she says he won't let her get a dog, which is fine, because they're in an apartment, and that's the kind of thing people say about their partners. he won't let me get a dog. and you're at a dinner party and you tilt your head a little to the side just like that dog he won't let her get, because is this the thing that's going to upset you? you don't know every corner of their relationship, she could be joking, they could have had so many healthy conversations about the dog, right, and maybe she's not letting herself get the dog because of money and time and whatever. but, like, she did say let
and she wants to move away from his hometown and he wants to stay and then he tells you with a wink and a conspiratorial stage whisper don't worry i'll convince her and she laughs about it - so clearly this is something they laugh about. but you do just stand there and stare at him like what the fuck, man. you can't say what you want to say which is why do you get the final say on everything because they're both obviously aware of the other person's stance on this and have obviously had private conversations about it and what are you going to do about it except make a scene and then he'll be mad at you and call you one of those bitches behind your back and she'll cut you off, which is a loss that doesn't feel worth it just because he makes you a little skeeved out every 3rd comment
and they both agree he just isn't the type to get flowers which is fine because everyone shows love differently, and are you really gonna judge someone based on their sense of individual relationship responsibility? maybe he's constantly cleaning her car and writing her poems and making her furniture or something. maybe she doesn't even like flowers and this is perfect, actually. and no you couldn't date him, obviously, ew; but like, she tells you she's happy. you almost send her a tiktok that says don't be 25 and the cool girl that doesn't need anything, you'll hate not getting flowers at 30, but that's like, starting drama & you shouldn't start drama needlessly.
and you're a little older than her but not so much older you can pull the whole trust me on this one babe thing and besides that wouldn't have worked anyway (when does it ever) and besides you have trauma so you and your therapist both agree that you're always looking for a problem even when there isn't one. and you tell yourself that just because you see them for 15 minutes every month does not mean you can identify every single red flag based on a single shitty half-joking(?) comment
and besides, what are you going to do? she says i actually wanted another stand mixer but thankfully he stops me when i'm about to spend too much money and you're standing there like are you okay? is this normal? is this just something people say? and again - what are you going to do?
to your therapist you try to language it - it's not, like, any of my business. but sometimes, doesn't it feel like - you should do something. there's got to be something, right? you've tried dropping little hints but they sail right through and you've tried having a single serious conversation and she got upset because why does it matter to you, yes it's different but we're happy, it doesn't need to make sense to you and you're like. really unwilling to push a boundary about it anymore; because the truth is that you know logically it shouldn't matter to you, as long as both parties are happy.
and besides, you've been wrong before. it's just... like, every time you see them both, something else happens, some kind of shiver down your spine like do you even hear each other when you talk. it's their strange, bickering orbit. just the way he's on his phone through dinner or watching sports instead of helping in the kitchen or, fuck, another one of these little throwaway comments he makes about we'll see about that, babe. she laughs when he calls her passions stupid shit and meanwhile she gets him tickets to see the knicks and he tells you well at least she's smart about something and still! it's none of your business.
you say get the dog anyway and she laughs. like, this is is you being funny. and not you saying - no really. get the dog. get the dog and get out of here. pack up and start running.
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RE:BOOTING, Awakening.
Part one-> Here.
Have fun!
———————
There are three things John believes in. The divine, The machine, and The flesh.
His own body has been over, under, twisted around this conglomerate of parts for months. People have called, texted, mailed him for Christ's sake. But there's nothing more important than feeling unforgiving metal bend under his human hands.
Ghost is a machine so broken and tragic, John cries when he's alone with it.
he forgets there's a human inside of there, forgets though always passively aware of the chip in the machine's name where he works around it. When he's welding metal together, wiring it, staring into its chassis with adoration and wonder, he neglects the fact there is a human ‘soul’ in there, waiting to wake up.
John's never been dead, he doesn't know what the real man inside the metal feels.
But he longs, he wants to shove more than his hands inside this robot. This Replicant, he wants to become one with it, in a body he's created himself. In his hazy mind he believes there's god inside this machine, because there is some god in everything and in him, and he is inside this machine, bits of himself- his handiwork, his blood, his sweat, the tears from drunk nights sobbing over a machine while he tells it things he could never admit to himself.
It takes his time, his sleep, his awareness away from the world. There's a bottle of medication right by his night stand and everyday he avoids it, he's so focused now. There's never been anything else like this, like peeling the synthetic skin away from metal and improving what couldn't fix itself. John doesn't want to lose any attention he has on this machine.
Days and nights pass, he prolongs the inevitable, making tiny worthless upgrades, small details, painting back some of Simon Rileys tattoos onto the cold dark grey metal, they barely show up unless in the right lighting but who cares? Anything but turning it back on, anything but having the man inside look upon John and see what he's done, to see him, see inside John's head and every thought he's had while inside him.
John hopes robotic bodies don't hold memories, he hopes when a Replicant's body is turned off that they can't see anything, can't hear anything, he hopes Simon is sleeping well in whatever realm of data his soul is in now. He doesn't want to be seen, he just wants to work. Free to love and care for things that feel nothing at all.
When he turns this machine on it will cease to be just that, it'll be a person. A person who will look down at themselves, call it good, and never see him again.
He'll be letting go of the best thing he's ever made, he'll be letting go Ghost.
[«»]
Time catches up anyway. He sends the email and they respond in kind. A week from now John Price, Kyle Garrick, and Kate Laswell will arrive at his office, So it's time. John will turn the ‘key’ and Simon will wake up.
When he does, for a brief moment he considers a gift from god- there is silence. Those brown eyes blink open, the synthetic skin on his face and neck pull when he turns his head, scrunches when he sniffs the air. John has never felt so… unsure of what he's done.
“Where am I?” Simon's head pulls up, he rattles against the metal table, john looks down in shame and purses his lips- unable to really make anything of his own doing.
“Where the hell am I?!?” Simon rattles again, John looks away from the restraints on him in guilt.
Simon continues his questioning, his flailing, John can only hope it'll end soon so he can get a word in- maybe explain. But in truth, how could he explain being reborn into a machine?
The sounds grow closer and John makes nothing of it until a towering figure blocks every inch of his vision.
Of course, he would make Ghost inhumanly strong, and of course he would fail to make proper restraints.
“Who are you, what orders were you given?”
Simon's face looked down at him, that face he had painfully put onto a plate he 3D printed just so he could keep it as accurate to what few pictures he was given. Scars and everything, even those tiny freckles he hand painted on- exactly where they should be.
Orders, right, orders are much easier to explain.
“You're aware of what a replicant is, yea?”
God let him keep his eyes anywhere but on the man in front of him.
“Captain Price, your superior; found you dying in Texas of all places- put you in a very old Replicant soldier body that was beat up and declared a spare.”
John thanked whatever gods out there that Simon had taken steps back to sit on the table, the table with broken leather straps- Christ above.
“He came to me to fix you up the best I could, so I did. Fix you, I mean.”
He felt… tired, John didn't bother explaining even more. couldn't really think beyond the sudden wave of exhaustion. Instead he sat down at his closest chair and bemoaned some of the papers and parts Simon had stepped on.
There's a giant silent expanse between them, John yearns for cold metal with no gaze to freeze him solid.
“When am I on active duty.”
John bites his tongue, goes for a cup of coffee on his desk he knows is cold.
“Price is coming around with the rest of the squad in three days, presumably he'll move you and you'll be in their care.” He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Simon is prone to one word responses and direct questions, John shouldn't blame him for it. He doesn't, not really, he blames himself most of all. For getting involved with a Replicant, for spending what little sleep he got at its bedside, for whispering his secrets into a hollow skull.
“And you?”
Oh, John doesn't know. What does anyone do when losing a part of themselves?
“I'll move on to other projects- military always has issues with something, once someone gets word about who patched you up, i'll get more orders. I do good for myself.”
He wants to brag, he wants to brag and act like Ghost isn't the best thing he's worked on in his life.
“Right.”
[«»]
In the end those three days are spent in silence. Simon only needs to recharge really, so John goes back to sleep in his bed. The world has never felt colder.
He's not listening to their reunion, not really. Price is happy to see Simon again and Garrick makes his introduction- he's charming and John finds he likes the people in this squad, it's certainly better then some.
Laswell is who he spends most of the time with, there's papers and documents of all kinds. John wants to poke fun at them using ancient methods like a paper contract but he's still so tired.
In truth, the only thing that really catches his attention is when Price turns to him and asks him, John Mactavish, to join the one-four-one.
It's been years since he'd been on a military base, he shriveled at the thought of shitty “laboratories” and rec rooms full of people that became uninterested in him once he spoke about what he was truly passionate about.
He lays down his clauses, he'll work here, loath to change his environment.
There's a secret glee inside of him though. Proper gym equipment, maybe the opportunity to work on more specialized robotics then just his usual contract allows. When he says yes, Kate slides his contract from under the one he just signed.
Quietly it feels like fate.
——————
👍I take my leave.
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prommy i'm not trying to liveblog which i can't even do extensively b/c while i Must speak at length, it sure takes time and effort all the same. but i'm hype delighted again like, midway through, talking to the mvp brasso friend with this kind of....not entirely sure what blue collar gig he's got here lol but. cassian walking up and their earnest exchange turning into cassian's ;0 ;0 ;0 [no Actual obvious cues abt the transition] implicitly asking him for an alibi by "correcting" him about what he did last night, as what They did last night. and my taking a second to catch on just like the other guy brasso, Immersive. and i love the way things don't feel like predictable such that there's no slight surprises / reasons to be attentive like this, but also aren't like confusing or incomprehensible. i'm already hype remembering how brasso here responds by just rolling with it, seguing right into playing along, and then their talking between the lines of their story they're constructing together. hype enough i'll leave this open while i actually watch through the rest of the exchange. ooh yeah the way you're kind of waiting along as well to see if brasso's "correction" to their story here is going to be a rejection of it, but actually he's adding to it to cover cassian being a bit banged up And to even extend the story to include a reason they're now standing together talking right at this very moment. ah and i guess they're coworkers also? even though cassian's plot allows for no day job material that we see
also that i'm hype b/c it's like, heartwarming lol, this guy is just like yeah i've got you with your cover story even though i don't now what for and cassian didn't try to answer who might be asking for it. the way you get the lore that cassian gets into trouble already and the way that if someone's in trouble that can get the people around them in trouble, if someone's vulnerable that can make the people around them vulnerable, and obviously that's not ideal but also there's nothing for it and you can't throw them to the wolves, or rather, you sure can but the like effective collective punishment of it all to preclude its being easier to unionize or indeed help insulate each other from whatever vulnerability is like, the deliberate strategy, of course it's best re: that strategy if taking on the inherent increased vulnerability of being involved with, or supporting, or helping other people is deemed not worth it, or gets people focused on blaming the people in trouble rather than the people behind whatever reprisal instead. fun understandable moments when bix is head in hands about helping cassian out in a pinch, and then when her space boyf is like look as her space ex who seems to always be stressing her out when you come by i'm not the biggest fan, and that he responds to cassian's brushoff abt her being tougher than both of them with the line along the lines of "i'm getting tired of hearing that" is like, again yeah fun understandable lol but then narcing on cassian to get the space cops to solve his problem? like, not the way, and of course now pointing the feds in that direction doesn't just smoothly work out, the comeuppance in his dying b/c calling this down on them also gets bix caught up in things, you're all [handshake] w/cassian in this scenario in how you're viewed here and that None of your best interests will be catered to today....nothing for it trying to get anything out of the [police state life] situation, nor is the way that if anyone's more vulnerable than everyone else, you just shut them out or push them in front of the bus, even if the bus is cruising around trying to pick up them specifically. metaphors. feels all like v apt setup for the more significant return to ferrix at the end involving maarva bringing some politics like "i'm the first brick at stonewall, we can't Just get by forever" and cassian like well i Will be having to come through for bix though. wrote it, post it
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