I didn't. [Markus confesses, working the sharp edge of his lower canine against his lip. Against the word itself. Collecting.]
I don't know how it happened, I don't know why I felt—
[Stop-start, and unsubtly so. Sometimes he thinks he's more than the adapted sum of what he was programmed to be, but there are parts of him that even he can't access or rewrite. Portions of his mind palace that don't respond to his presence, his touch, cut off and just out of reach, across still waters that don't exist outside of fabricated reality. If he dwells on it, like everything else, it erodes the clear-cut picture of his world— or maybe his perception of it, filtered through the lens of stored experience, already gone painfully stale with age. The sound of his own name cutting across his teeth, or what it was like to let his chassis warm in the sunlight of Carl's bay window.
Everything he's done since, he's done for their people. Because they needed it, because he wanted to, and despite the irony of it now he can't fully imagine living a life that involves turning his back on their quiet pain. But he doesn't want to think there might be more to it than that.
He's afraid, he realizes. Of what Simon would think if he knew.
He squints. Blinks, nose shifting sharply to one side as his mouth pulls in a hard-edged frown, doubling down on the task at hand: metal hitching against cauterized metal as he levers it slowly into place.]
When we raided the Cyberlife warehouse for parts.
John was the first.
[John, who'd willingly thrown himself into the fire without a second thought to save Markus. The first, the kindest, the strongest pull on his senses, Markus always knew — whether he acknowledged it or not— when he was near.
And he'd let him go. Let him die for his own mistakes. It's a theme that seems content to repeat itself over and over again.
There's a resonant, reverberating click, more sensation than sound, as the CX100's magnetized joint latches itself at last— Markus's fingers dipping quickly away to let the inner seams of Simon's casing align with it as naturally as possible. There's a gap: a difference of a fractional centimeter on one side, and Markus runs his thumb along the offending section of plating, testing with his hands to see if he can't willfully reshape it. Stubborn.]
no subject
I don't know how it happened, I don't know why I felt—
[Stop-start, and unsubtly so. Sometimes he thinks he's more than the adapted sum of what he was programmed to be, but there are parts of him that even he can't access or rewrite. Portions of his mind palace that don't respond to his presence, his touch, cut off and just out of reach, across still waters that don't exist outside of fabricated reality. If he dwells on it, like everything else, it erodes the clear-cut picture of his world— or maybe his perception of it, filtered through the lens of stored experience, already gone painfully stale with age. The sound of his own name cutting across his teeth, or what it was like to let his chassis warm in the sunlight of Carl's bay window.
Everything he's done since, he's done for their people. Because they needed it, because he wanted to, and despite the irony of it now he can't fully imagine living a life that involves turning his back on their quiet pain. But he doesn't want to think there might be more to it than that.
He's afraid, he realizes. Of what Simon would think if he knew.
He squints. Blinks, nose shifting sharply to one side as his mouth pulls in a hard-edged frown, doubling down on the task at hand: metal hitching against cauterized metal as he levers it slowly into place.]
When we raided the Cyberlife warehouse for parts.
John was the first.
[John, who'd willingly thrown himself into the fire without a second thought to save Markus. The first, the kindest, the strongest pull on his senses, Markus always knew — whether he acknowledged it or not— when he was near.
And he'd let him go. Let him die for his own mistakes. It's a theme that seems content to repeat itself over and over again.
There's a resonant, reverberating click, more sensation than sound, as the CX100's magnetized joint latches itself at last— Markus's fingers dipping quickly away to let the inner seams of Simon's casing align with it as naturally as possible. There's a gap: a difference of a fractional centimeter on one side, and Markus runs his thumb along the offending section of plating, testing with his hands to see if he can't willfully reshape it. Stubborn.]