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

[bodyguards]

[ it feels -- good.

even as non-essential processes terminate abruptly in the wake of the synchronization, the complex language that passes between them where they've connected fills him in a way that he knows humanity could never comprehend. binary that is full to bursting with rapid conversation, a poet's self-portrait spoken blindly against his bared casing, the stimuli that passes lightning-quick between all points of white-hot contact where markus feeds into him and he desperately feeds back into markus. gently copying over their leader's emotions and thoughts and core functions into a tidy little data package that sits like a mote of divinity, stored lovingly somewhere in the depths of simon's mind.

they trade themselves, through contact. copied data, easily accessed in the form of a crystal clear memory. he has more than one memory of markus - from the moment that they had met, to this point in time where he has connected to him and drawn him in. felt him settle into his alloy bones and the worn corridors of his coding. what little he is, he partitions away and fills himself with markus instead. his core stutters and glows, soft as a nightlight - his structure designed to simulate comfort for young children, not to compose himself as a companion might. yet, here he was.

bare. his nose bleeding, a soft drip-drip that came with overburdened subroutines that struggled to follow markus's lead. markus, who could easily copy twenty of simon into himself and still have room for everyone else in jericho. markus, who was full of voices and minds. he carried their people with him, at all times. and simon, old and decaying at the rate of winter's first snowfall. ] Josh. It was Josh who taught me.

[ he's laid open. in more ways than one. ]

I met him, before I met North. All he could do was recite his lectures, he just wanted - so badly - to do as he was designed.

[ gentle, soft, wonderful josh who had fallen into simon's hands and wept raggedly after he finished hundreds of hours of ethics and philosophy lecturing to the single individual who sat by him patiently and listened. it had been something cathartic, despite how wounded and heartsick josh had been after completing his task. simon thought of him now, the way he thought of her -- hoping in his secret heart that they were okay. knowing that if they weren't... he could not bring himself to regret stealing markus away, the way they had all decided to. ]

I'm not much of anything, really.

[ there's a light, wry laugh that escapes him.

it shivers out, as he wipes his nose with a dark sleeve. ] I've become a very good thief, though.

[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.]

[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.

[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.

[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?

[diplomats]

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.]

[bodyguards]

[ the response: that's no fault of yours, sits on his tongue for a moment. simon swallows it down with great difficulty, fighting that natural urge of his to diffuse tension, to politely acquit himself of strong opinions in an effort to balance them, to maintain cohesion. he's kept jericho from falling to pieces for a long time. with jericho gone, he easily refocuses his efforts onto markus, and markus alone. there is no one else. he had promised north, promised josh - and in that promise, they had missed the obsessive way that simon would gladly pour his life into markus's well to ensure he survived well into their people's future.

they had to have a future ( did they still have a future? ). ]

He was happy.

[ simon remembers john. the android at the warehouse, the one markus had spared and converted before their eyes, opening a mind to something more than encoded reactions and routine. it had been an eye-opening sight, watching the ease in which a simple touch could wrest an android into deviancy, and simon had been irrevocably, shamefully frightened of that conversion. no wonder, he had come to realize, the newborn deviants had rallied around them so easily. they had been given no time, no room, to come into their identities.

it's a thought he does not share with any of them, let alone markus - markus, who fits the CX100's limb to his adapted joint and holds it in place as it connects. he feels the weight of it on the edge of his consciousness, as his processes reach out to it and begin to patch and fuse. there are gaps in his mind, the same as there is a soft gap between limb and joint itself, where he cannot fully bridge the advanced structural codelines of the synthetic limb with his own aged functions... but when he tells his toes to flex, they flex. when he bends his knee, it bends. ]

Not happy to die, [ he promises, rolling his weight onto the bare hip of the CX100's former limb, dragging the legs of his pants up, to his thighs, to his hips. he fastens them, but does not try to clamber to his feet, while his system calibrates and runs updates and further patches. some fail, and he feels the errors stockpile in a heap at the corners of his system in warning. ] Just happy. You gave him a chance to know what that was, Markus. That's all any of us have ever wanted - just chance, just choice. The dignity found in being alive, and choosing what we do with that life.

[ it's with soft hands, that he reaches for markus's face. gathers the angle of his jaw into his palms, cradling it the way the crook of his thigh had - minutes before. ]

Help me to my feet.

[diplomats]

[Happy, Simon says. And in that moment Markus can't remember a single instance where that word defined the PL600 laid out beside him, restitching his appearance inch by dutiful inch, burying the beauty of his bared ribs and yielding, pliant insides. Relieved, he's seen. Hopeful, thinly. Removed and grieving and molded to his surroundings on intelligent instinct, but happy in his freedom, even now— especially now—

Fingers run sweetly across his jaw, cupping when he can't stop himself from falling into them, soft between his shoulders.]

No, [Markus refuses, without pulling away, still anchored in Simon's attentive grip. His own hand working itself overtop of that broken one, fastening it to his cheek.] no, you only just finished processing your repairs. You need time.

[He wants time.

Like this.

Even so, he doesn't hold any illusions. There's no safety here in well-worn walls and the barricade of their pitted concrete. If they stay too long, those rigid angles will bend down, turn from sanctuary into a cage where they'll be cornered. By Cyberlife, by the FBI, by the police, maybe, investigating suspicious silhouettes in an abandoned site. It wouldn't take much.

It never took much before.]

[bodyguards]

And I wish I had it, but I don't.

[ it's a simple statement, said with his softest of tones; the one reserved for someone he doesn't want to make unhappy, but must deliver poor news to. simon's legs shake as he fixes his clothes, trying to put himself back in order after being torn apart and rebuilt, after feeling markus race throughout him until he'd hit such a high it had broken something inside of him again. delicately, he wipes his nose until his self-repair fixes the burst seams and focuses on calibrating his new limb.

his system struggles, forcing him to move slowly. first to his knees, then to his hands. practically crawling into position before he braces himself along the nearest wall and begins to creak to his feet. ( this can't go on, he thinks to himself; one day, he won't be able to go on. he'll hinder markus, he'll be what gets them cornered and killed. ) and on his feet, he continues to move cautiously - waiting for his system to figure out what it can accept from the CX100's limb and what it has to reject. ]

It's going to get colder, Markus. I don't think either of us is in any shape to fight the freeze that will come off of the lake.

[ gently. gently. ]

-- and I need to get you to Chicago, as soon as possible.

[diplomats]

There's nothing waiting for us in Chicago. [It's a fact, not an excuse. He's out of those. He's always been out of those— and there's nothing of his maker's hands in it: that right belongs to the home that breathed life into him, not electricity.

Simon rises, and for a moment Markus only watches him. Functionally held up by a difference in time and determination thicker than blood— or maybe purpose. Maybe purpose. His palms are flat against cold cement, legs tucked under his own center mass, chin high where he stares a single moment longer. Rooted. And uprooted. The inescapable dichotomy fused to the entirety of his timeline now.

But then he concedes. Warmth still lingering on his insulated casing from the deeper hollows of Simon's sweet-soft chassis.

He rises, and knowingly doesn't reach for Simon in that fragile moment. It's the supplies laying nearby, the ones he'd abandoned in favor of a single request, that he returns to. Packs the backpack with thirium and spare casing components, packets of fasteners and all the tools they'd left spilled across the ground.

Simon's old leg, disconnected and lifeless, he picks up last. Spilled thirium will dry. The footprints outside already covered by wafting snow. This, though, heavy in his grip from encased alloy marrow, would make it all too obvious where they've been.

It's not his limb to feel sentimental over. But it was a part of Simon, once, and Markus briefly considers that between the two of them, he's the one more sorry to let it go. To bury it, rather than embrace it or keep it or section it away, knowing the farther ahead they move, the more they'll lose. Without any real means to destroy it, he turns mismatched eyes across their surroundings instead, mental processes barely flexing to preconstruct possible scenarios and safer outcomes. In the end, he fights (deftly) against gravity to clamber up along warehouse storage shelving, well-worn boots pinned tightly against framework and brick. The crate he opens is old, but it gives easily enough under the twist of his hand, just at the seam. Humans have a habit of meeting the world at their eyeline: opting to bury evidence above their heads (all irony aside), is the best option for the timeframe and tools they're burning through.

Snapped shut, faux factory sealed, the crate's realigned with its surroundings, and Markus drops back to the floor— having now, hopefully, bought Simon enough time to acclimate to his newfound mobility.]

Last chance to stay. [There's no hope in his voice. He's too mired in reality, watching the set of Simon's hip, measuring out how long it takes for his knee to bend or his heel to find a supportive angle.]

[bodyguards]

There's someone there. He escaped Detroit before the barricades went up, we'll be able to rest there.

[ on mismatched legs, he takes unsteady steps. his gait a shabby, ungainly thing as he works his new ankle and realizes that the toes won't flex properly. not the way his old limb used to - the knee shakes, the hip trembles. running will be a conscious task, but he hopes that with time and use, his system will adapt. it will learn to coordinate, because they are not just machines made of inflexible code. they are alive, and to be alive is to adapt.

for a moment, he paces the length of the warehouse they've hidden away inside of. hands pressed to his chest, fingers tucked under his chin as he methodically counts code breaks and measures the length of his stride. turning algorithms over in mechanical silence, eyes disfocused and focused all in the same moment. his peripheral senses pick up on markus, the mournful way that he seems to dispose of the dead limb. the graceful way that he climbs scaffolding, into the warehouse shelving. simon loses him for a moment, and it's in that fragment of time ( separated; but not by much ) that he pauses and looks to where markus has vanished.

thinks of how easily they could be separated.

thinks of what he's done, how far he's gone and how far he will go, to continue stringing jericho's most beloved son along. he is the unrepentant mary magdalene, it seems. a mantle he realizes he must take on, to keep markus's momentum focused on the path that simon will lead him on - the one that will save him, keep himself. ]

What am I doing, [ he whispers to himself, to the palms of his hands as he buries his face into them and tries to find a balance between necessity and selfishness ] Oh, what am I doing.

[ markus's voice, behind him.

simon unhunches his shoulders, fingers tracing down the front of his face to his chin. curling against one another, the image of fragility as he rests them at sternum height. the look in his eyes suggests he's anything but. older, brittle, and wise in a way that defies the trends of most deviants. ] We can't stay here. We'll freeze. I know... I know it's a lot to ask, after what I've done to you - but follow me a little while longer, Markus. I'm not -- I'm not leading you blindly.

[diplomats]

[Simon watches him disappear. Markus disappears with purpose, and doesn't think anything of it, too driven by what has to happen to stop and think about how far away he's gone again, connection slacking like a tied line.

For a little while.

—what am I doing. It's barely there. So soft and so quiet part of it erodes under the scuffle of Markus's boots as they drop from ledge to ledge with pinpoint precision; only the second verse catches his attention, Simon's back is still turned, and the high curl of his angular shoulders from behind (arms tucked rigidly against his chest) melds the edges of his silhouette with darkened walls. Private council comprised of Simon's voice, Simon's hands. Simon's fears.

Markus doesn't interrupt for a change.

His feet are firmly planted by the time he slaps his palm across metal to simulate the heavy sound of his own landing; Simon unhinges the doors to his closed-off session as he turns, still brittle in the gaps between knuckles and teeth, all of him folded around the distant beating of his heart. His beautiful, tired heart.]

Don't worry. [Markus breathes, speaking in that distinctive tone of voice he uses when he's aiming to mend wounds or tend to the dying. Slow and unshakable. His hand finds Simon's elbow first, settling just an inch behind the joint.]

I still trust you.

[bodyguards]

For now.

[ said, with the whisper of something wry, something waiting in the wings for recognition to dawn upon markus's sternly-composed face. already, simon's composure comes back to him; he's practiced, experienced in masking not only his feelings, but his mind. more a ghost than something alive, aged in consciousness and clearly in body. he imagines markus yearns for comfort, auditory and physical. it's with that in mind ( the lingering warmth of markus's mouth on his thigh, between them -- ) that he brings his hands to that freckled face and presses his cold palms to simulated skin.

simulated, and undeniably warm. ]

There are trucks. We'll need to take one, we can't walk in this weather - we'll die long before we get to the city.

[ for a long, lingering moment, he keeps his hands where they are. fingertips curled around the rounded edge of markus's jaw, tucked soft against his throat and chin, his thumbs aligned with the outer corners of his bicolored eyes. it reminds him of their positions in the church, the way markus hadn't wanted to be still, hadn't wanted to linger - and now he does. it worries simon. he's stolen jericho's leader from the cause, and doesn't know what affect it will have on his mind. it's the greatest crime he could commit, he thinks. ]

We'll talk, when we're there. I promised you, I didn't forget.

[ the words are soft, almost breathless though he doesn't need to breathe; a horrible promise, sealed with the faint press of his mouth to the corner of markus's own. one more crime to add to the pile. he'll burn for them all in the end, he knows. ]

Come on. This way.

[diplomats]

It won’t change.

[His trust. Even if he knows better, even if he thinks he’s being deceived or led or lied to— he’s made his choice now. Or he’s fallen into it all over again, like the way he’d tumbled into Jericho. Off balance and entirely uncontrolled. Not really a free fall half as much as it was a gravitational spiral, marked by mathematics and scientific theories he could lay down like a timeline: centimeters per second, mass versus gravity careening down, down, down.

Simon puts his lips to the corner of Markus mouth and he’s done for.

And it’s terrifying.

And it's beautiful.]

Let me drive. [He doesn't sound dumbstruck, there's no numbness lingering at the edges of his functional interjection, footsteps cutting in across Simon's still-delayed pathing just before a (mildly) raised hand follows suit. Automated GPS will get them wherever they need to go, but vehicles operating entirely on their own also yield by default to traffic instructions and law enforcement: if there's a road block, if something happens, someone should be at the wheel ready to steer them away from danger.

Someone with two functioning, synchronized legs and hands.

Not that Markus says it out loud.]