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Summary: Everyone told Tattle he was giving up on everything, but to him, he was finding something that meant more than everything.
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“You are throwing your life away,”
Tattle sat before the desk of his mentor, staring hard at his hands. They were resting lightly on his knees, although the fingers curled slightly with every word said. His lens remained fixed on them as he refused to look up at the camera before him that had been his mentor all his life. A father figure. A friend.
Now an angry higher-up chewing him out for his failures all over again.
For the first time in a long while, Tattle had nothing to say. He never had anything to say before his mentor except yes sir. Of course sir. It won’t happen again sir.
That had always been their relationship after all. He was a unit made to be an officer. It was expected. All of his training to this point was geared towards him being able to take the reigns and lead others into battle. He was to climb the ranks and become one of the higher ups in time and sit in the swanky office to bark orders at everyone else.
That had been what he was made to do, coded to do. It was what he had trained to do.
Now though, Tattle sat here in an office, silent, hands in his lap, refusing to look at his mentor and the papers laying on the desk between the two of them.
“This promotion is your future, Tiberius. This is what you are made for, what you trained so hard to be. You did not train to become some common soldier,” his mentor leaned forward, fixing him in the lens of his camera, “And to change your name to something so ridiculous, what the hell are you thinking?”
Tattle didn’t speak, hands gripping hard at his knees as he tried to find his voice, but it was hard when he was alone. Skewered to his seat like this under his mentor’s disappointed glare, the younger cameraman wanted nothing more than to stutter into apologies and quickly fix the situation.
But he didn’t.
He was trembling but he fought hard to try and force his processors to say something.
All that came out was a faint, croaked out, “I know,”
“You know. What do you know Tiberius? Tell me! Please enlighten me as to why you are doing this?”
“My…my name is Tattle,” he finally managed out, “Not Tiberius,”
“Cut the crap. That name is ridiculous. No officer would ever have-“
“I’m not an officer, so it doesn’t matter what my name is,” Tattle blurted out, “So yes, I’m Tattle now and…and I am just a basic unit,”
He didn’t dare to look up at the looming cameraman before him. Right now his mentor felt like he might be the size of a titan with how his aura hung heavy in the room. Tattle felt so small then. Small, weak, and utterly useless, but he clung to the choice he made.
The first choice he had actually made in his entire life of just doing what his mentor wanted. All the books he sat in front of studying for harder and harder tests, the various tutoring sessions spent making sure his grades in the military academy would set him apart as an exemplary. He had put everything into this moment, to be seen and to be offered a position as an officer.
Now he was turning it down, all just to stick close to someone who made him feel like his voice mattered.
“You are a disgrace, you know that? You are going to throw everything away, just like that? You are going to deprive the Alliance of an officer, forgo your duty to protect this world, for what?” his mentor leaned forward, the contempt dripping off each word, “Some bubmbling excuse of a unit that barely even got through basic,”
Tattle’s hands curled tight into fists as he gave a nod, “Yeah,”
It was the only word he could get out and it felt so small, so damn weak. He wanted so much to speak louder, to shout out all the reasons why he was doing this, to lay out on the table all the things he had never said before, but he only got out a single word. A solitary single little word like he was spitting on a titan’s foot and expecting that to do anything.
“Yeah. That is all you can say? You can’t even begin to defend your idiotic choices!?”
Tattle jumped as the papers were knocked off the desk and a hand grabbed tight onto his collar, yanking him forward. Now Tattle was finally forced to look up into the angry lens of his mentor and feel like he was about to be swallowed up by that abyss, the light below all but blinding as it glowed with hideous anger.
“You are weak! A disgrace! You know that?! You spent all this time, all this energy, and for what? Wasting my time, wasting the time of all your trainers. Wasting the time of the Alliance that sunk resources into shaping you into a commander!”
The hand slammed on the desk and Tattle jumped before he yelped as he was shoved back into his chair by his mentor. Still he sat up again, returning to the polished posture of one trained to be an officer. He sat there, ram-rod straight with a posture broken into him from the moment he came online. His vents flared, trying to suck in air as he so desperately sought out his voice in all the jumble of emotions in his head.
“M-maybe…maybe you should have asked, from the start if this…if this is what I ever wanted,” Tattle stammered out, “Instead of…just making me do it, sir,”
“You never said no,”
He wanted to scream it was because he was scared and because he thought there was no other options. That his life and all other units were pre-made for certain roles and no one had a choice but to do their duty. That they couldn’t just say no or just walk away. That even a titan couldn’t decide one day to just not be themselves.
Not until he met Prattle.
Not until he realized that at the end of the day, if he didn’t want to do something, if he wasn’t cut out for it, if he was terrified of everything he had to become and wanted a life made with his own hands, that it was there.
Even if it was scary to pull away.
He wasn’t alone. Even as he sat there in that room alone with the monster that was his mentor glaring down at him, he wasn’t alone and, in the end, everything eventually passed. Every hurt was a temporary thing. Every fear a passing moment.
“I am saying no now sir,” Tattle managed to say quietly, “And...and I’m not changing my mind,”
He saw the other cameraman’s grip tighten on the edge of his desk, like he would leap forward to bash in Tattle’s head for his words. Instead, there was a heavy exhale of fans as his mentor sat back in his chair, his lens still fixed viciously upon Tattle.
“I am going to make sure you’ll never get a chance to move up in the ranks, Tattle,” his mentor spat, “You’ll be stuck as some common unit, in the worse assignments imaginable for the rest of your goddamn life!”
“That’s fine sir,” Tattle said quietly, “I’ll do my part,”
His mentor was seething before he pulled back at last, putting his back to Tattle, “Get out of my sight,”
Tattle rose to his feet stiffly and gave a polite bow to his mentor, his former mentor now, and gave a salute, “Yes sir,”
He left that office feeling in a strange sort of daze. Nothing felt really real as he walked away from that office for probably the last time. Some part of him knew the two of them would never talk again. Probably wouldn’t ever see each other again. Something about that hurt deep in Tattle’s chest to think the unit that taught him everything, that stood by his side for everything was now going to be gone, it almost felt like seeing a friend die.
It hurt.
It hurt so much.
He didn’t run out of the office like some scared unit. He walked out, hands behind his back, every inch a trained officer, even if he held his head low. His crisp black suit felt heavy on his shoulders as he walked. He left the offices where the higher ups and officers of the Alliance took their seats, organizing and preparing for battle.
He walked out of the barrack entirely, pass units that were going about their own preparations, some getting ready for drills and other basic training of the academy. He kept walking until he was out at the miserable scrap of what could have been a garden but no one cared to maintain it. It was said that some civil engineer had made it but had departed after the big fight at the base.
It meant though people didn’t really care to frequent the place, making it a perfect space for the double-trouble fools of the Alliance.
“Oi! Tattle!”
The cameraman jolted before relaxing as he saw the white cameraman in the black bow tie sitting on one of the overgrown benches, waving a hand excitedly, “There you are!”
“Prattle!”
He breathed out the name with relief, hurrying over, “I’m glad you’re here!”
“You dolt! I told you I would be here,” Prattle huffed, crossing his arms, “I told you I wouldn’t leave the Alliance if you were going to stick it out,”
“I know,” Tattle paused before collapsing into the seat next to him, “I guess…well,”
He fidgeted, looking away, “My mentor, I guess ex-mentor, more or less tossed me out of his office and told me to go die in a toilet bowl,”
“Took it that bad did he?”
Tattle nodded, “Oh yeah. I think my future as an officer of any kind is well and truly dead,”
Saying that out loud was both a relief and a bitter hole in his chest, but he didn’t regret the choice. Not for a moment. Prattle was quiet a moment before he reached over, taking Tattle’s hand in his own to give it a squeeze, “Sorry about that. I know you really tried and all. Always the one studying and taking this all so seriously,”
Tattle laughed, “I think I only tried to keep other people happy,” he said, voice tired, “Most days I just…wanted to toss it aside and do something else. Like being a workaholic, thinking that if I didn’t do my best the world would crumble, well, that…that wasn’t me,”
He looked down at where Prattle was holding his hand, giving it a tight squeeze, “I really hated you at first, you know?” Tattle said quietly, “How you never took anything seriously and getting under my wires with how loud and careless you seemed. I think now I was just jealous you could be that and no one was breathing down your neck to do better,”
“Heh, well, same to you! I hated you because you had everything and all that drive and ability, made me feel like I was just a dollar store toaster! Like what was the point of me being here in this army when they had units like you?” Prattle returned the squeeze of the hand, “Guess we both were kind of like two peas in a miserable pod,”
“I like to think of us like a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. You don’t think we go together, but we go together so good, or so I’m told,” Tattle laughed, “Given neither of us can eat food or ever were human to know food,”
“It is the metaphor that counts,” Prattle said with a nudge.
The two fell into a quiet, companionable silence and it still felt strange to Tattle he was sitting with Prattle. They really had hated each other and gone for the throat like a pair of feral skibidis when they first met. From day one of the academy even. Theodore and Tiberius, a pair of trouble-makers always getting in trouble with each other due to some fight. Plenty of loud arguments and shouting had been had. They had pranked each other a dozen times and caught numerous poor souls in the cross-hairs.
They had been rivals of the utmost hate, completely opposites in every way, or so it seemed.
Now though, there wasn’t a person in this whole world Tattle trusted more to be at his side. When all was said and done, the two of them always ended up in the same boat, a pair of idiots, sandwiched together.
“So now what?” Prattle asked.
“Well, guess we wait for our assignments,” Tattle said with a quiet laugh, “And give how much my ex-mentor wants to see me in the dirt, I think we are going to have either some lethal battle where we are going to be thrown in front of the skibidis as bait so the titan can kill them and look badass, or we are going to get some really boring duty like guarding the High Commander’s bathroom or something,”
Prattle gave a snort, “Well, both sound fine enough, right? We’ll make do with it, as long as we are together,”
“Yeah,” Tattle leaned against the other cameraman, “We should really make a statement though to make sure everyone now knows we come as a pair,”
“And black is not our color,” Prattle added, “Maybe we try blue eh? Blue is allowed,”
“Navy blue,” Tattle said with a chuckle, “They actually allowed that color because they thought we were going to have like a navy instead of the ten ships moving about,”
“Think it is down to six? Four of them vanished in a terrible hurricane or something and sunk,” Prattle said with a shrug, “Hey, maybe they will put us on a boat. I always wanted to see beaches,”
“And oceans,” Tattle said with a sigh, “I think when the war is over, I’m going to open some little restaurant or rental shop on a beach. Just relax and go about my own business and chat with locals and tourists alike,”
“That sounds nice. We could do it together!” Prattle said with a happy tilt of his head.
“Well duh! We do everything together! That’s what true bros are for!”
Prattle nodded before hopping up to his feet and placing his hands on his hips, “You know, in all the stories and movies and all that, when two bros like us appear, they always make a pact. Like some kind of oath and all that to live by going forward,”
Tattle’s lens flexed a tad, “Like sworn brothers stuff? Dying on the same day and all that?”
“Yeah! But uh, not going to be big on dying for the other, I mean, I would die for you, but you know,” Prattle sighed, shoulders slumping, “I’d rather we both live or if I died that you lived on,”
“Bro? The feeling is mutual,” Tattle said in a near whisper, “Neither of should ever die, but if I kicked the bucket, I want you to tell all the embarrassing stories about me into the gossip multiverse!”
“Bro!”
“Bro!”
And like that they were hugging and laughing like a couple of idiots. Tattle would have cried and maybe he did a little, because this felt different than his ex-mentor and all the time spent cracking his lens for some dream that wasn’t even his.
With Prattle, he actually felt like he was reaching for something he wanted.
“So let’s do an oath, yeah?” Prattle said stepping back, holding up his hand, “We never leave the other behind. Where one goes, the other is right there next to him. We don’t get taken apart by no one, not even a titan can break this bond of brotherhood!”
“Not even the heat death of the universe can break us up bro!” Tattle declared, holding up his own hand, “And if the other should die, it is now in our sacred bro oath that the other one has to live on, to spread horrible legends about the other to all the new units, to keep the gossip alive!”
“We are bros, from womb to tomb!”
“Birth to berth!”
“Units to slag,”
“Porcelain bowl to porcelain dust!”
“Not even death will do us part until we both are moldering in the ground!”
“Forever more, and forever will be-“
“My best and bestest-“
They slammed their hands together with all the force they could muster, holding on tight.
“Bro!”
They said it together, perfectly in sync, just how they were always in sync, from the moment they had their first argument. Bros before they knew they were bros. Destined to be bros. When the bro constellation of Gemini came into existence, it was foretold that they would be bros forever more, greater than any other bros, destined to be the greatest legendary bros of all time.
At least that was the narrative in Tattle’s head and he was more than certain the same was for Prattle.
“And uh, want to add a little something to this oath, now that you already shook on it,” Prattle murmured, “If I ever do kick the big bucket to the big camera bag in the sky… go become an officer, yeah? Become some big important commander just to stick it to everyone and declare me the greatest hero in the Alliance with a big statue and everything,”
“Yeah? Well if I kick the bucket, you leave the Alliance and go start a circus, just like you said you would,” Tattle teased back gently.
“I will, just for you. I’ll name my best clown after you,” Prattle promised with a chuckle.
They gave a final shake of their hands before stepping back, silent for a moment before Prattle nudged Tattle in the side with a cheeky elbow, “Now, how about finding some matching blue suits, eh?”
Tattle nudged him back, giggling already, “After you of course!”
It was painful to close one door, but Tattle felt in doing that, he found there was a hallway of other ones to try and it wouldn’t be scary with Prattle at side. Prattle was his courage and confidence and he hoped he could become the same for his friend.
They were bros.
And that was all he needed to find out what wild future he could find that would be determined only by him and no one else.
