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[ 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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