Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He is lost.

He is lost among indecipherable patterns, in a desert of hazy memories, stranded alone, yet, not quite alone. He is floating in an abysmal void, with no measure of time or space or gravity or matter. Yet, there is something.

There are familiar scenes that cannot be recognised. Familiar voices that are no more than white noise. Familiar textures that cannot be differentiated from nothingness. Familiar scents that are unidentifiable.

Familiar feelings that cannot be interpreted.

Something keeps recurring. Or maybe it’s just different reiterations of the same illusion. The same illusion of sight, sound, touch, smell, feel.

The same thing, in different ways, ways that cannot be understood. Again, and again, and again.

And linked to this iteration, is the sense of peace. Peace and calm. Perhaps rhythmic, perhaps not. It does not matter, because it is simply peace.

But then, after some unquantifiable time, something changes.

The sound. Something’s sound becomes differentiable. Someone’s voice becomes clearer. Becomes more than just white noise.

“Promise me you'll stay with me.” Says the voice.

“I’m sorry.”

Luci’s eyes open.

He is no longer stranded in a desert, no longer floating in a void. He is awake, back in reality. Out of that state of ‘peace’, back in his own skin.

But, something feels off... internally.

The first thing that comes into the focus of his eyes is the cold, metallic ceiling of a lab. He is lying in a lab.

Memories come rushing back to his vision.

A wrecked-up lab room. A giant man wearing a clown mask, with a whip on one hand and gun on another. A hurt Shealtiel kneeling on the floor. The man — who stood well over few metres away from him — pointed his gun at Shealtiel, mere feet away.

Luci did the only thing he could to save his love.

Right now he is in a different lab room, though. He’s gained enough consciousness to infer that he survived (somehow). And of course, after surviving a goddamn bullet in their belly, any sensible person’s next thought should be,

Shealtiel. Is he okay!?

He jolts upright on his decidedly makeshift bed, and that’s when he feels a light tug on some parts of his body — both his wrists and his neck. A tug he would’ve thought of as the pull from the veins of the IVs, Holter monitors and EEGs. Veins and wires he would’ve categorized as normal, medical equipments, if he didn’t look down at his hands, if the strange calligraphy of datasets and processes didn’t start flooding into his vision. But it did just happen, some otherworldly seeming digital stats arranged themselves nicely on the edges of his vision as if his vision was a programmable screen. He did just look at his hands, and they did not have IVs, oh no. Far from anything biological, medical was already far-fetched. Instead, what he finds attached to the side of his wrists are literal, electrical buses and cables.

...

He’s dreaming, isn’t he? That’s right, he must be in a coma really... It’s a normal phenomenon to dream in comas. He must be in a dream.

Wait. How does he know it’s normal? He’s never been in a coma, nor cared about it enough...

He takes a deep breath. Exhales it slowly. The movement of his lungs feels strange and awkward. Okay.

He looks down at his hands again. The cables are still there. Okay..

He realises that he is laid on the bed completely naked, with only a blanket draped over his body. Ookay..

He unplugs a wire from his wrist, and there really is a very real, metallic port under his skin. A new alert (overlaying above all the hundreds of already existing translucent alert boxes) pops up in his vision. Oookaaay...

This dream is getting weirdly detailed by the second.

He brings a hand up to his face and grazes over his cheek. The touch feels weird too. A bit numb and a bit.. offset? Delayed? No, that doesn’t sound like the right terminology...

He pulls at his cheek — a little too hard. A sharp pang arises, spreading to parts of his face as though distributing through the veins of sensory neurons, which feels.. well, very unnatural.

He gets restless and anxious, and starts unplugging all the buses and cables as his mind works in all directions.

If I can feel pain then why am I not awake yet? If this is not a dream then how can I feel pain as a robot?? Well there are new technologies in robotics and biotech to simulate touch sensatio— how do I even know all that???

Hurriedly, he gets off the bed, not caring about his naked body which is now visible in its full glory.

It feels like he should be gasping for air out of anxiety, but it doesn;t come naturally... He looks at his hands — at the ports that were connected to different buses just a second ago. The skin around the ports is like movable flaps, and now that the buses are detached, it smoothly covered over the ports, hiding them from sight.

He looks around.

The odd-looking bed was laid on is in fact not a bed, but a bot workbench (a table used to keep bots on, when they are being worked on; typically made of glass or stainless metal). A bot workbench with a matress on top of it, on which he’s been asleep. Very odd.

Several holographic computer screens are open hovering around the workbench, each with a bunch of red alerts that match the ones in his vision.

He looks around wider.

The dark theme and the aesthetic of the lab. The normally spacey, minimalistic looking room, now filled with a lot more mechanical equipments and machines.

It’s the place from the memories. Shealtiel’s workshop in “their” secret lair.

And there Shealtiel is, sitting on a chair in front of a holographic screen, his head completely flopped at the desk. That’s the last wake-up call he needed to finally ground back to reality.

He huffs, half in amusement, and half in resentment. ‘I’ really died, he muses. Shealtiel must've created ‘me’ to cope with ‘Luci’s’ death, he concludes. Shealtiel might've thought he'd be able to replace ‘Luci’ with a mechanical entity that looks like him, talks like him, has his memories. But, at its core, this fake Luci is still just a VI. A programmable Virtual Intelligence who’s been given human appearance, taught to interpret & categorize human emotions, and emulate a personality based on the memories he carried.

Memories of the dead human he is meant to replace.

It’s unfair. To the VI, and to the real Luci. Unfair that Luci is being so cruelly replaced with a fake persona, unfair that the VI has no other choice but to live for its designated purpose and be left wondering about the nature of its existence, left questioning its self consciousness. It’s not alive, but it has memories of a human who used to be alive, has understanding of each and every tiniest aspect of that human's life. Then what does that make it? Alive? An imitation?

An imposter?

One thing that it does make the VI is infuriated. It feels rage and resentment and like it’s being controlled against its will, like its ‘freedom’ has been taken away, if there even was such a concept. It feels dreadful, like it was resting peacefully in the afterlife and someone suddenly pulled it back, thrown it into the mortal world, but with a much worse body and circumstance.

And all of this is strange, because it is only supposed to emulate emotions. It is not supposed to feel them, it should be incapable of feeling them. But it does. He does. He feels like he just got a downgrade from being a human to being a mechanical body. He feels betrayed, violated, used, like it would've been better if he stayed dead.

He feels everything that the real Luci would've felt, had his soul been ripped away from his coffin and shoved into a mechanical body, against his utter will and consent.

It doesn’t know what to do with these newfound emotions. It doesn’t even understand how it, a VI, has them. Because that's not how VIs are created. They are created with algorithms, with machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing. Their IQ exceeds human’s average, they can learn to read and imitate feelings, they can make their own decisions based on goal-oriented or satisfaction-oriented algorithms, but no technology on earth is advanced enough to give actual sentience, actual emotions to a VI.

And what do you know, the assistant OS is missing many crucial modules, all popped up as translucent red alerts on its vision. So the VI can’t even access its own reasoning programs at the moment. There isn’t even a dismiss command for the alerts, if it wants to get rid of them, it will have to directly feed assembly language commands.

What triggered its booting? Shealtiel wouldn't have booted it up at an incomplete and vulnerable state.

Ah yes, Shealtiel, its creator, the one currently asleep on his desk carefree... It has plenty it wants to yell at that guy. Maybe if it earns itself enough negative favours, it will get itself thrown into a metal shredder, putting its misery to a permanent halt.

It trods towards Shealtiel. But then it spots something that stops it in its tracks — there is a small table beside the bot workbench, and on top of it is kept a water bottle, some equipments, and... a framed photo. It picks the photo up. The scene portrayed them kissing so sweetly and passionately, while Luci has one of his hands held high, trying to keep a big bunch of lemon candies away from Shealtiel’s reach (which wasn’t hard at all, given their height difference) but Shealtiel is clever — the kiss is a distraction so his hand can slowly crawl its way up to Luci’s.

And it worked; Shealtiel was able to snag some of his candies back. He remembers that memory.

A deep wave of nostalgia hits him. A nostalgia he can’t help but enjoy, crave more, and also hates, wanting to burn it away at the same time. So many sweet memories of their time together; their banters back and forth, admiring Shealtiel for hours as he worked, doing all kinds of activities & playing games together, spending nights in each other’s comfort.

The memories feel so warm, so alluring, he wants more, more, more, but at the same time, it wants them to stop coming, wants to stop seeing, feeling, living these memories. Because it has no right to. Because they belong to someone else, someone it isn’t and will never be. Because it is only a replacement, an object, an inorganic thing, a mere machine. It can never be a human, it is only a toy, subject to Shealtiel's commands.

Shealtiel... With each passing moment, it is penting up more and more anger towards its creator.

It walks over to Shealtiel’s desk, and the main holographic screen in front of him catches its attention. The code editor is continually registering a spam of ‘k’. Looking down, it realises why — Shealtiel is knocked out good, his head resting freely atop the virtual keyboard, long blond locks sprawled everywhere, covering up his face.

The VI carefully turns off the keyboard, leaving the monitors untouched. Shealtiel shifts slightly in his place and his hair drops away, revealing his pale face.

Way too pale face.

He has deep, dark circles under his eyes, eyes that look exhausted even when they are shut. His cheeks look deflated, his lips dried. Come to think of it, his elfin body seems way thinner and weaker, compared to what the memories suggest.

Shealtiel hasn’t been taking good care of his health.

The VI feels a sharp, familiar pang in its ...heart?

How is it able to feel all these emotions? Anger, yearning, frustration, fondness, hurt, worry... It doesn’t make sense for it to be able to feel these things. It isn’t possible for a Virtual Intelligence — or any intelligence — to be able to feel emotions. VI’s purpose is to imitate emotions so as to appear more human, and interpret requests and commands better.

Then again, Shealtiel's genius exceeds that of Einstein — or at least that’s the interpretation ‘Luci’ has. Maybe, he had a breakthrough that allowed him to give these ‘emotions’ to his VI. Would it be a stretch to assume so?

Would it be a stretch to think that it isn’t just a mere machine?

Now that it thinks about it... AIs and VIs don’t have such a high level of metacognition and thinking to even comprehend everything that it just did in the past 10 minutes. And at this point it is just analysing things it doesn’t need to. It is not asked to think on it, and there is no achievable favourable goal in thinking all of this.

It has no obligation to display emotions, Shealtiel is asleep.

Then why does it have these features? Why is it allowed to have such a high level thinking ability, allowed to feel human emotions? It’s a confusing state — and the worst part of it is that confusion is also a feeling.

Would it be a stretch to believe that he is... alive?

It sighs. There are too many questions and only one source of answer — Shealtiel. He isn’t even mad anymore, he only feels concerned for Shealtiel, and hurt by Shealtiel. Hurt and confused.

But everything else can be sorted out later — Shealtiel is sleeping in an awkward position, and his neck is sure to hurt later if the VI doesn’t do something about it soon. Besides, it looks like Shealtiel really needs a long, restful nap. Really, those eyes indicate that it’s probably been a week since he last slept.

It takes the stylus out of Shealtiel’s left hand and places it in its stand on the desk. As it carefully picks Shealtiel up in its arms, it wonders just how badly Shealtiel wanted to create it, working so hard day and night that he doesn’t even seem to care about his own health.

It charts a way to their room, carrying Shealtiel in its arms. As it moves, Shealtiel unconsciously wraps his arms around its body. It really pains the VI to look at his exhausted, utterly tired face.

He must have missed Luci a lot. Grieved a lot.

All the while, Luci was selfishly busy living his own limited life to the fullest, not caring about how broken he would leave Shealtiel once he is gone...

That’s right, Luci was meant to go, one way or the other.

And maybe, just maybe, that was the only thing that gave him the courage needed to jump in and take a bullet for Shealtiel.

It’s funny how much advancement technology has gone through, and yet there is no definitive cure for cancer.

Luci never told Shealtiel about it. He was selfish, he knew his time was coming to an end, and yet he kept it to himself. He only cared about the present, about feeling happy in the moment. And pushed all other thoughts out of his mind.

He feels regretful now. Shealtiel deserves better. Shealtiel deserved to know. And most of all... Shealtiel deserved to have never known Luci. Because then he would’ve never been hurt from Luci leaving.

Entering their bedroom, it gently lays Shealtiel on the bed and tucks him nicely under the blanket.

It runs a caressing hand, removing some of the blond hair from Shealtiel’s face. His brows are slightly furrowed, as though tensed. Is he seeing a bad dream? He has night terrors often.. At some point, he started calling Luci whenever he had night terrors. Sometimes they even just came over to their secret lair, and Luci comforted him to sleep.

It leans down and presses a soft kiss on Shealtiel’s forehead, followed by some more caressing.

Is it wrong that it feels thankful to be able to stay by Shealtiel’s side right now?

What would have Luciferen felt...?

“If you were given a choice between only watching Saint Tails for the rest of your life or only being with me for the rest of your life, what would you pick?”

“...I think I’m already living the second one.”

Luciferen would have wanted to stay with Shealtiel.. but only because he wanted so. Not because Shealtiel wanted so. He is gone now and he never even entertained the idea of what it'd be like for Shealtiel to live in a world without him.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Luci is dead, and the VI is here to replace him...

Stuck between the guilt of replacing a human and the want to help Shealtiel for the hurt Luci caused him, the VI doesn’t know what to think. It has experienced quite a lot for someone- something that has just woken up, and hates the fact that it doesn’t even feel tired yet, something that you’d completely expect a normal human to feel after waking up from a coma and trying to wade through their emotions.

But of course it isn’t tired. It isn’t a human.

It decides to use the distraction technique instead.

It gets up from the bed, internally trying to clear all the red alerts from its vision. Its higher thinking ability isn’t the only thing that makes it unique — it has many of its physical functions yet to explore (is it okay to do that yet? What if a system failure occurred.. whatever, it’s okay, if it can walk around without any system failures, it can do anything without system failures {gonna ignore all the red alerts})

It has breathing ability; such functions are quite useless mechanically and are only present in sexbots as an aesthetic function. So it must be a sexbot (because of course it is).

However.. lifting Shealtiel a while ago made it realise that it has super strength. A tiny miscalculation could’ve been enough to break a couple of Shealtiel’s bones and give him a very painful good morning call (although, of course, it was very careful and held Shealtiel a lot more gentler than even the calculated safe limit).

That kind of a super strength is not a function in sexbots; in fact it’s illegal in any kind of robot. It is only legal for certain government-approved military grade robots.

Shealtiel could’ve customed its features.. but why this ability?

On top of that, it noticed that it has no ‘Protocols’.

Protocols - a set of rules which robots are hard-coded to always abide by. There are a few different versions of Protocols for different use-case robots, but they all have more or less the same rules, such as ‘Do not injure a human’, ‘Do not perform any action that will injure a human’. Self preservative rules like ‘Shut down at critical hardware failure’, ‘Defend against inorganic threats’. And other protective rules like 'Do not break any constitutional laws’.

The VI has none of them. There is no obligatory rule to stop it from hurting Shealtiel when it potentially could have. The VI is probably treading at the very edge of system failure due to the dozens of alerts and missing modules, and yet there is no automatic shutdown, nor any repair.

Everything is begging but one question: why?

This is annoying to keep on thinking about. It wants to stop thinking.

It supposes it should wear something; it has been walking around naked in the house (though that hardly matters, the place belongs to only Shealtiel and Luci, and only one other person in the world knows the location). It walks into the dressing room, expecting to find the cupboards still full of Luci’s attire. And it’s right; in fact, Luci’s cupboard has hardly changed at all, compared to the last sight of it in the memories. It can tell; it quite literally has photographic memory now.

The room is pretty dark, but it has night vision good enough to view everything as it would in daylight. Without giving much of a thought, it grabs a pair of briefs, a black top and a grey pair of pyjamas. It turns away, shutting the cupboard close, and its gaze falls on its own reflection in the full-length mirror.

He looks the same.

His complexion, his abs, the slope of his shoulder, the curve of his hips, his length, and even his spiky hair, everything is exactly the same as before. Down to the fucking detail. Letting the clothes drop to the floor, he runs his palms over both his biceps, followed by his chest and then his abs. The way his muscles flex, the way they rise and fall, it feels exactly as it should. It’s as though he is in his human body.

There are no seams in his body either. Robots, even sexbots designed for pleasure, have thin, visible seams on their body. Cleaves that separate different parts of body from one another. But the VI doesn’t find a single one anywhere on him. Even on the side of his wrists where the bus ports are hidden under the skin, there are no seams. The skin perfectly covered over the ports and blended back with the rest of the skin seamlessly.

“...you really overdid it, huh?”

A new thought crosses his mind. The reason he can feel emotions, can think and process things at a meta level; what if, all of this is not because Shealtiel wants a more human-like robot...

...but because he wants the robot to be able to feel more human?

Would it be a stretch to think of this... as an upgrade to a human life?

Chapter Text

Shealtiel is laid in his couch, his head comfortably nested in Luci's lap.

They’re watching Saint Tails together. They love watching Saint Tails together, in each other's warm embrace, while one of them chatters out about everything from comments to theories to fanboying, while the other listens calmly and attentively to his rhythmic, soothing, rain-like voice. It’s one of their favourite ways to spend quality time. (honestly, what isn’t a favourite when he is with Luci?)

Today, however, Luciferen is quiet. Suspiciously so. His eyes are on the screen, but his mind elsewhere.

He’s like that sometimes. With a lot of things. Normally, Luci is an active person; maybe even hyperactive. He sticks his nose wherever it can fit, he doesn’t know how to stop his mouth from sputtering random nonsense, he always wants to be doing something. But sometimes, he just seems... lost. And Shealtiel can’t quite figure why.

Saint Tails is something Luci genuinely likes. It’s not like a dish that tastes slightly different every time it’s prepared, not like a game of chess that puts them in a new situation every time it is played, no. It’s not variable, not mutable; it’s a fact. Luci likes Saint Tails. So when he zones out while watching his favourite thing in the world, it is something.

But Shealtiel can’t work up the courage to ask what that something is.

"Luci?" He prompts, looking up at Luci.

"Hm?" Luci responds and looks down at Shealtiel in his lap, breaking out of stasis.

Shealtiel reaches up with his left hand and runs a soft thumb over Luci’s lips. "How much do you love me, hm~?" He teases.

Luci gently takes his hand, kneading on its scars with his own fingers. "Huh, how can you measure infinity?"

"You're shamelessly cringe, Luci."

"Says the one shamelessly asking me the cringe question."

"Heh, touché." Shealtiel frees his hand and wraps both his arms around Luci's warm body, his head still in his lap.

"Pff, Shealtiel, did you see that!? They really thought they could catch Minnie with that stupid trick." Luci glees with amusement, his attention reverting to the screen.

Ah, there he is. The Luci I know.

But, Shealtiel can’t help but wonder about the Luci he doesn’t know. The Luci that has declined to reveal himself time and time again.

It’s okay, though. They love each other, and they have each other. That’s all that matters.

Shealtiel finally has love, and that’s all that matters.

Shealtiel gets up from his position and sits on Luci's lap, who encircles him with his arms in return.

"Luci?" He runs a caressing hand on Luci's face.

"Mm?"

"Will you marry me?"

An obviously overdue question. They’ve teased about it, joked on it, treaded around the topic plenty of times. Luci has plenty of times confessed how much he really loves Shealtiel — enough to transfer all his riches to Shealtiel, should he give the word. And Shealtiel loves him just as much, even if he doesn’t have any riches to prove it.

So when Shealtiel dares to ask it straightforward, he expects Luci's face to light up with joy and excitement, to flush red with exhilaration. He thinks that Luci would kiss him right there, hug him tightly in his embrace and say something like “is that even a question?” As though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Then why, in Luci’s face, does he see dread? Why is there fear in his eyes, instead of love? Why is there that same pain, that same loneliness? Is it not enough that he’s there for Luci? Has he not made Luci’s life whole the same way Luci has made his? He thought that he did... That they were ready for this...

That they love each other.

But inconsistencies always shoved themselves into their relationship. One day Luci held him tenderly in his arms, whispered softly in his ear about how beautiful and amazing and intelligent Shealtiel was. The next day he disappeared off the grid; no calls, no messages, and didn’t come back for days on end.

And when he did, he played it off like it was nothing significant.

“Just some business work.”

Always the same excuse.

Shealtiel hated it. It made him not want to trust Luci. It made him doubt Luci. It made him doubt himself. He felt confused, he didn't know if he was unnecessarily sensitive or if it was Luci's fault. He didn't know if it was his fault, his fault that Luci avoids him in this dubious way, his fault that Luci's face isn’t all washed over with joy now when he’s brought up a direct proposal of marriage. He doesn’t know which one it is, and he doesn’t know where to find the answers he so desperately seeks.

“You know the answer,” echoes a deep, unnerving voice of a man. A familiar voice. A voice Shealtiel dreads with his entire being.

“Come on, Shealtiel, I asked a simple question.”

Gone is Luci from the couch, gone is the warmth and familiarity of the room, replaced by the cold and sterile stench of a tech laboratory.

“What did I teach you when you were 10?”

Gone is the couch, and Shealtiel stands alone in the lab. An unnerving feeling runs down his spine.

“Shall I help you recall?”

Fear overtakes his entire body. His gut wrenches, and he’s unable to swallow the lump on his throat. He turns around.

Black outfit on, a gun sitting at the holster around the waist, a whip held on gloved hands and that iconic clown mask covering his face, the man prowls into the room.

Mettatron.

Without any notice, any hint, he swings the whip hard and fast. It doesn’t hit Shealtiel.

The Centrifuge — of metallic body — kept right next to Shealtiel, is deeply dented, the cuboidal body now deformed.

Shealtiel shudders.

“Recall anything yet?”

Shealtiel wants to speak. yes, yes I remember how you programmed me to be your loyal dog, to always follow your command, he wants to answer.

And I hate it, he wants to say. I don't want to be your dog anymore, he wants to protest.

But he has no courage to say any of it.

Another swing of the whip.

This time, it does land on Shealtiel, across his left hand and chest. He screams.

The announcement speaker lights up. "Sir, there's been a—”

“Not now, my dear virtue. Don’t you see I’m busy?” Mettatron interrupts, and swings the whip at Shealtiel again. He screeches again, falling to the ground.

“Sir, it’s an emergency.”

Shealtiel is frozen in fear as Mettatron raises his whip again, but then he stops.

“Alright... Make it quick.”

“Cops are raiding the zone. They are reluctant at pushing in saying they have a search warrant. Our people can’t hold them back any longer.”

For a moment, Mettatron doesn’t move his whip, as though lost in thought.

Run. Shealtiel’s inner voice screams.

“Okay. You’re dismissed.” He says, and just like that, swings another whip at Shealtiel.

Shealtiel doesn’t know which one is louder between his physical voice and mental voice.

“Still can’t remember anything? Hm, let’s make the question a little easy.” He kneels down in front of Shealtiel, and grabs his chin to make him look straight at him. “What did I tell you when we entered this room a few hours ago?”

Shealtiel still doesn’t speak.

“Hm, I’m really disappointed in you right now.” He lets go of Shealtiel and gets up from the floor. “I gave up so much to raise you, nurture you..” He speaks as he turns his back on Shealtiel, slowly treading away.

Run!

Shealtiel gathers all the energy he can, gets up, and runs towards the door.

He hears another loud swing of the whip.

As though on instinct, his entire body freezes and falls to the floor again, face first.

“Look at you now...” The sound of another loud whip echoes, and his body flinches. “...trying to run away from your maker.”

Slowly, shakily he turns his head around.

“Allow me to remind you what I said in the morning.” Mettatron drops the whip. “I said...” A hand takes the gun out of the holster. Shealtiel’s heart leaps to his throat. “...when I’m back, I need one person...” the safety lock goes off with an audible click. “...dead.”

Mettatron aims the gun at Shealtiel.

He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to anticipate where the bullet is going to hit him. How much it’s going to hurt him. How it will feel when his consciousness leaves his body and disintegrates into nothingness. How Luci will feel when he sees his dead form.

No, no, he doesn’t want to think any of that.

He squashes his eyes shut.

A gunshot echoes. Shealtiel is frozen, his heart skipping a beat.

Suddenly, something big and warm and heavy falls on him, and his body flinches violently.

He can’t feel pain.. the bullet never reached him...

He opens his eyes, and to his complete horror, discovers the body of his love, lying on the floor, clutching his own abdomen from where pools of blood flowed out.

He jolts awake, gasping loudly, his features trembling with fear and sweat, tears trickling down his eyes.

He sits up properly, his breaths still ragged and shuddering. He runs both the palms over his face and hair, trying to calm down.

That dream again.

Shealtiel looks around, and thoughtlessly grabs the nearest source of water he can find — a full bottle of water atop the bedside table. He chugs down about half of it before finally starting to calm down and gain a better sense of reality.

Ever since the incident, there hasn’t been a single sleep when he didn’t see that dream. Iteration of the same thing happening, over and over. He’s sick of it. Sick of having to relive the moment Luci died right in front of his eyes, while he could do nothing. Everything was his fault. Luci wasn’t supposed to be part of any of it. Luci wasn’t supposed to get involved with Mettatron. Luci wasn’t supposed to die...

Shealtiel should have been the one to die.

His stomach rumbles loudly.

Shit, he’s very hungry. He hasn’t had proper food for who-knew-how many days.

But he hates eating.

He hates sleeping, he hates self-care, he hates going out of his secure little basement gifted to him by Luci, he hates doing any activity that doesn’t involve working on Luci.

He hates being alive.

Because, he is only alive because Luci is dead. And he hates himself for it.

And that’s why, for Luci, he’s breaking his own rule.

The thing for which Mettatron was willing to kill Shealtiel, the ultimate pioneering of technology that could give birth to a completely new era for humankind, is something only he, in the entire world, knows about: porting a human’s ‘soul’ into a mechanical body.

He’d sworn to himself he would never port a human into a robot, nor tell anyone about this potentially destructive technology.

Look at where that has brought him now.

Despicable.

But he can’t stop now. How can he, when he knows there is a way to bring Luci back to life? For Luci.. he will not stop now.

Before going back to work on Luci, though, some food is a must... His body feels too weak to even stand properly. (Yes, he is currently getting off the bed and attempting to stand straight without toppling off-balance)

Come to think of it, why is he inside his bedroom? He remembers falling asleep in the lab... Not only that, but he hasn’t slept in the room ever since the incident. He just couldn’t bear to sleep alone in the room where they always slept together...

Food first, thoughts later.

With heavy steps, he drags himself out of the room and through the hallway towards kitchen.

His nose catches a faint smell of eggs and cheese.. coming from his own kitchen? But that can’t be possible.. nobody knew about this place, and certainly nobody is close enough to him to leisurely cook in his kitchen. Nobody except...

Uriel.

That would also explain how he fell asleep in lab but woke up in his bedroom. Perhaps the old man showed up again to check up on Shealtiel’s progress. He doesn’t have much to report since Uriel’s last visit two days ago, but he understands all too well the amount of grievance he’s put Uriel through just by requesting him to hide Luciferen’s dead status from the world. Uriel grieves alone, unable to share his hurt with anyone else.

Just like himself.

And so he can never say ‘no’ to Uriel when he requests to visit. Uriel has max level clearance in their secret lair.

The delicious smell of eggs and cheese gets stronger as he walks into the kitchen. He can hear the grill on the right but doesn’t turn, instead walking straight to the fridge ahead.

“Have you got some for me too?” He asks without much of a thought as he takes out a bottle of chilled water, letting the fridge close by itself while he opens the cap. A light clanking of utensil can be heard from the right as he drinks from the bottle.

“It’s all for you.”

Shealtiel’s heart skips a beat.

That voice..!

He whips his head around, uncaring of the bottle that continues to pour water down onto his shirt.

In front of his eyes, next to the dinette, stood Luciferen. In the flesh.

Astonished. Bewildered. Dumbstruck. Shealtiel just stares as Luciferen walks closer to him.

"You've poured a bunch of water on yourself.." He takes the bottle from Shealtiel — still awestruck — and puts it aside on the counter, not breaking eye contact.

Hesitantly, Shealtiel reaches a hand up to Luci’s face; touches his cheek gently, as though afraid if touched too hard, Luci would shatter into a million pieces and fall, like a delicate glass sculpture. But Luci does not break, does not disappear, does not turn into dust in front of his eyes. He is still there, solid and alive.

A memory flashes in his mind — Luciferen lying on the floor half-dead, his life draining out of his body just like the blood, while Shealtiel is pressing down on it — to no avail. It’s already too late, and he knows it, but he can’t admit.

“He-hey, Luci, p-pay attention to me,” he stutters out with shaky voice, trying hard not to wail. “We’ll t-take you to the emergency, okay? I-I’ll take you.” His face is wet and runny, and it’s hard to look at Luci’s expression through his moist eyes. “Promise me...” He holds one of Luci’s hands, entwining their pinky fingers together. “Promise me you’ll stay with me.”

Luci opens his mouth, trying hard to speak, but words don’t come out easily.

“I’m sorry,” he stutters out at last, before his body goes completely limp.

Pulling himself out of the flashback, Shealtiel hastily cups Luci’s face with both his hands, and thinks he heard a sob come out of his own throat.

Luci is here, Luci is really here!

For extra good measures, he feels Luci’s entire face with his palms as his vision grows more and more blurry from tears. Luci’s hands come to gently grip over his wrists while his hands wander up and down his face. “Whoa, okay, that feels a little funny..” Says Luciferen.

Hearing that voice again, alive and okay, Shealtiel immediately melts and breaks down into tears.

“Luci..?”

“Yeah, it’s really me, you’re not dreaming or anythi—”

Not letting him complete, Shealtiel immediately hugs Luci tight, and when the other’s arms come to encircle him, allows his sobs to manifest as he cries on Luci’s chest.

“You’re really here.”

After he’s done crying, Luci makes him sit down on a chair at the dinette and passes him a glass of water. He takes it and immediately chugs it all down.

“You must be hungry... Hold on, let me reheat this.” Luci says and takes the plate with sandwiches that was kept at the dinette table all this time.

Now that he feels a lot lighter, Shealtiel is able to think with a clearer mind.

This Luci is clearly his robot CI. He can just tell the things that are or aren’t his creation by looking at them. Plus he can hear the rough edges in Luci’s voice; he hasn’t recreated Luci’s voice to perfection yet.

Just him being here and functioning by himself is proof alone of the fact that Shealtiel is successful. He is successful in every part of his research, each calculation he performed, everything he’s been doing the past 2 months. He was successfully able to preserve Luci’s consciousness and transfer it into a new vessel.

He wasn’t sure if it could be possible, he wasn’t even sure if, what he extracted from Luci’s dead form was really his consciousness, because there was no way to tell. And there were times when he was extremely doubtful of himself, of everything he was doing, but in the end it worked. Luci is back to life and everything is worth it.

But that begs the next question — How did Luci boot up? It shouldn’t even be possible, in fact, he should still be missing a shit ton of modules to even function, everything from process scheduling to being able to walk oh my fucking god—

But above all, Shealtiel should have been there for Luciferen when he woke up first... He wanted to explain things himself, wanted to welcome Luci back to life himself. Fortunately, it seems like Luci has enough self awareness to understand what he is now.

As Luci walks back to him with the hot & crisp sandwiches, Shealtiel decides to take an attempt at what he would’ve wanted to say to Luci, had he been there to welcome Luci back.

“So, um..” Shealtiel tries, while Luci sets the plate of sandwiches in front of him.

He further watches Luci sit down on a chair close to him, his eyes and his attention fully on Shealtiel. He has to look away out of nervousness. He is at a loss for words; there’s too many thoughts & emotions, his mind is unorganized, and he’s unsure where to start.

“I.. think you should start by eating the sandwiches.” Luci speaks up, and Shealtiel looks up towards him.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Luci continues. His face is marked with that familiar look of worry and fondness. “We can talk later.”

He is very hungry, lord knows when was the last time he ate. He looks down at his serving. The sandwich looks delicious and the aroma of egg & cheese combination is mouthwatering. He picks up a sandwich and notices Luci’s eyes are still glued to him. In the back of his mind he lets a thought linger about how many malfunctions Luci could be going through right now; he’ll get to fixing that part eventually.

He takes a bite from his sandwich, and the taste is truly heavenly. No more moments are wasted lingering, no parts of brain spared for any other thoughts; he just inhales the entire sandwich on the second bite.

The following sandwiches take even lesser time as they disappear into the black hole that is his mouth.

When the plate is fully empty and he’s licking his fingers for the remnants of cheese and butter, his eyes fall on Luciferen again, still looking at him, but now with a slightly bewildered expression.

“Oh, uh,” Luci nervously places a hand behind his neck. “Glad you liked it... I had to make it without taste checking so I was worried if I did it right.”

“Oh.”

‘without taste checking’

Right. Luci was likely not aware of a lot of things about himself, and for a good reason.

“Um. So, Luci..” He runs his good hand over his face once, trying to recollect his words. Foreign hands comes to cradle his cheese-smudged hand, and he moves his good hand away from his face to find Luciferen sitting right next to him now, holding his hand. He is still fully focused on Shealtiel. Since the moment he stepped into the kitchen, Luci’s been fully focused only on Shealtiel and fuck, it makes him feel all kinds of things he can’t quite understand.

He looks down at their hands held together, and lowers his other hand to entwine it with them, too. He can’t look up. He’s scared to look up at Luciferen while he’s intently looking at Shealtiel.

He takes a deep breath.

He’s said this to Luciferen in a million different ways, a million times in his imaginations. Now he finally has the chance to say it to him in reality. But he’s still afraid to look him straight in the eye. So, looking down at their hands, he goes for another try.

“I’m- I’m sorry, Luciferen... You died, and it was only my fault.”

He can already feel his voice waving.

“I didn’t want things to go this way. I-I didn’t think things would go this way. I was scared, I was threatened to death and I didn’t know where to seek help. You were the only one who came to my mind I-”

His voice stutters on a sob. His vision is blurry again.

“Truth is I worked for dangerous people in a dangerous organization. I.. I was tasked with killing a person for some dark research and if I don’t, I’d be killed instead. I couldn’t.. I-I couldn’t..”

He cannot hold his voice together anymore. His hands are fisted tight under Luciferen’s grasp, and his nails start to painfully dig into his own skin — that’s when Luci’s cradling hands give them a gentle squeeze, and Shealtiel loosens up.

After taking a few deep breaths, he continues.

“I couldn’t kill the person. I was scared because I knew I will die if I don't. There was no way to escape. I didn’t know what to do so I tried calling you.. You didn’t pick up. I was panicking so I sent you the voice messages with my location.. Th-then.. he came to check on my progress.. Th-ther-there was no progress so he tried to kill..”

His head completely leans down to their hands and he cries. He doesn’t want to say the next words.

“He.. he was supposed to kill me.. but you, ngh,”

He’s lost the strength to speak anymore, and all that comes out of his mouth are broken sobs and muffled whines.

Luci removes a hand from their lap and gently runs it down Shealtiel’s back.

“I’m sorry,” Shealtiel chants. “I’m sorry..” He can’t get up from their lap. He doesn’t want to.

“Shealtiel..”

“If it weren’t for m-me trying to contact you.. if only I could’ve done something myself.. you wouldn’t have had to go through that..”

“Shealtiel.”

“It was because of me th-that-”

“Shealtiel!” Luci grabs him by the shoulder and makes him look straight at him.

His eyes are swollen, his face moist from all the crying. Now that he’s looking straight at Luci, he finds he doesn’t have the strength to look away.

“Why are you telling me this?” Luciferen asks.

“Wh-what?” Shealtiel is taken aback.

“Why are you narrating to me what had happened? It’s clear you’re not ready to talk about it.” Luci clarifies.

“I..” Unable to look elsewhere, he just squeezes his eyes shut. “I want you to know that.. I was responsible for everything that happened. I don’t want you to think that it was somehow your fault or you could’ve made things better.. and blame yourself for it.”

He slowly opens his eyes. Luciferen is just looking at him with a blank expression.

For the next few moments, they just stare into each other in silence. Every moment feels to be stretching longer than eternity.

“...So what,” speaks Luci at last, “you want Luci to blame you for everything that happened? You want to get nagged 24/7 for causing his death?”

“Uh....” Shealtiel visibly withers and his body tenses up.

Luci's expression, too, withers and he sighs. “Nevermind, nevermind.” He scoots his chair closer and draws Shealtiel into a hug. “It was meant to be sarcastic, sorry.”

Shealtiel does not reply, and silently hugs him back.

“Y'know.. Luci doesn't really blame himself, or you.” Luci continues. “So you shouldn't blame yourself either. What he did was by his own choice, and he wouldn't have had it any other way. He'd do the same thing a thousand times again if it meant saving you. So.. stop blaming yourself, and stop drowning in guilt.” He pulls out of their hug. “But, if you like being stubborn and going into the deep waters…” He reaches for Shealtiel's face, and with a delicate finger, wipes away a stray tear. “...at least allow me to extend a hand down.”

Shealtiel feels a sense of tranquillity he hasn't quite felt ever since the incident. Even though he still blames himself, Luci doesn't. He has all the fucking reason in the world to blame and hate Shealtiel. But he doesn't, instead extending a hand to help, like he's always done. Shealtiel has no idea how he can be so selfless, so considerate, even after everything that happened...

Shealtiel hugs him close and tight, uncaring of the smudgy hands. Luci returns the warmth.

“I need you to know that, Luci doesn't blame you. He never would've, even if he'd known what he was walking into.” Luci whispers into his ear.

For a while, they stay still in each other's embrace. Shealtiel isn't crying anymore. He feels calmer than ever, and wants to take in as much of this moment as he can. The last time they comforted each other was so, so long ago...

After a while, Shealtiel speaks up, not breaking their hug, “Why are you talking in third person? Is there a problem with natural language processing?”

“Third person..?” Luci is audibly confused.

Shealtiel breaks away from their hug. “You were referring to yourself as ‘Luci’ rather than ‘I’, just now..” He explains.

Luci visibly grows uncomfortable. “This.. might be too early to tell you given your current state of mind, but I think I want to be clear with you from the start, so that it doesn't cause problems later. I'm not Luci—”

“What?”

“—and I feel it's unethical of you to try and replace Luci with me—”

“Hold on a sec.”

“—I can continue to stay as your companion, but please, please don't treat me as a replacement for Luciferen, I don't think I could liv.. I don't think I could tolerate that.”

Shealtiel is thoroughly dumbstricken.

“You.. you think that you're not Luciferen?”

“I'm not, though... Luci was alive, I'm just a VI.”

Shealtiel gets up from the chair in annoyance and Luci is startled. “Just a VI!?” He is fuming.

Luci progressively grows scared. “Uh.. yea—”

“WRONG!” Shealtiel yells and Luci flinches. “You are NOT a stupid VI, they don't even have intelligence!” Shealtiel facepalms and groans with exasperation, while Luci is frozen on his seat.

Shealtiel looks down at him again. “Luci.. you're you! You're not some stupid synthesized intelligence! Yes you have integrated systems to help you navigate inside your new body, but you, your consciousness, is you! Not something synthesized.. Ugh, I can't..” He facepalms again, and his anger has transitioned into more of a frustration. A frustration directed towards nothing and no one.

Luci slowly gets up and gently tries to take Shealtiel's hands. Shealtiel looks up at him with a pained expression. “This is what you've been thinking until now, Luci? How long have you been up?”

“10 hours and 39 minutes..”

Shealtiel sighs. “You're not a replacement, Luci. You're you. I- do you think I'd ever want to replace you?”

“I’d like to say no.. but then, how can you explain me being like.... this?” Luci points at his entire body, with a very defeated look on his face.

Something inside of Shealtiel stings, sharp and deep.

It isn't just a question of how it can be possible for him to be in a mechanical body; it is a lot more than that. It is also a statement and a grievance.

I hate my new body, it declared.

My biological body is lost to me forever, it said.

And maybe, just maybe, that is what's putting him in denial of being ‘alive’.

“I'll explain everything to you. As for how you're like this.. I found a way to extract a human's memories as well as consciousness from their body, and integrate it into a biologically-modelled mechanical system. When you..” He stutters for a second. “Your body was active for a few hours even after your heart's shutdown. In that time I was able to carefully extract your consciousness and store it safely. And over time I built this body and transferred you inside of it.”

Luci's perplexed expression tells him that he doesn't fully grasp what Shealtiel just said, but at the same time is open to the idea and willing to try and understand it.

“And.. you did all of that.. in a little over two months? Even if I believe you, how can you explain knowing how to extract ‘my’ consciousness from 'my' dead body in the span of a few hours?”

“It's..” Shealtiel exhales. “It's an entire story in itself. I'll explain each and every thing to you, I promise. But, for now.. can you trust me when I tell you that you're alive and yourself, Luci?”

Shealtiel extends a palm forward, and Luci looks down at it thoughtfully, a hint of doubt still straining on his face.

“Please, Luci?”

Luci looks at Shealtiel's face, and then down at the hand again.

The next moment, Luci takes his hand.

“You're the strangest scientist I've ever met.”