She knew that response was coming, and there it is. He's well aware she'll blame herself, no matter how much he tells her she shouldn't. After all, he'd do the same: the real Nick did, and the synthetic Nick still does. No matter how many years pass, he can't forget what happened to Jenny Lands. He can't change the past, can't erase from his mind the memory of her murder... and his failure to prevent it, to keep her safe, to bring her killer to justice.
Nick's fingers curl against the table, the bare metal scratching the surface. They're just another reminder of how inhuman he is, even if, for a week, it hadn't mattered. For that week, he'd felt as though he fully belonged somehow: he'd had a home, a family, the kind of life he'd never had the chance to have -- that he, the synthetic, never really could have. He should be used to that by now; he should be used to having memories that aren't his weighing him down. That's one thing that he and Rey -- unfortunately -- have in common.
And there's not a damn thing they can do about it. They didn't ask for this. They didn't ask to be made, or ask to have someone else's memories shoved into their minds. They didn't ask for the ghosts of the past to show up. She didn't ask for her mother to come back.
But Undine did come back, and she'd asked Nick to shoot her; he obliged out of love for the only family he's ever known. That's on him. He can carry that weight -- she shouldn't have to.
"This isn't your fault, Rey," he insists again, his eyes on his hand. He closes them as those flashes of memory return, fragments and images of events he hadn't lived mixing with ones he did. It's that much harder to separate what's real and what isn't when the gods are involved.
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Date: 2017-08-07 08:56 am (UTC)She knew that response was coming, and there it is. He's well aware she'll blame herself, no matter how much he tells her she shouldn't. After all, he'd do the same: the real Nick did, and the synthetic Nick still does. No matter how many years pass, he can't forget what happened to Jenny Lands. He can't change the past, can't erase from his mind the memory of her murder... and his failure to prevent it, to keep her safe, to bring her killer to justice.
Nick's fingers curl against the table, the bare metal scratching the surface. They're just another reminder of how inhuman he is, even if, for a week, it hadn't mattered. For that week, he'd felt as though he fully belonged somehow: he'd had a home, a family, the kind of life he'd never had the chance to have -- that he, the synthetic, never really could have. He should be used to that by now; he should be used to having memories that aren't his weighing him down. That's one thing that he and Rey -- unfortunately -- have in common.
And there's not a damn thing they can do about it. They didn't ask for this. They didn't ask to be made, or ask to have someone else's memories shoved into their minds. They didn't ask for the ghosts of the past to show up. She didn't ask for her mother to come back.
But Undine did come back, and she'd asked Nick to shoot her; he obliged out of love for the only family he's ever known. That's on him. He can carry that weight -- she shouldn't have to.
"This isn't your fault, Rey," he insists again, his eyes on his hand. He closes them as those flashes of memory return, fragments and images of events he hadn't lived mixing with ones he did. It's that much harder to separate what's real and what isn't when the gods are involved.