[ He's seen a little too much, knows a little too much, has done and had done to him enough that he knew that it wasn't something, so easily gone past. Some things mar and mark, they cannot be undone and they write themselves deep.
He does relent after a moment, and he pulls back. It's a confirmation of life, selfish as that was. There was too much death under his hands, too much blood soaked under his nails, to believe such a thing was possible for a man like him.
So he's intent when he sits down in the seat beside her in the cockpit, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, peering at her like he still, doesn't quite believe it. ] Fine. [ He's not, he never will be, but none of it matters right now, if she is. So he's utterly dismissive about what he is, or how he feels right now other than how she's sitting right here, giving him a shaky look like she doesn't know what she's doing.
Which is probably comforting, because he's not sure what he's doing either. A mix of old habits and far too recent fears as he looks to her. Watching carefully all her little reaction like he's waiting for something off. ]
How's your mind? Is it still whole?
[ It's a strange question, but it makes sense to him and he needs to know. ]
[This, though, she does recognize, and it's an uncomfortable recognition. Pushing aside concern for one's own welfare so blithely-- she's done that before. She's done that a thousand times. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, unsure what to do with this new knowledge.]
[She opts to ignore it for now, set it aside and study it later. Maybe she can find some other pieces of the puzzle, connect them and make sense of this mess. Understanding is the first step to solving, even if the problem's she's used to solving aren't usually so abstract as this. Before, she wonders if she might have said... might have thought it was beyond her.Now is different. She's not sure how, entirely, but it is.]
[She's not sure of a lot of things anymore, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't bother her like it used to.] Far as I can tell? I dunno,
you want me to fill out a questionnaire? [She smiles again,
half-hearted, trying once more to lighten the conversation.]
[ He can see she is trying and that gives him more hope than he really wants to put to words, and there's a brief tug of a smile, trying to be less overbearing with his strange concerns. ]
So if I told you, I'd been listened to that... West man?
[ It's an attempt, at least. He could poke with more questions in a minute, but he was trying to show that he had been thinking of her. ]
[Fiona's expression goes from surprised to skeptical, but it's at least no longer strained. She nudges him with her foot.] Yeezy? Shit, I figured you'd like Clapton better. [The playlist from earlier is still playing quietly in the background.] How've you been? You never told me.
[ He shrugs. ] Maybe? I am not sure which one is which, but you seemed to like him. [ He shrugs a little, ignoring it. Still he was getting better at the music, or listening to it. It was different, but he didn't mind it all. ]
Fine. [ an utter lie, and he's bad at them, so he doesn't say anymore. ] Wade and I train, mostly.
[ Another lie because training was a generous term for brutalizing each other often enough, but it was nicer to say. ]
[Fiona smiles, oddly fond of the idea that Corvo can't tell the difference between rap and classic rock.] I'll send you Tears from Heaven, you'll like it. [It's calming and sentimental, good music for old people.]
[She leans forward, interested in talking about anything simple, normal. Light subjects of little import are everything to her right now.] Wade? How're you getting along with him. I'm sorry I talked shit about him last time. [She didn't know him as well, then. It seems like an eternity ago, and on some weird, metaphysical level, it probably was. How do you factor time into death? Goes it gain interest?]
[ It was music, and it wasn't music he was used to. Or at least he didn't know the names yet to know the difference well enough. ] I'll look forward to it.
[ He shifts in his seat, getting comfortable again and leaning back a little. Because he was comfortable with her, and he was certain he shouldn't be, but there was a casualness to it that he liked all the same. ] It's fine. He is after all, a violent, cruel man. [ But more than, he thinks briefly. ] ... but so am I. Probably why I enjoy his company. He's honest about what he is... and I appreciate it. [ So long lied to, having the world ripped out from underneath him -- and yes, he was more inclined to punch Wade and insult him to his face than ever mention what he thought. But he knew where he stood, that the worst parts of him were looked at, and not sneered at for what he needed to be. But he passes it off with a shrug like it meant little. Like he was used to having friends he didn't have to doubt, and he was a little less lonely than he was. ]
[Fiona thinks about it, because it's nice to think about something that isn't death and dying and sadness. She's fond of Wilson, she has one really good, strong memory of him from before she died. Yes, it's bizarre, he's in a dress and they're surrounded by dismembered snowmen, but what about her life isn't bizarre anymore? It's the details, smaller and finer than location and timing, that truly matter. Details like-]
You're not cruel. He's not either. [Cruel people don't say they're cruel.] You're just... kinda... different. [She laughs, thinking of Corvo's metal mask, his willingness to slow-dance with a stranger... it's her home, now. Not in this rover, but with these people. She's glad she came back to check up on them. She should have stayed alive longer to make sure they were okay.]
[ He looks a little taken back by that. Blinking at her, and he wasn't sure what he expected. More scorn, perhaps, and it's confusing. She asked him one thing, and then said another of him. He'd done what he'd done because he was selfish, because he'd do anything, anything at all, to keep Emily safe.
But here she is, calling him something less than that. Than what he deserved, and it's kindness, really. She might want to avoid it, pretend it hadn't happened. But he sat with the uneasy feeling with her blood on his hand in a revulsion of himself he just couldn't place. ]
I don't understand. [ he sucks in a breath, frowning in consternation. He didn't like feeling confused, feeling lost where he stood with people. It had been bad before, court games and courtiers lies, but after all that had happened, it down right sets him on edge now. ] You asked me to kill you. You asked me because you believed me I was unfeeling enough to strike another down in cold blood. [ and she hadn't been wrong. ]
[She looks at him, and her expression, puzzled, goes a little toward horrified. She figured she was being callow, but not... not that callow.] No, because you wouldn't... wouldn't fuck it up. Your file said you done it before.
[ She's not wrong, after all. But it's not what it means, but that doesn't matter because if doing what he had done had told him anything is he wasn't that kind of man.
Or he hadn't been. Might not be one day.
Much of a muchness now. Instead, he grits his teeth and he supposes he should be careful about this, delicate, should be anything else but himself. ] I have. Killed a great many. Women just like you. [ he likes his lips and this is pointless detailed but she was always asking him questions ( and maybe he just wants to prove her wrong and prove Wade right or -- maybe he just doesn't know anymore ) ] Not because they needed to die. But because, I couldn't afford them screaming.
[ Or maybe, he thinks, that this what she wants to hear, that it will make it all sit better. ]
[It's the gentleness that lets it sink in. When she's had these conversations ("conversations") with Wilson, they end up in screaming. Here, the words penetrate, maybe because of their calm.]
[Fiona doesn't have a context for this. Where she's from, a murderer would be a very different type of man, and she can't fit that person together with Corvo. (The guy waiting outside her house in the pickup truck, gesturing threateningly when he saw her looking through the window, searching for her father-- that's not Corvo.) Absurdly, all she can remember is the money she stole from that subway woman, the one who had finally clawed her way out of South Side only to fall back in because she was dumb enough to leave her rent on the train. That woman's rent bought Debbie a new coat for the winter, one that will last her for years.]
We all got jobs. It's not like you enj- [Don't make assumptions, Fiona. She pauses, looks up at him with something like fear-- fear of his disapproval. And fear breeds anger, but she has no reason to be angry-- fear, then, breeds the necessity of confidence.] I don't know. I'm not some fucking forgotten treasure of hood wisdom. I seen cruel, and don't make the grade, but maybe it's different where you're from.
[And?] And they weren't like me if they would'a screamed. [Which is a bullshit lie, by the way, especially if he was wearing that fucking mask, but in the moment, it's true in the same way the snow on the dashboard is. It's not supposed to be there, and it may melt away, but for now it is.]
[ He sits and stares at her and she's still saying the same thing. Because he knows she's lying, because she had screamed -- even if she might have called it less than that, it would still have been enough to attract attention -- the first time and if this were Dunwall she'd be dead before she had the chance.
And he doesn't know himself, in this. He doesn't know what she wants from him, what she expects and it's worse than maddening, it's terrifying. His hands grip tight, fisted in his pant legs like he might just bolt if he didn't hang onto something. ] I don't understand. [ His mouth parts on words he doesn't know how to form, because he should be more eloquent. ]
What do you ... expect of me? [ he thought she wanted cold, wanted cruel and empty and someone who did this before and didn't care. But here was insisting that he was less than that ( more than that? ). His life was not his, it had been hers and she had needed a protector and an anchor, and wholeheartedly he had given himself up to that. Then he had lost her, and Emily had needed less than a father and more than a protector, and the loyalists needed someone to do their dirty work -- and none of it meant anything more than what was required of him. Just like she had required something of him. Like any duty bound man, he did has he had been trained -- what he had been asked.
He was doing it now, still doing it. Without thought or consideration to himself, or anyone else, for that matter. ]
[In return for her little speech, Fiona gets something barely more
than silence. She stares for a moment, two, waiting for more. It doesn't
come.] I dunno...? [She leans forward a little bit, as
though that will help her understand. Or maybe it will inspire her to begin
to be able to explain all the things wrong with what he just said. The
missing beats in the song they were dancing to, the steps missing from the
stairs up the rover, all of them are clues. He is, again, more alien than
he seems.]
Do I gotta... expect something? [Is that how it works, out on the
far planet of his home?]
[ The confusion stays, the some frown that he feels almost angry, because it's easier than feeling so lost. She has to want something, has to need something, he needs it to define himself around. He was an extension of will, and never one of himself. He acts because others need him to, because they can't or won't do it for themselves, and somewhere along the line, his own will had been forgotten. He did as he was asked. He had always done as he was asked and made himself to whatever the task required.
Or, not that, not quite, he amends. He had some things, they had been his own choice. ( because there was a selfishness in the way that many years ago, when she pressed him back -- he hadn't pushed her away and placed duty between them, he'd gripped tight of her and pulled her against him. ) ]
Most do. [ No, not most. All but two, and they were who he'd given everything too without them ever asking. ] It is what it means to serve. [ and there's no self pity to the words, just a flatness that comes with exhaustion when it feels all so utterly useless. The tired feeling of swimming for miles and miles upstream, and eventually, there's a want to just like the current take and wash away the need to fight it anymore. ] And I have been serving a very long time.
[Fiona, meanwhile, reacts with a start, a little jolt of her shoulders. That wasn't the answer she expected. What did she just get herself into? She leans forward after leaning back, face pinched into an expression of sorrowful confusion. She's lost, here, but the situation is delicate. She needs to understand it.]
[What did she do?] You're not... serving me? [Why would he be? No one ever serves her, she serves herself, and others. It's not the other way around. She never wanted control of another person-- some innate sensibility (that would, if asked, define itself, perhaps wrongly, as 'American') rejects the notion. She only ever wanted control of herself.] Are you?
[ His gaze doesn't break, out of habit more than anything, he was made to watch, made to observe without speaking. In that, this is difficult, he doesn't appreciate having direct questions pressed against him, things of how he felt or thought. But she did it so often, asked him what he thought, about even that which seemed trivial, he wasn't sure exactly, what to do with it. He's trying it now, how to say it clearly, what he thought, what he thought she wanted.
But she looked so confused, and unhappy with what he'd just said that the refusal is quick, shaking his head. ]
No... No, I'm not. I am bound, to my death, to my Empress. [ It's a mutter, really, nothing more than a statement but it's etched with far too much devotion. But he doesn't linger on it. He frowns, and pauses on explaining about Emily, he's not sure, it's difficult, for many reasons and their are nuances there he feels a little too tired to go into. ] But you are asking two very different things of me, and I do not know how to be either of these things.
I'm asking something? [If she sounds concerned, it's because she is.
Fiona hates, fears and always, always avoids any outward sign of
selfishness or need. She tries not to ask anything of anyone, nothing
unfair or overly drawing. She's not some fluttering maiden who can't bear
to ask, but she has her own moral coda, one that demands she avoids actions
that remind her too much of the villains in her life. And they are
always asking and demanding and needing.] What am I asking?
[ It's a quiet counter, looking at her expectantly for what he does not know, but just as suddenly he's turning away again, shifting in his seat. Almost, almost ashamed but he can't place it, like he's been lying, like he doesn't know what to tell her, it's hard to put into one single thing. ]
You asked me to kill you, because you thought I was good enough, unfeeling enough for it, and you're not wrong. I am that selfish. Your decision was the right one. [ he licks his lips, cracked and dry on ugly harsh things that are far, far too true. ] But then you ask me, how I think, how I feel, you tell me I am not cruel despite what I did to you, would do again if that's what it meant to save my home... You ask me of myself, and no one... [ and he's too much conditioning in him to show how much that confused and scared him. His hands listless in his lap, eyes down. Confused and lost as a child. ] ... I do not know if you want me to be your killer or your friend?
[Things become a little clearer, and she isn't sure why. (It's because his posture reminds her, on some unconscious level, of that of a child, and Fiona knows how to deal with children.) As his back slumps, hers straightens, and she reaches out to take his hand. Her expression is sure, and everything is clear.]
[For other people, she can be strong.]
It was the wrong one, and I'm sorry. I didn't- I didn't want anybody confused. [Upset is what she almost said, but confused is better. That saves pride.] We are friends, okay? We just are. I didn't get that, it's my fault.
[ He goes still when she touches him, like it scared him more than comforted him. He doesn't know what to do with the affection, not really. It's confusing him, as much as he did it before and mimes the sanity better, maybe, than Wade, but he knows, knows far too well that he's not.
It's not fair to her, and he knows that, he knows he should be the one that was formal with this, that let this go like it was nothing. As if it were all nothing. It struck too deep, at something. Perhaps that was the nature of man, so often not defined in the positive, but in the negative. Cannot know what we are, but so sure of what we must not be.
But he knows, he knows he would like a friend, he would like peace, he wants -- wants to be less alone inside his own head with only a dead woman's murmuring to give him comfort. He doesn't quite take her hand back, but his hand shifts and his fingers press light to the inside of her wrist, pressing on pulse point. Warn with callouses and rough with a life time spent fighting, and her hands are far too small and fragile compared to them. ]
It is not your fault. [ He carefully lifts a hand and in return for her strength there is concern returned, brushing the hair back carefully from her forehead. ] I am glad to be called your friend.
[Fiona's hands aren't soft either. A life spent working doesn't leave much softness, even if they're not as hard and padded as those of a fighter. She has scars on her hands from knives, calluses from carrying and dragging. She has burns from too-hot metals and badly packaged chemicals. She knows she's no lady, even if others would disagree.]
It- I don't have a lot of, uh, friends. [This is a guilty admission-- for the first time, she realizes she has more friends on Ajna than she ever had in Chicago. Everyone always leaves.] So I'm, I'm glad I'm yours.
[But she, at least, can't live for too long in these earnest waters. There's always a fucking undertow if you don't watch it.] Even if they don't have rap on your planet.
[ His fingers laced through hers, careful. He does not have her -- but he thinks. Thinks of what she whispered so carefully, with too much compassion. More than he had or has. ( The fabric of the city is made of stuff such as she. ) ]
I would like that. [ his lips pull earnestly in a smile for a moment. It's a sad truth for them both then. It is not that he never wanted, it was just that he couldn't. Not once he released what his life would be like, serving his Empress. ] I have never been able to have friends before I came here. Not for a very long time.
[ he laughs, quietly. ] You are making very good at fixing this oversight by yourself. I would hate that to be taken off you.
[She laughs, small and kind of sad, but she's trying for his sake.] Yeah, I try, I guess. You're a better student than most of the people here. [She gives his hands a squeeze. Is it dumb that she feels safe around him? It's definitely dumb, but she does, and that's important to her in its own way. She doesn't often feel safe like this.]
[It's not that she expects him to save her, that's not important. It's that she knows he'll help her, and that's everything.] Thank you. I mean it.
[ He appreciates it. It doesn't mean much ( it means everything, really ). The grip is returned and held longer, his head down and he holds fast. Then he loosens, his hand turning enough to brush across the side of her hand. ]
I am sorry if I cannot always be... [ he's not sure what word he means to say, better? good? happy? ] ... well.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in horror movies, ability to maturely communicate emotions dies first
He does relent after a moment, and he pulls back. It's a confirmation of life, selfish as that was. There was too much death under his hands, too much blood soaked under his nails, to believe such a thing was possible for a man like him.
So he's intent when he sits down in the seat beside her in the cockpit, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, peering at her like he still, doesn't quite believe it. ] Fine. [ He's not, he never will be, but none of it matters right now, if she is. So he's utterly dismissive about what he is, or how he feels right now other than how she's sitting right here, giving him a shaky look like she doesn't know what she's doing.
Which is probably comforting, because he's not sure what he's doing either. A mix of old habits and far too recent fears as he looks to her. Watching carefully all her little reaction like he's waiting for something off. ]
How's your mind? Is it still whole?
[ It's a strange question, but it makes sense to him and he needs to know. ]
then they're going to live forever.
[This, though, she does recognize, and it's an uncomfortable recognition. Pushing aside concern for one's own welfare so blithely-- she's done that before. She's done that a thousand times. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, unsure what to do with this new knowledge.]
[She opts to ignore it for now, set it aside and study it later. Maybe she can find some other pieces of the puzzle, connect them and make sense of this mess. Understanding is the first step to solving, even if the problem's she's used to solving aren't usually so abstract as this. Before, she wonders if she might have said... might have thought it was beyond her.Now is different. She's not sure how, entirely, but it is.]
[She's not sure of a lot of things anymore, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't bother her like it used to.] Far as I can tell? I dunno, you want me to fill out a questionnaire? [She smiles again, half-hearted, trying once more to lighten the conversation.]
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So if I told you, I'd been listened to that... West man?
[ It's an attempt, at least. He could poke with more questions in a minute, but he was trying to show that he had been thinking of her. ]
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Fine. [ an utter lie, and he's bad at them, so he doesn't say anymore. ] Wade and I train, mostly.
[ Another lie because training was a generous term for brutalizing each other often enough, but it was nicer to say. ]
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[She leans forward, interested in talking about anything simple, normal. Light subjects of little import are everything to her right now.] Wade? How're you getting along with him. I'm sorry I talked shit about him last time. [She didn't know him as well, then. It seems like an eternity ago, and on some weird, metaphysical level, it probably was. How do you factor time into death? Goes it gain interest?]
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[ He shifts in his seat, getting comfortable again and leaning back a little. Because he was comfortable with her, and he was certain he shouldn't be, but there was a casualness to it that he liked all the same. ] It's fine. He is after all, a violent, cruel man. [ But more than, he thinks briefly. ] ... but so am I. Probably why I enjoy his company. He's honest about what he is... and I appreciate it. [ So long lied to, having the world ripped out from underneath him -- and yes, he was more inclined to punch Wade and insult him to his face than ever mention what he thought. But he knew where he stood, that the worst parts of him were looked at, and not sneered at for what he needed to be. But he passes it off with a shrug like it meant little. Like he was used to having friends he didn't have to doubt, and he was a little less lonely than he was. ]
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You're not cruel. He's not either. [Cruel people don't say they're cruel.] You're just... kinda... different. [She laughs, thinking of Corvo's metal mask, his willingness to slow-dance with a stranger... it's her home, now. Not in this rover, but with these people. She's glad she came back to check up on them. She should have stayed alive longer to make sure they were okay.]
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But here she is, calling him something less than that. Than what he deserved, and it's kindness, really. She might want to avoid it, pretend it hadn't happened. But he sat with the uneasy feeling with her blood on his hand in a revulsion of himself he just couldn't place. ]
I don't understand. [ he sucks in a breath, frowning in consternation. He didn't like feeling confused, feeling lost where he stood with people. It had been bad before, court games and courtiers lies, but after all that had happened, it down right sets him on edge now. ] You asked me to kill you. You asked me because you believed me I was unfeeling enough to strike another down in cold blood. [ and she hadn't been wrong. ]
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Or he hadn't been. Might not be one day.
Much of a muchness now. Instead, he grits his teeth and he supposes he should be careful about this, delicate, should be anything else but himself. ] I have. Killed a great many. Women just like you. [ he likes his lips and this is pointless detailed but she was always asking him questions ( and maybe he just wants to prove her wrong and prove Wade right or -- maybe he just doesn't know anymore ) ] Not because they needed to die. But because, I couldn't afford them screaming.
[ Or maybe, he thinks, that this what she wants to hear, that it will make it all sit better. ]
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[Fiona doesn't have a context for this. Where she's from, a murderer would be a very different type of man, and she can't fit that person together with Corvo. (The guy waiting outside her house in the pickup truck, gesturing threateningly when he saw her looking through the window, searching for her father-- that's not Corvo.) Absurdly, all she can remember is the money she stole from that subway woman, the one who had finally clawed her way out of South Side only to fall back in because she was dumb enough to leave her rent on the train. That woman's rent bought Debbie a new coat for the winter, one that will last her for years.]
We all got jobs. It's not like you enj- [Don't make assumptions, Fiona. She pauses, looks up at him with something like fear-- fear of his disapproval. And fear breeds anger, but she has no reason to be angry-- fear, then, breeds the necessity of confidence.] I don't know. I'm not some fucking forgotten treasure of hood wisdom. I seen cruel, and don't make the grade, but maybe it's different where you're from.
[And?] And they weren't like me if they would'a screamed. [Which is a bullshit lie, by the way, especially if he was wearing that fucking mask, but in the moment, it's true in the same way the snow on the dashboard is. It's not supposed to be there, and it may melt away, but for now it is.]
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And he doesn't know himself, in this. He doesn't know what she wants from him, what she expects and it's worse than maddening, it's terrifying. His hands grip tight, fisted in his pant legs like he might just bolt if he didn't hang onto something. ] I don't understand. [ His mouth parts on words he doesn't know how to form, because he should be more eloquent. ]
What do you ... expect of me? [ he thought she wanted cold, wanted cruel and empty and someone who did this before and didn't care. But here was insisting that he was less than that ( more than that? ). His life was not his, it had been hers and she had needed a protector and an anchor, and wholeheartedly he had given himself up to that. Then he had lost her, and Emily had needed less than a father and more than a protector, and the loyalists needed someone to do their dirty work -- and none of it meant anything more than what was required of him. Just like she had required something of him. Like any duty bound man, he did has he had been trained -- what he had been asked.
He was doing it now, still doing it. Without thought or consideration to himself, or anyone else, for that matter. ]
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[In return for her little speech, Fiona gets something barely more than silence. She stares for a moment, two, waiting for more. It doesn't come.] I dunno...? [She leans forward a little bit, as though that will help her understand. Or maybe it will inspire her to begin to be able to explain all the things wrong with what he just said. The missing beats in the song they were dancing to, the steps missing from the stairs up the rover, all of them are clues. He is, again, more alien than he seems.]
Do I gotta... expect something? [Is that how it works, out on the far planet of his home?]
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Or, not that, not quite, he amends. He had some things, they had been his own choice. ( because there was a selfishness in the way that many years ago, when she pressed him back -- he hadn't pushed her away and placed duty between them, he'd gripped tight of her and pulled her against him. ) ]
Most do. [ No, not most. All but two, and they were who he'd given everything too without them ever asking. ] It is what it means to serve. [ and there's no self pity to the words, just a flatness that comes with exhaustion when it feels all so utterly useless. The tired feeling of swimming for miles and miles upstream, and eventually, there's a want to just like the current take and wash away the need to fight it anymore. ] And I have been serving a very long time.
why do u hurt me like this
[What did she do?] You're not... serving me? [Why would he be? No one ever serves her, she serves herself, and others. It's not the other way around. She never wanted control of another person-- some innate sensibility (that would, if asked, define itself, perhaps wrongly, as 'American') rejects the notion. She only ever wanted control of herself.] Are you?
because i love youuuuu
But she looked so confused, and unhappy with what he'd just said that the refusal is quick, shaking his head. ]
No... No, I'm not. I am bound, to my death, to my Empress. [ It's a mutter, really, nothing more than a statement but it's etched with far too much devotion. But he doesn't linger on it. He frowns, and pauses on explaining about Emily, he's not sure, it's difficult, for many reasons and their are nuances there he feels a little too tired to go into. ] But you are asking two very different things of me, and I do not know how to be either of these things.
crying about it
I'm asking something? [If she sounds concerned, it's because she is. Fiona hates, fears and always, always avoids any outward sign of selfishness or need. She tries not to ask anything of anyone, nothing unfair or overly drawing. She's not some fluttering maiden who can't bear to ask, but she has her own moral coda, one that demands she avoids actions that remind her too much of the villains in her life. And they are always asking and demanding and needing.] What am I asking?
they're a tragic mess goddamn
[ It's a quiet counter, looking at her expectantly for what he does not know, but just as suddenly he's turning away again, shifting in his seat. Almost, almost ashamed but he can't place it, like he's been lying, like he doesn't know what to tell her, it's hard to put into one single thing. ]
You asked me to kill you, because you thought I was good enough, unfeeling enough for it, and you're not wrong. I am that selfish. Your decision was the right one. [ he licks his lips, cracked and dry on ugly harsh things that are far, far too true. ] But then you ask me, how I think, how I feel, you tell me I am not cruel despite what I did to you, would do again if that's what it meant to save my home... You ask me of myself, and no one... [ and he's too much conditioning in him to show how much that confused and scared him. His hands listless in his lap, eyes down. Confused and lost as a child. ] ... I do not know if you want me to be your killer or your friend?
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[For other people, she can be strong.]
It was the wrong one, and I'm sorry. I didn't- I didn't want anybody confused. [Upset is what she almost said, but confused is better. That saves pride.] We are friends, okay? We just are. I didn't get that, it's my fault.
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It's not fair to her, and he knows that, he knows he should be the one that was formal with this, that let this go like it was nothing. As if it were all nothing. It struck too deep, at something. Perhaps that was the nature of man, so often not defined in the positive, but in the negative. Cannot know what we are, but so sure of what we must not be.
But he knows, he knows he would like a friend, he would like peace, he wants -- wants to be less alone inside his own head with only a dead woman's murmuring to give him comfort. He doesn't quite take her hand back, but his hand shifts and his fingers press light to the inside of her wrist, pressing on pulse point. Warn with callouses and rough with a life time spent fighting, and her hands are far too small and fragile compared to them. ]
It is not your fault. [ He carefully lifts a hand and in return for her strength there is concern returned, brushing the hair back carefully from her forehead. ] I am glad to be called your friend.
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It- I don't have a lot of, uh, friends. [This is a guilty admission-- for the first time, she realizes she has more friends on Ajna than she ever had in Chicago. Everyone always leaves.] So I'm, I'm glad I'm yours.
[But she, at least, can't live for too long in these earnest waters. There's always a fucking undertow if you don't watch it.] Even if they don't have rap on your planet.
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I would like that. [ his lips pull earnestly in a smile for a moment. It's a sad truth for them both then. It is not that he never wanted, it was just that he couldn't. Not once he released what his life would be like, serving his Empress. ] I have never been able to have friends before I came here. Not for a very long time.
[ he laughs, quietly. ] You are making very good at fixing this oversight by yourself. I would hate that to be taken off you.
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[It's not that she expects him to save her, that's not important. It's that she knows he'll help her, and that's everything.] Thank you. I mean it.
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I am sorry if I cannot always be... [ he's not sure what word he means to say, better? good? happy? ] ... well.
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