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A/N: This was very closely based on part of an RP with our favorite Fiona_of_Random_Fandoms and is based on the concept of how Solar’s death would have impacted a newly coming to sentience Jack ‘O Moon. Just a short little thing but carries a lot weight.
Get ready for the tears, my friends. ‘Cause they comin’.
Disclaimer: Nope.
For What Is Grief But Love…Persevering?
He came to awareness, real actual awareness, with the crushing weight of the realization that his mother was dead.
He felt it in his code like a tether that had snapped unexpectedly. The sensation of that tether snapping and the reality of what it meant was what tugged him firmly and fully into sentience. And now…Now he didn’t know what to do about it.
He was broken.
He could feel it.
So, Jack found himself curled against the dingy wall of Parts and Service with a whimper. Everything was confusing and frightening and always there was that crushing weight pressing down on him.
Broken broken broken broken broken broken.
All of this data that was coming not from his surroundings like he was used to but from inside of him. Data that he had no way to quantify or categorize or even name . It was painful.
So, so painful.
He hadn’t been programmed for this. He felt as though he were…were liquifying from the inside out, like an insect trapped beneath the fangs of an arachnid.
He didn’t even realize that he wasn’t alone anymore, so overwhelmed were his systems.
“Jack?”
Eclipse stood in the doorway of the area, his faceplate tilted to the side at the curious behavior the robot was displaying. It was almost like…like sadness. As if he were grieving.
Solar’s absence sat heavy in the air of the Pizza Plex even in the air here in Parts and Service where he had frequently been seen.
He...hadn't realized that Jack would be sentient enough to feel grief. To feel the shock of cold and absence deep inside of his code as if he had been plunged into Antarctic depths. The bot didn't look up though Eclipse had no doubt that he was well aware of his presence. He was a pitiful sight, his pupil-less optics dull and dim.
"Jack's mother is gone ." He said with that same strange, robotic inflection as usual but quieter and softer, the last word glitching and staticking as if his voice box were damaged.
Jack whined, high pitched and warbling, a misery-imbued, sad sound. He gripped his faceplate, hands and rays twitching at the strange feelings welling up inside of him, feelings that he didn't understand or know how to cope with. He'd only been alive for a few weeks, how was he supposed to know what to do with all of this- this- this unfamiliar data ?
"Jack is broken on the inside. Jack needs...repairs?" He questioned his strange companion.
His newfound companion looked like Solar and he found himself drawn to him even though his systems listed the animatronic as ‘Danger Category 2: Temporary Ally/ Allyship Uncertain’ and came with directives to attack and restrain if he was seen harming any member of the Celestial Family.
Jack’s family.
But Eclipse was not attacking anyone at the moment. He was simply standing there, watching. Until he suddenly wasn’t.
Eclipse sighed and came to sit down at the robot’s side against the wall, cautious and careful. Moon’s attack dog didn’t try to hurt him or so much as twitch in his direction, he simply watched the solar model sit down at his side on the floor.
“You’re not broken, Jack. Not in the way you’re thinking at least. What you’re feeling is called ‘grieving’. It’s honestly pretty impressive that Solar was able to make you capable of gaining sentience. ‘Guess I gotta give him that much.” He said quietly.
As much as he preferred not to care at all, Eclipse found himself surprisingly affected by the loss. It was…not something that he had expected, no more than anyone had expected the guard dog to start having honest feelings and emotions.
Solar had been the only person to really treat him any sort of decently. Granted, he had been a little biased because of his clear love for Moon but he hadn’t been cruel, hadn’t run screaming or forced him from the room to spare his own feelings. Hadn’t murdered him or screamed at him.
He had been…okay. Even if Eclipse had struggled to understand him, to understand why he would be content to just be a mechanic here at this shithole, panting after Moon all day. He hadn’t understood him but…he had been an Eclipse too.
"Jack does not like this 'grieving'...Can Jack go back to being quiet and still on the inside now?"
“I’m afraid that sentience doesn’t work that way. It’s a one way street of sorts. Once it’s turned on, there’s no turning it back off. Trust me. Some days I would do just about anything to not be aware anymore.”
The halloween-themed bot made a sad sound of discontent at the knowledge. Jack did not want to be sentient. No one had asked him if he wanted to be, he just suddenly was . There was a dull burning feeling, somewhat smothered by the grief that had filled him like a cup. A feeling similar to anger but...but duller. Like a blunted instrument rather than a sharpened blade.
Did his mother think of him before he was gone? Or had he been an afterthought as he was for everyone else? Just a thing. A toy that could obey orders. Did sentience mean he was no longer a thing? Did it mean he was something more now?
"Will Jack always have 'grief'?" He finally asked the figure sitting by his side quietly.
Would he feel like this forever?
Eclipse hummed, looking over at the creature he was willingly sharing his space with. A lunar model but with wide rays that could come and go as he pleased, sliding in and out entirely to be tucked away, unseen. He wasn’t far off from being an Eclipse himself, was he? It was true, wasn’t it? None of them ever had a painless birth.
For once, he wished desperately that he had been wrong.
What was he doing here? Comforting a baby AI who was only a few weeks old, explaining grief and other such emotions that he barely had a grasp on himself?
“No. It’s my understanding that grief fades with time, becomes less painful. The humans like to repeat the phrase ‘time heals all wounds’ but I think that’s just flowery garbage. I don’t think grief ever really goes away. I think it’s like a wound. It turns into a scar that may not hurt anymore but will always be a part of you.” Look at him being all philosophical and shit.
Earth would be proud. Actually, she’d probably just kill him. She hated him.
“Why is ‘grief’?” Jack asked him after taking a moment to digest the new information silently.
Quite the hard-hitting questions, huh? The baby bot probably had no idea that these were questions that people had been pondering and debating since time immemorial. Eclipse felt woefully underequipped for such things. Surely…surely Sun or Moon would be best-?
Actually scratch that. Those two were the last people anyone should go to for discussions about healthy emotional management.
But him? He was barely equipped to advise a Roomba. Then again, until now, Jack hadn’t been much different than one so…he supposed he could give it a shot.
“People grieve because they miss the person that is gone. They miss them because they loved them, in whatever way they were able. You are grieving for Solar because you miss him and love him.” Eclipse tried to keep it simple and basic but what was simple and basic about understanding a concept like love?
He’d never felt love before. Hell, he’d never even been loved before. He was a blight, a scourge, a mistake. A tool.
"Jack loved mother?" He questioned, rolling the word around on his tongue in his databanks as if he could taste it. Defining it.
Love: Noun. An intense feeling of deep affection.
Affection: Noun. A gentle feeling of fondness or liking.
Yes, that did seem to express the internal data that rose when he thought of Solar.
"Did Jack's mother love Jack?"
Oh yeah, he was so not equipped for this. He didn’t really know Solar. They had only interacted a few times! But…
“Solar was the sort who put his all into everything he did. I didn’t know him as well as the others, but I think he probably did, yeah.”
Jack looked down at his shoes and the little bells there, the ones that he found himself particularly enjoying because of how they sounded just like his father's.
"Does Jack's father love him too?"
“You’ll have to ask Moon about that one, buddy.” Eclipse grumbled. He couldn't deny that it was rather amusing to imagine Moon hearing Jack call him 'father' for the first time. Boy, he would pay to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. At least Moon was alive to answer his ‘son’s’ questions. Let him go into the deep philosophical debates with Jack. And if he didn’t love him…maybe it was best for Jack to know from the start.
Better to tell him now than let him find out later after he was dumped later like someone else’s unwanted trash .
"Jack does not like when Father's optics leak. Jack does not like it when his optics burn and leak either." He noted quietly, filing Eclipse’s statement away for later.
He seemed to be filing a lot away to look at later. So much of what he was experiencing was overwhelming and even frightening. He did not know what to do with the internal data he had come to label as 'Fear'. It made him want to find a small place to hide even though his brain told him that would be unproductive and meaningless.
“Ahh, that one is called ‘crying’. It’s pretty uncomfortable. It’s an outward display of emotional or physical pain. In your case and Moon’s too, I’m assuming it’s emotional in this situation. You’re crying because of how you feel about losing your ‘mother’.” That was something Eclipse did know about. He had done it enough himself. Had caused it in others even more.
He did find it rather entertaining that Jack referred to Moon as his ‘father’ and Solar as his ‘mother’. Did that mean that the two of them…? No, surely not. Right?
"It makes Jack hurt on his insides when he sees Father's optics do the 'crying'."
Why did awareness have to be painful? Why did this 'Love' have to be so painful? Wasn't love supposed to be a good and positive thing? It was defined as being a positive thing. 'Affection' was listed as good and positive. So why did it hurt him so much? Why did it make his optics burn and his systems feel scrambled. He felt lost as if his GPS had shorted and he no longer knew where he was in time and space.
Broken .
If father had made him with mother, then could Moon make him a new mother too? Would that make Jack’s grief stop? He immediately dismissed the question with a twitch.
Jack did not want a new mother. Jack wanted his mother.
He wanted Solar.
“Yeah…That’s a pretty common reaction, I’m afraid.” Eclipse gave a grimace at the thought of Moon and how hard he must be boo-hoo’ing right now.
Especially if he and Solar really had been a thing .
They had spent an awful lot of time together but then again, so did Moon and Sun . Those two certainly weren’t a couple. He was just- just reading too hard into it.
Yup. That was his story, and he was sticking to it. For the health of his own motherboard.
“How can Jack stop Father from doing the ‘crying’?” Surely there had to be some way he could stop the liquid leaking from Moon? Maybe he could plug his optics up with cloth? Or perhaps there was a directive that could be switched off?
“Well…I guess you can be there for him? Hugs and comfort. That sort of thing is usually what helps people.” Eclipse shrugged. He wasn’t exactly an expert on ‘comfort’ of all things. He was so out of his depth with this conversation that he couldn’t even guess where the bottom was.
If he fucked this up and Jack got into some shenanigans because of it, Moon was going to rip him a new asshole.
Jack perked up at that and if he had a tail, Eclipse imagined that it would be wagging. The kid definitely had golden retriever energy. He’d certainly gotten that from Solar.
“Jack can do that. Jack is good at being places, sometimes even places people didn't want him to be! Jack is so good at it that sometimes people don’t know that he is there at all!” He chirped with sudden pride and excitement.
He had a new directive. That must have felt…comforting.
Eclipse didn’t really have anything like that right now. His only purpose had been to find his creator and kill them. Half of that purpose had been achieved but the other half, well…All he could do was sit and wait. Wait and do nothing. What was he
supposed
to do with himself? He had no directions, no directives.
He’d taken to just wandering the lower levels of the Pizza Plex, mapping out the seemingly endless tunnels and the rather surprising ruins he’d found there. Day after day, he just…wandered.
Aimless. Pointless.
He supposed, in a way, he was good at being places too. Even if every place he went to he was unwanted. The empty tunnels and the rats and endos at least didn’t judge him. The endos didn’t even recognize him other than as another endo himself. They did not bother him and they didn’t follow him.
“That’s- that’s good, Jack. I’m sure Moon will love that.” Yeah. Sure.
Who didn’t love a giant toddler who could turn invisible and shoot lasers out of their fingers on a whim?
Jack stood up with a slow, quietness that was a stark change compared with his usual loud presence.
“Can…can Jack come and talk to you again if he has questions?” He asked softly, almost unsure, his fingers twitching just the briefest bit as if he felt the need to fidget but didn’t really know what to do with the nervous energy.
Eclipse sighed, looking up at the other animatronic lightly.
It wasn’t as if he was doing anything. Waiting. Wandering.
And Jack wasn’t exactly bad company. Confusion for sure but there was something charming to be found in his ‘newness’ and his lack of understanding. A naive innocence.
“Sure, Jack. You may have to look for me but I’m always down here somewhere.” He offered, finally pulling himself to stand.
It seemed that his company would be going back above. He would go back to his wandering then, he supposed.
Jack’s rays gave a pleased little spin before he said simply a short, “Goodbye.” and was gone. No doubt to find Moon or pester one of the celestials.
He gave a chuff at the strange animatronic. No doubt that Jack would be occupying his thoughts for the next few hours. Eclipse wondered vaguely what kind of questions he would be asked next? Maybe next he would come asking about the meaning of life or the universe or maybe just the reason that he couldn’t put cats in the trash.
It would be a mystery.
Until next time, at least.
A/N: Eeeee! I am sorry about this one! But it's been on my brain ever since Fiona and I RP'd Jack's reaction to learning about Solar's death. :O Sooo...here you are. xD