4 Hours
Caves are objectively the most boring place on Earth, Proto Man thinks. The first strike against them is the darkness. It’s total darkness, not your poetic moonlit night or your spooky haunted house which are generally just dark enough to see by. No, it’s a complete absence of light that not even the most sensitive optics could compensate for. Nothing can really happen in that kind of suffocating darkness, which is what is happening right now. Nothing.
“Just wait until Dr. Light finds us.” Mega Man’s voice comes from about five feet to Proto’s left and he rolls his eyes despite the fact that even if either of them could see, it would be hidden behind his visor.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Proto responds smoothly. He doesn’t need a visual to know that that earned a glare, and he’s sure Mega doesn’t need one to know he’s smirking to himself. That’s how this game works, after all.
Strike two against caves, or at least this cave, is that they’re claustrophobic. It didn’t take much investigating, in the beginning, to determine that they’ve got maybe eight square feet of space, total. His room back at the fortress is bigger, and as a bonus, has never played host to his little brother.
“It doesn’t look like anything,” Mega says, accusatory. Then again, literally every word he says to Proto sounds accusatory, like he takes offense to Proto’s very existence. Actually, that’s probably true. “In case you haven’t noticed with those shades of yours, we can’t see a thing.”
He delivers the last line like it’s a true zinger and not a statement of the obvious, and Proto has to admit that Mega does have a knack for making anything sound like a one-liner.
“Ohh, you got me,” he says, absolutely ladling on the sarcasm, “Thanks for pointing it out, little brother. I never would’ve noticed.”
“Don’t call me that,” Mega says sharply, and abruptly the facade is gone. There’s no glaring face or ongoing battle or crazy half-cooked plan going on to distract from the genuine hurt lurking in Mega’s tone.
The last and final strike against caves is that Proto is stuck in one with his mortal enemy slash little brother, and there’s no rescue in sight.
“Fine,” he says, resting his head against the rocky cave wall behind him. “Have it your way.”
6 Hours
“If you hadn’t busted in and busted up the geostabiliser, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
“As if you weren’t trying to - what, threaten the city with earthquakes again? Didn’t Wily learn his lesson the first time?”
“We were digging for a lost top-secret government laboratory, if you must know. How did you even find us?”
“I was hiking with a kids’ day camp to promote a healthy lifestyle when the mountain started shaking, if you must know.”
“Of course you were,” Proto says, gritting his teeth and gently hitting the back of his helmet off of the wall behind him.
They’ve come around to the blame game. He’s shocked it didn’t happen already, but then, the repelling force of the most powerful magnets on Earth couldn’t hold a candle to the combined sullen silence of two estranged brothers. That they’re exchanging words at all is a testament to how boring it is to sit in the dark for hours on end.
“Just because you don’t care about anyone but yourself -” Mega starts.
“Save it,” Proto says.
“- doesn’t mean that I’m gonna slack on my community service,” he finishes obstinately.
“Gag me,” Proto says. “I don’t get you, bro. You could be riding robo-dinos through the streets of New York!”
“Causing millions in property damage,” Mega says.
“Staging an old-timey train robbery for mountains of gold!”
“That’s a felony.”
“Shrinking whole cities and watching rich people bid over them for their collections!”
“I think they’re still trying to figure out a new class of crime for that one.”
“You’re hopeless,” Proto huffs, crossing his arms for all the good it will do in the dark. “If you’d just let go of this goody-two-shoes business you and me could -”
“You and me is not happening! I’ll never join Wily, get it through your thick titanium skull!” Mega snaps. “And after the stunt you pulled with the election, I shouldn’t even be talking to you right now, I should be putting you out of your misery!”
“It wasn’t anything personal,” Proto frowns. “Look, it wasn’t even my idea. If it was up to me, we would have just fought mano a mano, no bothering with double-crossing.”
There’s a tight moment of silence before Mega replies.
“Right,” he says. It’s clipped. “Nothing personal. Of course.”
“Of course,” Proto says, and they descend into claustrophobic silence once again.
10 Hours
It’s not total silence, though. Unlike the light situation, the quiet of the cave is alive. There’s a steady dripping sound coming from somewhere, and if one tunes out all of the other senses (as one is wont to do when there’s nothing else going on) and listens, there are distant, soft rumbles. Proto likes to think it’s one of Wily’s machines, searching for him, but he’s not banking on it. Sometimes when one of those sounds filter in, he hears Mega shift, likely thinking the same thing but substituting his family.
Proto has to admit the latter possibility is much more likely, even if he likes to think his distinction as Wily’s only competent robot makes him worth the recovery effort.
There’s no sound of air circulating, and because there’s not much else to do Proto contemplates the fact that if either of them needed to breathe, they’d have been long dead by now. Besides, if there were somewhere the air was getting in and out, they would have tried shooting their way out by now, possible cave-in be damned. The possibility is probably the only reason they haven’t drawn blasters on each other yet.
The dripping is the worst, though. It’s just ever-so-slightly irregular, which grates on Proto’s nerves.
“Where is that coming from?” he asks, finally, breaking an hours-long embargo. He hears Mega shift again, maybe sitting up or something.
“Where’s what coming from?” Mega asks.
“That dripping,” Proto says. “It’s driving me nuts.”
“You’re already nuts,” Mega says reproachfully.
“Hah hah,” Proto says. “Seriously.”
“It’s probably either raining up there or it’s groundwater that was already there seeping in,” Mega says. He sounds weary. “That’s how caves form.”
“What, because of a little water?” Proto scoffs.
“Over hundreds of thousands of years, yeah,” Mega says, and as he speaks his voice starts to perk up. “In this area, anyway. The rain mixes with the atmosphere and becomes acidic, which dissolves the limestone very slowly -”
“Strike four,” Proto says, letting a hint of a whine into his voice. “They’re even boring the way they’re made.”
“Strike what?” Mega asks. Proto can hear the frown in his voice.
“Never mind,” he sighs.
“You’re the one who asked,” Mega says.
“You’re the nerd who actually knew the answer,” Proto shoots back.
“What’s wrong with knowing the answer?” There’s a combative edge slipping into his voice, which is a lot more fun than sitting around listening to nothing, so Proto fans the flames a little.
“You think you’re so high and mighty, with your National Geographic subscription,” he sneers.
“Actually, I learned that at a museum, which you might learn something from too if you weren’t busy robbing them!” Mega shoots back.
“I know lots about museums,” Proto grins. “Like which ones have the biggest diamonds, for instance.”
“I bet you do, you remorseless bag of -”
There’s a rumbling.
It’s not like the distant, far-off rumblings from before. Proto feels it reverberate through his whole body from the ground and wall of the cave. There’s a moment of almost animal panic as he thinks their little pocket might cave in, and then as suddenly as it came, it’s over. Neither of them say anything as they both strain their electronic ears to listen.
There’s nothing. There’s the drip-drip-drip of the water, and each other, but the distant sounds that had been keeping them company up until now have stopped.
“Do you think that was them?” Mega asks, and his voice is small, much smaller than Proto has ever heard it in his entire life.
“I don’t know,” Proto says, and for once he drops all of the cheek and lets his tone drop low and uncertain.
11 Hours
No more signs of rescue are forthcoming, and so Proto lets his mind busy itself with something he’s actually quite good at: planning.
“We should alternate going into sleep mode,” he says, in his opinion very reasonably. “If they’re looking for our energy signatures, we’ll need someone to be active, but we’ve gotta be careful about running out of power.”
Unfortunately, his little brother is putting up an unexpected resistance to common sense.
“No way, José,” Mega says. “You think I’m going to sleep while you’re sitting right next to me? Pull the other one.”
“If you want your batteries to go dead so bad, there’s probably a puddle somewhere in here,” Proto sneers.
“Very funny,” Mega says, “Don’t quit your day job.”
“Good to know I finally have your blessing.” Proto grins.
“That’s not what I -” Mega sputters. “Shut up!”
“Ohh, the great Mega Man, hoist by his own petard,” Proto croons.
“Hoist with his own petard,” Mega says.
“What?”
“For ’tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard,” Mega recites, and Proto can just picture his shit-eating grin. “What, no time for Shakespeare in Skull Fortress?”
“What do you think, bro?” Proto snorts. “What, did you pick that up doing volunteer work at the community theater?”
“As a matter of fact -” Mega starts, and Proto cuts him off with a full-bodied groan.
“Don’t finish that,” he says, lips curling. “You’re changing the subject.”
“Do you think I’m crazy?” Mega says, more sharply. “How do I know this isn’t a setup? You’ll just kill me as soon as I go under.”
An uncomfortable feeling twists its way into Proto, and it takes him a moment to recognize the alien feeling for what it is: guilt.
He would have said that even before the election, he tells himself. Don’t sweat it.
“I’m hurt.” Proto affects a wounded tone to cover what might have been a real wounded tone, because that just isn’t done. “Do you seriously think I’d fake getting marooned in a cave-in just to take a cheap shot at you?”
“You tell me,” Mega says, obstinately skeptical.
“Please,” Proto says, rolling his eyes. “If I really wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t stage a cave-in to do it. It’d just be you, me, and our blasters.”
There’s no response to that for a good twenty seconds, and Proto is just starting to think that Mega ran out of power already, maybe he should go over and check, when -
“You don’t want to kill me?” Mega says, voice tinged with soft disbelief.
Proto mentally smacks himself.
“That’s not what I said,” he says. “Look, it’d be stupid for me to kill you. If we take turns sleeping, we double our time visible to scanners, capiche? That’s the only reason.”
“Right,” Mega says, guard well and thoroughly back up. “That’s the only reason. Of course.”
And just like that, all is right in the world again. So why does Proto still feel knocked off-balance?
“Since you’re being a baby about it, I’ll go first,” he says.
“What makes you think I won’t shoot you in your sleep?” Mega balks.
“You won’t,” Proto says.
Mega seems to have nothing to say to that, and so in short order Proto drifts off, one system after another, into sleep mode.
19 Hours
Proto wakes up eight hours later, right on the dot, to the refreshing feeling of not having been shot in his sleep. Due to the nature of his residency at Skull Fortress and the robot masters there, he’s had days where he wasn’t afforded that luxury, so he appreciates it.
A quick post-nap check (open eyes, see darkness) indicates that they’re still buried, though, which puts a bit of a damper on his good mood. He doesn’t hear Mega moving, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything - after all, they’re robots. It’s not like they have to constantly make tiny shifts in position to stay comfortable.
“Good morning, lil’ bro,” he says, verbally probing. He’s rewarded with a very tiny scraping sound - helmet on rock, maybe? - and Mega’s response.
“Stop calling me that,” he says. “And it’s not a good morning.”
“I would have figured you for a morning person, since you’re such a boy scout,” Proto says, starting to stretch for effect before he remembers Mega can’t see it. “Me, I’m a night owl.”
“You must be so happy to be lurking around in the dark,” Mega says, once again as though it’s a great entry to the annals of witty responses.
“Eh,” Proto shrugs. “I’d like it to be a little more solitary.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Mega says, quickly. Proto raises an eyebrow.
“What?” he asks.
“Never mind,” Mega says.
“Wait,” Proto says, “Were you lonely while I was asleep?”
“Go take an acid bath,” Mega says, in a voice about as acidic as his suggestion.
“You were! ” Proto smirks broadly. “My poor little brother, all alone in the dark -”
There’s literally no way he could see the punch coming in the dark. It connects with the solid metal of his helmet, probably because Mega had only his voice to aim at.
“Shut up! ” Mega seethes. Proto reels back and blindly gropes around in the dark for a follow-up.
“Blind rage doesn’t suit you, bro!” he says, and Mega’s next strike grazes his gauntlet. “Not exactly heroic.”
“Stop it,” Mega’s voice is hoarse.
“Stop what, little brother? ” Proto says.
Some detached part of him knows that baiting his brother is counterproductive. That a real fight would risk a cave-in, that they could die, alone and surrounded only by the cold uncaring bedrock.
The rest of him sings at the prospect of a fight. There are never any walls between them when they fight, no carefully managed banter, no pretenses at all. Nothing but an honest exchange of blows.
Mega slams into his side, and they roll around the small cavern in a flurry of fists. Each jockeys for position, and in a few seconds’ time Proto finds himself pinned to the wall, head twisting with the force of the punches that Mega is doling out. They’re savage, clumsy, his usually excellent form compromised by the obvious intensity of his anger.
“You’re! Not! My! Brother! ”
And just like that, this isn’t fun anymore.
“Wait,” Proto wheezes. He gets another blow to the face for his trouble, and then another.
As his head cracks back against the wall of the cave, he hears something between a rumble and a crack, a sound that he can feel reverberating up his whole back which is flush against the cave wall.
His eyes widen behind his visor (which may or may not be cracked itself).
“Wait,” Proto says, and Mega doesn’t wait, hitting him one more time -
It all happens in a moment. Proto has a fraction of a second to get the leverage to launch himself forward, and he pushes with all of his might off the wall and shoves them both out of the way as the ceiling comes down right where they both were a moment prior. The sound it makes is deafening, and Proto holds very tightly to what feels like Mega’s shoulders as they both wait with bated breath for certain death.
It doesn’t come. The rest of the ceiling holds.
“You saved me,” Mega says, dazed.
Proto lets go and rolls over onto the ground, pawing at his face. His visor is cracked through, but not shattered.
“Don’t get used to it,” he says.
20 Hours
Mega is sleeping. Proto keeps vigil. He really hates the dripping sound.
It’s lonely.
28 Hours
“It’s been more than a day,” Mega says, as if Proto hadn’t marked the twenty-four hour mark the moment it passed.
“Good to see your clock’s still working,” Proto says. It’s only a little sardonic.
There’s a pause.
“They’re coming to save us,” Mega says.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Proto sighs.
“I’m not,” Mega says.
48 Hours
It’s been two days, and the fifth and real final strike against caves is that Proto is going to die in one.
They’re running low on power even switching off being active. The fight hadn’t helped, not to mention the scuffle that had gotten them in this situation in the first place.
Neither of them will say it out loud, but they have an unspoken agreement to stay up at the same time for half an hour or so before switching. It helps to ease the isolation. The topics of conversation, on the other hand, aren’t very uplifting.
“Hey, do you think if Light digs us up he’ll try reprogramming me?” Proto asks. He’s made his seat on the rock that almost killed them in that partial cave-in. It brings him a grim amusement.
“I should be so lucky,” Mega says.
“Don’t you want to see me reformed?” Proto says. “A changed robot?”
“I did,” Mega mutters. “Didn’t work out.”
He sounds tired.
Which is weird, because he just woke up.
56 Hours
“I don’t think they’re gonna find us,” Mega says.
It’s not fun to hear that, because while Proto has been thinking that for a long time now, Mega saying it somehow makes it more real. He brings up a hand to scrub at his face, grimacing.
“We’re gonna die here,” Mega whispers, and though it’s terribly quiet, there’s nothing else around to cover it up.
Proto’s hand freezes.
“Don’t say that,” he says.
“Why not?” Mega says. “It’s true.”
Proto swallows.
“Mega -”
“I’m gonna die hundreds of feet underground with my mortal enemy and -” Mega’s voice starts out even and cracks somewhere near the middle, panic rising.
“It was my plan,” Proto says.
There’s a beat. Proto winces as he pulls his hand down his face and bumps his visor. It finally gives, one large chunk of reinforced glass coming off one side and plinking down noisily onto the hard stone floor.
“What?” Mega asks. His voice is shaky.
“The election. Pretending to switch sides, getting in your good books. Double-crossing you,” Proto says. “None of that was Wily. Well, the robot clones were, but…”
“You lied to me,” Mega says. “Again.”
“I’m like that,” Proto says, voice tight. “You should know that by now, bro.”
“Why would you… why are you telling me now?” Mega asks. He’s strained. Balanced on a knife’s edge.
“Because we’re gonna die.” Proto laughs softly.
“You’re twisted,” Mega says, and Proto hears the sound of fists being clenched. “You’re seriously twisted.”
Proto sighs and bends down to grope around the floor for the missing piece of his visor.
“Yeah,” he says. “But you know what? I almost didn’t go through with it.”
“Almost only counts in horseshoes, Proto,” Mega says, ice cold. Proto laughs.
“Good memory,” he says. “You don’t want to know why?”
“I’d rather die not knowing, if it’s all the same to you,” Mega says. Then Proto hears him shift - probably turning away, given he was ready to sleep anyway - and soon it seems like he’s alone in the dark once again.
61 Hours
“Because…” Proto starts, to himself, in the dark, and then shakes his head and goes quiet again.
73 Hours
“Why?”
Proto turns his head, mostly on autopilot, towards the sound of Mega’s voice.
“Thought you didn’t want to know,” he says, with no small amount of bitterness. Mega sighs.
“I didn’t,” he says. “But…”
“Not much else to do in here, huh?” Proto snorts.
For the first time since the cave-in, a light appears. It’s tiny, and blinking, and it’s coming from Mega’s gauntlet and intermittently illuminating his face, which is grim. Proto shuffles over for a closer look, and sure enough, it’s Mega’s energy meter. It’s a single bar of power, out of many.
He’s almost out.
“This might be the last thing I ever do,” Mega says.
Proto, who has had nothing to do but check energy levels and feel sorry for himself for a while now, isn’t too far behind.
There’s a moment of hesitation, even though this was his idea. Maybe he never really expected Mega to take him up on his offer to explain. But he did, after all, and Mega is looking at him with an expression that sits somewhere between resignation and hope.
Ultimately, the answer is simple.
“I wanted to spend time with you,” Proto says, quietly. But in the near-silence of the cave, he may as well have shouted it off the rooftops. “I knew you were never gonna join Wily, so I… I just thought I could play the hero song and dance for a little while, get to be your real brother for a while, and then… I dunno, go back and make peace with it.”
“You’re a real piece of work,” Mega says, frown tightening. “That wasn’t the question.”
“It didn’t go how I planned, okay?” Proto says. “You didn’t trust me at all, and I thought, hah, guess it’ll be easy to bail, and then…”
“And then?” Mega asks.
“And then you let your guard down at the park,” Proto sighs, leaning his head back to rest on the cave wall and closing his eyes.
“I remember,” Mega says, accusingly. “I also remember that that was when you put the jammer on me. It was the only time you could’ve.”
“Guilty as charged,” Proto smirks weakly. “But just for a minute there, I had everything I ever wanted, and you said…”
“I said I wanted a real brother relationship,” Mega says.
“Yeah,” Proto sighs. “And I thought, you know what? So do I. And I almost… I almost came clean, you know.”
“Why didn’t you?” Mega asks. He’s wary, Proto notes. Like he’s expecting Proto to slip him another jammer.
“Because it’d change everything,” he says. “Because who’s saying if I stayed that Light wouldn’t reprogram me to be safe? Because what if you’d caught on and you were luring me into a trap? Because any reason I could think of, because I... I panicked, bro.”
“You panicked,” Mega repeats.
“I panicked, and then I ran,” Proto says, and then snickers. “Stupid, right?”
Mega doesn’t say anything for a little while, and the blinking shuts off. Proto mentally nods. No need to waste power, however little.
“You’re a real piece of work, Proto Man,” Mega finally says, and though they’re the same words as before, they’re softer. “More twisted than a car wreck.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Proto shrugs.
“Sometimes I can’t believe you’re my brother,” Mega says. Proto blinks.
“... Heh,” he chuckles. “Back at you, bro. Get some shuteye, would you?”
“I’m pretty low on power,” Mega says. “... I don’t think I’m gonna wake up again.”
“Oh,” Proto says.
“It was, uh…”
“You can say it.”
Since it’s completely dark, Proto takes a moment to pat himself on the back for knowing his brother well enough to decipher the small pause before he speaks again as him rolling his eyes.
“I was going to say, it was… I’m glad we talked,” Mega says. “But you’re still a total jerk, if that’s what you wanted to hear.”
“I am,” Proto laughs. “But, uh… me too, bro.”
“So, this is goodbye, huh?” Mega says.
Proto strains his hearing. There’s nothing but the drip-drip-drip of the water.
“Sounds like it,” he says.
All of a sudden, Proto feels a set of arms around him, and he belatedly realizes that he’s being hugged. It takes him a moment to remember that the thing to do is to hug back, and by then Mega is already pulling away. He tugs him back and they embrace properly, a few seconds that last for an eternity, before pulling apart.
“Goodnight,” Mega says, and then seemingly as an afterthought, adds, “bro.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Proto says, waiting a beat to add, “bro.”
Mega snorts out a laugh, and then Proto hears him shifting to recline. Then, there’s silence.
And he’s alone.
79 Hours
Proto runs out of power, too.
There are worse ways to go, he thinks, though he’d always hoped it would be doing something crazy like fighting a giant worm monster in another dimensio
---
The lights are blinding.
Proto isn’t a human and isn’t subject to their inferior eye defects, but to be used to complete darkness and then wake up to harsh work lights, even through a visor, isn’t pleasant.
“Uggh,” he says, intelligently. It’s not among his top ten quips, but it gets the job done.
“I see sleeping beauty is finally awake,” a deep German voice says from somewhere beside him, dripping with disapproval.
Oh, so he’s home, Proto thinks. But as he swings himself up to a sitting position, letting his feet dangle off the side of the table, he notes that he’s not at Skull Fortress. They’re in some kind of decrepit out-of-the-way office, and Dr. Wily is sitting at a makeshift desk, putting away tools in a portable box - looks like one of the ones that come standard issue in the Skullker.
“What happened?” Proto asks. Dr. Wily makes a ‘tch’ noise and spins to face him.
“Our plan failed,” he says, looking sour. Or, more sour than usual. Dr. Wily has resting sour face. “After you got caught in that cave-in, I tricked that fool Dr. Light into combining forces to ‘look for you’, and it would have succeeded, too, if it weren’t for that meddlesome girl.”
“I’m hearing some quotes where I don’t like ‘em, doc,” Proto says.
“Relax,” he sneers. “I have a tracker on you. You were never in any danger.”
“What? But -” Proto sputters. “Since when?”
“Since always, you unruly bag of bolts,” Wily grumbles. “Not that it mattered.”
“And why not?” Proto asks, clenching and unclenching his hands at his side.
“Because the sentimental fools handed you over,” he says, and reaches into his pocket to pull out a crumpled ball of paper. “I received this and a set of directions to this place.”
He throws it at Proto’s head. Proto catches it deftly and opens it up.
It’s written in blue pen, and sports a painstakingly neat print that could have only come from one person, the boy scout.
One brother-bot for pickup, limited time only, it says, followed by the aforementioned directions.
Proto smirks. Even as Wily starts on a mad rant about how he’ll get revenge for this indignancy with his next evil plot, Proto continues smirking, stashing away the note in a compartment in his boot. The mad scientist’s speech melts away into background noise, like so much dripping water.
