretched out in the chair, and only when Eclipse steps forward to break his line of sight does he finally look up. 

“It’s too late to do anything about it,” adds Solar. Eclipse doesn’t miss the way Moon winces, how his gaze slides away like his best friend is made of butter. 

“I wasn’t–! I won’t…” Moon sighs and shakes his head. “The Computer picked up a massive spike in magic, so I was just checking to see how you guys were doing. That’s all. I didn’t expect you to be… done?”

“Well, he’s gotten the patch job, but I wouldn’t call things ‘done’.” Quite as if he doesn’t notice the thick, awkward atmosphere, Solar walks around the chair, to the cart loaded down with recently removed parts. “We focused on getting the essentials going, rather than anything cosmetic, so that’s why he still looks like a mess. As soon as his battery is charged enough we’re going to wake him up and see how he’s doing mentally.”

“You should stick around, say hello.” It’s petty, and rude, but Eclipse is too tired to fight off the impulse to sink nonfunctioning teeth into an obvious weakness. “He might not remember what happened.”

Moon stiffens at Eclipse’s tone, but a brief glance at the figure in the chair has his shoulders slumping. “No, that’s…that’s alright. I think I’ll head back upstairs and tell everyone that they should expect to see him around soon.” Deliberately not looking at any Eclipse, Moon turns on his heel. 

“Moon?”

The lunar animatronic freezes. One eye peeps back over his shoulder, just enough to look at Solar. “Yeah?”

“You’re going to have to face this eventually.” Solar’s voice is flat, with a rarely-heard edge that makes Moon flinch. Without another word he slinks off, shoulders bowed under Solar’s golden gaze.

Quiet fills the vacuum left behind by Moon’s departure, until Eclipse breaks it with an almost normal tone of voice. “You know, I thought I’d enjoy the drama a little more.”

Solar barks out a laugh. “Maybe you’re going through some character growth– or you’ve got a virus. Actually, nevermind, it’s probably that. I can scan you after we wake him up, if you want.”

There isn't another rag to throw, so Eclipse settles for making a Daycare-inappropriate gesture, which Solar returns with interest.

“Let's just get this over with, before anyone else shows up.” His usual drawl neatly covers up the uneasy feeling crawling through his circuits as Eclipse glances at the door, then down at the chair. It was beyond too late for questions or doubts–  the only thing left was to face the consequences. 

Solar flicks his fingers in a little salute and approaches the prone form. He does something around its head, and Eclipse finds himself holding his ‘breath’ as recently replaced fans start up, rattling in their housings and nearly covering the whine of a processor. Red and blue optics flicker before coming fully online, their dim glow pointed at the ceiling. 

The tangled knot of guilt and shame that had lived in his circuits for the past couple of months loosens, all at once. Without really thinking about it, he waves a crimson-tipped hand. “Hey.”

A long moment of silence, broken by uncertain chirps from Ruin’s barely functional vocalizer. “H-hello.”

“...alright, enough with the riveting banter.” Solar waves off Eclipse’s offended snarl, stepping up to the foot of the chair. Ruin regards him with the same blank uncertainty that he’d shown the ceiling, even when Solar offers a hand to pull him up to a more upright position. “There we go. Hey, you’re with us, right?”

More silence, and Eclipse can see the same worry beginning to creep through his wires reflected in Solar’s copper rays angling back. Before either of them can get too worked up, there’s another little static sound, and Ruin accepts the offered hand. 

“I– yes, I believe that I am.” His endoskeleton creaks as he moves, bits of casing joining what already litters the floor. “Or perhaps I’m not, and it is you who are with me? Because– and do correct me if I’m wrong– you’re dead, Solar.”

“Yeah, funny how that kind of thing doesn’t stick around here.” 

“I-I see.” Red and blue optics drop to skeletal hands. “Yes, I do remember now. Moon had a plan, of sorts, didn’t he? A life for a life.” Those hands clench into tight fists, joints squealing softly.

Eclipse’s own claws bite into his palms as the shame begins creeping up on him again. “Yeah.”

“There was a cell, and then there was a different cell, and that twisted imitation of an animatronic. And then…” the words break into more static, the rough idea of a laugh. “Moon got what he wanted. I don’t begrudge him, you know. It makes perfect sense. What does not, however, is this.” 

He looks up at Eclipse, bewildered and lost. “Why am I alive?”

Eclipse had been expecting the question, because it’s the same one he’d been asking himself for months. All through the search for a way to alter a dimensional signature, scouring the computers to find an imprint of Ruin’s code, dealing with awkward questions and cold looks from the others. 

Why go through the trouble of bringing back Ruin, of all people? Who would want to see the amalgamate AI alive again?

(The fleeting impression of trust, of safety found in undeserving arms. He was familiar with betrayal, but this time… this time it hadn’t been on purpose.)

Eclipse is the only one that can answer, in his own way. With a sneer and a snarl, golden rays pinning back.

“You brought me back from the dead. Twice, actually.” He crosses his arms and looks down at Ruin. “Do you really think I'd let you get out of dealing with all of this crap? Nuh-uh, nope– if I have to be alive, so do you.” 

Mismatched eyes flicker briefly, searching Eclipse’s fixed expression for something. Falsehood, a trick. When nothing is found, soft static chirps begin sounding from the damaged bot’s chest, resolving themselves into hiccuping sobs as Ruin drops his face into his hands. 

“Of– of course!” He forces out. “Of course, t-that…yes, t-that’s fair. That’s fair.”

Eclipse’s stiff pose loosens slightly, and after a warning glance at Solar to not say anything, he sits down on the edge of the chair. Immediately there are damaged arms wrapping around his torso, a shattered face pressed into his chest.

Eclipse ignores the thin scratches being carved into his paint, the few bits of loose casing falling away from a broken body. He rests his hand on Ruin’s back, moving it in tiny circles. If his voice is unusually quiet, threatening to crack in the middle, he ignores that, too. 

“You’re okay now. You’re home.”