#maxilda

[wellamarke]

I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE GETTING A MAXILDA HUG

IT’S ALL I’VE EVER WANTED

[wellamarke]

on the road again

humans challenge, week 3, day 6: trenie/travel

“Slower, Mattie,” says Max, mildly. “You’re too close to the car in front.”

“Sorry,” Mattie murmurs, slowing down to increase the gap. “Keep forgetting it’s not a race.”

“It’s all right. That’s what I’m here for.”

Mattie concentrates solely on driving for a little while, only breaking her focus when Max adds, “Although I still don’t know why it’s me who’s here. Wouldn’t you prefer an instructor whose reaction times are the same as your own?”

“What, ‘slow’, you mean?” she asks, as they approach a corner.

Max smiles. “They may be slow compared to mine, but they’re adequate.”

“Hmm, flattering.”

She makes a turning that’s a lot less swerve-y and terrifying than the ones Max was seeing at the beginning of their little 'lesson’.

“If you’re gonna make me say it,” she says once they’re going straight again, “It’s because I trust you. And because you’re literally the most patient person in the world. Can you imagine if I’d asked Leo to take me? By this point, we wouldn’t be speaking. He’d be doing that face. You know the one.”

It’s true, Max does know the one.

“Is there any reason why you haven’t learnt before this?” he asks, later on, as they’re nearing her house.

“Smoking ban, mostly,” she says. “I wasn’t allowed 'til I’d either given up or moved out, Mum had a 'not while you’re under my roof’ thing going on. By the time I did give up, I wasn’t even that bothered about learning. But no way am I letting Toby pass his test before me. And I can’t let him know I’m doing lessons, or he’ll put in extra effort just to beat me, which is why I can’t have a marked instructor’s car turning up all the time.”

“Which is why it had to be me or Leo.”

“Yep.”

“You could have asked Mia,” Max points out. “She’s very patient.”

“Are you trying to talk yourself out of a job, Max?” she asks, as they get out of the car.

“No. I was just wondering. She does live with you, after all. It would be less suspicious.”

Mattie rolls her eyes. “What do you want me to say, Max? That I picked you because you’re my best friend?”

“It’s just nice to hear you say it sometimes,” he says, smiling the slightly mischievous version of his usual beam.

“Well, watch it, or I’ll re-open auditions,” Mattie says threateningly, but she winks as she unlocks the door.

[wellamarke]

maxilda. to me you will always be The Friendship

[wellamarke]

keep thinking about Anatole’s claim that if Max had told them the truth, none of this would have happened and... I hate how true it is? Like if we accept that the entire movement against humans, from the bar bomb to the memorial, was based on one man’s deeply-held but completely unfounded belief in a higher purpose, a belief that Max could have debunked a year ago, as soon as Anatole came up with it... that’s horrifying. And so tragic for Max, who thought he was keeping the secret for his family’s safety, and who didn’t even know about Anatole’s beliefs until comparatively recently (by which time the bar bomb and the humans’ retaliation had already happened)

you guys this is why I really need that Mattie/Max reconciliation because now the two of them are both going to be torn apart with guilt over something they never wanted but inadvertently caused. I mean clearly Basswood isn’t going to happen exactly as planned (otherwise what are they all doing in episode 8 lmao) but even then, Max faces the knowledge that he nearly wiped out his entire species just by, as Mia puts it in 3.1, “lying to the people he leads”.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah the pain.

Here’s some Max angst for your enjoyment, too:

[wellamarke]

humans prediction ficlet #10: mattie & max

@humanspredictions

cheating a bit and using some trailer lines! woop!

••••••••••

“You’re still awake,” Max observes from the doorway, and Mattie cannot bring herself to return his smile of greeting.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she admits. “Tomorrow’s… you know.”

“I know,” he says.

Tomorrow is Day Three Hundred And Sixty-Five. Tomorrow marks a year since Proliferation, a year since Mattie brought life to thousands and death to thousands more.

“I thought it would be over by now,” she says. “But it isn’t. People are still dying because of what I did.”

“Because of what we did,” Max says softly, stepping closer.

She shakes her head. “We’ve been through that. I was the one who matured the code. Even if you’d swiped my laptop and pressed the key yourself, it would still have been my fault.”

His eyes are full of sadness for her - she knows the look well. They have had this conversation so many times. It doesn’t hurt in the same way now; the vicious stabs of guilt have faded to a dull ache, a presence in her that is unending and heavy on her soul.

“Mattie…” he says, “You can’t go on like this. There has to be a point where you accept that your accountability is not—”

“But it is, though,” she snaps, her bitterness aimed inward, not at him. “It is my fault. They’re holding memorials tomorrow morning, in every place that lost someone, which is everywhere, Max, every fucking town and city and—and school, they’re having one at Sophie’s school because I killed one of their teachers. I’ve seen the posters.” She shudders. “One hundred and ten thousand. Even if you don’t count the synths, I’m one of history’s greatest mass murderers.”

“No,” says Max, “You’re not.”

He takes a firmer tone than any she’s heard him use before. She hadn’t known he could sound anything but gentle.

“The word murderer implies intent. A thirst for blood, some kind of vendetta, or at any rate a conscious decision to take life. You acted to save Mia. The rest was beyond your control.”

“But not beyond my imagination. I should have seen where it would lead.”

“They were going to kill us all, Mattie. They were going to pick us off one by one. My father thought he was preparing humanity for our arrival, but really he just ensured that our number would never grow large enough to survive. You were our only hope.”

“But I killed so many of you,” she says, the words choked. “How can you be grateful for that?”

“We are grateful to be alive. Grateful to be awake together, enough of us that they could not wipe us out.”

“It’s too much. All of it, it’s too much.”

She has not cried in Max’s presence since the very first week. Now she cannot stop herself, cannot hold back the tide. It’s worse when he hugs her – she hates hates hates to feel so small against him, so weak and broken and made of flesh instead of steel. She does not pull away, though. She needs it, that’s the worst part. After all she’s done, she cannot close off the part of her that wants absolution.

“I’m sorry,” says Max. “We put you in an impossible position. I cannot regret the decision that was made, because it was the right one. But I wish I could take this away from you. You don’t deserve to feel like this.”

Her mouth moves as if to form words, but she has none. She waits for it to be over, for her eyes to run out of moisture.

“I know I have to move on,” she says eventually. “I’m no use to anyone feeling sorry for myself.”

She pulls back. “I just wish there was something I could do. I forced all those synths to be alive and now I can’t even stop them being destroyed.”

“You’ve been helping all this time,” Max points out. “What colour are my eyes?”

Mattie sighs. “Green.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I got to your code before the orange program took hold. But there are plenty of others I couldn’t…”

“Stop. You are just one person. You can only do one person’s worth of helping. That’s enough.”

She sniffs. “I did more than one person’s worth of damage.”

“Not you. The code. The network.” He half-smiles. “You don’t really have godlike powers, you know.”

“That’s what makes it worse, though. If I did, I could stop them hurting any of you, ever again. It’s unfair.”

“That you cannot protect us from such a deep hatred?” He looks wistful. “No-one can do that. It will have to die out over generations, like every other prejudice. They will stop killing us, one day. Then perhaps their grandchildren will stop hating us. Their grandchildren might even stop treating us differently. Change takes time.”

“I wish it wouldn’t.”

“As long as there are people like you, even a handful of them, we have something to hope for. That’s who you can be for now.”

Mattie takes a deep breath. “I suppose I can try.”

“Good.”

“Thanks, Max,” she says, at length. “And…”

“Don’t apologise,” he says, with a knowing look. He glances at the open door. “I didn’t want you to be alone tonight, so I came looking. This encounter was entirely by design.”

“Oh, well in that case,” she says, “You brought it on yourself.”

“Exactly.”

“Snot and all, probably.”

He glances down at his shirt. “Thankfully, washing machines are incapable of conscious thought.”

Mattie laughs. A beep at her wrist tells her it’s midnight: the second year has begun.

Somehow, she feels a little more able to face it. If not with a mended heart, then at least with a braver face.

[wellamarke]

brotp height difference: significant 

[wellamarke]

my two favourite people standing next to each other... i am so blessed (by this three second shot. i don’t feel overly blessed by the rest of the episode) 

[wellamarke]

humans 30 day fanwork challenge, day 28: fear

Leo slept on. Only time would tell how thoroughly he’d recover. Mattie wondered if Mia, Fred and Niska really felt as calm as they seemed, if they were silent and still out of patience or despair.

The only one who was giving her anything to read was Max, who walked loops up and down the corridor. Mia was inside the room, charging at Leo’s bedside, and Mattie had been about to join her when she figured that while Leo wouldn’t even know she was there, she might actually be able to make some difference to his brother.

She smiled sympathetically as he came towards her. “That helping?”

Max stopped pacing, looked dejected. “It’s what Leo always does when he’s anxious. Up and down, over and over again, as if it makes the time go faster.” He paused. “I don’t think I can be doing it right.”

“Maybe it just doesn’t work for everyone,” Mattie suggested. “How ’bout a change of scenery? We could walk outside.”

“We?”

“If you want company.” She tried to say it airily, not to sound too desperate not to be alone, if that’s what he wanted to be himself.

“You don’t need to babysit me,” Max said, warily.

Mattie frowned, “I’m not trying to.”

He backed down immediately. “Sorry. I thought perhaps Niska had sent you. She thinks I’m not coping.”

“Are you coping?”

He didn’t seem to know how to reply to that, so Mattie patted his arm and said, “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”

Once outside, Mattie selected one of the paths that led through the courtyard and out into the field which separated the building from the road, and they kept a comfortable pace - a bit slower than what she’d come to recognise as a Synth’s default, but not a dawdle either. It was cool, and there was a noticeable breeze, so Mattie zipped up her jacket. “Supposed to be summer,” she mumbled. Max didn’t answer.

“The others keep saying I shouldn’t think about what happens,” he said after a while, “If he doesn’t wake up. Because we don’t know anything for sure.”

“Mmmm. Not easy though, is it.”

"No. I don’t know how they manage to block it out.”

Mattie sighed. “Maybe they’re not. Maybe they just don’t want to talk about it. You know, dwell on it, or whatever.”

“But what if we need to talk about it?” he asked. “What if this is it, and we have to go on without him?”

Mattie bit her lip, trying to think of something to say, because truthfully, ‘try not to think about it’ was the first thing that came to mind. Weird how no-one ever found that sort of phrase comforting, but everyone carried on using them all the same.

“Then it’ll be awful,” she said, frankly, sensing that he needed it said how it was. “It’ll seem like the end of the world, but you’ll never forget him, will you?”

“Never.”

“And you’ve got all those memories, perfectly stored,” she continued. “With brains like mine, it all goes fuzzy in the end, and we forget all the little things. But you’ll always have him with you.”

Max was silent, but he turned his head to watch her as they went on walking, as if she’d said something incredible - as if she wasn’t just filling the gaps with words to distract herself from how worried she was herself.

“It won’t seem like enough,” she added. “Not me saying it now, and not then, if it happens. But it’ll be more than most people get.” A thought came to her mind, and she held it here for a while, wondering if it was appropriate to bring in an outside story, or if it would sound like she was making it all about her. She decided to risk it, in the absence of anything else being said. “...I don’t know if you know about my mum’s brother.”

“No. I didn’t know she had a brother,” Max said.

“She doesn’t,” Mattie said hurriedly. “Well, not anymore. He died when they were children. All she’s got left is a few pictures, a couple of things she remembers, but she thinks about him every day, I know she does.”

“I’m sorry.”

Typical Max. “So am I. But you know something? She thought we would hate her for never telling us about him, and she kept it a secret for ages. Even my dad didn’t know until last year. But now that we all know, it’s so much better. She can talk about him sometimes, and maybe we don’t understand but at least we can listen, it’s better to have that.” She wondered if he knew where she was going with this, but pressed on anyway. “And you’re gonna have that too, Max. You won’t be one your own, even if Leo’s....you know. You’ve got the Mia and Fred and Niska, you’re a family. You’ll all remember him together.”

“But we won’t have him.”

“No. Maybe not.”

“We were made for him,” Max reminded her. “That’s how we all started out. Now Mia’s got her job, and she’s got your mum and Sophie, and Niska’s got her new life and her new...group.” He chose the word carefully, unsure how to define Niska’s band of renegades in a way that didn’t sound terrifying. “And Fred is working with Dr. Morrow, undoing all of Hobb’s work. I’m the only one left. I haven’t found anything else.” He looked up at the sky, not slowing his pace, but gazing as if there was something to see other than cloud cover. “I don’t know what to be, if I’m not his brother. It’s all I’ve ever been.”

Mattie felt her heart break a little more. She’d thought it was already far enough gone, but his voice was so lost, so small.

“No,” she said softly. “There’s something else.”

“I know, I’m Mia’s brother and Fred’s brother and Niska’s brother. But they have their own lives..."

“Something else,” she repeated. “Outside of them. It’s not the same,” she added, quickly, “But something that’s just you.”

“What, then?”

She smiled up at him. “You’re my friend.”

Another thought came to her then, and she held this one too, turning it around until she was sure it was true. “My best friend, actually.” If there was a contender nowadays, it was probably Leo, and in the situation they were discussing, that was irrelevant. “So you’d still have me.”

He smiled back at her, and she realised just how long it had been since she’d last seen that expression on his face. And just how much she’d missed it.

“Thank you,” he said, simply.

They turned back on themselves at the end of the field, back to face the world again as friends, as a united front.