Harvey Dent / Two-Face (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dualistic) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2012-06-20 07:19 pm
dualistic) wrote in damned_institute2012-06-20 07:19 pm
Entry tags:
Night 64: West Wing, North Hall 1-A
[From here.]
Along with his weapons and supplies, Harvey also had two other very important things with him, and he checked his pockets for them as he moved down the halls. First was his coin, which he wasn't surprised to find was there, as he couldn't think of a time when he'd let it be removed from his person. Second was the bracelet that the talking skeleton extraordinaire had given them. Forgetting the whole morbid quality of it, Harvey had to wonder if it could really be trusted.
On the other hand, Sangamon had made use of that ring and it had never come around to bite him, so maybe it was fine. Maybe every once in a while, this place actually made their lives easier rather than more difficult.
With the hall completely empty, Harvey didn't have to waste any time moving down it toward the meeting spot.
[To here.]
Along with his weapons and supplies, Harvey also had two other very important things with him, and he checked his pockets for them as he moved down the halls. First was his coin, which he wasn't surprised to find was there, as he couldn't think of a time when he'd let it be removed from his person. Second was the bracelet that the talking skeleton extraordinaire had given them. Forgetting the whole morbid quality of it, Harvey had to wonder if it could really be trusted.
On the other hand, Sangamon had made use of that ring and it had never come around to bite him, so maybe it was fine. Maybe every once in a while, this place actually made their lives easier rather than more difficult.
With the hall completely empty, Harvey didn't have to waste any time moving down it toward the meeting spot.
[To here.]
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And now this corridor was completely empty. If Landel could control perception, then was this part of it? Making everyone believe they were alone? That seemed rather childish, and a little like cheating. But then, Landel seemed like a childish and cheating kind of psychopath.
Even as more important thoughts simmered at the back of his mind, Skulduggery found himself wondering - how did you cheat at being a psychopath?
His sense of balance was better than it was last night, though still a little shaky. Skulduggery kept one hand near the wall as he walked, just in case, with the other hand held out and reading the air ahead of him. Still mostly clear, still nothing dangerous. That didn't stop him from moving slowly and cautiously.
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Kyousuke moved quickly, but cautiously, making sure to keep his eyes and ears open to everything around him, which came naturally enough; it was a practice he was already quite used to, even if in a different context. But as far as he could tell, the hall was completely empty. He could just make out doors on either end, one set closed, one set opened to another hallway, and he paused for a moment to consider which direction to take.
.... It was hard to believe this was happening. How much earlier, in this same day, had everything seemed so bright? But now he was who knew where, dealing with who knew what, and that victory they were still supposed to be celebrating seemed so far removed. Kyousuke almost wondered if he'd open his eyes for a second time soon, but he cut the thought off immediately. ... Entertaining that would be a waste. He was here now, and he needed to focus. If he had had time to feel sorry for himself, he was getting too relaxed.
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It gave him something to hold onto, anyway. Something solid and tangible, a concrete goal. He needed that, he had realized. So much of his life and the poor decisions he'd made could be traced back to drifting, confused and miserable and without clear direction. When left to his own devices, he always managed to pick the worst path he could.
Not anymore. And now he had his goal, whether Tsurugi liked it or not. He'd understand Murphy's insistence soon enough.
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Not wanting to waste any more time, he made his way towards the set of closed doors.
[to here]
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As they left the block of rooms, Claude couldn't help but notice that the halls weren't crowded yet. Hopefully that meant their route would stay relatively quiet, and they'd be lucky enough to avoid any surprise monster encounters.
Still, it didn't take long for Claude to realize that he wasn't sure where they were going, though, and his previously determined pace slowed as a result.
Turning to look at Guy, he asked, "Did she say where to meet her tonight, or are we just assuming it's the usual?"
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He found it strange that both of them had been affected when he hadn't, but it didn't seem like Luke or Tear had been hit with the infection either. It was probably completely random, but that only spoke to the sort of luck his friends had.
When Claude asked where they were doing, Guy glanced the hall. "I think we just need to keep heading down until we run into her," he said after a pause. "If she's not feeling well, then she probably didn't want to come all the way up here." And Guy couldn't blame her. While he felt bad for making Claude keep up with him, this was the direction they needed to go anyway. And so he continued down the hall.
[To here.]
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Still in unknown territory...but not for long. Just one more hall and he'd be at the "usual spot". Niikura idly wondered if Badd would actually show up. He doubted it, since the older man hadn't replied to his bulletin post, and if he'd really wanted to tag along, he would've said something.
It'd be okay if it was just the three of them, though. He wouldn't be on edge so much.
[to here]
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Badd led Byrne a different way this time, north rather than south. "Landel probably figures everyone's heading for the medical wing," he explained. "Meanwhile, we go the other way. If I can get you up onto that little shed in the rec field we can get over the wall and sneak off while everyone else is playing Landel's game."
It had worked for Kay. Over the wall and she'd made it free and clear. Badd hoped.
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Hm. Come to think of it, Byrne didn't have any idea what was beyond the backside of this place. Everything beyond the wall would be uncharted territory for him, wilderness or otherwise. And honestly? It all sounded quite exciting.
[To here.]
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Again, the halls were dark. The Once-ler was beginning to wonder if the owner of this building had failed to pay their electricity bills. That was another question to ask, alongside where am I? and how did I get here? and what is going on?
Hopefully he'd get lucky and find someone who knew the answers. It was really starting to bother him.
[to here]
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Murphy held the door open for Tsurugi, chest heaving as he sucked in great swallows of air. He was sweating, fear coursing through his veins. How quickly he'd forgotten. One comfortable day was all it took for Silent Hill to seem like just a bad dream.
And holy hell, he'd forgotten how dark it was inside.
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.... Something was wrong. Really wrong. Nothing worked the way it was supposed to, and this level of exhaustion didn't make any sense. There were times when he'd pushed himself a lot harder, to not nearly as much effect. The draining effect was a lot more pronounced here, hitting at particularly intense level even though he hadn't really done anything. And that he hadn't even been able to call Lancelot... It was like all his power had been depleted before he'd even used it. How was that even possible? He let out a sharp breath, annoyed; he wasn't sure what was going on, but he expected a lot more of himself than just this. It was hard to accept his effort had produced something so pathetic.
But at least it worked, in however loose a sense of the word. If the robot had decided to follow them, it probably would have been there by now. Maybe just being inside was enough. .... Not that he intended to stay for long. The wall may have been blocked now, but there was bound to be a door out or something like that around here somewhere. He pushed himself off the wall and started off down the hall, gritting his teeth as he did so; it was taking a considerable effort just to walk without it looking like he was dragging himself, and more yet to conceal that fact.
"... Come on," he muttered to Murphy. He didn't want to be followed, but he couldn't leave someone without a flashlight to wander unwittingly into who-knew-what. If he was stupid enough to throw that away, who knew what else he'd do. And while Kyousuke didn't want to admit it, wandering around by himself wasn't the best idea anymore. He was totally spent; just this was straining him.
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Murphy shook his head, his voice incredulous and half-shocked. He reached out for the kid's shoulder, to halt him a moment. The ex-con wanted explanations. And when he wanted explanations, he had a habit of just demanding them.
"What the hell was that out there?" He didn't even know what he was referring to. Catbot, the orders to return, the Doom Glow...really, it was all equally bizarre. Like he'd wandered into some 80s Saturday morning cartoon or something. Only...evil. And written by Satan.
He was starting to wonder if maybe dinner had been drugged, and this was all some crazy hallucination.
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He was mildly surprised he'd never seen anything like that, though. Avatar users were rare, but the ability was getting a lot of attention lately because of the Holy Road. Kyousuke might not have used his Avatar proper, but most people have would have seen that same energy on TV through the course of Nationals. ... Maybe Murphy just wasn't very connected to the world around him. Kyousuke couldn't say he'd be surprised.
"Spiritual energy," he explained. "It usually can't be seen, but certain people can learn to use it in a physical form."
It was far from the full, proper explanation, but it was all that came; it was hard to keep connecting his thoughts together, and talking was aggravating his headache.
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"I'm sorry. And...what?" Did...did this kid need medication of some kind? Or did Murphy? He guessed he'd heard stranger things, but...it was hard to reconcile them. This was an entirely different kind of strange, despite what he'd first assumed.
"I'm sorry, you're just not making any sense to me. Are you okay?"
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Kyousuke honestly didn't know what to tell him. There was a lot in what he'd said he could expand on, but if Murphy couldn't even process what he did say, that wasn't going to do much good. ... He didn't have the patience for this right now. Not with his head hurting like this.
"... Think of it as concentrated willpower," he decided on finally. That much was true, in a sense. And then, "If you can't understand that much, then anything I tell you will be a waste of time."
He just didn't want to deal with dumbing it down, and frankly, whether or not Murphy understood was his own problem. It wasn't like his comprehension of it was going to help them get out any faster.
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"Okay. Yeah." He nodded, showing he understood that, at least. Man, what had happened to this kid to make him lash out in a crisis? Obviously something.
"I'm sorry, I've just never seen anything like that. Not...not that a person did, anyway." He ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. "But hey. I've seen a lot of stuff I've never seen before these last few days. And...that was really great. Stunning Catbot back there."
Maybe he could earn a few points in his favor. Usually he was great with kids.
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Still, he'd never seen that ... in a person ...? Kyousuke had never been unfortunate enough to come across anything he'd consider inhuman, but his experience in that regard was exactly the opposite. That was strange, and a little disturbing. What in the world had this guy been running into? Although he did have to snort at the mention of 'catbot.' Was that what he was calling it?
When complimented, Kyousuke shrugged it off as if it wasn't worthy of praise, which, in his mind, it wasn't. ".... That was nothing." It was possible it sounded it egotistical, but to him, it wasn't; he was merely stating the truth. "It didn't work the way it's supposed to. Nothing did. I should have been capable of a lot more than that."
He still didn't understand, and was more than a little put off by it, but then, moping wouldn't change things, and it was pointless to put any reliance in something that wasn't going to work properly. That in mind, he forced himself forward again.
[to here]
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The Scarecrow pushed the strap attached to his two-way radio higher up his wrist, carrying it more out of habit and comfort than for practical reasons. His own skin felt odd to the touch- there was a certain chill there he couldn't describe, but it definitely wasn't like the one that ran through him when he put his bare feet on the floor. There was something unsettling about it- even the snow hadn't felt like that.
Perhaps that was what he ought to be doing, he thought to himself as he crossed into the next hallway, coughing again. Zero had suggested it was something far more sinister than what the nurse was telling him- the infection, though he hadn't put much thought into it until that moment. With all that was cluttering his mind— the military, troubles with Depth Charge, the consequences of their botched mission, his friends' and now his roommate's disappearances— he hadn't considered that was what was going on with him. He had no experience with the ailments that could arise with the human body, but his best guess had been that it'd be a bit like his hay getting moldy or his limbs not being stuffed enough.
It wasn't much like that at all, now that he knew there was something wrong and he had a basis for comparison.
[To here.]
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X had been kind enough to share a few things about himself, even if he might not have been aware just how much his answers had told Harpuia. He was still reluctant to discuss the parts of his life that had been colored gray by disillusionment and despair, but there were still things he could share. His life hadn't been utterly devoid of happiness, or anything so melodramatic as that.
"...You said you wanted to know about me," he offered. "I still feel this is neither the time nor the place to say everything, but it's only fair that I not leave you in the dark. The Four Guardians -- myself, Fairy Leviathan, Fighting Fefnir, and Hidden Phantom -- were cloned from your DNA, each with a distinct purpose in mind. Fefnir was made with Maverick-hunting applications in mind, Phantom was Master X's personal bodyguard, and Leviathan and I were created for the sake of climate-control operations to rejuvenate the earth and sea. Eventually, all four of us were reassigned to military positions, but for the beginning of my life, I was not a war machine."
He didn't necessarily think that was a fact to brag about, but nor was it one to be ashamed of -- simply a fact, nothing more. A rote recitation of the Guardians' original purposes, of course, sounded far less human than the words X had shared on his beliefs. Harpuia was perfectly aware how machinelike it must have seemed to simply list their duties off with that unchanging serious look on his face, but all the same... it wasn't necessarily impersonal. Not to him. Those early, relatively peaceful years were ones that contained nothing but fond memories -- if he had to share anything of the tumultuous future with X, then at least let it be something pleasant.
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And that Harpuia himself started as something other than a 'War Machine'.
'War Machine'? Who called themselves that? If his intended usage of that word was as negative as X himself had seen it, then it seemed that he and Harpuia shared more similarities than just their peaceful beginnings.
Though the thought of being cloned from his DNA...
"So the other guardians were your siblings?" X asked after a moment. "And I'm..."
...related to him. He was cloned from my DNA, so doesn't that mean that we're related? At least as closely related as Reploids can get.
That was a strange thing to think about. Siblings? If that was what he could call him; Reploids didn't have anything like this, rather forming bonds of friendship, romance, and comraderie than anything resembling biological ties. But if they were created from him, what else could they be?
But then, at the same time, wouldn't all Reploids in a sense be his...
The clenching in his heart was enough to get him to stop that line of thinking, lest it got out of hand. The last thing he needed to do in this situation was to rethink his past failures. He'd fix everything -- there was no need for him to dwell on it any more than he already did. And calling all of Reploidkind his 'brothers' or 'children' was simultaneously an honor and a disappointment (disappointment to them; it was as though he was a human who gave his children a genetic illness that he didn't have the symptoms to).
Though still, despite himself, X found himself smiling a bit.
"...your brother, I guess."
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All the same... he'd always framed his own identity in the context of his duty -- he never even knew the names of the humans who had built him, so what reason was there to put much thought toward the concept of family? He may not have been built to be a war machine, but he wasn't exactly an average civillian, either; he'd been born in the context of filling a purpose, and that purpose had inevitably been the groundwork for how he viewed the world.
"I suppose that, if anything, you would be our father," Harpuia began, though the words felt uncertain and strange on his tongue. Brother, father... it sat oddly with him, to assign such personal and familiar terms to X. It felt presumptuous, like a breach of propriety, to claim such an intimate connection to such a significant reploid. X, technically speaking, was famously known as the father of all reploids; perhaps Harpuia's creators had stuck closer to the template than most, but to use his birth to claim he was inherently more special than other reploids somehow seemed disingenuous to him. The DNA that had been used to make him wasn't a shortcut to prestige. It was meant, he was convinced, to hold him to a higher standard -- to push him to be worthy of what he'd been granted, prove that X's DNA hadn't been wasted on him.
"...I don't believe I can see it like that, though," he confessed. "You may see me in any light that you wish, Master X, but you are first and foremost the one that I serve. I don't mean to reject you in any way," Harpuia added quickly, lest X get the wrong idea. "I simply never felt a need for a family. There never was an empty place in my heart for words like those to fill. Rest assured, though, Master X: the term you choose to describe my feelings may change how they look on the surface, but it doesn't alter the content. Whatever you wish to be in my eyes -- brother, father, or master -- you are, above all, someone I respect and admire."
If I keep editing this thing, I'm going to spend a million years on it.
Father...No. By being one's father it meant that you had a part in giving birth, had a part in the creation of something. Even if he had succeeded in creating something to the extent of Neo Arcadia, that was hundreds of years in the future. At that point, he possibly could have learned from his mistakes, and perhaps even become someone worthy of that title and sentiment. Maybe he'd atoned for what he'd done.
But that was the future. This was now.
Even if he had become someone better, he wasn't now. X wasn't about to be so arrogant as to claim the accomplishments of someone he wasn't yet.
"I...thank you."
To be admired...X had rarely experienced that feeling outside of his stint as the Hunter Leader, but even then, it was still a new sensation to him. Not at all a bad one, but still one that would get that feeling of slight shyness to the surface, that was for sure.
Though...
"It's okay, Harpuia, I understand."
He even made an attempt at smiling, but with the thoughts whirling in his mind, it probably came off as wan, perhaps forced. With an attempt at humor that he just didn't have, with everything considered, but for Harpuia's sake he figured he needed to keep his mood up.
Father.
No. The closest X would ever allow himself to be (in terms of biological, human, relationship titles) was his brother. Brotherhood signified equality, or at least that one could teach the other. Even younger brothers could protect the elder and teach them what they didn't know. In the case of father and son, there was that barrier of respect, one that in X's eyes, he didn't deserve. Not when it was proven already that he was far less logical than his companion, and probably less mature.
Still...
Having a little brother, even from the future was a strangely thrilling idea. Even if he was more mature than he was.
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An admirable way of being, but Harpuia couldn't help but think it a little bit dangerous, too. He... wasn't exactly the kind of person who made friends easily, given his intense, serious nature, so it was hard to understand simply welcoming someone as family based on little more than a claim of shared DNA -- a claim that he couldn't even back up, so long as he was in a body like this.
It was simultaneously an honour and a little bit shameful -- he couldn't help but wonder if he was exploiting Master X's innocence. Was he really deserving of such a warm welcome? Would his opinion change at all if he knew that it would be Harpuia's foolish pride that allowed X to be killed? That he was dealing with a traitor? That even if he hadn't been born a war machine, all his life had amounted to was a senseless string of slaughter after slaughter?
"...You really are kind," he replied, once again locking his gaze straight ahead. "But is that really okay? You barely know what sort of person I am. I could be hiding something from you. I have no proof of anything I've told you; my word is all you have to go on. Your heart is legendary for its forgiveness, but you should save that warmth until you know I'm worthy of it."
The most trusting logical rundown in history.
"I always was told that I was too trusting." X said with a small laugh. "And you're right. I don't know anything about you, short of what you've told me."
He felt his bad hand start to throb as he navigated along the walls, but the rush he was feeling in the back of his head almost pushed it to the back of his mind. It was almost like liquid heat was going through his limbs; to describe it in words was impossible.
Still, he found himself smiling, his tone pleasant: "But if you wanted to deceive me, wouldn't you have tried using a cover story a lot more plausible? If you wanted to seem reliable and keep the 'future' angle, for example, you could have just said that you were a Maverick Hunter in the future. Why go so far and tell something like that if all you were going to do was trick me? At the first sign of confusion, you would have changed your story, wouldn't you?"
He didn't wait for Harpuia to reply. He went on:
"But you didn't, which shows to me that even if you may not have told me the whole story, you've been truthful so far in everything you have told. And putting that aside, you wouldn't have given me that warning if you didn't care."
And Harpuia helped him. After he hurt his hand, after he did reckless things, he could have just left him there. If he wanted to take advantage of him, he could have at that moment. All he had done so far was help him, protect him, and take care of him.
Why go out of his way? Regardless of what Harpuia said, his actions already told X all he needed to know about his character, even if, admittedly, he didn't know everything about him.
"I think I have more than enough reason to consider you 'worthy' as you put it." Though really, worthy? Since when did people have to be worthy of X's trust and friendship? Regardless of what Harpuia said, he couldn't see himself as the great man that his future self could very well have been. All this talk was just a little bit out of X's element. "Just from what we've been through already."
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"...You arrive that that conclusion far too quickly," he told X. "An unfit servant is easily dismissed--" Harpuia knew that much from experience, after all, "--but as soon as it becomes personal, not professional, you can't take it back so easily."
It would be a lie to say he wasn't feeling conflicted about this. Somehow, he'd been given a second chance -- a Master X that approved of him, that was still alive and whole! As long as X remained blind to the things that had happened in Neo Arcadia, it would be like everything he regretted so bitterly had been erased. He could learn from the mistakes he'd made the first time around, he could have back the things that had been torn away from him. But even so... having those things was meaningless if he had them because he was keeping his errors covered up. As much as he wanted to be trusted, to be permitted to stand at X's side like he had before everything had gone south, Harpuia wasn't going to ask for more than he rightfully deserved.
It was difficult to talk about. He didn't want to bring it up. This was a wound too fresh to be prodding, but... he would hide nothing from his master. A Guardian wasn't a liar or someone to shirk responsibility -- even if he couldn't exactly lay claim over that title anymore, he still wanted to live up to the standards he'd once been held to.
"When I introduced myself as a former Guardian... it wasn't my death that released me from that role, Master X. I was stripped of my position before that. My hubris allowed you and Neo Arcadia to fall into corrupt hands, and ultimately, I died a traitor to the dream you spent your life pursuing." The confession was quiet, but certainly not mumbled; every last word contained a deliberate, wholehearted weight. This was a subject he'd put a lot of thought into, so when he spoke, he did so with full awareness of just what it meant. "Allow me to serve you in any way that I can, that's all I ask of you. I know better than to demand you put faith in me. DNA alone is not enough to let me claim I'm worth your trust."
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"...I was stripped of my position before that. My hubris allowed you and Neo Arcadia to fall into corrupt hands, and ultimately, I died a traitor to the dream you spent your life pursuing."
...A traitor.
Hubris, bad enough to warrant such a fate. Corruption...
"Come on, X! What are you waiting for? This is your chance! You can stop me, if you're willing to shoot through Zero to do it!"
"I...I...!"
"HAHAHAHA!! You can't, can you?!"
"...Hubris, huh?"
"X, wh-what did I...t-tell you...? A-always said t-t-to be more...c-careful..."
"Zero, hang on; don't try to talk! We'll get you back to Hunter Base. We'll fix you up."
Leaning against the wall, X appraised Harpuia silently. He didn't know him that well, nor did he know much of anything about this mysterious future that he had come from, but he knew regret when he heard it. He knew shame when he heard it.
Two things he wasn't exactly a stranger to.
"If it's not too much trouble to ask..."
"What did you do to warrant such a thing, Harpuia?" His tone wasn't accusatory, or even harsh. It was thoughtful, even...sad. "Maybe I assume too much, but I can't imagine that whatever it was, it was done intentionally."
Though it was true: the worst things could be done with the best intentions, or even with no intention at all. But all people could atone if they had the desire to. If they felt remorse, what was stopping anyone from giving them a second chance? Or at least allowing them the opportunity to make up for it, to set things as right as they could?
After all, X himself had so much he still needed to atone for. To be unforgiving to one remorseful person considering his own follies would be hypocritical and wrong.
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How to explain all the errors he'd made, when X was still in the dark about so many things? Neo Arcadia, the Resistance, the Dark Elf, Omega and Dr. Weil... they wouldn't be much more to X than empty, confusing words. Attempting to explain them, too, would not only be incredibly time-consuming, but perhaps a little dangerous; X may have been optimistic, but Harpuia couldn't say with any certainty just what effect foreknowledge could have. He couldn't imagine that X would be able to shrug off finding out that his best friend was technically the enemy, he himself would end up dying at the hands of a power-crazed drone, and the paradise he would someday build would end up controlled by a madman.
"This is neither the time nor the place to delve into the details, though I don't believe I can give you a clear picture of my mistakes without them," Harpuia told X. "The simplest explanation I can afford for the time being is that while I lived, I was a very foolish reploid. I allowed pride to blind me, and you were the one who ultimately paid the price. I chose what was soothing over what was true, and it was that lie that paved an easy pathway for a sick and evil man to seize total control. I was complacent in dealing with the enemy, and that lead Master X to brand me unfit as a Guardian."
The beam of the flashlight dropped a few degrees; Harpuia bowed his head, diverting his eyes to the ground in front of them. "I became a traitor because I felt I could not forgive the one who controlled Neo Arcadia. I would like to think my motives were unselfish, but if I look at it honestly... I wonder if that's all there is to it. Everything I did was for the sake of humans. Even now, the ideal I believe in remains unchanged. Even if I say that, though... I had very little left to lose at that point. I no longer had a place within Neo Arcadia, and therefore no longer had a reason to exist. At the time, I wasn't sure if Fefnir and Leviathan would live or die, but even if they pulled through... I wouldn't have been surprised if Weil had found a reason to have us declared Maverick. He wasn't the type to be careless."
His walking had slowed a little. Harpuia went quiet, save for a funny little exhalation that... might have almost tried to be a laugh. Sort of. If laughing was even a thing Harpuia was capable of doing. "I'm being horribly morbid, aren't I? It's strange. I used to believe wholeheartedly that I was doing the right thing, but looking back... there's so little that I can be sure of anymore."
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Complacency leading to an evil man to seize total control. Harpuia had allowed pride and a lack of foresight to cause a great calamity to occur, and after losing his rank, had turned against the city that had shaped his entire existence in order to fight it.
A lot of what Harpuia had said was confusing, a bunch of words and concepts that were unknown and foreign to him from this mysterious future of his, but X gleaned that much.
And if some words were changed around ('pride' replaced by 'naivete', for instance), and some of the roles swapped...
That wasn't exactly the sort of nostalgia that X was expecting.
"Though I am confused about one thing: You called yourself a 'traitor' to my dream, and that after you were stripped of your position you turned against Neo Arcadia because of the evil man who had taken control of it. But how is turning against an evil person who was perverting Neo Arcadia being traitorous to the Dream that supported it?"
If he had been mentioning just the establishment, that would have been one thing, but...
Dreams were intangible things, made of beliefs and ideals. It was hardly something that would be concentrated on a single object, or all within the confines of a single city.
"You said you were prideful before, and that it was your complacency and inability to accept the truth that had allowed his rise to power in the first place and your loss of position. But regardless of whether or not your intentions were pure unselfishness or desperation, you still turned against it and stuck to your beliefs once you realized what was happening. You wanted to help Neo Arcadia and the humans who lived there, didn't you? You wanted to redeem yourself for the mistakes you made, maybe even fix them. At least, that's how it sounds to me, if you don't mind me saying so.
"You may have turned against the establishment of Neo Arcadia, but I don't think you turned against my dream. If that were the case, then wouldn't you have just sat around and let Neo Arcadia fall? You could have said 'well, this doesn't have anything to do with me anymore', and just went on with the knowledge that it was happening, but you didn't. You still did something."
If that was a laugh, then it was a humorless one.
"In your position, I probably would have done and felt similarly."
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More than anything, he suspected, he just wanted to know that it had all meant something -- that even if the cause he'd fought for had been an illusion, his struggles had still done some good. To no longer be living was not such a crushing thing. Harpuia, after all, came from a society where even high-class custom models like him were considered some degree of expendable. To have lived in vain, though... that was the idea he was struggling with.
It may not have been a very significant remark to X, but hearing him say that he would have done the same in Harpuia's shoes struck deeper than he was willing to say. He wasn't so vain as to think himself the next Mega Man X or the inheritor of X's will, but "What would Master X have done?" was a question that had guided Harpuia's decisions many times in the past. His betrayal was still a shameful, disgraceful thing, but... if that was the same path that X himself would have taken, then Harpuia knew that it hadn't been a waste. Not just him -- Fefnir and Leviathan, wherever they were... they could all hold their heads high.
Harpuia came to an abrupt halt, head bowed, the flashlight's beam dropping all the way down to the ground at his side as his arm fell to his side. He'd always been the type of reploid to show the gravitas that suited a soldier. Sentiment had no place on the battlefield, after all. This, however, wasn't a battlefield; just for a quick moment, he'd let himself slip a little.
"...I think that was something I desperately needed to hear," he told X quietly.
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X didn't fully understand his circumstances. He didn't fully understand the things he was saying to him, and could only piece together Harpuia's circumstances in a patchwork piecemeal of events and ideas that sat in a very loose, coherent pattern.
But he understood enough. At least enough to feel a hard tug of sympathy for the man he was looking at now, slumped as though a great weight had just been lifted off of his shoulders for the first time.
X stepped forward.
One step. Two. Three.
Standing at Harpuia's side, X dared to place the hand without the glass shard in it on his companion's shoulder, giving it a squeeze (Wait, that was his injured hand, wasn't it? Ow, ow. Probably not the best of his ideas). Awkward, unsure, but still in hopes to be comforting all the same.
After all Harpuia had done for him so far, it was the absolute least he could do (and it wasn't exactly in his nature to ignore anyone's plight, regardless of how small or insignificant it was).
"I...I'm glad to have been of help."
He threw him an encouraging smile. If he needed to say more, X was willing to listen.
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And out into the hall which was really only familiar because it was like the one it connected to.
[To Here]