Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Eric and Deborah sat next to each other, both of their metal fingers covered in paint. A large canvas was infront of them, colourful paint covered nearly all of it. There was no real pattern or idea behind what the robo-boys where doing, but it didn't matter, they just were having fun.

-

The boys were in Katie's old room, she decided to let them have it when she went to College. Of course, her father wasn't too happy about that, the room was his daughters after all, but Lin and Katie persisted.

Life had changed a lot for the family after Katie left for College, and after the whole, y'know, saving the world thing. The family was showered in pubicity and people wouldn't leave them alone, but after a while it died down. It did make Katie more popular though, which gave her more friends, this also happened for Aaron though many people quickly stopped talking to him after he kept bringing up dinosaurs. Linda and Rick also gained new friends after saving the world, Linda had a much funner time teaching, as so many people wanted to be her students, or to have their kids be her students, and Rick also gained a lot more friends who were intrested in camping, and other outdoor activities. Monchi even got more dog friends at their local dog park.

The only people in the family who were excluded from this rise in popularity and who didn't gain new friends, were the newest additions to the Mitchell's family.

Eric, and Deborah(Bot5000, but we'll just call him Deborah or Deb for short).

The robots were shunned upon by almost everyone.

People didn't like or trust the boys, even though they were defective and wouldn't pose a threat to anyone, people had a deep hatred for them, as they were apart of Pal's plan to kill the entire human race.

When Eric and Deborah went out, which was rarely, they would get picked on by people. Getting called named, they got pushed around and even got things thrown at them.

This of course, worried the Mitchells, well, some of the Mitchells, mainly Linda and Aaron. So, they restricted the boy's time outside and told them not to go to crowded places so that they wouldn't get treated as they usually would.

This didn't bother Eric and Deborah that much, they were quite intent on staying inside. There was a lot of fun things to do inside, with Linda supplying the boys with fun activities.

Though the boys didn't get treated that nicely at home.

-

Deborah turned away from the colourful canvas and to his brother.

"Brother, I think I'm done painting!" Putting his paint-covered thumbs up at his brother.

Eric turned, and nodded, also putting rainbow-coloured thumbs up at his bother. "Okay! Mother will be very pleased!"

They both stood up, and look at the colourful painting, the paint had been smeared on, very evident by the handprint shapes that took up the canvas.

They both picked up each side of the painting, and walked out of their room, paint dripped behind them. They walked into the living room, and they looked around.
They could not spot Linda, and Eric turned his red-marker face to Deborah.

"Brother, I think Mother might have gone out."

"Oh." Deborah responded, sounding disappointed. There was a pause, before Deborah continued, "Perhaps Rick-Dad is home? I didn't hear him leave."

Once Linda purposed that the boys called Rick "Dad", much to Rick's protests. The boys latched onto the idea though, but still kept calling him Rick because of Rick's complains, thus Rick-Dad was born.

Eric nodded, "Maybe. Let's go check."

They started to move again, paint forming a trail behind them.

The bot-brothers then moved into the kitchen, looking for the father.

Rick was found laying on the floor, top half under the kitchen table. He was putting new screws into the table, as it was getting wobbly and screws were falling out thanks to Monchi ramming himself into the table head first.

The two robots stopped about a metre away from the table.

"Rick-Dad!" The two robots announced simultaneously, causing the man to jump and hit his head on the table. After a loud Ow, he pushed his body out from under the table and rubbed his head, staring at the two boys.

"What is it, Eric and Deborah? You shouldn't disturb a working carpenter." The man tried to joke, but the robots clearly did not understand.

"Rick-Dad! Look!" Deborah began, before his brother began to talk, "Yes, Rick-Dad, look! We have painted!" Both of them pointed with their free hands to the painting that they were holding.

Rick looked away from their faces and followed their fingers down to the painting. To Rick, it was far from a masterpiece. It was a mess of random colours and shapes, made up by the boy's handprints. Further more, it was dripping all over the man's hardwood floor and forming a puddle. Behind the boys he could even see a trail of paint that followed them.

Rick sighed.

"Yes, yes, it's a uh, wonderful painting," He tried to compliment the boys but he could only think about what a mess the robots had formed.

"You don't seem very happy with our art." Eric inquired, and turned to his brother, before looking back to Rick.

"Well, yeah, I like your art but you guys made such a mess." Rick scratched his head, sighing again. He was trying to fix the table and couldn't deal with this. "Plus, I was kind of busy."

"Oh." Deborah said again, he sounded somewhat sad.

"Sorry, Sorry." Rick hurriedly said, noticing the tone of voice. "How about- Look, I'll go put the painting somewhere where it can dry and you guys go and clean that up."

The boys titled their heads to the side and their screens flashed green.
"Okay!" They both exclaimed in unison.

Rick felt bad in almost an instant. The boys had been taking their own orders ever since the apocalypse, though they still listened to other people and even though they said they wouldn't take orders from others, their busted defective programming still made it hard for them to not take orders.

Linda had been trying to make the people around the house use less commanding language to prevent the boys from doing things they didn't want to, but it was hard for Rick.

The boys handed the canvas to the man and went to go get mops and rags.

It took a matter of minutes before the paint had been cleaned up and their hands now clean as well.

Rick quickly went back under the table to fix it after putting the painting out to dry.

The boys now were left bored, as bored defective bots can be.

They looked around the house for things to do, but now Rick wanted nothing to do with them.

Rick was never that found of them anyways, I mean, of course he liked them, they had saved his life, but Rick still didn't like technology. He always disliked it before the machine apocalypse, he just couldn't figure it out and he didn't understand why his family liked it so much. His dislike was fueled more after the apocalypse, and sure he made an effort for his children to understand it, he wanted to connect to his children, especially Katie, through it. And by learning how to use it, it would show that he cared.

Still, his distrust of machines was strong, mainly from almost dying and being kidnapped by a phone, and so he was always seemingly on edge around Eric and Deborah, even though they were considered part of his family, despite his wife's best efforts.

Atleast Rick apricated what the boys did around the house, doing chores and fetching things for him.

Eric and Deborah searched for things to do in the house, Linda was usually their source of entertainment, she would always bring things from the shops or from the school that she worked from for the boys to play with or interact with. Lately, she's been trying to teach them new things, though it was tiresome, and she couldn't keep up with their antics.

Since their mother was out of the house for some reason beyond them, they had to look for something on their own.

The boys went to go ask Aaron if he wanted to hang out with them, but he was busy playing with dinosaur toys (in a scientific accurate way, of course) with the girl from next door. The boys didn't know her name, because every time they tried to ask Aaron about her, he would panic and pretend that he didn't know her, and that he didn't know what dinosaurs were, so it was no use.

Eric and Deborah tried to face-time Katie, to see if she wanted to talk to them, but she said she was busy, working on an up and coming project her group was making. Apparently it was something about two female sock-puppets who were in love, but their date got interrupted by evil giants and they had to defeat them before they could continue to date. Eric and Deborah didn't really understand it, but tried to encourage her anyways.

They even tried to see if Monchi wanted to play, but the dog-pig-bread-thing was to busy with his head in a bin to bother with them.

No one wanted to be around them.

The boys were now alone, sitting in their room. And for the first time in a while, they were silent.

Chapter Text

The robot boys stared at each other, drawn on marker faces seemingly soul-less.

Deborah finally started up conversation, as he looked around their barren room for things to do. "Oooh, what if we went outside?" Deborah looked out the window.

"No." Eric responded quickly, following his brother's head and looking at the window. "Mother said that we could not go out for a while after our previous incident."

The last time that they went out, someone was walking their dog - a middle-aged woman - and they set their dog after the robots, causing immense damage to the boys. They didn't want to harm the dog nor the woman, though Linda looked as if she wanted to rip the woman's head off.

"Hm." Deborah hummed. "I still don't know why the other humans all hate us so much. We helped save the world." He looked away from the window and looked at the door, head tilted down slightly.

Eric let out a 'uh' as he thought, "I don't know. We did help save the world, and we are apart of the Mitchell family. Maybe-" A loud ringtone interrupted the conversation, and both the boys immediately jumped to their feet, and sped into the living room. The laptop that was set on a coffee table was receiving a face time request.

"Katie is calling!" The boys yelled loudly in unison. They would typically announce everything loudly, from the person who was at the door or to whoever was calling the phone or trying to facetime them.

From another room Rick yelled back, "Can you, uh, pick it up or something? I'll be there in a bit"

Eric reached down and moved the mouse to click accept.

Katie's face immediately filled the screen, a massive toothy grin on her face.

"Mum! M- Dad! I have news! So me and J-" She finally slowed down and noticed that the people who answered the call were not in fact her parents or her little brother, it was Eric and Deborah.

Deborah started waving quickly at the screen and Eric waved once at Katie's digital image.

"Hello Katie!" Deborah exclaimed, and Katie gave a quick wave, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"Hi Deb, Hi Eric. Uhm, is Mum there?"

"Mother isn't home right now! We can give her a message if you want." Deborah responded.

"Oh, okay, is Aaron there? I have some really good news-"

"No, sorry! He's at the girl-who-doesn't-have-a-name house!" Eric answered, and it took Katie a second to realise what they meant.

"Rick-Dad is home though!" Deborah added excitedly, one finger pointing upwards as he interjected.

"Oh, uhm, no it's okay, just let Mum to call me back- Please!" Katie quickly muttered, before giving a short wave. "Bye guys!"

"Goodbye K-" The sound of Katie hanging up on them cut the boys off; the screen flashed.

The boys stared silently at the screen before Deborah turned to his brother.

"Brother, why didn't Katie want to talk to us?"

"What?" Eric turned to his brother.

"Well, she asked to talk with Mother and Aaron and denied the request to talk with Rick-Dad, but she didn't even ask if we would like to talk."

Eric thought of a reply, he also had the same question as his brother, but he just pushed it to the side, Katie probably had a good reason.

"Katie probably had a good reason." Index finger pointing upwards - as it usually was when he talked - as he answered his brother.

Deborah looked at the ground, before looking back up.

"Okay."

-

The rest of the day went on pretty much without a hitch, the boys mainly just did chores that Rick requested and did little things around the house.

They didn't resume their earlier conversation that Katie interrupted, but Eric couldn't escape thinking about it.

When Linda arrived home, Eric and Deborah helped put away the groceries that she bought back and helped her clean up the house.

They also made dinner, and helped make dessert. The family sat around the table and chatted, the sound of knives and forks clinking helped to fuel the conversation, Rick and Aaron playfully arguing about dinosaurs and how they would've built houses as well as asking about days.

Eric stayed silent, though Deborah tried to engage with the conversation.

The boys told Linda about Katie wanting to facetime after dinner, and Linda excitingly ran off to go chat.

Aaron moved off to his room after dinner and Rick went off to go to go carve some wooden statue.

-

No one asked how Eric and Deborah's day was.

The boys didn't even get to show their mother the painting they painted.

Chapter Text

Eric and Deborah's room was quiet the next day, morning sunshine shining through a gap in the curtains, the sunlight bouncing off the back of the bots.

Both of their screens were dark and the red dot points that rested in the corner of both the boy's faces also dark and not blinking.

The robo-boys were sitting down, both crossed legged as their heads titled downwards.

It looked as if the boys were just sleeping, all thanks to their 'sleep' settings that they were able to trigger by themselves through orders and programming. They also had 'shut-down' mode that could be also triggered, but it was hardly ever used.

The scene was so peaceful, both of the boys leaning against each other, heads touching.

The boy's peaceful 'slumber' was not-so-peacefully disturbed my Monchi, who rammed his quite-large head into the door before bursting into the room and bumping into Eric and Deb, violently jumping up and down and licking them; Monchi bouncing all over the place.

Both of the boy's head tilted up and their red dots brightened, waking up, shoulders straightening.

"Hello Monchi." Deborah announced, reaching down and patting the dog in a very mechanical way, his hand just lifting up and down onto the dog.

Usually the boys would wake up at set times, for example, Seven AM, but Monchi and some of their other family members disturbed this.

Eric and Deborah stood up simultaneously, Monchi falling out of Deborah's lap and bumping onto the floor. Deborah let out a "Aww" noise and reached down to pet the dog.

Monchi raced around in circles now that he was back on the floor and then excitedly ran out the door.

Eric was being unusually quiet, but Deborah assumed it was nothing. His brother was typically the one in control so if something was wrong then he would speak up about it, right?

Deborah assumed everything would be alright.

Shouts from the other corners of the house made the boys turn their heads to the door.

"Good Morning, Brother." Eric spoke up, Deborah responding with the exact same phrase. Both of them then walked outside and gently shut the door to Katie's old room behind them.

-

Outside, Aaron was chasing Monchi around trying to put a harness-vest on the dog, but Monchi clearly wasn't having it. Though, it was confusing to the bots why Aaron was even chasing the dog around, Aaron clearly was faster and Monchi ramming his head into every second thing, it was a mystery.

Linda was busy packing sandwiches and other various home-made food items into a bag while also making other food and packing other random things and talking to Katie on a phone; her multitasking skills were astounding.

Rick was in the front yard, busily packing the car with some bags while also yelling back into the house for Linda and Aaron to go do this and that before coming back into the house to grab more things.

The two robots stood in the hallway, Monchi ran in-between the two and Aaron quickly followed suite, yelling after the dog. Eric and Deborah's heads turned one-eighty degrees around on their torsos, watching the boy and the dog disappear before turning back around.

"Good Morning Mother, Rick-Dad." Eric and Deborah announced their presence in the room in unison.

Linda turned around and saw the boys, smiling.
"Oh, good morning boys!" She waved, before going back to packing and talking to Katie. Amongst the other noises, the boys managed to pick up Katie also saying hello.

Aaron dashed pass the robo-boys again, holding the dog this time, the harness-vest successfully strapped to the dog.
"Haha! Success!" Aaron squawked, his voice blending into the chaotic background noise. "Also good morning!" Aaron smiled at the robots before running to his mother and lifting Monchi up, showing Katie on phone.

Lastly, Rick stopped moving things and looked up at the robots, readjusting his glasses. "Oh, hey Deb, hey Eric." He then grabbed most of the stuff that Linda was holding and put it into the car, coming back into the house. Aaron passed a dinosaur-pool-floatie to his father.

"Mother, where are we going?" Eric asked, Linda waved goodbye to Katie before hanging up and turning to answer him. Deborah stopped looking around the room and he followed his brother's marker-drawn on face towards Linda.

"Well, honey, we're going to the beach and then we're going to do some hiking as a family!" Linda responded excitedly, clasping her hands together, smiling.

"Sounds exciting. Should we go get ready?" Eric responded, which was met with silence. Rick looked at Linda, Linda looked at Rick before they both looked at the robots; Aaron looked down at Monchi who he was still holding.

It was clear that they had all talked about this before Eric and Deborah had woken up.

"Well, uh," Rick began, scratching his head. "This was just going to be family thing, y'know?"

"Not to say that you aren't family!" Linda quickly interjected, smiling nervously, turning her gaze to her husband, both of them engaging in a glaring-contest, unspoken words being, well, spoken.

It was clear that the two had definitely argued about whatever they were saying with their eyes, and the subject of their eye-to-eye argument and other arguments that had happened before were definitely the robot boys.

Linda looked away first.

"Then why can't we come?" Deborah asked, looking between the both of them.

"Well, uh, you guys shouldn't really come because, it's a f- I mean," Linda glaring at Rick quickly made him switch up his words, "Water, is uh, bad for you guys right? You shouldn't really come, we, uh, don't want you getting hurt," Rick let out an awkward laugh, before he quietly stopped.

It was true though, P.A.L. MAX Robots were made to be water resistance, but since the bots had been badly damaged and were considered defective, wires and other weak spots that were exposed meant they were very vulnerable to water damage, and ever since the machine-apocalypse, P.A.L. MAX Robots had stopped being made, there was no easily-accessible way to get the robots fixed if they got badly damaged.

It was understandable.

It was also very clearly an excuse to leave them behind.

Deborah let out a "oh" and Eric let out a small hum.

"Okay." They both responded, tone sounding somewhat sound.

"Well, uh, we should probably get going now-" Rick quickly added, moving out of the house and striding quickly towards the car.
Aaron nodded, and waved to the boys, waving Monchi's paw with him. "See you later!" He then ran to the car as well.

Linda stayed behind and sighed, resting her head in her hand.

"Look boys, we'll-" She sighed, "We'll be back soon, okay? I- I love you two." She walked over to the two, and wrapped them in what could be somewhat-called a hug, since she was still holding things in her arms.

The boys stiffly hugged her back before she let go and walked to the front door.

"Bye! Don't burn the house down or start another apocalypse!" She joked, laughing before shutting the door.

"Goodbye Mother." Eric and Deb responded, waving goodbye but by the time they went to the window to wave the car goodbye, the beaten up car had already left.

Eric turned his head slightly, studying his brother.

Watching his brother watch the dust trial disappear, Eric could swear he felt something.

And not just a drawn on "tear" or drawing eyebrows on himself and calling himself scary and angry, he felt different.

-

He really was defective wasn't he?

Chapter Text

The car was silent as they drove to the beach, the only exception being the songs on the radio that were playing quietly.
Linda frowned as she looked out the window.

She knew that Rick didn't like Eric and Deborah that much, but excluding them from family events was too much.

She let Rick know this.

As soon as he said that it was 'family' thing she got excited, but her excitement stopped the moment when he purposed that they didn't bring the robots. Their argument lasted for a while before Linda finally gave in.

Linda decided she would make it up to the boys once they were home.
They were probably okay with not coming, in all honesty.

She still felt bad about it though.

She sighed, looking back at Rick, his hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were turning white.

It was obvious he didn't want to talk to her about it.

She sometimes really wished her family was more like the Posey's.

-

Aaron flipped through his dinosaur encyclopedia for the fifth time, only gazing at the pictures and not bothering to read the words, he already knew the book like the back of his hand.

He looked away from the book and out the window, the scenery blending into a mass of colours as they drove. It made Aaron feel slightly dizzy so he looked away and opted to look at the dog who was strapped to the seat next to him.

Monchi panted and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, it sounded as if the dog was choking on something but the Mitchell's all knew that that was simply the sound of the dog breathing.

Looking at the family dog helped to distract Aaron for a bit, shutting his book with one hand as he patted the dog.

He was looking forward to the trip but now that he was actually in the car he felt kind of sad.

He used to enjoy having roadtrips and being in the car, traveling around with his family, but now he somewhat hated it.

The car felt so empty and quiet without Katie there, and Aaron couldn't stand quietness. It didn't feel right to him, he was always itching to talk about something, - dinosaurs - so that the silence wouldn't be so loud.

When Katie was with him, they could talk for hours. Half the time they couldn't even remember what they talked about after their long conversations but it was fun for Aaron, to have someone who listened.

Their conversations always made car trips funnier, and would also get their parents talking as well.

Now that Katie wasn't there, it was just silence.

Well, it wasn't all that bad.

Eric and Deborahbot had taken her place in the car, rambling about dinosaurs with Aaron, listening to whatever he had to say before fact checking it and getting into playful arguments with Aaron about how this dinosaur would act or how that dinosaur would eat, Deborah and Eric both having different opinions about Aaron's favourite dinosaurs.

But, it wasn't the same. No one could replace his sister.

Though, at least the robots made the car less empty.

Aaron turned away from Monchi and opened up the book again, he tried to think of something to take his mind away from his current thoughts and went to a page that had one of Abby's favourite dinosaurs.

He decided that thinking about Abby Posey's favourite dinosaur would distract him enough from the silence that consumed the car.

-

Deborah had moved from the window and went off to do some task, probably cleaning up the mess that Monchi and Aaron had made in the hallway, but Eric wasn't paying attention to that.

He was staring directly out of the window again, fixated on the road.

He felt different.

He didn't like that they left him and his brother behind.

He knew that Rick had a reason to leave them, and that they shouldn't really be outside because of how people treat them, but he still didn't like the fact they had just left them at home.

Their family had just ditched them.

Eric clenched his hand into a fist.

Why did they just leave them?

That wasn't right.

He-

"Brother!" A shout interrupted his thoughts and he turned his head.

"Yes?"

"What's wrong? You've been staring at that window for a while." Deborah walked towards his brother, tilting his head to the side.

Both of them looked at each other.

The robot brothers shared a moment of silence, before Eric looked away.

"It's nothing."

-

Deborah stared at his brother.

He could clearly see that it wasn't nothing, his brother hadn't acted like this before.

Something was bothering him, but Deborah didn't know what.

Sure, he himself was a bit down about not being able to go to the beach and go hiking, but they'd do something else some other time, right?

Why was Eric so worked up about it?

They were family, of course they'd eventually do something fun with him and Eric, right?

Right?