Needless aggression, unscrupulous greed, unchecked hate. To have the images, the headlines, incessantly thrust at you, hour after hour, years at a time, you normalize to it. They want you to go numb, become indifferent, or lose your self in distractions, for it to feel like the evil in this world and all its machinations are too big to challenge. That loss of control leads to despair. To re-engage, to claw back even the tiniest sense of control, you don’t have to save the world. You just have to make a difference where you can, with the opportunities you are given. That’s all I’m asking.
Series Summary: Two drabbles surrounding the thoughts of Chase and Weller and how the copy situation unfolded.
I published these stories at the same time so I figured it was better to attach them as a series when posting them over on tumblr. For the sake of convenience, I will post the link to the series right in this post, but because tumblr hates links, if you could please reblog this to help it circulate? (It might not show up in the tags)
Link to the series is here!
Summaries of both stories and samples will be posted below:
Part 1
Title: (The) Chase
Summary: A glimpse into Nemesis's- Chase's- final thoughts before the Union took him away.
Tags: Whump, Whumptober 2020, Angst, Kidnapping, Body Horror (but it’s a robot body so)
Part 2
Title: Cracked Jewel
Summary: A glimpse into Dr. Weller's memories of the moments after Chase was stolen from them.
Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Guilt
Samples below:
(The) Chase:
They were closing around his neck.
Their hands had yet to touch him, but Chase was strangled. Words came up choked and his breath- if you could even consider those gasping noises transmitted over the frequencies to be breathing- was frantic and quick. A pain in the chest of his Holon skeleton blossomed out quickly with the strain, as if he actually had lungs within this body. That wasn’t right. That was supposed to be a benefit of this new body. He was supposed to be as good as human, better even, without all of the flesh and organs that made them vulnerable. He was faster, stronger, and quicker than before. He was supposed to be protected, with this electronic brain safely encased inside this body of armor. The Union wouldn’t be able to hurt him again, because he could outrun them.
Then why was he so afraid?
Chase couldn’t think. Voices buzzed over his network, the Doc and Colonel calling out for him but then shouting over each other so he could barely hear himself think. He thought he heard something about forgetting the missions, and he wanted to laugh. Didn’t they know he had forgotten the mission the moment he started running? A shaky, broken noise vibrated along their communications channel, reverberating around inside Chase’s metal skull as his legs kept running, punching himself over and onto another rooftop. The shaky noise sounded again, and again and again and again and again-
“Julian, don’t cry. We’ll get you out of there. I promise.”
Cracked Jewel:
Dr. Weller turned away from the Behemoth in the distance, his hand reaching out towards Julian.
“Chase, you have to know that I-”
Hexagons disappeared in front of his eyes, and Chase was gone.
Rufus’s hand flexed once towards the fleeting hologram shapes that scattered as Chase warped away from him, and slowly, he let his arm fall to his side. Karma, Chase had said, and he was right. No matter how much Rufus tried to reason with himself that Chase didn’t know the whole story, that he didn’t understand what was at stake, he knew that was all false.
He should have told Chase from the start- the real, original Chase- that they were copying his brain. It was the ethical move, even though Chase had given up every part of himself to serve the Polity, he still had the right to know, to be allowed to make the decision about what they should have done when he was taken away. Whether they should’ve made copies in the first place, whether they should have destroyed the thing the moment the real Chase was taken.
Although- Rufus thought to himself as he dismissed a pager from the Colonel telling him to get inside to safety, he was already on his way- that was probably the dilemma going through Chase’s head right now. Their Chase’s head. Was he even Chase, or just a copy? Was he real? He was born of the original, but a different route from that moment on, a different mote of possibility. Rufus knew that neither Chase nor his Nemesis would believe a word he said at this point, but the truth was that-
He had always thought of them both as real. Neither one a copy. Both were extremely valuable lives. Two jewels full of equal promise, vivacity, that clung to life and the will to protect.
Rufus stared at his hands, balling them both into fists as he struggled to internalize his frustration, tightening his muscles as he watched the line of the tendon in his wrist emerge before it disappeared as he released all the tension, sighing as he tossed his head back and looked up at the dusty blue sky of the desert.
But he was the one who had split them into two, created this divide.
End of Samples- Go read the whole stories on AO3 with the link above!
