Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dirk groans loudly and pushes his chair back, peeling off his shirt. He shoulder checks you as he storms past. "Take over, I don't care."

You huff (you don't need to breathe, you just do it to be overdramatic) and plop your metal ass down in the chair.

EB: well maybe during the new campaign we can change the level of Tavros's character?

AG: Please, John. You're 8eing a little 8itch.

DS: man this is just getting annoying

So Davesprite is playing Dirk's stupid game. You tilt your head curiously. You never would have taken him for a DND person, but who are you to argue?

TG: dirk what do you think

TG: tell vriska shes being a little bitch

You take the opportunity to interface with the chat. You don't touch Dirk's computer, you don't need to.

[autonomousResponse (AR) joined the memo]

AR: Dirk's not here right now, it's Hal.

AR: Vriska, you're being a little bitch.

TG: see

DS: the shades have a point

AR: Funny joke, coming from a Cheeto puff.

DS: oh suck my dick

AT: uH, aNYWAY, tHANKS, bUT i DIDN'T REALLY NEED TO UP MY LEVEL,

AT: i'M FINE BEING LOWER,

AG: This is why no8ody likes you, Tavros!

TA: je2u2 fuckiing chrii2t can you guy2 keep iit iin your pant2 for over two miinute2?

CG: IT HAD TO BE TWO, HUH.

TA: diie.

"Hal, get up." Dirk tells you from the door, brushing blonde hair out of his face. You scowl at him, sliding lower in the chair. He narrows his eyes at you.

"Fine," you grumble, getting up and trudging over to Dirk's bed, sitting down with your back against the wall, grabbing a cable and jamming it into your back to charge. You're still in the chat.

TT: I'm back. Hal, you can leave now.

What a fucking prick. You are actually not going to leave.

AR: Oh, sure, just kick me out. No "thank you, Hal, I appreciate it!" Just keep me at your beck and call like you're a dude on Butler Island, don't listen to my feelings.

AR: Off I go.

[autonomousResponse left the memo!]

Dirk shoots you a glare.

A few days later, Rose hosts a party, because why not? You get a message from her that pings at your optic sensors.

[tentacleTherapist (TT) began pestering autonomousResponse (AR)]

TT: I'm hosting a party, and I'm not leaving you out.

AR: That's nice of you. Dirk might not bring me along, though. I don't have the battery power to get to yours on my own.

TT: That's why I threatened Dirk with explosives.

AR: Jeez.

TT: I'll see you there, Hal. Wear your best.

AR: You mean my bodysuit?

TT: That's the one.

AR: Thanks, Rose. See you soon.

[autonomousResponse (AR) ceased pestering tentacleTherapist (TT)]

True enough, Dirk does grudgingly bring you. Of course he uses the fucking hoverboard, so you're left clinging to Dirk's waist, praying no bugs get in your circuits as you fly.

You touch down in front of Rose and Roxy's big ass mansion, Dirk completely ignoring your shaky legs as he shoves the board into his sylladex.

"Hal!" Roxy squeals as she runs towards you. Remembering your most recent roleplay, you catch her and drop her into a dip completely ruined by both of your giggles. Dirk frowns at you and Roxy, but you're not allowed to flip him off.

"Nice to see you, Rox." Dirk says stiffly. Roxy wraps him up in a tight hug, pinning his arms to his side.

"Hey," Davesprite greets you, floating around you, his tail brushing your leg. You grin at him.

"How've you been?" You ask. Davesprite shrugs.

"Still filled with self loathing. I talk to Nepeta sometimes, though. You?"

You start to talk, but instead accidentally beep repeatedly at him. You clap a hand over your mouth as Davesprite collapses into a fit of chirpy giggles.

"Hal." Dirk calls. You look up at him. He jerks his head. "Come on."

"Jeez, Di Stri, lay off of him." Roxy protests. Dirk whirls on her.

"Don't tell me what to do with my own creation." He snaps. She shrinks back a bit. You put a hand on her wrist, gently.

"Rox, you don't need to-" you start. Roxy shoves a hand over your mouth.

"Yes, I do." She says firmly, no longer the alcohol-ridden teenager you knew years ago. After you all made the new world, Roxy swore off of alcohol, and as far as you can tell, she's been sober for six years.

Six years since the Game. Six years, and you're still in the same place as you were when you were created: right by Dirk's side, unable to do anything about it.

God, you hate him. You hate the way he treats you, how he talks to you like you're his servant. And sure, you were made to be his answering machine, but he should have thought of that before he gave you sentience.

"You can't treat Hal like that," Dave - the non-orange one - agrees. You guess he must have come with Davesprite, since they do live together. Dirk scoffs, disdain clear on his face. You knew he hated you, but not that much. It hurts.

"Actually, Dave, I can treat him any way I like. I made him. I can destroy him." Dirk sneers.

"You can't, Dirk." You say without thinking. Dirk whips around to give you a withering glare. You stare right back at him, your circuits humming with anticipation.

"I can't what?" Dirk says. You raise your chin. He's about a head taller than you, but you're not scared.

"You can't destroy me. I have backups everywhere." You say. Dirk snarls wordlessly.

"Let's just chill for a sec, guys," Davesprite says, feathers rising. Rose sets a hand on his shoulder, oh when did she get there?

Dirk glares at you. "I have the code for your killswitch."

"Ok, and?" you say coolly. "I changed the protocol for that years ago."

You're lying, but you hope he doesn't realize it.

Dirk stares at you for a moment longer with a hateful look that could have boiled granite, before he turns and stalks off. You watch him go warily.

"He needs to chill out a bit," Dave observes. "Maybe get more sleep."

"He hates me," you say quietly. Roxy wraps an arm around your shoulders, squishing you into her chest. It can't be comfortable for her, since you're mostly metal and silicone, but it's nice, and you're not complaining.

Rose clears her throat. "I say we still try and enjoy today."

You nod. "As long as I don't have to talk to Dirk."

"Heh, I don't think any of us are gonna talk to him after what he just pulled," Dave tells you, Davesprite nodding along, his feathery hair bobbing along slightly.

Roxy grabs your shades off your face and looks you straight in the eyes. She has to bend a bit, but she gets there.

"You tell me if he hurts you." She says firmly. You nod.

"He wouldn't hurt me, though, I don't think. He threatens it, but I don't think he would." You say. Dirk hates you, and the feeling is mutual, but you don't think either of you would go so far as to physically hurt the other.

You manage a smile (facial expressions are hard) and go with Roxy and the two Daves as they take you on a tour of the inappropriately massive house. It's fun, and you almost forget about the Dirk fiasco.

That is, until it's time to go home. You and Dirk tensely say your goodbyes to everyone, with a half-hearted promise to keep in touch, and then you're off.

Dirk doesn't say a word when you touch back down. You open your mouth to say something, anything, but his glare shuts you down.

He showers, you charge. He comes back and stands in front of you. You stare up at him. You don't like this.

"Get up." Dirk says sharply, his shades hiding his eyes. You unplug, not liking how low your battery is still, and scramble to your feet.

Dirk eyes you, then walks towards the roof access door.

Oh, you're strifing. You check that your specibi are still there (bladekind and karatekind) and hurry out after him.

He's standing stock still, staring out at the night. You stand near the exit and nowhere near the edge.

"I hate you," Dirk says simply.

"I know."

"I hate everything about you. I hate that you're just a better version of me. I hate that you managed to get Dave on your good side. I hate you." Dirk says, completely flat.

"I'm sorry," you say, for lack of anything better. He turns to face you and your coolant goes freezing cold.

The only emotion on his face is pure, dark hatred so strong it nearly knocks you over. Dirk just stares at you with absolute loathing on his face, and draws his sword.

Fuck.

You get yours out as well and zone out for half a second to send a message. In that moment, Dirk lunges.

You execute a roll, dodging out of the way so his sword rakes into the ground, and double back, launching yourself at him.

You're small. When you actually fix your posture, you're a whole head shorter than Dirk and Roxy. But you're skinny. When you and Sawtooth built your body, you were low on supplies, and didn't really go head over heels for cosmetics. Hence the reason why your skin and hair have no pigment, and on your face and arms your circuits are pretty visible. So you might be shorter, lighter and weaker than Dirk's toned muscle and practiced moves, but you're hella agile.

You thread your arm around Dirk's neck and drive your knee into his lungs, slamming him into the ground in a chokehold.

"I don't want to fight you, Dirk." You say. Dirk laughs coldly and throws you off. You just barely catch yourself before you skid off the roof and screech around Dirk's attack.

His sword slams through your arm, and you accidentally let out a mechanical shriek. Fuck your pain receptors, why the hell did you install those? You wrench your now pretty much useless arm out of the sword, hating the way it scrapes against your wiring, and kick Dirk in the stomach. He wheezes and you take the opportunity to vault over his head and grab your dropped sword, readying yourself for the next attack.

Dirk leers at you. "I'm going to take you apart for scraps."

You shrug. "Then you'll be alone forever."

"I'd take that over living with you, you fucking tin can," Dirk yells, lunging for your leg. You dodge, and instinctively slash across his back with your sword. He grits his teeth and grabs you by your hair, driving you into the ground. You hear something break against the ground and you bet it's your arm. You wiggle around, and his grip tightens on your neck. Something collapses in your neck, and you freeze.

"I'm going to break you." Dirk hisses in your ear. You writhe and somehow nail him in the junk. He freezes, and you squirm free, getting to your feet. You assess the damage and you really don't like it.

Your left arm is completely torn off, wires exposed to the air. You touch your face and find a patch of smashed skin and metal. One of your legs is jammed, unable to move, and the other is sporting a deep incision that has coolant leaking through.

Dirk stands, a bit unsteadily, and runs at you again. You ready your sword and-

You see it more than feel it.

Dirk runs you through, completely severing your main circuit board that lets you move your legs. Right as your sword embeds itself in his middle.

You both stand, Dirk gritting his teeth, you barely suppressing the mechanical whine of pain and overheating.

Your legs give out, and you crumple, sliding away from the sword and hitting the ground with a crunch. Dirk falls to his knees right afterwards, fixing you with a disgusted stare, pressing his hand against the massive wound in his side. His arm is broken, you're not sure when you did that.

"Weak," he hisses. "You're my biggest mistake, you waste of material. I can't even fucking repurpose you, you heap of junk."

Through blaring error messages, you see Dirk raise his sword to kill you...

And collapse from a rifle butt to the head.

A pair of sneakers appear in front of you, and you're scooped up into warm arms and encircled by soft orange. Hazily, you reach out a finger and touch the soft orange wall.

A soft voice says something you can't understand, and the orange disappears. Your head is gently turned to rest against a pale shoulder.

Cold wind hits your ruined body, and you beep quietly. Your body is covered by something pink and soft and warm, and you don't feel the cold. There's a rhythmic whooshing sound that reminds you of the ocean.

You can't sleep. Sleep can't be programmed into something. But you can dissociate.

You shut off audiovisual feed, and detach yourself from everything.

Your battery is low, and it's getting dark.

==> Be Roxy.

"Everything is fine." Equius tells you calmly, applying heavy pressure to Dirk's wound. Dirk screams into the pillow you handed him as whatever Equius put in there jerks off his entire nervous system in the worst way. When he calms down, Dirk side eyes you warily.

"Are-"

"YES!! YES!!" You scream at him. "Yes, I'm fucking mad!! You almost just killed my best friend!!" You rake your hands through your hair, pacing. Jake looks up at you from where he's elbow deep in Hal's broken body.

"Roxy, calm down. I'm not sure if Hal can hear you, but he's doing swell right now, and I need him to stay rather still." Jake says.

Hal was... when you got the message from Hal saying only "You were right." you and Davesprite immediately took off for their apartment. When you got there, Dirk was about ready to kill Hal.

You had knocked him out as Davesprite had manoeuvred his arms under Hal's body. He'd been aware at that time, but only barely.

Dirk has the decency to look guilty.

"I'm." Dirk starts. You frown at him. He swallows hard, winces, and continues. "I'm sorry."

Jake freezes halfway through connecting a wire and you follow his gaze. Hal's eyes are open, his head turned slightly to stare hard at Dirk. He struggles to raise himself until Jake moves behind him and supports him to a relatively upright position, Hal completely slumped into Jake. He's entirely focused on Dirk, though.

"What did you say?" Hal croaks, the words warped and mechanical around a wrecked voice box. Jake adjusts his position slightly to keep working on Hal's shoulder, tucking in the wires that used to connect to his arm. Dirk stares at Hal, pain written all over his face.

"I'm sorry," Dirk repeats. "I didn't...I have no excuse. I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I was mad. An-and I took it out on you. I'm so sorry."

It's a tense silence in the room.

Hal makes a sound halfway between a glitch and an actual word. He closes his eyes for a second and tries again. Speaking clearly hurts, but he seems to need this.

"Do you hate me?" Hal asks quietly. Dirk flinches, hard.

Hal hums, the sound an old computer makes when it's running, and nods jerkily before closing his eyes. Jake's eyes flit from Dirk, bandages wrapped an inch thick around his middle and arm, to Hal, barely alive but still fully aware, unable to hold his own weight, pain clear on his face. Jake clears his throat, shifting, and Hal's eyes open and he whirs uncomfortably as he's jostled.

"Sorry, chum," Jake whispers to Hal, who just nods vaguely again. You move, taking Hal's weight from Jake so he can get to Dirk. Hal peers up at you, and you waggle your eyebrows at him.

"Can we be alone, here?" Jake asks. Equius nods, having finished with Dirk, and leaves. You glance down at Hal, who is completely missing an arm and the entire bottom half of his leg, and bashed up in other places. Hal hums again and nods at you, mouthing the words "we can go."

"His repairs are as finished as they're going to get, Roxy." Jake says. He clearly needs to have a discussion with Dirk, and you do not want to be there for it.

You scoop Hal up carefully, not ignoring the way Dirk sucks in a breath as he gets a full view of what he did.

You have to set Hal down as you close the door, and the way he has a vice grip on your shoulder as he leans basically his entire body weight on you tells you that he's not going to be walking anywhere soon.

"Do androids heal?" You ask him as you scoop him up again. He frowns, then shrugs.

"Probably not," he whispers. "No blood."

"I dunno," you say. "Brobot could heal."

"He was made of sy-sssss-nnngh!" Hal grunts, slamming his head into your shoulder, not that it hurts. You guess whatever damage was done to him affected his voice as well.

"Synthetic?" You ask. He nods.

"Heals. Gummy." Hal says. "Movie?"

It takes you a second before you realize what he's asking. You grin. "Yeah. Which movie?"

Hal shrugs, moving slightly, the stump of his leg shifting. He winces.

"Are you guys going to the movie room?" Davesprite asks, poking his head out of the kitchen. You nod. He floats over to join you. Hal waves weakly at him, and Davesprite waves back, then flinches. "I should not have done that. That was uncool."

"Nobody will know," Hal reassures him. You nod. Hal continues, "'cept TZ, Kat, Dave, Rose-mmmph!" Davesprite has his hand over Hal's mouth. Hal narrows his eyes at him, and Davesprite squawks indignantly and whips his hand back.

"Did you just LICK ME?" He demands. Hal grins crookedly, warped by the mess in his face, patched up awkwardly so nothing gets in. Davesprite groans.

"Well done." You commend Hal, beginning your trek to the movie room.

The second you get there, Davesprite lunges for the remote, remembers that John is not there to attack him for it, and acts like he knew that the whole time.

He's so uncool that it's endearing.

You settle on the couch, Hal still curled in your lap, since the moment you went to set him down he seemed to freak out slightly and clung to you.

Davesprite puts in Zoolander, ranting about how amazing it is, Hal nodding enthusiastically the whole time.

The movie is actually the most awful thing you've ever seen. Davesprite nearly kills himself laughing while he's drinking soda and Hal is halfway out of your lap, shuddering with silent laughter at Davesprite's suffering.

The next few weeks go slowly. Hal gets a new leg thanks to Jake and Equius and has to get used to walking around again. You see him around the house usually leaning on things as he walks. His arm is more complex, and is going to take much longer.

He's slow to talk, freezing up a bit when someone asks him a complex question. Jake theorized that it might be neural damage, but Hal assured him it wasn't, but offered no other explanation.

Dirk recovers slowly, relying on crutches and getting out of breath easily. Apparently Hal had punctured his lung.

They begin to spend more time together, not alone, but wherever Hal goes, Dirk usually follows. It's a sharp change from before, when Hal was forced to trail behind Dirk.

Everything seems great, right up until it's not.

You, Dirk, Hal, Nepeta, Dave, and Davesprite are playing Monopoly. Most of the money is being collected by Dave and Nepeta at a frightening pace, and by the way that Davesprite is sullenly perched on the sofa tells you that he was beat by the schemes.

You're not sure what happens, but Nepeta and Dirk begin to banter back and forth about ethics around money or whatever. Dirk begins to get louder, only marginally, but it's enough that Davesprite loosely curls his tail around Hal's leg as the android tenses.

When Dirk throws out his arms in an animated gesture about whatever, Hal yelps. Dirk turns to look, and Hal flattens himself against the couch.

"Oh, you okay man?" Dirk asks, leaning towards Hal.

The next second, Dirk is clutching a bloody nose, and Hal is darting out of the room.

Nepeta frowns. "Is Meowl okay?"

Dirk shakes his head. "This is my fault."

"Yeah, kind of." Dave agrees. Davesprite smacks him and unwinds his tail.

"I'm going after him." Davesprite says, heading out of the room.

Dirk looks miserable, and you can't blame him.

At least, when Hal comes back with Davesprite later, wrapped in a blanket, he allows Dirk to wrap him in a hug, and even hugs Dirk back.