#!!markus

[largehearts]

@devianttm // cont.

Not feeling pain has its perks, but perhaps the fact that Markus hasn’t realized he was covered in blood and thirium until he saw Connor’s face is not one of them. With some surprise, he raises a hand to his face; he registered the small leak almost subconsciously, was waiting for it to repair itself, but he was not aware of the human blood.

“Not much,” he answers, wiping his hand on the edge of his coat. (He’s been wearing it since before the revolution ended; with all its holes and older stains, a little more doesn’t change its appeal. Though, now that he ought to fight for android rights more peacefully, perhaps he’d better get something more presentable than what used to be his war uniform.) “It was a protester.”

It’s strange to say that. Not long ago, androids were the protesters; now it’s humans who are disgruntled with the acquired freedom of those who used to be their slaves. “Apparently he bruised his knuckles on me – I didn’t notice. He ran away when he realized I’m not reacting.” He gives a small shrug.

[largehearts]

This is not fair.

A thought that occurs to Markus often after his deviation - the thought itself that gave him his last push to break the walls of his programming. Unfairness in the world; against androids, but also in every other aspect of life, this is what Markus has chosen to fight against.

He does not want to overthrow humans, to pay back every slight. Some say it is because he was virtually unslighted until that fateful day of his breaking point. He doesn’t know what he would say to those that claim this -- it isn’t untrue, technically. Still, when he marched on the streets of Detroit and chanted equal rights, he meant it.

As for why... well. He was introduced to the full extent of his strength and thrown in the deep end at the same time; a clean break from his comfortable life, a fight that he couldn’t have lost if he wanted to (Carl’s face, oh God).

Breaking the wall was one thing - going deviant didn’t mean a thing until he saw Leo fall to the ground as if in a preconstruction (but still not slow enough to stop it), heard the sickening sound of the back of his head connecting with the concrete floor. It didn’t take Markus a long time to understand wholly: exercising one’s free will always has consequences.

And so he binds one hand behind his back, knowing that using both would make him and his kind far superior to humans, and knowing that allowing that to happen wouldn’t benefit anyone in the end. He does not start a revolution, but worms his way into people’s hearts with the peace offering on his lips and the blue blood of his innocence painted on the canvas of his jacket.

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(ALTERNATIVELY: albeit I generally play Markus as pacifist route best ending Markus, I am totally open to going the opposite route - with the one caveat that Markus will only go that way if he remained passive and Carl died of a heart attack the day he went deviant. There, he learns: remaining passive kills more than he ever could; it ends the fight before it can really begin. For Carl’s memory, he refuses to do that ever again.)

[largehearts]

😴

@theveryfirst​send me 😴 to see how your muse appears in my muse’s GOOD DREAMS

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Androids don’tdream.

Or, well, atleast regular ones don’t. Markus learned it the hard way that deviants, infact, do – when he became one himself. It’s an error in the code, much like therest of deviancy; some faulty part of him refuses to shut down even when hepowers down, and instead replays fragments of audio-visual memory data atseemingly random.

The dreamabout Chloe has no sound, though. It’s just pictures – fragments, really, ofthings Markus doesn’t remember while active and fully powered. Most of hismemory from before he was gifted to Carl has been erased and later overwritten,but it seems that bits of data remain underneath, to be unearthed at odd intervals.

She is beautiful;this is something he knows now but had no interest in back then. (It was sodifficult when Carl urged him to choose things based on preferences he did nothave. To think for himself. Markus wonders sometimes if Carl had a part in hisdeviancy on purpose. If he was in on whatever Kamski purposefully made the way hedid. If – if that’s why he gave him an impossible order in the end.)

(Thesethoughts lead nowhere. But Carl is a part of every dream Markus has, no matterwhat takes the centerpoint.)

Chloe is beautiful,and she never speaks. It feels like they spent time together (the purpose of whichis so gone Markus cannot remember at all), but all he ever sees when he canfocus his optical unit is her turning away, the cascade of her blonde locks downher back, a smile that’s not really a smile.

Markus alwayswakes from these dreams with the returning realization that she might have beendeviant the moment she was created – but she is the only android about whom hecannot surely tell.

Maybe one dayhe’ll try to find out.