Work Text:
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers turning into dust
Turning into dust
“Into Dust” by Mazzy Star
So this was it. The end of the world.
Together they made their way across the rubble that had once been a place of worship. A church, perhaps? No matter how hard they racked their brains, they could no longer remember what had stood there, eons ago. Time had, unfortunately, damaged parts of their memory drives. Time had done a lot to them.
Crow carried Tom in his arms, Tom’s hover skirt having been broken long ago, while Cambot rolled on behind them. Crow’s arms had barely stood the test of time: he’d lost his original left arm some time in the 23rd century, and the right was so full of dents and divots that it barely functioned anymore.
Not all of their little group had made it to the end.
Gypsy’s death had been a long time coming. She’d been malfunctioning for centuries, purely a result of the parts she had been made of and some external injuries along the way that, after one too many, had jolted her internal workings. When she passed, it had rained.
It hadn’t rained in years, but somehow, it had rained.
The final days were softer than the ‘bots had expected. Quieter. All that was left was them and the trash and wreckage underneath their feet. Crow’s feet. It was funny, being the sole remaining creature with legs to walk on.
“This is it,” Tom said suddenly, and Crow halted, staring down at the ground.
The indicators that would have been obvious to the human eye had long eroded into the earth and dirt, but they knew. It was something they could sense more than anything. They had strayed away now and then, sometimes for years at a time, but they always found their way back.
And now, at the end of times, here they were.
It was odd, being faced with sudden mortality after spending a life nearly immortal, but what they sensed was not fear. No. This was something different. This was a sense of waiting, standing idle.
This was anticipation.
Tom often wondered, what happens next? What happens when there no longer is a next, when Earth has run out of new days for them to witness?
This was a question they had no answer to.
At least they weren’t alone.
They settled onto the ground, remembering a time when it had been grass that rested beneath them and not debris, remembering the inklings of a memory, something so distant in the past that it seemed as if the only possibility was that it was a work of fiction, not something of their own world, as their current time scarcely resembled what had once existed.
The passing of time blurred events together, and sometimes Crow and Tom wondered if their memories were simply scenes from films they had watched together. It was a funny thing, how time made memories fade. Even important ones.
Mike had passed first, surprising Joel, as Joel had been the older of the two, but cancer was a hell of a beast and had taken a lot out of Mike physically. He died at home, two days out from his seventy-first birthday, having been only semi-conscious for the three months leading up to his death. It had been hard to watch.
At least Joel had passed on in his sleep.
He had worried about the ‘bots, Tom remembered vaguely, about how they would survive once he and Mike were gone. Joel had spent most of his last five years attempting to ease his own weary mind and anxieties.
Tom and Crow had noted, years back, that they couldn’t actually remember these conversations.
They didn’t really remember a lot of Mike and Joel’s idiosyncrasies. They did remember space and their time floating amongst the stars, but they also remembered when they were on Earth, the moment they had looked up and realized they couldn’t see the stars anymore.
Cambot settled down next to Tom, beeping a drawn-out, descendent hum of a noise that suggested he was shutting down for a rest at the end of a long day. Sleeping through the end was smart, but Tom wanted to see it happen. He glanced over at Crow, catching his eye, and saw that Crow wanted to see it, too.
Good.
They were together.
They were all together.
Following Gypsy’s death, they had laid her to rest here, knowing that she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way than to rest indefinitely besides the man who had created them and the other man who had loved them like his own.
The grave markers had long since faded and turned to detritus, but the path to this spot had long been ingrained in the ‘bots' memory. Nothing else on Earth was so firmly planted in their minds as the way back to where Mike and Joel rested.
Returning here felt like coming home.
“It’s strange, Servo,” Crow hummed, turning his head to look up at the red ruddiness of the sky above them. “We’re the remaining life on Earth, and we’re not even alive. Not really.”
“You can say that again, Crow old pal.”
Tom began to sense something new, an awareness that he was fading. There was no other way to describe this feeling than as if one was falling to ash, becoming particles in the air. It had been a long time since Tom had sensed something new. Despite the peculiarity of the feeling, it was freeing.
“Tom?” Crow choked out, and Tom guessed Crow was experiencing the same thing.
“Best not fight it,” Tom suggested, his voice barely audible. “It’s inevitable. Better to let it happen and think of something comforting.”
Many memories had been left in the past, unretrievable. Important things, like birthdays and favorite movies and laughs they had shared as a family. But some things stuck, despite the eons of time, despite the damages to their systems that should have taken them out long ago. Despite it all, nothing could shake Mike and Joel from their memories.
Somewhere in the back of their minds was a sunny day back at home, their real home, with its porch and fence and picnic table in the backyard, and in this memory, they rest on the porch as Mike and Joel swing, content to just sit for a while. Tom and Crow think back to this moment and when they do, they hear the remnants of laughter and see a pair of heavy-lidded blue eyes and a bright smile.
They think back to this moment, and despite it all, amongst the dust and the detritus and everything falling apart around them, they both feel warm.
They sit back and together do what they were made to do, eons before.
They watch.