#psychedelicdeviant

❝ ❞❤ ▬▬ emotional starters to kick you in the feelings. // still accepting!@psychedelicdeviant

          it had been a risk to leave their borders and go to DC to speak with the madam president herself. public opinion would keep the government from doing anything against him, but markus was aware of the anti-droid groups plotting within the country. outside of their foothold in detroit, he was a moving target. it was a fact that had become very clear in his travel.

          and so, markus could understand the relief in lucy’s eyes as soon as their gazes met. he was SAFE and he was home, just as he had promised her he would be. the weariness of travel seemed to roll off of him the closer he walked towards her presence, happy to finally be near her again. a month of separation ( as short as it sounded ) had been torture.

meme   /   not   accepting.

THERE   WAS   A   certain   awkwardness   to   him   as   strong   arms   cradled   the   sobbing   woman,      the   awkwardness   of   a   man   with   near   infinite   empathy   who   was   simply   just   too   conditioned   to   a   world   of   hostility——      his   path   was   and   always   will   be   peaceful,      but   it   didn’t   mean   the   endurance   he   and   his   followers   exhibited   was   any   less   brutal   on   their   part.      markus   was   no   longer   accustomed   to   gentle   comforts,      but   that   wouldn’t   stop   him   from   trying.

hacking the camera, josef snapped the engineers neck and stole his uniform, swapping their clothing, he laid the engineer down on the examination table and smeared blue blood across his face. it wouldn’t pass an inspection but at first glance he hoped that it would give him more time. josef then replaced the shattered remnants of his leg with a compatible limb from one of the other androids taken from jericho, pushing the part of himself that felt sick to his stomach about it to the back of his mind.

    standing in the room, dressed like one of their engineers, josef felt the familiar prickling of hatred. hate for what cyberlife created them for, servants and slaves, hate for what they had done to jericho, to his friends and his allies. it felt so thick around him that he imagined that it was comparable to choking.

composing himself, josef exited the laboratory in search for a terminal of some sort that he might be able to use to gain information on the building’s layouts, perhaps he could find others that were like him, playing dead and waiting for the chance to escape. as he searched the floor he was on he heard a commotion and jogged to investigate. an engineer and two armed cyberlife security officers were escorting an examination table and on the surface . . . lucy. josef bit back a sound of desperate concern, regulator pounding far too hard and far too quickly, simulating the panic that he felt.

                          X [ INTERVENE ]                    O [ DO NOTHINIG ]

                     ❝  this is jericho... these are deviants...  ❞

He stiffens at the touch, keeping eye contact for only a moment, ( her eyes were so dark that he could see himself reflected back ). Is this what he wanted? Irrelevant: is this what he deserved? Of course not. Even with his limited emotional intelligence, he knows she should hate him. He’d tried to take everything from the deviants.

Even when they tried to “save” him.

( Software Instability: +15% )

“Am I awake?” Obviously. That’s not the right question, is it, Connor? Try again. “Aren’t I supposed to feel different?” Deviancy was like a fog dissipating, an impossible revelation, a burst of emotion -- it was supposed to be something. Not a resigned acceptance of his own actuality. It wasn’t supposed to feel natural. As if he’d had grown used to it his entire existence.

He looks down at her offered hand, something akin to a guilty expression on his face. He couldn’t claim he was just acting as a machine like the others could. He chose to be what he once was.

     lash marks and necklines━ they’re usually buffed away, gone before he can recall what put them there, or what he sounded like asking for them. now he has freckles, bites along his palms, the corners of his fingers and past his wrist, some still GLITTER. he doesn’t feel pain ( thank you, he might have suffered in several past lives if he did ), but he panics, just  small amount, when there’s shard-glass where he thought he’d healed. fixed. HEALED. even in bad lighting, and as a free man, he still has his body-glitter. 

in touching his shoulders, connor tensed. it wasn’t common for him to have someone touch him if it wasn’t some act of violence. and he could deal with that, easy. it was his duty to know what to do when a person came at him with aggression. but this -- it was different. in such a way that he could feel his default programming trying to find the proper reaction that wasn’t anything but to retaliate. and he knew he couldn’t... because he felt comforted.

❝ lucy, i... ❞ he choked, trying to figure out a way to counter everything she said. to invalidate her sight to bring her down to see him for what he really was. what he knew he was... everything he was told to be. 

he wanted to be kind. selfless. compassionate. empathetic. at least... when he saw those things, he thought me might like to feel that.

as she closed the embrace between the two, connor tried his best to reciprocate, but he still remained at a stand still. his body stiffened more as he felt her come closer. the words he tried to find had become lost as he reached to cover his mouth from saying anything that would further punish himself into thinking he wasn’t real.