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"What are you doing?"
Neo brought one optic online to glance at Silver, promptly switching it off again. With a small grumble from his engine he signed, "something."
Silver tilted his head. "Well, this… something is new for you. You're sitting. Doing… nothing on the roof? I think?"
"Not nothing." Neo signed curtly.
"Then what?" Silver asked.
"You are distracting."
"Distracting from what?" Silver prodded, at this point just wanting to irritate his older brother for fun.
Neo sat upright and turned his optics on, now fiercely glaring at his little brother. The bright red reflected off of the rooftop almost ominously.
"Alright, alright… I was just, I dunno, curious. Are you okay?"
"… Yes. Sorry."
"What's crawled into your motors and died today? Talk to me." Silver let up and walked over, then slowly sat down in front of his brother.
"I was," Neo began to sign, then paused before saying, "meditating."
"You. Meditating."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Neo studied Silver's face, looking for any sign of ridicule. All he found was genuine curiosity in that slight frown and tilted head.
"Healing work."
Silver shifted to sit with his legs crossed and shuffled a little closer. "How does sitting there quietly help with that?"
Neo was slower to respond. He looked slightly uncomfortable, optics squinting ever so slightly as if talking about this was somehow painful.
"Quiet in my head. Lets me talk to my… my younger self."
"Oh."
A silence fell between them. Silver sat back on his hands, now feeling guilty for prying. Any mention of their younger selves was always followed by something painful, whether it be memories, mental hurt and exhaustion, and physical losses. Neo gave a small smile with his optics, silently telling Silver that it was okay. He wouldn't have known.
"So… what does it say? Your younger self?"
Neo's optics dimmed slightly, telling of his internal pain. "It says that I am not good enough. That I failed."
Silver shook his head. "And what did you say back?"
"I… told it that it did its best."
"And did that help?"
"A little bit."
"You gotta be kind to that little guy. You're right, it did its best." Silver added with a smile, taking Neo's hand in his. "You… weren't treated fairly. You were just a little kid, Neo. You weren't a killer."
Neo nodded after a moment. As much as he struggled to take that to heart, he tried. He really did. But still, that little voice persisted. He was raised and trained to be a murderer from the beginning, only, he had never succeeded at that. It was a good thing, and he knew it - but the child within knew differently. Said differently.
Silver saw through Neo's feigned acceptance. "I know you're disagreeing with that, but look… the three of us never got to be kids the same as most others did. It wasn't fair, you know? We were given these super smart minds, like an organic being, but treated as if we only had one purpose. That's not right."
"I know."
The brothers fell quiet again. Silver ran a thumb over Neo's hand before letting it go. Neo looked past Silver, at the sky and the vast expanse of grassland and railroad tracks that surrounded their warehouse home. His optics followed the stars as they began blinking into view. Silver followed his brother's gaze, looking over his shoulder to the sky.
"It's so clear tonight. So pretty."
"Yes."
Silver looked down to the ground, the mud from the day's rain storm glinting gently against the full moon, the grass slowly swaying in the evening breeze. The smaller robot suddenly thought of something, and sat up with a grin. He looked to his brother and grabbed his hand again, this time pulling him up as he stood.
"Come on."
Neo stared at him, confused.
"Maybe you need a little… push."
Silver suddenly turned, pulling Neo past him before pushing him off of the roof and onto the ground below. A drop from this height wouldn't hurt a battle-hardened machine like Neo, but the metallic thud would make anyone wince with concern. Not Silver though. He followed suit, diving off of the roof and landing right beside his brother on his side.
"Why. Did. You. Do. That." Neo signed each word slowly and sharply, glaring at his brother in both confusion and annoyance.
Silver just grinned back at him. Then, he clambered onto his knees and pounced on Neo, pinning him to the ground on his back. Neo stared up at him, shuttered his optics for a moment -
"Bet you can't beat me." Silver teased him as if it made all the sense in the world.
"At being annoying?" Neo signed back, squinting one optic at him.
"No, I've got that on lock. I mean in this-"
Silver wrestled his older brother into the mud, quickly prompting Neo to fight back. Neo dug his claws into Silver's shoulders and flipped him over, but Silver used the momentum to throw Neo right off of him and two feet away into the damp. Neo clambered up to his feet, covered from head to foot in mud. Silver did the same, grinning from ear to ear. Neo revved his engine and darted forward with his head lowered. He wanted to headbutt that little shit back into the dirt. Silver saw this coming from many wrestling matches and ducked out of the way. He snickered to himself as he turned and ran.
"C'mon slowpoke! You'll never catch me!"
And so, Neo gave chase on foot. He wasn't exactly built to run like Silver was - much preferring flight - but he would be damned if he let Silver win at anything, including running away.
The brothers chased each other through the night under the light of the moon, one laughing to himself and the other growling at the challenge before him. Mud and rainwater splashed and squelched as they ran, covering both of them almost beyond recognition. Silver took little moments to hop into deep puddles, bouncing right out of them with all the energy in the world. Neo jumped into one and quickly regretted it, one foot sinking down and almost getting stuck - but a quick boost from his engine brought him back on track.
There was a method to this madness. Silver was doing this to let his big brother feel like a child, for once. And for himself too. And boy, was it working. He laughed and screamed whenever Neo almost caught him, and Neo couldn't help but snicker to himself at his brother's antics.
Silver slipped in a puddle with a squeak and Neo finally caught him from behind. He rammed into his little brother and sent him tumbling into the sludge. Neo then lost his footing too, slipping down just beside him on his face. After a moment of processing what had just happened, the brothers rolled over at the same time.
At this point, they were more earth than robot.
Silver turned his head to look at Neo and immediately broke into hysterical laughter. "You look like shit!"
"So do you." Neo signed back.
"Not as bad as you." Silver retorted, reaching over to slap a handful of dirt onto Neo's face.
Neo scraped the dirt right off and turned his head to look at Silver. "You look worse."
"I bet there's slop in your CPU." Silver teased.
"And you don't have one." Neo signed back simply.
Silver just laughed at that. "Sure, bro, sure."
In the moment of quiet that followed they both looked up to the sky. The stars were brighter now in the quiet of night, twinkling softly.
Silver lifted an arm to point vaguely at a cluster of stars. "That's a constellation, I think. It looks like a tadpole."
"Big Dipper." Neo told him.
"It's kind of little."
"It's not."
"It is. Oh, that one looks like a dog!"
"Leo."
"Or a horse."
"It's Leo."
"What would your younger self say?"
Neo paused, considering that. Sure, he was built with advanced AI, and sure, he was born knowing far too much about everything. But at first glance, without studying the structure of the stars too closely, he might have said...
"Dog."
"Then tonight, it's a dog. Let it just be a dog."
And so it was. The brothers returned home later, where Mecha was waiting with two towels and a hose to wash their mucky armour down.