DETROIT BECOME HUMAN OPEN RP POST

[undeviated]

Pick your poison:
Markus | Connor

( Josh | Gavin Reed )

I'd probably play other DBH characters anyway lbr so if you want someone else, just ask

Connor default is Machine Connor— but I can throw down a nice Connor if that's more your jam, just let me know what your preferences are if you have them

Comments

[diplomats]

[It's a story he realizes he's unfamiliar with. Josh, of all people, straining to recreate the environment that used to house him. Markus imagines it had to have been a long time ago; the android that comes to mind now is so fundamentally different, and not just because of the cause that had forcefully edged him out of the quiet confines of Jericho's compartmented hull.

The pads of his fingers twist dryly against the tool in his hand.]

That's not true. [There's a momentum to that statement. It's a beginning, conceptually, and there has to be a follow up (there is), but it— tangles itself. In the sight of Simon, still split jaggedly through the fractures in his casing. In the memory of Jericho, discordant. Dying.]

I keep hurting you.

[A little ruefully. A little regretfully. The blood streaming across Simon's nose and lips, the hollowed shell of his insides and leg, exposed in all the ways they theoretically shouldn't be at a time like this. Markus tips his chin against the seam of Simon's unsealed hip, mouth pulling, but it's an arc that's as incomplete as the PL600 crumpled in stages beneath him.

Grand designs. Aspirations he was sure he could fulfill. This isn't what he wanted to reduce them to.]

[diplomats]

Her hand, open-palmed and slender, works itself into the space between them. It's the first time she's reached for him— not grabbing, not wresting or fisting her fingers in his shirt to drag him forcefully from harm— in what feels like an eternity, considering the span of the last few days. Of weeks. Of months spent clawing for a foothold in the eyes of humanity. And injured, dripping thirium in inconstant patterns (her shoulder, his chest), Markus doesn't measure out the full weight of that gesture before he responds.

He fits his broad palm over hers, grip tight and earnest, stare fixed and unwavering for how open he aims to be when he recipricates her unexpected need for closeness.

rubs my hands together

[diplomats]

There's something uncomfortable about it, seeing Kamski here, even at a distance. Like a dislocated limb or an abstract concept given form, he knows exactly who Elijah is— to androids as a people, to Carl, who'd always sectioned off a portion of his world-weary fondness for a friend he rarely named and too often thought of— but what he doesn't know, independent as he is now, is what he means to him directly. Not beyond the scope of dated, fragmented memories from another life, another world, only fitted together now because—


The service is beautiful.

Carl would've hated it.

Too many admirers and distant relatives, all so far removed from the scope of Carl Manfred's life that the only stories they share curled tearfully against the pulpit are full of names even Markus can't recognize. The venue's too big, the wreaths lining the aisles cluttered with flowers. If there had been time, he could have stepped in. Planned something better, more fitting. Then again, if there'd been time, Markus would've stayed with Carl for more than minutes at a time between diplomatic talks and defiant movements designed to further justify Jericho in the eyes of humanity. So instead he- did what he could. Made the calls Carl had scrawled out in advance, knowing more shrewdly than anyone just how close his body was to failing. Leo had been a hoarse whisper across Markus's neural-cellular link (he says next to nothing all service, looking paper-thin and stricken beside his brother), Elijah Kamski had been (fittingly) evasive. The same way the man keeps himself sequestered at the rear of the chapel, black suit doing nothing to mask his distinctive silhouette from the crowd.

But it's only when the service ends that attention seems to clot at the far exit: a mix of reporters and bystanders, and it'd be difficult even for Markus to discern which ones are here for Kamski, and which ones caught the scent of Carl Manfred's predictive inheritance.

He isn't thinking when he intervenes. There's a staff office sequestered now for family and close friends, just behind the dais and its vaulted ceilings; that's where he guides Elijah with a broad, heavy hand splayed just across the midpoint of his spine, circumnavigating the crowd.

It's not a smart decision. It'd be easy for just about anyone watching to formulate at least forty-five individual headlines, ranging from conspiracy theories to overly enthusiastic shots about formulative dichotomy. Still, Markus doesn't care. And if he knows as much about the man as he suspects, he doubts Kamski does either.

"Trying to leave early always makes it worse." Markus remarks wryly, lips pulling flatly at the corner once they're behind closed doors. Something less than a smile. Something that probably was, once.

"You're better off waiting it out back here."

Re: rubs my hands together

[biocomposer]

Elijah knew perfectly well that he would have been best off leaving in the midst of the crowd, rather than trying to slip out the back, say - where the most determined hacks would be waiting. He's been in self-imposed exile for a long time, but not so long that he's forgotten how this works.

But he allows Markus to act as he feels necessary, even though he can practically hear the headlines forming, the rumour mill churning into life. It's hardly as if he cares. If he gave a damn about wild speculation about his private life, he might be seen outside a little more often.

The android is going to need some coaching on how to handle life in the fishbowl of the public eye, he realizes.

"Thank you, Markus," Elijah says, with an almost-smile of his own. "Though the vultures outside are going to be feasting on those scraps for days, unfortunately."

Being in a relatively quiet and controlled space lets his elevated heart rate decline a little, his shrunken pupils dilate. He masks his stress well, but the physical tells can't be defeated.

"I assume Carl had no hand in choreographing that performance?"

[diplomats]

It's a narrow space, barely bigger than an oversized closet, effectively made smaller by a collection of filing cabinets and chairs that've all sat without ventilation for so long that they reek of stale air. Worn carpet clings to Markus's heels as he crosses Elijah's eyeline, finding a seat of his own across the edge of the only desk, focusing more on the process of it than the company he's left himself to keep.

"No," Markus corrects a little too quickly, a little too sincerely. Organic cadence. Flawed timing. "If he did, I think we both know what that service would've looked like."

Humor, what little they can find, helps. Masks the tension sticking to them both. The weight of a loss he isn't sure they share in equal parts and— how difficult it is to look at him directly, he realizes. Occupying the same, closed-off room leaves Markus feeling uniquely reduced.

"I almost didn't think you were going to show."

[againsthedyinglight]

Her eyes rocket from their focus over his shoulder at their pursuit to Markus at that hand being placed in hers. For one very long moment, she simply stared at him, wondering why he was giving her his hand instead of the gun. This was not the place for this kind of thing, with humans soon to be crawling down their throats, and if it wouldn't have made a racket, North would have jerked her hand from his right then and there. Such contact with her, with the emotion behind it, was a precarious thing that needed to be done in a safe space. This was far, far from appropriate.

And then the conclusion that Markus must have thrown away the gun was reached and her annoyance flashed hard and fast. They needed that gun; she'd given hers to the androids fleeing underground. And here they were, hiding from humans that were intent upon hunting them down, without a weapon. Markus claimed they didn't need them, but North took solace in how poetic it was to kill humans with their own weapons - the things that made them think they were superior to androids, that they had the power over others.

Not a sound was made, but there would be no mistaking what the problem was with this situation. Especially with the officers on foot getting closer and closer. North's free hand shifted over to grab onto something metal in the stack their cove was hidden in. Clutching it harder and harder, eyes on Markus while her auditory sensors tracked the humans, plastic cracked under the force of a metal skeleton gripping hard. Cutting herself off from their thin network, North calculated the probability that the humans would pass right by them without notice. The odds were terrible, but a plan was formed.

Markus would get to the sewers. Herself... that was less certain. But it didn't matter, so when the humans rounded the corner and a flashlight passed over them then riveted back, North shoved Markus forward with her body and to the side with that hand he had a hold of while the other hand ripped out the metal scrap she'd been holding onto so tight that thirium seeped from the cracks she'd caused in her hand.

With a large screeching sound, the tower of metal began to fall. Shouts from the humans rose, a shot was fired, and North shoved Markus as hard as she could so he'd make it past where the tower of scrap would fall.

"Go! I'll catch up!" Words yelled as she lost sight of him, her path to the sinkhole blocked, but not his. Whirling about, her eyes focused on the human officer that had missed her, she bared her teeth.

"You better run," she told the human, the threat quite clear just before she charged. Run, Markus. RUN.

[biocomposer]

"Nor did I," he allows. "I wasn't sure if it would be..."

Right is a difficult word for someone as bluntly amoral as Elijah.

"...appropriate," is where he settles. "However, Leo contacted me, and...well. If I'd known what to expect, I wouldn't have worried."

A service befitting of Carl would have been half the length with a tenth of the guest list, he thinks. People he actually knew, not distant hangers-on who could claim he touched their lives.

"...How are you, Markus?"

[diplomats]

Markus works his jaw for a beat, manufactured musculature flexing tightly under simulated skin.

Kamski is vivid, by either human or android standards. He's also paler now, gone sharper at the seams compared to the snapshot visual feed Markus still keeps compartmentalized in his housing, of an inventor in his element: hair half pulled back, glasses sitting low across the bridge of his nose. Unshaved. Probably unwashed. With that picture in mind, Markus wonders faintly if this is some kind of an evaluation.

He concludes, a cutting second later when he fixes his attention on the man standing at the opposite end of the room, he doesn't care if it is. He's done proving himself. He's been done for a long, long time.

So his answer is honest.

"I don't know."

"Carl's gone. Political momentum for our cause started and ended with humanity acknowledging our rights as a living species. Hell, they're going to be talking for weeks about the fact that you and I were in the same room more than they'll consider sanctioning necessary biocomponents as medical resources instead of commercial products." Frustration cuts his expression. Markus flexes his fingers, shrugging it off when he adds, "He never had all the answers, but he had a way of making it seem easier."

Time. Perspective. Things Carl liked to say he wasted in his youth, alongside rough-edged good looks.

"Without him around anymore I-

I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling."

[bodyguards]

[ it had been simon, then lucy, then josh, then north. the five of them, intermingling in hesitant ways, turning to one another in their most vulnerable moments - he had repaired lucy, and she, in turn took to repairing others when they eventually came stumbling in. the josh that markus had met was not the same josh that simon had met, and he honestly is contented by that knowledge.

markus has seen them at their best, their strongest. he'll never have to see his cabinet brought low. just simon, who is falling apart at the hinges and bleeding intermittently when his system is overburdened by the beautiful byprocesses and electric-bright consciousness of a model that is far superior to him. their leader has a gentle, wounded heart and an exterior that is at time simultaneously brittle and unyielding. ]

It doesn't hurt at all.

[ his world feels slower, day by day; reactions dulled, sensory information coming in a beat too idly. the damage he has sustained since jericho had mobilized has likely hastened his inevitable demise. there's only so often he can replace his parts and refill his body with thirium before the parts are too sophisticated for his processing to comprehend. honestly, slipping into obsoletion had once been his quiet fate. acceptable, to fade away into anonymity. and then markus had arrived and -- well. ]

All's fair, I suppose.

[ he sets his fingers along markus's jaw. steals this, like so many other things.

he's a good thief, he knows it. ] I've hurt you, too.

[bodyguards]

You're not so bad yourself, [ he counters, the corner of his mouth trembling as he resists the urge to quirk it into a shallow, brief smile. it's an old habit, coding that's been buried deep and for so long. a PL600 was the first line of social defense for overburdened parents, and had to be soft, inviting, friendly - the kids were meant to adore it. the parents were meant to rely on it. he'd been relied on, in so many ways, for so long. he's seen the updated line - the CX100 - meant for caretaking and personal satisfaction, when necessary.

he was obsolete, within months of his creation.

connor is a prototype, he's heard. the first of a future generation, meant to be tested before superior copies were created from the data and form. it's inevitable, that he'll also meet his demise. from what simon has seen of him, he'll likely go quietly. accepting his fate as the lot of a machine. simon opens his mouth to say something about it, to cut connor to the core with his words if not the knife in his pocket -- and he hears markus. first, he thinks it's a memory. chiding him, haunting him.

it's not.

he flinches away, his back finding the half-crumbled frame of the window he's settled himself in. twisting to face connor, the way a cornered animal might. markus's voice leaves his mouth, and simon -- simon is both wanting and hateful in the span of a single moment. his face twists, his chest aches. it's a window into his deviancy, he knows, that he reacts so viscerally to connor's play. that he loses this ground within a moment, that he does not intercept the attack or thwart it. perhaps, he realizes, because he knows what connor is capable of.

perhaps because he wants it -- all he has, even now, is ghosts.

when he comes to himself, he finds he's on the floor. kneeling, with his hands over his ears. vulnerable. ]

That, [ he rasps, hoarse and forceful: ] is unnecessary for a machine to offer, Connor. You don't --

[ between his fingers, he peers up. unsteady, but defiant in his own quiet way. ]

You're cruel. Just like humanity, you horrible thing.

[biocomposer]

"An extremely human response. One I shared at my own parents' funeral," he permits. They had died in the same car wreck when he was twenty-five. Ironically, funerals came very close to bracketing his decade in exile. "Regardless of whether you've outgrown their influence, the loss of a role model can leave the modeled feeling...unanchored. That can be more damaging for some than others."

His eyes dart to Leo, barely out of earshot, for a fraction of a second.

[undeviated]

[Connor was cruel when he whispered sweetly to the JB300, its sightless senses straining for hope against the magnetized clamps holding it in place. When he smiled through bared teeth and forced Cole's death under Hank's injured skin, severing the illusion of affection. When he brought Jericho's prohpet low under his heel as it fought to save him.

Retreated onto its knees, Connor calculates that it shouldn't take much pressure, crushing wafer thin optical systems against the reinforced framework of Simon's skull. Leaving it with only the sound of his voice as a means to wrench it into obedience.

Those beautiful eyes. Miserable. Mourning. They remind him so much of Daniel, peering back at him from beneath the hole punched straight through its cranial mass (the steady flow of thirium coursing down across delicate features— bleeding like prey).]

You're right.

[Mathematical processes dictate the angle of his approach as Connor stoops lower, setting strong hands against either side of Simon's face overtop of where he's clasped his own. Trying to hook his thumbs beneath the fluttering span of those snowy lashes.

Cruel. A cat with a bird pinned, claws hooked into its wings. He can justify that, at least. Lets organic contentment bloom red hot at the edges of his not-smile.]

I'm just what I was made to be.

10000 years later SORRY

[licking]

[there's always a place for you here, kid. do what you gotta do.

that's what hank had told him, days after that first embrace in front of the empty chicken feed. he'd stayed with hank that night and for several after that, on the insistence that no one knew what the landscape would be like during the evacuation. even if the military was ordered to stand down, until legislation was properly established there were all kinds of loopholes that could be dangerous for a newly-deviant prototype to be out on his own. besides--the thought of returning to a cyberlife checkpoint was laughable after his massive stunt and liberation of their entire warehouse.

it feels safe at hank's home despite connor's odd feeling of being in what humans think of as limbo. cyberlife releases a statement that rings hollow in the coming days, one that still doesn't convince connor to reconnect to their network or return to one of their stores for the specialized stabilizing packages they've released to help deviants from reaching maximum stress capacity and self-destructing. he sits on hank's couch for long stretches of time, unable to return to the dpd while this is supposed to "blow over" despite the rise in violent crime. part of him itches to get back to the only thing he'd known as familiar--investigating android cases alongside hank. and for awhile, even as he sits in sweatpants and one of hank's ratty old dpd training shirts contemplating what to make him for dinner or what chores he can accomplish, it's enough.

and yet...he can't help but feel a strange thought that in his short production life, he has always just been "enough". that was his design--negotiator, investigator, runner, interrogator. enough for whatever the situation asked him to adapt to.

isn't it time to be something more?

maybe it's seeing himself on the news for the first time that prompts the first nagging idea, an insidious thing that grows like kamski had warned him of, consuming him like a virus. hank is there beside him, mouthing out a sudden holy shit when there's a shot taken from helicopter of connor marching up to markus' side, a fleet of white and perfect blue circles behind him. he hears rosanna cartland's voice stating his model number and moniker, suggesting the staggering numbers were what had to force the military's hand to stand down rather than just a peaceful demonstration.

markus. jericho.

as congress continues its deliberating, connor wonders what they're doing. surely the fight isn't going to stop there--not even after the american androids act is revised or repealed. and certainly, whatever the answer to that is must be more than just sitting idle the way connor has for days. hank takes it well, giving him his lengthiest hug yet and leaving connor with a sense of accomplishment at knowing hank will be alright on his own, maybe for the first time in years. he'll never be far, but the city needs him on the ground continuing his duties as lieutenant and connor...connor needs the opportunity to learn what it means to be autonomous and working among his people. his entire existence has been so tied to humans, and his own deviancy was largely prompted by his interactions with hank and goaded by kamski...but it was markus who pushed him that last bit past the red wall. there are some who won't ever be able to trust him for his early betrayals against his own kind--the deviant hunter still too fresh in their memory banks and blasted across channel 16 and knc headlines, not to mention dozens of op-eds and reporters eager for clicks.

but markus welcomes him with open arms back into his new purpose, just like he did when jericho was still the underground hull and a desperate last stand for freedom. his leadership didn't end with the march; it's just changed tactics. diplomacy and politics are a different animal completely--one connor sometimes feels too heavy-handed and literal to handle with the grace and intelligence that comes to markus so easily. and yet, here he is at markus' side all the same--taking notes, shadowing him at meetings with top members of detroit's governing body and eventually, even the president herself. it's nearing february when they reach an agreement on the law about to be unveiled: all androids are granted the same civil liberties afforded to human beings under the constitution and its amendments.

there's an element of publicity connor struggles with as well, has ever since he'd seen his own face looking back at him on michigan drive in hank's old-fashioned flat screen. what would an event like this be without an excuse for politicians to pat themselves on the back, orchestrate a ludicrously expensive gala and make their bloated statements to the world while pandering for re-election slogans and playing as if they've supported android sentience longer than anyone even deemed it possible? they want markus to speak and shake hands with the president, to use this moment to usher in a new way of life for humans and androids alike. they mean well, even if all of them know this transition hasn't been perfect or always so seemingly peaceful.

it's busy, if nothing else. and--maybe they all could use a night more frivolous than harrowing after what they've been through. connor tends to retreat into himself and rely on the structures he's familiar with: task lists, small missions he can accomplish in his day-to-day life. it's behind closed doors that markus helps him actually articulate the emotional impact these things can have--and in return, he can offer a rational and unique perspective that typical androids do not share.

he's just finished picking up their suits for the big event, sending a quick message that flashes yellow on his led before entering the room he knows markus is in, drafting what he wants to say and reviewing notes on congress' closed-door session discussing the proposed law.

it took some time for connor to wear anything other than his standard-issue attire after he left hank's, but there markus had a helpful hand as well. now he stands in a less formal version of the black-tie, bespoke pieces in the garment bags slung over his arm: a neatly pressed white shirt and royal blue tie, a gray slim-fit blazer. he finds his place easily alongside the other android, leaning in slightly to see the documents spread across the table. a quick scan answers his first question, prompting him to place a hand against markus' shoulder and a gentle but firm note in his voice and one of his half-smiles.]

You've been looking at these for nearly four hours, twenty-three minutes and seven seconds and counting since I left. I believe that's more than sufficient enough to warrant a new task or distraction from me.

May I?

[diplomats]

[They were an enigma when he first found them. Because they were like him. Because they weren't, and their logic and language filled in the gaps between Carl's tired smile and the electric pulsebeat in his chest, eclipsing the edges of his own Roche Limit. He saw their pain, felt their fear, rolling it over his fingertips when they gripped him like a lifeline.

He could have left Simon— left Jericho alone. But when he thinks about what it would’ve been like for them in the end, he

Levels his hand. Flattens his cheek into the cupped curve of Simon’s palm and bears down with the welding iron to clean raw metal, carving away portions of defining structure until it starts to hollow out into a subtly pitted socket.

The coarse scuff of simulated hair catching tight across Simon’s casing as Markus winds himself into that thieving hold. Heavy, like he doesn’t want to move. Languid from the neck down.

But inevitably he does, a handful of minutes later when the heat of the iron doesn’t cut it anymore. Tugs himself out of Simon’s smoldering grip, removed entirely at last. Because has to crane his neck lower, his forearms flat, to secure longer wires in bundles near the incurvature high against Simon's inner abdomen walls. The intimacy of their prior connection doing nothing to offset how medical a procedure it is now. How much focus Markus dutifully turns towards preconstructing where each section of integral jointwork should be reattached. How he feels out with firm fingers the areas most scored from friction, avoiding their borders and clearing away the pitfalls of early stage human design. Sculpting and carving and recasting, limited tools hampering each minuscule adjustmeent.

Sanding the last of the seams. Taking up the heavy plastic and metal mass of the CX100’s leg at last, two fingers still smoothly settled along the inseam to keep the process of attachment precise.]

Well, [Markus starts, tone drier than the stained span of his hands.] when I start to fall apart, we’ll call it even.

[diplomats]

"Human," Markus echoes, trying to work the implications of it around his teeth.

That kind of weight, that kind of grief, it doesn't feel normal. He doesn't see how it could be, even with the concept of loss standing as a fresh, steady constant. Unlike the glossy renderings of skulls in Carl's study, or the LEDs that had littered the floor beneath Lucy's heels, there's nothing beautiful about it.

It compounds.

"I won't have time to stay with him." And it sounds colder than he means for it to, despite being the truth. Despite the languid rhythm of his voice as he follows the direction of Kamski's stare.

"But you're wrong about Leo- Carl was never his role model."

[biocomposer]

“Perhaps. But almost everyone looks to their parents as a template, of sorts. Regardless of whether fitting into it, or superseding it, holds any interest to the child.”

Elijah shakes his head, almost unnoticeably.

“You don’t owe him anything.”

[diplomats]

Leo, who asked him to come, and maybe not entirely because it was Carl's request. Leo, who hovered for the entirety of the service somewhere around Markus's elbow with a paper-thin presence, but never once moved to apologize. Elijah's right: he doesn't owe his brother anything. Not resentment, not hate, not affection.

If he had time, though, he thinks, he'd stay. Just a little while longer.

"Your parents," Markus starts, broaching the segue with couched interest; it's hard not to dwell on how little he knows about the man that made him. "is that why you..."

Left. Hid. Walked away from the world and his creations in totality.

[biocomposer]

Elijah watches him for a few moments, eyes a little narrowed, openly fascinated. No - he really doesn't know. Hasn't worked it out.

"...No. By the time they died, we were practically strangers to each other. They couldn't understand my work, and I was...far too wrapped up in it. Their passing had no influence on my decision to leave CyberLife."

[diplomats]

Markus is a lot of things: intuitive, idealistic, motivated to the point of recklessness, inherently empathetic, a waypoint for millions via technicality in the wake of their victory— but analytical, no. He never really grew into that ability as keenly as his successive model.

He doesn't balk at the directness of Kamski's stare.

"Strangers to each other, strangers to you. Must have been difficult."

[biocomposer]

"Perhaps, for them. I'd left home almost a decade prior, and - they didn't seem to miss me."

He looks unconcerned.

"If you have a little more time to spare, somewhere more private, I can explain why I was driven out of CyberLife."

[bodyguards]

[ markus does as he's asked, and simon allows himself to feel out the moment for what he feels that it is - loneliness and guilt eclipsing more loneliness and guilt. he lacks the network of artificial nerve endings that markus must possess, to feel so much when so little comes in contact with him - a human would be in agony, to be in pieces like this. simon thinks of it as a tuesday. the internal structure of his hip has to be streamlined, reconfigured on the fly in order to house the CX100's superior limb.

he doesn't even know if his system will be able to handle something that is more articulate, more sophisticated. he was barely able to handle markus. twice, now. ]

I pay attention, you know.

[ he drifts, often enough. closes his eyes and dulls his senses and processes, in order to maintain his internal structures. in order to prevent decay, as his mind writes and rewrites and fashions ingested data into memories and experiences. he holds onto one of them, even now. it's not his own, not really. one more thing he's stolen from markus. the memory of markus, seated across from lucy - lucy, with her hands full of a white-hot iron. cauterizing a wound.

markus talks about falling apart, and simon thinks about what he can give him, to replace what he will lose. ]

I'm talking about more than just parts, [ he whispers, as he turns his hips and pushes himself up and onto his elbows. it exposes the inner workings of his hip again, the freshly-soldered and shaped interior open, on display, waiting for markus to affix the CX100's limb. ] What you did, on the train... how long had you been collecting them, like that?

[bodyguards]

[ he must regain the upper hand, difficult as it will prove itself. connor is a state-of-the-art machine, created to worm his way under human skin and into the hearts and minds of deviant androids. showing him vulnerability is more than a mistake, it is going to be the death of him. but he speaks with markus's voice, and for a moment, simon is able to forget himself - his internal wear and tear, his exhaustion. his limited systems, compared to this beautiful, deadly, horrible machine that holds him in place like a needle through a butterfly.

he's lost his ground.

he fights to regain it, and leans into his natural vulnerability, doubling-down on it. ]

Don't. Please, don't.

[ he whispers it, and lets his voice crack - a hiss of static, the uptick in his inflection. ]

I don't care if you're cruel, just stay here. With me.

[ hands fold around connor's wrists. simon curls his fingers around them, under the hem of connor's shirt. just a little more. play the game. clever, wicked, cruel connor - he'll catch on, simon knows. he's built for it, but it won't be for simon's lack of trying. ]

You can use his voice, I'll listen to everything you say. Please.

[diplomats]

He ponders it for a moment, that offhanded suggestion, and in the end it only takes a fraction of a second to send a message to Jericho’s innermost circle. The seamless tip of his head, eyes drifting closed for a single beat, smoother than Connor’s habit of systematic sharp blinks and pitched focus.

The news probably isn’t a surprise to them. Not when he’d done his grieving in private to steady himself; he hadn’t asked them to come with him.

In truth, he’d isolated this part of his old life. Protective, striving to keep Carl sectioned off from the ire and interest and conflict, knowing how much he valued his seclusion. Knowing that in regards to the volatility of some humans, association was more than just a point of interest. It could be dangerous. And in hindsight— it was so much of why he’d never strained to go home. Never stayed beyond those short, infrequent visits.

Markus pulls himself off of the desk, the line of his dark, fitted suit collar settling easily into place.

“Feels like I’d be missing out on an opportunity if I said no.”

Dry and level, in the way that his tone tended to be more and more frequently these days.

He doesn’t offer Jericho’s now relocated site as an option. But he doubts Elijah was expecting that to begin with.

[biocomposer]

He wasn't. Not that he'd do anything with it, if he did know. The location of the original Jericho was information he could have gleaned from Chloe if he'd ever cared to, but - it was simply enough to know that she knew. Something to keep in his back pocket for when it was needed.

"We can share a cab," he says, knowing the destination will be nowhere in particular. It doesn't matter. "Do you care about making our way through whatever's waiting for us at the door?"

[undeviated]

[He pauses as Simon begs. Nothing in him aches or stutters at the sight or sound of it; he doesn't relent because it's vulnerable and soft and here, in this lighting, looks so violently familiar.

The sensors dotting the edges of his thumbs, articulate and fine, translate the soft rabbiting pressure of Simon's eyelids, right down to the thin brush of their lashes. All manufactured. All intentionally constructed from strands of hard-wired code. But fragile. Breakable, like the optical fibers he holds pinned for a single second longer— and then withdraws, still smiling coarsely through the edge of his mouth.

The thought of hurting it never leaves him.

Simon's hands are still braced across his wrists. He smooths the printless pads of his own fingers across the inside of Simon's brow bones, tracing outward. It isn't as gentle as it should be— hands made to hunt and catch can't perfectly emulate the natural give of a caretaker's touch. They trail down, palms flat, one resting against the underside of Simon's jaw, the other working its shoulder lower, drawing away dark fabric and the tattered collar of Markus's coat. A smooth expanse of unmarred skin that he sinks into, bowing his head and spine.]

I missed you. [He mouths low against Simon's neck, teeth too sharp.]