[Connor steps away from him as if he’s been pushed, and Markus thinks he might have departed further if not for the couch acting as a barrier behind him. His boyfriend might be able to perceive what ails Markus in tangible measurements — tired, stressed, worry lines created at his brow upon thinking of a war still unfought — but the same applies in the reverse. Markus, in all of his deep perceptions of people, would have to be blind to not read the person closest to him. And in Connor he perceives anxiety and guilt; he can feel the weight of emotion cocooning each word that slips past his lips, harried and hurried, yet it still does very little to quell the surge of disbelief that rises in his stomach when the other android makes his point.
—get rid of me before I find Jericho—]
Get rid of you? [He echoes, eyes searching Connor’s face, as if trying to understand why he would think such a thing remotely viable.] If I retain my memories of this place, why on earth do you think I’d be able to do that?
[It’d be like carving his own heart out from his chest.
Markus steps forward to close a portion of the space between them, unknowingly mirroring his actions of the night in which he had met Connor for the first time, in a future that has yet to come to pass.]
And if I move us, who’s to say you wouldn’t still find me? [Connor is ferociously clever, almost intimidatingly smart. He doesn’t give himself enough credit, Markus believes, by thinking it’d be so simple. It wouldn’t. There are too many variables, too many unknowns, branching paths that flow outwards towards realities he couldn’t comprehend — the butterfly effect’s full influence, making this advice just as uncertain as doing nothing differently.]
Nor would I just leave you in CyberLife’s hands, if you don’t think you could wake up on your own. [Is that what the meant? Forever caught in the thrall of the corporation that treated him like a leashed hound? I may have made a choice to change, but I was never in control of myself.] You can’t ask this of me.
no subject
—get rid of me before I find Jericho—]
Get rid of you? [He echoes, eyes searching Connor’s face, as if trying to understand why he would think such a thing remotely viable.] If I retain my memories of this place, why on earth do you think I’d be able to do that?
[It’d be like carving his own heart out from his chest.
Markus steps forward to close a portion of the space between them, unknowingly mirroring his actions of the night in which he had met Connor for the first time, in a future that has yet to come to pass.]
And if I move us, who’s to say you wouldn’t still find me? [Connor is ferociously clever, almost intimidatingly smart. He doesn’t give himself enough credit, Markus believes, by thinking it’d be so simple. It wouldn’t. There are too many variables, too many unknowns, branching paths that flow outwards towards realities he couldn’t comprehend — the butterfly effect’s full influence, making this advice just as uncertain as doing nothing differently.]
Nor would I just leave you in CyberLife’s hands, if you don’t think you could wake up on your own. [Is that what the meant? Forever caught in the thrall of the corporation that treated him like a leashed hound? I may have made a choice to change, but I was never in control of myself.] You can’t ask this of me.