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"Marcus! I know I built you to be evil but I can reprogram you. We can be a family again: you, me, Daniel. Maybe we’ll adopt a girl or a kitten. Come on Marcus, it's me, your dad. Let’s fix this. All you have to do is release these restraints.”
Those words haunted Daniel. Not because they were particularly good words, nor were they ingrained in his memory from the potential trauma of hearing your dad try to convince the man torturing you to be your brother, but because the thing Daniel remembered most about hearing those words was Marcus. How his grip on Daniel softened, became almost regretful that he was hurting his brother, and Daniel remembered thinking that the way Marcus’ face screwed up made him look like he was about to cry.
But Marcus had said no, he was gone, Douglas had his eyebrow as a bracelet, and those words still haunted Daniel. The alternate reality contained in them of being with Marcus and Douglas as a family, and not for the first time Daniel found himself pondering the consequences of the fact that Marcus had been programmed to be evil.
How did Douglas even do that? Like the hate cats thing, obviously evil, but how did you program someone to be evil? Like code it in and then they just were? Did that make Marcus evil? Or did that just force him to take those actions, leaving whatever the real Marcus was fighting to get out? That’s what all of Daniel’s thoughts circled back to because all he could think about was how Marcus’s grip relaxed, and now he was gone.
Logically, Daniel should be happy that the guy who’s only interaction he’s had with was torturing him, but he can’t be, at least he doesn’t think he is. He doesn’t think people who are happy about someone else’s demise spend the hours of three to four in the morning with their Dad’s stolen phone looking at photos of the person who died, looking happy, and normal, and fine, and good, and not dead. Maybe Marcus wasn’t good, but Daniel couldn’t bring himself to think he deserved to be dead, not for something he was programmed to do, not when the moment Marcus started to let his guard down he seemed to be trying to let Daniel go- how was that fair?
“Daniel?” Douglas came out of his room, bleary-eyed. “What’re you doing up, buddy?”
“Nothing.” Daniel hated how choked his voice sounded, was he really starting to cry over this?
Douglas heard it in Daniel’s voice, of course, he did and was immediately on alert, taking a seat next to Daniel at the counter. “What’re you looking at?”
Daniel shrugged, staring at the picture of Marcus laughing about something.
“Ah, Marcus.”
“You loved him.” It wasn’t a question, no one who didn’t love someone had so many spontaneous pictures of a person saved on their phone.
“Yeah, I did, I do. What’s this about?”
“I keep thinking, that,” Daniel hesitated before everything he’d been thinking about for months since Marcus’s death, “It isn’t fair that he died! He died because he was programmed to do something he didn’t want to do! I know he didn’t want to do it, Dad, I could, he wanted to let us go, he wanted to be a family! But he couldn’t because of some stupid code!”
“Oh, Daniel.” Douglas pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
“It’s not fair,” Daniel repeated as if that would somehow fix it.
“I know, buddy, I can’t even say he deserved it for what he did, because he didn’t.” Douglas took the phone from Daniel and scrolled to a video. “This one is my favorite.”
It was a video of Marcus looking in the mirror and saying “Hello, Mr. Davenport. Or should I call you, Uncle Mr. Davenport?… shoot, it’s not right.”
Daniel laughed as Marcus turned around to see Douglas recording.
“Dad! Stop it!”
“What? You’re really goo-” Marcus got a hand on the device and the recording stopped.
“He practiced that for days before we went to capture Donnie,” Douglas explained.
Daniel rested his head on the counter. “It wasn’t his fault,” he muttered, it was late and he was getting tired. “I wish you had reprogrammed him.”
Douglas nodded, staring at another picture of Marcus on his phone. “I do too.”