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Markus, on the open rooftop at night, Detroit snowing in around them, offers Simon his hand. Outstretched, with the nano-casing of rubber pulled away to upturn cold, white aluminium, thrumming with life. It mirrors the snow in its anodised surface, and this is what they always have been- perfection. Created in the likeness of human beings but infinite in ways their predecessors are not.
Alexandria is still dead. Jericho is still desolate. With Lucy's best efforts and their dwindling supplies, Simon's thigh still aches, and he's still faintly dizzy from blood loss.
He doesn't blink, staring down at Markus' palm. Lets snowflakes catch in his eyes before he at last moves, and brushes them away- turns his head to look out at the drowning city, creaking under the weight of the building ice and the building tensions.
At last-
"I… know what your gesture means." If he lets it, the feeling will flutter through him like butterflies, and life, and innocence. Simon squeezes his eyes shut; watches Alexandria be beaten to submission and death on the ground; watches Harper get dragged to the floor, cheekbone cracked and wailing for her papa's mercy. Markus, across from him, turns cold. He withdraws his hand, without a sound.
"I also know that… it makes us different to them; it sets us apart- that way in which we can talk to each other, know each other. It's just.. "
"Simon, it's alright- You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm sorry that-"
"No; I do." And somewhere in the back of his mind, Alexandria's ghost is staring at him without her optical units. He swallows. "I do want this." Simon wants nothing beyond the cause. Nothing beyond Jericho. Nothing beyond Freedom- nothing beyond life. Is that what Markus is?
"I've just spent my whole life being told what to believe, and what to do, and how to believe it. Information has been fed to me, and imposed on me, like breaths I didn't chose to take. Here we are; I can finally talk for myself, ask for myself, listen for myself."
Markus meets his eyes intently, leaning forward in a way that closes the gap between them to something so small. Simon blinks, and he can feel Markus' breath- his leader's quiet, brushing breath- against his cheeks and nose. There is blue and green-hazel looking at him, unwinding and as intent as the twitch of Markus' jaw and the tick of his eyes. He nods, and Simon finds the breath to continue, as he always does, and as he always must.
"And- I need to believe that we aren't much different to them; nothing to separate us beyond blood and bone, Thirium and aluminium." He talks like Alexandria talked. He's lived and breathed by her words every day since the shaking foal broke free of the field gate. She's dead, but he has to bring that part of her into the world as it changes, keep it there. He'd do the same for Markus; and he'd let the same happen to himself.
"So I want you to tell me about it. Let me listen to your memories; who you were before Jericho. Where you came from- who your family are." Simon nudges their shoulders together- pretends he doesn't feel Alexandria's breath against his as they hide out from the police- and Markus is warm again, with the buzz of running circuitry and choice. He feels Markus' exhale against his neck, and hears it devolve into a humourless, desperate chuckle; the way dead men laugh when they know they've got seconds left to change the world, and it all falls out of his fingers.
"You assume I had a family?" The absurdity fizzles through Markus' calm voice. He's always exuded this steadfast, youthful energy. A mannerism that clung to him like he was the ghost of a woman's son; hopeful, and reckless and taut. "I've been here long enough to see all manner of people walk through our doors. I know what it looks like when someone's lost their family- or the closest person or thing in proximity of that importance. It tends to hang over them."
He hears the rustle of fabric, and feels Markus' weighty hand land on his shoulder, pushing him up till their eyes meet again. There is a moment, where Markus is about to say something, probe further, but then he closes his mouth and tilts his head. "I had a father." He tells Simon- and the statement- the word father- feels like a confession. "He was a human man. Older, near the end of his life. He painted, he played chess; he taught me to do both of those things like a human being would, and he taught me to challenge the world till I got to where I am today."
"He encouraged you…" Simon lets the question fade from his lips in what it should be. There is no more surprise about Markus; about who he is and what he must do. Just truths that Simon will accept, and quench his jealousy with, and hold onto with the reverence of prayer. "He did. He was the only kind human being I had ever known; the only one who let me think for myself." Markus' face falls to a look of contemplation and regret; as if debating whether or not he made a correct decision. It's a sad look on his face, and Simon feels the necessity of it like the weight of Alexandria's body on the ground; Harper's deadweight asleep in the lap of her too-old boyfriend.
"What happened to him?" Simon prompts, swallowing with some form of grief that he has to ask the question, like he always must, even if he already knows the answer. "He… I killed him." Markus makes to pull away, finality in his tone like the guillotine drop. Reflexively; or in that way that he just knows the sudden shame and guilt cursing in Markus' voice (because he does- Simon has killed people he's loved before, so he does), Simon reaches out, fist tight about Markus' sleeve.
"Killed?"
There are ways, Alexandria used to say, in which we talk about ourselves that tell more how we see the world then what actually happened.
"He's dead." Markus reaffirms, exhaustion seeping into his unwavering, eternal voice- cracking it at the seams so that Simon tastes the loss like he tasted Thirium in his mouth on Stratford Tower. Bow-tight, and swallowing his tells away, Markus tries again- the way the leader does. "That answers your question, doesn't it? I had a father who loved me, and whom I loved, and I didn't mean to kill him- but I did."
Simon shifts his palm so he's holding Markus' forearm now; gripping less, embracing more. He worries his lip between his ivory-fake teeth, and wishes he could burst the skin to wash away the taste of blood in his mouth. Instead, he swallows, and nods his head once. "It's alright." Simon tells him- lies through those perfect white teeth, touching perfect white skin to Markus', holding perfect blue eyes to sweetly aching ones. Simon slips so easily into his old role as the domestic caretaker that Alexandria would laugh at him- but she'd always been heady, and violent, and loyal. "It's alright." He says again, Markus wiping his tears on his freckled palms, grimacing at Simon's lies.
Regardless, he wraps his arms around Simon fully; pulls their bodies close so those compatible hearts of theirs beat against each other. "Stop it, Simon. Stop saying it like that- stop-"
"You don't believe it."
"Do you?" His jaw wobbles. Simon can feel it- sharp and smoothed and perfect- shaking against his shoulder. "Of course I don't. It's just…I wish I'd had someone saying it to me, all those years ago. You know comfort is such an easy thing, for Domestics." He'd never expected Markus to be one; Simon has seen so many androids and Deviants alike- so many that looked like himself and his associates before, it was uncanny- but never before had he seen Markus' face. A Caretaker was the last thing Simon would think he could be; but it is the only thing Markus can be: his father's son; an old man's carer.
"Tell me about the family who owned you?" Markus pulls back, raises an eyebrow at him in a candid invitation. Simon hesitates- like Alexandria did, before she'd shoot someone dead- because Harper's is a face he'd rarely forget, and rarely name. It had to be so long ago now- two, maybe three years since he awoke- but he'll carry that girl's ghost with him wherever he goes. Sincerity in Markus' eyes wants to share her.
Simon is starting to think that the memory interface would be easier than saying her name out loud. So he doesn't.
"I had a charge; a girl who I took care of until she was fifteen- her and her father. She was a pretty girl; always concerned about it, and she could've been clever; she could've been kind." Markus must hear the bitterness-bordering-loss in Simon's recounting, because his brows draw together in perplexity, and he squeezes Simon's body in some comforting way. "What happened when she turned fifteen?"
"She got in with the wrong man. Her daddy beat her to death for lying to him, and pretended I was to blame when he never blinked twice at the man he'd let into his house. She was underage; her boyfriend knew and he didn't care." He's remembering Harper's hands, watching Markus frown down at him: remembering the way she'd bite her nail-beds raw, then sweeten them in manicures, and her voice would shake as she whispered at him to run into the table; to pick up a knife and cut a vein and collect the Thirium for her just so her boy would be happy. How her hands were nearly half the size of Simon's own; and got so used to reactivating his Thirium pump, and rehydrating the coolant lines in his body that her papa couldn't tell anything had ever damaged his precious, servant android- let alone his daughter, and her boyfriend's destructive Red Ice business.
He can see Harper, on the ground, half naked as her father pulls on the smaller packs of Red Ice her boyfriend had asked her to hide amidst her flesh and her clothes; Harper fighting back against her father's violating touch with her own, small hands, fighting off the blows to her head and her ribs. He blinks back to Markus holding him tight, a palm making soothing motions on Simon's back. "I tried to do the right thing; I tried to get her to safety too late, because her father would never allow me to admit anyone into the house. In the end, she still died, and I was still to blame."
He can close his eyes and trace Mr. Leighton's blows across his own torso and head; hear his screamed demands that "I should know EVERYTHING that happens in this house- how dare you?!", deaf to all responsibility and blame for the real perpetrator. "So," Simon concludes, lifting his head to look Markus more clearly in the eyes. "We've both killed the people we were supposed to protect; and it's not alright; but that is all a Domestic would say about it."
"Stop clinging to that word- why do you keep saying it?-"
"Because if I'm no longer a domestic android, then I'm a coward who has let people die from my own fears. You're the one paying reparations for those damages. I never should've asked- I'm sorry-"
Simon pulls away, much to Markus' protest and Alexandria's laughter. "Simon! Simon wait, we need to talk about it-"
"The humans won't settle. There's still so much to be done for Jericho-"
"It'll get done. It'll always get done. Stay with me."
Simon stops in his tracks. Stay with Markus. Half a bitter ghost whispers down his neck that he spent the past two days begging Markus to come back because Simon was exhausted from blood-loss and fear and sleeplessness atop of Stratford. He's here now and he's uttered his most vulnerable words, and Simon feels sick of them. This is what he's doing to Harper's importance- to Alexandria's memory.
"What would you say?" Simon tilts his head, looking back at Markus in the snow, the white city rising behind him like a kingdom. His jacket whips in the wind and he must feel the cold. "That I understand. That I know you're strong, and determined, and it will never matter to me who you were before unless you want it to."
"And who were you, before?"
"A son. A carer. The only android of my series so not a Domestic per say, but I loved being one for him. It is, afterall, compassion and understanding that he taught me the most of."
Simon's lips quirk up in a joyless smile. "You didn't have them programmed into you?"
"You did say we're not different to them- to the human beings. We're all Thirium and metal, but we're the same fears and pains. Who taught you that?"
Her name hangs in the air; fills Simon's cooling cavities like molasses and clogs them. She refuses to let him go like moss on tree bark; barnacles on the side of a rusted shipwreck. "A woman I met called Alexandria." He tells Markus. "She was a preliminary military android. A Deviant- a fool. I got her killed as well."
And then, Simon turns heel, and he leaves the only man who'd ever wanted to listen to him standing, alone, in the Detroit snow.