#dispatch sentimech au

[fanfiction-artist-prototype]

sentimech au snippet

look im just throwing shit in the wdoc atm and i wanna share it

[fanfiction-artist-prototype]

I. AM. WORKING ON THE SENTIMECH AU

So like, this is a bit of a future segment lol. because i am writing some backstory, but i'm really happy with this so, i am sharing it early.

--

"And this is Prism, she's actually quite talented."

"Yeah, I know her work." Robert replies absently, looking back at Blazer and Chase when the silence stretches a second too long, "What?"

"Since fucking when did you listen to music that came out in the same fucking century you live in you fuckin' uncultured shit?" Chase asks him, eyes narrowed as he leans in further over the back of Roberts chair. Like he thinks getting closer to Robert will let him see something written in print that's too small for his old man eyes.

(Something that tastes like the same guilt he feels every time he's walked into his flat in the weeks since he got back from his damn coma and seen his lifelong companions empty shell on his living room floor, wells up in the back of his throat. Every time he asked for Chase to go and run to grab something for him starts to get tallied up in the back of his mind the more he takes in the wrinkle lines around the creases of Chase's eyes from this close. It's not much of a consolation that he has crows feet. At least Chase has had reason to smile.)

He scoffs, and waves him off, the truth rolling off his tongue too easy, "Blue listened to whatever the hell they wanted during patrol, by virtue of proximity that means I listened to whatever Blue wanted to."

Robert readjusts himself so he can see Blazer and Chase easier, one hand hovering on the desk to prop himself up.

Blazer has a face that Robert is quickly cataloguing as 'corporate' and has logged it firmly in what he'd call his 'don't fuck around but do find out' column of shit to deal with recently. Chase rolls his eyes, and scowls at Robert.

"No accounting for taste," Chase flicks him in the forehead, and Robert lets him. The habit of sitting there and letting Chase do whatever he was going to do ingrained into him after years of accepting that he couldn't stop the guy with super-speed even if he wanted to,"and here I had hopes that that bitch ass might have at least developed taste from exposure to the internet. Fuck knows they've had more unsupervised access than you over the years."

"Blue? Like your Mech designation?" Blazer asks and it sends Robert's heart all the way down to whatever sub basement the SDN building has.

How do you explain to your new boss who's offered to rebuild your completely normal totally not a living construct robot mech suit, that she's got her R&D guys performing Frankenstein level fuckery on a living thing for the cost of a dispatcher salary, without sounding like you've developed an unhealthy dependent and parasocial-esque relationship with said mech suit? Robert was pretty sure you didn't.

"Part of team Mecha," he shrugs trying to not think of a metal corpse in his living room, "have been since I was a baby. They were with me every step of the way."

Chase's face falls as he also seems to think about what 'rebuilding the suit' entails. Robert knows that Blue was much more a part of his own life and that Chase never really forgave them for blowing out a chunk of Robert's ear, but the man also knew Blue. Chase knew Blue was a living (maybe not breathing) entity that could think and do things for itself. It's just as much a reminder of someone dying for the other man as it is for Robert.

"Oh!" Robert watches as the heroine's face lightens, before she flicks her eyes from Chase's crestfallen face to whatever face Robert is making, "Oh."

"They didn't survive the … attempt to kill Mecha Man." He can't say the explosion, it's too specific. And they'll be having that Royd guy dragging the suit in, there's no room for a second person in the suit, and paramedics didn't drag a second corpse out of the suit when they got to him. "Shroud made sure of that."

(Robert happens to know the particular EMT's who dragged him out and kept him alive long enough to go comatose in a hospital, having met them frequently over the years and helped their fire station more than enough times to have been invited to community fundraising events mask off but disguise on as a friend not a hero there to raise funds. If you asked Aditi and Sven they didn't drag any corpses out of the mech, they held firm on that after they'd cornered him post-interview with the press. Robert only believed them half the time these days. The other half he thinks they just have too much professional pride to admit that Robert's been a zombie for as long as they've known him.)