Food for Thought (Patreon)

T/CW: Dead Dove AULet's say Robert manages to transfer all of Chad's prior memories into 0820. He wakes up very very confused, his last living memory is of him dying. The first thing he sees is Robert, looking sunken and tired and so incredibly ill, illuminated only by a blue glow. There's clicking and whirring of machines, and Robert's steady, apathetic voice, "Test 137, activity stable. Open your eyes, 0820."

Something inside Chad responds to that, and he opens his mouth, feeling no sensation in his throat where his voice should be, but instead the sound comes from somewhere in his chest. "Robert?" It sounds like him, he's talking like himself, but there's a mechanical edge to his own voice. He surveys the pitch black room, taking in the disarray, like a wanted criminal's den. "What the fuck happened? I...I should be..."

Robert's eyes light up. They light up in what Chad suspects is the first time in a long, long time. "Bae?" He's in front of him in a second, a manic, joyful look in his eyes as he grips his shoulders. "Chad, is it really you?"

"Robert, what..." Something clicks inside him and he finally realizes. That blue light is from him. "What the fuck did you do to me?" He stares down at his mechanical hands, his limbs, his fucking body. None of it is his, but made to look exactly like him, although there's no hiding the astral pulse imbedded in his chest, nor the creases where metal meets metal.

"It's okay." Robert says soothingly, that familiar, deep voice. It's wrong, though. It's all wrong. This is wrong!

"How could you do this to me?" Chad asks, desperate, horrified, clawing at his unfamiliar body. Robert keeps trying to shush him, to calm him. How the fuck can he stay calm?

"It's okay." Robert repeats again and again, tears streaming down his cheeks. "You're back."

"No, nonono." Something inside him is overheating, and his head hurts, it hurts so fucking much. "I'm supposed to be dead!"

"How can you say that?" Robert's face twists, haunted. "How could you leave me behind like that? You said you would never leave me."

"Not..." Chad squeezes his eyes shut—it feels like atoms are splitting inside him. "Not like this."

Warnings blare on Robert's monitor and he curses, typing rapidly as Chad continues to spiral, his memories of being human overwhelming and disorienting. Finally, Robert yells, "0820, shut down!"

Chad goes slack, and everything goes dark.

Robert continues waking him up periodically, each time more careful than the last. Making sure he doesn't get overwhelmed, doesn't get triggered, his system doesn't try to overhaul itself. Chad hasn't seen the sun since waking up, nor has Robert, it seems. He doesn't need to eat, drink, go to the bathroom. All he does is lay strapped to wires for more of Robert's tweaking, and when he is free to move about, he's trapped in this fucking room with Robert. His real body is still there, tucked away in the corner in a cryogenic chamber, and Chad wonders how the fuck Robert even got his hands on that.

Sometimes he stares at his own sleeping face and feels such a huge disconnect between what he thinks and what he knows. He knows he's not real. His real body is dead, right in front of him. His mind should be too, and yet he's still here. Thinking. Feeling.

"Why don't you just get rid of the body?" Chad finally brings himself to ask one day. "I'm already using this body, why keep the dead one?"

Robert makes a complicated face and turns away. "Well, maybe one day I can put you back into your body."

Chad thinks about that for a long time. He thinks he doesn't want to. He thinks it's already too late.

And he thinks, maybe the only way to get out of here, is if he killed Robert himself.

A/N: Thought about posting this on Tumblr but honestly I want to keep it discreet because I might draw some of these scenes 👀 Also been thinking about this art from 3artho again and was like "what if I added that into my already sad AU...."