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Part Seven - Forever is Shorter

It ends in the only way it can.  Roxas can't be self-sufficient, not really, and he's been trained now, imprinted, believes himself in love with Sora, despite the evidence that it's bad for his health, that it's something no one should feel after being locked in a room for days at a time, lonely, aching, needy.  He has no way of earning a living, no way of helping himself to get on with his life, such as it is.  He exists for Sora, and yet Sora's finding that he wishes he'd never wanted someone who existed only for him, that he'd been selfless enough to cope with his own loneliness, or just to go out with Axel and Reno, to meet other people, to realise that there was more to life than just spending time on his own, thinking everyone hated him.  He realises that by withdrawing, he never gave anyone a chance to get to know him – it had nothing to do with disliking him, they just never thought he was interested in having a friend.  So they kept their distance, and he withdrew more every day, compounding his own agony.

This is wrong, really, it's not what should be done, but it is as close to right as either of them are likely to get now, and that's not exactly fair to either of them.  Roxas is as close to human as you can get without a beating heart – he loves reading, he laughs at funny movies, he likes to lie in patches on sunlight on the floor like a cat.  He likes his hair to be petted, as long as fingers are kept away from his power switch, he enjoys trying to cook, even when he's not very good at it.  He hates sharing attention with anyone, even the cat, loves praise, and is afraid of the dark.  Sora supposes the last one isn't irrational; he gave him enough reason to resent the darkness which separated them for those few days where he forgot that you've got to take care of machines, too, not just people, and not just yourself.  People can get up and walk around, do what they need to, without support, without help or instructions, though it may get lonely, difficult and complicated.  But machines don't have that knowledge, don't have the ability to carry on without someone there to hold their hand.  It's as if he'd locked a child away, but instead of ending up with something mute and feral, he's got a robot who can cry and eloquently tell him exactly how he feels about what has been done to him.

He peels the skin layer off, exposing the workings beneath, giving Roxas his first look at what he is underneath the pretence, other than when he's worked on himself.  But this is the whole show, the full monty, as it were, and the eyes go wide with fascination and a tinge of horror as he brings a hand in front of his face to look at the mechanisms.
"You must have been very clever, to build me." He says, quietly.
"I'm just used to the process of assembly, that's all," Sora says, shrugging as he folds the skin layer neatly, "It's not complicated when you do it every day."
"Still.  You said no one else had ever built one from scratch for themselves before, that you were the first.  You must have been very clever."
Sora doesn't say anything to that, simply gestures to the workbench and watches as Roxas hops up onto it, lying down like he's in a doctor's office, waiting for an examination.  In a way, Sora supposes, he is.
"This might feel a bit strange." He says, and then slowly begins to disconnect the wires which connect Roxas' legs to his body, before easing the faux-joints out of their sockets and sliding the legs over to a trolley by the bench, taking them apart there, stripping them down into components, heedless of the oil dripping onto his bare feet.
"It… tickles." Roxas complains, sliding his hand down to the empty pelvis and rubbing for a moment.
Sora nods, engrossed in cleaning the tiny pieces of metal and plastic, making sure each is perfect.

The head works almost independently, that's always been something they've been proud of, being able to store central processing inside the head, just like a human brain, inside a little plastic capsule to protect it.  It's unnerving, watching Roxas watch himself be taken to pieces, slotted into place with care in the box, back where they came from, those too-blue eyes blinking and leaking slightly, which, Sora thinks, trying pragmatism, will mean he doesn't have to empty the salt water reservoirs tucked behind the eyes.  It doesn't work, and he rubs his face against his shoulder, hands streaked with oil, chasing away tears of his own.  This isn't how it was supposed to go, this isn't what was supposed to happen, but he can't do this again, he just can't.  He doesn't understand these creatures, for all that he knows how to make them and take them apart again, doesn't know how to deal with them, or how to interact.  Perhaps he should have realised just how human they are, and just how bad he was with people, and wondered whether that would make a difference in how something so close to human would cope with him, and how he would cope with it.

"It's nearly over, isn't it?"
There's nothing left now, just the central processing unit, nothing to speak from, but the lips were incidental, the noise simply comes from a speaker on the unit.  Just that left, in the little plastic bubble, wrapped securely to keep it safe.  It would only take one drop, one bad knock, to smash it into tiny pieces, to destroy the idea, the person of Roxas forever, and Sora considers it, for a moment, considers brushing it off and stepping on it, over and over, and for some reason, that thought makes the tears flow faster.
"Yes.  It's nearly over."
"No more pain?"
Sora shakes his head, mutely, and realises that Roxas can't see him, not with his ocular equipment in the box.
"No.  No more pain."
"No more feelings?"
Sora's sob catches in his throat and he wishes there was still a Roxas he could draw close, to hold, to stroke his hair and reassure him that it was all going to be fine, that nothing was ever going to hurt him again.
"Not ever."
"I'll miss you.  I mean.  I would.  If I was going to exist."
"I'll miss you too."
Sora picks up the unit and presses his lips to it for a second.
"Goodbye, Roxas."
He presses the reset button, then switches it off, placing it back in the packing material before setting it in the box, on top of everything else, the skin, the hair, the eyes, everything he thought made Roxas.  He's just erased the one person he felt he could live with, who he felt he could keep forever.
It turns out that forever is so much shorter than he thought.