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Sometimes he wondered why the Doctor had made him unable to speak. Not even just unable to speak, but without even a mouth to move, to make sounds of any kind. No beeps. No binary. No Morse code. Nothing. His metal fingers were too clumsy to form the symbols of any kind of sign language, not that anyone had ever tried to teach him.
After he met his loathsome copy, he understood, at least a little. Sonic never stopped talking. Not even when he was an inch from death, his silver tongue kept wagging, informing both his creator and himself that they couldn't possibly win, that what they were doing was wrong.
Wrong? That was impossible. Metal ran a half dozen scenarios in his head as soon as Sonic made the claim but...no. The Doctor was always right. The Doctor had a Vision for the world, and it was Metal's place to help bring that Vision to fruition. Sonic was just being selfish.
Maybe Metal would have told him so. Except that he couldn't—besides...what would he have said? He would have had to come up with something quick and quippy, witty enough to match his counterpart, and there was nothing like that in his databanks. Nothing but endless rows of zeroes and ones. So maybe...maybe it was for the best.
He couldn't believe it when they lost. The Doctor was furious, the sounds of metal crashing around the workshop ringing in his head. If he'd been able to speak, maybe he would have comforted his creator. But what would he have said? What words could have assuaged the anger, the accusations thrown at him that almost cut deeper than the scratches on his carapace?
So maybe it was for the best. That all he could do was stand there and take whatever the Doctor threw at him, whether it be insults or nails or entire office chairs. The most they might do was dent his already scratched exoskeleton. And he probably would have just made the situation worse by saying something, reminding the Doctor of his nemesis. So being silent was for the best. Yes.
It wasn't until the second time they met that Sonic even realized he couldn't speak. Metal would have chastised him for it except that, of course, he couldn't. All he could do was stare with his unblinking red gaze and then try and destroy him.
Their first real fight. Metal had thought they would be perfectly equally matched, unable to beat each other but...
No. At the end, he was creeping out of a lake of lava, reaching towards Sonic as his visual processors slowly fizzled out, wondering what had happened to the rest of his legs.
He didn't wake up again for months. And when he did, the Doctor didn't talk directly to him. He would talk around him, but he treated Metal like any of the other badniks. He was nothing but a specialized war machine, after all. He didn't need mental stimulation.
Orbot and Cubot tried to talk to him for a little while. But he ignored them—after all, how would he even communicate with them? He couldn't even blink to indicate his understanding. Besides, most of the time their banter was full of odd little quirks and jabs, and what would he do to respond? He didn't have any idea how he would reply to them. So he pretended that he didn't understand, and eventually they assumed he didn't.
It was for the best. They were distractions towards his glorious purpose, after all: defeating Sonic.
So why couldn't he do that? Again and again the blue hedgehog left him defeated. Again and again he withstood the rage of his creator at yet another failure.
Metal would have explained himself. But what was there to say? He didn't understand the reason why he couldn't succeed, why he couldn't make the Doctor proud, why he couldn't do the one thing he was built to do. So what would he have said? What explanation could he give for the situation? The Doctor rewatched the video footage taken from the cameras in his eyes; he could see every move made, analyze every action. He didn't need Metal to explain anything to him. So maybe it was for the best. He didn't have to come up with a reason. He just had to stand there while the Doctor upgraded his speed and weapons, even though it wouldn't matter in the end.
And the cycle repeated. Day after day, year after year.
Until there was something new. The day when he woke up and he didn't see the familiar layout of the Doctor's hideout. Instead it was the slightly nervous face of Sonic's sidekick, Tails.
“Are you sure about this, Sonic?”
“I couldn't just leave him out there—that whole area was about to get destroyed!”
“But it's...it's Metal Sonic. You know it's just a mindless killing machine!”
There was a dead silence for a few moments, before Sonic replied, “It doesn't matter. He didn't deserve to die there anyways.”
“Can it die?” Tails' voice was sardonic, “Can a computer program made to kill you die?”
Another silence.
“Just...fix him up Tails. I owe him that.”
Tails grumbled, but returned to his work, and jumped when he realized that Metal's red eyes were glowing.
“Jeez, Tails, don't get scared. It's not like it can move.” The fox was correct, as Metal ran through a diagnostic procedure and determined that he had no motion capabilities. All he could do was watch as the fox continued soldering and welding bits of him back together.
Maybe if he'd been able to speak, he would have asked why. Why Tails was doing this—why he was choosing to listen to Sonic's plea. Why Sonic thought he owed Metal anything. Why his enemies had saved him, why they had then even gone on to repair him.
But he probably wouldn't have liked the answer to any of those questions. So maybe it was for the best.
He watched the fox scribble something on a piece of paper, his eyes automatically zooming in to read it—words. Actual words. He'd never seen the Doctor write like this, everything he did was typed.
Metal didn't know how to type. He could probably have arduously picked out the letters, eventually gotten faster, but what was the point? Nobody would give him the time to do it. It was for the best that he just not try.
Instead, he occupied his time with imagining what his Tails would have been like. A small companion, on par with his intelligence, but somehow...softer. A glittering golden exoskeleton—someone he could rely on to have his back, someone whom he could protect, the way his counterpart did.
He'd wondered, sometimes, why he didn't have his own version of Tails. If he'd been able to speak, maybe he would have asked. But then he would have had someone else he had to interact with, someone else who...who would have been like him. So maybe it was for the best that he couldn't ask.
“There, all done.” Tails said, and Metal focused on the scene in front of him again. Both Sonic and Tails were there, and both of them looked ready to fight if it came to it.
“Did you get the translator all set up?”
“Yeah,” Tails wrinkled his nose, “But I doubt we'll get anything. It doesn't think Sonic, it just follows orders.”
“I don't believe that—you didn't see what I saw, that first time we fought. I think...I think he's intelligent on his own, Tails.” Sonic turned his attention to the badnik, and thrust something into Metal's robotic hands, “Here.”
Metal knew what it was, fundamentally. It was some kind of port that he could plug into himself, attached to a voicebox, a little speaker in his other hand.
He stared at it.
“See?” Tails huffed, “Let me.” He grabbed the plug from Metal's hand and shoved it into its connecting port. A burst of static came out of the speaker and then...nothing.
“Metal?” Sonic asked, “Metal, can you hear me?”
He could. Of course he could. He always could.
“Can you talk to me?”
Could he? What would he say? Was there anything to be said? The obvious thing would have been to just say “Yes” but...but he wasn't even sure what type of code that would be. A soft garbled noise, not audible by normal creatures, warbled out of the microphone, and Sonic's ears wilted after a few more moments.
“Oh...”
“I told you,” Tails sighed, tugging the jack out, “I know you wanted this to be like all the others, Sonic. But it's not. It's just another badnik with a flashy paint job.”
“Yeah...I guess...” Sonic stepped closer, meeting Metal's eyes. For a long moment, he just stared, and Metal stared back. If he'd been able to speak, maybe he could have voiced the emotions he saw in Sonic's eyes, spoken through a classification of them, figured out what Sonic saw in him. But he couldn't, and they were too fleeting for him to properly analyze anyways.
“Go. Go on. I'll...I'll see you around, Metal.” Sonic finally said. Tails grumbled in the background as Metal turned on Sonic's command and walked with a perfect robotic pace to the door.
He gave one fleeting glimpse back. Tails had already turned away, still complaining under his breath, but Sonic was watching him. Sonic saw that little glance.
Maybe if Metal could speak, he would have said something then. Even something as simple as “Thank you”.
But he couldn't.
And he had to tell himself that it was for the best.