Chapter Text
He knows it’s wrong, he knows it. He shouldn’t do it, he knows it shouldn’t, but he feels like he needs to.
When he had first remembered who and what he was, it felt like all of his feelings had rebooted to what they were before the ‘incident’. He remembered how he’d felt when he first met Sean, how happy he felt on their first date, how nervous he’d felt when he met his parents, how excited he felt when Sean said yes, how complete he felt on their wedding day. How worried, heartbroken, and how pained in all since of the word and in all forms of the word when he had been shot.
And then…and then he remembered how, empty he had felt when he had opened his eyes, how confused he had felt when he’d had seen Jack’s face when he had woken up, how familiar he thought his face was. How uncertain he was about Jack’s answers but how easily he forgot, how he had felt when he saw the forget-me-nots, how broken he felt right after Jack saw them and not knowing why he had felt saddened over the little flowers, how he had felt when he asked Jack all of those questions about who the stranger was in the pictures. But now? He feels…
Fake. He feels like a cheap imitator, just a piece of hardware that programmed to feel and think like the man once named Mark. He can’t genuinely feel like anything other than just, an imposter. He doesn’t love Jack, even though he should. He doesn’t feel like he could ever love jack the way he used too, or, the way Mark used to. His name seems foreign, the name the green haired man had given him. He knows that he doesn’t love Jack, and it doesn’t feel wrong or foreign. But at the same time, he loves Sean, and it feels wrong of him to say no.
It just feels like his true and fake feelings are arguing against one-another trying to convince him which one’s right and which one’s wrong and he just wants to get away.
He wants to tell Jack the truth. He wants to tell him that he doesn’t love him, he wants to tell him that he doesn’t feel nearly anything. He wants to tell him everything without the guilt that he knows he’ll feel. He doesn’t want to deal with seeing that cursed pained expression flow across Sean’s features, he doesn’t want to see the disappointment, anger, and just overall pain behind his eyes. He wants to see Sean happy, but he can’t do that through lies. He can’t keep acting like he cares. He can’t keep acting like he loves him. He’d nearly ‘had an episode’ this week. He’s already caused Sean to feel worried. He can’t do that for all the time he has left, however long that is. And not just that, what can he do? He can’t keep up his channel anymore, the people that watched him before would feel more pain in knowing that he really isn’t the real Mark all of them used to know, that would just cause them pain. He can’t be there for his friends, he doesn’t feel like he knows them, even Tyler, he doesn’t feel like he knows him. And he would cause his friends pain, all of them. It’s strange, he cares for them, through and through, but he feels like he doesn’t know them. He’s already caused them the pain of his death, he doesn’t want to cause the renewing of the pain. He doesn’t want people to look at him and think of who he once was, but soon finding out that it’s not him. He needs to end it. He needs to end it before it gets worse…
-x-
It feels like he’s going behind Mark’s back by looking through his files. But he can’t help but take notice to the bad feeling in his stomach that happened that morning.
Right now, he’s in his lab searching over files that may’ve been unstable and could’ve caused a problem in the future that would cause a malfunction.
Nothing. He can’t find anything that could cause a breakdown. Good. But that doesn’t help the fact that he still has the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
What seems wrong is the question that Mark had asked him the night before. Maybe it was just as Mark had told him was just a curious question, but it didn’t feel like it. The way he put it, the tone he had with it. It sounded more like a passing question, like it didn’t matter, but at the same time it sounded like it did. And when he had asked the other if it was a serious or curious question, he answered it way faster than it should’ve been. It’s just, worrying him.
But really, that’s all he can do nowadays is worry.
-x-
Mark was looking through an Email Jack had gotten a year ago, and it’s frightening. Jack had turned his notifications on and had started looking at his Emails a couple days ago, but only on his computer. Not his phone. But it doesn’t surprise him that jack hasn’t been looking through them or paying them any mind.
He knows Jack thinks lowly of this, and he himself does too, but now it’s different. Now the notice is even more threatening and more serious than anything else. He slammed the laptop shut when he heard a knock on the front door.
He grabbed the laptop, rushed it in his old office, placed it on his desk and then quickly walked back toward the door.
He was expecting Jack on the other side of the door, but this is so far from Jack.
“Is Sean Mcloughlin here?” Mark was immediately terrified.
“No, may I ask why you need him?” Mark’s mind is telling him to shut the door, bolt it, and hide. But his body apparently says otherwise.
“As you may know, Mcloughlin had not informed the government of Project BB 208. A private Email was set out a year ago telling Mcloughlin that he is to stop production until he has fully informed them of what he tends to do with said project.
“If he doesn’t act accordingly in the next three days, said government would have no other choice but to shut it down permanently.”
-x-
He doesn’t know what to do, so he supposes he’ll just go home.
He raises his hand, but the door opens before he could knock. Mark looks like he’s about to collapse of how weak he looks holding himself up like that. Before Mark could react, Jack pulled him into a hug. Even though he doesn’t know what’s going on in Mark’s mind, he wants to comfort him. He needs to.
“Mark? Mark, what’s wrong?” his voice is on the verge of shaking.
“Nothing, I just woke up…” That hasn’t been an issue before, he didn’t add that feature in: That was a fact. Mark slowly looked over his face which was full of concern.
“What?” But Jack can’t say anything about it because they agreed to forget anything about his death had ever happened.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jack murmured to him. Mark nodded as he rubbed his eye and yawned.
“Other than tired, yeah! Why wouldn’t I be?” Mark smiled a bit over his tired posture.
Something about that smile was off, but Jack couldn’t place it.
-x-
“Hey Mark? Did you wash my ripped jeans?” Jack exclaims from upstairs to Mark who was in the kitchen leaning on the counter pretending to scroll through his phone.
“Yeah, they should be in the washer!” Mark replied, but not really paying attention.
He should tell him. He should tell who came to the door before Jack made it home. He should tell him what they wanted.
But there’s a strong thought that says ‘no, don’t tell him, you can’t’ and he can’t help but to listen to it and to do what it says. But at the same time another part of his brain is telling him to tell Jack the whole thing. To tell Jack that he feels wrong and strange, he needs to tell him that people came to their house, he need to tell him that he doesn’t…
“Mark, did you hear me?” Jack asked as he put on his shoes. Mark looked up from his phone and gave Jack a look that told him that he, didn’t hear him.
“I’m sorry, what?” Mark asked with a clueless expression hiding the thoughts he was thinking previously.
“I said that I was going to spend the day with Felix because he’s going to go back to brighten soon, is that okay or do you need me to take care of you like a baby?”
“Yeah that’s fine! I can take care of myself!” Mark replied with laughs mixed in. Jack rolled his eyes and walked toward the door.
“And say hi to Felix for me, Love you!” Mark yelled at him as he walked out the door, hearing Jack say ‘love you’ back from behind the door.
The words…they feel forced. They feel artificial and not genuine.
Mark waited about ten minutes before he ran towards their room, pulled out a small box that was lodged under their mattress and opened it to find a flash drive and a key. Jack always kept the key to the lab away from his key ring just in case he gets mugged or something worse.
The flash drive had a lot of his codes and projects and multiple private things that Jack puts on it when he doesn’t want people to see it, and to make it even more secure is that he put a password lock and it could only be opened with the password, a password that Jack always changes once a month.
Mark pockets both the key and flash drive as he walks out of the room. He grabs a hat and sun glasses as he walks out of the house, locking it on his way out with the spare house key he had picked up off the coffee table and putting it with the flash drive and lab key.
-x-
“Jack!” Felix yelled out to Jack as he ran toward him as he was getting out of his car.
“Hey Fe!” Jack exclaimed as the two of them hugged and started to walk towards the café.
The two of them walked up the counter prepared to order their coffee.
“What can I do for you?” The person from behind the counter asked with their head bent down toward a screen, Jack guessed that they were around eighteen.
“Yes, I would like a green tea,” Felix paused for Jack to order. Jack glanced up at the board filled with different drink names, foods, and desserts and then looked toward the teen.
“And I would have a regular black coffee, please” Jack answered. The teen said their orders to the other workers in the kitchen out back. The teen typed their orders in, looked over the screen again before finally looking up to them saying the order as they did so.
“That would be $8.85, sir” But their eyes widened and their lips parted a bit as they looked at the two of them but then quickly closed their mouth and lowered their eyes a bit.
“S-So, who’s uh- paying?” The both of them looked at each other and looked back to the person, Jack pulls out his wallet and pays for their drinks.
“Your drinks will be ready in a couple minutes” And with that the two of them thanked him as they walk toward their seat and sat down.
“You think they recognized you?” Jack asked Felix quietly so the teen couldn’t hear them.
“I don’t think so, but sh! They’re coming over…” Felix whispered to him as the teen walked up to them with their drinks in hand.
“Okay, so I have your green tea and your black coffee. Will that be all?” The teen put their drinks on the table with shaking hands and an undertone of a shaking voice.
“Um, I don’t think so, thank you” Jack said to them. Jack could tell that he wanted to say something by the look in their eyes.
“You’re, Sean Mcloughlin, right?” The teen asked with the words jumbled together a bit, Jack nodded. “I’m Mercedes, I’ve been reading and following some articles on your work and you as a person as well. And I just wanted to say that I’m a fan and I wanted to ask you something, is that okay?” Mercedes asked him with a nervous posture.
“Yeah, go ahead!” Jack said with a smile, he forgotten how it had felt to have people come up to him just to say hi, get a photo with him, or just to ask him a question. He really missed the feeling.
“Okay, so a lot of articles and rumors have been going around that you had stopped making your tech due to stress. I know that was about a year ago, but I was just wondering if you were okay now and if you were going to continue your work?” they asked him. Jack was sort of taken aback by the question, he honestly didn’t know there was a rumor like that about him, he expected it, but he didn’t know that it had actually happened.
But then again, he shouldn’t really be surprised by it, he did turn off everything that he could use to communicate with through the internet, and he basically wiped himself off of the media.
“I’m doing okay, thank you for asking! And don’t worry, I will continue. You have my word, Mercedes!” And with that, the teen smiled, thanked him, and left to take more orders.
“Wow” Felix sighed with a smile. “I forgot that you are actually famous!” Felix joked.
“Oh, shut up!” the two of them laughed as they spent the day joking and having a good time.
-.-
Jack went home rather late in the afternoon. He knocked on the door with a happy attitude, but nobody answered. He knocked again, maybe Mark can’t hear him? He waited for about two minutes before he knocked again but louder. He waited about three minutes and knocked again. Nobody, nobody answered.
He’s now panicking, Mark wouldn’t have gone to be at this hour, would he? He dug around in his pocket before pulling out his house key and unlocked the door. Maybe Mark actually can’t hear him? Maybe he’s just watching something with headphones?
“Mark?” Jack called out as he put his keys and bag down on the coffee table and looked around. He’s not in the kitchen, and he’s not in the living room. He walked up the stairs and looked in all of the rooms: the bathroom, the guest room, the closet, and their room, and Jack’s office. Jack ran back down stairs toward Marks office-.
-x-
He’s almost done. Mark’s almost done with what he needs to do. All he has to do is wait.
He’s currently sitting down on the lab table with cables attached to the sides of his neck and one attached to the middle of his chest. He’s just sitting on the table, thinking with all of the cables that were hung from the ceiling attached to his body. He’s holding a flash drive in one hand, and has a remote sitting beside him as he rubs on the flash drive that’s in his left hand.
He wonders. He wonders if Jack will be okay this time. The last time he had ‘left’ He had been murdered no real reason other than bad timing and a drunk man with a gun, and that was it. This time, though, was different. This time he had a reason to go, and he had a right time to go. But one hard thing to do is that he has to watch Jack say farewell. But it’s the best thing to do.
He can’t just do this without Jack not knowing and without him hearing his voice for the last time, and he can’t die without hearing his voice for the last time…
-x-
Jack’s panicking. He looked in his office, and he wasn’t there. He looks all around the house and he couldn’t find him. But what’s one more thing to do is to check his lab…
Oh no.
Jack bolts out of the door and races down the street without thinking about nothing other than Mark. He’s too panicked and nervous to cry, but he finally reaches to his lab and he sees the key in the doorknob, it’s unlocked.
He races down the halls toward the main room, toward where Mark was. What was Mark doing here? Why was Mark here? What provoked him to come here? Why?
He enters the room and sees Mark shirtless with cables attached to the rightful places, on his neck and his chest. Jack’s eyes widen a bit as he slowly walks toward Mark, gaining speed as he walks but then he runs. What was Mark thinking?
“Mark..?” He mumbles as he looks at what he’s done. “What’s…what’s going on?” Mark looks up at him from looking at a flash drive that’s in his hands.
“Sean…” Mark quietly said. “We have to, talk” Mark looked up towards jack with worried eyes. Jack slowly nodded as he sat down on the table next to Mark. Mark shifted a little towards Jack, still holding the flash drive. “Listen, I know I’ve been acting strange. I know I have. But I have to tell you something, but you might not like it” Jack thought, and nodded again.
“Ever since I remembered who I was and what had happened, I haven’t been feeling like my old self.”
“What…what do you mean?” Jack asked, there’s two roads that he thinks this is going to go down, but he doesn’t know which one is going to be correct.
“I mean, I don’t feel the same way I did two years ago. I don’t feel like the old Mark that you had meant to build…I haven’t been feeling like I used too. I know how I should feel, but I don’t feel it. I don’t understand why I loved YouTube so much, I don’t understand it anymore. I don’t understand why I had made those for people to watch. I remember having too much passion for doing it, now I just feel nothing towards it. And-…” He paused, thinking. Jack shifted in his seat of the table.
“Mark, it’s okay.” Jack placed a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Whatever you need to say to me, you can say it. I’m here for you” Mark smiled toward him and took a breath.
“And I don’t…I don’t feel anything genuinely now. I don’t feel like I used to toward you. I don’t feel like I did before everything happened. I know who I was and how I was supposed to act, but I don’t feel like him. I don’t feel like your husband. I don’t feel like the Mark that everybody had known. I don’t feel like I’m supposed to.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t know how you were going to act or feel. But then…but then men came to the door this morning when you were at work…”
“Mark-.”
“Sean, these weren’t your typical businessmen. They were official and they had said that if you didn’t tell the government about me, they would have to permanently get rid of me by force.
“I knew that if you tell the government, they would tell you that you have to sell it to them for legal reasons, and I couldn’t just stand there and let you go through the pain of losing me again without you knowing about it. So…I needed you to be here for this.” Mark stopped for Jack to process.
He couldn’t believe it. But he did have to admit something,
“Mark…I understand. It felt like I knew your thoughts and opinions but I didn’t know you. I felt like you were a whole different person that just had a face of person who I had known, and that’s it.
“I always knew that this was all wrong. And that I need to mourn, but I couldn’t. Mark I’m…” Jack had started to well up, “I’m sorry that I had made you. I’m sorry that I made you to cope. I’m sorry about you being murdered, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry that I didn’t just move on. I’m…I’m-.” Jack was interrupted by Mark hugging him with a warm embrace.
“I forgive you. I was never mad at you. I was never disappointed by you. I loved you, Sean. I loved you. My last thoughts were worrying about you and how you will do without you knowing I’ll be there when you come home. I was thinking about how much I loved you. I’m proud to have known you, and I’m proud that my past self-had found someone who was so kind and happy. Your husband loved you. And he always will” Mark finished. Those last word that he had said stood out. It felt like he was telling it himself, it felt right.
“Mark…?” Jack pulled back from the hug, Mark hummed in response. “What do you want me to do?” Mark smiled at him. Mark explained to him that he needed to take the remote that was on the other side of him activated the machine to power him down permanently. He had also told him to take the flash drive that was from his hands when he had fully powered down.
Jack nodded as he took the remote in his hands and he held Mark’s head up as he laid down on the table.
“Are you ready?” Jack asked him gently. Mark nodded. Jack took a breath. He was doing this. And it’s going to be okay. He pressed the button and watched the power slowly drain out of Mark.
“Mark?” Mark slowly looked up to him. “I won’t forget you.”
“…Promise?” Mark almost mouthed with a weak smile.
“I promise.” Jack said before Mark finally closed his eyes and the power was fully drained, and Jack was left in his lab. “I promise…” He echoed as he held Mark in his arms.
-Five yours later-
Jack is in a graveyard, looking over a grave stone.
“I finally did it.” He said to the stone with a smile. “I finally made working VR contacts! I know you were doubtful when I first told you about it, but now I finally did it!” Jack exclaimed as he crouched down in front of it.
“I know I haven’t visited you in about three years, but I had my hands full being a dad! You heard it right, I’m now a father of a cute little daughter-.”
“DADDY!” A small voice interrupted jack’s words.
“And there she is now…” Jack stood up from the grass and looked toward two figures who were walking towards him, well, two if you count one that’s running and bouncing toward him.
“SAMMY!” He yelled with outstretched arms. “How are you? Did Mommy do a good job of taking care of you while I wasn’t around?”
“She did, but I would’ve loved it more if you were playing with me instead! That way I can actually win at hide and seek…” The little girl mumbled at the end.
“Yes, because your daddy isn’t good at finding things” Signe came up to the both of them. “How’s he doing?” she motioned to the grave stone.
“Oh, he’s probably doing well!”
“Daddy! Did you give him those little blue flowers?” Sam asked him as she looked down to the stone, pointing toward a little bouquet of bunched up forget-me-nots on the stone.
“Yep! He loves those!” Jack giggled with the little girl and then later listening to his wife join in.
-.-
Jack was now looking around for something until he stumbled on a little wooden box. He opened it and pulled out a black flash drive from the box. That’s right, he never saw what was inside.
He walked down the stairs and he walked towards a room that was located at the back of the house. He opened the door, and looked around the room and saw the foam padding and the computer and the whole set-up still hooked up and that would be ready to go.
He looked toward in front of the desk and saw two rings that were gently placed by each-other. He walked in the room and gently placed the flash drive by the two rings and walked out of the door, but before he closed it, Jack smiled as he closed the door on his way out.
He’s finally ready to let go.
THE END.