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"What are you doing."
"Travelling."
"Why?"
"Grief, I think."
A gentle morning wind slipped between the two machines as they stood by the railroad. Mecha gingerly nodded her head, armour outlined amber against a soft sunrise. Silver gave a weak smile and looked back out to the tracks, sprawling far into the distance across wastelands where their warehouse sat like an old landmark.
This was home now, as it had been for a couple of months.
"Why." Mecha quieried.
Silver frowned subtly. "Why not?"
"I would hypothesize that you are, in some manner, attempting to place physical distance between yourself and your home." Mecha offered simply.
"Not everything's gotta be psychoanalyzed, M. Sometimes things just… are." Silver dismissed her, purposely looking away - again, creating distance.
"I suppose so. However, I would like to understand your pain. You are hurting, and I see that." Mecha ventured gently, moving to stand closer to her brother. Closing that distance.
"I… feel like… there's nowhere I wanna go, but I can't stay."
"Stay where."
"With myself."
Mecha watched with interest as Silver's arm moved, crossing over his other, and his hand rubbed against his armour - stimulating his pressure sensors, no doubt for comfort. His fingertips clicked quietly as the joints in his hand moved and flexed, seeking something soothing.
"And yet, you seek reassurance from yourself." Mecha noted, still gentle. She reached to his side and took Silver's wandering hand in her own. "Speak with me. You need not carry this alone."
Silver sighed through his vents and leaned into his sibling, letting the weight of his frame sink into Mecha's strong form. "Where he used to be, there's this… hole. I feel like I'm constantly walking around it but I still fall into it. There's a brother-shaped hole in this universe."
Mecha nodded, listening carefully, tuning her auditory sensors into her brother's words like they were scripture. Her hand closed just a fraction tighter around Silver's, holding it with care that only a sibling could provide.
"Indeed, there is a great loss that we are suffering. But this morning, you have walked into the light, the cool of the air, and you continue to love him, and you will continue to love him tomorrow. Loss does not mean absence of love. It does not mean that you must stop doing what brings you joy. You are permitted to return to yourself, for doing so is not an abandonment of our love for our brother."
Silver fell quiet, listening too, and nodding slowly. His optics fell to the ground, the small plants, the tiny wild creatures scuttling about in the morning glow. They knew not of his suffering, his heartache, blissfully unaware in their own worlds which - he realized only then - were just as large, if not larger, than his own. A small part of him wanted to hate those little animals for their ignorance. Part of him then figured that, somehow, he just wanted everything to know how physical his missing was.
Why did everything else in the world step around this hole so easily? It felt like a mockery, even if the robot didn't want to become resentful.
Mecha continued in order to bring Silver back, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand, "you may wish for a place that is big enough for this grief, however, all you will encounter is more grief when you arrive there."
"You talk so… feelingly sometimes." Silver murmured with a half-smile. He braved a look up to Mecha, only to find that warm amber visor looking down at him with undeniable care. "For a robot who says they have no empathy. How do I know you're not just saying what you think I want to hear right now to make me shut up?"
Mecha shrugged a shoulder. "Perhaps I am. Perhaps, more importantly, I speak because you are my brother, and your suffering is of great consequence to me, as is the loss of our sibling. Do not doubt that I too miss him, and do not accuse me of speaking with intent to silence you. That brings me... sadness."
"Sorry, M. I didn't mean that. Forgive me."
In the distance, the familiar roll of a freight train rattled the earth under their soles. The sound had become just a part of the routine for the robots in their new home as heavy loads made their long travel to distant cities. They were but a speck on a gas station map out there, and it brought some comfort to be so off the grid.
Silver expected Mecha to draw or distract him away from the tracks with the incoming arrival, but Mecha surprised him.
"Come. Let us travel. I have a destination in mind." Mecha instead offered, gently pulling on Silver's hand towards the spot on the horizon.
Something as small as this managed to pull a smile onto Silver's face, and he seemed to light up just a little. "Where are we going?"
"To a paint manufacturer," Mecha explained, looking back to Silver with a slight tilt of her head, "because I noticed your new habit."
Silver tilted his head, curious but a little defensive. "What habit?"
Mecha reached out and placed her palm square on Silver's forehead. "The black paint at home washes off of your armour too easily. Let us invest in something of higher quality, something that shall remain no matter the water pressure."
(So that you can return to yourself, and him, at the same time.)
Silver's face would have flushed if it could have - knowing that Mecha had seen him try to paint the arrows that Neo had - so he diverted the topic to something more consequential. "We could just fly there."
"And yet, you did not."
"You didn't remind me!" Silver blurted out, apparently forgetting all common sense for a second. "I- that was dumb. Sorry."
A lapse in logic that only heartache could account for. Mecha saw it for what it was, and did not poke fun at him.
"You may approach your grief however you must. However, when I see you step into that hole that you spoke of… it is my duty to pull you out."
"Then pull me out."
And when the train arrived, Mecha took the first leap up onto the top, pulling Silver along with her. Silver scrambled for purchase for just a moment before Mecha ushered him up with her, taking care to not scrape his paint. The heavy vehicle steadily rocked with a maternal rhythm, anchored to centuries-old rails, and the two machines took comfort in the way they leaned into each others' forms to keep their footing.
And when the train arrived, it rolled over the little holes in the earth, the tiny ants took pause, and the grass blades leaned back against the tide of the passing wind, and for a brief moment in time, those ankle-high worlds bore witness to the brother-shaped hole in the universe.