etrayalogs | I won't run, the guilt is mine

Entry tags:

I won't run, the guilt is mine

WHO: Harold Finch & established CR
WHEN: Forward dated post-mission
WHERE: Around Etraya
WHAT: Harold canon updates to post-series and has a bit of a time. Closed starters below. There will be an open post for him after these are sorted through!
NOTES\WARNINGS: This whole post and all threads are full of descriptions of grieving and suicidal thoughts & ideation.

After it happens, after he recovers his memories of how everything fell apart, Harold questions his grip on reality. It would be appropriate if after all this time he finally met his limit. John is dead and Root is dead and Elias is dead and-- the Machine is dead-- and Grace is alive, but what right does he have to see her, how can he get a happy ending when he's the one who deserves it the least--

He's in the library they abandoned long ago and there's traces of his life here with John all around him. Rationally, intellectually, he knows where he is. This is Etraya. He can reread their text conversations, few though they were, and reassure himself that this is real and that this is happening. But there's no one here. It's eerie, everyone away on the mission; it's like Harold is in some kind of bizarre tortuous stasis. He's here but no one else is, survivor's guilt made manifest in its natural apotheosis.

He finds the remnants of all the projects he'd been working on so steadily what must've been a day ago, electronic pieces strewn around and multiple computers chugging test code, and stares at them. They seem so pointless now. Meaningless. Harold struggles to find an ounce of caring in his soul, for anyone, for anything. Surveillance? A covert encrypted network?

What does it matter? He's utterly alone.

Harold can't stay there. The numbness is getting increasingly punctured every time he finds something John left behind: washed dishes from making him dinner, a suit jacket left over the back of a chair, and then Bear himself. He has to leave the library or risk feeling things again and that's a tidal wave whose potential aftermath frightens him.

Mutely, he leashes Bear and heads out, and for hours he wanders the empty streets of Etraya, wondering how much longer he has to endure existence.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ He tilts his head, watching Harold for a moment. Considering that statement and everything it might mean. What Shaw's told him. Not everyone makes it out alive of that particular war, do they? ]

That happens sometimes. You lose?

We vanquished our enemy, [ he murmurs, picking his way down the stairs with laborious, limping steps. ] I've heard that counts as victory.

[ It doesn't feel victorious, not in the slightest, which is obvious in Harold's devastated shock. ]

[ He watches Harold make his way down the stairs. He doesn't offer to help, but Carver watches. Ready to intervene if it's needed. It occurs to him that he doesn't want Harold to die today; a rare thing. Usually, Carver doesn't care one way or another. Most people are just noise in his periphery, targets to be dispatched or enemies waiting to reveal themselves. Sometimes he likes them, the ones he's obliged to speak with and force secrets out of. Usually, he puts them out of his mind the moment they're out of his sight. He doesn't remember their names.

None of them lent him Don Quixote, though. ]

The commander had this line he liked to say. These things happen.

[ He meets Harold's gaze, unyielding. ]

It's war. These things happen.

[ That immediately ruffles his feathers. He scowls at Carver readily. If nothing else, it serves to jolt him out of his macabre headspace, the words jangling gratingly against Harold's too-acute knowledge of his own failings. ]

These 'things' don't just happen, [ he says insistently. ] Abdicating responsibility is a morally bankrupt position. It's convenient, violent tragedy being the product of an arbitrary force of nature, but it's not true.

[ That gets a thin, brief hint of a smile. No teeth. He likes this about Harold, Carver realizes distantly. The way this man doesn't balk or buckle, but instead stands taller when he finds something he deems worth challenging.

One day, Carver thinks, a little sadly, one day, the commander's going to mark you. And then it'll be on me to end it. ]

I killed my friend a few months back, [ he says after a moment, meeting Harold's gaze again. Voice soft. Almost conversational. ] He got bit, so I put a tourniquet on his arm. And then I took it off with a machete while my sister held him down. Sometimes it works if you do it quick enough.

[ Sometimes. Not often. ]

He died three days later. Sepsis. I did that. I didn't get him bit, but I did the rest. These things happen, Harold. Sometimes it doesn't matter. People just suffer. They die. That's war.

[ He nods, firm. ]

Tran. That was his name. God decided it was time.

[ A series of thoughts run quickly through his head in succession. A whole diatribe about following orders versus personal culpability; frustrated, continued horror at the kind of conditions Carver has had to live through; kneejerk intense resistance to religious reasoning justifying anything. But he doesn't want to prod at or mock or dismantle Carver's own beliefs, his own coping mechanisms. He just wants to be true to his own perspective, speak honestly in return. ]

Forgive me, but there is a distinct difference between actions you must rationally take under duress and calculated decisions made long before that lead to those circumstances.

[ Harold would once have sounded tart, maybe annoyed, arguing this position. Now he thumps down the stairs one painful swing of his bad leg at a time and he sounds steady, sure, iron underlining his sentences. ]

I have no desire to lay blame. [ Whatever his actual feelings are, he realizes that isn't practical or helpful. ] Yet pretending things happen out of nowhere prevents us from doing better.

And we must do better.

[ Carver tilts his head, doglike. Watching Harold so very close. God's watching too, he doesn't say. God knows the shape of our souls even better than your machine. ]

Okay. It's all your fault, then.

[ His voice is soft. Conversational, still. ]

What're you gonna do about it?

Oh, please. It's not all my fault.

[ He huffs and reaches the bottom of the stairs, looking around with an intense wave of deja vu. But it actually-- wait. It looks a little different. ]

And I already did what I intended to. Have you been cleaning in here?

Edited (homophones!!) 2025-03-23 15:25 (UTC)

Mhmm. Then there's no point in dwelling.

[ You have to keep moving or you'll get stuck in the mire of it all. Carver shrugs and stays where he is, watching Harold. ]

Yeah, [ he adds. ] I don't sleep much. And it promotes discipline. You want some coffee, or something?

[ No point in dwelling, honestly. What a thing to say. Harold keeps frowning at him but lets the conversation progress in the direction he's pushed it. ]

If there's tea, I'll take that, [ he allows with a sigh. ] I was hoping you would sleep more with a private, securable location. Would you like some electronic proximity monitors? [ It's a polite sort of offer Harold makes automatically, along the same lines as Carver's offer of coffee. ]

[ That just gets a shrug. Carver's never slept well alone, without his brothers and sisters nearby. But you can learn to function with less. You can learn to survive on starvation rations, with nothing but knives. God's watching even if the commander isn't. He owes it to Leah to do this properly.

He gets mugs and some tea bags. There's a coffee maker that heats water up. Instant coffee. Impossible luxuries. ]

Sure, [ he adds, after a moment. Extra security measures are always welcome. It's why Carver sleeps in a closet with all his weapons instead of one of the cots left out for that purpose. ] I'll show you how to disable the trip wires. I set up bells and razor wire. Nothing with gunpowder, though.

[ It's all said rather blandly. He busies himself making tea. ]

[ It's absolutely anathema to Harold to need more company to sleep better, so it doesn't occur to him at all. It had taken him months to adjust to living with John in Etraya, no matter how much practical sense that made. For him, increased security measures and isolation are the only things that lend peace of mind. ]

That's not necessary, but if you're willing to show me, I won't say no. [ It seems important to clarify that it's not an expectation he has, but Harold isn't about to turn down potentially strategic information.

He lets the silence lie as Carver makes tea, casting his gaze across the familiar contours of the subway, sadness oddly tempering and leveling out the intensity of his grief. ]

... I'm sorry for ambushing you outside of your place of residence. I really thought I might be hallucinating the vending machine.

[ Carver tilts his head toward Harold, frowning slightly. Considering those words carefully. ]

It's real, [ he says after a moment, slowly. He fills a mug with hot water, watching it steam before he brings it over, along with several tea bags. He doesn't know what Harold likes. ] Probably.

[ Sometimes, it's hard to tell. ]

It's not mine, anyway. It's just where I'm sleeping.

[ Harold can appreciate that probably. Lately he's felt extremely uncertain of anything himself. It helps him muster up a trace of a rueful smile for Carver. ]

If it's anyone's it's the Machine's, [ he says plainly. ] She's spent more time here than any of us. These are her dead servers and processing center around us.

[ It feels... strangely good, to say out loud. Acknowledging her demise and acknowledging it specifically as a death. Like picking off an uncomfortable scab and finding the wound has healed over just a little since the last time. ]

It’s good to carry your ghosts. Otherwise, who’d remember them?

[ Carver doesn’t remember the names of the people who died by his hand. They fade. The noise of them slips away. But he remembers his brothers, his sisters. He reminders the child who was, in many ways, his own. Who else would take on the weight?

He makes himself coffee, in the meantime. It’s good to keep busy. ]

You call it she, [ Carver adds. ] Like a person. Did she have a name?

[ It's a different way of putting it, but Carver's perspective lines up nicely with Root's and the Machine's, both conversations Harold had shortly before their respective deaths. Maybe it's a cold comfort at times, but... it is a comfort. To think he will remember them, which meant so much to them.

He reaches out to take a mug and pick a tea bag, movements slow, thinking. ]

I used to resist personifying the Machine, but I've since given up. She's more human than some people I know, [ he says ruefully, meaning that deliberately, with all due care to the phrase. Then he catches himself, and it hurts. ]

... Or rather, she was. Honestly, I always hoped one day she'd name herself, but she never had that opportunity.

[ He hums at that, accepting it. To Carver, a machine is just a tool. It can be used and so it often is. There’s no sentiment involved. He doesn’t name his gun, or any of his knives, doesn’t mourn them when they break. He moves on because he has to. But this was different for Harold. This was a death, if perhaps in a new form. And there’s respect in that.

Only the living can mourn. The dead are just dead. He supposes that’s true in both their worlds. ]

You gonna try to make another one?

[ It’s asked simply, without judgement. ]

[ It's a frightfully logical question. Harold lost one, why not make another? Putting aside that it took him the better part of a decade and 42 failed attempts before he landed on the miracle that became the Machine, he's capable of it, he's certain. Maybe he could even do it better now, quicker. Fewer than 42 attempts, surely.

But it lands like a stab, a knife twisting in his gut. His hands spasm briefly around the mug and he sets it on the table with a thunk. He stares ahead at the glimpse of the racks of Playstations and cooling cables he can see through the subway car windows, unshattered, whole. ]

If you lost a child, would you try to make another to replace them?

[ Harold doesn't mean to be so harsh, but the grief rubs him raw when he least expects it, takes him by surprise and scrapes his nerves, cuts rough edges around his words. ]

[ For a moment, it’s like the air goes icy. Like being stabbed through the chest and feeling the knife twist inside. Seeking out the pain points.

Carver doesn’t drop the mug. He sets it aside deliberately. And when he speaks, his voice is flatter than before. Colder. He doesn’t look at Harold. ]

You don’t get to ask me that. You understand?

Then don't ask me, [ he says easily, point made.

Harold knows most people won't respect what the Machine is to him-- god, does he feel for Root now, too little and too late-- but having finally come to the inescapable conclusion that she is, was, his child, at least his creation and he her father by her own admission, he won't allow anyone else to treat her as something less. ]

I killed her. It wasn't sepsis, Mr. Carver. It was my decisions and my actions that caused her to die.

[ It's plain and true and he can't hide from it, mitigating factors aside. ]

Get out.

[ It’s almost comical, in a way, how quickly things can swing. Harold’s still talking but Carver barely hears it beyond a ringing in his ears not unlike tinnitus. Like the first time he felt an IED go off so close to his feet. It shook the earth, but the world just kept on going. A machine isn’t a child, he’d say, if he could manage anything coherent right now. How dare you compare the two.

He’s shaking, Carver realizes distantly. He feels somewhat apart from himself. ]

Get out.

[ He doesn't say anything. Harold had been starting to get a glimmer of normalcy -- talking about what happened like it could be accepted and lived with, making idle conversation, sharing tea even in the surreal environs of his former hideaway -- but this makes sense. It fits. Harold doesn't know how to find normal anymore, keeps periodically drifting off into a mental quagmire he no longer tries to resist.

He gets up and leaves without a word, respectful and quiet. ]

[ There's no fight. Not even any yelling. The moment just ends. Carver takes one breath, then another. He gets his breathing back under control. He unplugs the coffee machine and washes the mugs. Then he resets the traps.

Work is good. Work means you don't have to think. And so he doesn't for a while. He goes through the motions and he doesn't sleep and he doesn't let himself drift back to his ghosts.

It can't go on like that forever, though. That's a weakness, and therefore a sin.

Three days later, he shows up at the library carrying a few boxes of the tea Harold picked. Carver doesn't know if Harold actually likes that kind or just picked it at random; maybe it doesn't matter. The thought of having choice with something like that feels so strange to Carver. It's been years since he's tasted coffee, real coffee.

He moves silently. He didn't message to see if Harold was there or not, but he'll hang around for a while just to make sure. ]

[ Harold is now staying in Shaw's apartment and she in his and John's, places swapped, but he still has access to the camera feeds across the library and it doesn't take him long to notice Carver's presence, hovering about with a peace offering. He has plenty of things he could be doing but nothing that can hold his attention. Something about John knowing and being present, alive, makes him ache in a way he can't ignore. Like the days his neck hurts so much he can barely move.

He puts together a thermos of hot water, a tea pot and mugs, and brings them on a book cart to where Carver is waiting. Between the clatter of the tea things and his limp, he makes plenty of noise on approach, but he doesn't say anything until he starts unloading the cart onto the study table. ]

I think I'm the one who owes you an apology, [ he notes. ]

[ There’s an air of ritual to this. Penance often does, Carver’s found. He watches Harold for a long moment, eyes slightly narrowed. But he doesn’t bolt. Doesn’t draw a knife. Just watches, and breathes, and the moment plays itself out. ]

You outrank me. No need to apologize.

[ It’s said flatly. Carver doesn’t close the distance between them. He just sets the tea down: penance of his own. Luxuries like tea are hard to find back home. These things matter. ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw gore, amputation

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject