Chapter Text
Metal didn't know how to say it out loud. He never did. Words weren't something that came easily to him — they never had — so instead he carried the weight of it quietly, the way he carried everything else. He did his chores. He followed instructions. He trudged down the hallway when his father called, beeping softly in acknowledgment, and tried not to think about the hollow feeling that had taken up permanent residence somewhere inside his chest.
It was easier, he figured, to just keep moving.
But that afternoon, something in him gave way.
He wasn't sure how it happened. One moment he was walking, and the next he was on the floor — sitting still for the first time in what felt like a very long while — and his hands had found his Tails doll without him even deciding to reach for it. He held it close, pressing it against his chest, and the sound that escaped him was small and involuntary and embarrassing, and he hated it immediately.
He didn't expect anyone to hear.
He certainly didn't expect his father to come.
But then there were footsteps — his father's heavy, familiar stride — and Eggman appeared in the doorway, pausing at the sight of him. Metal looked up quickly, trying to school his expression into something neutral, something unreadable, the way he always did. But his eyes were wet. There was no hiding that.
Eggman didn't say anything clever. He didn't make a project out of it. He just knelt down — all the way down to Metal's level — and rubbed his head gently, and said, Hey. What's wrong? Talk to me.
Metal beeped. It wasn't an answer, not really, but his father seemed to understand it anyway, because the next thing Metal knew, he was being lifted — carefully, securely — and held against Eggman's chest, and his father's arms wrapped around him like a wall between him and everything outside, and Metal clutched the fabric of his father's coat and couldn't let go.
I'm so sorry you've been feeling alone, Eggman said quietly. But I promise you — that's going to change.
Metal didn't know if he believed it. But he stayed very still and let himself be held, and for a while, that was enough.
He hadn't expected to be asked what he wanted.
That was the part that stayed with him, even later — even after everything — the memory of his father kneeling down again, this time with a warm expression and two small dolls held out in his hands, and the simple, earnest question: Do you want a brother or a sister?
Metal looked at both dolls for a long moment. He thought about it carefully, the way he did most things. Then he reached out and pointed to the boy.
Are you sure? his father asked.
Metal nodded. More certain than he'd felt about anything in a long time.
Eggman smiled — really smiled — and stood up and offered his hand. Metal tucked his Tails doll under one arm, took his father's hand with the other, and walked.
The laboratory felt different that day. It always smelled the same — oil and ozone and something faintly electric — but that afternoon it felt like a place where something was about to begin, rather than just a place where things got built and fixed and taken apart.
The prototype sphere sat on the workbench. Small. Round. Smooth, except where the seams were.
Metal stared at it.
We're going to build your little brother from this, Eggman said. How does that sound?
Metal didn't have words for how it sounded. He stood very still and looked at the sphere and thought about what it meant — that something that small and quiet and unfinished could become a person, could become his, could become someone who might someday reach up toward him the way Metal had always, quietly, wished someone would reach toward him.
He chose white and black for the colors. He wasn't entirely sure why. They just felt right.
He watched his father work — the careful strokes of the airbrush, the precise installation of components — and he held his Tails doll tightly and didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say. He just watched, and waited, and when the engine finally hummed to life and the little sphere trembled and whimpered at the unfamiliar world around it, something shifted in Metal's chest — something that had been tight and wound-up and sealed for a very long time.
He wanted to help. He wanted to be the thing that made it less afraid.
When his father asked if he'd like to hold him, Metal sat down carefully in the chair and held out his arms and let Eggman place the small, trembling form against him, and he looked down at his little brother — his little brother — and felt something he hadn't felt in a long time.
Like maybe he had a purpose that was just his own.
He named him Ergo. Orville, for short. He wrote it out in slow, deliberate letters, because it felt important to do it properly — to give a name carefully, like a gift, rather than just assigning one.
His father looked at the paper and smiled. And Metal, for once, didn't look away.
From that moment on, he was there for all of it.
He rocked Orville when he fussed. He held out his arms when Orville wobbled through the air, learning to hover, tilting and correcting and tilting again. He watched his father change Orville's lower shell casing and tried to learn the technique himself — fumbling with it more than he'd expected, more than he liked — but
He kept trying, because Orville deserved someone who knew how to take care of him.
In the quiet moments, when Orville had worn himself out and drifted off to sleep, Metal would curl up nearby and just be there. Close. Watchful. Not because anyone asked him to be, but because he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
He watched his little brother grow — white fading into deep red and black — and felt something in his chest expand to match.
And when Orville — Orbot, now, in his own small confident voice — looked up at him and announced his new name like a declaration, Metal exchanged a surprised glance with his father, and felt, for the first time in a long time, like the kind of person who got to be surprised by the people he loved.
He had built himself a family.
He hadn't planned it that way. He hadn't planned most of the things that mattered. But somewhere between the hollow hallway and the laboratory workbench and the small warm weight of his little brother in his arms,
Metal had become something he hadn't known how to be before.
Not just a son who carried out his chores.
A brother. A keeper. Someone who stayed.
And when Cubot arrived — yellow and black and trembling, just like Orville once had — Metal settled in behind Orbot and let his little brother hold the new one first, because he understood, now, that this was how it worked. You made room. You stayed close. You kept watch.
You built the family, piece by piece, until it was real.
Next: Metal POV-Orbot