Work Text:
Today. It was happening today. Derek didn’t let his scowl move from his face until he was safely locked inside his lab. Today was the day he would finally see Stiles again, after an agonizing three years of scrounging around for the correct organic and inorganic materials, having to barter for microprocessors, having to sneak into one of the most guarded laboratories in the country to 3D print the exact bone structure and just the right hair, skin, eyes, he even had every mole back in its place. Now, he had finally obtained his last, and most crucial piece. Stiles’ memories. It was stained with some hardships, but it held plenty of good memories, and even towards the end, his death hadn’t been painful. The doctors let him slip away into death without pain at the end of his struggle with dementia.
Derek sat down in front of his computer monitors, pulling up encrypted file after encrypted file until he had the schematics for Stiles’ body. He had hidden them for so long, but now was his chance. Derek pushed the render button, heart thumping in his chest as the fabricator started to work on the endoskeleton that Derek had pre-fabricated. Minutes passed like they were hours as Derek watched the metal arms reach down from the ceiling, connecting artificial veins and arteries, stitching together ligaments and tendons. Derek’s heart beat faster and faster as the machines began to attach the skin over the muscle and organs. Every second stretched as Derek sat, entranced as Stiles began to appear out of what used to be a pile of metal scraps.
It only took an hour for the render to complete. In front of Derek sat Stiles Stilinski, but just a husk. It looked like him, had his voice, could talk, think, compute, but it wasn’t him, not yet. Derek dressed the body in loose sweatpants and an undershirt, then going on to manually set the body down on his work bench. Derek adjusted the memory input over the brunet hair, pale skin, and moles, his heart thumping harder with every tick of the clock in his workshop. Derek inserted the disk with Stiles’ memories and sat patiently as the memory insert began. The memory insert was only supposed to take around five minutes, but Derek was sorely tempted to remove the helmet after only one. Stiles’ body began to shake as he experience all of his memories. His mother dying, his father being shot on duty…those were early memories. Awful memories. The shaking started to slow down around the third minute as he began his memories of Scott, Lydia, the academy where he learned his trade…when he made Derek…
The memory input pinged with a bright yellow display showing that Stiles’ memory should have been 100% installed. Derek reached forward to pull up the input, but stopped when a long-fingered hand did it himself. Stiles’ eyes were still glowing pale blue from the memory input as he staggered when he stood up. He eyes darted around the room and when his gaze settled on Derek, Derek’s heart hitched, afraid that Stiles didn’t remember him, that his dementia had settled into his memory as well.
Stiles gasped loudly, startling Derek. The newly fabricated robot surged forward, flinging his arms around Derek in a hug as tears leaked from his eyes that had finally settled into whisky brown. Derek’s chest grew tight as he hugged Stiles, the robot’s face nestled in his neck, bringing them both to their knees.
“Derek…” Stiles managed after quiet moments of heavy breathing and contact. His voice was just barely scratchy, like he had just woken up from a particularly good nap. “What happened?”
So Derek sat down on his work bench, Stiles by his side as he explained how he had worked on the rendering program, finding all of the right parts for Stiles, and sneaking through the National Archive of Stored Memories to find his exact memories.
“That was dangerous.” Stiles frowned, hitting Derek’s arm gently. “I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble just to bring me back Derek.”
“I’d have risked anything to bring you back.” Derek insisted, grabbing both of Stiles’ arms.
“Derek—“ Stiles started to argue, but cut off when he heard the distant thump of footsteps. “Who’s coming?” Stiles asked, just as the door to Derek’s laboratory caved inward, Kate Argent’s rough hewn smirk appearing in the doorway, flanked by four large brutes.
Derek stood quickly, hiding Stiles behind him.
“Bot 000104, we caught wind of you having some sort of rendering device, but we figured it was just for illegal fabrications, nothing this creative.” Kate’s smirk spread even wider. “Or am I supposed to call you Derek? I believe that’s what you charmed your masters into calling you, right?”
Derek scowled, but before he could spit out an angry comeback, the brutes moved forward, two of them grabbing Derek’s arms, and then one grabbing Stiles. Derek struggled, but became distressed when he realized the brutes had the endoskeleton he had designed just weeks ago, making them twice as strong as he was.
The fourth brute pulled out a square of thick plastic connected to a long wire covered in rubber coating, that connected to a long needle. Derek struggled to reach Stiles, but could only watch as the fourth brute plunged the needle into the back of Stiles’ neck. Stiles’ body immediately drooped into standby mode, his eyes flashing bright as his information fed into the square. The screen on the plasti lit up, showing Stiles’ diagnostics before finally flashing red, one word spelled across the screen. Illegal. The brute yanked the needle out and moved to grab the recovering Stiles.
Derek panicked, feeling an unfamiliar strength fill his frame as he wrenched himself away from the brutes holding him, running at Stiles to pull the brutes off of him as well.
Kate Argent scowled, yelling at her brutes to chase after them, but it all felt like it was in slow motion to Derek. He ran through the halls, practically dragging Stiles behind him.
It wasn’t long before Derek was in the official de-fabrication lab, the heavy steel door locked and bolted behind him.
Derek lowered himself to the floor, letting his arm drape over his eyes as his mind raced a mile a minute in an attempt to find a way out of the situation.
“Derek.” Stiles said quietly, putting a hand on his lover’s shoulder. “I have an idea.” He nodded towards the automatic de-fabrication machine.
“Stiles…no.” Derek shook his head. “We can’t…we have to find a way out…I…I don’t want to lose you again.”
“You won’t” Stiles promised, a smile on his face as he offered Derek a hand.
Derek stood up and looked Stiles in the eye, memorizing his face as Stiles grabbed his hands.
Stiles kissed Derek’s forehead, still smiling as he led Derek to the de-fabrication machine. Stiles laid down on his back, staring up at the metal arms. Derek joined him quietly, laying on his side so that he could look into Stiles’ eyes.
“De-Fab, protocol 3.1” Stiles ordered the machine quietly. His eyes shifted towards Derek. Stiles held out his hand, breath hitching a little when Derek grabbed it.
“Bot 000104, protocol 4.013.” Derek said clearly. “Bot 0344125, protocol 4.013”
Stiles smiled a little, squeezing Derek’s hand gently.
The process of de-fabrication was quick and painless due to Derek’s commands. Stiles watched, his smile falling, as the machine slowly took bits and pieces of his lover away to be recycled into new bots.
Derek didn’t cry the entire time. He simply sat, his heart wrenching as Stiles’ moles disappeared one at a time, a hole in his skin growing larger and larger.
At the last moment, just as the machine was reaching for Stiles’ voice emulator, Stiles barked out one last order. “De-Fab, protocol 9.909S.” Stiles ordered, before his system shuddered to a halt.
The machine continued to work until the only thing that was left was one heart. One half of the heart was old, manually patched several times, using old systems of bionic technology. The other half was the newest model, not even on the market yet.
And that’s all there was.