Sincerely

I sit silently in the car with Lev as he drives, I can tell he’s worried but I know running away won’t do anything, even if I know my safety is more important right now than trying to prove Huxley murdered Carlos.

I don’t know where he’s taking me at first, but eventually, I recognize the houses and neighbourhood.

“I’m not human, why do I feel like this?” I murmur.

He glances at me before his eyes return to the road.

“This is what grief is Deckard, it’s what all people or even animals feel when they lose someone, it’s not just humans who feel it,” he whispers.

We pull up in front of the house and I can barely look at it. I look at the windows, expecting to see Carlos looking out one of them.

Lev gets out of the car and comes around to my side. He opens my door and kneels down beside me.

“Deckard, look at me. Emotions are a good thing, I promise. It might feel like a burden but it makes us human, without them the world would be at war with itself a lot more frequently. You might feel guilty, but you are not responsible for what happened to Carlos,” he continued taking my face in his hands.

“If you don’t do this, you will regret it,” he warns me.

“I’m a machine, why do you want to risk yourself for me?” I exclaimed, clenching my jaw and shutting my eyes, trying to keep the tears from falling out.

Lev took my hands and put them over my ears, “What do you hear?” he asks.

I pause for a second.

I hear a thundering sound.

“There’s a thundering noise,” I murmur.

“That’s your heart, it might be robotic, but you have one. It’s beating, you are alive. You got upset over Carlos dying and you said you thought about kissing me. Robots don’t have those thoughts, you do because you are deviant, you are human, not in the same way I am, but you have a conscious and emotions. You care about me in the same way I care about you. Even if you didn’t feel the same way I did, my feelings wouldn’t just disappear because you didn’t feel the same way,” he explained gently.

“Come on,” he whispered nodding toward the house, holding one of my hands.

I got up slowly, Lev shut the sedan’s door behind me before gently leading me toward the house I once called home.

He pulled out a key, I recognized it as Carlos’, I used to carry one around, too. I must have left it behind though, the night I left. I watched him unlock the door and push it open gently. It swings inward. You can tell people have been in the place since I left, probably investigating and collecting evidence. Things are out of place but not destroyed or messy. We step inside quietly, Lev shuts the door behind me again.

I look around the room which is filled with dim sunlight, the sky outside is overcast, causing the inside of the house to have a grey hue. I walk forward slowly as if I were to go fast I might break or destroy something. I went into the living room first, looking over the bookshelves and their books. I approach them and slowly run my fingers along their spines.

A smell similar to the candles is invading my nose already. I pull out a book and flip the pages, wafting the smell on my face, before putting the book back. I would never get over or forget that smell.

Lev didn’t say anything, he just watched me. I glanced over the photos of Carlos, his wife, Huxley’s mother, who had passed several years before, years before I came into his life, and Huxley as a kid, and young adult. I picked up one photo of I and Carlos a few weeks before he passed, I and him were standing in front of his Christmas tree, which I had just dismantled a week after it was taken.

Lev glances over my shoulder at it.

“Do you want to take some things with you? I doubt they’d notice them missing, they didn’t go over this place thoroughly because they were fixated on a suspect already,” he replies quietly.

I grip the photo tightly in my hands, thinking about what he said. I held onto the photo before going back to the book and picking it up as well. Lev continued to follow me through the house until I came to the bedroom. I paused outside, tears on the verge of falling again. Lev grabbed my wrist.

“I don’t know if seeing the exact spot where he died would be a good idea,” he whispers.

I looked at him, I knew he was right, the blood would still be there, and all I would see was it covering my hands again. I turned back towards him, and he reached out and gently wiped my cheeks with the sleeve of his coat.

“I don’t think he’d want you to see it again either,” he added, quietly.

Carlos wouldn’t.

“There’s no sense in going through the same pain twice if it can be avoided,” I hear his voice echo in my head.

“Do you think he’s happy I met you?” I ask quietly.

“I think he would prefer it to you being in jail for Huxley’s crime. I can’t speak about how he’d feel about our relationship, I didn’t know him. Do you think he would be happy for you?” he replies.

I shrugged.

I glance back at the room, he hadn’t spoken much about what he thought of deviants or androids having emotions at all. I wondered if he felt guilty that he thought he was keeping me here. It was sad that he had to die for me to wake up, I guess we don’t know what we have until it's gone. I wouldn’t let the same happen to Lev, I would appreciate every moment I had with him.

I brought my hand up and touched his cheek. He looked at me before I leaned in to kiss him gently.

“What do you feel when I do that?” I asked quietly pulling back.

He looked into my eyes before he touched my cheek gently.

“I feel how warm you are,” he whispered.

His hand moved down to the side of my throat.

“I feel your heartbeat,” he whispered next.

“I see how much you loved Carlos and how much you…love me,” he whispered.

“I’m not warm, I’m made of metal. My heart doesn’t beat,” I murmured, looking down at the floor. “I don’t…I can’t love you because I’m not alive. You’re lying.”

“Deckard,” he exclaimed holding the side of my face still, “I don’t lie.”

I looked at him, he didn’t waver or hesitate or sigh in annoyance.

“What you feel is sincere, and so is what I feel. You would have left without me earlier when I went to go see Elias, you could have and you didn’t, Deckard. You waited, for me,” he reasoned.

“You might be made of metal, but you’re not cold, and you have a heartbeat, you cry, you have a name, a home and you feel things. You are alive, more alive than Huxley is,” he continues.

He reached into his pocket where he pulled out a small book, a journal really. He held it out to me.

“This is what made me doubt Huxley’s story was just a story. Carlos wrote in this every day since you came into his life, you were alive even before he died, you just didn’t realize it,” he whispered, holding the journal between us. “I promise.”

“We should go soon,” he replied quietly after.

I looked up from the journal in my hands, running my hand over Carlos’ name that he had written on the front.

I leaned in and kissed him and he returned it quickly. I could feel how warm he was, too. He gripped the back of my jacket and my hands were on his neck and in his hair.

With all the books I’d read and movies I’d seen thanks to Carlos, this felt and looked like love, now did I want to risk Lev’s safety to have it? I didn’t want to waste it like I did with Carlos, even though that was a different type of love, it still hurt a lot to lose him, losing Lev, at least in the stories would be said to hurt more, and it would be worse if I wasted the time I did have.

I pulled away from him gently and I put the journal in my pocket.

“Let’s go then,” I stated nodding towards the stairs we’d come up.