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The words that Robotnik says aloud and the words that Stone hears are two entirely different things.
It's always been a part of Stone's job, though, to translate the doctor's thoughts to be easily digestible for dimmer minds. Despite Stone's own intelligence paling in comparison to Robotnik's, he has one simple advantage.
He knows Robotnik. He knows him, trusts and understands him completely. He’d like to think that the reverse is also true. They may not be friends the way Sonic and Tails are, a thought that sends a sharp pain slicing through his very core, but Stone can say with his entire chest that they know each other.
That's why, when Robotnik's face appears on the screen, broadcast live from way up in space, Stone knows what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth.
"This is Doctor Ivo Robotnik," he declares, every inch of his stance screaming absolute confidence and security.
Stone is the only one who can see beyond that. The doctor's confidence in himself is absolute, that much is undebatable. That is as it should be. There's a slight hesitation to his movements, however; he moves slower and more precisely than normal. Uncertainty tints the edges of his form.
"I'm dedicating my final livestream to one very special henchman: Agent Stone." His voice wavers as he speaks, yet Stone's heart flutters at the sound of his name in the doctor's voice.
Words bubble up from his throat - pointless ones, ones the doctor can't hear, yet he can't stop them nonetheless.
"No, no, Doctor, wait!" he cries, but it's fruitless. He can see the doctor on the screen, almost as tangible as if he were standing right in front of him, but he can't reach him.
“If I can’t rule the world, I might as well save it,” Robotnik says, his voice wavering. He pushes on with his message regardless. “For the one and only person who ever cared about me.”
There’s an ache in Stone’s chest. A deep, throbbing one, the pain blotting out his heart, because maybe all his efforts weren’t for nothing. The things he did for the doctor ran deeper than just a job, and until now, he thought he had come to terms with the fact that it would never be reciprocated.
As always, Robotnik defies all expectations. He’s seen right through Stone, straight to his heart.
They both know he didn’t have to learn to make coffee for the doctor’s sake. He could’ve just ordered it from another shop, or learned only to make the basics.
Yet as soon as he knew how the doctor liked his coffee, Stone learned how to prepare it. He researched into the sourcing of the Austrian goat milk Robotnik so favoured, and even taught himself how to steam it.
Stone didn’t need to remind the doctor to take breaks whenever he got too caught up in his work, but he did. He didn’t need to start tucking a blanket over him whenever he fell asleep at his desk, but he did.
It was never in Stone’s job contract to nurse Robotnik back to health after he fell from the giant robot he himself created. Yet he sat at his side, spooning soup into his mouth, when the doctor was too injured to do it himself.
He did it all, and relished in it. It was the only way he could give back to the doctor, the only thing he could offer.
In the end, it won’t be enough to save him.
Robotnik saw it, though. All of it.
Now, he’s giving back to Stone. To some, it may be considered too little, too late, but Stone’s heart is full to the bursting as the magnitude of the doctor’s actions become apparent.
This is being broadcast all over the world. Hundreds upon thousands of people will see this, will see his vulnerability. Robotnik is bearing his soul to the world, for him. There is no way for him to know if Stone will even see this, yet he’s recording it anyway. Risking it, giving up his life.
He’s saving the planet for him. For Stone.
The image of the doctor begins to blur as Stone’s eyes water. He blinks the tears away furiously; he won’t miss a single second of this last moment with the doctor, he refuses to.
“I’ll miss your lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk,” Robotnik says, laughing despite his voice thickening with tears. It’s so subtle, Stone doubts anyone else would pick up on it.
He does so immediately. Effortlessly.
“I love the way you make them,” Robotnik tells him. Stone has always been able to understand what the doctor really means.
He says he loves his coffee, but what Stone hears is different.
I’ll miss you, is what Stone hears. I love you.
Despite it all, despite the last moments of the doctor’s life playing out right before him, Stone smiles. He lets out a chuckle, more an exhalation of air than an expression of mirth, but there nonetheless.
Even now, Robotnik is refusing to say what’s truly on his mind. It’s ridiculously stubborn, and even more endearing.
“I guess there’s only one thing left to say,” Robotnik adds, a note of finality in his voice.
Stone scrubs desperately at his eyes, vehemently wishing he could freeze this moment, stopping the flow of time entirely. He wishes he could bottle it, this final moment where the doctor is alive, heart beating, lungs inhaling and exhaling steadily. He wants the doctor to keep on living more than anything.
“It’s been a real drag. Thanks for nothing,” Robotnik finishes softly.
Thank you.
He barely finishes his sentence before a burst of flames explodes from behind him. It cuts off anything more he might have to say, severing his life itself.
───── ✿ ─────
Stone isn’t sure he wants to live in this world. Not without Robotnik.
People are celebrating. Lining the streets to party, to proclaim that they’ve been saved, but to Stone the cheerful atmosphere is suffocating.
They’re not celebrating Robotnik’s death itself, not really. That’s what it feels like, but it’s not what it is.
The world has been saved, they have been saved, and they’re overjoyed. Death’s shadow loomed over them all, yet they made it through.
They don’t care that the doctor died. It was just an unfortunate byproduct of them being saved, his life just a broken egg to make them an omelette.
Stone wishes they would even say that they recalled him, but they don’t. They don’t remember his final moments, just the relief that came when they realised the danger had passed. The details of his face are probably fuzzy in their minds, not relevant enough to really register.
In stark contrast, his face is engraved in Stone’s mind. Carved into his eyelids. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees him, sees his last moments, but these people don’t even care to remember his name.
He came back before, he tells himself desperately. He survived being stranded on another planet, he survived a fall from a giant robot. If anyone could survive this, too, it would be him.
Somewhere, deep, deep down, Stone knows that those words are just false comfort. A lie to help him sleep at night.
When he disappeared onto the other planet, the government slowly began to cut his life away. Awards he’d earned, appearances he’d made, were erased, bit by bit.
As if he was never coming back. As if he was never there to begin with. As if he didn’t even matter.
This time, they’re downright ruthless.
Stone rings his number, on the bad days. Which is most days, to be fair. He leaves voicemail after voicemail, of all the things he wishes he could say. He reads through their old texts, mostly clinical, all work-related, yet all holding a trace of what they felt for each other.
Until, one day, he opens his phone to find the doctor’s number gone. His only favourited contact, erased.
In a panic, he searches his entire phone. Robotnik’s number, their texts, their few emails, it’s all gone.
With that, the government has erased every last trace of him. His personal phone was scraped clean.
It’s a useless gesture. They can’t erase him from Stone’s mind, yet they erased the evidence of his existence anyway. A knife was already stuck through his heart, but they grabbed it and twisted it, cruelly.
Doctor Ivo Robotnik had five PhDs. Now, not a single graduate list holds his name.
He had a job with the government. Now, they deny him ever existing, yet alone being in their employment.
He live streamed his final moments to the entire world. Now, the video can’t be found on a single platform.
And no one cares. Not a single person on this awful rock, besides Stone, even cares.
That’s how it’s always been, but it shouldn’t be. Robotnik was, to put it simply, brilliant, the smartest person in this world.
There’s not even a body to recover. It was probably blown to pieces.
───── ✿ ─────
Stone pays for a plot at a nearby cemetery regardless. He erects a stone there, even with nothing to put under the ground.
He doesn’t know if the doctor would’ve preferred cremation or burial. Even if he did, he wouldn’t have been able to make it happen.
Stone visits the grave more often than he probably should, but at this point it’s the only thing that keeps him sane. The last thing holding him together, flimsy stitches holding him together after everything of Robotnik was taken from him.
He sits right by the headstone. He can’t talk to the doctor over the phone (not that he was ever really talking to him anyway, of course, but he could at least pretend to be), but he can talk to this headstone, this personification, in his mind at least, of the man he so admired.
It’s calming to him. He chose the nicest spot available, as far away from the path and other people as he could manage. Robotnik certainly wouldn’t want to be laid to rest amongst the masses of stupid people, he knows that much.
He’s just stewing in silence, in the lack of response one day when he sees them.
Team Sonic, and the Wachowskis. Sonic bursts out from behind another headstone, clearly trying to catch him in some kind of heinous act. He has his fists raised, instantly taking up a fighting stance, until he actually processes the sight before him.
Stone has no doubt he looks a mess. He struggles to sleep now, so there’s no doubt he possesses awful eyebags. There’s his position, too, sitting in the dirt beside an empty grave.
“Uh,” Sonic says eloquently. “I really thought you were planning something evil over here. You come here so often it seemed suspicious, but now, I mean… It’s just kinda sad.”
Stone doesn’t dignify him with an answer, simply rolling his eyes.
It occurs to him as the group stands there, awkwardly shifting their weight from foot to foot, that he is in the presence of some of the only people who actually remember the doctor’s name. The government does, of course, but they treat his name as if it’s a curse, a blot on their entire organisation. They don’t even want to say it.
These people may not have liked him, but they respect what he chose to do in his final moments. He helped to save the world, right alongside them.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me to grieve in peace,” Stone says pointedly when they continue to stand there, just staring. He’d like to return to his thoughts, to his memories.
He’d like to talk to the headstone, too. He doesn’t need their judgement when he does so.
“We’re, uh, very sorry for the intrusion,” Tom offers, beginning to herd Sonic and Knuckles away.
“So sorry,” Maddie adds awkwardly, following along after shooting him a nervous glance.
It’s Tails who hesitates.
“I’ll catch up with you,” he tells the others, waiting for them to be out of earshot before turning back to Stone.
He sits beside him, and Stone notes that he still is absurdly adorable.
“I’m sure you already know that he saved the world for you,” Tails begins. “That’s why he did it, it was all for you.”
Stone nods slowly, trying to ignore the pang in his chest.
“You really were best friends, so I get it. Kinda, at least. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if Sonic died,” Tails says quietly.
His words are comforting - a small comfort, insignificant compared to the oceans of hurt within Stone, but a comfort nonetheless. There’s just one thing that rubs him the wrong way.
“I think we were more than best friends,” he tells Tails. He’s not entirely sure why he does it, but maybe it’s just so at least one other person recognises what they were. So that their relationship isn’t unacknowledged forever.
“Yeah, I got that feeling, too,” Tails admits.
They lapse into silence, but Stone appreciates the space to think. A breeze is blowing past them, visibly ruffling Tails’ fur, and acting as a cool balm against Stone’s skin.
“He always said that people admiring him was inevitable,” Stone says in a low voice. “I think he was right. If he had enough time, everyone would admire him. Everyone would know his name.”
Tails blinks, his eyes softening. “Well, maybe they can,” he suggests. “You could make it so people remember him. Write him an obituary, tell people about him, and everything he did. Keep him alive in that way.”
Stone’s eyes widen. That hadn’t even occurred to him.
No one knows Robotnik like he did. But that means he can teach them; tell everyone everything, from all he knows about his incredible mind, to the sacrifices he made at the very end of it all, to keep Stone, and by extension, the world, safe.
No one knows Robotnik like he did, but maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing, because he can teach them.
“I will. I’ll do that,” Stone says, heart picking up. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Tails beams.
He can practically hear Robotnik cackling gleefully in the back of his mind as Tails flies off, heading in the direction the others left him.
The doctor would be overjoyed at this idea. The world will know him and admire him just as Stone does, for they will see him through Stone’s own lens. They will know him inside and out, and be taught everything that he achieved, every last thing they should admire him for.
Stone can’t think of a better way to celebrate all that the doctor was to him. It's more than a fitting tribute for a man like him.
He’s going to get to work right away.