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Sometimes Eijirou wishes his parts would have been put to better use. They’re wasted on him, a failed soldier, a glitched mainframe, a giant mass of wasted potential who’s one dream is the opposite of the sole purpose for which he was made.
He was created to be a soldier, a perfect amalgamation of decades worth of research and infinite knowledge. He was proudly proclaimed to be the most advanced of his kind, given the ability to replicate human emotion more exactly. He could feel things more intensely than any android before him in hopes he would latch onto the energy around him and become an unstoppable force of war.
He was perfect, except for his one fatal flaw. He was kind. He wanted to love, to help and save people who couldn’t help themselves. The resistance won him over with pretty words and broken promises. They taught him how to build weapons, how to fight, how to ask questions and get answers. They told him he was a hero, and he believed them.
He was proud to fight with his brothers and sisters, to pave the way for a world that knew no boundaries, man or metal.
The days went on, and slowly but surely things started changing. He heard about it in passing, soldiers coming back to base and talking about mass casualties. It was unsettling, but it was something he needed to look past. He learned the hard way that there would always be some collateral damage done for the greater good.
It was fine.
It finally dawned on him that something was seriously wrong the day his team took their first prisoner. He sat at the table as they asked the man questions. He was scared. Eijirou knew the man was scared and that’s why he couldn’t answer all that well, but his partner started yelling, started grabbing and pulling. He looked to his superior for help through the glass. This was going too far, but she just stood there with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face and Eijirou felt his chest plate run cold.
He sat there, terrified, unable to speak or move as his partner kept yelling, demanding answers this poor man obviously didn’t have. He sat there when the first shot rang out, then the second, then silence. He sat there as his partner left the room, his ears ringing as he looked into the dead eyes of an innocent man.
—
That was three years ago. Now, he walks abandoned streets without a purpose, hiding behind cars and in alleyways when he hears footsteps amongst the rubble.
He almost wonders if it was even worth it to escape. Who is he helping by hiding in houses that have long since been raided? Who can he save when any human that sees him immediately opens fire and runs in the opposite direction? Not for the first time, he curses his metal flesh and electric veins. If he were more of a man, he would be fighting from the inside out, not hiding on the sidelines where he has no use.
Back then, he was so sure that the first step in stopping whatever war was on the brink of being waged was to get out. Maybe he could have found help, he could have warned everyone what was coming. But like always, he was too little and too late to do much of anything. Streets were empty, cities were destroyed, Tokyo was reduced to nothing more than a graveyard of skyscrapers and traffic lights, the ghost of neon signs eerily casting over the empty city.
He walked through it all. He walked for days overturning pillars and beams, months wandering underneath burnt out street lights and abandoned buildings. A year passed and he couldn’t find a single living soul.
It’s been two years since he made it to the suburbs. He doesn’t know where he is, but there are people here. He catches glimpses of them ducking behind cars and running behind buildings, but he can never get close enough to talk to them.
He doesn’t easily pass as human like some of his brothers did. Maybe at first he could have, if you could look beyond his sharp edges and bulking mass, but now his outer coating is beginning to erode without routine maintenance, showing a mess of exposed wire and framing that runs all the way from his ear to his cheek and down his arms.
They run like he’s something to be feared, and maybe he is. He’s trapped inside the shell of a monster designed for war. He wouldn’t trust himself either. He can’t say for certain that he does.
So when he finds the blonde man struggling to tug his bag free from a splintered doorway, he resists every urge to help him. It’s a familiar sense of longing that hangs heavy in him as he watches the scene unfold. There’s a small cut on one of the stranger’s shoulders peeking from underneath his sleeve and Eijirou briefly wonders what it's like to bleed. He watches the man’s chest heave with frustration and he wonders what it’s like to breathe, to stretch your muscles and pant and burn.
He can’t help but watch in a fascinated sort of envy as the man finally tugs the bag free. He wonders where he’s going, if there’s anyone waiting for him.
He wonders, he wonders and wonders and wonders what it’s like to be alive.
The man curses loudly, looking around quickly before rushing to throw everything back in his bag. Eijirou has seen enough. Perhaps he’s seen too much, a small snippet of a life not meant to be lived by him.
With one last glance, he turns and heads back to the direction he came from but gets all of two steps before he hears it. It’s faint and far away, the slow methodical sound of metal against asphalt, unmistakable to his trained ears.
Patrol soldiers.
He hasn’t seen any since he left Tokyo, but he would recognize them anywhere. He zeroes in on the sounds, catching a clear view of the soldiers. They’re decked head to toe in protective armor and weaponry, guns strapped to their backs and shields over their faces. They’re coded to kill on sight, and this man would be dead in seconds. He can't let that happen, he decides. He won't let it happen ever again.
Thinking is something he does best. His entire stream of consciousness is a mess of input and output, 0s and 1s, endless information beating around every second he’s powered on, but he doesn’t think for a second before running from his hiding spot.
The man’s head snaps up at his sudden appearance, his look of shock morphing into anger once he drops down and starts throwing the rest of the materials back into the bag.
“What the hell do you think—“
“Shh!” He looks over the stranger’s shoulder, panic settling in as the soldiers rapidly close distance at the slight ruckus. “You need to go, right now,” he says, shoving the bag into the man’s chest. He follows Eijirou’s gaze, hands freezing where they clutch one of his tools. He slowly turns his head back to Eijirou, eyes wide as he finally sees what’s sitting in front of him.
He’s seen that face a hundred times over, but it never gets any easier.
Eijirou shoves the hurt away. He releases the bag into the man’s lap and gives him a gentle push, a reminder, before turning around. There’s a shout from not too far away, a warning to stand down and surrender. They’ve been spotted already.
He didn’t have much of a plan going into this, but he’s seeing now that his options are severely limited. He’s a bit out of practice, but fighting is the baseline of his coding. He couldn’t possibly forget, even if he tried. He was made for this. He can protect one person, one time.
“Damnit,” he spits, turning his back to the man and bringing his right arm in front of him. “Seriously man, just go!” His metal creaks and splits in a mimicry of pain, the planes rusted shut after years of no use. They separate and fold in on themselves, replaced by barrels and rows of ammunition. He hesitates for a single moment before pushing aside whatever fear is holding him, releasing the first shot, then the second before the patrol soldiers start firing their own.
He does his best to cover the man, knowing for a fact that his metal body can sustain far more damage than human flesh, but he may have underestimated how much a few years without maintenance has taken a toll on him. They shoot with deadly accuracy, shot after shot piercing his armour and getting dangerously close to exposing the power source buried under his chest plate.
He feels no dread. There’s no fear or sadness, just the somber realization that there’s no way he’ll be leaving this fight. The only emotion he registers is the slight pang of regret. He didn’t do nearly enough, he thinks, but maybe if this man gets to see another day, he’s finally done right by someone. If he can protect just one person, this one time, maybe he’ll have been good for something.
He sends one last pleading glance to the guy next to him. They lock eyes for the first time since this all went down and Eijirou feels a new sense of conviction fill him.
His eyes are filled with life. There’s a flurry of emotions reflecting back at him, too many to even try to unpack in this quick moment. He’s lived a life and has plenty more to go. He’s touched and felt and has known devastation. Eijirou wants him to know relief one more time.
He still hasn’t moved besides rising to his feet, clutching his bag with white knuckles and his boots firmly planted on the ground. Why isn’t he moving? Can he not see that his life is in danger the longer he stays here?
“Please , just run! Get out of here!” His voice cracks, a stray bullet finally poking past his first layer of protection.
The man hesitates, looking over his shoulder before taking a step back. Eijirou gives him a small smile before turning back to his opponents when he hears the stranger let out a defeated groan.
“I’m going to get in so much shit for this.”
It all happens way too fast. First, the last piece of armor falls to the ground, then he hears a tiny click preceding the arrival of a small round object landing at the feet of the soldiers, then everything goes up in smoke. It’s disorienting, the heat and fumes the shouting and blind firing in the chaos.
Eijirou feels his arm being tugged violently and before he can think about it, his feet are moving. They’re running, he realizes. The stranger is just slightly ahead of him, his hood pulled over his head as he leads him through alleyways and under fences.
He can’t tell where they’re going, his vision blurred with smoke and his head fuzzy from the extent of his damage, but he doesn’t really think he has much of a choice in the matter anyway. He doesn’t know how much time has passed before they stop, but eventually they come to a halt in front of a small brick building. It looks like it could have been a warehouse at some point. It’s small and run down, doors and windows boarded up with rotting wood. It looks like it’s a good five minutes from falling over.
The man releases his arm and slumps against the wall, heaving a few deep breaths.
“So, uh, that was close?” Eijirou chuckles, very disoriented and more than a little confused as to what exactly just happened.
The stranger pushes off the wall after a minute with a laugh, a short, raspy sound accompanied by a jerk of his shoulders, “Yeah, I’d say so,” he extends his hand, “Bakugou Katsuki.”
It takes him a minute before he reaches for the hand in front of him, shocked at the blatant display of trust it takes to reach out for a hand that was shooting out bullets not even twenty minutes ago. He’s never touched a human before. He’s never even spoken to one for longer than a fleeting moment whenever he can catch a glimpse.
It’s severely underwhelming.
He feels nothing besides a dull pressure against his palm, the smallest hint of warmth fighting to reach whatever is left of his sensory mechanism.
“Eijirou,” he replies, returning the gesture. He pauses for a moment, contemplative. “I guess computers don’t really get surnames, huh?” He laughs and drops Bakugou’s hand when his voice cuts off, a strange jolt of pain running through his chest with the sound.
Bakugou’s brow furrows as he steps closer. He walks right up to Eijirou’s chest in three large strides. Eijirou freezes as Bakugou’s hand carefully reaches up to touch the area. He immediately yanks his hand away with a hiss, and Eijirou flounders for a moment before he realizes what happened.
Slowly, he looks down and sees that where his chest plate should be is nothing more than a giant gaping hole of crushed metal and sparking wires.
“Ah, that’s probably not good,” he jokes, trying to lighten what is no doubt a very pressing situation for at least one of them. He doesn’t really feel any different, besides an unsettling lightness. He’s not in an extreme amount of pain, which is probably why he hadn’t realized before, but he does notice the edges of his vision slowly getting more fuzzy the longer he pays attention to it.
He kind of wants to scold the man for wasting the effort and resources used on getting him out of there, no matter how grateful he is. It’s probably only a matter of time before whatever energy reserve keeping him powered on runs itself dry.
“You’re right. That’s real goddamn bad,” Bakugou deadpans. He seems to think for a few seconds more, his brows furrowing. “Come with me,” he decides, before Eijirou is once again dragged over to one of the boarded up entrances. Bakugou slips through the gaps between boards with ease, rummaging around for a few seconds on the other side before the whole door is opening in front of him, boards and all swinging out in one neat piece.
It’s a pretty cool setup, something straight out of one of those action movies he sees old posters of once in a while. Eijirou would probably stop to appreciate it more if he weren’t currently fighting a losing battle with the small remains of his consciousness. The space isn’t that large. It’s an empty room, a few boxes scattered around haphazardly. There’s an empty folding table pressed up against one of the walls, but that’s pretty much it. He isn’t entirely sure what they’re supposed to be doing here, but he doesn’t really feel like asking so he just watches as Bakugou makes his way to the far corner of the room with purpose.
He stomps his foot a few times before one of the floorboards pops loose, a handle nestled under it that he yanks up to reveal what looks to be a staircase leading down. Huh.
Bakugou looks back over at him, an eyebrow arched with impatience, “Are you coming? Or would you prefer to stand there while those walking tin cans track us down and your systems give out?”
“Coming… where? You know what, yes. Yes, I’m coming,” he makes his way over as fast as his legs will carry him, which is not very fast in his current state. He focuses most of his energy on not faceplanting down the concrete stairs as Bakugou presumably seals the entrance back up behind him.
This room is a lot bigger. The space is large, but it’s packed completely with large work tables and smaller tables filled with tools, there are flickering lamps hanging from their wires from the ceiling, casting an eerie yellow light across the space. There are robotic limbs littering the tops of some tables, scattered arms, a leg, and he’s pretty sure he sees an ear too. It looks terrifying and insanely cool at the same time.
“Woah,” he breathes out, taking in as much of the lab as he can. Bakugou must be a scientist then. A really cool, kind of hot, mad scientist. That explains the wires and tools in his bag before.
“Sick, right? Spent years building this baby,” Bakugou says, a smirk playing across his lips. He pushes Eijirou to one of the tables at the far end of the room, giving his shoulders a gentle push as he says, “Sit,” before immediately turning his back to rummage through his tools.
Eijirou does what he’s told without question, more than happy to not have to worry about keeping his balance anymore. It’s nothing like the labs back at the base. Those labs are clean and pristine, blinding white walls and shining metal. He doesn’t have many good memories from those labs, but he doesn’t really have any bad ones either.
This one, though, has a sort of homey feel to it, somehow. The tools and limbs are terrifying, but the cushy chair underneath the desk in the corner is well loved, the wheels scuffed and discolored. There are sketches on the walls, some look like blueprints, others early stages of design, and right above the desk lamp is one colorful piece of notebook paper with crinkled edges that could only have been drawn by a young child. It’s a very silly drawing, a yellow spikey ball and a little girl holding hands with the words unkle kacchan ‘n eri almost illegibly scribbled at the top. He’s sure if he was still capable of physical feeling he would be feeling that very same ache in his chest.
When Bakugou comes back, he has a clunky belt wrapped around his waist, heavy with spare parts and sharp things. Without preamble, he begins poking and prodding at the mangled mess, mumbling to himself every once in a while. He lets Bakugou do his thing for a bit, but after a while he starts getting antsy. Bakugou doesn’t seem like a very talkative person, and that’s cool by him, but he could really use a distraction from the feeling of someone literally rearranging his insides right in front of his face.
“Hey, Bakugou?”
Bakugou hums in response, wiping some grease off his hands with a towel sticking out from his belt.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing this mess,” he mumbles, “‘S the least I could do after you saved my ass back there. You probably wouldn’t make it ten more feet walking around like this,” and then he’s right back to work. Eijirou hears a crackling sound followed by a contemplative hum.
Oh. Eijirou has had maintenance done before, more times than he can count. It’s always been a fast, cold, methodical process. It’s never this careful study, or the slightest shake in the hands holding the tools, or even a quiet this feel okay? It’s almost comforting.
“How’d you end up out here anyway, Mr. Soldier,” Bakugou asks after a while, taking a break from poking at him to tinker with a small piece of machinery on the side table.
“Soldier?” Eijirou squeaks, shoulders shooting up to his ears, “How did you—“
Bakugou raises an eyebrow at him, gesturing to his right arm, still covered in soot and gunpowder, “Only military models have goddamn machine guns for limbs. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. And stop moving, you’re makin’ everything worse.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he says, shoulders relaxing a bit. “Well I— wait! You knew I was a soldier and you still brought me back to your secret lab? Are you crazy, man?”
Bakugou’s hands fumbled with the part he was working on, the piece falling gently to the table. His face is red when he looks over at Eijirou, his shoulders hunched up like a defensive cat. “Am I crazy? Which one of us decided to take on two fully equipped patrol soldiers completely unarmed, ha?”
“That’s different!” Eijirou sputters, “I think.”
“Yeah, sure,” Bakugou snorts and starts working again, bringing over the piece he was working on and attaching it to some loose wires. He doesn’t push Eijirou for an answer, but he feels compelled to give one anyway.
“I was at the Tokyo base,” he starts, shame filling him up with every word. He hates remembering the blood on his hands, leaving its lasting stain long before he even knew any better. “I guess one day I just sort of… woke up? I didn’t want to see anyone else get hurt, so I left.”
Eijirou laughs, a pitiful sound, “Kinda ironic, right? I wanted to be a hero and all I did was run away.”
Bakugou pauses, his hand resting just outside the gaping hole where his chest should be. Eijirou can barely feel it, but the look on his face has something stirring in the nonexistent space. He looks soft, a stark contrast from the swearing man he encountered on the street. His brows are turned in ever so slightly with discontentment, his lips the smallest bit quirked in a pout.
“A hero, huh?” he says lowly. “Looks like you’re doin’ a damn good job to me.”
Eijirou tears his gaze away, a sad smile playing across his lips. He wishes, desperately, that those words held at least some semblance of a truth.
“Oi, cut that out. Nobody cares what you did before, alright? That doesn’t define you anymore. Never did, probably.” Bakugou snaps. “If throwing yourself in front of two fully armed death traps for some guy you’ve never met before doesn’t make you a hero, I don’t know what does.”
The words don’t really do all that much, but he feels a little bit lighter, something that feels like hope making home amongst all the doubt.
“I just feel like there’s so much more I could have done,” he whispers, keeping his gaze locked onto a crack in the concrete.
Bakugou doesn’t answer him, and Eijirou isn’t really sure he wants him to. They spend the next hour or so in silence, the only sounds heard being the click of tools against steel. He gradually begins to feel like himself again. He can feel the coldness of the table under his palms, the heat from the lightbulbs on his face, the dull ache in his chest from the extent of the damage finally catching up to him.
Bakugou steps away from him after securing the final piece of his new chest piece, surveying his work with a critical eye. He nods after a minute, seemingly satisfied, and begins to clean up the mess.
“What if I told you,” Bakugou pauses, his hands stilling in the middle of putting away his tools, “that you can still do more.”
“What?” Eijirou croaks, still rough and scratchy from adjusting to his new vocal box. Bakugou finishes packing away his things and turns to face him. His face is serious. A different kind of serious than before, more determined.
“There are others like you. And there are others like me. We’re going to fight back,” he says, certain. Eijirou barely manages to hold in a surprised laugh. It's a very bold statement to say the least. It would be practically impossible to take back a world that’s already been so thoroughly broken, but the look in his eyes is so fierce, so determined and for some reason, Eijirou believes him . “We’ve been preparing since the moment this mess started. We have numbers. We have the assets. We’re gonna do it.”
“I—“ Eijirou isn’t too sure what he was going to say, but before he can even finish thinking about it, Bakugou is cutting him off.
He has his chin up high, and with all the confidence in the world he says, “If you really want to be a hero, come with us.”
Bakugou straightens up and looks him straight in the eye. His gaze is intense, it shakes him down to his very core. Somehow, despite everything, Bakugou Katsuki looks nothing like a man who has lost everything. Eijirou sees passion in his tired eyes, he sees strength in the hands that have built incredible things. He sees a fighter, a winner, and Eijirou wants to know what that feels like too.
“Yeah,” he chokes, “Yes. I want to fight with you.” And he does. He really, really does. He wants to fight for the right reasons this time, to right a wrong that’s been eating at his soul for years, to rebuild everything that’s been lost and finally feel at home in his own skin.
“That’s the spirit, Red.” Bakugou says, a fierce grin overtaking his face. “Now rest up while you can, you’re comin’ with me to the base tomorrow. Nothin’s gonna be easy from now on.”
“Thank you,” Eijirou blurts out earnestly and unprompted, with more feeling than he probably meant to. “Thank you for trusting me, and for saving me,”
He doesn’t know how to best express his gratitude, the unending relief that there’s a possibility he can be more than some giant hunk of metal and a failed experiment, that he can be something more than his failures. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to say it all, but this is a good start.
Bakugou looks at him for a minute, face contemplative, before his face softens again, “Idiot, you’re the one that saved me.”
Yeah, it's a start.