"And if that happens, someone else will pick up where we left off."
He's certain of it. Certain of the kinetic flow of belief and unbending determination. Certain because of how far they've come already, and the idea that what's become synonymous with his name might eventually diffuse among their people instead is more comforting than he cares to admit.
A cause is better than a graveyard; their lives better than safety in silence.
Still, Simon's fingers tighten, winding themselves between his knuckles. Despite the focus of their conversation, that's where Simon's attention buries itself: weaving the negative space between them tighter, watching the slow slide of simulated skin as it recedes in crawling patterns, giving way to stark white plastic and manufactured jointwork. At odds with the idea of piety in the name of their people. And maybe that's all Simon's ever really known. PL600 models were designed to give. To care until their bodies bent and broke down. If he maintains that habit now, is he any less deviant? Is he reclaiming whateveer he'd lost before he violated his intended programming?
Markus remembes how unmistakable it'd been when they'd first met. The idea that Simon hadn't asked to be this way. That they all— including Markus— had to deal with it.
But those fingers are a present pressure, and his blue-eyed gaze is soft. "If you don't want this, tell me."
It wouldn't hurt any more than letting another fraction of himself wash away under the drag of Jericho's increasing gravity. It wouldn't hurt.
no subject
He's certain of it. Certain of the kinetic flow of belief and unbending determination. Certain because of how far they've come already, and the idea that what's become synonymous with his name might eventually diffuse among their people instead is more comforting than he cares to admit.
A cause is better than a graveyard; their lives better than safety in silence.
Still, Simon's fingers tighten, winding themselves between his knuckles. Despite the focus of their conversation, that's where Simon's attention buries itself: weaving the negative space between them tighter, watching the slow slide of simulated skin as it recedes in crawling patterns, giving way to stark white plastic and manufactured jointwork. At odds with the idea of piety in the name of their people. And maybe that's all Simon's ever really known. PL600 models were designed to give. To care until their bodies bent and broke down. If he maintains that habit now, is he any less deviant? Is he reclaiming whateveer he'd lost before he violated his intended programming?
Markus remembes how unmistakable it'd been when they'd first met. The idea that Simon hadn't asked to be this way. That they all— including Markus— had to deal with it.
But those fingers are a present pressure, and his blue-eyed gaze is soft. "If you don't want this, tell me."
It wouldn't hurt any more than letting another fraction of himself wash away under the drag of Jericho's increasing gravity. It wouldn't hurt.
But he has to know.