It had gotten into his head. Again. He hadn't even realized it at first. All the thoughts and emotions within him. He had treated them as his own. But that was far from the truth. When had he known? Maybe it had been the moment when he had killed Norton. Maybe when he had let Santos die. But he knew it when they were facing Danik at the end. He knew it then when he looked at Ellie. When he was ready to sacrifice her. By then his mind was his own again. Mostly. Deep within him he had accepted Ellie leaving him a long time ago. But somehow what was ingrained in his mind, screaming at him, spelled out something different. Fucked with him again. Tried to lure him, so that he did its bidding. For the umpteenth time. But he wouldn't give in. Not again.
He hadn't accounted for Carver. He should have. It had been clear from very early on that he was affected, too. Maybe even worse than Isaac himself. They hadn't talked in detail about their respective hallucinations. About how messed up they both really were. But Isaac still should have learned by now. No one was safe from the Marker's influence. He should have done something. Though, even when he thought about it now, he wasn't sure he could have done anything. Not back then. Not in his own state of disarray. But he was still wondering: Why? He thought he knew the answer. But he couldn't be sure. What if Carver truly believed in what he had said and done back then? Maybe he hadn't accepted his wife's and son's death yet. Maybe he was the one trying to redeem himself. Maybe he just did it for himself, even. That last thought stirred something in Isaac. Something bitter. Something petty. He fought it down, after a minute. He couldn't fault Carver for it, either way. Or could he?
Isaac let out an audible sigh. He definitely was spending too much time in his own head again. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Carver turning to look at him.
Right. Somehow, by yet another miracle, they had survived. Both of them. And they were free. For the moment, at least. Or so Isaac hoped. He had to convince himself. Had to actually force himself to not give in to the more terrifying possibility. That the Markers still had plans for them. No. Even if they had, he would defy them. Once more. And again. As long as he needed to. Moments of respite like these, right now, were few and far between. He wanted to take them. Had to. He was getting too old for this shit.
His tired eyes finally looked up at his sole companion (if one didn't count the visions). Isaac tried to crack a smile.
"Just thinking."
He wasn't surprised when Carver raised an eyebrow at that. Thinking could be some dangerous territory, even if you were in your right mind. After defeating a living moon and crashing it into a planet, after walking through a world half real and half hallucination, thinking could mean being one step away from killing your partner. Or yourself.
"Wanna share?" Isaac seemed to sense genuine interest in Carver's question. Maybe too much so. Maybe, if it would have been a simple courtesy, he wouldn't have felt like he was treading on thin ice.
"Not really." Two word sentences. Was that what they had come to? Was that how they would end? How their world would finally fall apart even though it had cracked into a thousand pieces already? Cracked like Carver's face when his question was dismissed like a mere nuisance.
"Suit yourself." The soldier was about to turn away from him. But Isaac didn't want to look at his grim profile. Didn't want to go back to sitting here in silence. There was too much going on in Isaac's head. Too much blaring noise, too many screams of too many voices. It was still difficult to filter what was real and what was not. And it was almost impossible to see what was truly important.
"John, wait." Using the other man's first name was new to him. And yet it rolled off his tongue easily. It felt right. "There is one thing." Four words. They were getting somewhere. Of where exactly, Isaac wasn't sure. Wasn't completely sure what had compelled him to utter these words in the first place.
Carver's eyes found him again. Made him feel as if he existed, after all. Alive or dead. Didn't matter which. But he was here. Both of them were. At least real to each other.
"Yeah? What is it?" There was a last chance to turn back. Back to the silence. A silence that was comforting. But also terrifying. Maybe even more so than what he needed to say.
What if he dismissed Carver once again? What if they simply continued to drift through the darkness, side by side, lost in their dreadful thoughts. What if Carver had other thoughts than him? What if they were better? What if they were worse?
What if...?
He didn't want to keep asking himself 'what if'. He needed the answer now. Later could become never. And what did he have to lose at this point?
"Why did you leave the Codex to Danik?" He hadn't asked back then. With their imminent deaths it hadn't seemed that important. But they were still here. And now it mattered to him more than anything.
There was a flicker of hesitation in Carver's eyes. Guilt, too. But strangely enough Isaac didn't care for that. What he was looking for was not an apology. At least not if what Carver had said back then had been a lie.
"I've been thinking a lot about that. Among quite a few other things. I can't give you an answer, Isaac. Because I don't know. Not the answer to that question, anyway." He was evading him. Isaac was sure of it. No, wanted to be sure of it. As sure as of his own answer as to why Carver's reason would make all the difference in the world.
"You don't know? Or you don't want to tell me?" The inside of his head felt as if fingernails were scratching over irritated skin. A small relief, but not enough to suppress the itch, instead making it even worse. Isaac held Carver's stare as the soldier glowered at him.
"Look, man. I just know that the Marker fucked with our minds. Back then, I thought it was still fucking with yours even more than it did with mine."
"So, you didn't trust me?" His stomach was twisting in ways that made it difficult to breath. Yet he swallowed the bile rising in his throat. It reminded him too much of what they had just left behind them. The doubts gnawing at their minds and hearts. Making them fight each other. If only in their heads. It was still too real.
"No, Isaac, dammit! I didn't trust myself. And I didn't want you to do something you'd regret. And now we both have to live with those regrets."
So, it had been the truth, after all. Though not in the way Isaac had expected.
'There's more than one kind of right.'
He saw it now, too. Carver was still looking at him. And yet he didn't see. How right he had been. And how wrong he was now.
"And that's where you're mistaken." His voice rang hollow in his own ears. But even so, the frustration and pain in Carver's face gave way to confusion. "I don't regret it. Not like you think I do."
Not like he had thought he would, just moments before they had reached the machine's heart.
"I was ready to make that sacrifice. But I wasn't ready how much your betrayal would hurt. I thought you didn't believe me. Didn't believe in me. It seems, in the end, we both fooled ourselves. And still, we fought. And we won."
Carver's lips drew up into a reserved smile.
"That we did."
Isaac slowly shook his head, trying to sift through the depths of his mind. There were too many words. But none of them seemed right. There had to be more.
Think...
"You didn't abandon me, even when I was blindsided by them again."
T h i n k...
"We battled our demons. Together. And we made it out. Together."
THINK...
"I don't want to lose you, John."
There was another shift in Carver's face then. Not quite shock. But more than surprise.
Isaac had told Ellie the truth. But there had been more than one right then as well. He wasn't afraid anymore. Not of defying the Markers. Not of self-sacrifice. Not of dying.
He was afraid of being alone.
This was his real second chance. The one before that had been a lie. Another one. He had seen through it. But he couldn't admit the truth to anyone other than himself at the time. Was it the same lie Carver had told himself? The one he had admitted to Isaac just now? Or was he reading the wrong signs again? The uncertainty was weighing on him still, heavier than the silence from before. But in the search for clarity, his determination grew.
Nothing to lose, he reminded himself. It was no outside voice inside his head. No Marker deceiving him. Isaac knew he was simply lying to himself. But he also knew that they might soon fade into nothing, anyway. By then, it would be too late for any regrets. For either of them.
"Just tell me: Are you in or out? And then I'll stop bothering you."
And they would go back to the way they were before. Back to the silence.
He had thought about the reason why. Thought he had figured it out, crazy as it was. But then again, he might just be even more crazy. Because he had gone so far as to confess his own truth. And because the real answer, the one that mattered, still managed to stir him.
"Bother me, huh?" John's eyes spelled out something akin to disbelief and ridicule. But not towards the older man. "Hell yeah, you've been bothering me. Couldn't get you out of my damn head, no matter how hard I tried. And that sure wasn't because of some brainwashing alien artifact. Or I wouldn't still be thinking about you like this right now..."
The silence that followed felt almost deafening. It lingered as heavy as the thoughts that must have weighed on John's mind. Thoughts that hadn't been all that different from Isaac's own. Not better. Not worse. But similar in nature. Easily mistaken for the lies they had told themselves before. But not a deception, for a change. Or maybe they were both crazy, after all. Did it really matter? They hadn't lost themselves yet. Nor each other.
John and him met halfway, both getting up from their seats at the same time, both closing the space between them with a few quick steps, scrutinizing one another for a short moment, then leaning forward in unison, their mouths clashing almost painfully, their grip on each other almost bruising. But underneath it all was a quiet tenderness. Knowing they mustn't leave new scars where the old ones had not even begun to fade.
There were no more words then. Their language having evolved into touches and kisses, the silence filled by the sound of their breathing and the occasional faint sigh.
After what seemed like an endless nightmare they found some comfort in each other. And new meaning in all the withheld answers of the vast dead space.