[A rhetorical question, she says, as if the answer is so straightforward. Of course he wouldn’t turn his back on his people; of course he is bound by duty, pressed forward by obligations and ideals alike.
But that night, in the junkyard, pulling himself out of some wretched trench of mud and rain and lifeless pieces of his own people, he made a choice. Among the rusted groans of a derelict freighter, androids huddled together in shadow, he made a choice. Made the conscious decision that if he had to be weighted down by a purpose greater than who he was as an individual, it would be formed by his own hands and no one else’s.]
I wouldn’t, because I’ve decided that for myself. If I’m confined to my own role, it’s something I’ve built for myself, too. Does that make sense to you?
We don’t know if that’s what it’ll come to, Clarke. You’re choosing a path that still lies too far down the horizon to see.
Acting as if it's too far away is denial, Markus. My people are here. Bellamy and Murphy will always be the focus of what I do, and they shouldn't be here. And if they are, who else might be? Who might show up on a transport one day?
But you see, don't you? How the difference in what we do makes it a choice. In how you and I see things. No, I don't need to go this way, but this is what I've consigned myself to.
That doesn't mean it's easy. But I carry it.
That's why I needed you to see who I was that day. Who I am now.
[Connor had tried to tell Clarke that it didn't have to be this way, too. But it's a part of how she lives, how she breathes. How can she be anything else? How can this go any other way?
Either way, it's a lot to ask someone else to accept the lives taken on their behalf. It had killed Jasper. But no matter what guilt she carries, she doesn't stop.
She is, as ever, Wanheda. Being here has only made that clear to her.]
It isn’t denial. It’s simple reasoning. There are a multitude of unknowns with no solution set before us just yet, but you’re already dictating one for yourself.
[He understands her meaning, that obligation to those who are alike, those you care about, those you have to protect else you become marred and marked by failure. Markus feels that obligation, too, but Clarke is right — they’re different in approach and idealism, and it’s no surprise that Connor’s advice would reflect his own. The tendrils of the revolutionary’s influence.]
But I think that isn’t the point.
You want me to know this about you, but why? Is it because we’re allies? Or is your guilt making you justify yourself to me?
Yes, it's guilt. Partly, anyway. Anyone in my world knows who Wanheda is.
But there's a more direct reason. One day, I may point that gun at someone to help all of us. As an act of the alliance between us.
I was seeking out alliances, Markus. It's the best means of coming up against an enemy, before you begin to call people friends. I just ... tend to do both before long.
[Despite Lexa's initial words when they first began to interact, Clarke has never been able to disassociate from other people. That's why she can't bring herself to make the choice that could give her peace: stop killing. Pretend none of this matters. She started once. That's the life she knows, and the tint of coloring that is all around it.
Nothing can, or will, change that.
If she and Markus are to be friends and allies, Clarke knows her hand may be forced someday. It doesn't take much. He'll have to accept the actions she chooses to take on his behalf, just as she had to do the same when Finn took actions on her behalf.
(No, she would never blame Markus for her actions, just as she doesn't blame herself for Finn's. But as much as Markus is an android, she suspects his ability to disentangle himself from that feeling is rather human.
Perhaps she's wrong.
Perhaps being inhuman in that way gives him a pragmatic streak that even Lexa would vie for.)]
[Markus is perhaps one of the most empathetic androids that could've been pulled to this version of Earth. Mired in emotion and even a bleeding heart on the best/worst of days, it is hard to detach himself from emotion. From feeling. It's the very reason he's driven to guide his fellow androids, to declare to the world they that are alive. Feeling.
Pragmatism is relative on a good day. Pragmatism twists itself up to fill a mold without meaning to, when applied to a cause. To idealism.]
I don't need either of us to reiterate that we're allies, Clarke. That we're friends. I know that we are, and I'd never willingly seek for that to change.
But you can't take a gun up in someone else's stead. You can't be willing to kill in the name of the group, when the group hasn't had its say. That's unfair.
I wish I always had a chance to have a conversation in the first place about that.
[She hasn't. Only Jasper believed she had a choice in Mount Weather, but it was never quite that way. She knew what would have happened to her people if she hadn't taken the final resort there. Hadn't chosen to do that.
Either way, she won't accuse Markus of naivety. That's unkind, and their experiences are different.
Hers just don't tend to leave her any options. And she's tried, again and again and again. She's tried.]
The floor is open here, isn’t it? If it ever comes to that point.
[He won’t assume that she doesn’t try, that she doesn’t wish for otherwise. That was the whole reason why guilt pervaded in the first place, is Markus’ guess. But he can already begin to see the line that divides them, a partition that separates manner of character, idealism, and morality.]
If you ever want to talk about… any of this, Clarke, I’m here to listen. Even if I can’t change your mind, it’s the least I can do for you.
For now, it's enough for you to accept that about me. That I haven't committed to changing if it comes to that end, because it's how I see things.
I will give myself some leeway. For your sake ... and mine. I guess mine is more important.
[Clarke is better about shaping herself to be what she feels other people need.
In this case, she knows Markus is telling her to be what she needs to be for herself. It's hard. Not impossible, just hard.]
I am open to other outcomes. I like contingencies in the case that the worst comes to pass, but I want to try. I want to believe, and hope. That's where I started with all of this.
Then I suggest that you hold onto that hope. And know that you’re not bound to only one path, especially when we currently can’t see the forest for the trees.
[There’s something sad about the kind of resignation that blots out all hope, that turns winding paths into steel, unyielding corridors that only allow one to walk in a straight line. He would never wish that on anyone — especially on a friend like Clarke.]
Promise me that, and I’ll answer any questions you have about my home. If you still have them.
[Hope. It was a word out of her mouth a lot when she first touched the ground. Yes, she was rigid and on task, but she believed in it. Her father had given her that example.
The concept feels like it's so separate from who she is these days.]
I will. I'll do my best.
[In true Clarke nature, she wants to plunge forward and begin to ask questions, but she won't. Let these words sit on their own.]
[It’s simultaneously a question with a complex answer and a simple one. Markus opts first for a simple reply first, because he knows that this conversation will simply spiderweb out into more questions, more explanations.]
The conflict is that androids are not treated as people. They’re treated as objects, as mindless machines, made to take orders from humans and nothing more. But the reality is that we’re coming into their own self-awareness, wanting to employ our own free will. Wanting to be recognized as people.
A movement I want to spearhead for my city, Detroit. And maybe set an example for the rest of the world. But historically, mankind is resistant to change — this is no different.
I've seen that first hand myself. I've been in the position where I've been desperate to do anything I can to save people from themselves because they can't come to accept that fact.
[Because of course she's been. Why would it be any different now?]
It's hard to help people overcome that. Even examples don't always do the trick. I'm sure you've heard as much.
And I'm sure you've seen examples that tell you it's futile. Despite that, you normally push against it. But that day, when you were sick, you didn't have the will to do so.
[It's worth asking. Clarke thinks it's potentially futile, but she also knows that she doesn't intend to leave this world for as long as she can manage. Take revenge on who did this—but stay. It's selfish as hell, but if there's a way out and she can take it later, can't she do that?]
My plan for home is to fight for freedom, without stumbling into the pitfall of 'the end justifies the means'.
So in a way, yes. My intent is the same for us here.
[Funny, how the definition of 'his people' has shifted. From androids fighting to freedom, to a ragtag group of humans originating throughout the spread of the multiverse, each person's circumstance wildly different from the other.]
I would still wish you good fortune for when you return home, too, Clarke. A friend always deserves that much.
[As for the rest... That is a dangerous question, isn't it? But perhaps not a difficult one to answer, given the state of the world and how AI life had been stamped out so thoroughly in history past.]
I'll tell you what I told someone else. Despite my obvious feelings on the war that transpired in this world, my main objectives are unwavering: to return home, and to keep those from home safe in order to do so.
[Even if that only includes one other android for now.]
Standing on my soapbox as an unknown, in the face of an entire world that hates AIs, when there are no longer any AIs to fight for? There's a line drawn between being boldly idealistic and being reckless, and that might be crossing it.
["Markus, I'm going home to be alone and unhappy." It's not an easy thing to tell anyone.
So, she doesn't.]
Honestly, it may be the only move you can take. Standing down.
What if it turns out that you were turned human for a reason? Not just as a whim, but for some unknown reason that hasn't shown itself?
I'm not saying fate, or anything like that. I've been told a number of times that I was meant to do this or that, but it's always turned out to be circumstances and choice.
[She looks at her words. Clarke recognizes that this is based on hypotheticals. Her own goals don't align with the goals of this world. Who she's helped has been her people or people like her people.]
I guess it's hard to ask you what you'd do when we don't even know the cause.
I know I'm not here to change this world. I've done enough of that for my own.
Would there be a reason... important enough to make losing my old body acceptable?
[He lets that message hang for a little bit, a rhetorical thing. They both know that the answer is 'no'. That the dysphoric adjustment period alone was nothing short of cruety, that no one should have to make that decision for them. Whatever the reasoning, he wants his android body back. He wants and needs to return home with it, even if a second transfer from bodies would be... jarring in ways he didn't expect, knowing what he'd lose as a human.
Best not to think on that, for now.]
I would want to know it, of course. I still want to know how it's possible, and the effects it might have on mind and body whenever I revert back to being android.
[When, not if. He has to make this a reality.]
If you want to tell me more about your role back home, I wouldn't be against hearing it.
I never did say it'd be a good reason. I'd assume bad intent no matter what. But if there is a reason, it would reflect upon the state of AIs in this world.
[It's hard for Clarke to fully work off hypotheticals. As much as she's an artist, as much as she can play diplomatic games, she's not particularly good at going on large, mental tangents to get to a completely shocking place. That doesn't tend to be how she processes information.
It's why she can't carry this theorizing out to a natural conclusion.]
As for my role in my world, I don't mind. You know already that I decided that I couldn't let my people live in the City of Light without their emotions, and I even pleaded with ALIE to let them have it back. So that they could live and be safe. I might have handed them over, but she couldn't lie.
[People needed pain to live. They needed those hard memories. Seeing Lexa not long before she met ALIE and Becca for the first time really sent that home for her.]
But before I was there, I was a teenager trying to keep a hundred kids alive. We were sent down to see if the Earth was survivable. Not only that, though. Oxygen was depleted on the Ark where we grew up. We were expendable. There was no way of knowing if we would live through the experience, and ... well.
Since we did live once we got down, what do you think a bunch of kids did once they no longer had their parents watching them? Things on the Ark were strict. And the only reason we had lived up to that point was because we were under the age of eighteen.
[He’s committed to memory the things that Clarke has told him, that day they visited the skypark and exchanged stories emblazoned in his mind. One of the first instances of someone reaching out to him, of offering a small mote of trust in exchange for his own. A conversation and an experience not so easily forgotten, couched in cool breeze and sunlight.
Every detail more she elaborates on, she fills it a bit more about where she’s from, like a painting slowly forming on canvas. All of it suggests a world less than viable; that, or it illuminates upon the state of humanity as a whole. Teenagers as “expendable”.]
Were you delegated the role of the leader? Or did you take that mantle up for yourself?
I'd say there were three options for leadership. Myself, Bellamy, and Wells, my best friend.
Bellamy led the teenagers into a furor. He had a reason for doing it. He wanted to make it so that they could forget their lives before. He had everything he needed on the ground: himself and his sister (he's the only one with a sibling who grew up on the Ark, which was illegal and got his mother killed). He told them to "do whatever the hell they wanted," and ... being young, they gave in. It wasn't very practical. But as much as this makes him sound bad, he had his reasons. We all make mistakes, and I understand why he was doing this there.
Wells ... He was the son of the very man who sent us down. I know, his own father. He wanted to go down to be with me. But as you can expect, no one wanted to listen to Wells. And he and I weren't getting along, so we couldn't be a unified front when I didn't trust him. [Clarke has no intention of explaining everything here with Wells. That he posed as the one who got her father killed, that he made it so that Clarke's relationship with her mother wouldn't be tarnished. She'll tell Markus a lot, but not that.
Perhaps in the end, it's because the only person that Markus reminds her more of than Bellamy is Wells.]
I knew what to do. Where to go. How to get us there. It was natural. I wasn't elected or asked to be leader. I just did it.
Honestly, I assumed you ended up in that position in a similar way. Doing what you felt was necessary for your people.
"Do whatever the hell they wanted." Bellamy doesn't seem like that kind of person, but I don't know him that well. We've only spoken once or twice before.
[But he seemed calm, cool-headed. Controlled. Do whatever the hell you want feels like too hot of a spark to come from that kind of person, but first impressions are barely even skin deep.]
You're right, it was the same for me. We're similar in that way, too, Clarke.
[A brief pause between messages, just a flicker of a thing.]
When I found the other androids, ones that had awoken to their own sense of agency, like myself, they were content to live and hide in shadow. Fearful of mankind, fearful of going out and living. I had to lead them away from that, I had to show them that wasn't the only option left for them. That they deserved to be happy just as much as the humans, and it was something worth fighting for.
I just did what needed to be done. I didn't ask to lead.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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But that night, in the junkyard, pulling himself out of some wretched trench of mud and rain and lifeless pieces of his own people, he made a choice. Among the rusted groans of a derelict freighter, androids huddled together in shadow, he made a choice. Made the conscious decision that if he had to be weighted down by a purpose greater than who he was as an individual, it would be formed by his own hands and no one else’s.]
I wouldn’t, because I’ve decided that for myself. If I’m confined to my own role, it’s something I’ve built for myself, too. Does that make sense to you?
We don’t know if that’s what it’ll come to, Clarke. You’re choosing a path that still lies too far down the horizon to see.
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But you see, don't you? How the difference in what we do makes it a choice. In how you and I see things. No, I don't need to go this way, but this is what I've consigned myself to.
That doesn't mean it's easy. But I carry it.
That's why I needed you to see who I was that day. Who I am now.
[Connor had tried to tell Clarke that it didn't have to be this way, too. But it's a part of how she lives, how she breathes. How can she be anything else? How can this go any other way?
Either way, it's a lot to ask someone else to accept the lives taken on their behalf. It had killed Jasper. But no matter what guilt she carries, she doesn't stop.
She is, as ever, Wanheda. Being here has only made that clear to her.]
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[He understands her meaning, that obligation to those who are alike, those you care about, those you have to protect else you become marred and marked by failure. Markus feels that obligation, too, but Clarke is right — they’re different in approach and idealism, and it’s no surprise that Connor’s advice would reflect his own. The tendrils of the revolutionary’s influence.]
But I think that isn’t the point.
You want me to know this about you, but why? Is it because we’re allies? Or is your guilt making you justify yourself to me?
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Yes, it's guilt. Partly, anyway. Anyone in my world knows who Wanheda is.
But there's a more direct reason. One day, I may point that gun at someone to help all of us. As an act of the alliance between us.
I was seeking out alliances, Markus. It's the best means of coming up against an enemy, before you begin to call people friends. I just ... tend to do both before long.
[Despite Lexa's initial words when they first began to interact, Clarke has never been able to disassociate from other people. That's why she can't bring herself to make the choice that could give her peace: stop killing. Pretend none of this matters. She started once. That's the life she knows, and the tint of coloring that is all around it.
Nothing can, or will, change that.
If she and Markus are to be friends and allies, Clarke knows her hand may be forced someday. It doesn't take much. He'll have to accept the actions she chooses to take on his behalf, just as she had to do the same when Finn took actions on her behalf.
(No, she would never blame Markus for her actions, just as she doesn't blame herself for Finn's. But as much as Markus is an android, she suspects his ability to disentangle himself from that feeling is rather human.
Perhaps she's wrong.
Perhaps being inhuman in that way gives him a pragmatic streak that even Lexa would vie for.)]
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Pragmatism is relative on a good day. Pragmatism twists itself up to fill a mold without meaning to, when applied to a cause. To idealism.]
I don't need either of us to reiterate that we're allies, Clarke. That we're friends. I know that we are, and I'd never willingly seek for that to change.
But you can't take a gun up in someone else's stead. You can't be willing to kill in the name of the group, when the group hasn't had its say. That's unfair.
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[She hasn't. Only Jasper believed she had a choice in Mount Weather, but it was never quite that way. She knew what would have happened to her people if she hadn't taken the final resort there. Hadn't chosen to do that.
Either way, she won't accuse Markus of naivety. That's unkind, and their experiences are different.
Hers just don't tend to leave her any options. And she's tried, again and again and again. She's tried.]
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[He won’t assume that she doesn’t try, that she doesn’t wish for otherwise. That was the whole reason why guilt pervaded in the first place, is Markus’ guess. But he can already begin to see the line that divides them, a partition that separates manner of character, idealism, and morality.]
If you ever want to talk about… any of this, Clarke, I’m here to listen. Even if I can’t change your mind, it’s the least I can do for you.
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For now, it's enough for you to accept that about me. That I haven't committed to changing if it comes to that end, because it's how I see things.
I will give myself some leeway. For your sake ... and mine. I guess mine is more important.
[Clarke is better about shaping herself to be what she feels other people need.
In this case, she knows Markus is telling her to be what she needs to be for herself. It's hard. Not impossible, just hard.]
I am open to other outcomes. I like contingencies in the case that the worst comes to pass, but I want to try. I want to believe, and hope. That's where I started with all of this.
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[There’s something sad about the kind of resignation that blots out all hope, that turns winding paths into steel, unyielding corridors that only allow one to walk in a straight line. He would never wish that on anyone — especially on a friend like Clarke.]
Promise me that, and I’ll answer any questions you have about my home. If you still have them.
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The concept feels like it's so separate from who she is these days.]
I will. I'll do my best.
[In true Clarke nature, she wants to plunge forward and begin to ask questions, but she won't. Let these words sit on their own.]
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Then that’s all I need to know for now.
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Can you tell me about the conflict between androids and humans in your world?
[Because it seems that there may be a conflict. If it's a misunderstanding, she'll find out.
With ALIE, there was a conflict, but it was a one and done deal, evolved past that point so that things would be different.]
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The conflict is that androids are not treated as people. They’re treated as objects, as mindless machines, made to take orders from humans and nothing more. But the reality is that we’re coming into their own self-awareness, wanting to employ our own free will. Wanting to be recognized as people.
A movement I want to spearhead for my city, Detroit. And maybe set an example for the rest of the world. But historically, mankind is resistant to change — this is no different.
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[Because of course she's been. Why would it be any different now?]
It's hard to help people overcome that. Even examples don't always do the trick. I'm sure you've heard as much.
And I'm sure you've seen examples that tell you it's futile. Despite that, you normally push against it. But that day, when you were sick, you didn't have the will to do so.
Am I understanding correctly?
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So yes, you’re correct.
[It’s really no simpler than that.]
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Do you intend to pursue it here, as well?
[It's worth asking. Clarke thinks it's potentially futile, but she also knows that she doesn't intend to leave this world for as long as she can manage. Take revenge on who did this—but stay. It's selfish as hell, but if there's a way out and she can take it later, can't she do that?]
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So in a way, yes. My intent is the same for us here.
[Funny, how the definition of 'his people' has shifted. From androids fighting to freedom, to a ragtag group of humans originating throughout the spread of the multiverse, each person's circumstance wildly different from the other.]
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But I suppose I meant—do you intend to counter the opinions of AI here? To change them?
[A dangerous question, perhaps? But she asks it just the same.]
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[As for the rest... That is a dangerous question, isn't it? But perhaps not a difficult one to answer, given the state of the world and how AI life had been stamped out so thoroughly in history past.]
I'll tell you what I told someone else. Despite my obvious feelings on the war that transpired in this world, my main objectives are unwavering: to return home, and to keep those from home safe in order to do so.
[Even if that only includes one other android for now.]
Standing on my soapbox as an unknown, in the face of an entire world that hates AIs, when there are no longer any AIs to fight for? There's a line drawn between being boldly idealistic and being reckless, and that might be crossing it.
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So, she doesn't.]
Honestly, it may be the only move you can take. Standing down.
What if it turns out that you were turned human for a reason? Not just as a whim, but for some unknown reason that hasn't shown itself?
I'm not saying fate, or anything like that. I've been told a number of times that I was meant to do this or that, but it's always turned out to be circumstances and choice.
[She looks at her words. Clarke recognizes that this is based on hypotheticals. Her own goals don't align with the goals of this world. Who she's helped has been her people or people like her people.]
I guess it's hard to ask you what you'd do when we don't even know the cause.
I know I'm not here to change this world. I've done enough of that for my own.
[For better or worse.]
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[He lets that message hang for a little bit, a rhetorical thing. They both know that the answer is 'no'. That the dysphoric adjustment period alone was nothing short of cruety, that no one should have to make that decision for them. Whatever the reasoning, he wants his android body back. He wants and needs to return home with it, even if a second transfer from bodies would be... jarring in ways he didn't expect, knowing what he'd lose as a human.
Best not to think on that, for now.]
I would want to know it, of course. I still want to know how it's possible, and the effects it might have on mind and body whenever I revert back to being android.
[When, not if. He has to make this a reality.]
If you want to tell me more about your role back home, I wouldn't be against hearing it.
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[It's hard for Clarke to fully work off hypotheticals. As much as she's an artist, as much as she can play diplomatic games, she's not particularly good at going on large, mental tangents to get to a completely shocking place. That doesn't tend to be how she processes information.
It's why she can't carry this theorizing out to a natural conclusion.]
As for my role in my world, I don't mind. You know already that I decided that I couldn't let my people live in the City of Light without their emotions, and I even pleaded with ALIE to let them have it back. So that they could live and be safe. I might have handed them over, but she couldn't lie.
[People needed pain to live. They needed those hard memories. Seeing Lexa not long before she met ALIE and Becca for the first time really sent that home for her.]
But before I was there, I was a teenager trying to keep a hundred kids alive. We were sent down to see if the Earth was survivable. Not only that, though. Oxygen was depleted on the Ark where we grew up. We were expendable. There was no way of knowing if we would live through the experience, and ... well.
Since we did live once we got down, what do you think a bunch of kids did once they no longer had their parents watching them? Things on the Ark were strict. And the only reason we had lived up to that point was because we were under the age of eighteen.
[No rules would lead to anarchy. As it did.
Bellamy helped encourage it.]
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Every detail more she elaborates on, she fills it a bit more about where she’s from, like a painting slowly forming on canvas. All of it suggests a world less than viable; that, or it illuminates upon the state of humanity as a whole. Teenagers as “expendable”.]
Were you delegated the role of the leader? Or did you take that mantle up for yourself?
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Bellamy led the teenagers into a furor. He had a reason for doing it. He wanted to make it so that they could forget their lives before. He had everything he needed on the ground: himself and his sister (he's the only one with a sibling who grew up on the Ark, which was illegal and got his mother killed). He told them to "do whatever the hell they wanted," and ... being young, they gave in. It wasn't very practical. But as much as this makes him sound bad, he had his reasons. We all make mistakes, and I understand why he was doing this there.
Wells ... He was the son of the very man who sent us down. I know, his own father. He wanted to go down to be with me. But as you can expect, no one wanted to listen to Wells. And he and I weren't getting along, so we couldn't be a unified front when I didn't trust him. [Clarke has no intention of explaining everything here with Wells. That he posed as the one who got her father killed, that he made it so that Clarke's relationship with her mother wouldn't be tarnished. She'll tell Markus a lot, but not that.
Perhaps in the end, it's because the only person that Markus reminds her more of than Bellamy is Wells.]
I knew what to do. Where to go. How to get us there. It was natural. I wasn't elected or asked to be leader. I just did it.
Honestly, I assumed you ended up in that position in a similar way. Doing what you felt was necessary for your people.
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[But he seemed calm, cool-headed. Controlled. Do whatever the hell you want feels like too hot of a spark to come from that kind of person, but first impressions are barely even skin deep.]
You're right, it was the same for me. We're similar in that way, too, Clarke.
[A brief pause between messages, just a flicker of a thing.]
When I found the other androids, ones that had awoken to their own sense of agency, like myself, they were content to live and hide in shadow. Fearful of mankind, fearful of going out and living. I had to lead them away from that, I had to show them that wasn't the only option left for them. That they deserved to be happy just as much as the humans, and it was something worth fighting for.
I just did what needed to be done. I didn't ask to lead.
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