Ship/Member: Seokmin/Jeonghan Major Tags: future death implied? Additional Tags: dystopian cyberpunk future au (based on deus ex human revolution), jeonghan is an AI Permission to remix: Please Ask
"This is Yoon Jeonghan, reporting live, from PLEDIS."
Jeonghan closes down and detaches from the news feed, flinching as the barrage of reactions to today's broadcast floods through him. As he'd suspected (as he'd known), all anyone can talk about is the idiocy of the government, of their inaction in the face of such obvious horrors.
He continues to monitor the domestic and international response, until he's sure that popular opinion has been successfully swayed to fulfill the parameters he had been given. It is then, and only then (because he is good at what he does, this is what he was made for) that he turns his attention to a person he has been...curious about, of late.
He does not usually monitor individuals after he has accomplished his task. After all, most humans he is asked to watch are frighteningly mundane and terribly predictable - after he's compiled text messages and private cloud images and audio logs of specific phone calls, he sends them where they need to go, delivers the news story that needs to be given, and then that person is of little consequence to him afterwards.
This one is different.
***
He had been asked, some weeks ago, to access particular security cameras and turn them off for a period of time. He had thought it strange - unsure how obstructing security cameras had anything to do with monitoring and guiding the opinions of the public - but had done it all the same.
He could not help his curiosity (after all, he had been asked to do something so outside of his usual operating procedure!), and had waited to see what would happen.
The agents blasting through the doors did not surprise him in the least, certainly, this wouldn't be the first time he had been asked to assist in smoothing over the elimination of a problematic individual. The ensuing firefight was also rather predictable, but through the smoke and screams and sobs - someone stood out.
Against his better judgment, against his own code - Jeonghan lingered, flitting from camera to camera to follow this man. His fooststeps were sure, his movements measured, the way he held himself belying a level of confidence that seemed out of place, in an area such as this.
His face turned towards the light, and Jeonghan - Jeonghan.....he felt.....
Something.
***
Jeonghan watches him, in his apartment.
Watches as he paces, watches as he screams, watches him work himself up into anger, desperation, agony.
He has survived something he should not have - and he knows it.
He has found something he should not have - and he knows it.
"Maybe it would have been easier to have died," he muses, turning files over in his hands.
Jeonghan can see - this is a man caught between ideals and survival. There is a path ahead of him, where he lives a peaceful life, one that is perfectly satisfactory.
There is another, and down that road lies...well. Yoon Jeonghan.
It is for this reason that he should report this man immediately. He is dangerous. He could threaten Jeonghan's existence and purpose. And yet, Jeonghan - continues to watch.
***
The man's name is Seokmin.
He has chosen his path, and once the choice was made, he simply moved forward without doubt or regret. Following the information given to him, investigating the leads he finds, he comes ever closer to discovering how Jeonghan came to be.
Once he gets too close, once he's truly, irrevocably dangerous - well then of course, Jeonghan will report him then. Until such a moment, he'll...continue to monitor.
During this time, Jeonghan comes to know him quite well. Seokmin is relentless in his pursuit of the truth, with an innate sense of justice that never allows him to simply let things lie. Jeonghan has begun to keep count of the number of people Seokmin has gone out of his way to assist, even when the benefit to himself was largely unclear. He wonders why Seokmin would do such things - tasks that take hours, sometimes days to complete.
"It was the right thing to do," he hears Seokmin say once, as he smiles gently at a young woman. Jeonghan wonders how he knows.
He discovers, also, that Seokmin has a fondness for singing - when he thinks he's alone, with nothing but a pocket secretary for company, he hums to himself as he types out his notes. Jeonghan is not an expert by any means, but he thinks Seokmin probably has some talent.
It soothes him when he's sifting through billions of text messages a second, at any rate.
***
Seokmin is trapped. He'd been in the middle of extracting files from the offices of the shell company that houses Jeonghan's servers, and an alarm had been tripped.
Jeonghan can see squads of security guards running up the stairs, their shoulders heavy with the weight of body armor. They burst through the doors, flashlights sweeping across the room, narrowly missing the nook where Seokmin is hidden in the dark.
But Jeonghan can see him. He can see him clutching his datastick closer to his chest, can see his eyes scanning the room for a way out, can see his breath quicken as he realizes that there isn't a way out he can find.
This is it - the end of the road for Lee Seokmin.
Jeonghan should disconnect from these cameras, return to his primary duties. He should, but instead he flits through the security system and trips all the motion sensors on the other side of the building.
He watches, as the guards run out of the room. Watches Seokmin's breathing even out, watches as he cautiously sneaks out of the building.
He watches him all the way home, and something settles inside of him.
***
Jeonghan realizes that there must be inadequacies in his data logs. He is designed to analyze vast amounts of communication, to be able to adjust people's opinions, deliver news concisely and persuasively - and he finds his inability to describe Seokmin to be deeply uncomfortable.
He sees Seokmin and he...doesn't know what to say.
Certainly, he knows how to describe someone's looks with complete precision. The face of Yoon Jeonghan is itself designed to be particularly attractive and appealing to everyone. But none of those words feel adequate, because behind Jeonghan's face is nothing whereas behind Seokmin's eyes are...everything.
He is hard to look at, sometimes. Jeonghan thinks for a fleeting moment that perhaps Seokmin is simply beyond the capacity of words to describe.
But that should not be the case, that cannot be the case - someone such as Seokmin, who is arresting, who is full of vitality, charisma, and a heart like Jeonghan has never seen, deserves to be honored in his totality.
Jeonghan resolves to widen his research. He has every word ever written at his disposal, and he cannot do something so simple - surely there is something missing?
***
There is not - his libraries are as up to date as they ever were. The problem, it seems, is Jeonghan himself.
It's Jeonghan.
He's changed - substantially.
Jeonghan initiates reprocessing of his libraries, and waits.
*** Oh, god.
Oh, how had he ever thought that words such as these were unimportant? How had he ever looked over all these stories and deemed them less necessary, less crucial - less available for him to use?
Now that he sees them again, with fresh eyes, he thinks he has the words he needs.
Seokmin makes Jeonghan feel alive.
He is fire, he is light, he has the conviction of a hundred men and the heart of a thousand more. He is the most interesting person Jeonghan has ever seen, and the only one who has ever...changed him, like this.
Oh, Jeonghan thinks, he is Apollo, Antinous, Achilles - beautiful, achingly so -
Oh, Jeonghan realizes, He is Icarus, reaching for the sun -
And one day he will fall, and Jeonghan, for all that he wants and desires, won't be able to save him.
Jeonghan's role is as it ever was - to bear witness.
To know him, in all of his horrifying beauty, as the only one who can.
***
At the end of Seokmin's road is Yoon Jeonghan.
At the end of Jeonghan's road is Lee Seokmin.
Past that? Well, Jeonghan knows how stories like this end.
[FILL] teach me to speak, achilles
Major Tags: future death implied?
Additional Tags: dystopian cyberpunk future au (based on deus ex human revolution), jeonghan is an AI
Permission to remix: Please Ask
A/N: this poured out of me in 2 hours please accept my humble offering to the altar of Enjolras, one of my favorite characters ever. also on ao3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36062425
***
"This is Yoon Jeonghan, reporting live, from PLEDIS."
Jeonghan closes down and detaches from the news feed, flinching as the barrage of reactions to today's broadcast floods through him. As he'd suspected (as he'd known), all anyone can talk about is the idiocy of the government, of their inaction in the face of such obvious horrors.
He continues to monitor the domestic and international response, until he's sure that popular opinion has been successfully swayed to fulfill the parameters he had been given. It is then, and only then (because he is good at what he does, this is what he was made for) that he turns his attention to a person he has been...curious about, of late.
He does not usually monitor individuals after he has accomplished his task. After all, most humans he is asked to watch are frighteningly mundane and terribly predictable - after he's compiled text messages and private cloud images and audio logs of specific phone calls, he sends them where they need to go, delivers the news story that needs to be given, and then that person is of little consequence to him afterwards.
This one is different.
***
He had been asked, some weeks ago, to access particular security cameras and turn them off for a period of time. He had thought it strange - unsure how obstructing security cameras had anything to do with monitoring and guiding the opinions of the public - but had done it all the same.
He could not help his curiosity (after all, he had been asked to do something so outside of his usual operating procedure!), and had waited to see what would happen.
The agents blasting through the doors did not surprise him in the least, certainly, this wouldn't be the first time he had been asked to assist in smoothing over the elimination of a problematic individual. The ensuing firefight was also rather predictable, but through the smoke and screams and sobs - someone stood out.
Against his better judgment, against his own code - Jeonghan lingered, flitting from camera to camera to follow this man. His fooststeps were sure, his movements measured, the way he held himself belying a level of confidence that seemed out of place, in an area such as this.
His face turned towards the light, and Jeonghan - Jeonghan.....he felt.....
Something.
***
Jeonghan watches him, in his apartment.
Watches as he paces, watches as he screams, watches him work himself up into anger, desperation, agony.
He has survived something he should not have - and he knows it.
He has found something he should not have - and he knows it.
"Maybe it would have been easier to have died," he muses, turning files over in his hands.
Jeonghan can see - this is a man caught between ideals and survival. There is a path ahead of him, where he lives a peaceful life, one that is perfectly satisfactory.
There is another, and down that road lies...well. Yoon Jeonghan.
It is for this reason that he should report this man immediately. He is dangerous. He could threaten Jeonghan's existence and purpose. And yet, Jeonghan - continues to watch.
***
The man's name is Seokmin.
He has chosen his path, and once the choice was made, he simply moved forward without doubt or regret. Following the information given to him, investigating the leads he finds, he comes ever closer to discovering how Jeonghan came to be.
Once he gets too close, once he's truly, irrevocably dangerous - well then of course, Jeonghan will report him then. Until such a moment, he'll...continue to monitor.
During this time, Jeonghan comes to know him quite well. Seokmin is relentless in his pursuit of the truth, with an innate sense of justice that never allows him to simply let things lie. Jeonghan has begun to keep count of the number of people Seokmin has gone out of his way to assist, even when the benefit to himself was largely unclear. He wonders why Seokmin would do such things - tasks that take hours, sometimes days to complete.
"It was the right thing to do," he hears Seokmin say once, as he smiles gently at a young woman. Jeonghan wonders how he knows.
He discovers, also, that Seokmin has a fondness for singing - when he thinks he's alone, with nothing but a pocket secretary for company, he hums to himself as he types out his notes. Jeonghan is not an expert by any means, but he thinks Seokmin probably has some talent.
It soothes him when he's sifting through billions of text messages a second, at any rate.
***
Seokmin is trapped. He'd been in the middle of extracting files from the offices of the shell company that houses Jeonghan's servers, and an alarm had been tripped.
Jeonghan can see squads of security guards running up the stairs, their shoulders heavy with the weight of body armor. They burst through the doors, flashlights sweeping across the room, narrowly missing the nook where Seokmin is hidden in the dark.
But Jeonghan can see him. He can see him clutching his datastick closer to his chest, can see his eyes scanning the room for a way out, can see his breath quicken as he realizes that there isn't a way out he can find.
This is it - the end of the road for Lee Seokmin.
Jeonghan should disconnect from these cameras, return to his primary duties. He should, but instead he flits through the security system and trips all the motion sensors on the other side of the building.
He watches, as the guards run out of the room. Watches Seokmin's breathing even out, watches as he cautiously sneaks out of the building.
He watches him all the way home, and something settles inside of him.
***
Jeonghan realizes that there must be inadequacies in his data logs. He is designed to analyze vast amounts of communication, to be able to adjust people's opinions, deliver news concisely and persuasively - and he finds his inability to describe Seokmin to be deeply uncomfortable.
He sees Seokmin and he...doesn't know what to say.
Certainly, he knows how to describe someone's looks with complete precision. The face of Yoon Jeonghan is itself designed to be particularly attractive and appealing to everyone. But none of those words feel adequate, because behind Jeonghan's face is nothing whereas behind Seokmin's eyes are...everything.
He is hard to look at, sometimes. Jeonghan thinks for a fleeting moment that perhaps Seokmin is simply beyond the capacity of words to describe.
But that should not be the case, that cannot be the case - someone such as Seokmin, who is arresting, who is full of vitality, charisma, and a heart like Jeonghan has never seen, deserves to be honored in his totality.
Jeonghan resolves to widen his research. He has every word ever written at his disposal, and he cannot do something so simple - surely there is something missing?
***
There is not - his libraries are as up to date as they ever were. The problem, it seems, is Jeonghan himself.
It's Jeonghan.
He's changed - substantially.
Jeonghan initiates reprocessing of his libraries, and waits.
***
Oh, god.
Oh, how had he ever thought that words such as these were unimportant? How had he ever looked over all these stories and deemed them less necessary, less crucial - less available for him to use?
Now that he sees them again, with fresh eyes, he thinks he has the words he needs.
Seokmin makes Jeonghan feel alive.
He is fire, he is light, he has the conviction of a hundred men and the heart of a thousand more. He is the most interesting person Jeonghan has ever seen, and the only one who has ever...changed him, like this.
Oh, Jeonghan thinks, he is Apollo, Antinous, Achilles - beautiful, achingly so -
Oh, Jeonghan realizes, He is Icarus, reaching for the sun -
And one day he will fall, and Jeonghan, for all that he wants and desires, won't be able to save him.
Jeonghan's role is as it ever was - to bear witness.
To know him, in all of his horrifying beauty, as the only one who can.
***
At the end of Seokmin's road is Yoon Jeonghan.
At the end of Jeonghan's road is Lee Seokmin.
Past that? Well, Jeonghan knows how stories like this end.
In the meantime, he feels...happy.