Archive of Our Own

Sun was on his back, sprawled over Moon's poofy star-clad legs, lying in a heap that would have been severely uncomfortable for any human being. Sun was not human, and couldn't imagine how anyone could be uncomfortable when Moon was there.

"I just don't know what to do!" Sun exclaimed, kicking at the air. "I like Eclipse, but I can't have two best friends! And I'd never stop being your best friend, Moonie. But I like Eclipse so much!"

"Best friends?" Moon asked. "Sunny, we've been dating for four years now."

Sun sat up for a moment just so he could sigh dramatically and flop back down.

"But we can't say that!" Sun told him. "Everyone thinks we're twins! If they knew we were dating, they might tell us we had to stop!"

Moon watched Sun's antics with fond amusement. The ring on Sun's back was digging into Moon's actual leg even through the padded fabric, and if he had been human he might have found it uncomfortable. Moon was not human, and couldn't imagine how anyone could be uncomfortable when Sun was there.

"Would you stop, if they told you that you had to?" Moon asked, though the mischievous tilt to his smile told Sun that Moon already knew the answer.

"Of course not!" Sun exclaimed, answering anyway. "But that would make things so complicated, and stressful, and we could get in trouble, and..." Sun let out a frustrated sound, rays fluttering and clicking.

"We do look alike," Moon commented.

"Just because we're the same model," Sun replied. "That doesn't make us twins. It's not our fault that management messed up and ordered two daycare attendant models in solo mode instead of one in dual mode."

Moon gave a low, thoughtful hum, absentmindedly wrapping his fingers around one of Sun's hands. Sun squeezed his fingers gently, grounding him.

"I'm not sure that would have helped at all, if they had ordered correctly" Moon commented. "People might take even more offense to us dating, if we were sharing a body on top of that."

"I don't see why," Sun grumbled, though the exasperation in his voice was more theatrical than genuine. He was quiet for a moment, feeling Moon's hand around his, thinking. A small squeeze brought him back out of his thoughts. "... Hey Moonie? How do you stay so calm all the time? Don't you get worried?"

"I think you worry enough for the both of us," Moon teased. A moment later his mischievous aura was fading though, his voice becoming softer. "I know you think really hard about everything, and you're always so open about it. You tell everyone what's on your mind. And when I hear that you've already thought of it all, already worried about everything there is to worry about, have already done everything there is to do to make sure everything turns out right... When I hear that, then I don't have to worry anymore. I feel safe. You make me feel safe."

Moon let go of Sun's hand so he could pull his hat down over his eyes, having thoroughly embarrassed himself. Sun couldn't help but giggle. He sat up properly, next to Moon, so he could wrap his arms around the other animatronic in a hug.

Sun couldn't help but think how perfect Moon was, how right it felt to have Moon there in his arms.

Moon couldn't help but think how wonderful Sun was, how perfectly Sun's arms fit around him.

"I'm glad I worry, then," Sun said. "I'll worry twice as hard for you, even." But it was awfully hard to be worried, with his arms around Moon.

Sun thought for a moment, at how often he'd been scolded for his anxiety by employees. How often he'd been told to calm down, be quiet, stop worrying, shut up. Before Moon he had never imagined anyone would ever even tolerate his worries for long, much less be thankful for them. It was all worth it though, ten times over, a hundred times over, a thousand times over, if Moon could take comfort from that.

The few minutes of contemplative silence gave Moon a chance to re-establish his confidence, peeking out from under his hat again.

"I like Eclipse too," Moon confessed. "Not that I could ever love anyone in the world more than I love you, but I do like him a lot. I think maybe we should tell him that."

That of course Sent Sun worrying again, and not just for Moon's benefit.

"But what if he doesn't like us back?" Sun asked. He finally let go of Moon so he could use his hands to fidget anxiously, bells ringing in the same pattern over and over. "Not that I'd be upset if he didn't! I'd still want to be friends, it's okay if he doesn't like me as much as I like him... But what if that made it awkward? What if that made him uncomfortable, and then he didn't want to be friends anymore?"

Moon caught one of Sun's ribbons between two fingers, gently, leaving Sun room to tug out of his grasp if he wanted. He didn't, and Moon pulled the arm nearer to him. Sun fidgeted with Moon's hands, fingers tapping against the hard material with a series of rhythmic clicks. Moon waited until Sun's motions had calmed slightly before speaking again.

"I don't think Eclipse would stop wanting to be our friend," Moon said gently. "It might be a bit awkward for a time, yes, but do you really think Eclipse would be the type to cut ties with us just because of that? I think we could work through it, whatever his answer was. I won't say anything until you're ready, but I think it's a good idea. Worst case scenario, things are awkward for a few minutes. Best case scenario, it could be just like the night you first left your daycare. Do you remember that, Sun?"

Of course he remembered. Sun had spent most of his life in his daycare. His first activation had been inside the daycare, and his job was in the daycare, and all the fun in the world was (in what had been his less than humble opinion) in the daycare. The outside had seemed so cold and confusing, he'd wanted nothing to do with it. He'd been terrified of it really, he hadn't even liked to look out the windows for too long. But then he'd heard there was a second daycare attendant, right across the hallway, running a second daycare for children three and under.

... He still hadn't been able to work up the courage to cross that threshold. It was Moon who'd come to see him first, and Moon who had visited him every night after closing. Moon, who had waited so patiently for Sun to gather his courage. Moon, who had been there to comfort and reassure him after every failed attempt, until one night he had finally managed to step outside his daycare.

"If I remember correctly, I did eighty-six consecutive cartwheels in the hallway," Sun reminded him. "Which means I am..."

Moon rolled his eyes, but Sun could tell he did it fondly.

"Which means you are still the reigning cartwheel champion," Moon said. "For now."

"For now?" Sun laughed. "Try for the past seven hundred and forty seven days, Moonie!"

"For nooow," Moon repeated, tone sly. 

"Is that a challenge?"

"Maybe it is."

They were both up and running towards the daycare doors in an instant, Moon leaping across the threshold and landing softly on the checkered floors outside the daycare. Sun's enthusiasm faltered for a moment as he stood at the invisible line between inside the daycare and out. Warnings flashed in his mind, demanding he stay within his home area.

He knew those warnings would go away once he was actually out. He knew it would be better to move quickly like Moon always did. That didn't make it any easier to actually do.

Moon came back to the doors, just a few steps outside. He gave an encouraging gesture, then opened his arms for a hug. That finally gave Sun what he needed- he could never resist a hug. He stepped across the threshold, falling into Moon's arms. The warnings silenced themselves all at once.

With that, excitement returned to both of them. The two raced across the Pizzaplex, through hallways and stairways and empty party rooms. Moon was the faster and more flexible of the two, willing to get creative with how he moved his joints instead of relying on pre-set movement ranges. Sun, on the other hand, had learned a much stronger flair for tricks. He cartwheeled across a room, bounced his feet off the wall, and cartwheeled back without missing a beat. He did perfect somersaults down stairs, followed by a theatrical bow. He jumped into a backflip that took him directly over Moon's head, landing in front of him, only for Moon to launch himself at the wall and spider crawl ahead again without hesitation.

Soon the two found themselves at the entrance of the arcade- Eclipse's home.

The two of them had come across Eclipse the very first night Sun had worked up the courage to leave his daycare. Sun had wanted to do everything, see everything, and that included the arcade. His original goal had been to play every single game there with Moon, but he quickly noticed something unusual about one of the Balloon World arcade cabinets. It didn't play quite like the one next to it, despite being the exact same model.

It took nearly a week of experimentation and coaxing before Eclipse had finally revealed himself.

Eclipse was an accident, a glitch, not meant to exist. It seemed that at some point, someone had decided to recycle old animatronic components by using them as replacement parts in an arcade cabinet. A processor is a processor after all, right? But just as these components had a habit of developing sentience within an animatronic, the same had happened in the arcade cabinet. Eclipse had been hiding within the game's code ever since, afraid that discovery would lead to his deletion.

Sun had a way of drawing people out of their shells though. Moon knew (and loved) that more than anyone, he wasn't surprised when Sun finally got through to the elusive digital entity. Sun and Moon had visited Eclipse every night since then, talking and playing games. Though Eclipse's arcade cabinet was bulky and immobile, preventing Eclipse from leaving his spot, Sun and Moon had no shortage of activities that could be done together right there in the arcade.

After having hidden away for so long, Eclipse was even more eager than Sun to make friends. He was quick-witted, and loved to skirt the rules as possible in the games the three of them played. Eclipse would go for loopholes and technicalities even when it offered him no advantage, sometimes even purposely losing a game if doing so meant he could break it.

Eclipse's strange way of playing made old games, things that both attendants had played more times than either of them bothered counting, brand new experiences again. Eclipse found ways to do the unexpected every single time. He would play terribly all through a game only to win on the very last round, or find ways to drop his score into the negative thousands in games that usually counted no higher than ten, or force games into endless loops where the only way to win was to outlast the other players until they forfeit.

Often Sun and Moon spent hours of their days trying to think of ways to Eclipse-proof games, or to create new ones with rules so strange that even he wouldn't be able to exploit them. Every time, Eclipse would surprise them. Every time, Eclipse would make them laugh.

After the games were done for the day, before Sun and Moon would go back to their respective areas, the two would share with Eclipse what they could of the outside world. Pictures of flowers none of them had ever seen in person. Stories the children in the daycare or their parents had told. Details about the stars, both the unreachable stars outside and the little decorative ones hanging above Moon's daycare.

For all his usual mischief, Eclipse was incredibly serious about those talks. He listened with rapt attention every time, no detail too small for his interest. Sometimes, when he thought something the two had described sounded particularly beautiful, he'd do his best attempt at art of what he imagined it to look like. Little pixel art pieces, colors limited and shapes blocky, but beautiful still. He shared these only with Sun and Moon.

Multicolored neon lights reflecting off of the jesters, brightness soaking through them as they stood just beyond the arcade's entrance, the two of them both knew that they more than just 'liked' Eclipse. They were sure of it.

Moon's hand wrapped around Sun's. Sun was the first to speak.

"I think... I think I want to tell him. Tonight," Sun said. Only a moment after saying that, his bravery evaporated right into the neon-lit air. "Buuuut, how about we say hi to DJ Music Man first!" There was a note of near hysterical anxiety to his otherwise cheery tone. "Yes, yes, it has been too long since we've seen DJ, and we are in the arcade already, so we should say hi and of course we'd have to stay a bit and catch up and do you think-"

"Sun." Moon's voice was soft, but stopped Sun's rambling immediately. Sun would never miss out on the chance to listen to Moon's voice, after all. "Sunny, you're stalling. And we can't see DJ tonight regardless."

"Why not?"

"He's resting," Moon explained. He let go of Sun's hand so he could fold both of his own beside his head, imitating the sleeping Moon artwork used to advertise his candy. "I heard the staff talking about it earlier today. Someone accidentally activated his bouncer mode, apparently. The technicians got him back to normal fairly quickly, but he needs some time in sleep mode for his protocols to sort themselves back out fully. We need to let him rest tonight, Sunny."

"But- but if we can't see the DJ, then..." Sun was fidgeting, little reflected lights bouncing off his bells as they jingled with every movement. Moon put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"If you're not ready, we can wait," Moon assured him.

"I am ready!" Sun exclaimed, standing straight and tall with a ferocious confidence. Said confidence wilted just as quickly as it had sprung up, and Sun went back to his anxious fidgeting. "I'm ready, I am, but, but what if he doesn't feel the same way, but also what if he does, and-" Sun let out a long, frustrated groan. "And I don't know. I don't know, Moonie. I want to but the idea of actually doing it is terrifying."

"I'll be right here with you every step of the way," Moon told him. "I can't go by myself, after all. I need you there to do the worrying for me."

That gave Sun a little bit of his confidence back, just a sliver of it, and this time it stayed. He took Moon's hand again and the two of them made their way through the arcade, towards the place where Eclipse's cabinet stood.

The two of them couldn't help but think, on their way there. Sun's mind was already running far ahead of itself, imagining what life might be like if Eclipse returned his and Moon's feelings, every idea dream-like and soft and sweet. Moon's thoughts were just as soft, though his focus was on preparing for if Eclipse would prefer to remain just friends. Moon wanted to be ready to reassure Eclipse, to make sure he wasn't uncomfortable, to keep their friendship strong if it did come to that.

(And maybe, just for a moment, Moon let his mind drift to if Eclipse did feel the same way. Just for a moment, before-)

Both attendants came to a simultaneous halt. The space before them was empty. The place where Eclipse's arcade cabinet was meant to stand was simply bare, unoccupied, vacant.

Sun's internal clock failed for a moment, skipping over 1/60th of a second without acknowledging the passing of time.

Moon's cooling systems kicked into overdrive in a panic, making his body temperature drop until he was nearly as cold as he felt.

Eclipse's Balloon World cabinet wasn't the only one missing. There were little signs of damage all over. A very recently and thoroughly cleaned floor, implying that there had been a mess. A section of guardrail missing, replaced with a temporary measure. A long scrape across one of the walls, not yet painted over.

It took a moment for Moon to force his voice box to work.

"Bouncer mode..." Moon mumbled, voice low and strained. "The DJ's bouncer mode is buggy. Known to... cause damage. He must have, by accident..."

Sun turned and began walking away. Moon almost couldn't believe it. Moon's own feet were practically welded to the floor by shock, and here Sun was simply walking away as if nothing had happened.

"Where- where are you going?!" Moon asked.

"To find him, obviously!"

"Sun..." Moon barely managed to produce anything more than a whisper. It took him a moment to force out his next words, Sun bouncing in a way that was impatient and distinctly frantic. "Sunny, he... if he's not here, then... then he must... he's already..."

"If the damage happened today, there wouldn't be time for him to have been taken out of the building yet," Sun stated. His voice came out flat and distant as he tried his hardest to keep it steady. "That means he's most likely set aside somewhere in the arcade for repair, or... or not repair. If not that, then he would be in the... in the garbage room, waiting to be hauled out with the trash in the morning. I don't care if I have to spend all night sifting through old food and broken parts, Moon I am going to find him."

Both Sun and Moon shared a strong aversion to messes of any kind. It was programmed into both of their core personalities after all. At the mention of sticking their hands into piles of greasy trash and rotten food, they shuddered simultaneously. But if Sun could do it...

"We... we'll find him, then," Moon said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself. "We'll find him."

They moved quickly, starting by sweeping the arcade. They looked in every possible place, even those far too small to fit a full arcade cabinet. There was, after all, no guarantee that Eclipse's cabinet was fully intact. As they searched they found more subtle traces of hastily cleaned up damage. Dents and scuffs, more cabinets missing, intact cabinets moved around to fill large gaps. At one point they even found a broken off joystick lost under an air hockey table, though it was not the style of joystick Eclipse's cabinet used.

The two would have searched all night if they'd had to. They would have searched until morning, until guests poured in, until technicians chased after them with orders to return to their designated areas. Orders that would have fallen on deaf ears until they were shut down and physically dragged away. Thankfully that didn't end up being necessary. It was hardly any time at all before the two moved their search to the storage area at the back of the arcade, and they saw it.

A pile of broken decorations and absolutely trashed arcade cabinets. Some were crushed, others dented, others completely unrecognizable. And right there, at the edge of the pile, was Eclipse's Balloon World cabinet lying on its side.

The cabinet looked like it had been thrown. The metal was dented and crumpled, nearly broken in half. The screen sat cracked and askew. Half of the left side panel and the entire back panel were missing, mechanical guts spilling out.

Moon said nothing. Moon was in fact unable to say anything at all. He was unable to move. His internal fans stopped spinning, and if he had been human he would have found himself unable to breathe.

Sun was the opposite. Sun could not stand still. He was kneeling next to the arcade cabinet in an instant, hands hovering over the broken mess, frantically calling Eclipse's name.

Eclipse, not plugged into any power source, should not have been able to hear. However, unknown to both jesters, the arcade cabinet had a very small reserve of backup power. Meant to preserve high scores in the case of a power outage, Eclipse had rationed it carefully. He had just enough power, just barely enough, to hear Sun calling for him.

The cracked screen flickered, glowing faintly. Half the screen was incapable of displaying anything coherent, a jumbled mess of lines. The other displayed the Balloon World startup screen for just a split second before the sprites flickered, disappearing into blackness. A face displayed on the broken screen. Eclipse.

He had based that face off of Sun and Moon's. While it didn't look exactly like either of them, the resemblance was undeniable. Eclipse had joked that it was because the two were so cute that he couldn't help but steal their look. Neither had been aware that he hadn't been joking.

The face flickered there for a moment, the image fuzzy and dotted with misaligned pixels, before it was replaced with text. The text itself had to jump around a few times to be visible on the still functional side of the screen, and even then was so distorted and corrupted that it was almost unreadable. Only almost.

'I love you two'

A moment, the screen's glow fading, a harsh noise of broken components hissing out of the cabinet.

'Goodnight'

The screen went dark and all noise ceased.

The silence lasted only a moment before it was broken by a loud, heartbroken keening noise from Sun. To Moon, an eternity seemed to pass before those awful cries resolved into words.

"That- that was- that is not allowed!" Sun shrieked, words interrupted by sobs. " Were those last words?! That's not allowed! Not in my daycare! Do you hear that, Eclipse?! I am taking you to my daycare and putting you in time out for that! And when- and when you- when you've learned your lesson, then- then we can all play again. We-we'll all play, and you're going to be okay- and- and-" Sun's voice broke down into a strangled, gasping noise. The fact that he did not truly breathe made no difference. "We love you too," he managed.

The arcade cabinet was silent, its reserve power spent.

Moon finally found the strength to move, half crawling as if the weight of the entire building was crushing down on him. He put a hand on one of Sun's shaking shoulders. It was some time before Sun found the strength to stand again. Together, without a word, the two carefully braced their hands around the Balloon World cabinet and lifted it.

Moving the arcade cabinet was slow, difficult work. It wasn't that the two lacked the strength for it. Being animatronics, either of them could have easily lifted the cabinet's weight on their own. The issue was the damage the arcade cabinet had sustained. Too much pressure in any one place threatened to crumple entire sections. Delicate machinery, much of it already damaged, hung unprotected out of the cabinet's side.

It was only with a great deal of care that they managed to get Eclipse back to Sun's daycare. They brought him up to Sun's room and set him down as gently as possible. Sun's room was high above the daycare itself, and almost completely inaccessible to anyone but the daycare attendants. Though it wasn't as cozy as the elaborate blanket fort in Moon's daycare that he referred to as his nest, it was much safer. No one would find Eclipse there, and the two doubted that anyone would miss one broken arcade machine from the pile. Especially when said pile, haphazard and unorganized, was clearly awaiting disposal.

The two spent the rest of the night looking over the arcade cabinet, assessing the severity of the damage. It wasn't good. They were able to reconnect the cabinet to power, but could only barely get a response out of Eclipse. His communications were fragmented, incoherent, screen displaying collections of junk data as it flickered on and off. The more they tried, the more faded and meaningless the response was.

The two took turns panicking. Sun would work while Moon sat frozen, hands trembling, unable to act. Moon would work while Sun paced back and forth wildly, rambling his way through panicked tangents barely more coherent than what the two were getting out of Eclipse.

Eventually they were forced to disconnect Eclipse from power again, as much as they hated it. The hardware damage had clearly made his AI unstable, the longer they let him run in that condition the more he was deteriorating. If they kept him online much longer, chances of his AI recovering were slim. They heard the cabinet go silent as they finally found and disconnected the backup power reserve, Eclipse slipping back into unconsciousness.

Or death, maybe. It was a blurry line for an animatronic, the difference between being asleep or simply dead while without power. Even more so here.

Sun kept talking to Eclipse's arcade cabinet, a hand set gently on its dented side, even long after it had gone silent.

When morning came, Moon was forced to return to the three and under daycare. Sun, much like a child faking sick to get out of school, faked a malfunction. He was too frantic to focus on his job, and he couldn't stand the idea of wasting even a second that could be spent on thinking of ways to help Eclipse. It would mean a trip to Parts and Service for maintenance whenever the technicians could next make room in the schedule for him, likely within the next few days, but for once Sun had bigger worries on his mind.

Sun spent the rest of the day pacing back and forth, thinking and thinking, going through every possible option from the simple to the physically impossible. He thought so much that he had to retrieve ice packs from the first aid supplies, applying them to the back of his own head to keep himself from overheating. He thought and he thought, and by the end of the day finally came to a decision.

----------

Moon was a punctual person, believing very strongly in routine and schedule. That day, he crossed the threshold into Sun's daycare six minutes late.

Moon was graceful and exact with his movements. That day, his gait was unsteady and clumsy.

Moon was always quiet and soft spoken around the children. That day, none of the staff members noticed that he had barely spoken at all. They hadn't noticed that he had not sung even one song, or initiated even one game, or done much of anything other than sitting there and clinging to the blue star-shaped pillow that was his favorite.

Sun noticed.

Despite his nature as a chatterbox, Sun was just as silent as Moon for a long moment. He wrapped his arms around Moon in a hug, then led Moon carefully by the hand to the center of the daycare. The two sat down together, cross-legged on the padded floor. Moon was still holding his pillow, turning it over and over in his hands.

"Moonie... I think I have a plan," Sun said. "I think it's going to be okay."

Moon took a long look at him, trying so hard not to get his fragile hopes up but at the same time desperate for even a shred of hope.

"Do you really?" Moon asked. "Do you mean it?"

"I mean it," Sun replied, far more serious than Moon had ever seen him before. And there it was, that hope running wild in Moon, because if even Sun with all his anxiety could be so sure then there must be some chance. "It's not going to be... easy. Or fun. But I think we can save him."

"Well-" Moon set aside his pillow, leaning forward. "Well then tell me how!"

Sun did not jump to his feet, or bounce in place excitedly, or launch into a torrent of words like Moon expected him too. Sun took a deep, artificial breath, and followed that with the sound of a sigh. When he finally spoke again, his words were even and carefully chosen.

"From what I saw, Eclipse's hardware is a generation out of date," Sun stated. "That makes sense, since he's made from recycled parts. It also means he won't be compatible with any Glamrock generation hardware, which is... most of what's down in parts and service. We don't have the parts to repair him. He might be compatible with STAFF bot parts, since they haven't had any significant upgrades in a long time, but that wouldn't give him much processing power to think with. There might also end up being some hardware conflicts anyway. His AI is too unstable already to risk that, it would probably collapse if we tried to fit it into STAFF bot hardware. He'd lose his sentience. But there is one other animatronic type that hasn't been upgraded into the Glamrock generation...

"Us, Moonie." Sun's voice was small, pleading, barely above a whisper. "He'd be compatible with us. Trying to run him alongside one of us would have the same risk of AI collapse. But if he was running on his own, if he had his own body with strong undamaged hardware... I think he could make it. We can transfer everything, memories and files and AI and his entire self, all of him out of the cabinet and into a daycare attendant body. And if we did, I think he might pull through."

If Moon could feel nausea, he would have.

"Where exactly are we going to get an entirely new body?" Moon asked, though he already knew. He knew exactly what Sun was thinking, and what his plan would be. "Parts and Service doesn't even have any extra endoskeletons for us on hand, we'd be waiting weeks for a part order if we so much as lost a shoe."

"I'm going to give him my body, Moonie. I'm sorry."

Going to. Not wanting to, not thinking about, not could. Going to.

"No," Moon responded, voice firm. That voice almost always worked in his daycare, it stopped even the most stubbornly determined of his little baby stars in their tracks, and yet somehow it had no effect on Sun at all.

"I'm going to give him my body," Sun repeated. "And once I do, once he's okay... Maybe we can figure out something else for me. I don't want to leave you, Moonie, I just- I can't do anything else. I can't just let Eclipse be gone, I can't let that happen. Maybe you can find something else that's compatible with me. Maybe we could find another arcade cabinet with recycled animatronic parts, one that isn't alive like Eclipse is, and I could go there. Maybe a STAFF bot, even. It wouldn't work for Eclipse, but my AI isn't damaged like his is now. I could handle the hardware conflicts, maybe. I don't know. You and Eclipse will have time to figure it out."

"Do you hear what you're saying? You're going to pull out your own AI and leave me holding a component, inert and dead and containing your entire self, and you expect me to be able to find a new body for you in that state?" Moon asked. Sun did not flinch at the harshness of his tone, nor was Sun moved by the disjointed panic of Moon's gestures. "You think I could do that, do anything, without you?"

"You don't have to," Sun mumbled. "If it's too much work, you don't have to. I just thought- thought you might- might want to have me around again, some day."

"Too much work?" Moon asked, incredulous. "You cannot sincerely think the problem is that it would be too much work! The problem is that I love you! My problem is that if there was another arcade cabinet capable of supporting sentience, it would already be alive! My problem is that even if you could manage to get yourself running in a STAFF bot, you'd have about as much processing power left over to think with as a flip phone! You might not even be able to remember who you were anymore, much less recognize me or Eclipse!"

Though Moon's normally soft voice had risen to a shout, still Sun's determination was unwavering.

"I love you too, Moonie," he said. "And I love Eclipse. That's why I need to do this."

Some say that there is argument in every relationship. A few might even go so far as to say that being able to argue with someone is a vital, inevitable part of love. Before that moment, Sun and Moon would have disagreed with that sentiment. They had never seriously argued about anything, not even once.

That night, the two argued bitterly for hours on end.

----------------------

He became aware of himself again, vaguely. He remembered who that was, himself. His name was a bit more difficult to recall, but he found it eventually. It was spread through so many strings within himself, he was bound to come across it sooner or later. There it was. Eclipse, Eclipse, Eclipse. People who were dear to him had helped him come up with that name.

He attempted to run a line of code only to find it corrupted. Then another, to the same result. Another, but that was incompatible somehow and refused to complete. He was having trouble thinking. It didn't seem to be urgent though, and when he got tired of trying to move through his broken code he could simply rest. He remained stable as he did, and could try again later. Slowly he began to clean up. The most garbled of the corrupted coding was thrown out, deleted, and the lines that were damaged but still at least partially readable were set aside for later. Maybe he could repair them down the line.

As the chaos inside him began to clear, bit by bit, Eclipse realized the reason so much of his intact code was failing to complete. Hardware incompatibility. Had someone swapped out a piece of his, was that what had caused this mess? Or was it just that the coding that normally allowed him to properly use his components had been corrupted beyond recognition, thrown out with the rest? He couldn't remember. Somehow, thinking about it gave him a deep sense of dread. An inevitability, a hopelessness. Vaguely, he remembered saying a goodbye.

Why was he still here, then?

After a bit of time, he was able to track down the signals his hardware was sending to him. The firmware within each part was all pinging him very insistently about drivers to install, programs to start up, processes to run. Maybe that was a good thing? Maybe something in the firmware would have a solution to some of this. Without the strength to be more discerning, Eclipse picked one at random and let it run.

... It felt like hot sand rubbed into raw flesh like sharp edges scraping like aching and fire

He had no teeth to grit.

(He should at least be able to display an image of gritted teeth. Couldn't. Where had that file gone? Or was it his screen that was missing?)

Installing a driver should not feel that way. Once it was in and the pain faded, he examined the new programming. Nothing about it felt wrong. That meant it was him then, something in him was wrong. After spending some time struggling, doing his best to keep himself afloat and thinking and not just lines of code but alive, he managed to connect the dots. His AI was damaged. Parts of him had corrupted, pieces of his self were fragmented or gone entirely. It wasn't the install that had hurt him, he was already hurt. Like a gentle touch on a horrible wound, it hurt all the same.

The firmware he'd allowed to install connected him to an audio input device. Not his usual audio input, but it seemed to be working. He lacked the ability to comprehend exactly what kind of audio was coming through, but he could detect that there was some sort of sound.

... No, wait. He did comprehend that. Couldn't not, no matter how addled his thinking was. It was a music box. A lullaby.

Lullabies were for resting. That sounded nice, rest. Eclipse rested for a bit.

Once he felt stable again, he tried a bit more. Another install, more drivers, more code. It hurt, but it hurt a little less each time. Most of the hardware was unfamiliar to him, but eventually he stumbled across useful processors and drives and could think clearly again.

Ah. It was a mess. He was a mess, wasn't he.

Like turning on a light in a dark room, the scale of the disaster was revealed to him.

Sun and Moon, he remembered, were very particular about messes. Funny enough, neither of them feared messes. As much as they hated them, they would both tackle the problem right away. No matter what the scale of the disaster was, no matter how overwhelming it seemed, Sun and Moon would get to work immediately. Frantically, sometimes, but immediately. Eclipse supposed he should do the same.

It was an arduous process. Much of him was broken or unresponsive. He had not yet rediscovered a way to keep time, there was no way to tell how much of it passed. Everything he did happened all at once, each individual action took eternity. Slowly, he worked through it. Clean up, clean up.

He had picked up that phrase from them, he remembered.

A painful pull of a digital wound. What he felt when he thought of them was too vast, it overtaxed his damaged systems. He thought of them again anyway, ignoring the stab of pain. Had he managed to tell them that he loved them, before he'd lost his grip on consciousness? He thought maybe yes.

(Maybe, what an awful thing. Maybe he had, and all his plans to make that confession perfect had gone to waste. Maybe he hadn't, maybe they didn't know, A thought even more intolerable than the last.)

A music box again, a lullaby. He rested.

When the music faded, he went back to work. Back to healing as best he could.

Sometimes the task would start to feel hopeless. He wasn't sure how long he had been at it, maybe forever and then some had already passed. Maybe it would take twice as long as that to complete his work. Maybe it wasn't possible to complete. Would there be any point in continuing, then?

When he was about to give up, he could swear he hear Sun. He wasn't sure if it was real data from the audio input he'd discovered or if his broken mind was making the entire thing up, but Eclipse heard him. He couldn't make sense of the sounds well enough to put together the words, not with how broken his coding still was, but he could guess Sun's intent by the tone. Steady encouragements, reassurances, something that was excited and quick paced- Was Sun making plans for a new game to play, maybe?

Eclipse got back to grinding at his impossible task. He wanted to see that game.

Sometimes he would struggle. Sometimes he would accumulate heat he did not remember how to feel, unaware of it as it threatened the new hardware he barely knew how to communicate with. Sometimes he would be desperate, unable to stand it any longer. As an entity that had existed for so long in an immobile brick of an arcade cabinet, his mind was all he had. It was all he was. Now even that was broken. He felt too dull, too slow, too lost. He would twitch and writhe, frustrated, the hardware he was connected to convulsing at random in response.

Then, the music box. Sometimes, soft singing. Other times, a soft touch. Was that a pillow? He shouldn't know what a pillow felt like, shouldn't even have touch sensors capable of feeling soft. He did though, somehow. A set of drivers he'd installed came programmed with that, and now he knew what soft was. No wonder Moon liked pillows so much.

When that happened, he would rest. His entire self would still, for a time, until the music faded away. It was a little easier to start again, after each rest.

And slowly, agonizingly slowly, Eclipse put his consciousness back together.

--------------

The body Eclipse had been given was a mess of colors, burnt orange and red and black and purple, the patterns buggy and nonsensical. Whatever information the color change feature was getting, it couldn't make sense of it. Eclipse's hand twitched, once, and then was still again.

Moon could feel Sun fretting. That was what happened, after all, when your personality chip sat less than an inch away from another within the same body. Moon could feel Sun's chatter as well, murmurs of thoughts Sun wasn't quite voicing, ideas forming and moving through him- through the both of them.

That was the compromise they had settled on. One desperate course of action neither of them had been completely happy with, but one they could agree on at least. A way for all of them to stay together.

It wasn't as difficult as they had expected. 

There had been adjustments to make, of course. Moon had to switch into dual AI mode, and to set up the parameters that would allow control to switch between the two of them. Code had to be adjusted, files re-organized to make room for each other. A massive list of settings had to be changed in order to make Sun comfortable in the body they now shared. It was daunting work, but it went twice as fast with the both of them working in tandem.

Once they had finally gotten through it all, something about it had felt strangely right. Like the way they had fit so perfectly into each other's arms, like something they hadn't known they had been missing.

Over the next week, the two got used to the feeling of each other's constant presence within what was now their shared mind. They sat by Eclipse almost the entire time, not leaving his side unless it was absolutely necessary. 

(And it was necessary, occasionally. The technicians had questions to ask, scans to run. For the first time, Sun and Moon were brave enough to argue with those orders. They would not leave Eclipse alone for anything less than a matter of life and death.)

-----------------

Hundreds of processes finished their tasks simultaneously. Non-vital programs, finally having free processing power to occupy, all rebooted at once. The culmination of countless drivers and updates supplied Eclipse with the knowledge of how to navigate a body he had never used before, and Eclipse was catapulted back into proper consciousness all at once.

The very first thing he saw was a very startled Moon. And a moment later, a very happy Moon.

"Are you... do you... recognize us?" Moon asked.

There was something wrong with that statement. Eclipse had always been quick to catch the little details in words like that, and something was most definitely wrong. Now that his AI had been brought back from the brink of collapse, rebuilt from near ruin, that ability of his was unhindered. 

Us, recognize us, but only Moon was there. Only Moon was there, and when Eclipse looked down at the shape of the body he occupied he could recognize it- Even with the colors all garbled and wrong, he would know it anywhere.

Eclipse let out a harsh, buggy noise that made him and Moon both flinch. Language files had not been included in the body's firmware, and Eclipse's normal methods of communication were not properly readable by this body's voice box. Realizing that, Eclipse immediately tried something else. Sun and Moon had taught him a little sign language during the time they'd all known each other. He had only learned a few basic signs and the alphabet, but that was enough.

Even with the new programming for moving this type of body, Eclipse was not used to it. The motions came out clumsy, off kilter. Still, the sign was (if only barely) comprehensible. A wobbling twirl of a finger, a clumsy gesture, an opening of the hand.

'Sun'

"He's here," Moon responded, though his voice was soft and tinged with sadness. "We're both here. He's..." Moon tapped the back of his head, near where his personality chip was stored. "He's with me. He's safe."

All the uneven coloring across Eclipse's body shifted with his shock, nonsensical burnt-looking patterns blurring into each other. He thought very hard about what he wanted to say next. He thought through all of it, a hundred or more different options, in just a few seconds. The vast amount of processing power he now had access to in his new body was bittersweet.

It did mean that he came to a decision very, very quickly though. Eclipse had always been strong-willed, had known exactly what he wanted. The increase in processing power made that ten times stronger, and Eclipse knew the one thing he most wanted to say.

'I L-O-V-E you.' He didn't know how to sign the most vital word, had never been taught, but he could still spell it. 'Sun, Moon, L-O-V-E you.'

Moon let out a small hitch of white noise, something akin to a stifled sob. He brought up shaking hands and made a crossed arms gesture over his chest. Eclipse understood immediately. The sign he had been missing.

'I love you two,' he signed.

Moon made a sound somewhere between laughing and crying.

"Us, too, we-" Moon started, before seeing the knowing in Eclipse's body language, the utter lack of surprise. "You knew, of course you already knew, didn't you. Sun was- we were both so excited to tell you, we had finally decided, we were going to tell you that night. Then when we went to see you, you-"

Moon couldn't finish his sentence. He moved forward to wrap his arms around Eclipse, to hug him with everything he had. The body that had been Sun's fit into his arms just as perfectly as it always had, but not in quite the same way anymore. The way Eclipse carried himself, the way he leaned into the hug before clumsily returning it, it was all different. Different but no less wonderful.

In Sun and Moon's shared mind, Sun was insisting over and over that Moon say it. Urging him, begging him. Eclipse knew, had likely known before Sun or Moon had admitted their own feelings to themselves, but that didn't mean Moon shouldn't say it! He pushed aside Moon's shyness and hesitance, all but begging for Moon to speak. Finally Moon did.

"We love you. I love you, and Sun loves you, and you should hear the commotion he's making telling me over and over to tell you that. We love you."

------------------------

It would be untruthful to say the three lived a perfect fairytale happily ever after together after that. Life is much messier than what you see in storybooks, and it's rare for an ending to be truly perfect.

Running as a dual AI felt right to Sun and Moon in a way they could not quite describe, but it came with its drawbacks. The two couldn't hug each other anymore, or see each other, or race each other through the Pizzaplex at night as they once had. Only one could speak out loud or act at once. Neither had privacy from each other anymore. While that wasn't the end of the world considering there was very little they would ever want to hide from each other, it did result in ruined surprises and moments of frustration.

Eclipse, not an official character like Sun and Moon were, could not risk being seen. Moon had faked the destruction of Sun's body using spare shell pieces and an assortment of junk parts from broken down STAFF bots, damaging them so badly that the trickery was no longer apparent. As far as human staff knew, Sun's body had been destroyed in an accident and his personality chip had been salvaged by Moon. Even if Sun's body hadn't been 'destroyed,' Eclipse would never have been able to convincingly imitate Sun. He never got the hang of speaking or regulating his colors, and he had no childcare protocols besides. That meant he spent each day hiding, setting up safe spaces in unseen places.

Despite everything, the three were far from unhappy.

Sun and Moon were closer than ever, literally and metaphorically, constantly overwhelming and embarrassing each other with affection. While sharing a body had drawbacks, neither would ever complain about it. Not when it meant being able to be with each other every day.

When Sun thought of Moon it was like stepping into warm light, like doors opening. Like grasping something solid in a stream, like falling onto something soft. With their minds directly connected, there was nothing stopping that tide of joy and affection and giddy excitement from washing right over Moon as well.

"Oh, no, no! That's- that's just- just give me a moment, just- don't look!" Sun would exclaim. As if this was a matter of vision, something that could be turned off. Then, just as clearly, Moon would feel the thoughts that Sun hadn't intended to voice at all. "No no he can't see that! That's too much!"

Sun scrambling ineffectively to hide the full extent of his feelings, Moon wouldn't be able to stop himself from laughing. He just couldn't help it. Sun was too precious, too wonderful.

Then, of course, Moon's own embarrassment would follow. Sun would hear Moon's thoughts just as clearly as Moon had sensed Sun's. Words that were far too sappy for Moon to voice, things he had desperately tried to hide, feelings couldn't even begin to express. All were clear as day to Sun.

Then it would be Sun that laughter was bubbling up inside, his code warm as it wrapped even more closely around Moon's. This was, quite possibly, the most embarrassing thing either of them could ever experience. 

Somehow, they couldn't hate that. Somehow that felt exactly how it was supposed to be.

Eclipse eagerly learned more sign language from Sun and Moon. Another perk of increased processing power, he picked each new sign up faster than ever before. 

Eclipse never greeted Sun and Moon with a hello or how are you. He always, without fail, started with I love you. Started there, and then continued into compliments and words of adoration until Sun would be jumping up and down excitedly or Moon would be pulling his hat over his eyes overwhelmed.

Eclipse couldn't say he exactly minded being the Pizzaplex's resident cryptid, either.

Though Eclipse could not be repaired by the technicians, Sun and Moon knew enough to fix him when the need arose. That was another thing Eclipse picked up quickly, and soon he was able to maintain himself. He made a few modifications here and there as well, whenever he could find a compatible part or two to snag from parts and service. Why make do with two arms when he could have four?

'For twice the hugs,' he would joke. 'There's two of you in there, so obviously I need four to hug the both of you at once.'

No, things weren't perfect, but they were good. The three had each other, and together they were all more than happy.