retravel: (i'm cute about EVERYTHING)
oh, fitz. ([personal profile] retravel) wrote 2018-11-25 10:27 am (UTC)

[ This was supposed to be an exercise in truth-telling, giving Markus the whole of it, and explaining why people from his world and his team will be hesitant to trust anyone in the android category — even someone like Markus, who so easily proves to Fitz time and again that he's a person worth being around.

He allows himself to look, then, where he'd been unwilling to linger before, gaze tracing the lines of Markus' features as he processes the allowances being offered, utterly disarmed. A singular focus, as if Markus might take a stab piecing together the multiverse just 'cause he's here, anyway, and believes that's his role in all this (dimly, he recognises those traits as unsustainable, with as much potential to lead to burnout and ruin as Fitz's own hamartia — something to consider, when he replays this conversation). The touch at his shoulder has a knock-on effect on his person, with their insignificant physical distance as his last defense against his poorly compartmentalised grief. For the person he was, and for Ophelia, too. ]


Yeah, but you don't know — you don't know the person I was before, or the one I was in there, either. It's just me here with you, Markus. [ no before or after, just Fitz, a hastily stitched together version who dragged himself out of the wreck when the first human shipment arrived, who'd been held offsite in a prison for six months, with too much time alone to do anything but lose himself. Ultimately, it's not a bad thing. On the contrary, the distance is a crucial piece of what facilitates this conversation. In Fitz's eyes, Markus has clarity as an outsider, despite his personal investment, where his friends are biased in their (understandable) want for the old Fitz, earnest in his warmth and heroism.

And yet he knows he should tell them, too, Daisy and Bobbi both.

You can’t do it alone warrants a stuttered nod, but it's I know you're a good person that unstoppers his tears, eking out at the corners of his eyes. Given that he isn't in a position to argue anything, he lets that be the truth, at least for this moment, standing in the light of the sky park with someone unwilling to turn him away. Then, he closes the gap between them, slipping his arms around Markus' back in a grateful, if shaky, hug. Inevitably, the bond activates, inviting Markus into the potent coalescence of relief and sorrow that has Fitz leaning up and sniffling into his shoulder.

It's a sloppy cry, long overdue. ]


Was supposed to be about telling you the truth — apologising, not — not just bloody — crying all over you.

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