XOqNI

[tongueamok]

Hello, this is Carlisle. I mean, it's not Carlisle as in I'm actually answering you right now, so if you're trying to reply to me at the second, you should probably save your breath because I'm not really here. This is some kind of a recording of my voice, but this is my communicator. I'm going to assume these devices are as common here as they are in other places — not my world, but others, ones more technologically advanced than where I come from— so if you'd like to leave me a message, then you may do so here, or er... Right. Here is fine. So just leave yo— [beep]

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[tongueamok]

[Carlisle would answer those inner questions Kate is having if he had the answers himself. Guilt is a tricky subject for him as it is, as he has lived nearly his entire life mired in it. It comes with the territory of being the failure of one's family line.]

When will it be enough, then? To what lengths would you go to protect those you care for? What lengths should you, or could you go?

[dedikated]

Death.

( The fact that she doesn't even hesitate to say that, even after her death months ago, even after Faith's reaction when she found her at the temple, or Sam's at 2 in the goddamn morning, is probably not a good thing.

She doesn't care. Faith can do more. Marc could have.

But she failed there. )

[tongueamok]

[Somehow, that was the answer he'd expected. Carlisle sighs, sipping at his drink.]

And even then, if we could ask your opinion from beyond the grave, I get the feeling you'd tell me it still wasn't enough. It may will be, but that is something you must accept and forgive yourself for, or you'll never believe you're worthy of anything.

[Spoken as someone who knows from personal experience. His voice softens.]

It takes a toll on you, and I'm sure Faith wouldn't want that.

[dedikated]

( How do you believe that you're worthy of things, when you've spent most of your life thinking that you have one real purpose and failing at that. How do you deal with the pressure you've given yourself and not living up to that?

Kate knows how to live alone, knows not to expect Marc's presence in her mind or his footsteps in the house. She knows how to survive losing him, but she's never really tried to cope with the sense of failure that she tries to ignore. It's been easy to ignore it back home, where life is less dangerous, more political than it used to be. She doesn't fear death in the same way for her friends as she does here.

She hasn't had to experience the death of her friends back home since The Agency fell, and all it does - losing not only a friend, but her best friend, the person closest to her since Marc was killed - is remind her of then, remind her of the ways she never managed to protect Marc, not just in protecting him from death, but all the things before that.

Shouldn't she have figured out how to stop losing people by now? )

Even if we keep making th' same fuckin' mistakes?