Work Text:
He’s been here ever since he can remember. Stuck in an empty room in an abandoned facility with miles of leftovers from another life to entertain himself with. He’s free to roam around, he’s free to go out, but he doesn’t. Doesn’t ever. He finds comfort in his room (was it even his? he found himself in it more often than not, being weirdly comforted by some strangely familiar grey walls). So, yeah, he’s not technically stuck, but it certainly feels like it. Stagant. Dusty.
He spends his days either shooting bullets or punching hard at the almost completely destroyed cement wall on the other end of the inescapable building, or trying to tidy up the mess that covers more than 90% of the total area. How the mess ever came to be, that's simply not to be discussed.
One day though, he found a journal. Well, he’s found loads of journals over the time he’s been here, all of the pages signed by an egotistical man named Ivo Robotnik so it really shouldn’t surprise him, but this one’s different. It’s in binary. It’s his own writing (could it even be called writing? They look more printed than written over, but nonetheless). So he starts reading it. It takes him more time than simply scanning the pages over and analyzing the data, or even reading normal books, but it occupies his time rather pleasingly.
01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100.
Rather cliché, might one say, but interesting. He does not remember writing any of it. So he goes on.
The journal logs memories. Memories he has no recollection of. It tells the story of a soul as free as the wind, of running and wild adventures and unthinkable enemies as well as rivals and friends. And then it stops. In the middle of a sunny day and a birthday party, the printing malfunctions. Does it really? It just stops, if he’s being honest. He’s not, he really wants to think it malfunctions. He has spent the last 516 hours reading code and logging these memories onto his data base. He has no need to read it again, but he does anyway. This time, it only takes him 447 hours.
A certain set of numbers rested rather lightly, lighter than the others, inside his memory card.
01100001 01101101 01111001.
He remembers the pages where this particular set appears. He reads them again. And again. And maybe a few times more. If he kept going any longer, they would override his own serial number. She was first mentioned in the beginning pages, having been there since forever. That fact brought him a sense of comfort, the thought of someone being there since always. Unconditionally. The memories were being narrated by a character he could not quite grow fond of, but on the contrary, he felt as if he couldn’t really stand him. He faintly recognized the codes of feelings generated being categorized as jealousy and bitterness, but always chose to delete them immediately after. They served no purpose. On the other hand, the ones that were output when he read about 01100001 01101101 01111001 didn’t have anywhere to be sorted to. Not only couldn't he find any meaning in them, but he didn't want to get rid of them either.
So, he created a new folder inside his memory drive. Labelled it “AMY”. He automatically stored there all feelings related to her, and all situations that reminded him of her. Sometimes, when the days were particularly sunny and the light went through the scarce windows in a rather “AMY” way, he sat there and manually sorted through millions of lines of code and moved them into or around the folder.
Soon after, said folder had sections. And sub-sections. And sub-sub-sections. And not long after that, he felt he had run out of code. There truly was no cure for lacking other than creation, so he went after that next. He scoured the facility over and over again looking for things that would create something, anything, similar to what he felt just to put them into his AMY drive. And he did.
It was after a particularly messy search in the library that he found what he was looking for. He was not especially fond of that place, always feeling that books were rather outdated and boring after having read them all and finding nothing more than dictionary words being repeated in a different order every time. But what he had found regarding “AMY” he had done so in a section he simply never had visited before. That feeling, slightly different but similar enough to what he had felt about her. A rather big book with shiny pages, a recollection of paintings and illustrations of love throughout the ages. He had witnessed paintings before, please don’t picture him as an uncultured imbecile, but he simply didn’t see the appeal of them. Sure, he could appreciate the technical aspects of painting something by human hands and the impressiveness of a living thing doing it, such as perspective, use of color, and attention to detail, but he just couldn’t quite “get it”.
But he felt he could do so now. There, in between the zeroes and ones of the painting's pixels converted to code, he could see her name written over and over again.
He analyzed page after page, translated every single picture into bits and stored it deep within AMY’s folder just to sort through them again and again and discover her footprint all over. It was like the pictures were corroded by her simple set of numbers, he could recognize and reorder them a million different ways and they would just fall like a jigsaw into place and form her name’s shape again and again. He could virtually see the numbers shifting in their place like a casino machine and stop only when all of them were set right to 01100001 01101101 01111001.
He had a virus. A deep, sick virus invading his core and infecting his very primordial code and shifting his insides like a snake choking a rat, swallowing it whole and feeling it go down his throat. Sickening. He could physically feel his systems overheating, screaming, warning him of imminent danger the more he dove into AMY’s folder. If there was truly a virus logged in there, he was most certainly fucked. Almost half of his code was stored inside AMY’s folder by now, and if his symptoms were of any use, it was too late to try and contain it by now. He sat there on the dust covered floor and tried to endure the heat, the creeping feeling of shifting systems in his core, and the overbearing noise of his cooling fans going into overdrive.
A system reboot.
Before what felt like long, he woke up.
The first line of code he could spew out was her name again.
01100001 01101101 01111001.
Then, physical sensations registered. Cold. Freezing. Ice. Snow shifting. A loud bang in his head, repeated. A hammer, maybe? His vision was restored. Black, then white, then pink.
AMY’s folder was intact, because he could almost physically feel new entries being generated and sorted into it.
AMY.
Amy.
Was he looking at her now? Was she real? Was the one in front of him the pink hedgehog he had read about in foreign memories and then logged into himself as his own?
Pink, overbearing, strong willed, intelligent, sweet, beautiful, and perfect Amy.
He tried saying it for the first time as he felt she dragged him by his foot throughout the snow. Only weird robotic sounds came out. Beeps and boops. Startled, the pink hedgehog dropped his foot and hit him with his hammer again, hard. He could feel a dent form in his head at the impact. He couldn’t confirm her identity, so he tried again. This time, the beeps were consistent. A short one for zeroes, a long one for ones.
“01100001 01101101 01111001.”
The pink hedgehog stared at him. “What is that? All that noise…” She furrowed her brow.
He pointed at her. Beeps, again. He was saying her name, could she not understand? He tried again, this time, in the language she spoke.
“A-my.”
It came out robotic and twisted. He did not like how it sounded coming from him, cold and mechanical instead of warm like the sun or melodic like the chirping of birds he would usually associate the name with. He didn't think he'd like to try saying it again. It felt wrong.
“My? Are you trying to tell me your name?” He shook his head. “No? Are you not trying, or is that not your name?” He shook his head again. This time, he opted to sit down and write her name in the snow with his finger. AMY. He then pointed at her. She laughed. He stored the sound in his folder, under a new section of it. He hoped to keep filling it until he ran out of his almost infinite storage space. He wouldn't mind deleting some of his old files just to make space for her.
“Yeah, that’s my name! How’d you know that, hm? Are you one of Eggman’s robots, perhaps? You don't look like it tho, you're in pretty bad shape…”
He just stared at her. Her voice was beautiful. New code generated with every syllable she spoke and he could not get enough of it. He probably stared at her too much, moved too little, because she sighed after waiting for a while and kept dragging him by his foot.
“C’mon big guy, let's take you to Tails. He'll check you out.”
Upon hearing that name, he may have panicked a little. He remembered that name, his little brother. His? No, no, it's that one guy’s. Was it? He planted his free foot firmly on the ground, Amy stumbled over the sudden force stopping her. She let out an exasperated grunt, and he, again, stored it in a new folder.
“Oh don't be like that. Tails is nice! You're basically wires and metal and he's a pro with that stuff.”
Wires and metal. Wires. And metal. Her voice saying that word stirred something inside of him that felt like an old computer being turned on again after years of not being used. Waking up beeps and old whirring fans starting after being stuck in one position with rust invading them, collected dust being shaken alive and flying around. Metal. He remembered distantly being called like that once. Long ago. Amy noticed something was wrong with him and stared again, waiting patiently. He couldn't do much else but think for a minute or two, then pointed at himself and tilted his head.
“What's wrong? Did I offend you with that?” She crouched in front of him, the cold snow touching her red dress, half of it melting and half getting stuck on the edges, still frozen. “I'm really sorry, I don't know exactly what you are… I mean you certainly are a robot but… Could I have your name?”
His cooling fans started acting up again. Weird, he was surrounded by cold. Amy looked at him with eyes that looked oh so similar to the ones in those paintings, glossy and bright and beautiful and he was mesmerized. He didn't know his name. She didn't know his name. Did he even have one? It didn't matter, he could make up one just for her to say. Just to listen to her voice saying the word that meant him. A single snowflake landed on her nose and she scrunched it lightly.
He tapped at his chest with his index finger, a clang resonating within his body. Amy didn't get it, he did it again. Third time she asked, he wrote it in the snow. She laughed at what he was trying to demonstrate earlier now that she understood, and said his name for the first time with a smile reaching her eyes.
He made a new folder now, different from the AMY one. This time, it was titled “METAL”.