Project Rowdy II: Interlude II

The house hadn’t changed. 

The same pale siding stared back at him, the same crooked porch light that threw shadows wrong, the same smell of mildew working through gutters and wet leaves decomposing on the front steps. 

He’d been standing on the sidewalk for… his internal chronometer said ninety-seven seconds, but he couldn’t deny that it felt much longer. 

She already knew he was out here. Obviously. 

If thermal imaging through the kitchen window blinds weren’t enough, it was the simple fact that he could see her silhouette when she had paused by the coffee maker a minute ago. He would like to believe he was just out here gathering his thoughts but he wasn’t. 

Simply put, his thoughts were already gathered.

Cross-referenced.

Collated.

This was just… buffering. Processing lag between decision trees and execution.

A sigh escaped his lips the second he took his first step forward; an involuntary respiratory response to stress indicators his body apparently still produced regardless of… regardless of recent revelations regarding the authenticity of said body.

He came to a stop on the welcome mat and raised his hand.

“Donald.” The door opened before his knuckles made contact with painted wood.

“Betty.”

A slight frown crossed her face at the name, Donald a little unsure why. “I was wondering when you were finally going to come in.” She stood framed in the doorway, hair shorter now in a professionally-maintained pixie cut, but those big blue eyes looked exactly the same as they’d always had. “I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the police on you.”

He knew very well that any such call would be intercepted, rerouted through GDA protocols, and classified under standard security measures, but the image was… amusing. Still. 

“Thanks for seeing me,” he said, voice settling into that clip that read briefing room at 0700. His professional mask slid into place because muscle memory (was it muscle memory if the muscles weren’t entirely… Damn it, Ferguson) demanded it. “I know it’s been a while.”

She nodded, arms crossed over a white t-shirt that looked new, mouth drawn into that tight diplomatic line she’d perfected during PTA negotiations. 

“Some things are happening in my life,” he said, words tracking exactly the same as he’d spoken to her over the phone three days ago. Even behind his mirrored sunglasses, he kept his eyes off hers because direct eye contact would trigger emotional responses he wasn’t entirely certain he was ready to handle right now… if they still existed. “And I just wanted to talk. To you and Donny.”

She rolled her eyes, not even bothering to hide it as she stepped aside and let him come in.

The kitchen hadn’t changed either. Same backsplash, same refrigerator magnets holding soccer schedules and parent-teacher conference notices. Beatrice poured coffee without asking; hands moving through a practiced routine that felt like archived footage. The table between them was the same one they’d shared pancakes on for six years, the same one she’d slammed her wedding ring down on nine years ago.

The coffee went untouched in his hands, ceramic warm against palms that definitely felt temperature but also definitely weren’t… entirely… “Beatrice,” he said, voice coming out too flat, too processed. “When did you stop loving me?”

Her face went still even as something cracked behind her eyes.

She set her mug down with deliberate care. “What is this about, Donald?”

“I have so many fond memories of our life together.” The words sounded curated, archived, like data pulled from storage rather than lived experience. Because maybe they were. Maybe they always had been. “The things we did. The plans we had. We were truly in love. I know that for a fact.”

She looked at him, saying nothing.

A low sigh escaped his chest. “Then it just went sour. I want to talk to you about that.”

“I…” She paused, recalibrating. “Honestly, not a day goes by that I don’t think about you. You were everything to me for the longest time.” Her voice dropped a little as if she was unsure of what to say next. “The-there were days I knew we’d be happy together forever, and that filled me with such joy I couldn’t force myself to do anything but think about how happy I was.”

He remembered those days. Like film still almost, grainy and too-bright.

“We had a perfect marriage,” she said, voice steady as mission briefing cadence. “I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved you.”

His hands pressed against the table.

“Then one day, it just stopped.” Her eyes narrowed like she was still trying to solve him like a puzzle. “You went on one of your missions, or whatever, and you came back different.”

Her breath hitched. “I don’t know what you saw or what they did to you. Or even what you were doing.” She swallowed a mouthful of nothing. “But it changed you. You always came back a little distant at first but warmed up to me after a couple days. This time, nothing. We were back to normal, then we weren’t. It was like you were a completely different person.”

Donald nodded slowly. It made sense… too much sense. The timeline aligned. Mission parameters, dates, operational classifications all cross-referencing with personal relationship degradation patterns and…

“You never warmed up. You just grew more and more distant. I couldn’t take it anymore.” She looked away from him, hands clenched together. “It was like you were a completely different person.”

He looked at her across the kitchen table, coffee growing cold between them, and felt something that might have been the urge to jump off a very tall building. Professional assessment: this conversation required precision. Personal assessment: this was going to hurt both of them.

“That was the mission to Egypt,” he said, voice settling into briefing cadence because that’s where his training took him when the ground started shifting. “November 17th, 2013.”

She blinked, clearly not remembering the date. Why would she? Operational security meant she’d never known what any of his missions actually involved.

“I was gone a week,” he continued, hands flat against the table surface. Real wood, real grain, real contact that he could feel but… but sometimes wondered about the authenticity of the sensation. “You never even knew what I was doing.”

Beatrice didn’t speak. Just watched him with those blue eyes that used to look at him like he was worth coming home to.

“A superhuman had been recruited by the Egyptian government. He was a Level 9. One of the big ones.” Donald paused, frowning as he accessed the classified details that suddenly felt less important than they used to. “Above the Guardians, Omni-Man level. It was just some farmer’s kid but he was basically a living black hole. Conceptually, at least, not literally. We were sent to eliminate the subject before he could be used against us.”

The procedural language felt safe. Familiar. Like armor that still fit even when everything else about his existence had become questionable.

“Brit was away, helping the Guardians of the Globe with something more world-shattering. I was sent in with an elite team of G.U.A.R.D. cape hunters.”

“The super soldiers?” Beatrice’s voice had that careful tone she used when she was trying to process information that didn’t quite fit her understanding of the world.

Donald nodded. “Something went wrong.”

She stared at him, hands wrapped around her coffee mug like it was the only solid thing in the room.

“I died.”

Her hand froze halfway to her lips. “What?”

“There was an explosion,” he said, clinical as a post-mission debrief because that’s how his mind categorized traumatic events (even ones he couldn’t actually remember experiencing). “I didn’t make it out in time. Not that I could have; everything within half a mile was pretty much pulped.”

She said nothing, eyes going wide. “What…”

“My body was recovered,” he went on, because once you started a briefing you finished it, regardless of how the audience was handling the intel. “Taken back here. They rebuilt me.”

She just stared, blue eyes big and shocked.

“It wasn’t the last time either. And during Omni-Man’s attack…” He caught himself before the words became a report instead of a conversation with his ex-wife.

“He killed you?”

“No,” Donald shook his head. “But I was injured and I found out. About… about what I am.”

“Oh, Donald.”

“My memories were there. My emotions weren’t.” The words came out too matter-of-fact, too processed, but that’s how he understood it now. How he’d been briefed on his own reconstruction. “The integration process wasn’t perfect. They programmed me not to remember the accident, any of them. Every one of those missions I died on, I believed was completed without difficulty.”

His hands opened on the table, fingers spreading against wood grain. Regrown skin over cybernetic joints, but when he moved them, they felt like his hands.

“I had no idea.”

He looked up at her, seeing the way her face had gone pale, the way her breathing had shifted into that shallow pattern that meant emotional overload. “Over time, I regained control of my emotions. Apparently, I’ve been somehow getting back to normal faster every time I… every time it happens. The brain remembers, I guess. It’s taken years, but I’m almost completely back to normal.”

Almost. The qualifier sat between them like classified information.

Beatrice’s voice came out hoarse, tears tracking down her cheeks in a way that made something twist in his chest. “You died? I don’t… I don’t understand. You’re some kind of a rob… bionic man?”

“I believe the correct term is android,” he said, fighting back what might have been a snort of bitter amusement. “But yes, essentially I’m a… I’m a robot. Only a portion of my brain was saved. That’s really all of the original me that’s left.”

He looked her in the eyes, professional facade cracking just enough to let the uncertainty bleed through. “What you’re looking at is a cloned flesh exterior over my cybernetic frame. I have functional cloned organs, blood, and a rebuilt bio-synthetic brain as well as… other parts for psychological health, at least, but most of me is a living weapon.” Donald tilted his head to the side. “Like a slightly less super SuperPatriot.”

Beatrice covered her mouth, shock muffled. “I… I still can’t believe you died.”

He nodded once, the movement precise as a confirmation of received intel. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

She blinked hard, like she was trying to catch up to the conversation and her own guilt at the same time. “All this time… I never knew. I never knew it could be something that wasn’t your fault.”

Donald shook his head. “I did promise you I wouldn’t die. So, it’s my fault too.”

“Oh, Donald,” she said, voice cracking in a way that bypassed all his professional protocols and hit something deeper, something that felt real regardless of its origin. “I’m so sorry.”

She wrapped her arms around him, and he felt the warmth of her against his chest, the familiar weight of her head against his shoulder. Real contact. Real comfort. Real forgiveness, maybe.

“I know,” he said quietly. “It’s okay.”

She looked up at him, eyes bright with tears.

Their lips touched.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

She hadn’t caught her breath yet. Sweat cooled along her lower back as she stared at the ceiling, hand resting on Donald’s chest. His heart beat. 

She hadn’t asked how that worked yet.

Her fingers had moved faster than her mouth. 

And that had moved pretty fast already.

He didn’t hold her the same way anymore. Not worse, just… measured; every touch deliberate, careful. The space between them wasn’t empty in the slightest, but it felt calculated in a way that made her want to scream or laugh or both.

It had certainly made her moan.

Sheets were twisted around their legs, afternoon sun cutting through bedroom blinds in stripes that hit his face, her shoulder, the wall behind them. Dust floated in the light like tiny disasters waiting to happen. 

Time felt stuck.

“Oh, Donald,” she said, voice breathy, satisfied and so many more things she should probably sound like right now, on top of tired. “You’re a machine.”

He gave her that awkward almost-grin she remembered on the face of that Georgetown undergrad. “Pretty cool, huh?”

She didn’t answer, her eyes stuck on the spot where his collarbone met his shoulder, the tiny scar that she remembered somehow recreated on cloned skin. They… they really rebuilt him perfectly, huh? Surgical precision disguised as natural healing, but she’d kissed that exact spot a thousand times before and it looked the exact same.

Felt the exact same.

Her smile cracked. Rebuilt itself. Cracked again.

Donald stared up at the ceiling, looking calm, focused, relaxed.

“You’re still warm,” she said, only a little surprised.

“Regulated temperature control,” he said, and Jesus Christ, Betty rolled her eyes again as her ex-husband was always a technical bastard. 

No wonder I didn’t notice. “Don’t make it weird,” she said, scoffing loudly because if she didn’t laugh about this she was going to lose her mind completely.

He shut up. Smart man. Robot. Whatever.

She sat up slow, not bothering to cover herself because modesty seemed stupid after everything that had just happened. One leg over the edge of the bed, exhaling like she’d forgotten how breathing worked when she wasn’t holding it. Her back ached in good ways and terrible ways.

Donald sat up too, elbows on knees; still breathing out of habit, or programming, or whatever kept him running.

There were things you didn’t notice until you were looking for them. Donald’s hands didn’t shake unless he was focusing on them. No fidgeting, no unconscious movements, except for breathing.

“I wasn’t sure I could still do that,” he said quietly.

She didn’t turn around. “You mean physically?”

“No.” He looked at her with a smile, brown eyes that still looked exactly like the ones she’d fallen in love with. “Emotionally.”

The silence stretched between them, fragile as wet tissue paper.

“You were gone for a long time,” she said, one hand finding his back because she needed to touch something real, even if it wasn’t entirely real. “I had to grieve someone who still looked like you.”

“I know.”

“I moved on. Or I thought I had. Then you showed up with the same voice and the same stupid earnest face and I—”

“I know.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, really looked. “You’re still you, right?”

Donald blinked, the first genuinely uncertain expression she’d seen from him since he’d knocked on her door. “I don’t know,” he said. “I remember what we were. I remember loving you. I remember how I felt about losing you. But I don’t know if what I feel now is… the same. Or if it’s what I’m supposed to feel.”

Her throat went tight.

“But I want to protect you,” he said, words coming out more honest than clinical for once. “And I want to stay. That part’s real. Even if the rest is reconstructed.”

That should have sounded cold. It didn’t.

She moved back toward him, sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to reach but not close enough to pretend this was simple. Her fingertips found his knee, real skin over God knew what underneath.

“Donald…”

She bit his shoulder. Not hard, just enough to leave her mark there, proof that this had happened. “How many times?”

“What?”

“You said you died. Once. The explosion. But you hesitated when you told me.” She sat back, blue eyes studying his face for tells she’d learned to read over six years of marriage on top of four years of dating. “How many times have you died, Donald?”

His eyes opened wider. Still brown. Still soft. Still his.

It took him forever to answer. Long enough for her to count his heartbeats against her palm and wonder if they were real or just good engineering.

“Thirty-eight,” he said.

The number hit her square in the chest. “Jesus.”

Thirty-eight times. Thirty-eight funerals she’d never been invited to. Thirty-eight times they’d scraped him off some battlefield and put him back together while she sat at home wondering why he wouldn’t touch her anymore.

“They rebuild me. Every time.” He swallowed, and she watched his throat work, real muscles over whatever framework they’d bolted his voice box to. “I don’t remember most. Just pieces. They don’t like it when I do. I usually don’t like it when I do.”

She chose to ignore that last part. “And you let them.”

“I serve,” he said, and it sounded like duty more than it did surrender.

She stared at him. Really looked. Every freckle she’d memorized, every line around his eyes that came from squinting at classified documents. None of it original. All of it him.

Donald watched her back, half-propped on his elbows, body loose but eyes calculating something that had nothing to do with her naked on his lap. She leaned down, kissed the corner of his mouth sharp, testing for seams. When he didn’t flinch, she bit his bottom lip.

“You can feel that?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Her hips shifted against his, not aggressive or loving, just intentional. Movement that came from fifteen years of knowing exactly how his body responded, even if it wasn’t technically his body anymore. His breath caught. Real or programmed, it changed something in the room.

“Don’t think,” she murmured against his ear.

“I’m not programmed to.”

Bullshit. She could feel him thinking, calculating, measuring every response against some internal manual on How to Human Properly.

They moved together anyway. Not like the world was ending or like they had all the time in it. Just like two people who’d figured out how to hurt each other and heal each other in the same breath. Sunlight cut through her bedroom blinds, striping his shoulders with warmth that looked real enough.

Her hands found the solid muscle of his arms, searching for weakness or wiring or anything that felt artificial. He responded like muscle memory, maybe because that’s exactly what it was. 

Maybe the cloned flesh remembered even when his rebuilt brain forgot.

She moved faster. He stayed careful.

“I’m not gonna break,” she said.

“I know,” Donald replied, voice dropping lower.

“Then stop holding me like I will.”

His grip tightened on her waist. Finally. 

Not cruel or controlling, just enough pressure to remind them both that he was strong enough to hurt her and choosing not to. She gasped, and he shifted under her like a man remembering he had a body worth using.

Their rhythm found itself, rebuilt just like the man on top of her, behind her, to the side. Not desperate or romantic. Just necessary and frantic and years overdue.

Outside, something landed on the windowsill and flew away again.

Inside, time crashed back into the room like a wave. Movement slowed, stopped. She collapsed against his chest, breathing hard into the hollow of his throat that still smelled like the aftershave he’d used since college.

Donald’s hand stayed on her lower back. Warm. Still as stone.

Neither of them spoke for a long minute. Then she rolled off him, tangled sideways in sheets and consequences.

“I’m gonna regret this,” she said to the ceiling.

“I won’t,” he said smugly.

She shot him a look, one eyebrow raised. When does a man ever regret sex? “You never regret anything, Mr. G-Man.”

Donald didn’t argue.

ZRA-KOOM.

The window just fucking disappeared. Glass everywhere, nightstand gone, dresser split down the middle in a way that meant something big and angry had decided her bedroom needed redecorating with explosives.

She screamed because that’s what you do when your life turns into an action movie without warning.

Donald was already moving, wrapping around her before her brain caught up to what was happening. His back took the hit; warm skin over God knew what kind of metallic reinforcement his bones and muscles now were. She blinked through dust and debris, mouth open but no words coming out because what the hell do you even say?

“Get some clothes on—we have to move. Now.”

He was off the bed before she could argue, mirrored sunglasses materializing from nowhere because apparently even cyborgs had their accessories ready for emergencies.

She didn’t waste time asking stupid questions. Grabbed her shirt off the chair, yanked her bra on over arms that were shaking but still working and had a moment of panic when she couldn’t find her jeans.

“What the hell was that?” she asked, shirt half-buttoned up. 

The whole house rocked sideways. Donald didn’t answer because another boom from the side made answering pointless.

They stumbled down the hallway, bare feet on floorboards that were probably older than both of them combined, smoke already working its way up through vents that definitely weren’t designed for this. She caught herself in the hallway mirror—smudged makeup, pupils blown wide, chest heaving.

Donald stopped dead two feet from the living room, hand up flat and silent in that way that meant shut up and listen.

Donny was there. 

On the couch. 

A perfect teenage copy of his father, the boy was backlit by his stupid game, unbothered behind his mirrored prescription glasses and still holding his controller because apparently fifteen-year-olds had different priority systems than normal humans.

“Donny!” she shouted, voice cracking sharp enough to cut glass. “We didn’t… didn’t know you were s-still home!”

The kid looked between them—mom in just a shirt and panties, dad in slacks and those ridiculous sunglasses—and his expression said more than everything about what he knew had happened. “Feh. Obviously.”

“What was that noise?” he added, casual as asking about dinner plans.

Donald started to stammer. “Uh, s-son, that was… me and your moth—”

“Ew, no. I mean from outside.”

Thank God for small favors.

Donald’s voice dropped into something that she was sure she had never heard before, the professional agent he never brought home. “We need to get out. Now.”

He grabbed Donny’s arm and hauled him upright. The kid resisted for half a second, saw whatever was in Donald’s face, and stopped arguing because even teenagers knew when Dad meant business.

“Wait—Dad?! What the—”

BA-THOOM!

The world exploded sideways. She was flying before Donny could finish whatever smart-ass comment he was making, Donald’s arm locked around her waist as he grabbed their son by the back of his jeans. A heartbeat later they were crashing through the roof on purpose, Donald’s body shielding them from debris as something that definitely wasn’t human anatomy roared to life from his legs.

Cold fire. Jet engines. For a split second, Beatrice wondered if this was standard issue for cyborgs.

She looked down as they climbed. Her house—their house, the place where she’d raised their son and learned how to be alone—caved in like a house of cards. Roof sagging, walls buckling, everything she’d built after he left turning into rubble.

She looked up and couldn’t breathe, eyes going wide as she saw the sky suddenly filled.

Donny only screamed. “What the hell is happening?!”