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[ Talking certainly doesn't hurt anything at all. In fact, he hopes it'll help ground some trust between them eventually. ]

If that's what you want to talk about, I don't mind listening. [ Whatever he wanted to say, when he felt he needed to say it. Steve, at least, can do that much. Sometimes, it's really the only thing he can do. ]

[ what does he even do with all this affirmation and support, sweet lord. well, he acts like a shit, that's what he does. ]

what if i wanna talk about throwing newborns to hungry crocodiles

Then we're gonna have to talk about how you're going to go in after them. [ He should be used to this. Why isn't he ever used to this from anyone? ] Is that really what you want to do?

and what, you're gonna make me? sure you can, grandpa?

what if it was? if it was throwing teenagers to crocodiles, is that a pass? adults? the elderly? or is it the crocodiles that's the issue? could do tigers.

I think you'd be surprised.

No one gets a pass. You shouldn't be throwing anyone to their death, but if you need to practice, I guess you can throw me. If you can.

i think you should bring it, blondie

what if they're bad people?

[ is it a test?

it might be a test. ]

[ He's pretty sure it's a test, but he can't answer the way he thinks Andyr wants to hear. Steve can only tell him what he would do. ]

Murdering someone who did something wrong isn't gonna make it right. They might deserve it, but it doesn't mean we have to be just like them.

[ not what he wanted to hear, no, but what he'd expected to hear. he doesn't blame him, steve's a good man, like barnes said. but andyr isn't, and he's not looking to be. ]

you're gonna have a lot of problems with this getting to know me thing, then, captain, because the last i overheard, my employee kill count was over 300

and i've been busy since then too

I'm not saying I'm innocent or haven't made mistakes. [ He's killed too, out of need or circumstance, and what's more, it's usually the civilian blood that stains his hands far darker than those of evil men. ] We do the things we do for whatever reasons we have to do them, but that doesn't mean you're not worth the time. It doesn't mean you can't be someone better here.

[ Because he's not home, and isn't that already a nicer thought? However temporary it might be. ]

they weren't mistakes

[ and he won't regret those kills, ever. not in a lifetime. ]

because that's just what i need, right? get comfy, settle in, go talk about my feelings and cry a little, then get zapped right back where i was, with everything i did to stay sane there all undone?

even if we get to that port and they fix the ingress to send us all wherever we want, and i get a choice, i'm still going back to hapsburg. because people there need me to be what i am so they can have a chance of getting out, and you people want me to take that all apart

sorry, steve, we never got any superheroes to come fight for us, so we have to make do with what we have

if there's someone you want to help become better, talk to barnes. i like who i am just fine.

Maybe you're right.

[ It's the first thing he sends after a rather heavy silence, now pacing the length of a hallway as he tries to let his mind settle on those facts. A while ago, Steve had almost decided not to go home, and why would he have wanted to? The people who are most important to him, who have made up every fiber of his being, are right here on this ship, and like Andyr had said, they could send them wherever they chose once they reached that place. To whatever time. He could learn to be happy with what he has and not think about the things he's leaving behind, but there's also that obligation deep in his bones that makes them similar in so many ways. Regardless of what he might want, of what he thinks he should have, Steve would put all those things aside and continue to fight for those who can't at the risk of destroying himself.

They have more in common than he thinks. Almost too much. ]

But it's not about that. I'm not asking you to stay or give up your cause for whatever might be out there waiting for us. I [ What the hell is he asking? ] No one has that right, but if that's what you're gonna do, you shouldn't waste the time you have here. Some good might come of it eventually.

I have to make the most of what I have on this ship because as soon as I go back, it isn't going to be there. I'm still working things out with Bucky-- [ Which isn't really something he wants to talk about right now. ] Anyway, whatever you decide, you're wrong about one thing. Those people in Hapsburg have you, and that's just as good as having a superhero.

[ Even if he's still learning about him, still trying to figure him out. Not many would willingly go back to a world like the one he's from, and if he could, as he'd told him before when they'd first met, Steve would stand right along side him and do anything he could to help. ]

[ a superhero. for a long span of time, maybe so much steve had thought he wouldn't get an answer back, andyr's looking at that message, and trying to come to terms with it. all the rest of it fades, and he's just pushing that through his mind. and feeling the deepest guilt over it. ]

they got fucking short changed

[ i can't save them, i can't even save my goddamn self rings in his head, and you're selfish, you were never doing it for them. he'd thought, when he first got here, if he could just pull in posie, mikal, mal and kon, plus alva's kids, that'd be it. they could just stay and forget about home. still isn't sure he'd go back, if that offer was on the table. even with all his rage and indignation and spewing about revenge. if he could just make it all disappear, like it never happened.

but even that isn't possible, is it? ]

you know what i learned in hapsburg? [ a pause between messages, like he isn't sure he wants to continue, but does, nonetheless ] the one thing that's worse than not having something like freedom or family or happiness to begin with... is being born to it, enjoying it long enough to know just how good it is, and then having it ripped away.

[ it hurts, so goddamn much, every fucking day, to know what he lost, to have had it in his hands, and know that he'll never have it back. maybe pieces - maybe he'll be free one day, after mikal's war, if they even get that far. maybe he'll have a quiet place to live, a port nearby, be able to go where he wants and say what he wants and be what he wants.

but jehanne is still gone. his dad is still dead. so, so much of andyr, who he was, the dreams and hopes that he had, the innocence that was there, is ruined forever. even after the houses and the raids and all the rest, even if all of it stops, it still all lives on in his head, every day, and there's no purging that.

if the moira's taught him anything thus far, it's that he isn't fit to go back to a life like this. peaceful. the quiet of it leaves what's in his head far too loud. ]

Edited (repetition ) 2016-08-08 18:31 (UTC)

[ His own response to that isn't immediate either. It seems as if the Ingress and this ship only know how to draw in those who are fighters and who suffer deep, the weight of those obligations pulling them down so that there's no choice but to look forward and hope they might make it to their end destination eventually. Steve doesn't like that vagueness or what it does to people who think they have nothing else but the memories of their own world to look to—good or bad.

And in truth, Steve isn't sure what to say to the things Andyr's told him. There are similarities to the things he's experienced, yes, but it's not exactly the same. Having freedom stripped away is too much like-- ]

But you're still fighting. [ For himself, for others. ] It might not be now or even years from now, but as long as you remember that, you could have it again. They can't take that from you because they're the ones who gave you a reason to push back.

[ there's a difference in the rhetoric here, between what he and mikal talk about when they plan raids and dream of their war. steve talks about freedom and gaining a better life. he and mikal just talk about revenge. maybe they know better, that once freedom's gone, getting it back in full is a lie. they haven't been fighting for freedom. ]

what else would i do? i can't die, they won't let me.

[ the i've tried is in there somewhere, unspoken, if you squint hard enough.]

some things you don't get back, and some things don't ever let you go. ask your friend. but whatever i could gain here, i'll have to let go of, and you don't know how hard that is after having to do it once already.

[ it's cruel, he wants to say, but he knows steve doesn't mean anything like that by it. ]

I know what else you could have done, but you didn't.

[ From experience or Andyr's own subtext, he gets it. Giving up might have been easier. Letting them win would have stopped the pain and numbed them to a life of imprisonment, each as different as the circumstances that surrounds them. But Steve sees it in those words and the look the other man wears sometimes, one of bite and bitterness. The same look that soldiers get when they're worn to the bone but know nothing else of the world aside from what they've done, and even if he doesn't believe it in the way Steve believes it, he's a fighter. A survivor. That makes them stronger than anyone else in ways that no one should ever have to realize. ]

And I know that too. I

I don't know if anyone explained it to you, but time works differently here. Almost everyone from my world are years behind me in terms of what they know, even my friend. [ Bucky, most of all, and he's not sure if it would have been better if he'd shown up at some other point or not. He can't predict anything like that. ] So you're not the only one who will have to give it up. I've let it go too many times, but I don't know if I can this time.

[ If he wants honesty, there it is. He walks the fine edge of breaking every day, and the deeper he moves, the harder it gets to surrender what had slipped through his fingers all those years before. ] It doesn't mean I won't try to make the best of what I have while I have it though. I think it's better, in some ways, than the alternative.

i know. we have one like that. miray.

[ she'd have been dead in a week, maybe two. and alva's going to have enough trouble trying to let her go - the iteration he'd fallen in love with over so many years. andyr doesn't know the extent of time issues for steve, but he can only assume it's something similar. ]

i'm sorry.

[ for what he'll have to leave behind. ]

why not just stay? [ instead of return home, if it's so hard to let go of. andyr has things to do, a war to fight, people to get to. if steve doesn't have the same, why not just stay? ]

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