Huvrye Tirvio (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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metalogs2023-01-19 01:39 pm
effiomsfavorite) wrote in metalogs2023-01-19 01:39 pm
Entry tags:
Lucy In Disguise With Glasses [Closed]
Who: Huvrye effiomsfavorite and Mark atypical_echo
What: Huvrye has a magical disguise and needs help figuring out Normal Human Looks, so he asks Mark for help.
When: Mid-January, post ageswap event
Where: The Diadem Hotel
Content Warnings: None so far
Huvrye has had the enchanted velcro strap for a few weeks now, courtesy of Doctor Strange, and while he knows he should practice with it more, everything just feels off when he does. He knows that just hiding his wings and ears isn't enough to really disguise himself, but he's also having trouble seeing himself as a human enough for the disguise to really work. He sees plenty of humans around, but he doesn't want to just copy one of them, because that's going to cause other problems if someone else recognizes them.
So he does what he normally does when he runs into Normal Human Problems and calls Mark, asking for his help with something ("it shouldn't be too bad? I'll explain when you get here") and promising to pay for dinner. Provided he didn't get mugged along the way, Mark should be here soon; for now, Huvrye is waiting.
effiomsfavorite and Mark atypical_echoWhat: Huvrye has a magical disguise and needs help figuring out Normal Human Looks, so he asks Mark for help.
When: Mid-January, post ageswap event
Where: The Diadem Hotel
Content Warnings: None so far
Huvrye has had the enchanted velcro strap for a few weeks now, courtesy of Doctor Strange, and while he knows he should practice with it more, everything just feels off when he does. He knows that just hiding his wings and ears isn't enough to really disguise himself, but he's also having trouble seeing himself as a human enough for the disguise to really work. He sees plenty of humans around, but he doesn't want to just copy one of them, because that's going to cause other problems if someone else recognizes them.
So he does what he normally does when he runs into Normal Human Problems and calls Mark, asking for his help with something ("it shouldn't be too bad? I'll explain when you get here") and promising to pay for dinner. Provided he didn't get mugged along the way, Mark should be here soon; for now, Huvrye is waiting.
no subject
Yet, says a poisonous little voice in the back of Huvrye's mind, but he ignores it for now. Mark knows, and he's not leaving, and the acid burn in Huvrye's chest is slowly starting to subside. It's okay. For now, it's okay.
(It might not be okay later. He'll take 'for now.')
He's still listening - he doesn't correct 'grew up,' at least not yet - and while the leadup to whatever question this is going to be is making him nervous, he still trusts Mark. "Okay."
...though evidently trusting Mark doesn't prevent him from being utterly blindsided by that question. For the second time today, he's left blinking and staring at Mark as he tries to gather his thoughts. What coffee is his favorite? What does that have to do with anything?
But Mark asked him to take it seriously, and he does, turning the question over in his head. He's had a lot of different coffees since he'd arrived here, to the point where he doesn't remember all of them. Which one is his favorite?
"There's one they make downstairs," he finally says. "It's mostly regular coffee, but it's got salted caramel in it. I think that one's my favorite." It's the first coffee he'd had that had been flavored (and better quality than anything he could get back in Lasardhi), and it had stuck with him. It had also become his regular order downstairs, to the point where the people in the coffee shop would start prepping it for him when they saw him in line.
He has to ask, though. He shouldn't be pushing, but he needs to know. "Why?"
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“Because weapons are things, Huvrye, and things don’t have preferences, or likes and dislikes. A gun doesn’t like armor piercing rounds over standard. A tank doesn’t have a reason to prefer dry ground over muddy, even if one is better for its operation. There are no preferences with a sword when it comes to whether their handle is wrapped in one color leather or another. People have preferences.”
He’s going to put aside the whole idea of animals here because those have preferences too but he’s not going to muddy that water. Right now he needs Huvrye to see that he’s a thinking, reasoning being. And that makes him a person.
“You were a soldier for your world, and it sounds like you weren’t given a choice in that life. But that doesn’t mean that you are without your own ability to make choices. Sometimes people get caught like that. I got caught in that, I had my agency stripped away for years, but that didn’t make me less of a person, and that doesn’t mean I lost my right to make my own choices now. And right now, you’re free of whatever fucked up structures you were in, and you get to make your own choices, no matter what your past was.”
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As for his past, he gets the feeling a lot of choices are going to be made for him if anyone ever finds out about the details. Better to keep that under wraps for as long as he can.
CW: References to Slavery
“You sound like a plantation owner back before the Revolution. They used to say that about some people too. People that were ‘made’ to serve them, to work in their fields and make money for them. Of course that doesn’t change the fact that just enslaving a person doesn’t make them any less a person.”
And being a former slave, even a military slave, didn’t make Huvrye any less of a person.
“You’ve been a person all your life too Huvrye. You were just controlled by bad people who refused to see that. People who didn’t deserve you.”
CW: corpse desecration, boy is this conversation ever going places
"That's not the same. The people who controlled me made me." Wait - is that the part that Mark's not getting? "I'm made out of dead civs and held together by alchemy. I wasn't born. I was never a kid. I didn't grow up. I don't have a soul. I'm not a person."
But it's nice to be treated like one, says a quiet voice somewhere deep in his mind. He's not listening - the hypocrisy and indoctrination run far too deep to be uprooted so easily - but the thought is still there.
CW: corpse desecration, debates on souls
“First, and let’s get this out of the way: I’m an atheist, I don’t believe in souls. So ‘lacking’ one isn’t going to sell me on the lies that slave-owners tell to their slaves to keep them in line. Actually, I’m pretty sure that one was told to black slaves in America too, so extra points against it. Secondly, you were born, but just born in a different way than I was. Arguing against that would also mean that you’re arguing against the personhood of someone who is, say, hatched, or cloned, or even thinking machines that are constructed or something.”
Because Mark’s seen enough here to believe that AI could probably get to be fully sentient and thus people. So that argument is total bullshit too. And Mark’s not going to buy it.
“And I’m not going to say that the people who created you,” because he’s not saying ‘made’, that’s dismissive of Huvrye’s personhood things, “are good people for using the bodies of people who passed away. But I have seen what alchemy can do, and I know it makes things absolutely real. From what I saw from Oliver, it’s very potent, and it’s very real. So that doesn’t take away from you being a person. Also, new homework for you, you’re reading Frankenstein, because literally we teach in school from one of the most classic stories of all time that even if everything about your creation that you’re saying means you don’t have a soul and makes you not a person is actually wrong. If, and hard if on it from me, souls are real, the people without them are the ones that hurt you so bad, that beat you down until you really believed all their lies.”
Because that’s absolute truth in Mark’s mind. If Huvrye isn’t a person, then neither is he, because they were both lied to by their governments, both tools that never deserved what they were treated like.
“There is nothing you can say to make me believe that one of my best friends in this world isn’t a person, Huvrye. And I know I’m going to find a way to make you see yourself for what you are. Because I made a promise that I’m not going to stand back and not fight to save people from bad things. I’m not going to run because I’m scared or because it’s hard or because I could get hurt. And that includes this.”
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...what?
It's all Huvrye can do to stand there, slackjawed and slightly awed, as Mark starts his argument by blithely dismissing the idea of souls and just goes from there. Saying Huvrye is born. Insisting he's as much of a person as anyone else, regardless of circumstances. Giving him homework. Calmly and methodically tearing down every argument Huvrye has made. He knows Mark is wrong - he knows homunculi are different, that they don't count - but what is he supposed to say? How is he supposed to make an argument when Mark is simply taking them all apart?
(The bit of grace for Lasardhi, and the stark dissonance with his experience, almost gets a startled laugh out of him. He knows where those bodies come from. He's brought enough of them to Resources himself.)
And then Mark calls Huvrye one of his best friends here, and promises to fight for him - even if it means fighting him, or at least his mindset - and Huvrye's ability to think shorts out entirely.
None of this makes any sense. Huvrye has only known Mark for a month - how could he be one of Mark's best friends here? Sure, Mark is Huvrye's best friend, but that's partly because Huvrye doesn't have many friends, between his short time here and his tendency to lose them in horrifying ways. How could he possibly be that important to Mark? His life doesn't matter. He's not a person-
But Mark says he is-
He doesn't get it. It doesn't make sense. The inside of his head feels like locked gears, frozen and straining to move; like broken glass, edges grinding together but unable to become whole; he feels dazed; he feels concussed, and he's had enough concussions throughout his life to place that feeling-
And like he has before when he's been concussed, his mouth buys time for his brain to get itself back in order by filling the silence with something inane.
"...what's homework?"
It's not an attempt to change the subject; it's currently the only thing he can think of when his brain has overheated trying to process something anathema to how it was built.
Mark thinks he's a person.
But he's not. Mark is wrong. That's not how this works. It's not possible.
But, says that same quiet voice, what if it is? What if he's right?
(That voice is getting harder and harder to ignore, but Huvrye tries anyway, because he doesn't have an answer and he's pretty sure that, if he ever does get one, it won't come easy. He's not doing that right now.)
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"Come on, let's sit down and order dinner. I'll explain homework, and then I'll probably have to back track and explain school and education for young people on this world. So you have enough of an understanding of it to wing it through any questions that may have come up."
no subject
He takes Mark's hand and holds it tight (not too tight, he doesn't want to hurt him), like an anchor, and sighs. "Okay." He can manage dinner, and an explanation, and anything that doesn't involve delving too deeply into his personhood or lack thereof, because that's definitely still in mental gridlock.
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"Alright, I think it's probably best to go with something we've already tried before. Better to just choose something familiar, your favorites."
Reinforce that you have favorites.
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(If Mark checks the delivery history, that same pho place is three of Huvrye's last five orders. He definitely has favorites.)
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"Pho it is. I love pho actually. It's comfort food. I've missed not having it. We'll get a huge serving of it, and sit at the table together, and eat it together. That's how it's supposed to be done, but apparently a lot of places in the states don't do it that way."
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He's quiet for a bit, letting Mark place the order and easing the edges of his brain out of gridlock. He trusts Mark to order for them both, trusts him with his phone, in his room...so much of his friendship with Mark is acts of trust. How had he not trusted him with his identity until now? Why had he thought Mark would leave?
(Because Mark deserves better; Huvrye knows that, and he'd thought Mark would realize that too. Looks like he still hasn't yet.)
(But Mark knows he a homunculus and still thinks he's a person-)
"I wasn't planning on telling you," he finally says, partially to fill the silence and partially to derail his current train of thought before it can shut him down again. "I wasn't planning on telling anyone, actually. I'm still not used to being somewhere where people can't tell I'm a homunculus just by looking at me, and I guess people here are weird about clones, so I thought..." He trails off and gestures uselessly. "I don't know. It's weird."
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"It doesn't have to be weird, you know. You can be what you want here. We both can. You don't have to be a soldier, and I don't have to be a lab experiment. Again."
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"No, I mean-" It takes that long for lab experiment, again to sink in, and he sits up abruptly. "Wait, what?" Mark had mentioned that his government was interested in his powers, and that they didn't treat him well, but that- no. No.
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"When I finished my four years in college, I decided I was going to go on a trip around the world with some friends. Instead I was kidnapped by a secret government organization to be experimented on for a long time. I... I don't even get to have the scars from it, because a lot of the tests were done around people with healing powers."
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And normal people are supposed to scar when they heal - to have proof that they survived whatever they experienced. Homunculi don't do that, and Mark doesn't have them either - no proof of what happened except for his memories.
He shakes his head slowly as it sinks in, expression still stricken. "I'm sorry." It's inadequate at best. It is so, so little in the face of what Mark's been through, but right now, it's all Huvrye has to offer.
no subject
"There was a lot that place did to me, and made me do. But there's no map of the hurts on my skin anymore, and so sometimes life feels like an impossible dream."