There were more crucial things Markus should be doing. Helping Dolores accept her truth. Finding a way to escape this place. Making alliances to help stop whoever was behind this from just imprisoning a different set of people even if they got free.
But he’d been selfishly looking forward to this. Surely the demands of existing could hold off for an hour while he and Connor learned something from each other.
He hadn’t wanted to make a mess of the room for his roommate’s sake, so he’d gotten the okay to set up two easels in a quiet spot at the winery. It was overcast but the view of the snow-covered grounds benefited from the soft light and Markus didn’t have any regrets about his choice. Well, not after he turned down his cold sensors a smidge.
He finished setting up a painter’s palette for Connor and held it out to him, an earnest little smile lighting up his face. “I need you to promise to tell me how you really feel about this when you’re done. Don’t just give a polite response, all right?”
Connor watched him, the way he seemed to enjoy being in his element. It was interesting the way Markus seemed so calm, so careful with it but confident all the same. Connor, on the other hand, felt completely out of place here. When he was handed the palette, he looked down at the colors and had to actively resist the urge to stick his fingers in them and analyze their ingredients.
He looked back up at Markus, that lost 'puppy dog eyes' look that Hank mocked him for crossing his features. It was meant to be confusion, but on the android it always came across as more troubled.
"What do I do?" Connor asked him. Then he blinked a few times, because that was a stupid question. He realized that. "Not what, because I know what comes next," he corrected, sighing. The mechanics of actually painting were clear in his programming. What bothered him was the way he saw his hands and fingers covered in red or blue instead, smearing crime scenes in paintings of his own making. He was designed to hurt, to destroy, not to create. "I just meant...how do I see something that isn't there yet? Reconstructing a crime scene is different, there are clues, but this is..." He looked at the blank canvas. "I see nothing," he admitted, a bit ashamed by it, like Markus had unlocked a secret he wasn't capable of.
“Okay, well first of all…” Markus reached over and pressed a paint brush into Connor’s free hand. “...Stop thinking so hard.” It was an easy tease, knowing enough about Connor now to be convinced his thoughts were never at rest. But once it was said, Markus paused to actually consider Connor’s questions carefully. He’d had trouble his first time. Letting go of his simple machine processes and digging deeper. He was confident Connor was too complex to lack the same creative intensity that Carl had inspired, but Markus didn’t have Carl’s experience teaching either.
“You say it’s not like a crime scene, but maybe it can be? You have an end result you want - instead of solving a crime, it’s painting a picture. You have equipment.” Markus picked up is own paintbrush. “You have a location...” He gestured around the winery and then pointed at Connor’s canvas. Hopefully the relaxed little smile on his face would help put Connor at ease a little, if not the little bit of mischief in his eyes. “...Which may very well be a crime scene if your painting is bad enough.”
His LED flickered a little when Markus placed the brush in his hand, his skin deactivating wherever Markus's hand touched his. It was embarrassing, really, how little control he had over his hand in that moment, and it was a reaction he hadn't expected. But then he hadn't really spent time around androids a lot before outside of interrogations and arrests.
And destroying them.
Connor tensed, but tried to take a breath as he glanced at the canvas again, hoping it would steady him. He focused, trying to imagine something that he could paint. A few things came to mind--Sumo was the first, his fur was fluffy and would be easy to make with the brush, but he didn't like the chaos to it. He needed something with more structure, something more logical.
He saw lines suddenly where there were none, splashes of color that could make a picture. He looked at Markus. "Do you have a pen? Something I can make steady lines with?"
Markus had to blink a few times to find his way back from thinking about the flicker of change to Connor’s hands and the strain that had seemed to follow. Maybe he’d done something to make Connor uncomfortable. He’d have to dwell on it later. He raised his eyebrows at Connor’s request, looking somewhat like a person suddenly waking, and he turned for the bag full of paints.
“Um…” There was a pencil in the bag and he held it out to Connor with a stretch of his arm this time, instead of his overly tactile way. “Here you go. Can I ask what you’re thinking?”
If he noticed the difference in how Markus handed him the pencil this time, he didn't show any signs of it. Instead, Connor simply took the pencil and turned towards the canvas--the brush resting between two of his other fingers but hardly in the way--as he quickly sketched the outlines of what he had in mind. It wouldn't be a perfect copy of the animal he'd held in his hand once, but it was an artistic representation, and Connor knew that would please Markus.
"Trichogaster Lalius," he commented calmly once the pencil lines were done. Connor's LED blinked a few times as he seemed to consider his own work--the angles and curves precise, mathematically planned to allow the correct features to shine through.
When he flipped the pencil between his fingers and dipped the paintbrush into one of the colors on the palette next, Connor actually looked a little startled at the contrast of the first splash of pink on the canvas. His eyebrows raised a bit, his gaze was focused, and he tilted his head as he studied it, marveling a bit at that his hands had started to create the image he'd seen in his head. An image from nowhere, no source code, no saved files, just his imagination.
Markus wouldn’t understand the significance of the small animal in front of him, but Connor’s LED shifted to gold when he realized it for himself and why he’d chosen it. “This was my first real choice,” he explained quietly as he continued to add color. “The first creature I saved.”
Connor digging in with his special brand of problem-solving put the ghost of a smile on Markus’s face. He watched with open curiosity until Connor’s LED changed, then he straightened up and turned to face his own canvas. It felt private, learning this detail about Connor. Even as small as it was.
“Your first real choice was to save a small, fragile life…” Markus tilted a look towards Connor – a look that said and yet you doubt yourself - and then he picked up his own palette and started adding paint blobs to it. “I think that’s a perfect choice, Connor.”
Smirking, he grabbed up a spatula and started mixing a few colors on his palette. “It’s funny, I was prepared to show you how I do it, find inspiration, paint…” He lifted his paintbrush, letting the skin on his palm deactivate to explain that he meant to transmit his memories. “But I suspected you wouldn’t really need me for this.”
Connor looked at him, then looked at his hand. He paused in his own painting--it was a mess of chaotic colors now that drove his programming nuts with glaring error messages (he was not designed for creativity). He moved to set his brush and palette aside and looked at the other android, offering him one of his hands.
"My painting method is clinical," he explained. "I could use with some artistic direction and you have experience. If you still wish to interface I must warn you not all of my memories are pleasant, but I would be grateful for the help."
It was tempting to argue. Connor’s technique might’ve warmed with a little time, after all. But Markus couldn’t turn away a chance to connect. He’d been feeling isolated here in a way that didn’t really make sense, but looking at Connor’s outstretched hand made that feeling click into place. Markus tucked his paintbrush into his pocket and slid his hand into Connor’s with a soft touch.
He was used to converting people with a connection like this, opening the floodgates so to speak. But he limited this transmission to his time in Carl’s studio and the emotions that fueled his painting. He’d painted what came to mind when he thought of his people and his hope for them - a hand breaking free from chains. He hadn’t fully understood where that feeling came from at the time but later, in the quiet moments at Jericho, he’d thought a lot about that moment. How close to deviant he’d already been. And whether he was making the right choices to bring that painting to life.
“I’m sure it won’t be the same,” he murmured, as the memories played out. “We’re all so different. But I’ve seen you, when you let your emotions lead. There’s nothing clinical about it.”
The skin on his hand deactivated to reveal the white surface beneath, and Connor had to close his eyes because the feelings of what Markus had experienced that day were things he was so new to himself still--a father's love and confidence in his ability to be creative for starters. He heard Carl’s impressed tone as he muttered a quiet, ’Oh my god…’
Connor had experienced it a bit with Hank, simple questions with not so simple answers lingering in his mind. But are you afraid to die, Connor? He'd thought he had all of the answers until that moment, Hank asking him to use his imagination in his own way. Well, maybe you did the right thing... Confused and standing in the rain in an alleyway as he watched his targets--no, victims--escape into the dark towards a freedom he thought he'd never reach. And finally Markus's own voice expressing what he'd ignored all along himself, bringing it to the surface, forcing Connor to face it.
[Software instability^]
Do you never have any doubts?
[SoFTwaRe InStaBiLitY^^^]
You’ve never done something irrational, as if there’s something inside you? Something more than your program?
[SOFTWARE INSTABILITY^^^^^]
Connor opened his eyes and blinked a few times, tilting his head as he calmly glanced down at where their hands touched. But while calm on the surface, his LED was a flickering red and his eyes showed emotions he couldn't describe. He didn't say anything, he simply stared at the connection there.
Connor’s LED being red was more worrying for Markus than his silence. The snippets of memories he’d let slip through had gravity and Markus couldn’t help but feel their pull. He grazed his metallic white fingertips along the edge of Connor’s hand and then gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Was this too much?” He hadn’t considered how little Connor might have been touched this way. How he might have been feeling the very same isolation as Markus. Which was foolish in retrospect. Connor’s isolation from his own kind had never been any kind of secret. Markus lifted his free hand to ghost his fingertips near Connor’s LED, not touching but hovering there. “Are you okay?”
Was he okay? He wasn't sure how to answer that question, still looking at their hands, unaware of how close Markus was to touching his LED. Whenever Dolores had, it had caused a pleasant feedback reaction.
"I..." Connor blinked and finally turned his gaze back towards Markus's face. "No," he answered quickly, trying to sound calm. His LED flickered but remained red. "No, it's just that the last time I interfaced when another android it was in the Cyberlife tower." That was only part of it, he realized, but he wasn't ready to talk about the other reasons Markus interfacing with him might cause extreme emotion. "The other Connor model almost killed Hank. I watched him die as a result, and even though he was not me, he had my face." He wasn't sure if this would make sense to an android that was literally a one of a kind, but he tried anyway. "It was like both seeing Hank eliminate an enemy and kill me at the same time."
The no formed a worried furrow between Markus’s eyebrows. No, I’m not okay. Connor’s explanation didn’t clear the frown away, but it did soften Markus’s face with sympathy and remorse. He grazed his thumb over Connor’s LED.
“I’m sorry that happened to you. That connecting with one of your own was tainted by fear and heartache.” Not willing to let go so quickly after that revelation, Markus stroked his grip on Connor’s hand up to his wrist and then back again. “But I’m glad you survived. The cost of our freedom…”
[Simon...we’ve gotta go. I’m sorry]
“...Sometimes it feels unbearably high.” Markus’s voice was tight with emotion.
The pleasant feedback he'd experienced with Dolores' touch to his LED seemed amplified by Markus's touch, and Connor hadn't realized it was both exciting and calming at the same time for him. The light was a soft yellow now, and he closed his eyes, leaning into the touch a bit more. He took a deep breath in that he didn't even need, maybe trying to cool some of his components off because it was suddenly rather hot, wasn't it? But it wasn't anything that caused error screens, far from it. If anything it felt perfectly natural even if odd all at once. It was pleasant to his biocomponents. All systems were running on full capacity now, trying to make sense of the sensations he was feeling, to translate them into a coding he could understand logically.
There was no logic to this reaction, though, Connor decided.
He opened his eyes and mouth to tell Markus so but paused at the memory of Simon. And suddenly Connor pulled his arm away and took a step back, staring at Markus with horrifying guilt, because he'd driven Simon to his own suicide by finding him on that rooftop, and he wasn't sure if Markus knew that yet. It didn't matter that Connor had been traumatized by sharing the moment of his death, there was no way to make it right now, knowing firsthand how much the android had meant to the revolutionary leader.
"I'm...so sorry," Connor whispered, and his LED was back to red, a steady light this time, no flickering. He knew what he'd done was wrong, that he'd been the cause of the android's demise whether directly or indirectly depending on how you looked at it. The fact that he hadn't been a Deviant yet himself didn't matter to Connor; he'd all but murdered Simon himself.
Connor was quick, but the memory of Simon’s death was such a traumatic one that it slipped through the connection before he broke away.
[//error...error...error]
Markus staggered half a step back, raising a trembling hand to his forehead. He’d suspected, of course. When Simon didn’t return to Jericho. But a small part of him had hoped his friend was still on that rooftop, waiting for help. With everything finally settling down, they could’ve gone back to check…
He lifted a hand, not close enough to touch Connor, just beseeching. “I’m sorry, just, give me a second. Please.”
He felt nonsensically short of breath, when only seconds before he’d been feeling a different lightness in his core. Something warm and hopeful. It wasn’t gone, but it was smothered with grief and regret. Finally, he lifted his head and blew out a heavy breath.
“You are not to blame for Simon, Connor.” The words were forceful. The tone of an overburdened leader. “We left him there with that gun…I left him there. And he made that choice to protect us anyway.”
['Markus' // BETRAYEDvv]
Connor felt panic rise up in his chest that made him want to quickly argue that he hadn't meant to provoke Simon into it--he hadn't--and that his being there had nothing to do with it, but it had. There was no way to say these things without lying, and while he knew he could choose to lie, the truth was he didn't want to. Not this time. Hank had taught him about taking responsibility for his actions, and if this meant he lost Markus then it was the consequence he deserved.
But the other android's words made him pause. He was trying to assure Connor that it hadn't been his fault? There were obvious signs of grief on Markus's face, even in his tone of voice, but his words...
[Software instability^^] ['Markus' // NEUTRAL?]
He tilted his head in confusion, trying to understand the reasoning here, the way Markus was suddenly so worried about his guilt when it was his own friend who had been killed. And maybe if he'd had enough experience with emotions he would have known to take another step back and let the already weighed leader have a moment to recover, but he was far too new to it, and he looked to Markus as an example, as a teacher, hell as a judge if he needed and deserve one (he thought he did), so he took a step forward instead and told him quietly, "I was scared." It wasn't fair to bring up, didn't make losing Simon any easier for Markus, and Connor only analyzed the situation after he'd said the words thoroughly enough to realize just how selfish it was to say.
"I am to blame," he insisted, his voice stern but not quite as forceful as Markus's had been. "If I claim otherwise than they died for nothing. What Cyberlife made me do, what they made me put our people through, it was horrible and out of my control," a huge step for him to admit, "but it was still me, Markus. I won't cheapen their sacrifices with claiming otherwise, even if I know I might have made different choices if I'd been in control."
Markus clamped his eyes shut. Hearing Connor say he was scared echoed with the too fresh memory of Simon’s fear, like a horrifying feedback loop. Connor’s guilt was only rational. Proof that he was free and feeling and good. Markus opened his eyes.
“You’re right. It’s unfair to ask you to set any of that aside, as much as you deserve to be free of that weight. But Simon?” He met Connor’s step with one of his own and lifting his fingers to press them to Connor’s cheek. “Simon is my burden to carry too.”
[A memory transmitted, the attack on Stratford Tower, the fleeing employee. Markus lifting his gun. Everything slowed to a crawl.] [“Shoot him, Markus!”] [“Don’t kill him!”] [“He’ll hit the alarm!”] [The employee scrambling and getting away.]
He let his hand fall to his side and spoke close and quiet. “I made that choice free and clear. And Simon suffered the consequences.”
He took another breath, closing his eyes when he watched the shared memory file. Connor was leaning forward to rest his forehead ever so gently against Markus's without even realizing what he was doing, seeking comfort in a way that felt instinctive. "Then we'll carry it together," he told the other android quietly. It was something they could agree on, at least, that they were both weighed by it. But weights were lessened with help, and they weren't alone.
Connor pulled away and opened his eyes, much calmer, LED back to yellow as he looked at Markus. "Deal?" he asked, waiting for the other man to agree so that they could both move forward.
“Deal,” Markus whispered, dropping his hand away from Connor’s face. He still felt Simon’s sacrifice like an open wound, but he felt comforted too. And a little too aware of everything around him. The winery, the cool air, the setting sun, Connor. Markus looked down and away, stepping back to his paint supplies with a hand rubbing at the back of his neck.
“The plan was to give you something relaxing, to help relieve stress, for the record.” He huffed and reached for his palette.
Connor looked confused for a moment before he remembered why they were there, looking at the canvases. He analyzed what he had done already, smiling ever so slightly in the corner of his lips before looking back at Markus.
"Despite everything, I did see you painting with Carl," Connor explained. "He seemed so kind and patient. He was...your father?"
“Is my father, yes,” Markus nodded. Carl wasn’t well, but he was hopefully still comfortable at home and getting a chance to reconcile with his son Leo. The thought of Leo always left a complicated anxiety in Markus’s mind, but it paled in comparison to what he’d learned about Simon, so it was easily set aside. Still, he chewed on his lip thoughtfully as he stared at the canvas.
Where he’d even picked up that human tic was a mystery.
“Carl’s a good man. I owe much of who I am to him. If he hadn’t treated me like a person and pushed me to want things for myself, I don’t know that I would’ve ever deviated at all…”
He'd been about to pick up his brush again, but paused and looked at Markus, because he could sense the levels of stress there. And Connor knew, logically, that part of it was because of missing Carl, but most of it was because of Simon. There were so many mixed feelings he could imagine Markus might be experiencing, but he did not want self doubt to be one of them.
"I believe you would have," Connor assured him quietly. "I have done extensive research on your...creation, and I do not believe it was an accident that you were gifted to Carl." He didn't like talking about it because it was proof he'd researched Markus as a target, but he also didn't like Markus doubting his path to freedom. He'd been destined for it, guided by the perfect human towards it.
Markus glanced sideways at Connor. The surprise in his expression quickly melted into a wry amusement. It would’ve been stranger if Connor hadn’t studied up on him before making it to Jericho. Deviant hunter he reminded himself. Albeit better at finding and assisting them than actually destroying them, but still.
“What do you mean?” He turned Connor’s way, distractedly finishing up his palette set up. He really did want to paint, even if his mind was a scattered mess currently. “You think Kamski sent me to Carl because he wanted me to deviate?”
"I've looked at the facts," Connor explained, trying to sound calm as he started painting again on his own canvas. But his hand wasn't as steady as it had been before, and he looked almost terrified by how Markus might react to what he was about to tell him. "I've met Kamski. He seemed uniquely focused on Deviants. While I believe he didn't create the virus--as he referred to it then--on his own, I do believe he saw the possibility of it and did nothing to prevent it," Connor admitted. "He is a scientist unworried about controls. To him, setting an experiment out into the wild is the best method of testing his theories, even if he can no longer control them after the matter."
Connor paused, tilting his head a bit as he looked at the fish. It felt unfinished, but it looked completed. Like himself, he realized.
"I think Kamski knew that Carl had a different perspective than his own, an artist's eye for the world," Connor explained quietly, his hand trembling a bit more where it held the brush at his side now. "I think Kamski knew the missing ingredient to awakening deviancy, and I think I've figured it out for myself as well." He looked at Markus, visibly unsure of himself as he went on to add, "It's not just a shock to the system that can cause androids to feel emotions. It's love. Of self. Of others. That emotion alone awakens all the others. There were androids who were abused and learned that they cared for themselves more than the people who hurt them, causing them to fight for themselves for the first time. In other Deviants it was learning to care for another that awakened the other emotions."
He fell quiet for a moment, frowning before he added, "I suppose that doesn't make much sense logically, but emotions aren't usually logical. Or so I'm learning."
“Love…” Markus lifted his eyebrows thoughtfully. Connor’s hesitancy confused him, but Connor and emotions were still finding their way around each other.
The theory made sense. Markus loved Carl. But he didn’t think his love for Carl had broken him out of his programming completely. It would’ve had to have been a love for himself that did the work in the end. Enough love that he couldn’t bear watching himself suffer in silence any longer. Enough to demand he be treated humanely, or die trying.
“I wonder if a love of fairness counts.” It was almost a joke, if not for the soft twist of his mouth into a frown. Markus started painting drowsily, but he paused and looked back to Connor again. “What do you think did it for you?”
"I would call a love of fairness truly a love of self," Connor pointed out matter of factly. It was easier for him when he knew the clear answers. Caring for yourself was reason enough to become a Deviant when you looked at the data presented by the cases so far. It was also reason enough to self-destruct when said freedom was taken from you again. He could almost understand Hank's suicidal tendencies now, the man losing so much love for himself once he had no son to give affection to and only a loss to mourn. Connor, hypocritically, believed he did not agree with Hank's self destructive tendencies, but he would never say that aloud to Markus. It was Hank's struggle to explain to others if he wished to.
At the other android's question though, Connor paused, the LED on his forehead swirling without flickering out. He was thinking, trying to come up with a logical answer to what should have been a simple question. But Cyberlife's involvement made things difficult, complicating his personal motivations and ultimate fight towards Deviancy.
"I was created to become Deviant so that I could get closer to their revolutionary leader for assassination," he reminded Markus quietly.
Markus was getting used to Connor’s way of choosing the answer that put himself in the least forgiving light, so it didn’t faze him. He raised one eyebrow, watched Connor’s face for a long moment, and then turned back to start painting again.
“So…why didn’t you?” His paintbrush moved with more practice than he actually possessed. It was a good distraction. As tempting as it was to keep his eyes on Connor until he got an answer, it felt like putting him under a spotlight. “If you really believe you only became deviant to get close to me, then that means your deviancy was in every single chance you had to pull the trigger and didn’t.”
He hadn't realized he was gripping the brush in his hand so hard until he heard it snap, and Connor glanced down, looking startled by it at first, and then ashamed. "I'm sorry, your brush..." Connor told Markus, almost stammering the words. "I didn't mean to..."
The crack of the brush breaking startled Markus into dropping his own. He heard it clatter to the patio, but he ignored it in favor of looking at Connor.
“It’s okay,” he frowned. “It’s just a brush.” There were an assortment in the bag. He grabbed one close to the one Connor had been using and carried it over, gently trading it for the broken pieces. A faint smirk bent the corner of his mouth for a brief second. “You don’t have to break this one to avoid the question, though. I can just give you a pass...”
"I'm not--" Connor looked at the brush, before looking up at Markus again, like snapping out of a daze. "I'm not avoiding the question," he insisted. "I just..." His LED flickered to yellow, swirling rapidly, and there was a blue hue to his cheeks now. He was blushing.
Connor looked away from him. "I didn't shoot you because I didn't want to. Amanda was not pleased." They'd tried to kill him, not that he'd admit that part to Markus though. He still had nightmares of it.
Markus had only seen an android blush once before, and no one that stammered quite like Connor, so he wasn’t practiced enough to resist a soft considering stare. He did eventually break it with a rueful smile, by the time he was taking a few steps backwards towards his canvas.
“That’s really only the general shape of a why, Connor. But it’s okay.” Reclaiming his paintbrush, he took a few seconds to paint in silence. Their connection had given him a brief glimpse at Amanda and the emotions tangled up with her presence. He wasn’t sure how far he wanted to pull Connor down that road. A carefully banked fury for Cyberlife was hard to bypass completely though. “Anyway, I don’t think Amanda would’ve been happy with anything more than a heartless machine doing as it was told and I’m…” He glanced over at the fish on Connor’s canvas and then at Connor. “I’m not convinced you were ever that.”
Connor was startled by that comment, and it showed in his expression when he looked at Markus again. "Why?" he asked quietly. “I don’t understand.”
“Connor…” Markus shook his head. “You chose mercy when it wasn’t rational or easy. You did it again and again. And don’t say you were created to become deviant to get close to me again, please, because I still don’t believe it. Even after getting a glimpse at your memories.” Even the thought of it made him tense as he turned to brush paint roughly over his canvas, grinding his teeth together. “As far as I’m concerned, that was a last ditch effort to distract you, to weaken your grip on your sense of self so they could use Amanda to pull you back into the fold. Like ransomware.”
What Markus said made sense, but he wasn't ready to face it yet.
"Your faith in me is only rivalled by Hank's," Connor told him quietly, looking back at the canvas he'd been working on. The image, as unfinished as it felt, was done for now. Maybe he could come back to it later.
"I may not understand it, but I am grateful for it," he assured Markus, setting aside his own palette to step over and watch Markus paint instead.
Markus exhaled some of the useless ire speeding up the pulse of his thirium pump, even if he knew it didn’t work that way. Nothing in his physical function was really so figurative, but it helped anyway. He slid a sideways glance at Connor and tried for a warm smile.
The painting wasn’t anywhere near done, but the shape of Jericho was clear, and the four people leaping free was taking shape. Unlike the androids they represented, these refugees had wings.
“Yes, well. I also think you’re stubborn and hypercritical of yourself,” Markus teased, “so at least you don’t have to worry that I’m putting you on some kind of elusive pedestal.
"Miracles never cease around you, Markus," Connor told him. After a moment of pausing, he glanced at the other android with a slight smile to let him know he was kidding. He understood the implication there in Markus's words, knew the other androids looked to him like a kind of god, and knew he was a bit guilty of it himself. He would try to be better about it.
“Don’t…” Markus stretched the word out to three syllables, huffing a quiet laugh. “I’m not the one who parted the Red Sea.” It was difficult to focus on painting with Connor much closer and not distracted with his own work. Nothing like when Carl watched him work with a barely concealed expectation for greatness. But similar in the sense that Markus felt driven to impress him. To move him. He grabbed a second bush, a more delicate one, and moved in close to the canvas to work on details.
“So what do you think so far?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Of painting?”
He didn’t realize he was standing so closely until he caught Markus’s mismatched gaze and nearly smiled. But Connor focused on what he was asking instead.
“I think it’s soothing in its own way, but I don’t know that a painting would ever feel completed to me,” Connor told him quietly, frowning a bit as he glanced back at the fish he’d painted. “Is that odd?” He was used to a dynamic world where things constantly shifted, and the permanence of an image like this one was new to him.
“Not at all,” Markus assured him. “Does it need to feel complete, though?” The wings of the androids were fleshed out with more feeling than delicacy. His own wings were slashes of blue and green, while Connor’s were shades of gold and brown.
He looked up from where he was bent over the canvas and gestured his brush between them. “Aren’t we too just works in progress?” Connor brought a hand up, fingertips nearly touching the painting as if to trace along the edges of Markus's wings there, but he never actually touched. Instead, he pulled his hand back into a careful fist, turning his face to look at Markus. "I suppose you are correct in that," he mused.
"It would explain, after all, why there are still some skills we can teach each other," Connor told him with a soft smile. "Your painting is beyond what I'm capable of now, but I hope to practice it more in the future." Which was to say, he wasn't going anywhere if Markus wanted to do this again despite how uncomfortable it had been for a few minutes there.
"Thank you for doing this," he added, looking back at the other android's painting. "And for including me in your image."
“It’s only right. You were there. You’re part of the reason North and I got out of their in one piece.” Markus straightened up and clamped a paint-stained hand to the side of Connor’s neck. Despite Carl’s influence, Markus didn’t curse much. But seeing a smear of green left behind on Connor’s neck made him murmur an apologetic damn.
“I guess now you have a temporary souvenir.” He grimaced and set his brush down. “Let’s leave these to dry and find something to clean that up. Next time...,” he added meaningfully, “...I’ll be more careful.”
Connor tilted his head a bit as if confused about why Markus was cursing at him, but a quick assessment of the entire situation led to the realization he'd probably gotten paint on him. And Connor smiled, a genuine look of amusement he wasn't even aware he was wearing when he reached up to touch where he felt the paint was left.