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What kind of maniac gives a killing machine the capacity to feel? What good is an iron executioner that is consumed by guilt with every strike? What use, a final creation who would weep at the top of his new world?
The empathy that churned at his guts and tore at his heart (whether or not he had either) hadn’t stopped him from carrying out his sacred mission, at least. What good were all of his heroics if his creation alone had doomed the world a thousand times over? How many times must he see the people he loves die to repent for all of the loved ones lost in his wake? How many times must he die before the world lets him go?
They both knew what he was now. It was a miracle he wasn’t alone yet, but it would happen in time. One of these mistakes, one of these casualties, and no pacifist worth anything would stand by his side. He’d see his mistake eventually. X was what he had thought he had been. He was a hero. He was Light. Too good for this world and sworn to protect it anyway. The least Zero could do was die for him.
Patient Zero . The irony was not lost on him. Signas’ suspicions had been accurate, the bastard. The virus could disable a Reploid and drive him mad almost instantly if it wanted to. Zero was no Reploid. Zero only got stronger in its presence. High ranking Hunters had to be equipped with a million antivirals before they could go into a Maverick nest, and even then they wore dense armor to make sure they weren’t so much as scratched by one of the infected. Zero should have known something was off when they sent him in with just a sword. And covered in the blood of the innocents he had made sick, he’d go back to base and show off . Like he was some kind of hero .
He mourned Iris like somebody else had killed her. It was the only way he knew how to survive his guilt. He had been foolish. She wasn’t ill like the rest. Her only crime was loyalty to her brother. He had picked a fight where he shouldn’t have, and she showed where her loyalties lay. The Hunters accepted that it was self-defense. Anyone who knew what he could do, the precision with which he could land his strikes, knew he could have spared her if he had wanted. That same day, X asked him to kill him if he ever went Maverick. All he could do was agree. X wouldn’t want to hear that if he ever got the person he cared for most in the world infected, he’d be going first.
The shuttle was his only chance to redeem himself. If he died here to save a world he was born to destroy, then he could go to the cold, dead, robotic approximation of hell that awaited him as happy as he could ever be again. He was the only pilot they had left after all (never mind that X had had the same training). X had volunteered to go in his place. He had never heard a worse idea. The world needed X. He was like an angel, sent from the past instead of the heavens to protect the foolish humans from themselves. From him. If X died then God really had given up on the world. So even as his best friend wept an angel’s tears into his comms, begging him not to go, begging Signas not to send him, begging his father even (forgive them father for they know not what they do) but gods do not stop fallen angels from falling further. He ejected in time, if only for X’s sake. It didn’t matter.
The shuttle failed. The navis were panicking, the citizens were panicking, Douglas was wringing his hands. Signas only smirked a little, then returned to directing the frenzied Hunters. Eventually only X was left at the monitor, screaming until his throat hurt, until it cracked and broke in a way more human than most real people left on the Earth. If anyone was supposed to die for humanity it was supposed to be him. It was always moments like these when he regretted his simulated humanity, when he wished he could not feel the way his tears stung his eyes or the way his voice cracked around Zero’s name. Even when Alia had worked her magic and located a faint signal, and X and company were ushered out the door, he dared not hope.
It was a strange feeling, not being entirely in control of his body. Zero supposed that the ever evolving virus had finally perfected itself, had weaseled its way into his system and removed that irritating little bug called empathy. He’d die when he went Maverick indeed. Floating high above the wreckage of the planet Earth he questioned why he had ever so avoided his destiny in the first place. He was perfect now, powerful and beautiful and free . He was no longer shackled by petty guilt, just an all-consuming drive to fulfill his prime directive. Kill Light’s final creation . His old ‘friends’ showed up eventually, they always would, the sentimental fools. Reploids were copies of copies of copies, entirely underwhelming compared to the original, his hereditary enemy. The part of his processor that the virus was squirming inside identified the blue-armored boy with endless hope and love tainted with fear in his watery green eyes as DLN-∞. A slightly more sentimental part of him buried under layers of new programming identified him as X .
This was what life was always supposed to be like! They were evenly matched and covered in each other’s blood and it was fabulous . But still, the blue robot (not Reploid, never Reploid, X was better than those fools, he was the son of a God) looked up at him, shining in all of his glory, with fear and despair in his eyes. Couldn’t he see this was all they were ever meant for? To be locked in eternal battle until they both slay each other? To let the world fall in ashes if only to lock blades one more time? Buster shots parried, sword slashes gracefully dodged. It was almost like dancing. Zero thought he might have laughed. X would tire first, of course. He didn’t have such glorious power running through electrical veins. He would fall to his knees before him, in supplication and prayer to the god of this new world. He lifted the fallen Lightbot’s chin with his sword, more than prepared to make the boy his lieutenant if only he asked (anything for X, anything ) only to find himself on the ground with the Buster aimed at his face. He grinned as everything went blissfully dark.
He came to slung halfway over X’s shoulder (it was almost comical, given their height difference). He could hear Signas screaming in X’s comm to leave him there, to not bring his infected body back to base. X ignored him and pushed on. He was too smart to believe there wasn’t someone else behind this, and it sure as hell wasn’t Zero. It was always Sigma, dammit. It was surely Sigma again. Neither of them were in any shape for that, not without backup, but he had to prove their innocence. He couldn’t just let Zero die. Not like this.
X was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t see the bright flash, didn’t feel Zero moving from his side to push him out of the way until it was too late- and like everything was moving in slow motion, he watched his best friend get torn in half like wet paper by Sigma’s attack. Zero couldn’t see much from the floor, leaking coolant and lubricant and fading in and out of consciousness, but he could hear X fighting valiantly, could hear Sigma cursing and screaming as he was defeated for what seemed like the millionth time- and he could feel when he was picked up, held in X’s arms- he could feel the tears that were not his fall on his cheeks. He did his best to smirk up at X, to smile at him through similarly wet eyes, to try to convey everything he had ever felt for the boy, his best friend, his reason for living, what he was fighting for-
That was when the second flash happened.
The last thing he felt was X slumping against him, as he fell into darkness for real this time.