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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-26 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[ It would be a fight with Pope, Carver knows, because it has always been a fight with Pope. They never stayed in communities; they weren't allowed.

Maybe it could be different with Leah as commander, though. He wonders.

He wonders.

Carver takes a breath in, then lets it go. ]


I understand. I'll tell them, if any of them come here.

[ He's quiet for a long time. Then: ]

My sister would listen, I think. If she's still commander now.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-26 02:28 pm (UTC)(link)
[ That's a more complicated question. Carver looks away, quietly ashamed. ]

There were twenty-five of us. But I think most of them are dead now.

[ A lot of that is his fault. He lost control. Lost perspective. He didn't kill a man when he should have. ]

Leah was the second in command. Pope died, she took over. I'm her second now. I don't know if any of the others made it. I saw a lot of bodies.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-26 02:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Carver works his jaw, forcing himself to breathe past that anger. It doesn't serve now. There's nothing to point it at. ]

We got hit. And they got the gate open.

[ What happened next was almost inevitable. ]

Enemy got me on the ground, [ he adds, without much emotion at all. ] I heard gunshots, but I didn't see my sister fall. And if I didn't see it, then she made it.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-26 03:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Carver stays quiet for a long time after that, watching a spot just beyond Harold’s shoulder but not really seeing him. In the beginning, when they first started this alliance, Carver called it convenient. A halfway familiar shape he could squeeze himself into, useful for a time but nothing he could ever trust. It never occurred to him that they might understand. And it occurs to Carver now that there’s something wrong with him, possibly very wrong, because he swears he can see black uniforms in the corner just past Harold’s shoulder. Waiting for them.

That isn’t right, is it? ]


Would’ve been okay if I’d died for her, [ Carver explains softly, a little unfocused. ] But I didn’t.

[ And Harold Finch knows the weight of that far better than most. ]

Sorry you lost him. [ He twitches, trying to refocus. ] It means a lot, that you’d take my people in.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-27 09:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[ In a different time, from a different man, that tone would've gotten Carver's hackles up. Made him brace for correction. Maybe he's too tired for that here, too heartsick and stuck with his ghosts, but he just watches Harold and doesn't balk. People die all the time, Carver doesn't say. Usually, they don't die for much.

It would've been good, and right, to die for Leah Shaw. But he didn't. ]


Relevant, [ Carver repeats softly. ] Yeah.

[ To someone. Even if they're all monsters like him. He's quiet for a long time again, quietly grateful to a man he's never met and never will, a man who influenced the shape of Harold Finch's world enough that this moment could be possible. It's a strange sensation to wonder at someone else's ghost, to honor them or at least want to. Maybe he'll light a candle for Nathan. Maybe he'll even tell Harold about it.

Then Carver breathes out and takes a small polaroid out of his jacket pocket with great, exacting care. He offers it out to Harold without really looking at him. ]


This is Leah.

[ He doesn't name the little boy held in her arms. ]

In case you see her one day.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-27 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[ In the end, Harold doesn't ask the obvious questions. Doesn't pounce on the throat that Carver's just bared and try to take advantage. He just examines the photograph and then he hands it back with a quiet sort of care.

Carver tucks the polaroid away. He shouldn't carry something so delicate in his jacket, he knows, but he's afraid to lose it if he doesn't. ]


I light candles, [ Carver explains, a little distantly. ] I cut their names into trees and walls, and I leave offerings for their souls.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-27 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)
When I was little [ Carver explains softly, ] my grandma said the dead aren't really gone so long as we remember them. And if we honor them, if we leave altars, then they can find us again on Day of the Dead.

[ He honors them as best he can. The lost. His family. All of them. ]

I'll light a candle for Nathan.
Edited 2025-05-27 22:13 (UTC)
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-27 10:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I don’t think it makes up for their deaths, [ Carver replies softly. He won’t believe Leah’s dead but she is gone from him, as inevitably as Matthew and Pope are now. Maybe one day they’ll see each other again. It haunts him to have that in common with Harold’s machine, whatever the reason, but he believes this to be true and so he honors it however he can.

Death, often violent death, is inevitable in both their worlds. He watches Harold, feeling suddenly tired. ]


But it’s something.
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[personal profile] fortitudosalutis 2025-05-30 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Mhmm.

[ He watches Harold a moment longer, sober and quiet, and then looks away. What else is there to say? ]

I'll light a candle for him, if you want.