Work Text:
Eulogy - a piece praising someone highly after their death. Definition number 1215225 in X’s internal dictionary, one of many “human” things Dr. Light had encoded into his systems.
X was built with a great deal of familiarity toward that sort of thing in general - he liked to think that was his father’s way of pushing him toward one-to-one functionality with humans. He could laugh, he could cry. He could want things outside what he was programmed to be.
To the humans of Dr. Light’s time, X was straddling human and robotic lines. How wonderful , he could imagine the old man saying, how wonderful that you are alive . Alive like a human, alive and living, alive like… like Zero was no longer.
Another one to one function. Laugh and cry, want things for the sake of wanting and now: mourning the dead.
If Zero could be considered “dead”. That would mean he’d need to be alive first.
“Are we alive.” Zero’s voice was about as deadpan as it could get in that moment, staring X down.
“Yeah. I mean – we’re machines. But we’re sentient machines,” X had protested. So does that mean we’re alive?”
X closed his eyes, insides rolling with memory. That conversation had been… years ago now. He’d just made B rank. It was an August morning, hazy with sun and heat even that early, enough to make even a Reploid think twice about being outside.
“You’re overthinking this,” Zero shrugged with that devil-may-care expression of his.
“I’m not sure I am, Zero! Think about it. If we’re alive - alive in any sense of the word - do you have any idea what that implies in terms of ethics for the Maverick Hunters and for Reploids as a whole?!”
“And see, there’s the speech that proves the rule. Overthinking it for sure ,” Zero laughed.
He remembers Zero leaning casually against the railing, elbows braced on it, golden hair whipping in the crossbreeze. If X closed his eyes, he can even picture that oddly fond blue-eyed gaze and hear Zero’s laughter in the wind currently brushing his helmet like someone just beyond this world was ruffling the hair under it. Don’t worry about it, he hears it in his head so clearly.
“Look, X - don’t worry about it. The answer’s simple, right? All living things exist. And we exist, so we’re alive.”
Zero grins as he pushes up off the railing, stretching his back languidly. “Don’t you think that’s enough of an answer for now?
Zero had spoken it so confidently that X could believe it without hesitation. Which set the tone for their whole relationship, if he really thought about it: Zero’s confidence and quick action, the complete lack of hesitation as barrelled forward on his own path, and X following along a few steps behind.
So, he decided. Zero was, indeed, alive.
Was.
Was, because of…
You’re overthinking it again, he hears Zero chide in his head. C’mon X.
Zero was alive, and now he was dead. All that remained of him was the buster now seated firmly on X’s left arm and the memories ping-ponging around in his hard drive like fireflies trying to escape. One of which has settled neatly in his core, glowing with all it had, reminding him of the memories he still wouldn’t get to make.
Each brick from Sigma’s toppling fortress is another memory he doesn’t know if he’s ready to part with, sitting in still silence. Mourning, perhaps. Mourning the Animaloids he’d once called friends and allies, his trusted commander - and if X can let himself be honest, which he rarely did where Zero was concerned, the partner he loved more than life itself.
He’d probably mourn Zero forever, X thinks with a bitter laugh. In all the moments when X would find something to miss, he’d discover another loss to mourn. In all the memories he didn’t get to share with Zero, every nightmare– still more to grieve. With every endless knot of love and praise around each memory, he’d–
Frankly, right now, he just misses Zero being there. The phantom arm stretching across his shoulders dulls some of the pain, even if the person it should belong to isn’t there. Without really thinking, the hand X had clenched into a heartbroken fist was now slowly reaching up to lay on the hand that wasn’t there.
Tapping his own cold armor almost startles him, but he refuses to let himself stop imagining Zero’s arm around him until the last fortress brick had at last met the unforgiving sea. Then, and only then, does he quietly turn on his communications channel.
“Alia, I’m ready to–”
Go home, he chokes on it before he even gets the words out. Home? Yes, Hunter HQ had been home once. And now without their comrades, without Zero…
It was a new place now. Certainly not the home he knew.
“X?” Alia startles him out of his thoughts, stern voice soft with concern. “X, respond, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Alia. Can you…?”
“I’ll teleport you back to Hunter Base now. I’ll make sure to… I’ll just have something warm ready for you.”
“Thank you. I’ll see you shortly.”
“Hunter Base” it was. Until it was home again, or until he accepted it never would be.
“You know,” X said after a moment, “I’ve always wondered why you make that face.”
“What face?”
“This one,” X scrunched up his nose and squeezed his eyes shut like he was bracing for impact. “Every time you come over and drink one of my E-Tanks, you scrunch your face up.”
The cycle of grief is much shorter if the one you’re grieving gets rebuilt six months later and is currently sitting with you on the roof of the Hunter HQ.
For the first time in half a year, the seat next to X is warm with a body’s heat and not just collected sunlight from during the day. Zero is with him, drinking one of the high-performance e-Tanks X liked so much, and something that should feel so very the same feels so very different instead.
“I don’t do it every time,” Zero protested, gesturing with the tank itself.
“You do! Every single time,” X said, punctuating the sentence by folding his arms. “You scrunch your face up. It’s weird.”
“...Weird,” Zero deadpanned, but X was practiced enough at reading the unreadable to catch a flash of hurt in his eyes.
X promptly backpedaled. “Well, not weird weird. Just different.”
“Seeing the sky like this hits different now,” Zero commented softly with a chuckle.
“Hits different? Since when did you say that?”
“Since now,” Zero shrugged.
“So, just “different” enough to be weird. Thanks, buddy.”
“I didn’t mean it like that–” X protested and groaned, facepalming. “I sound like you now.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I rubbed off on you,” Zero taunted and was rewarded with a pillow thrown at him by X.
X leaned over slightly, resting his head on Zero’s shoulder and shivering slightly at the way Zero’s hand held so gently onto him. It still didn’t fully feel real - Zero was back, and the base finally felt like “home” again. Well, that was a lie, it didn’t feel like the home it used to be. It felt like a new kind of home.
Maybe “home” could be a person, he decided as he closed his eyes to savor the warmth of the setting sun.
“Seriously, though - if you don’t like the high performance kind, why do you keep drinking them?”
X had asked it from his spot leaning against the bench, lounging on the ground next to Zero (who had sprawled across the entire bench) to keep watching the sun set. Zero made a vague half-awake “mm” noise as he turned in the hopes X might repeat the question, and his wish was promptly granted with a chuckle from the Lightbot.
“Iunno,” he said after a moment, grinning down at X. “Maybe I just like taking your stuff.”
Home could be Zero instead of a place, X thought idly, feeling Zero shift.
X opened his eyes to watch Zero take a sip of the E-Tank, eyes never straying from the sunset, Zero’s thumb gently running back and forth over X’s shoulder much like X’s used to for him.
“Zero!”
“What, it’s true. Maybe that’s why I was built, so I could steal your annoyingly sweet energen tanks and tease you about it?”
“That’s not– wait, that’s why you scrunch your face up? They’re too sweet?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m telling you, X, only you and Alia drink this kind. The rest of us drink standard like grown-ups.” Zero’s grin never once left his face as X huffed indignantly.
“Why do you steal mine if you don’t even like them?!”
“You didn’t scrunch your face up,” X murmured, getting Zero’s attention.
Waves of setting sunlight played in the gold of the other Reploid’s hair as he softly chuckled, looking away. “Maybe they changed the formula. It doesn’t taste as sweet to me this time. Or maybe I just missed it, I guess. Dying changes a guy.”
“Tell you what. You keep some of the standard blend for me at your place and I’ll stop stealing your stupid high-performance kind. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Dying would in fact change Zero, X supposed.
He just hoped it didn’t change him too much.
In a shocking turn of events, it wasn’t Zero’s death that changed X the most, but Iris’s.
“What do you think, X?” Iris had said from her spot in the grass, arms behind her head. “A world with only Reploids… what do you think you’d do first?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted honestly, looking over and away from the stars overhead. “I think I’d just like to be a nobody.”
“A Nobody? X, I said a world where only Reploids exist, not a world where Kingdom Hearts is real,” Iris had giggled and X found himself laughing along at the ridiculousness of it.
Iris hadn’t been with them very long - she had been built for Repliforce and thus her time as a Navigator was short and precious. She had been a pretty thing, round cheeks and fluffy hair, wide, innocent eyes.
X had commented Zero had a type when he first introduced them. A fact he was still sure of to this day, Zero just liked brunettes. But he’d welcomed Iris, and he’d welcomed the way little glimpses of the Zero he knew before he came back peeked through the curtains at them both when she began coming around more often.
Zero had treasured her. And truth be told, part of X did too.
“Could you imagine it, though?”
“Okay, okay… no puns this time?”
“Promise. Tell me.”
“I did tell you. In that world, I just want to be “X”. Not “X, the hero who defeated Sigma” or “X, the B-Rank Hunter”. Just X.”
Iris hmm-ed softly to herself, fiddling with her bangs in thought. “Just X… are you sure?”
“Yeah. I just want to be me, no matter what kind of world I lived in.”
“Hey.” Zero’s voice shakes X out of his thoughts and he turns back to Zero, putting the flower he was looking at back down.
“Hey yourself,” X said back. “You all right? That last mission didn’t go so well…”
“No kidding,” Zero sighed, folding his arms and looking out the window. “I could have–”
Zero suddenly flinched (invisibly, in that way only X could tell it was a flinch and the way only Iris knew it was guilt) before he continued. “I could have lost you, too.”
“I don’t know what other answer I expected,” Iris said with a little laugh, looking over at X again with open fondness. “You’re the most human Reploid I’ve ever met, so of course you’d answer like a human.”
“What do you think I’d be, then?”
“A leader.”
“A leader?”
“Yes. A leader, like a king.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“I could have.”
“You wouldn’t have,” X soothed, crossing the space of the room to put a hand on Zero’s cheek. “The Zero I know wouldn’t have dared let it happen.”
“A king?! Okay, now it’s my turn to say you said “a world where only Reploids exist” instead of Kingdom Hearts, Iris,” X laughed, reaching over to give her a gentle shove.
She giggled and rolled away onto her opposite side to face him properly, the wide emerald of her eyes reflecting the dancing fireflies near them. “I meant it, though. You’re kind and fair, and there isn’t a Reploid in this world who doesn’t trust you. You can be king. Colonel and Signas can get married, Zero can be your queen, and I’ll be his consort and your top advisor. It could be great!”
Iris is joking, X knows. But it’s an oddly ominous joke, he has to admit. “Maybe. Though I’m pretty sure your brother asked you to stop trying to Parent Trap him and Signas together?”
“It’s not my fault he doesn’t realize how good they are for each other,” Iris very maturely sticks her tongue out at X, then breaks into a smile.
“I could have ,” Zero protests, and it is only then X understands he is looking at a Zero who’s come back from the dead again.
X thinks he can see Iris’s ghost at Zero’s back, pleading with them both without saying a word as X touches his head gem to the teal crystal on Zero’s helmet.
Zero is shaking. The Iris in X’s mind wrings her hands like she always did when she wasn’t sure how to help.
Part of Zero died with Iris and came back to X, it seems, and he wraps his arms around Zero’s waist to help steady him.
Again, he pretends Iris is there at his back, comforting and sweet, just like she was before– before the end. When she could take off the Repliforce badge and just be Iris, just like he could just be X, just like Zero could just be Zero.
X wonders if maybe part of him died with Iris too.
“Still… I do think you’d be a great leader, X. Even in a world of only Reploids… or in a world where we managed to live together. I don’t know. I think you might be the only one strong enough for it.”
“Why not have you be the leader, then.”
“Because I’m not as strong as you,” she says as if it is a statement of fact and in some ways, it is.
Though he can’t shake the unease he feels about it when she asks him to promise he’ll take care of Zero if and when she’s gone, he makes the promise anyway: gazing at the sky, he swears on the stars he’ll protect Zero for her.
God, he should have known. The relief in her smile should have said everything then.
Zero’s hands shake and finally, after what feels like hours, he pulls X so close he can’t ventilate properly and holds him there. X quietly shuts his eyes, lets Zero hold onto him, and in his heart he wonders if Iris knew she wasn’t coming back.
X focuses on the fireflies of his memory and the fading, lingering press of his best friend’s palm as he made her a pinky promise that he would always take care of Zero.
Always, he promises as he tries not to cry himself.
Maybe she’ll come back in half a year, too.
Iris does not come back in half a year.
X doesn’t have the heart to explain to Zero why he finds himself crying over it. Fortunately, Zero doesn’t ask and just kisses his tears away.
It’s nice. He thinks of his promise and hopes Iris doesn’t mind that Zero’s taking care of him for a bit instead. Part of him thinks she’s scolding him for thinking she would mind - she may have loved X in a different way than she loved Zero (and he loved her in that same way, as his first non-Zero friend) but she did love him, too.
“And my exact wording on that promise was “take care of each other,” you doofus!” Iris’ voice chides in the back of his head, and X wonders if Zero can still synthesize her voice from his memory banks.
X has gotten very good at grieving in the past year.
First it was Zero, who returned. Then it was Iris, who didn’t.
Now it is Zero again, and even with the saber in his hand acting as a sobering symbol of that loss X isn’t sure he can believe Zero is truly gone forever this time.
Idly, he twirls it between his fingers almost as if he is waiting at a train station for a train that isn’t going to come for years, let alone a few minutes from now, and yet somehow he expects to look up and see Zero again.
With a sigh that’s lived in his metal bones longer than he’s been alive, he prepares to stand up and speak to a new set of fresh-faced B-Ranks ready to start their own careers as Hunters. In the back, two are lightly pushing each other and occasionally throwing playful punches, laughing between themselves without much of a care to be had.
The memory of his early days with Zero is so vivid and clear watching them. For a moment he almost convinces himself there is a beautiful flash of golden blond just within reach…
“Your left–”
X dives directly into one of Eagle’s Storm Tornadoes, leaving the violet Animaloid shaking with laughter as Zero snickers, hair blown by the wind.
“I-I meant your other left,” Zero chokes through laughter.
X thinks he is being very mature as he shouts for Zero to stop helping him and fires off four quick shots from his buster.
Zero doesn’t dodge and is sent backward into Storm Eagle, still laughing, while Armor Armadillo softly sighs and offers to show X a better defensive position. X does not take her up on it, and instead runs across the field to tackle Zero and knock both him and Storm Eagle down.
Clearly this was the correct, proper response. Once he’s in a heap with the Animaloid currently joking about him listening to Armor Armadillo and a Zero still helpless with laughter, X lays his head on Zero’s chest and begins to laugh at the ridiculousness of all of it.
After a few moments, they all sit up, Zero’s hair falling over his shoulders like twin rays of sunlight.
“Wanna try that again?” Zero helps X up as if he already knows the answer.
The golden flash he expects isn’t there as he comes out of his memory, and neither is Zero. It doesn’t keep X’s hand from twitching slightly, watching to reach for the phantom hand of the man he loves so deeply.
Loves, present tense, and he has to fight against his processor trying to correct it to “loved”.
After all, he didn’t stop loving Zero because he’d died. And in the depths of his mechanical heart, X is more sure than anyone he won’t stop loving Zero any time soon.
He could be patient. Could Zero come back from this? Unlikely at best.
But he’d also once said Zero couldn’t come back from getting blown into multiple pieces by Vile, and thus if any part of Zero survived it would mean he could return.
And one part of Zero did survive, thought X as the newly-minted 16th unit began to settle down. Because part of Zero would always remain in X’s heart, and in that way, he lived forever.
The saber felt warm against his hip. As long as it rested there or in his hand, Zero was still with him. Zero was still alive when X held the Z-saber.
X’s favorite hobby, Zero had once said in a fit of frustration, was finding ways to blame himself for every tragedy that befell their world.
Yet as he dodged to the right with a yelp, X thought back to the first day the 16th took the field. No matter what way he tried to look at it, this was his fault. His decision to let Zero pilot the shuttle, his memories, his fault this violet-armored nightmare was wreaking havoc on the world.
It wasn’t Zero, he knew that on some level. But it made for a hell of a convincing copy, and his circuits burned with that knowledge. It’s him, some hidden part of his mind yelled. It’s him, and it’s your fault he came back like this, it’s your fault he died–
He scrambles to block another blow that rattles his entire arm and makes him flinch. Maybe he wanted it to be Zero, actually. Maybe he wanted Zero to yell that it was X’s fault and scream at him like that would somehow absolve him of his guilt. Maybe he wanted Zero to hate him, so he could feel like whatever cosmic overlord their universe had would agree he had been punished enough.
Maybe he wanted Zero to kill him, since he’d died for X so many times, but at this point even the Nightmare itself seemed to be pulling his blows.
“C’mon, buddy, you’re better than that,” it softly laughed, a warped mockery of the gentle tone Zero always took when trying to salvage X’s ego after a lost spar. The rain almost made it look like he was crying, too.
“You need to put your heart into it,” he insisted, and X wondered briefly if putting his heart against Zero’s saber was an option.
Unfortunately, with Elysium still but a dream and humans still only human, death was a luxury he couldn’t afford to purchase. It might have been nice to give up if he could, but present needs dictated otherwise.
Relying instead on his better judgment, X brings up Zero’s saber to block the Nightmare’s strike against his own wishes: trying to push forward and put an end to the charade. “If my heart wasn’t in it, you’d have been dead by now,” he hissed and broke the bladelock, sliding backwards with a huff.
Sabers were never X’s strong suit, his frame just wasn’t built to let them be as effective as they should be. He could never strike fast enough to put sufficient power into it - and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t tried or as though his need to feel connected to his lost lover hadn’t indirectly led to getting better with the damn thing. He was all right with one but Zero had always been so much better and his violet counterpart proved it to still be true.
A solid horizontal blow connected with X’s hand and sent the saber flying, rolling somewhere into the darkness. X didn’t have time to think about going after it, refocusing his energy into his buster–
And very suddenly he was chest-to-chest with the violet copy of Zero smiling so serenely at him that X could feel his own heart crack. The arm around his waist and the hand on his cheek sent his senses rolling with memory.
“Hey, c’mon, you need to focus.”
“I’m trying, but you’re in front of me. What else is there to focus on?”
Zero huffed softly, stroking X’s cheek with his thumb, the arm around his boyfriend’s waist warm and strong.
“You know if we spend too long like this, Alia’s gonna yell at us for missing our target in the crowd.”
“Maybe. Or she’ll just be glad to see you smiling again after so long.”
X was sure if he blinked, the other Zero’s armor would be red.
“Besides, what’s a few more minutes like this?” X murmured, closing in for a kiss.
Zero’s answer was lost as he leaned in, too.
The Nightmare softly laughed, like all of this had just been a friendly spar. “Easy now,” he said, voice clearing of the odd vocalizer glitches he’d been displaying most of the fight. “It’s okay. The saber’s out of your hands, the fight is over.”
“The fight is over,” he repeated with a tone of finality, tapping his head crystal to X’s. “And you’re free. You don’t have to keep going alone any more, I’m here.”
“Can we stay like this? Zero?”
“As long as you need me here, I’ll be here. So, yes. A little longer should be fine.”
X’s body felt frozen and molten all at once. Was he shaking?
“Just close your eyes for me, okay? I know, it hurts. You’re ready to stop,” the Nightmare murmured softly, lips damningly close to X’s.
X had lost count of the kisses they’d traded by now, assignment all but forgotten.
Was… was he ready to stop fighting? The answer felt more complicated than he wanted and it felt like every system he had was firing off warnings of something or another going critical. Not to mention his threat detection was pinging like crazy. But… he still couldn’t seem to move.
They’d get back to it soon enough, but while he had this moment, X would linger in it with Zero and softly sway to the music in the background behind them, night sky stars twinkling like their own private stage.
X wasn’t even sure he wanted to move. But before he could open his mouth to protest, the situation changed in the blink of an eye: the Nightmare threw X behind him as a red blur lunged forward, saber aglow.
Zero, his mind helpfully informed him as the Nightmare was forced to engage. The Nightmare growled and slid backward, taking a bracing stance - Zero gave it no notice, lunging in again with a howl from somewhere in his core. Saber met saber with constant crackles of ozone and static.
Again. X stayed frozen, the weight of the past few minutes seeming to compress down into the back of his head as Alia begged him for a status update. His fingertips instinctively go to his lips and his thoughts come to a halt with one final metallic screech.
X looks up to find Zero panting heavily, hair blowing golden in the wind and rain, looking more an angry war god than a Reploid: the violet nightmare is in pieces around him, and even so Zero seems to be subconsciously seeking another to fight.
“Zero?” X calls hesitantly, drawing Zero’s attention to him and the expression change is immediately visible as he rushes over to hold X himself, bracing the back of his head carefully like he wasn’t sure X was really there.
“I’m sorry,” Zero whispered, voice thick with relief. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left you alone like that–”
“You’re back?”
“--I-I needed time for my self-repair to finish running and I was so scared–”
“Zero–”
“I thought,” Zero wasn't trying to breathe between words any more, seemingly too focused on just clinging to X. “I thought I lost you. I thought either the virus would have killed you or that you’d hate me for what happened on Eurasia–”
“Zero!” X finally managed to pull away just enough to look Zero in the eyes. “I would never– you can’t–”
X gave up on words entirely himself and yanked Zero into a kiss instead, feeling the other ‘bot melt against him like he’d released every tense spring in his body. He stood hesitantly still, lingering with his hands hovering over X’s shoulders before ultimately deciding it was fine and lowering them. Zero embraced X, and for a few moments there was no greater world. No calamities. No danger. Just X, Zero, and the rain.
There were still things left to do - eliminating the nightmare was just the most prominent thing on the list for X. But as the kiss broke and he found himself staring into the blue eyes he missed more than anything else, X questioned how wrong Zero had come back this time.
“I would never, ever , hate you,” X said between breaths. “If there is any one thing you can be assured of, it’s that I could not possibly hate you if I tried.”
“You’d be justified to,” Zero whispered with a bittersweet chuckle, pressing his head crystal against X’s again, clearly guilty but needing to be in some form of contact with him.
X didn’t dignify that with a response and settled for kissing the fear out of him again.
At the edge of the world only infinity remained. Infinite potential, DWN-Infinity, either way: it was only them for so long, and now they mutually had the world’s loudest headache.
(Not that X minded, deep down. Axl was a good kid.)
X had left active duty to try and find a peaceful end to the fighting - an alternate path to the Elysian future he was desperate to hold. Which had been… challenging, to say the least. It felt weird to hear an alarm and not go charging in beside Zero, but his ideals held that this was the only way.
Still, even he had to admit that the mournful look in Zero’s eyes when he left X behind at base was enough to make even his (mechanical, but no less real) heartstrings feel like they’d been plucked. This was the only way. X was sure of it. How could they find real peace without someone to lead the way? Who better for it than him, who was sick of fighting anyway?
…Even he had to sigh a bit and lean into his chair, head in his hands, at that last part. “Sick of fighting” - was that really what he was telling himself? Granted, he didn’t like it. In fact he was pretty sure he detested it. But sick of it? That wasn’t right either…
No, thinking it over, that would imply he’d given up. And that was something he couldn’t do no matter how much pressure piled onto his shoulders. So what was this he was doing? “Ending the violence through nonviolence”? Sure, maybe. But even that didn’t feel right.
Maybe… maybe this was just another form of running away, he mused as he lowered his hands to his lap. Running away felt right. Running away meant he’d come back to it later.
But when was later, he grimaced, remembering Axl’s bright-eyed and adoring gaze while cheerfully announcing he was a Hunter like that was something to be proud of. (Wasn’t it, though?)
X found his head in his hands as he stared down at the desk in front of him. He was tired - the kind of tired that hollows the bones, Dr. Cain had said years ago - and he imagined Zero was tired. How could he not be? Even the sun eventually had to burn out, but even then, Zero seemed to persist.
That was the magic of him, X mused, to persist well beyond any given limitation. (Wasn’t that what “unlimited potential” was? Wasn’t that a sign?)
…And X had certainly pushed those limits over the years, he realized. When it came down to it, Zero always came back, not just for his own sake but he always looked X in the eye like he was saying I did this for you, you know that right? That was why Zero was still fighting even now. Because X asked, because there wasn’t a goddamn thing on this planet he would refuse if it was something X asked. X could ask him for everything and nothing, because he knew Zero would never refuse. When it came to X… Zero’s coin was loaded to always land on whatever X wanted.
On some level it had always been that way. And now, only now, was he realizing just how much Zero would happily sacrifice for him… and how much he, in turn, had sacrificed for Zero.
For each instance of dying and coming back wrong, X had died and come back wrong in other ways.
From rookie clinging to his mentor’s shadow to confident Hunter.
From hesitant and fearful to decisive and calm.
From begging Zero not to leave his side again to understanding Zero could do nothing but leave him to protect him, X had died and come back wrong just as much. For every time Zero died, part of X went with him.
So, what was left of him now, then? The chair under him creaks like it’s offering an answer.
X the Maverick Hunter was begging for the world to stay saved for more than ten seconds. X the leader who wanted peace was saying that as much as he wanted to lead the charge, he could better get them there from desk duty. And above all else, the X who loved Zero was wondering if maybe just this once he couldn’t meet Zero halfway to the afterlife.
After so many “deaths”, what remained of the original X?
X wasn’t sure he knew the answer any more.
But… after writing so many mental eulogies for Zero, he supposed it only made sense that he write one for himself, too.
As he could distantly hear Axl’s footsteps barrelling down the hallway, he sat up straight and took in a breath.
This is a eulogy, a eulogy for you.
For the “you” who died and survived, and for the “me” who followed you.
He opened his eyes and steeled himself for the difficult conversation ahead, knowing there was no going back on it once he’d started it.
From the me who is brave, to the me who was afraid:
Thank you for trying. Thank you for admitting it. Thank you for being the “me” who died so the “me” of now survived.
Axl’s footsteps were louder, joined by more sure footfalls. Zero’s, he wagered.
From the me who stands on his own by necessity, to the me screaming for Zero to return:
He will be back. He always makes it back. Thank you for being the “me” who learned to trust and wait.
Signas turns around ahead of him, eyes meeting X’s. X finds himself nodding, because he already knows what he needs to say.
From the me who’s survived, to every me who died:
I’m tired. I will always be tired. Thank you for giving me a reason to keep fighting.
The doors are thrown open and the boisterous brunette with eyes so much like X’s own is rushing over, laughing wildly and cheering about how great he had done. Zero would be just behind him, acting nonchalant, fighting to keep a proud grin off his face.
…Axl did need a teacher to help him rein it in a little, after all. And damage mitigation wasn’t really in Zero’s skillset.
From the me who’s going to keep fighting, to the “you” who became my reason to fight…
“So, you’ve decided then?” Signas says quietly, drawing X’s attention.
“I have.” X finally stands up, the confusion on Axl’s face rapidly transforming into an over-excited grin. “I’m going too.”
Thank you.
May this be the last lonely eulogy I ever write.