Archive of Our Own

As Yuuta entered the warehouse, Deckerd couldn't shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong.

His head hung and his face shadowed by his disheveled hair, the small human approached him slowly, tiredly, his posture slumped as though bearing some great weight on his tiny fragile shoulders.

"Yuuta..." Deckerd stepped out of his repair cradle and kneeled in front of Yuuta, his expression concerned,

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine..." The boy whimpered, voice shaky, "I'm fine, but...But..." He straightened himself somewhat, revealing a tiny, fluffy lump pressed tightly to his chest.

"Yuuta, what is..."

Yuuta kneeled down, gently placing the lump onto the ground in front of Deckerd. A small baby bird, silent and unmoving.

"I-it... fell out of its n-nest when I was going home from school..." Yuuta sniffled, tears running down his face in great fat globs, "It got...R-really...Really badly hurt...I tried to get it to the vet, but..." The boy choked on a sob, "It didn't make it! It didn't make it, Deckeeeeeeerd!!!!"

Desperately clinging to Deckerd's leg, Yuuta began to openly bawl, his small frame rattling with ugly sobs. The Brave Detective didn't know what to do.

It wasn't the first time he's seen Yuuta cry. Yuuta was, by nature, the type to get teary-eyed easily. Sometimes he'd come to the robot whining about getting a bad grade at school, or falling and scraping his knee, or breaking one of his favorite toys . But this...This was different. Deckerd has never felt so much raw pain radiating off his human friend. Yuuta was seriously hurting, and Deckerd couldn't understand why. It had something to do with that bird...

So it fell and got hurt. But didn't humans have the ability to repair each other and other living beings? Wasn't that the purpose of doctors and veterinarians? Couldn't Yuuta just go and get it fixed? If it's hurt so seriously some of its organs have become unusable, can't they just be replaced, just like the mechanics replaced his parts?

It wasn't anything serious. It was just a matter of swapping out damaged parts for new ones.

But then why was Yuuta crying?

"Yuuta..." Deckerd began, cautiously wrapping his fingers around the child's shaking body in the closest thing to a hug that he could give, "I do not understand. If its internal mechanisms are broken, why can't it just be fixed?"

Yuuta only bawled harder.

Deckerd bit his lip. He hated to see his best and only friend in such emotional torment. Something deep, deep inside him was starting to hurt as well. He wanted it to stop. Seeing Yuuta like this filled him with a sense of visceral wrongness. Yuuta was a joyous kid with a bright, sunny smile that warmed Deckerd's circuits. For him to be in such pain...It felt so unnatural it outright terrified the robot."

"Yuuta, what's wrong? Please, tell me! I want to help!"

"You can't," Yuuta sobbed, "There's nothing you can do!"

"I'll try my absolute best, Yuuta! I promise! Just tell me what needs to be done!" Deckerd desperately tried to sound reassuring, even as unease made his wiring crawl. 

"You don't understand," the boy's voice was small and choked, "It's dead."

"Dead?" 

Dead. Death. Dying. Sometimes Deckerd would hear these words from the engineers that worked on him. He didn't quite catch the meaning of that word, and his databanks were still basically a blank slate. Still, there was something unsettling about the impact that the mention of those words would have on the engineering crew. The people that just five minutes ago were casually conversing and exchanging jokes would suddenly plunge into an atmosphere of unease, their faces creasing into frowns, heavy sighs escaping some of them.

That word was bad. Scary.

And the fact that now Yuuta himself was mentioning it while in obvious emotional distress and Deckerd still hadn't the slightest clue of what it meant made the robot dread it that much more.

"It means it's gone forever, Deckerd." Yuuta whispered. He'd calmed down some, but tears still dripped silently down his face.

"B-but isn't it right here?"

"It's not like this. I mean, it's here, but at the same time it's gone."

"I don't under~"

Sniffling, the boy reached into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled candy wrapper and smoothing it out before folding it in a way that looked like there was still something inside.

"Now look, Deckerd. There used to be a piece of candy inside of this wrapper. But now, even though it looks like the candy is still there," Yuuta crumpled the wrapper in his shaking fist, "In reality it's just an empty wrapper. The candy's been eaten. It doesn't exist anymore. And it will never exist again. Same goes for this bird. You could say that the body is like this wrapper. It makes it look like the bird is still here, but it's gone. Dead. That's what death is. I mean, that's what I think it is. It happens to all living beings on Earth eventually." 

"All living beings...Will cease to exist someday?" even though it was August and the temperature inside the warehouse was sweltering despite the concrete walls and the air conditioning, Deckerd suddenly felt very cold.

The boy looked up at his metallic friend. His eyes were red and puffy and his face was stained with tears and snot, but somehow, he looked surprisingly mature. 

"Yeah. Before we got Urunyan, we had a dog. His name was Friender. He was already elderly when I was born, and one day he just fell asleep and...Never woke up. He died from old age. I still miss him sometimes, but there's nothing anyone can do about it. When someone dies, there's no way to bring them back. People die of many things - old age, sickness, accidents...And nobody...Not even the smartest doctor or the strongest, coolest rescue robot in the world can help those who have already died. But...It's not like dying is a bad thing. If humans and animals didn't die, there'd be so many of them that they'd...Break the Earth or something. It's just that...When someone close to you dies...Or when you fail to keep someone from dying no matter how hard you try..." Yuuta choked up again, smearing tears all over his face with his sleeve.

"It h-hurts...It really hurts, Deckerd!"

Deckerd gritted his teeth, feeling like somebody was twisting the wiring in his chest to the point of ripping it. The combination of worry and sympathy for his friend and the overwhelming, unexplainable new fear of ceasing to exist was almost unbearable.

"Will I die?" Deckerd said silently 

"I don't know" Yuuta rasped, "Maybe robots really can be rebuilt no matter how old or damaged they get."

That, however, was hardly reassuring  to Deckerd. In fact, it only worsened his fears.

"Yuuta..." he whispered, voicebox glitching, "Will you...?" he couldn't finish the sentence with that word, suddenly fighting back the urge to purge his fuel tanks.

Sniffling, Yuuta silently nodded.

Deckerd audibly gasped.

"D-Deckerd, it's okay!" Yuuta stammered nervously, seeing his friend's obvious distress, "I'm still a little kid! I won't die in a long time! Like, we're talking 80 or 90 years! Who knows, maybe I'll even reach over a hundred years!" the boy gave Deckerd a shaky, teary smile, "So don't worry about me, Deckerd. Cheer up. It's okay."

Deckerd replied with a similarly shaky smile, desperately trying to push the thoughts of losing Yuuta forever to the back of his mind. He couldn't lose to his own fears. He had to stay brave and strong. He had to be there for Yuuta.

After all, Yuuta would still be with him for many decades, wouldn't he?

However, after Yuuta left to bury the dead bird, he didn't come back the next day.

Or the day after that.

Before Deckerd knew it, a week had passed.

It was so strange...Usually Yuuta would visit him every day, no matter what. For him to skip an entire week...

Deckerd desperately tried to keep calm. Desperately tried to convince himself that the boy was too busy catching up on his studies for the upcoming semester or on a trip with his family. But the engineering team would occasionally come in to work on his systems, and with them would come chatter about recent news. Discussion of terrible car crashes with ridiculously high body counts, of the most barbaric of crimes, of the emergence of new strains of deadly viruses and bacteria.

"People die of many things - old age, sickness, accidents...And nobody...Not even the smartest doctor or the strongest, coolest rescue robot in the world can help those who have already died."

Two weeks passed...

As Yuuta ran, he couldn't help but notice the unusual weakness in his legs and the shortness of breath that set in way too soon for it to be normal. Week-long 40 degree fevers sure took their toll on people. So did not being able to keep down anything but the smallest sips of electrolyte drinks. The flu had sucked. A lot. And now that it was finally over, Yuuta couldn't wait to hang out with Deckerd again. He missed his mechanical friend so much it physically hurt.

Yuuta couldn't help but wince as he hoisted his body into the the vent that was the secret passage to Deckerd's warehouse, his skin still sensitive from the last vestiges of the illness in his body. But the excitement of seeing Deckerd for the first time in two weeks soon overrode any physical discomfort.

"DECKERD! I'M HOME!!!" Yuuta yelled joyfully, bursting out of the vent and landing into his friend's waiting arms.

Silence greeted him. Instead of cheerfully greeting the boy like he always would, Deckerd simply stared at him  with dimmed orange optics, his expression unsettlingly empty, emotionless... Looking closely, Yuuta couldn't help but notice a layer of dust that covered the robot policeman's usually shiny body, as well as a few cobwebs strung across his chassis. Deckerd looked like he had been stuck in this position for at least a few days, crouched in front of the vent with his arms reaching out, waiting fruitlessly for Yuuta to come back...

Tears stung Yuuta's eyes as terrifying realization hit him. Sensitive skin be damned, he clambered as fast as he could up Deckerd's body onto his shoulder and desperately pressed himself against the stupefied robot.

"DECKERD!!! IT'S ME, YUUTA! I'M NOT DEAD! I'M OKAY!" he yelled so loudly he went into a coughing fit.

"Yuu...ta..." the mech droned his name, his voice as robotic and emotionless as it had been when he and Yuuta first met...

Yuuta choked on a sob. Had his absence upset Deckerd so much his newly acquired "heart" literally broke? It was his fault! Oh god, it was all his fault!

"Yuuta. Tomonaga Yuuta." Deckerd continued in the same robotic voice, "Okay. Alive. Not dead."

"Okay. Alive. Not dead." he repeated the same thing five more times. And then, suddenly, his optics flashed to full brightness. His frame jerked as though he had been hit by an electric shock. Yuuta had to cling on for dear life to avoid falling off Deckerd's shoulder.

"Deckerd! Are you okay?" the boy yelled, terrified.

Deckerd's head slowly turned to the side. Warm orange optics met tear-filled blue eyes.

"Yuuta..." Deckerd whispered the boy's name as though it was a prayer. Then, an agonized grimace contorted his face, and he took the boy into his arms and pressed him to his chest as hard as he could do it without hurting his fragile body. 

Yuuta couldn't help but sob out loud as he suddenly realized that Deckerd was holding him in the same way he had held the dead bird two weeks ago.

"Y̭̩͍̣͇̦̅͋̓ͬͤ̈́u͙͇͎͉̬̬̼̎̾u̘͍͔̺̘̘͑̉ͭͫͭt̞̘̪̟͎ͣ͂̓ͮͭ̆͂a̭̜͎̖̭̺ͬͬ̒͆ͩ.̮̥̰̝̳͍̈́̆ͥ͒̚.͚̲̎͑ͧͮ̌" the robot's powerful frame was shaking, his voice heavily distorted by static.

"Deckerd!" Yuuta wept, clinging to the trembling mech with everything he had 'I'm so sorry for leaving you alone like this! I am so, so sorry!"

Deckerd's optics flickered under the brim of his helm, and he shook even harder.

"Please please please please don't be sad Deckerd!" the small human wailed, face pressed against his friend's chest armor, "I'm not going anywhere! I'll stay by your side forever! I promise!"

As childish as it was, Deckerd wanted to believe that comforting little lie so badly...

Or was it really a lie?

As the boy and the robot sat tiredly in the corner of the warehouse, snuggled up against each other, exhausted from going through so many emotions that had overwhelmed their young minds, Deckerd couldn't help but wonder if Yuuta's desperate promise was true after all.

Yuuta had erected a miniature tombstone for the bird on top of a hill near the warehouse, decorating it with colorful chalk drawings. That way, even though the bird was no more, its memory could live on forever in Yuuta's heart.

Even in death, the memories would still live on. Somehow, that felt slightly reassuring to Deckerd. With his metal body, even if no accidents were to happen, he would still most likely outlive the human by many, many years. But even if he were to lose Yuuta, he would still be alive in his memories forever. All the happy moments they'd shared together, all the laughs they'd laughed together, all the fun they'd had...It would all stay with him.

For the moment, Deckerd stopped being afraid.