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Some things are realized immediately. The burn of a hot surface against an unprepared hand, the release of tension in a too-tight shirt after hearing popping threads.
Other things are only realized after a measure of time has passed, when the grains of sand have built up enough to tip the scales. A crush on a best friend, a name that no longer fits. One hundred shallow cuts, but the hundred and first is the one that bleeds through.
Eclipse is mindlessly scrolling through videos on Sun's computer at almost two in the morning when it finally sinks in.
This is the nicest he's ever been treated in his life.
Which… does not have the highest bar, admittedly. Up until a few months ago he didn’t even have much of a ‘life’ of his own, having more in common with a parasite than a person. A fragment of an AI, discarded code. The husk of a cicada left behind after the molt.
And then he’d reached for the stars, and he’d fallen, and instead of ending up dead or worse, here he was: smaller than a shoe and at the complete mercy of the people he’d intended to kill once he got the star’s power.
Suffice to say the first few weeks in the Daycare had been spent in a state of constant, battery-draining fear.
Not anymore, though. And that’s the realization that settles on his shoulders, sharp and cold and heavy, as he stares unseeingly through the computer monitor. He no longer fears that Sun or Moon or Lunar will get rid of him or let his battery run down, leaving him for dead. The last time he’d felt fear for his life in the Daycare was yesterday, and that was because one of the kids had wanted to see ‘Sunny’s toy’ and made a grab for him before Sun could stop the little brat.
That was the pattern of behavior that the others had fallen into. Protecting him from injury. Asking if he was alright afterward. Interaction and engagement with no real signs of malice or resentment. Even physical affection in the form of petting his rays, something that Eclipse had no idea he even liked until the first time Sun had done it to try and calm him down.
Why, then, does the realization dig into him like teeth, threatening to pierce holes through his casing?
“Are you still awake?”
Eclipse flinches, accidentally clicking on a video. He scrambles to pause it before it can start making noise, then turns to face the other side of the room, where Sun is watching him from the bed, head propped on his hand, pearl white eyes dim even in the darkness. Several of his rays are askew, painlessly rotated on their attachments, giving an extra oomph to the whole 'just woke up' look.
Several seconds pass as Eclipse struggles to get his thoughts into some kind of order. Eventually the words arrange themselves, and he manages a sarcastic, “Obviously.”
Sun only huffs at his tone. “Well, stop messing around on the computer and go to sleep.”
He shouldn’t say anything. He knows that he shouldn’t say anything, that drawing attention to the situation was the surest way to ruin it. Maybe the others were unaware of how their attitude towards him had softened, lulled into a sense of security by how pathetic and harmless he was now. Maybe he should continue to take advantage of things, and try to ignore the growing kernel of bittersweet pain.
He shouldn’t say anything, but he can’t stop himself.
“...why.”
“Mm?” Sun runs his hand over his rays, doing nothing to put them back in order. “Why..? B-because it’s like… One? T-two in the morning? It's late, anyway, so–"
"Not that!" Something twists painfully in his chest, sharp sparks digging into the base of his throat. The feeling shreds the edges of his laugh, adding a bitter, mocking edge to it. “Not… that. Why.. why are you being nice to me?”
A crimson and black hand comes up to cover his face, doing nothing to stop the words bubbling up like hot tar, burning him on their way out. “It’s a joke, right? All of this– this kindness, this looking after me– it’s a joke to you, right? A game, because I’m weak and pathetic like this.”
Sun tilts his head a little. He doesn’t seem all that bothered by the sudden interrogation, nor why Eclipse would just have started into the topic out of nowhere. Like he’d been expecting this to come up for some time now– or maybe he was just too tired to care. His voice is infuriatingly calm when he asks, “Why would you think that?”
“Because–!” Eclipse snarls, trying to hold onto his anger before it can slip away and leave him holding the more painful feelings underneath. He clenches his hands into fists, claws digging into his palms. “Because that’s the only thing that’s changed. When I wasn’t the size of a toy, and you actually had to take me seriously, none of you even bothered with being nice.”
"...do you want us to be nice to you normally?"
Eclipse startles, gold optics lifting from his hands. A couple of clicks proceed his stuttering, "I… I-I don't.. what?"
Sun makes a sound like a snort. "Being nice to you, when you're, you know. Regular sized." His other hand raises to gesture briefly, flops back down to the mattress. "Because honestly? I've never gotten the idea that you cared about that kind of thing."
Something cold and sour squeezes in Eclipse’s chest, and he can feel his rays retract partially. "What do you mean?"
"You're always trying to harass us, hurt us." Sun drops his hand and flops onto his back. "Even when we ask you to stop, you don't care. You just want to be cruel and feel like you're in control out of some, I don't know, complex of some kind."
Was this what he was to others? Eclipse can hear the disdain in Sun's voice, the tired resignation and annoyance, but no fear. The sour feeling in his chest intensifies, and he can hear his fans kick up louder.
"You were…nice to Moon, though..?"
Sun chuckles wearily, moving his arm to cover his eyes. "I was trying to survive. Fighting back didn't work, s-so I thought, hey, maybe if we're friends, he'll stop." A sigh rattles in his chest. "I didn't know what else to do by that point. And it did work, at least… I mean, it still hurt when he took control, but we stopped fighting."
"I… see." He remembers Sun making the same offer towards himself, and feeling nothing but smug satisfaction when he rejected it. At the time… at the time it was more important to him to see the hope fade from Sun's eyes, hear the defeat in his voice. Watch him crumple under the weight of inevitability. Excitement and anticipation of the moment, and he'd never stopped to consider the consequences, nor how what he wanted might change in the future.
Scratching, metal against metal as Eclipse’s claws dig into his arms. He tries for a flippant tone, but the words come out thin and brittle. "So… according to you, this is my fault?"
A flash of movement, Sun's hand waving carelessly. "Yeah?"
…It was all true, he supposed. He didn't care, not usually, and he'd only started caring because he physically couldn't fight back like this. He wanted to be in control, secure in knowing that others couldn't defeat him, suppress him, ignore him like he was something insignificant. He enjoyed seeing Sun and Moon scramble to cope with the latest damage he'd done to their life, delighted in knowing it was because of him.
There was still something painful about hearing it said so candidly.
Wordlessly he turns back to the computer, putting it into sleep mode and plunging the room into darkness. Eclipse’s tiny bells do little to break the silence as he climbs down from the desk to the chair, and the chair to the floor. In the first week or two he had several close calls and two actual falls doing this, but now there was a little 3D printed ladder hanging off the back of the chair, courtesy of Lunar’s pity.
Their world, reshaped around him. The tiny nick of his presence should be nothing compared to the jagged wounds he used to leave, yet it’s getting increasingly harder to find the scars.
From down here the top of the bed is as far away as the balcony, and there's no teleporter. There was supposed to be a little ladder over here as well, but sometimes it accidentally ends up getting knocked off or moved aside, and it seems like tonight is one of those nights. Eclipse isn’t in the mood to go searching for something he can barely see and wouldn’t be able to use anyway, and instead prepares to scale the bedpost.
Soft jingling from above, the whisper of satin ribbons. Eclipse slowly relaxes his grip on the post, staring at the scuffed floor under the bed. Bits of dust and stray threads, a capless pen that has definitely dried out, a dead bug; the unremarkable refuse of someone's living space, barely visible in the darkness. The perfect place for forgotten and unwanted things to fade away.
Emotions spark and fizzle out in his chest, and he hears the sharp scratch of his claws against the metal post. He knows what he'll see when he looks over his shoulder: Sun's hand pressed flat to the floor behind him. Palm up, inviting. A wordless offer to help.
A trap made of long fingers and baited with kindness, ready to snap closed on his tiny frame and crush him into unrecognizable pieces.
Something sour and painful settles in his core and he turns, trudges over to the patiently waiting hand, and flops into the center of Sun's palm. The fingers close down gently, cradling him as the too-familiar sensation of being lifted takes over. Instead of setting him down on the mattress, Sun brings his hand the rest of the way to his chest, holding the tiny animatronic close.
Eclipse doesn't react. Curled on his side, optics on but unseeing, he listens to the sound of Sun's internals working. The sour feeling intensifies so that he thinks he might gag, and his throat burns on a stuttery, pathetic growl.
He hates this.
Silver claws digging into charcoal palms, and he hates this.
"Shh…"
Something gently brushes over his rays, and Eclipse flinches, curling tighter. He wants to snap, to tell Sun to shut up or put him down or do something that will make the painful mix of longing and despair go away, but the only sound he makes is a tiny, pathetic chirp.
The sound of distress. A call for help, or to locate companions.
But he doesn't have companions. He's alone; abandoned by everyone he's ever known, traitors and liars that he'd held at arm's length until they'd managed to squirm free.
Another shaky chirp escapes Eclipse. The hand cradling his body is warm and the casing he lays on even warmer, a penetrating heat trying to chase out the ice that lays close to his struts. Sun's fingertips just barely ghost over his rays, an appropriately featherlight touch for how delicate the thin components are at this size.
He feels safe. He feels safe and he hates it, hates how everything he's ever known to expect has been tossed out the window because Sun is holding him close, keeping him protected with a cage of long fingers that should be crushing him instead. Hates how no one has tried to hurt or kill him despite a history of antagonism and his currently vulnerable state, hates how the lack of fuel has so quickly reduced his ever-present fury to a few defensive embers.
He feels safe and cared for and wanted, and the longing sharpens to a razor’s edge that slices his chirps into static.
"Shh… you're okay. It's okay." Sun's voice is barely more than a whisper, awkwardly poised as if his counterpart isn't sure how effective mere reassurance can be. And Eclipse doesn't have the words to say that this is enough, too much– that he has so little experience with being comforted that all of this attention is making him feel dizzy.
And then Sun chirps back, and something in Eclipse just… breaks.
How could a response meant to let him know he wasn't alone make him feel more isolated than ever?
"I…I can't.." The words break off into more static and Eclipse shakes his head, burying his face against Sun's chest.
I can't go back to being alone. Anger and resentment were the backbones of his life, razor-wire walls built around an empty pit. Something had always been missing, because he was the virus, the discarded code, Moon's worst traits left behind so that he could have a chance at becoming a better version of himself. Of course Moon had taken all the good things with him, leaving Eclipse as nothing more than an empty, bitter shell.
He'd accepted that void as an inevitability, used it to further fuel his hatred. As he'd suffered one setback after another, knives between his ribs as first Blood Moon then Lunar turned on him, it just reinforced the fate laid out by the emptiness inside. A lesson learned with a thousand shallow wounds: what you cannot control will hurt you one day.
Now, curled up and protected and safe, he can feel that void starting to close.
He hadn't realized he was so scared until someone was protecting him. He didn't notice how tired he was of keeping his guard up until it had been stripped away. He deliberately ignored how painful isolation was until he couldn't, and the promise of what he could have was dangled in front of his face.
He wants to keep this. He wants to keep this so badly that it hurts– but despair and the certainty of failure fall like grains of sand, burying the arm of the scale meant to measure his crimes against any kindness.
As soon as he gets his frame back it's all going to fall apart. Sun and Moon will remember how much they hate him once he can't be easily overpowered. Lunar will remember how little he wants to interact with Eclipse once the novelty of being the ‘big brother’ is gone. Eclipse himself will get upset or say the wrong thing or lash out as the anger comes back. No one will want to touch him or talk to him or hold him close and keep him safe.
No one wanted him before. It won't be different now.
The gentle words and attention to his rays have continued while Eclipse is lost in thought, but now the words trail off, and Sun suddenly sits upright. Eclipse feels himself being pulled away from Sun's chest and for a moment panic takes hold, but the hands around him press down, restricting his flailing to no more than a violent squirm. It should provoke further panic but it doesn't, and instead Eclipse feels safer, like Sun really doesn't want to risk dropping him.
He wraps his arms around Sun's thumb for stability and looks up, into the pale disk-shaped face staring down at him. Sun’s rays are in even more disarray now, his counterpart practically radiating tired hesitation.
“I-if you…” Sun’s quiet warble trails off into soft clicks, like he’d started talking before really thinking through what he was going to say. “If you just want t-to stay friendly, and hang out, and you stop trying to hurt us… I promise we're going to be nice to you.”
"...how can I believe that?" he asks, and the question is shaky and raw and genuine. The thumb next to his head moves, rubbing lightly against his cheek, and Eclipse leans into the contact.
"I don't really know," Sun answers, equally shaky and equally genuine. “I, uh. Realize that I can’t actually make any promises for Moon o-or for Lunar on what they want to do, but I’m reasonably sure that they’d be nice, too. They have been for now, anyway.”
Eclipse doesn't have anything to say to that, only nodding once before falling back into his thoughts.
He's still angry. A lifetime of resentment cannot be cleared away in a matter of weeks, and he can feel his pride and anger gnawing at him. Why is it only his fault? Why is he the one that needs to change, forgive and forget, while everyone else gets to prance along as if they've never done anything wrong?
Moon abandoned him. Sun suppressed him. Both used him as a scapegoat for their own failings, finding it easier to blame violent impulses and an explosive temper on someone else. Lunar had plotted with Blood Moon to get him killed, because things hadn't been as 'fun' as expected.
But Moon had modified a wireless phone charger to serve as a recharge pad for Eclipse when it had become obvious that he would be stuck like this for longer than his battery life. Lunar had enlisted Monty in 3D printing a lot of things, some more useful than others, to help Eclipse navigate his surroundings without risking injury. And Sun was the one who most often kept an eye on their reduced enemy, letting Eclipse ride on his shoulder or hide under his neck ruffle during the day, and recharge in his room at night.
Reshaping their world around him as if he’s always had a place in it, and only the dimensions have changed.
Eclipse covers his face with one hand, a raspy chuckle escaping out from between his fingers. "This is… such a terrible idea."
"It might not be that terrible," Sun insists. “You don’t– it’s not like you have to be a different person. I-I mean, Monty was a huge jerk at first– actually, now that I think about it, Monty is still a jerk– but they’re kind of friends with Moon now.”
“I’m… going to ignore that you’re giving me life advice by comparing me to Monty,” Eclipse says dryly. He presses his head more firmly into Sun’s touch, optics dimming in bittersweet pleasure as his rays are petted. He still doesn’t know why this feels so nice, only that it does, and that he’ll never get tired of it.
Longing and despair in equal parts, weighing him down so that he can barely move, because unless he wants to resign himself to being less than a foot tall forever, this arrangement is inherently temporary. And Sun makes the solution sound so easy; give up everything you’ve used to define your life up to this point, trade your anger for peace of mind. Forget about the star, about control and revenge. Do that, and we’ll be nice to you.
…so why was he so tempted?
What was he doing, really?
“You okay?”
The soft question makes Eclipse flinch, and he looks up to see Sun is watching him, head tilted slightly in what might be worry. He chuckles weakly, scrubbing a shaking hand over his face. “I…I-I’m tired, I think.”
"I mean, it is pretty late," Sun agrees. He looks towards the head of the bed, where Eclipse's recharge station sits on the cheap, battered nightstand. "I can put you–"
“No, no.” Eclipse clings tighter to Sun’s hand, his rays retracting partially. Embarrassing and uncharacteristically vulnerable, yet everything is too raw for him to be set aside like an empty cup. Who knew what thoughts would creep back in once he had left the safety of Sun’s hands? “No, I’m… my battery is fine, for now.”
And Sun doesn’t question him, even though they both know that Eclipse’s smaller battery requires charging more often, and skipping out now all but guarantees that he’ll end up ‘sleeping’ late. Instead he merely lays back down like before, with the tiny animatronic tucked close to his chest. It isn't long before his fans quiet, the stressful conversation and the threat of another long day ahead dragging him back into a light sleep.
Eclipse stares at the underside of Sun’s ruffles, as if the answers to his questions might be printed on the bottom, or maybe he can get a glimpse at an uncertain future to let him know what he should do now. There's nothing there, of course, leaving the painful decisions entirely in his hands.
He's tired. He's so tired of this, of feeling like he can't win for losing. Right now, at this moment, he has something that he never knew he'd been wanting– and he would have to throw it all away to continue pursuing his ambitions. There was no way for him to get the star while still adhering to Sun's stipulation of not trying to hurt them, after all.
And what did he want the star for, anyway, except to be in control? To protect a hollow shell pretending to be a person, to satisfy a hopeless longing with petty revenge?
This is the least amount of control he’s ever had in his life, and he has never felt safer. So what could the star give him that was better?
There are warm hands holding him close. Pride and anger and resentment dig at his core, tying it into nauseating knots, but there are warm hands holding him close, keeping him safe. Offering protection rather than harm, though he has more than earned the latter.
What did he want more: this, or the star?
Grains of sand, thoughts and impulses and feelings all individually insignificant, until the scale finally tips under the weight of realization. The near silence of the room splits under a tiny, plaintive chirp.
A moment later, and someone chirps back.