[ "I'm sorry," makes him duck his head. As if he has any right to accept this, the figure who survived his own tragic play, when it would have been kinder if fate claimed him in the second act.
Easier to focus on the latter line of conversation. ]
I do. [ He nods, then pauses, glances at Markus for confirmation. ] I think I do.
[ To say Fitz understands the androids or Ophelia just because of the time he spent building AIDA or working with her, being with her, the fleeting hours where he just watched as she processed, talking him through how it felt — ]
There were too many other factors in play. [ Radcliffe's programming, the Framework, Leopold James Fitz. Love, then loss. ] And it was extreme, all of it. [ the physical and emotional drain more than any being could bear. He's eight months out and still in shambles. In truth, Fitz thinks he lives in the swing, always going from one end to the furthest reaches of the other — a quiet crest of emotion with Markus here, or a deadly slash at Daisy during the outbreak — but there are people catching his hand, fingers slipping through his own, trying to help him reach equilibrium until he can maintain it alone.
He doesn't know how to say what that means to him. Instead, it's something he'll need to show, when the opportunity presents itself. ]
That's what I told Daisy, when she asked me about her. And you. [ exhaling. ] Only no one else sees it that way, not yet. [ his voice lowers. ] Ophelia is our Elysian. More localised, but.
[ When Daisy, when anyone from his team meets Markus or Connor — or someone like them — they're going to see her. The man Fitz was with her. What she did. How she couldn't cope with being human for a mere forty-eight hours. ]
I should have told you the truth from the jump. [ because Markus deserves that, even though it's hard, complicated, much more than artificial intelligence gone haywire. He holds steady, then. ] I’m sorry I didn't.
[Parts of his friend still retreat at condolences, the I’m sorry causing Markus to lose Fitz’s gaze. Not what the other is really looking for, he knows, not when guilt will take that phrase and turn it inside out until it’s shaped like an ugly thing — but Markus says it because he means it. There's sympathy there; Fitz is a friend and therefore to hear these retroactive revelations still makes his insides twist, because the curtain is being drawn back to reveal just what kind of damage was done, made clearer with each branch the conversation takes.
Markus wishes he could halve that burden and sling a part of it onto his own shoulders. Or even just the tiniest sliver, the smallest degree, to remove it from the other man if it meant that he could feel steadier on his feet, even imperceptibly. Conversation might be all he can manage; concessions, emotions, regret, memory that circles over and over in one’s mind like a restless predator. But giving life to them with words can make them tangible, make them more present — and as they walk down the skypark trail in the wretched heat of the New Amsterdam summer, perhaps with some small miracle they might leave some of those shadows behind, like footsteps pressed into loam.]
I would’ve liked to have known the truth from the start. [He won’t lie about that. After this world’s disastrous experience with AI life, after having left his own still in the lurch, the interest is a poignant one for Markus. As if he might divine the best route for himself to take, based on the failures of others. Like there might be something illuminating in these histories; advice unspoken, a clearer path. A warning.
And yet—]
But I was a stranger. A man who called himself an android, when all you could associate with the term were experiences still too raw to share with someone you’d just met.
[A highly personal story, a retelling that still seems to shake Fitz’s core. He can’t blame him, and he definitely can’t really be upset with him.]
Daisy and I aren’t unfriendly with each other, you should know. Even if our initial meeting was less than ideal. Take that seed of hope and latch onto it for now, the potential that your friends might learn to see it as something… not so cut and dry, not so black and white. [He mulls over his next statement, trying to apply the right words to his meaning.] I don’t ever want to be like Elysian, and I hope to never give the impression that I should be any world's version of it. I always hope to be a better example to anyone who has a troublesome history with AIs.
[And finally, all that being said:] Thank you for telling me everything.
[ Hope does slip in — through the same cracks in his guilt and condemnation that Markus has pried wider, simply by listening, clarifying, questioning where no one else has before, acknowledging where Fitz misstepped and where he ought to be kinder, at least to himself. Not a blanket forgiveness, the kind he can't accept, but something more nuanced. ]
Thank you. [ faint again, still walking through the skypark on autopilot, as if the world around them has blurred, nothing but greens and light filtering this strange and intimate moment. Fitz does that sometimes. A focused single-mindedness that obscures all but the task or person in his sightline: Markus, offering him something he can't reject, no matter how much the self-punishment might satisfy the destructive impulses rolling around in his head. ]
It's only you who I've — well, Jemma, obviously, and Daisy was there — but you're the only one I've told the lot of it. [ Ah. Hastily, he adds: ] As I remember it. [ Memory takes a lot of poetic license, he thinks. Can't recall who said that. Fitz only knows he can't be trusted any longer, not with memory and not with this (despite this is the essential truth of what happened; it's hard for him to know that). ] You listening, everything you've said, what you're saying, you — it means a lot to me.
[ Fitz exhales, working two fingers under the collar of his shirt and brushing over the bandages there. ]
You are a good example, you know. Not just of AI's. Of all the examples. [ a tug at his collar, slight frustration over the effort of this. Trying to find the right words. Markus deserves the closest ones he can find, whatever he can string together to convey what he means. ] Of people. [ a beat. ] Only you don't have to be. Not all the time. I mean, that's a lot to ask of someone who's more than a — than an idea. [ His pace quickens, as if he's overstepped in saying that. ] You probably know that. Just. If you don't. [ an aborted shrug. ] I liked hearing about where you worked, what you get up to, before we were caught up in this again. [ He frees his hand from his collar, sweeping it across the nearby fixtures (a floral sculpture, a cluster of benches and trees, shading other wanderers). ] As a friend. As your friend. [ dropping his hands at his side. ] That's all.
[ Reiterated with greater confidence than before. Maybe if he can offer Markus a small reassurance (attention, companionship, honesty), he can allow this friendship, regardless of whether he deserves it or not. ]
[It’s an imperceptible change. Jaw setting, muscles there going taut, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. The rest of Markus’ demeanor remains the same, looking only affected by the gratitude of his friend, ready to accept it and always willing to be there to aid him. Even if it’s only via a trek through the skypark, exchanging burdens with each other under lazy, whispering branches.
Even if Markus has a tendency to make that a lopsided exchange at best.
Because the talk of being an example — about not always having to be an example — doesn’t quite bring him unease, but it dredges up a part of him that’s hooked so deeply into duty, into obligation, into pressing forward for a purpose higher than his own, that makes it hard to think of himself as anything else. He is still all calmness to Fitz’ nervous energy, but there’s a hitch in his own words this time.]
I appreciate it, but— [A pause, readjusting his thought process, verbiage chosen carefully.] But I’m what others need to me to be, when they need me to be it. Especially when it comes to friends.
[Reaffirmation, the tug of a smile that he forces to not look apologetic in any way possible. But he affords Fitz the honesty he deserves.]
Just a part of who I am. It was that way back in Detroit, too. [Another hand stuffed into a pocket, a casual sort of air he doesn’t quite align to.] But if you’re signing yourself up to be someone I can complain to about the difficulties living in a human body, then I won’t say no.
[ Not so imperceptible that Fitz doesn't clock something shift with his unrelenting focus, the eyes of an engineer who knows a misplaced wire could shock him dead or rattle a base full of precious people. Can't say what passes over Markus' features, but there was movement there. He knows it.
Lightly, he knocks his fist against Markus' shoulder, more friendly than comforting. Fitz worries that something softer would be rebuffed, just like his statements seconds earlier. ]
If that's what you want. [ Who is he to deny that? A part of who Markus is, like Fitz's earth-shaking, heart-shattering devotion. A more clinical assessment is arranged and metered out. ] Sounds like a tough way to live, when people need different things. Yourself included. Dunno if I'd call it sustainable. [ then, as if brushing it off. ] Maybe that's just the scientist in me.
[ the logic side of his brain, throwing around terms like "sustainable" and wondering if you can divvy up yourself that much without losing pieces along the way. ]
You know I'll always answer, if it's you calling, at any rate.
[ a purposeful redirect. He'd like to field more than complaints, if he can. ]
[It’s well-employed, that scientific skepticism. Just casually enough stated to question Markus’ borderline martyr-like stance without actually questioning it. Observation, utilized in a way that allows Markus to reply, or to let it slide off of his shoulders like a thing ignored.
He finds he can’t do the latter, not completely. That Fitz has unwound so much of himself before him, that should allow him at least the same in return — if even by a small amount. His shoulder jostles a little with the friendly gesture, his grin tilting lopsided.]
Unsustainable? Maybe not. But sometimes it isn’t a matter of sustainability, only necessity that you keep pushing forward for reasons that are beyond yourself.
[But even so, the offer does not go unnoticed nor under appreciated.]
That being said, I know that I can rely on you. And I appreciate it more than you know.
[ Their pace evens and steadies, more at ease in the aftermath. In some ways, Markus gives the answer that Fitz anticipates. Fitz has known better (or perhaps equally good) and worse men in the style of Markus, built to rise above their contemporaries and stand with pride for something greater. And Fitz, while not in that league of heroes, fights as if he’s running out of time, every hour stolen from the spectre in his head.
Not sustainable. Necessary.
Repaying all of his vulnerability and concessions with one admission of his own, Markus gives a fraction, enough for the moment. Then he turns the conversation back on Fitz, terming him a known quantity, proven to be reliable despite all the evidence to the contrary. It makes his chest ache. People here as warm as his team, their specific configuration of atoms and memory only possible in this multiversal hub, and destined to blink out of this reality, by force or by choice.
We don’t need a martyr, he thinks, and forces the words to stay in his throat. Maybe they do. Maybe they will. The best causes always have one. If the time comes, if it’s necessary — ]
I know enough. [ His mouth curves, smile slight and sad. There nonetheless, persisting. ] You’re good at saying it. Showing it. [ He looks askance at Markus. ] And it means a lot. When it’s you.
[ clearing his throat, then. That’s enough sincerity for one day, isn’t it? ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Easier to focus on the latter line of conversation. ]
I do. [ He nods, then pauses, glances at Markus for confirmation. ] I think I do.
[ To say Fitz understands the androids or Ophelia just because of the time he spent building AIDA or working with her, being with her, the fleeting hours where he just watched as she processed, talking him through how it felt — ]
There were too many other factors in play. [ Radcliffe's programming, the Framework, Leopold James Fitz. Love, then loss. ] And it was extreme, all of it. [ the physical and emotional drain more than any being could bear. He's eight months out and still in shambles. In truth, Fitz thinks he lives in the swing, always going from one end to the furthest reaches of the other — a quiet crest of emotion with Markus here, or a deadly slash at Daisy during the outbreak — but there are people catching his hand, fingers slipping through his own, trying to help him reach equilibrium until he can maintain it alone.
He doesn't know how to say what that means to him. Instead, it's something he'll need to show, when the opportunity presents itself. ]
That's what I told Daisy, when she asked me about her. And you. [ exhaling. ] Only no one else sees it that way, not yet. [ his voice lowers. ] Ophelia is our Elysian. More localised, but.
[ When Daisy, when anyone from his team meets Markus or Connor — or someone like them — they're going to see her. The man Fitz was with her. What she did. How she couldn't cope with being human for a mere forty-eight hours. ]
I should have told you the truth from the jump. [ because Markus deserves that, even though it's hard, complicated, much more than artificial intelligence gone haywire. He holds steady, then. ] I’m sorry I didn't.
no subject
Markus wishes he could halve that burden and sling a part of it onto his own shoulders. Or even just the tiniest sliver, the smallest degree, to remove it from the other man if it meant that he could feel steadier on his feet, even imperceptibly. Conversation might be all he can manage; concessions, emotions, regret, memory that circles over and over in one’s mind like a restless predator. But giving life to them with words can make them tangible, make them more present — and as they walk down the skypark trail in the wretched heat of the New Amsterdam summer, perhaps with some small miracle they might leave some of those shadows behind, like footsteps pressed into loam.]
I would’ve liked to have known the truth from the start. [He won’t lie about that. After this world’s disastrous experience with AI life, after having left his own still in the lurch, the interest is a poignant one for Markus. As if he might divine the best route for himself to take, based on the failures of others. Like there might be something illuminating in these histories; advice unspoken, a clearer path. A warning.
And yet—]
But I was a stranger. A man who called himself an android, when all you could associate with the term were experiences still too raw to share with someone you’d just met.
[A highly personal story, a retelling that still seems to shake Fitz’s core. He can’t blame him, and he definitely can’t really be upset with him.]
Daisy and I aren’t unfriendly with each other, you should know. Even if our initial meeting was less than ideal. Take that seed of hope and latch onto it for now, the potential that your friends might learn to see it as something… not so cut and dry, not so black and white. [He mulls over his next statement, trying to apply the right words to his meaning.] I don’t ever want to be like Elysian, and I hope to never give the impression that I should be any world's version of it. I always hope to be a better example to anyone who has a troublesome history with AIs.
[And finally, all that being said:] Thank you for telling me everything.
no subject
Thank you. [ faint again, still walking through the skypark on autopilot, as if the world around them has blurred, nothing but greens and light filtering this strange and intimate moment. Fitz does that sometimes. A focused single-mindedness that obscures all but the task or person in his sightline: Markus, offering him something he can't reject, no matter how much the self-punishment might satisfy the destructive impulses rolling around in his head. ]
It's only you who I've — well, Jemma, obviously, and Daisy was there — but you're the only one I've told the lot of it. [ Ah. Hastily, he adds: ] As I remember it. [ Memory takes a lot of poetic license, he thinks. Can't recall who said that. Fitz only knows he can't be trusted any longer, not with memory and not with this (despite this is the essential truth of what happened; it's hard for him to know that). ] You listening, everything you've said, what you're saying, you — it means a lot to me.
[ Fitz exhales, working two fingers under the collar of his shirt and brushing over the bandages there. ]
You are a good example, you know. Not just of AI's. Of all the examples. [ a tug at his collar, slight frustration over the effort of this. Trying to find the right words. Markus deserves the closest ones he can find, whatever he can string together to convey what he means. ] Of people. [ a beat. ] Only you don't have to be. Not all the time. I mean, that's a lot to ask of someone who's more than a — than an idea. [ His pace quickens, as if he's overstepped in saying that. ] You probably know that. Just. If you don't. [ an aborted shrug. ] I liked hearing about where you worked, what you get up to, before we were caught up in this again. [ He frees his hand from his collar, sweeping it across the nearby fixtures (a floral sculpture, a cluster of benches and trees, shading other wanderers). ] As a friend. As your friend. [ dropping his hands at his side. ] That's all.
[ Reiterated with greater confidence than before. Maybe if he can offer Markus a small reassurance (attention, companionship, honesty), he can allow this friendship, regardless of whether he deserves it or not. ]
no subject
Even if Markus has a tendency to make that a lopsided exchange at best.
Because the talk of being an example — about not always having to be an example — doesn’t quite bring him unease, but it dredges up a part of him that’s hooked so deeply into duty, into obligation, into pressing forward for a purpose higher than his own, that makes it hard to think of himself as anything else. He is still all calmness to Fitz’ nervous energy, but there’s a hitch in his own words this time.]
I appreciate it, but— [A pause, readjusting his thought process, verbiage chosen carefully.] But I’m what others need to me to be, when they need me to be it. Especially when it comes to friends.
[Reaffirmation, the tug of a smile that he forces to not look apologetic in any way possible. But he affords Fitz the honesty he deserves.]
Just a part of who I am. It was that way back in Detroit, too. [Another hand stuffed into a pocket, a casual sort of air he doesn’t quite align to.] But if you’re signing yourself up to be someone I can complain to about the difficulties living in a human body, then I won’t say no.
no subject
Lightly, he knocks his fist against Markus' shoulder, more friendly than comforting. Fitz worries that something softer would be rebuffed, just like his statements seconds earlier. ]
If that's what you want. [ Who is he to deny that? A part of who Markus is, like Fitz's earth-shaking, heart-shattering devotion. A more clinical assessment is arranged and metered out. ] Sounds like a tough way to live, when people need different things. Yourself included. Dunno if I'd call it sustainable. [ then, as if brushing it off. ] Maybe that's just the scientist in me.
[ the logic side of his brain, throwing around terms like "sustainable" and wondering if you can divvy up yourself that much without losing pieces along the way. ]
You know I'll always answer, if it's you calling, at any rate.
[ a purposeful redirect. He'd like to field more than complaints, if he can. ]
no subject
He finds he can’t do the latter, not completely. That Fitz has unwound so much of himself before him, that should allow him at least the same in return — if even by a small amount. His shoulder jostles a little with the friendly gesture, his grin tilting lopsided.]
Unsustainable? Maybe not. But sometimes it isn’t a matter of sustainability, only necessity that you keep pushing forward for reasons that are beyond yourself.
[But even so, the offer does not go unnoticed nor under appreciated.]
That being said, I know that I can rely on you. And I appreciate it more than you know.
no subject
Not sustainable. Necessary.
Repaying all of his vulnerability and concessions with one admission of his own, Markus gives a fraction, enough for the moment. Then he turns the conversation back on Fitz, terming him a known quantity, proven to be reliable despite all the evidence to the contrary. It makes his chest ache. People here as warm as his team, their specific configuration of atoms and memory only possible in this multiversal hub, and destined to blink out of this reality, by force or by choice.
We don’t need a martyr, he thinks, and forces the words to stay in his throat. Maybe they do. Maybe they will. The best causes always have one. If the time comes, if it’s necessary — ]
I know enough. [ His mouth curves, smile slight and sad. There nonetheless, persisting. ] You’re good at saying it. Showing it. [ He looks askance at Markus. ] And it means a lot. When it’s you.
[ clearing his throat, then. That’s enough sincerity for one day, isn’t it? ]