Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Marcus knew he probably should have come clean a lot earlier. He knew his superhero teammate deserved the truth, but he just couldn’t bring himself to tell them.

Marcus had always felt different from humans, even from his bionic cousins( if he could even call them that). He had a past he wasn’t proud of (because of his father's programming and his “mother's” manipulation, he had attacked the bionic family, and his brother out of revenge). He was just angry, so angry at Douglas for abandoning him, and galavanting into the sunset with his better, more advanced experiments. He had done everything his family wanted, and all he got was killed for his troubles…twice…by his father.

But both times, he didn’t stay dead. The first time he was killed, Giselle brought him back, and he seized the opportunity to make his dad pay for leaving his son for dead.

But the second time? There should have been no way anyone was able to reconstruct him from that pile of molten metal. But Chase Davoiport was the smartest man alive and didn’t take no for an answer. Behind his teammate's back, he experimented with the remnants of Marcus and was able to pull a mostly damaged chip from the melted metal.

Chase mostly used the technology and blueprints inside to design his own androids, even creating ones that would pretend to be his girlfriend for a day. He didn't initially plan to bring Marcus back, but Roman and Rikers' gang were growing stronger by the day, and he didn’t feel like he could burden Adam, Leo, and the rest of the academy for help.

So desperate as he was, he went to Douglas. Showed him the work he had done repairing Marcus, asked him if he could be reprogrammed for good like Douglass promised all those years ago. He got Bree and explained everything, explained why they needed Marcus, why it would be different this time. And Bree agreed, not because she thought this was a foolproof plan, but because she believed there was something good inside Marcus, something that none of the other humans or bionics could see.

So Marcus was reborn and reprogrammed, waking up in a capsule in the Elite Force’s basement, feeling a lot less angry at the bionic kids and only a little less angry at Douglas.

But he had overheard them while he was rebooting; he knew what they might do to him if he displayed any of the aggression he felt towards his father. So he clenched his fists, gave a smile, and tried his best to pretend to be a happy-go-lucky son so his father didn’t melt into a pile of bionic parts a third time.

About two weeks after being awoken, Marcus was officially introduced to the rest of the team. Chase had initially planned to tell the supers the truth, that Marcus was a powerful android meant to take and deal hits the squisher member of the team never could. But Marcus managed to convince him that it wouldn’t be a good idea. An ex-evil android brought back to life and put on their team, it would be like trying to convince them to share breakfast with the Terminator.

But Marcus also convinced Chase for a more selfish reason. He wanted the others to like him. If they thought he was another bionic cousin from the island, who volunteered to join the elite to help out his sorta brother and sister, they would think he’s some kinda hero. They might even treat him like a human.

And after 5 months, that's what the team had started to do. Kaz and Oliver had never seen him as anything other than another bionic hero, so they greeted him with open arms and never once questioned that he could be anything other than human.

Chase knew, of course, he knew more than anyone that Marcus wasn’t human, but Chase always had a softer side about him, and Marcus was diligent to always follow Chase's orders and treat him with the utmost respect, and Chase began to warm up to him. No longer having tight security protocols, no longer viewing him as someone different then the rest of the team. Every day, Marcus tried hard to convince Chase he was a valuable team member. He needed to; he was Chase's project, his responsibility.

He also tried to spend each day convincing Bree that he was a good guy now. He was always the first to react when someone was in danger, and the last to come home after a patrol. He didn’t complain over any mission, like Kaz and Oliver love to do so much; he couldn’t afford to. No matter how tired or annoyed he was he h, ad to prove he was something beyond just rigid evil programming. To Bree, mostly, but even just a little bit, he had to prove it to himself.

The one person he couldn’t convince was Skylar. Damm her X-ray vision, she literally saw right through him! She confronted Chase about him one night, right in front of Marcus, and both begged her not to tell anyone else. Marcus tried his best to appeal to the fact that both Skylar and he weren’t humans, that they both were heroes regardless, but that he just doesn't want his friends to know right now. She seemed confused, but she agreed not to tell, though he wasn’t sure if she was aware of the full weight of him being an android or not.

Nevertheless, the six of them had fallen into a hodgepodge group of sorts, and it was the closest thing to friends (or family) Marcus had ever had.

Marcus was sitting on the couch, sipping a coffee. He didn’t need to drink, or eat for that matter, but he liked the way the warm mug felt in his hands, and it just made him feel so normal to be drinking it. Chase was sitting in the living room as well, reading a book. Chase had raised his eyebrow the first time he saw him drinking the coffee, but it became so much of a habit for him that Chase didn’t bat an eye anymore.

Marcus heard a noise and looked up to see Oliver and Kaz shuffling down the stairs. Neither one of the boys had ever been a morning person, and while Kaz seemed to run off pure sugary cereals to wake him up in the morning, Oliver refused to talk to anyone before his coffee.

Kaz walked into the kitchen and began grabbing bowls and cereal for his and Oliver’s breakfast, rummaging through drawers and cabinets. Oliver trudged over to the coffee machine and began was about to grab the handle, when a tickling sensation filled the back of his throat and he let out a sneeze.

He blinked after rubbing his nose and looked down at the coffee pot shattered by a spiky ball of ice.

Chase startled at the noise and looked up. “You good there, Oliver?” he said.

“He’s fine,” replied Kaz lazily, “But I think...” A grin spread across Kaz's face. “he might have a little cold?”

Oliver glared back at Kaz, all attempts at humor lost on him this early in the morning.

Chase put his book down on the table and wandered over to the kitchen to assess the damage.

“Well,” Chase grimaces, “it looks like no other kitchen appliance or human was hurt in the blast.” He glanced over to the now-empty handle in Oliver's hand. “However, the coffee pot wasn’t so lucky, we're going to have to order a new one”. Oliver groaned into his hands, frustrated by the morning's start.

“How long should that take?” Oliver asks as he dumps the broken handle into the trash.

“A couple of days at most,” Chase replied, reaching for the broom.

Oliver sighed again, “Guess I'm just gonna have to muster through the next few mornings.”

Marcus looked up and looked back down at the still-hot cup of coffee in his hands. It wasn’t like the caffeine was going to do anything for him anyway; he had no stomach to process it.

“You can have mine,” Marcus offered, popping up from the couch and making his way over to the kitchen. “I'm on my second cup anyway,” he lied, “ And with the morning you had, you probably need it more than me”.

Oliver looked at Marcus and opened his mouth to refuse, but with the smell of coffee so close, he seemed to change his mind.

“Thanks,” he said, slowly taking the mug from Marcus and grasping it in his hands. “I guess I am a little out of sorts today.”

Marcus smiled back at him. While some of his “Good Samaritan” actions were for show, he did enjoy some of the praise he got from his human team members. He liked the feeling of being appreciated more than he cared to admit.

Kaz continued to make breakfast for himself and Oliver as Chase and Oliver cleaned up all of the broken glass around the kitchen. Macrus drifted back to the coach and paused a news presentation he was barely paying attention to.

Kaz and Oliver both eventually sit down on the couch with their bowls, sitting on the other side of the sectional that Marcus was occupying. Chase was about to return to his books as he looked to the staircase, as he and Marcus heard the girls making their way down to the living room.

“Ok,” Chase started as Skyler and Bree finally came into view. “Now that everyone is up and..”, he looked back at Oliver's shrunken form on the coach “..mostly awake, we can begin our mission debrief for the day”

“Wait a minute,” said Bree, and she strengthened her arms behind her back. “Let me just get some coffee first.”

“About that…” groaned Oliver, as Kaz started laughing

Chapter Text

It was a routine mission for the day, and the group was split into two. As one team explored a lead in one of Davenport's old research facilities, the other team would stay behind to patrol the city.

Marcus, Oliver, and Kaz were sent to the old research facility as it was located in Antarctica and the temperature there would’ve been too much for their teammates to handle. Marcus was an android so he didn’t have any issues, while Oliver was immune to cold and Kaz was quite literally a human furnace. So it only made sense they were the three chosen to explore.

They creep up on the abandoned facility, half covered in snow. It was completely dark inside and with how the door was frozen shut it was clear nobody had been in or out in years.

Marcus had chased a map pulled up on his tablet “Well…” he began underwhelmed by the state of the building “looks like we’re here”.

“Seems like it's a bit of a fixer-upper” joked Kaz, hand scratching his chin “but has a huge yard for kids” he said gesturing to the snowy expanse of the Antarctic.

“I just want to get out of here as soon as p-possible” Chattered Oliver, his hands stuck firmly under his armpits to try to ward off the cold. While his powers allowed him to survive in cold places, it didn’t stop him from feeling cold, and he had solidly pressed himself into Kaz to try and steal any warmth the boy might have to spare.

“Should be in and out” explained Marcus as Kaz began unmelting the door “just check to see if any technologies are here, and report back to Chase if they are. We aren’t exactly equipped to dismantle or transport technologies even if we knew which ones he wanted”.

Oliver nodded, “in and out, in and out” he mumbled to himself

Using Marcus’s Strength and Kaz’s heat they were eventually able to pry the door open. The inside of the building was covered in icicles and a thick layer of dust, but it was a break from the strong winds outside so everyone climbed in as soon as possible.

Marcus pulled up the blueprints of the building that Chase had sent to him as Kaz lit a small fire in his hands to illuminate the room. Marcus began down the first hallway leading the other boys to where the lab should be.

The hallways were small and narrow and seemed to constantly twist and turn. A small pit begins to fill in the place where Marcus's stomach should be . Marcus felt pretty warranted in his claustrophobia, being buried alive will do that to a person, and the facility is tight and cramped and looks one bad breath away from collapse. He keeps walking forward though, eyes staring straight ahead trying to block out his current scenario. He can’t afford to fail a mission based on some irrational fears. He can’t afford to look useless in that way, when his very usefulness to the team is what keeps him up and running.

He distracts himself from the tight hallways by bleakly wondering about what would happen if they did decide to scrap him. One day Douglass came into the building needing some more spare parts, and nobody bothered to stop him. What would Chase and Bree say to the two idiots behind him (who had now taken to arguing about Tecton's power scaling in the recent comics ) when they asked where their team mate had gone too. Would they lie and say he went to the island, to help train the new recruits like Leo and Adam do? Would they forge a postcard from him, apologizing for leaving in the middle of the night, but he was oh so happy here and he hoped they would be happy too, like he was an old dog who was “just going to the farm”.

A small smile broke on his face as he imagined Kaz responding back to the postcard and forcing Chase or Bree to play pen pals while they pretended to be their dead team mate. Maybe it would simply be more practical to fake his death, though, where they were going to find a body that looked like he was a….

Marcus was so lost in his thoughts he almost slammed right into the laboratory door. He righted himself and turned back to his teammates.

“This should be the lab” he said, breaking Oliver and Kaz out of their silly discussion.

As Marcus pried open the door, the three of them looked inside.

Marcus grimaced to himself, he didn’t like being back in a lab, to many bad memories from his childhood. He went over to the control panel and began attempting to boot it on as Kaz and Oliver explored the room.

As it began to start up he noticed several programs options he could run on the screen ranging from “bionic repair scan” to "manually override weapon”. He scrolled though taking pictures of every option so he could send it back to Chase.

Once he had finished he looked up and saw Oliver and Kaz standing over some prototypes, and as he approached them he realized what they were.

A half completed metal arm, a rudimentary prototype of an eye, and some other small experiments laid out on the table in front of them. These were the beginnings, the first steps in the process of making the ultimate android soldier...him.

“What do you think he was building?” Kaz murmured, eyeing the piles of complex machinery spread out in front of him.

Oliver shouted “I don’t know, and I don’t care, I know he’s on our side and all but that Douglass guy always gave me the creeps”

Marcus felt a little vindication from that, as he was glad some of the team shared his animosity towards his failure as a father figure.

“Look!” Kaz said pointing to the various experiments around the table “I think he was trying to build a robot, you know like the kind that chase made to try and be his girlfriend”

Oliver made a fearful face “Dude I still have nightmares about those things! They freaking attacked me and tied me up in the basement because they wanted me all to themselves, and Chase took his sweet time deactivating them” he crosses he arms across his chest “I don’t wanna find another robot, but this time its more advanced, more powerful and more scary because Chase's freaking uncle made it !!”

“Ok, ok” Kaz relented. “Let's just get some pics of the parts in case Chases need them and then we can get out before the scary robots attack you… again.”

Oliver pulls out his phone as Marcus tears his eyes away from the table feeling a little uneasy as he looks over his own prototypes.

“Ready?” Marcuse asked, pointing to the door, refusing to look back at the boys, or the table behind them.

“Yep” said Kaz, grabbing his bag and prepping to go.

“More than anything” replied Oliver shivering into his jacket. Though whether that was from the cold, or from the fear there might be an evil android roaming the halls, it was hard to tell.

The three of them began heading back through the hallways all eager to leave behind the crumbling lab and the bad memories within it.