Work Text:
He could never forget that day.
The squad leader looked back at him as Congre’s gun slipped from his sweaty, shaking grip. Terror and horror were in her eyes. “Run, kid,” the woman told him, voice quavering as screams rounded the corner, “you’re too young to die here. No one will blame you! Run, kid! RUN!”
He ran. As he did he looked back at their attacker, a monster who’d ambushed them as they finished sealing away Model W. Gunblasts from the rapidly dying Guardian forces couldn’t hide the sound of carnage. Red eyes glowed vividly as a magenta light cut through the air. The squad leader’s blood sprayed out a brilliant crimson, the hue similar to the attacker’s armour, beautiful and vulgar and too much all at once for the fleeing rookie to comprehend.
Girouette roared as he sped past Congre, the red Mega Man facing the beast head-on to buy them all time.
Congre ran faster.
He could never forget that day. It haunted him almost every night. He’d taken to letting his bangs grow out to help hide the bags under his eyes.
Ciel patted his back, holding him close. It didn’t seem to matter to her that she was the commander, and he was just a lowly recruit. She held him anyways, and he was glad, because he needed it. His first official day on the job. His first field mission. And he was the only survivor other than Girouette. Girouette the hero, the red Mega Man who was barely held together in the med bay, breathing through tubes because of injuries sustained in holding the demon off. Girouette, paragon of the Guardians, now marred forevermore, the man suffering from permanent damage to his retinas and knee and lung and who knows what else. Giro, who saved his life, and whom he couldn’t even look in the eye anymore because of the long, blonde hair that reminded Congre all too much of Him.
Too much guilt. Too much fear.
None of it was supposed to have happened. The area was supposed to be secure. Safe, safe enough to bring along a promising new recruit despite what the Guardians were hiding away from the world. No need to even be armed. No need to run for your life, or sob out your story to a panicked commander, or listen to assurances or condolences or “Shhhh it’s over now, it’s okay, just let it out,” from the unofficial mother of all Guardians, Ciel. The leader, the genius, the long-time friend of his father Hirondelle, the first one to offer him her shoulder. The graceful and wonderful commander whom he also couldn’t look at because her hair was blonde and long like Giro’s.
Like His .
His squad leader had been right, in the end. No one blamed him.
He could never forget that day.
A loud BANG made him jump a foot. One of the newer recruits laughed, “Hey, take it easy on the gunpowder, Cédre! You’re going to give poor Congre the coward a heart attack!
Congre the coward? Is that what they were calling him?
He watched them all guffaw at his miserably huddling form even as one of the veterans started admonishing the others for their behaviour. Despite the dressing-down, once the veteran turned their back the rookies all puffed out their chests and grinned with the exuberance of the young and untouchable. Jokes started up, whispers and jeers murmuring through the crowd. The rookies all postured and posed with weapons they didn’t know how to use in the slightest. There was no room for anything but bravado in their ranks, as far as they were concerned. If you weren’t courageous, you were a loser to them, simple as that.
Fools. Bravado like that would get them all killed.
Congre the coward. He liked that name. Cowards survived.
He could never forget that day. No one would let him forget it.
Someone laughed in the halls. Laughed loudly and fully, the sound bouncing off the metallic walls of the Guardian base. Congre didn’t hear the joke that had started the jovial noise, but he heard the aftermath all too well. The booming echoes chased him as he fled to his room, memories threatening to overtake him.
He saw red eyes. He saw vicious glee in the demon’s gaze. He saw blood and viscera, a bright sword, red armour, and long, golden hair that followed behind its owner like a banner of war. He saw all this and more as Giro faced off against the monster, even if it was only for a moment as he fled to the trans-server a few rooms away. Congre observed, for the briefest and longest second of his life, the sadistic curiosity in the maverick’s eyes as it prepared to battle the Mega Man approaching it. It let out a battle cry as Congre fumbled with the trans-server’s controls. Congre heard the words and haunting laughter as he teleported away.
“Ware wa messia nari! Ha ha ha ha!”
Congre cowered in his room. He could never forget that day. He could never, ever, ever forget that day.
Giro was dead, Ciel was long gone, and one of the newest Mega Men, one of Girouette’s successors, was striding boldly around the base in their full ZX megamerge. Blonde hair swayed behind them as they moved. Congre stayed in his room, because that hair made him remember what he could never forget. Because he could never forget that day, never, ever, ever forget that day. He couldn’t even go to the window to calm down, to look and see the beautiful landscape below, because they were currently flying above the Area A forest. The forest, serene, unassuming, and hiding beneath it the dreaded Area M ruins. Hiding beneath it a slaughterhouse for his comrades. Like a monster under the bed there was a monster deep, deep under those woods, one that no one but him knew about. He wondered if the ZX Mega Men knew how fortunate they’d been when Pandora and Prometheus had attacked the residential area, and in doing so, made them rush out of the dangers of the ruins. It made them completely and mercifully miss the fact that something else had been down there with them, prowling through the depths of darkness with an unmatched thirst for destruction. They’d been lucky. They’d been so, so lucky. That ignorance, that forgetfulness, was bliss. A bliss Congre couldn’t afford.
He could never forget that day down in Area M, that horrendous occasion when Weil’s hellhound had come back from the dead and immediately went for their throats, fangs sharpened and bared and covered in blood. Congre couldn’t forget. He couldn’t!
If he didn’t remember the threat down there, who else would?