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“After everything we've been through,” Markus starts, baffled, “you call this a problem?”
Looking down at the pictures, he sees nothing but the reminder of long, stressful interviews in which humans constantly tried to bait him into saying something that would put him in a bad light. It never works. Simon, despite having watched them, seems to see something else. More specifically, the lack of something.
“It’s not any less of a problem because you won’t start a revolution over it.” Simon sounds tired of this discussion, which Markus had hoped wouldn’t happen - he’d expected that after the fifth time, Simon would let it go and insist on other issues, though it looks like he underestimated the importance of this to him. “It’s simple. There’s no reason to avoid this, Markus, not after everything we’ve been through,” he parrots to him, making the corners of Markus’s lips curl slightly. “You’re doing it now, is that so difficult?”
It isn’t, Markus can admit that much to himself. Around Simon, talking to him like this, it’s easy to be comfortable, to feel like he isn’t the face of Jericho. He’s just another deviant when they’re together, even if they’re talking about matters far more important than the two of them.
Around Simon, that’s the issue. In a press conference, surrounded by human reporters and curious faces, he has a hard time being anything but tense, serious. Many of them expect him to fail and he can’t give them the satisfaction, he has to do his very best to ensure that his kind will earn the rights they’re entitled to, as a sentient species.
With all of that going on, how can he be expected to worry about smiling for the cameras?
“They already know that we’re intelligent, Markus. That’s why they felt so threatened by us. We need them to see that we feel,” Simon insists, likely noticing that Markus isn’t putting up as much of a protest as he usually does.
“I can try,” Markus allows with a tilt of his head. It’s enough for Simon, who beams at him as if he’d agreed to more than a curl of his lips in the presence of others. “With one condition.”
The next time the leader of Jericho is seen in public, it’s with a smile on his face as a PL600 watches.