The second time Zero woke up after his long sleep, it was to the kindly face of a man dressed in a white lab coat.

Human… There was this little nagging sensation in the back of his mind, as if he'd forgotten something he was supposed to be doing.

"It worked! I can't believe it—but wiping those corrupted data banks did the trick! A pity that means we've wiped out all prior history, but…" The man leaned in, until they were practically nose to nose.

"Can you hear me?"

"…hear…you…" Zero whispered, his volume modulation vocal subroutines thrown off because he wasn't yet receiving proper feedback from his auditory processing center.

"Excellent! Excellent! You're well on your way to recovery!"

"Re…cover..y…?"

"Yes, you were quite damaged, I'm afraid. You won't remember this, but you are a very old android—your parts carbon date to nearly the same time as X's! It's magnificent, the intricate level of technology you were built with—but it seems like you were shut away for a long time. I dare say, after so many years without any proper maintenance, something in your systems must have gone severely haywire." The man shook his head sadly. "Thank goodness Sigma was able to bring you in."

Sigma. There was something oddly familiar about that name, like the ghost of a memory lingered over deleted files. "Who is he?"

"He's my greatest creation and the leader of the Maverick Hunters," the human declared proudly, "a group that handles Reploids who have dangerously malfunctioned."

"Reploids?" That word wasn't in his database.

"Replica androids, though I suppose that term doesn't really apply to you, does it? I'm an archeologist by trade, and on my last dig I found an extremely advanced android, called X. Because I saw his enormous potential, I built many replica androids based on his design. But you, your design is clearly different, though its obviously at the same technological level as X's. That's why I had to see if I could repair you—you are an engineering marvel!"

Zero blinked. "A marvel?" You're worthless anyway, a cruel little voice hissed inside his head, but it was gone before he could trace down the source.

"Yes, though unfortunately, that means I don't understand your systems well enough to know if you're truly fixed or not. That's why you'll have to stay here for testing for a while—after what happened, well, we can't afford to have you running wild like that again. I'm afraid almost every Repoid you got your hands on is completely beyond repair; even Sigma suffered extensive damage."

"I…destroyed?" Somehow, that sounded familiar, too.

"Yes," the man said sadly, sighing. "I just don't have the skill to repair them."

"You repaired me?"

"Well, you are a bit more resilient, apparently," the man replied modestly.

Zero was quiet for a moment. "I was repaired, but they were destroyed. That's…" Unfair, his mind supplied, and there was this sharp, terrible sinking sensation in his chest. He didn't recognize it. The moment of self-hatred that followed after it, though—that, he thought he knew. Hatred was so easy to learn.

He had only a moment to sink into the bitterness before his higher level processing came back online, though, and he suddenly found himself declaring, "I have to become a Maverick Hunter."

"That's—where did you get that idea come from? Perhaps your logic module is still malfunctioning…"

"No!" Zero said, his sharp word stopping the man in mid-motion, which was a very good thing, as he had been lifting his hand, as if to reach for the emergency shutdown switch. "It's…to make things fair. I destroyed them, and I was repaired and not them, so I have to take their place."

The man blinked. "Well, I'll be… I couldn't even find it, but it seems your morality module is working after all! Yes, yes, at this rate, I think you will make a full recovery!"

Zero blinked. Morality…? That word wasn't in his database, either.

As it turned out, there were a lot of important words missing from Zero's database, though Dr. Cain reassured him that it was probably just a side effect of the data wipe that had been performed to clear out a corrupted part of his system.

As it was, it took him weeks just to relearn the basics of the way the world worked, picking up new vocabulary along the way, improving and improving until he almost sort of knew what he was doing. Still, it was a shock when, one day, Sigma said to him: "Thanks for helping out with the new recruits, Zero."

Helping out? He was still encountering phrases that weren't in his database, and he was not really sure yet what "thanks" were, either. He was learning, though, and even if his history was a blank and his personality was flat and withdrawn, at least he was doing well at everything combat related. Then, one day...

"Excellent maneuvering, Zero. Your quick reaction really saved the team, this time," Sigma commended him, and for the first time ever, his fellow Hunters actually looked accepting, smiling and thumping him companionably on the back. Suddenly there was this, this—something, warm and gentle inside his chest, as if something were vibrating very softly within his core.

Zero had no clue what that was about, because apparently that sort of knowledge had been flagged as non-essential and thus been deleted during the system recovery wipe. But luckily for the Maverick Hunters, Zero had come hard coded with excellent basic instincts, and so he heard, more and more often, things like:

"You're an incredible asset to the team."

"I knew I could count on you!"

"You rescued them! Great job."

Then, of course there was: "Thank you, Zero." X had told him that, so many times. Zero wasn't even sure why—all he did was explain the most basic principles of combat and occasionally covered the blue android when he got in over his head. But when X looked at him with such warmth and gratitude…

Zero could feel something down in the depth of his core, like a starving fire had finally been fed enough to flicker back to life inside him. That was the only thing, really, that got him through Sigma's betrayal. That, and the solemn, vicious stubbornness that told him to retaliate, to not take anything lying down.

He was going to give as good as he got—he was designed to. So the Maverick Wars dragged on, neither side quite able to strike a killing blow. But in between the fighting and the dying and Iris' vital fluids all over his hands (and the screaming, there had been screaming, then), there were these moments, these little stills in time that kept him sane: a shared, triumphant smile on their return, two sets of bored eyes meeting and rolling while some minor bureaucrat droned on obliviously about their accomplishments, a short laugh before a pair of battle ready Hunters headed out on a mission again…

Even the things that shouldn't feel comforting somehow took on a different aspect when X was around. Although Zero's recording capacity had been severely degraded at the time, the blond android could distinctly remember how X cradled his failing body, that first time Zero had used his self-destruct—he still couldn't adequately explain what failure of sensory input had made X's titanium fingers and bulky, armored limbs feel so soft, so unerringly gentle then. To be honest, there were an awful lot of things Zero couldn't seem to figure out, no matter how much he thought on them, because there was simply so much to it, to this connection—that they could challenge each other and support each other and laugh for each other and bleed dry for each other all in the same day. Protectors and rivals and resurrectors and even eulogy writers, should the worst come to pass, layer upon layer upon layer, and Zero didn't understand what was at the heart of it all.

He did know that they were best friends, though, and Zero would do anything for X—kill for him, die for him, even, though it was desperately hard, try to live well for him—because he knew X would do the same in return. In the depths of his central processor, though, Zero was secretly afraid of who had flagged his ethics data non-essential, of how Sigma first caught the Virus, and of what that little nagging objective might have been that he'd woken up without memory of in Dr. Cain's lab. Zero was afraid to feel because every good thing had its opposite, and he didn't properly trust himself not to be desperately bad at friendship (there were still so many words missing from his database).

All he could be certain of was that even when he was so far past the extremes of weariness, when he was in agony, his entire body twisted and broken, still, when X called to him and begged him not to die, he suddenly wanted to hold on for that moment when his systems rebooted and X smiled at him, so wide, the corners of his mouth stealing up as if the laws of physics and gravity had slipped their hold upon his face.

There was something almost hypnotic in the intensity of that sort of joy, along with the answering lightness in his chest, like waves of vibrations layered over each other, resonating into a soft, downy warmth. Zero didn't know what this feeling was, really, but that was okay. Databases could be filled in. As long as he kept coming back for X, he'd have plenty of time to learn, and it wasn't even really a choice anymore, when it was writ there at the core of him: give as good as you get.

Zero is nothing if not stubborn, so he will.