Just a Machine |Detroit: Become Human

9.

Marlene did not bring Daniel or that night again to Zoey. While she wanted to because she wanted Zoey properly to mourn the lost of her friend, she knew that she didn't want to see her distressed light again.

It was funny though how she refused to call it LED. Since she bought Zoey and started seeing her more as a person instead of a machine, she had started to dislike, even hate Cyberlife that she stopped using their terms, slyly trying to get Zoey to stop using them too, without success of course. The girl was very stubborn to keep to her programming than adjust to how Marlene talked to her. But Zoey let her, no longer correcting her when she called 'standby mode' as sleeping or taking a nap. The colors of her LED were now healthy, thinking and distressed to blue, yellow and red respectively to which Zoey had to mentally create a file for Marlene's slang, which she had to pull up constantly, and every time she did so, the corners of her lips would pull up and Marlene was very certain the way she'd use Cyberlife's terms after Marlene used her own to talk to her was that of amusement.

That and those little moments she could see here and there that showed Zoey indeed had a personality under all that robotic crap was enough to believe Deviants weren't bad, just mistreated and maybe with a little decency they would be like any other human.

~8~

Back straight, hands behind her back and LED cycling blue, Zoey stood behind Marlene as the blonde human worked on her desk.

Exactly 20.5 minutes after Marlene had started working, her pen stopped moving, lips pursed together and her eye twitched slightly.

"Is everything alright, Marlene?"

"No" Marlene snapped, immediately feeling regret seeing a brief flicker of yellow before Zoey looked away, staring straight ahead. Marlene groaned, dropping her head on the desk, ruffling the only thing that she heard as she closed her eyes momentarily. The light touch on her back, in between her shoulder blades made her stir up and open her eyes, moving slightly her head to the side, seeing Zoey kneeling at her side, holding a glass of water, and definitely Marlene felt guilty for snapping. "I'm sorry, Zoey"

LED spinning once yellow before turning blue, Zoey sent the human a small, reassuring smile, the expression looking slightly more human looking that Marlene had to take a double look at that.

"No, it is me who should apologize" Zoey said, handing her the glass of water, "I detected your stress levels potentially increasing, determining an approach, but I must have miscalculated and chose the wrong approach"

Marlene had to smile, despite of everything because she could see how Zoey was beating herself up for saying the wrong thing, in her robotic way of course but another thing that she could hold on to, that there was a soul under all that plastic and wires.

"It's okay" Marlene reassured, accepting the water, squeezing Zoey's hand which had the Android look down to the gesture, the thinking apparent in her light but also looking quizzical at the action.

[processing...]

[searching...]

[Search completed]

Holding hands. Noun.
The providing of attentive support, reassurance or instruction, as to calm or lessen anxiety or fear.

Zoey tilted her head aside, looking up at Marlene, wondering why she figured she'd need support or reassurance when the one in stress and in need of assistance was her and not Zoey.

^Software Instability

Like always when that label appeared, Zoey ignored it, knowing she wouldn't find anything concerning in her software so she didn't try.