helloaschefire:

I always return to the Institute when I sleep. Duncan urges me to sleep as he does. Humans need a certain amount of sleep or else their physical and mental functions suffer. For a synth, for me, it is different. We sleep so that we may blend in. Duncan wishes me to blend in.

I sleep and I dream of gleaming silver columns and rushing water. I smell the earth and green things growing that have never seen a sun. I move through unfamiliar corridors, painted white with yellow stripes. Sometimes red and green and blue. Different divisions, all needing synths for nearly everything. Without us, they could not aspire to the goals Father has set out. And yet, we are treated like any scope or scalpel or spoon.

A scientist whose face is familiar with a name I can almost remember, asks me to sit in a chrome-plated chair next to a small table. Atop are syringes and vials neatly lined up on a silver tray. He tells me this will not hurt, but it is a lie. The injection stings. I rub my arm as he carefully reminds me to let him know of any side effects I experience. “Go back to your duties,” he tells me.

My cheeks are hot and damp with salt water. My eyes burn with it. My shoulders shake. There is a soothing touch on my cheek. The press of soft lips.

I open my eyes but my vision is blurry. It is Duncan there. is face large and pulling away. “You are crying,” he said.

“Oh.” He doesn’t let me sit up. Instead, he lays on the couch beside me. A shield, I tell myself. Not a cage. I do not think this is the first time I have cried on his shoulder, but it is the first time I will remember. Neither of us heard the door open and close to the safe house, hours, minutes later. Neither of us remembered Curie had been there too.

This follows what happened here. An index of Ashoken and Duncan’s story can be found here. Duncan is the apoco-son of the lovely and talented @charomiami 

yesssssssssss