Chapter Text
“I’m fine, Six,” Spine insisted as the shorter man hastily tugged him down the dimly lit hallway towards the newly dubbed “therapy wing” of Walter Manor. The Spine had heard hushed conversations between him and Walter Workers, usually in the dead of night when they thought he was in stasis. When he should have been powered down but was physically incapable of relaxing enough to allow the sequence to initiate. He would fight the urge to protest, to desperately grab onto his sanity as it slipped away with the last drop of sunlight and prove to them that he was okay.
No, he didn’t panic at the mere mention of war, and his sensors didn’t scream in pain as flashbacks forced themselves to the surface. They didn’t. He was fine. He was strong. He had to be strong. For Rabbit, who saw him like this all too often, and for Zer0, whose perpetual optimism was a barrier between him and the cruelty of the world. He envied him with every fibre- no, metallic modicum of his being.
He was The Spine. The backbone for his siblings and the band, for Peter and the Walter Workers. He’d been built with a titanium alloy spine. That was his… backstory. It was more than some bit to get a few laughs, it was his namesake. It was him. If he couldn’t be strong like the very material he was composed of, then what was he?
He’d tried so hard to keep the flashbacks underwater and yet, here they were, destroying him from the inside out, clawing at him. Wire by wire, gear by gear, until he was reduced to nothing more than trembling hands and whimpers in a dark room.
The fact that a seven foot tall machine with war experience could be defeated by some silly flashbacks was pathetic. His allowing images etching themselves into his mind and bringing him to his knees, begging for mercy was pathetic. And yet, here he was, fighting off each blast of grisly imagery as if they were grenades setting off in his body.
As they walked down the hallway, Spine’s footsteps heavy enough to warrant concern about the structural integrity of the wooden floor, the automaton reluctantly allowed Six to guide him, keeping his arm relaxed in the scientist’s grasp. Despite the keyhole mask veiling his features, The Spine could see it in his movements and hear it in his voice, in the very way his fingers trembled as they tried to hold strong.
This was his fault. Human emotions were vulnerable and he was stepping all over them as if they were nothing more than litter on the side of the road.
“I am fine,” Spine repeated, emphasizing the final word. Peter detected an undertone, a spark of doubt emanating from his voice. “Really.”
“If you were fine you wouldn’t have the whole of Walter Manor scared you’re going to damage yourself!” Six shot back, keeping his gaze fixed on the passage ahead and blinking back the tears forming in his eyes.
Spine shrank back, pulling free his arms and bringing them to his chest and rubbing his hands, perhaps in an effort to self-soothe. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Peter, and instead elected to stare at the cracks in the floor. “I-I’m sorry, Six. I didn’t mean to worry you.” His usually commanding voice was now no more powerful than a kitten’s meow.
Peter sighed. “We’re just trying to help you, Spine-o. We don’t like seeing you like this.”
“But my systems aren’t affected.” The automaton began to list every functioning component of his body until Peter stopped him.
“I meant mentally. In all the repairs and maintenance we’ve done, we’ve neglected the most important aspect of your systems. Your brain.”
The Spine quirked his lips thoughtfully, staring at the chipped wall behind Peter. “I… don’t know. Couldn’t you just reprogram me?”
Spine was 99.7% sure that if Six hadn’t been wearing a mask, his mouth would have dropped to the floor. “Reprogram you?” he exclaimed. “You think we can just erase all that trauma from your software?”
“Uh.” The automaton rubbed his arm, heat flushing his face. “Based on your response there I er, suppose not.”
It baffled Peter how despite the countless panic attacks and nights spent wide awake as he was gripped by nightmarish visions, The Spine could still plaster on a smile and twist his tongue into deceitful positions.
“This will be good for you.” Peter’s voice slipped away from the edge it held earlier. “Please just give it a try.”
Spine was stubborn, Peter knew, when it came to taking care of himself. He always prioritized his robotic siblings’ repairs over his own, and kept his haunting thoughts in the deepest recesses of his CPU. Which was why he had a full argument locked and loaded.
He could only widen his eyes when Spine nodded and agreed to go. There was a clear tinge of resentment in his voice, but firecrackers still went off in Six’s mind. At this point, with Spine’s world crumbling around him, he was going to take all the small victories he could get.