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Every time Pathfinder told Revenant he thought he was beautiful, he wanted to claw every wire out of his body, rip every metal plate apart, tear his own throat open in some twisting, gnarled hope he wouldn’t wake up in another replica of the same shell.
Because that’s what this body is— a shell. It is not him. It is a metal cage with iron bolted doors and growing poison spiked thorns digging into the very fibers of what remains of himself, ripping it apart further and further to twist him into something else. Into the reaper, death itself, in a body of carnage crackling like ash with bloodlust raking his insides apart until not even his own mind was present. This shell is only death within death, something not quite alive and someone who should not be alive at all— he is a dead thing living in a body whose only purpose is to leave more of it in its wake.
He is a revenant. This body is Revenant. It is not himself, it is not Kaleb Cross.
But was Kaleb even there anymore? Was there someone still living buried underneath all that coding, wires, and metal? He’s not sure. Revenant can’t bring himself to use the name that was his own, the name he had earned, the name he chose. When everything is taken from a person— the clothes on their backs, the walls they lived in, every mortal possession— they still had their name, they still had their self. Revenant didn’t even have that anymore.
“This flower is an asydia, also known as Potentilla lepidus. It is native to the planet Gaea and has many color variations, but my favorite is this one.”
In Pathfinder’s large blocky fingers, he delicately holds a small red and white flower. It is a vibrant crimson color that bleeds into a stark white half way into the petals. The center is a gold that could rival a setting sun with a tiny black iris at the heart of the flower. He holds the tiny, pitiful flower out towards the simulacrum, a glaringly obnoxious pink color and a filter of hearts floating up the emotive screen on his chassis as he does so.
“They remind me of you,” the MRVN says. The pink of his display screen and its affectionate notes are quick to leave though, turning back to its usual candy yellow and annoying smiling emoticon. “Because they’re pretty like you.”
Revenant doesn’t have a stomach, but he can still feel the ghost of it curdling with bile as each casually fond word leaves Pathfinder’s voice box. His shoulders tighten and a growl slowly rises from his chest— the thunder before the storm.
“Stop fucking saying that,” Revenant finally snaps as he jerks his head towards Pathfinder, his voice bordering on a roar. He couldn’t stand to listen to another pointlessly sentimental word from an artificial voice.
“Saying what, friend?” Pathfinder asks calmly, seemingly unfazed by Revenant’s sudden rush of anger. The screen on his chest merely dulled to a pale gray and a series of question marks as he tilted his head.
“Everything,” Revenant growls, his arms flying out in front of him with claws extending half an inch amidst his flood of anger and emotion.
“All that bullshit about what you like about me. Stop saying you find this god damn cage of a body pretty. Nothing about it is fucking ‘pretty! ’” he yells, anger and too many feelings to name flooding into every receptor of his non-existent mind.
In all his naivety, Pathfinder only tilts his head in the opposite direction and asks, “Why?”
And that was it, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the final stone to be added to the dam before it couldn’t bear the weight anymore and the whole thing came tumbling down, letting a violent flood rush forth.
“Don’t you fucking get it? ” Revenant asks, leering towards the MRVN with too much hurt carefully lurking beneath a thin sheet of ice carved from anger. “This isn’t me, this isn’t my body.”
“This isn’t me,” he repeats, as if to somehow drill the point further into Pathfinder’s oblivious coding. “It’s just a fucking shell, one of thousands. They are not me, they are not my body, they are not my own. Nothing about this is mine! This existence isn’t mine! There’s nothing fucking pretty about it!! ”
His voice roars over the both of them, aching with too much grief that had festered for too long into some rotting thing , dwarfing the humble act of kindness the MRVN had attempted to extend towards him.
The silence that follows is too heavy and makes Revenant turn abruptly away from Pathfinder with his hands shaking and clutching at hair he doesn’t have anymore. Instead, there is only the sound of metal tearing at cloth as his claws itch to tear something apart as some kind of futile attempt to return the hurt he felt onto something or someone else. It aches and it screams and it cries and all of it is him and none of it is his own. His throat burns even though that's impossible, but it's another phantom sensation he can’t forget. Revenant doesn’t want to feel it, he doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t want to be at all. He’s not supposed to be alive! His body was taken from him, his name, his own damn death was robbed from him to sate the greed of a faceless insatiable beast of greed. It made him sick.
Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.
The sound of his claws ripping into his body made the same noise, echoing the senseless mantra he felt running through his body in a hideous melody of metal scratching against metal. Revenant dug at his own throat, ripping into the thin yet durable material covering all the more delicate pieces, attempting to find whatever could be considered his jugular. His other hand was curled tightly around the edge of his upper body, trying to pry the metal plating off entirely. Silver lines were quickly forming in deep, long gashes where he tried to rip himself apart in a futile search for reprieve from this moment of consciousness.
No sooner than when he tried to tear into himself like an animal ripping apart its prey was Pathfinder diving towards him. His hands clutched Revenant’s where they were trying to lay waste into himself, his grip almost strong enough to crush them entirely. He could feel the slight tremble of the MRVN’s hands as he held him in a vice grip, making his body into the rope tied around Revenant to pull him back from the cliff edge that he tried to dive from.
“Please don’t hurt yourself, friend,” his voice box warbled, an undeniable tremor in his words.
“Let go of me,” Revenant spat back at him with a growl as he tried to wretch his hands and arms from Pathfinder’s strong hold on him.
He tugged and writhed, his head turning from side to side as if he could possibly tear into his throat by raking it over his stationary claws. Pathfinder only pulled his arms further away from his body as if he was trying to pry a rusted door open. It wasn’t until now did Revenant fully grasp just how physically strong the MRVN actually was. Despite his struggling and stubbornness, he was able to keep Revenant’s hands prone during his self-destructive outburst.
“Please don’t hurt yourself,” Pathfinder repeated, his voice soft and laden with an ache of concern.
Revenant couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand that of all people, of all things to try and offer him comfort— it was a damn robot. A MRVN. A bunch of artificial code with no heart, no soul. It made him feel all the more pitiful, worthless.
“It doesn’t matter,” Revenant threw back at him, but he had lost a considerable amount of his bite by now. “I’ll just wake up in another shell.”
“I don’t like seeing you hurt yourself, friend,” Pathfinder insisted, his voice still a gentle lull compared to his normal bright and chipper tone. It was strange to hear let alone be the recipient of a seemingly genuine concern from a robot.
“Why are you doing this?” Revenant finally asked in a moment of tired frustration. He didn’t want to linger on how raw Pathfinder’s words left him, how some tiny fragment of him found it nigh impossible to say no to the MRVN. Revenant didn’t want to think about how desperate he was to devour all the crumbs of kindness being offered to him.
“Because that’s what friends do,” Pathfinder answered as if it was the simplest thing in the world, “They help.”
“I’m not your fucking friend,” he growled back, but all the anger in his body had burned to only embers and ash by now. His stubborn pride was all that persisted.
There was a long stifling silence between them that only led to exhaustion seeping further into every fiber of Revenant’s body. Like a flash of lightning, his grief had ripped through himself hot and bright, leaving only the skeletal limbs of burnt trees in its wake. He ached, he raged, he mourned, he ran himself ragged into the ground until he was whittled down to the smallest fragments of himself. He was tired.
“That’s okay,” Pathfinder finally says, silently surprising Revenant with the acceptance of his prickling answer, “Maybe you don’t think of me as your friend, but I still think of you as mine.”
The crushing grip that Pathfinder had on his hands relaxes, but Revenant in his exhaustion doesn’t have the will to rip himself away from the MRVN. He didn’t fight Pathfinder as he guided his arms away from his body. Those dull blue, blocky fingers brush over the backs of his thinner fingers until Pathfinder’s fingers were underneath them, his thumb laying over the branded plating on the back of Revenant’s hand.
Pathfinder held his hands like they were something so precious, his touch surprisingly gentle despite the bulky, awkward build of his body. If he wanted to, Revenant could easily pull his hands out of his caring touch— but like a beaten dog, he was too tired to fight the kindness offered to him anymore. Every time Pathfinder treated him with such care, so much tenderness, it haunted him until he felt hollow, like he was haunting his own body.
It made him feel sick all over again, but with an all new wave of emotions washing over him with that feeling of nausea. He ached in a way that could never be put into words. The initial blaze of anger had already burned through him, leaving only the hollow feeling of grief and despair falling over him like long shadows down a battered alleyway.
And yet, Pathfinder in all his persistent, annoying, stupid kindness pushed through the storm of all his raging waves. He held Revenant’s hands so gently despite how he lashed at him like a wild dog snapping its maw of teeth, he followed him still despite how he hardly gave the MRVN a glance of consideration. Pathfinder spoke of and to him with the same fondness as he did everyone even though Revenant had relished in carving into the MRVN and all his hopes, his dreams, despite how he had savored breaking him down into pieces for only his depraved, sadistic enjoyment. He still marveled at Revenant with all the adoration of a poet to their muse. All of this, and Pathfinder asked nothing of him in return.
Revenant couldn’t bring himself to meet the glowing gaze of Pathfinder’s optic and its warm gold color, cradled in the pale blue of his body. It was too much like the sun held lovingly in a summer skin. The weight of Pathfinder’s kindness weathered him down to only exposed bones and raw nerves, too much of a shambling skeletal resemblance of himself to be able to fight back against it.
“I’m going to help you,” Pathfinder says after a long, heavy moment of silence. He speaks with all the conviction in the world, his certainty unable to be swayed.
Revenant only scoffed in response. If he could still move his face, his lip would be curled up in annoyance and a scowl would be etched into his features. He pulled his hands away from Pathfinder’s and turned away from him, his broad shoulders and torn hood the old things facing the MRVN.
“You can’t help me,” the simulacrum answered, his words cold and detached despite the heavy rumble in them. Revenant spoke definitively, his tone implying he was not to be argued with— that he could not be argued with. He had been stalking through the ages for over 300 years, leaving behind nothing but carnage and cruelty even before he was imprisoned in an endless loop of mechanical bodies. He knew very well that he was beyond help, he had been beyond it for a long time now.
Another heavy silence wraps the two robots like a blanket trying to smother them. Revenant didn’t even hear the soft sounds of Pathfinder’s body moving. It’s a silence that’s utterly deafening, stifling to the point that Revenant compulsively wants to tear into his own body again.
Somehow, it was more painful than he ever could have imagined to be met with silence from the one being who seemed to be willing to endure all his anger, all his hurt, all his selfishness and pride. The one person who genuinely and unabashedly seemed to care for him, liked him, admired him. Revenant had spurned and bit back at Pathfinder at every step, with every word. He bit the hand that so kindly reached out to him simply because it was offered to him and he wanted someone, something to hurt as much as he did. No matter how many times he had bit it, though, Pathfinder had kept holding it out to him.
It seemed that even the blindly optimistic MRVN had a breaking point, and Revenant was painfully afraid he had met that point— not with the wild thrashing he thought he would, but as little more than a leaf drifting towards the ground.
“My name is Pathfinder,” the MRVN finally says after a moment of silence that felt like it had been drug through mud and rocks, “I was made for a great purpose.”
The familiar soft sounds of his body finally return and Revenant can hear the subtle bounce of his hydraulics moving, the tap of metal against concrete, and he knows Pathfinder is walking towards him again. Revenant’s pride holds him rigidly in place, his back ramrod and refusing to allow him to turn towards the MRVN despite a small part of him wanting to.
“I was made to find a way when all hope was lost.” Pathfinder was standing next to him again and Revenant could feel the tenuous heat emitting from his body.
“I was made to find a path.” The MRVN was standing in front of him now, only the amber glow of his optic burning brightly in the dusk that was beginning to fall over them, the screen on his chest completely blank. The city lights below drowned out any stars that could possibly be seen, and Pathfinder himself stood in place of the moon— like a sun refusing to set. Stubborn as ever.
“I was made to help,” Pathfinder continues, and he raises one of his hands to right the torn cloth tied around his head and shrouding his shoulders. “And that is what I am going to do.”
Revenant doesn’t know what to say much less do. He was once again faced with a defiant, stubbornly kind MRVN that refused to abandon him. It was frustrating, confusing, but above all else it was desperately wanted. The piercing yellow of his eyes merely stare in silence at Pathfinder for some time, body unmoving with nothing to betray the tumultuous sea of thoughts and feelings overriding every processor in his mechanical body.
“It’s a waste of your time,” Revenant says in another half-hearted attempt to push back against the unmovable, unshakable need to love and help that was hard-wired into Pathfinder.
“You don’t get to decide that,” Pathfinder argues back. The firm tone of his voice quietly surprises Revenant, leaving him once more rendered wordless despite a fully functioning voice box. “It is my time, it is my life. I decide what is and isn’t a waste of it, and I have decided it isn’t a waste to help my friend.”
Revenant was running out of ideas on how to somehow shake Pathfinder off his back. Like a wild animal, he felt like he had been broken not by a harsh whip to his back, but with a gentle hand that returned to him no matter how many times he shoved it away. He had spent so many long, lonely years writhing in his own suffering, festering like a wound that was continuously torn open and never allowed to heal. How long could he keep fighting one of the only things that offered him any semblance of genuine care? How long could he fight back against someone who cared for, accepted, and loved him and all his twisted, flawed coding? Why did he keep fighting it?
Pathfinder, in all his bravery and foolishness, again raises a hand towards him again and with a surprising amount of tenderness, he gently presses his palm against the sharp angle of his cheek, his blocky thumb resting under the downward curve of his faceplate. For the first time, Revenant doesn’t shove his hand away.
“I can’t offer you anything,” Revenant croaks, the rumble of his voice made rougher by the tremble in it.
“I don’t want anything from you, friend,” Pathfinder answers him softly— as soft as a breeze, as gentle as a whisper. It’s the quietest Revenant has ever heard him speak. “Being able to see you at least a little bit happy someday is enough. That’s all I want.”
“Why?” he presses, every ounce of anger in his voice having all but fizzled into nothingness. He sounded tired, exhausted, like he had been worn ragged by everything he had ever faced ( and he was, he was tired, he was so damn tired ).
Pathfinder’s other hand joined the first, now cradling Revenant’s face in his warm metal palms.
“Because I love you, Revenant.”
Each of those words dig into Revenant’s broken and beaten body, hollowing him out until he ached so damn much he wished he could cry to at least let the wailing need leave him. Pathfinder was so damn kind to him, cared so much about him, loved him despite all he had done to everyone and everything around him including Pathfinder himself. He felt every ounce of grief and pain in his coding shake with howling sobs throughout every wire, he felt it overflowing from him, felt like he was going to break into pieces in Pathfinder’s gentle, wonderful, loving hands.
And Pathfinder didn’t want anything in return, only Revenant’s own happiness. The MRVN was so selfless it made him ache.
Revenant couldn’t bring himself to speak. All he could do was lean into the hands framing his face, to let himself slowly and silently pour over the robot below him. He fell further and further forward, until he was curling inward around a MRVN who was more human than any single person he had ever met.
The simulacrum stood like a crumbling building against Pathfinder, his arms hanging lifelessly at his sides as he pressed his head into the soft silicone of Pathfinder’s neck to seek refuge in the one body that wanted him. It forced Pathfinder to lean his head considerably to the side, but even now the MRVN welcomed him with open arms. His hands slowly fell over Revenant’s chest until they moved to embrace him, pulling their bodies closer together. One of his bulky, strong arms was wrapped completely around Revenant’s thin waist and the hand of his other arm came to rest gently against the taller robot’s back, an embrace so wholly given in nothing but love.
Even now as Pathfinder held him, Revenant could only offer him the brow pressed into his neck. His open, bleeding heart of a MRVN did nothing but love him.
Pathfinder held him in a moment of quiet love, unmoving with only the moon overhead as their witness. Pathfinder still asked nothing of him in return.