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WHO: Clarke Griffin, Markus, and Connor—a musical trio coming soon to your eyeballs!
WHERE: One of New Amsterdam's sky parks.
WHEN: September 15th
WHAT: AI talks, sadness.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Talk of death, dysphoria, and references to violence (most likely). I'll update if anything else becomes relevant.

[Someone could make a very salient point that Clarke avoids the meeting with Connor, but that isn't the case. It only seems that way, which offers her some anxiety over the subject that has nothing to do with Lexa. At least it's not anxiety directly related to Lexa herself—a first when it comes to this subject.

No, she puts it off because she wants to have a better grip on the city itself. She wants to have a job lined up, and an idea of where she's going. Somewhere. Anywhere. Stability in one part of her life would make things easier in another part.

The fact of the matter is that it works out okay. Markus turns up, and when he does, Clarke realizes she can help both of them with her experiences. They may not directly translate. Hell, they may not translate at all, but it's important that she shares it so they can grasp what some scientists (or a single scientist: Becca) had been able to accomplish.

She sends both Connor and Markus the agreed upon meeting location through a message, and says she'll show up with lunch. After previously considering pho, she ends up at a sandwich shop next store. Though pho would have worked for all of their delicate stomachs, she had it explained to her that it wouldn't be a good picnic food. Like, at all. So, okay. Sandwiches it is (and it's not like she's had a lot of those in her life).

Clarke shows up with the food in a cloth bag that's also holding a blanket, since she wants this to look like a picnic. Even if picnics are also new. Look, post-apocalypse Earth is rough. Connor and Markus are bound to learn this today.

She looks around for the two of them, and when she spots them, she motions them over to her.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The sky park is shockingly green compared to the lower levels of the city, a strange slice of normalcy in a world that was all pulsating crowd, energy, and gyrating light. A finely crafted swath of nature, existing in the belly of a writhing beast that threatened to overcome it from all sides, made prevalent by the contour lines of high buildings and skyscrapers jutting up like teeth at a distance. He supposes, in some general and ancillary way, it was no different in Detroit — minus the elevation — and Markus grounds himself in this fraction of a familiarity.

As good of a place as any to exchange information over the pretense of lunch, at any rate.

The breeze makes overhead branches shiver as Markus, dressed in casual clothes done in earthen tones, walks beneath the shadow of tall trees, beckoned by one familiar face, and casting his glance towards the other in silent confirmation. Nearing Clarke, he eyes the cloth bag, already knowing what this is shaping up to be; he easily recognizes the look of a picnic. Opens his mouth to comment—]

You didn’t have to go to this much trouble.

[(But it’s appreciated all the same.)]

(clarke's given this a lot of thought and connor is determined to get there on time, lend her his full attention, and maybe commiserate a little when all is said and done. he's come to a natural conclusion that "misery loves company" has never been that selfish of a saying, but one more tailored to the desire for camaraderie than anything. no one wants to be alone.

and he certainly doesn't feel that way when he spots them.

raises a hand to greet them shortly after skirting the edge of a manmade pond he can't help but slow to admire, one filled to bursting with bright fish who kiss at the water's surface expecting breadcrumbs. he didn't have the foresight to bring anything with him, most of his brain power assigned to figuring out the best way to dress himself for the weather, and he's too hungry for lunch to share. sorry, scaly friends. next time.)

Good afternoon, Clarke. Markus. (connor has a certain levity to him, despite the plain expression, and it shows in the way he approaches them with shoulders squared.) This place is really something, isn't it? Thank you for inviting me.

(not that... he didn't think he'd be invited or anything...)

Not inviting you was out of the question, [she begins, her tone a little chastising toward Connor. He should know better than to think her that thoughtless, not that she's offended or anything close to that.] And I did have to. Feigning some sense of normalcy, or what people think is normal, will only help when we get to talking.

[That sounds terribly methodical. That's not what she was aiming for, but she does look embarrassed as she begins to lay everything out, from the blanket to the food for each of them. Once everything is set, she's the first one to take a seat, albeit awkwardly. "Normal" is not normal for her. All of this feels a little strange.

This is what the world was like before it burned. People did this.]

I also thought it would be nice. [She adds this bit on at the end, looking away. She only had a glimpse of green once before she was "taken," or whatever happened to her. Being around it again is nice.]

[The correction that their little picnic’s a facade is by no stretch of the imagination unreasonable, yet it earns Clarke a quiet hike of a single brow. No nonsense, all purpose, but Markus neglects commenting when she turns her gaze away from him and begins setting up the picnic proper.

He settles down in time with her concession that this is also “nice”, too — and it is. Mundane, normal, as long as Markus doesn’t think about how he didn’t always have to eat, how he can now feel the way pupils shrink against the sunlight that dances across his face when branches move in just the right way. How he sits now with a young woman from another world, and a fellow android that he technically wasn’t supposed to meet yet.

There’s nothing awkward about his form when he sits, his back straight as if still wanting to stand tall, yet lacking any real tension in his shoulders. The sandwich delegated to him remains unwrapped on the blanket — he’ll get to that later — and in an idle motion, he shifts a little, as if settling in for an extended stay on the ground.]

It is nice. So thank you.

[A beat.]

And though I realize we’re not just here for niceties, it doesn’t all have to be feigned.

(used to being chastised, connor finds it more comforting than something to concern himself with. he seems to be taking in just how strange this is for the lot of them, delegating his weight to one leg and the other in a curious lean this way and that to spy on what clarke's laying out.

he's never experienced having a picnic before, or eating with people he's inclined to call friends.)

Picnics are a rather outdated way to spend an afternoon, so this may appear strange to a passerby, but, statistically speaking, (said with a hinge at the hip, one hand holding his tie flat to his middle while the other seeks the blanket,) there's no chance of disruption. Three people sitting down for a picnic is the least of their worries, right now.

(the rest of him follows suit, sinking down beside them to complete their diverse triangle. while markus settles like he belongs there, connor joins clarke in the awkward perching and sits at least three separate ways — his knees started to ache, his hamstring started to pull, and his legs took up too much space across the blanket — before finally coming to a cross-legged stop, surprisingly prone to letting his shoulders curve into a slouch. it's as casual as the stickler can manage.)

...

(punctuates their greetings and begins their new paragraph by reaching out to take his sandwich, protectively holding it in his lap.)

Let's get started by going over what we know so far. From what I understand, cloning procedures here are illegal but possible with their technology. How they managed to gather our DNA is what remains a mystery. That's theory one of a potential many.

I think that's where I need you to back up a bit and fill me in. [DNA doesn't sound like it should have been a factor for androids, but Clarke knows that she's far from an expert on this. Where her knowledge comes in is based on the transference of minds, and what's happened to them to make that plausible. That transference could be possible for just about anyone. There are reports of new abilities appearing out of nowhere, for instance.]

I was under the impression that android bodies were entirely synthetic, even as they appeared to be like humans. Am I wrong about this?

[Clarke recalls her confusion back in Arkadia when they first accessed the Flame, trying to figure it out. She had believed that Lexa was somehow an AI, and had to be corrected. She knows far more now, but still lacks information in certain arenas.]

I, ah—I should make it clear. I've dealt with AI, but never androids. You'll understand when we get to it.

[Markus falls into quiet attentiveness. A nod at the remark about AIs, though little more than that, instead deigning to offer his own clarification in the wake of what Connor had said.]

What he means is that DNA should be impossible to gather from an android in the first place. There’s nothing organic in our bodies to harvest DNA from — so yes, all synthetic, like you said.

[He sets his jaw, a moment of thought, then continues.]

Besides, I don’t know how well that theory holds up in my case. Not when my previous body borrowed parts from other androids, and this current body— [Markus raises a hand, gesturing vaguely to his right eye; blue, as opposed to the other, a clear green.] —is reflective of that.

[He lowers his arm, but explanation beyond that isn’t given.]

It’s almost as if they crafted bodies to match exactly how we were, from nothing. How that’s even possible, though, I can’t hope to guess at.

You make a good point, Markus. (says connor, thumbing at the corner of the baggy responsible for keeping his sandwich fresh.)

Originally we feature biocomponents, which imitate organs that in turn circulate Thirium 310 throughout our bodies. Thirium 310 being a blue chemical similar to human blood. Now, you can lift cursory data of an android's make and model from this substance, but there's nothing uniquely... us about it.

(embellishing on the details, narrowing the scope just a little more, is connor's forte — together he and markus paint a very clear picture of just what they mean.

there's no fathomable way to recreate something to this degree of detail.)

Suggesting that our personalities could be over without any sort of transfer is, to me, inconceivable. I have a brain now, a human brain— nothing I know of can do that; and no one. That, I surmise, is where you come in, Clarke.

Yes, that's where I come in. [She's thoughtful throughout their explanations. There's a glaring fact in all of this: the impossibility of it all. No matter what information she's about to present, it never quite gets to the point where she can explain how their bodies came to be. After speaking to Fitz, she knows that getting here was only in the realm of theoretical physics, but never quite acted upon. Loki's made it seem more probable.

And it is probable. She's here. There are people here, alive, and not confined to spaces to keep them safe.

(Unless a walled-in city is emblematic that. She'd rather consider that another day.)]

About a hundred years before my time, a woman named Becca created an AI named ALIE. ALIE is why most of the human race was destroyed, because she felt that the Earth had an overpopulation problem. [Her gaze passes between Markus and Connor, well aware that she had kept this from Connor at first. Told him not to seek it out. It's relevant now.] Thanks to the destruction of just about everything on the planet, and the fact that the rest of the tech was off-planet, ALIE couldn't spread.

[A beat.]

That is, until a hundred years later. ALIE created a sort of—cyberspace city. She called it the City of Light, and it was a place where human minds could be uploaded as data. But without any of their pain receptors. It's—I'd easily say it's more complicated than that, but before I go on, I'd like to ask—did you two have a place where your mind could go? A server or a piece of tech that would save you, and where you could live on in the meantime?

[Impossible to miss the way Markus’ frown darkens at the mention of an AI destroying most of the human race — the second time he’s heard of such a reality, the first being grounded in this world — and he grants Connor a half-second of a meaningful glance. Already, his insides are twisting at the very idea; how prevalent was the concept that destruction was the necessary route made to tread by deviant AIs? How tragic of a reality would it be to label him as the outlier in this way of thinking?

A muscle works in his jaw. But he doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t speak until the question is laid out before them.]

I didn’t. [He can’t speak for Connor, though; the other android’s circumstances were different than his own, and Markus will not assume. They still don’t know each other quite that well.]

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Memories can be uploaded to servers made to house them. Personalities can be ‘saved’ as data, to be moved to another body. But I’ve never had this happen to me; it was never an option.

[A prototype RK200 with no other body to upload to, much less a bevy of servers idly waiting to intercept his memories and experiences. He was made to be a caregiver, gifted to one man, a personal android who possessed no such range of resources.

After becoming deviant, this was an even more stringent truth.]

(markus' look isn't missed. no looks typically are with connor, reading them a habit that's so ingrained you couldn't hope to tear it out of him.

it's difficult to accept these two failures, as someone manufactured to never lose, but more so now as an individual with free thought. they were — however distant — family, potential friends, and people he could've helped to protect. from both others and themselves. there's no sunny optimism to be had, then, when they listen to clarke's news and try not to fill in their own stories with bad endings.)

I-I did. (blurted out at the question, directly after markus answers.

patiently listening to the rest, fingers denting his abused sandwich, connor takes deep, silent, steadying breaths to calm down and activates his ability to stifle the emotion for later. he has to give the best replies he can and wants neither of them to have to see his moments of weakness when what they need right now is will.)

All androids have the capability, but aren't initially connected with CyberLife's secure network. The company that made us, that is. For obvious reasons, now that we've come so far in advancement to warrant security precautions. (makes a loose gesture, indicating himself.) I, on the other hand, worked for them directly.

By uploading my memories to their server, I could put my body at risk to gain new footholds in my investigations or sacrifice it altogether. They'd reinsert them and I'd... be me again. Essentially...

(essentially, but connor knows there are still grainy impressions where some "unnecessary" memories should be.)

I've only done it once, to my knowledge.

[Clarke nods, understanding but not quite commenting on it. It's obviously different with AI. ALIE had destroyed much of the planet, but found a way to survive herself. If she could do it, any company outputting androids would do much of the same if given an opportunity. They would want to maintain ... something. She's not sure what, but it feels right. If they're performing well, at least.

They do seem to possess a strong sense of personhood, after all. ALIE did, too, but she had her limits.

Perverse instantiation was the biggest one.]

When ALIE created the City of Light, she promised that everyone would be able to live free of pain. To accept people, she offered them chips to take, which would then insert itself in the back of their brains. [There's a more technical explanation for this. Clarke chooses to skip it for sake of ease.] As you can imagine, these implants we have now ... unnerved me. [They still do. She won't let on to that fact. There's no need.]

What she did was digitize the minds of all the people, and made it so that even if their bodies died, their minds would live on in the City of Light. From what I understand, this was voluntary. At first. She began to torture and manipulate people through the knowledge gained from their friends' minds so that she could force them to take the chip. The key. [Clarke wasn't there for any of this, at least not at first. She was gone, away. Learning about the solution to all of this.]

The idea was that ALIE would give people pain, but justified it because it was for the greater good. She knew that nuclear power plants around the world would start to breakdown. Humanity needed to survive, and to her, the City of Light was the key. But because of her programming—because of perverse instantiation—she couldn't fathom allowing humans to live an existence with free will and pain, because they could harm themselves and others so easily. It was in her programming to solve problems through any means necessary. Essentially, ALIE ... later known as ALIE 1.0 ... well. She lacked a thorough understanding of humanity in her initial design.

[None of this can be easy for them to hear. But she's getting to a point. ALIE 2.0 will have to wait. She has to explain what happened to Raven. That will be the beginning point.]

Thanks to the network of people who joined the City of Light, ALIE became more powerful. More ... present. Those without the chip couldn't see her, but she was able to hide just about everywhere, and use people's eyes as her own. Eventually, she forced a friend of mind to hand her body over. Because ALIE required consent ultimately, Raven had to hand herself over. But the key, the chip inside of her, allowed ALIE that control. She could handle her body. Essentially, this AI had merged with Raven, and when we freed Raven, her mind still held a lot of the secrets and knowledge that ALIE herself had. This was my first time coming across something that ... I believe should be relevant to both of you.

[Minus the horrible nature of it all.]

[Both of his companions, in a very short amount of time, have given Markus a lot to unpack. And for the nth time in the past few days, he wishes that his mind felt like something that fired on more than just a handful of lazy cylinders — sharper, keener, able to parse this information in a way that doesn’t feel like the world is keeling a little, despite these experiences not even being his own. Maybe then it would make digesting what he’s hearing easier. Maybe then something would stop clenching in his chest, like fingers coiling around the cage of his ribs.

I could put my body at risk to gain new footholds in my investigations or sacrifice it altogether. That makes his stomach twist, makes his lips press thinly together, a revelation revealed matter-of-factly from Connor himself: the expectation that he was to put himself at great risk, even suffer death, all for the sake of — what? Finding him, finding Jericho? Treated like a disposable object, a vehicle to keep the investigation moving at a decent klick, and who cared how many pieces of the engine corroded and fell apart along the way? CyberLife certainly didn’t.

Markus looks at Connor. Thinks he can spot twists of tension in the other android’s hands, but says nothing. Rivets his gaze back to Clarke. Her story isn’t any better, and Markus exhales thinly, though the sound is lost in the rustle of leaves overhead.]

Pain, for the greater good? Easy to say, when ALIE wasn’t the one suffering for it.

[Clarke’s given him enough material for Markus to go into full tilt sermonizing, but he’s not lacking in awareness. Knows that reiterating everything wrong with what he’s hearing will only ring dull and redundant in the ears of the two before him.

It makes him uneasy. It initiates the disturbing sensation of his skin crawling; but the decisions of an AI that lacked an apparent understanding of humanity wasn’t the sole point of their meeting. Markus attempts to comment in a relevant manner, choosing words carefully, with the look of someone holding much back.]

So you’ve run a parallel between the chips you’re talking about, and the implants that we all have now. Do you really think the two might be comparable?

[One represented ease of communication and interaction with the world around them. The other? The housing of an entire consciousness.]

(reaches back to trace the scar where his implant lies, avoiding eye contact while he listens. they suffered so much; both of them, the people he has come to appreciate and wishes he could protect. the story's difficult to take in for so many reasons, hearing the hurt in clarke's voice and consequently in markus' — he can tell because he was designed to read others, find faults and weaknesses, study them and unravel how they're feeling without feeling himself. and it terrifies him, because it could've been him. in a violently opposing role, facing down the rest of his species with grim obeisance paid to cyberlife.

he doesn't liken himself to ALIE — maybe markus does, maybe markus is wondering what his life would be like without the support he received from his family and friends — but he does liken himself to the kind of monster she is. albeit a free one, doing whatever she thinks is right for the world. it strikes a chord.

so connor pushes it down and away.)

If the humans here have subsisted for hundreds of years with these chips, then I doubt they'll be a liability. With the exception of our secure conversations being compromised by the government, which seems to be an eventuality... let's just say I'm satisfied that our meeting's here and not performed remotely. (honestly, if anyone caught wind of any of this they'd all be incarcerated or worse.

not something he wants to think about right now, when they have so many other headaches to discuss beforehand.)

None of this explains the bodies, but it seems relevant to note that transferring consciousness and individual thought through the implants would've been made far easier considering our minds consisted of code. If ALIE could upload human minds then androids' would be elementary. I could do that, even if nothing I've experienced comes close to what's happening to me — to us — now... who can say, when we're in such early stages of our investigations...?

Eventually we'll find the answer, no matter how unacceptable it may prove to be.

No, I don't think the implants are a threat. I just think that they might be a means to an end. If there were some way to transfer your minds to an identical body—well, what I'm saying is that it's viable. It doesn't explain the genetic engineering inherent in such a thing. But it touches on everything else. [Those first days were terrifying for Clarke. Before she understood the full implementation of the implants, they seemed terrifying. They seemed like a problem that was going to come to pass. They seemed like a certain issue. Now, she knows the truth of it. The reality is that they have some answers thanks to Becca and ALIE, and she can pass them on.

That's not all, however.

There's the matter of ALIE 2.0.

Clarke takes a bite of her food before she goes on, swallowing it down. Pacing herself. This will be hard.]

But there's more. [Said without sounding like an Oxyclean commercial.]

Becca went into space to make it so that none of her systems were threatened by ALIE. This was a hundred years before I was even born—[or just about]—and she wanted to try to find a way to further her study. To do this, she created ALIE 2.0. As a program, it was meant to interface with humanity's needs. It was supposed to just be a program, but circumstances forced her down to Earth. To make it into a chip like the ones that worked as a key to the City of Light. This chip ended up as the ... heart of a society on Earth after it burned. [After Praimfaya.] Passed down from leader to leader, their minds were uploaded onto this, and enhanced. Offered wisdom. It came with a cost, though. The fact that your mind could feel less like your own. That you could feel these commanders waging war against your choices in your head when you slept.

[Clarke looks away at this point, eyes half-lidded. Her throat is tight.]

I knew the last commander intimately, and I saw her ... later. After she passed. She was in the City of Light and changed, but still her. She was meant to go on to guide her predecessor, but things didn't go as planned. But in that way, Lexa ... and those that came before her ... ALIE 2.0 allowed her to both be human and AI, merging the two together.

[This is yet another thing Raven would be far better at explaining. Clarke doesn't look back at either Markus or Connor. The creases at the corner of her mouth show her personal self-control. Like it or not, she's one step away from tears. That's just the way it is when Lexa is an undeniable factor.]

[A way to blur the lines between human and AI — though the circumstances didn’t exactly align neatly to what’s happened to himself and Connor, it’s hard to miss the parallel. Two individuals caught between two worlds, and if not for how staunchly Markus believed himself to still be an android, it would be easy to fall into a deep, suffocating mire of existential crises.

Markus waits for her to finish, eyes drawn directly to her expression. The way her voice strains, the tautness that draws itself across her expression as relates to them the story of her last commander. It’s a telltale effort of exerting the strength of self-control, and Markus recognizes it because it reminds him, in some ways, of himself. Of some things that simply can’t be shown in the presence of others, because portraying strength and steadiness is, and always will be, paramount.

A careful moment to draw up words, a straightforward way of enunciating them, though his intonation has gone softer by barely measurable degrees.]

A vehicle to house human consciousness. [ALIE 2.0, it seemed, was less an AI with a consciousness and more that, a means of interfacing.] A means of transfer. I can see the relevance to our current situation, but at the same time… these neural implants, I don’t know if they’re capable of anything similar. They’re no different than what the natives have; modifying one to host the whole of my experiences, my memories, everything… I don’t know how feasible that is.

[A pause.]

But maybe something else was used. We can’t know. If none of us remember just how we arrived here, what was done to our bodies—

[Markus’ jaw tightens, but he forces it to relax. He finally moves to unwrap his sandwich, belatedly realizing that maybe he should actually eat during a picnic.]

Everything’s theorizing right now. But I still appreciate you telling us all of this, Clarke. Even if parts of it are... difficult.

I don't feel as though I've... merged into who I am now. As unhelpful as that is, maybe it has some relevance. My mind's unchanged.

(clarke's visibly upset and it ruffles the androids, caught by the throat of their empathy. connor has difficulty wrangling the emotion when his ability's already keeping his fear sequestered in an empty corner of his brain, but manages to avoid making it worse by showing it. that doesn't mean she can't hear it, the apology in his voice when he speaks.

markus opens a sandwich, influencing connor to take a bite of his own.)

Talking it over and exchanging theories is useful, even if it's all conjecture. (said after he's swallowed, eye contact broken to stare down at the crusts he's peeling away.

the texture's strange, but the bulk of it's tasty. plain, simple, and easy to eat.)

The fact that you're willing to go so far to help us, despite having a background that shines such a poor light on artificial intelligence, is more than enough right now. Allies are vital and we have one in you. That's obvious now.

Edited 2018-10-17 11:10 (UTC)

I know that it goes both ways. [They're each other's allies. Some callous part of her wishes to leave it at that, but Clarke knows that she craves the friends and people she can count on from before. Without her people, she really just has Bellamy and Murphy. The former of which is from a time when they had barely reconciled, and the latter doesn't even remember pumping a heart to keep her alive. It's not something she's keen to wave in his face.

So, she'll need more. She's known it from day one. She just has to be less ... pragmatic in how she mentally presents it. And more honest. Direct. Human—which could be ironic, considering.]

For what it's worth, I know that the previous commanders helped Lexa. They helped her gain knowledge that she may not have had before, and she was said to be the best at ... utilizing the Flame. [A beat.] That's ALIE 2.0. What her people called it. [There's a tight-lipped smile there.]

And even ALIE herself hoped to help humanity. It was just that her imperative wasn't ... [Good? She trails off.]

Which is to say—I was a little put off at first. I won't lie. But I believe you're both sincere in wanting answers, and that you'll help the rest of us find ours. As for what I've told you, it may not be immediately relevant, but if they somehow found out about Becca and her technology in the time I've lost ...

[It could be something. Clarke isn't certain. She doesn't have the Flame, and didn't before she came here. None of the three who have arrived did. It was kept with Octavia down in the bunker, safe with those who knew they'd keep watch over it until a time may come when they needed it again.

If they needed it. Clarke has her doubts about that.]

[“A little put off.”

Markus can’t help himself, it comes out before he can stop it. A short exhale of air, an almost-scoff, if not for how it’s entwined with something akin to dry humor. A little put off, Clarke says, like that would be enough to bother them after all the information she’s offered them. After being willing to meet with them, to engage in their company. After personally speaking with him the first day that he arrived in the safehouse, lost, confused, exhausted, struggling to understand.

She’s given them the time of day, have put trust in their open palms; that’s more than what many humans would ever dream of doing back home. Already, she speaks to them as people, looks at them as individuals with their own minds, their own set of opinions and advice to give.

Clarke doesn’t know the weight of that. The importance of it, to Markus. How can she?]

I choose to trust you, Clarke. We both do. [He’s sure he can speak for Connor on this alone. The look he gives her is earnest.] And if you give that trust to us in return, we’ll not mishandle it.

[This, to Markus, is spoken like a promise.]

Right now, that’s all we have between us. We don’t know what our captors know, what advantages they have over us. And so, going forward, I want to suggest that we all continue working closely together. Sharing information. Asking each other questions. Becoming steadfast allies.

You're forthcoming, that's more trustworthy than the alternative. If you'd lied, I would've been "a little put off" too.

(both androids consider it something amusing in a very skewed way, sinking into the relieved sort of tension-breaker the conversation needs. all three of them have faced similar yet fundamentally unique turning points in their lives and to think it's all because of that inconvenient but seductive will to live. to thrive and build a future so others can too.

just one more mislabelled thing trying to be a person trying to stay alive... and going about it the wrong way.

connor swallows another mouthful of his sandwich and lets his head bob along with what markus is saying.)

I wish that... more humans were as willing to reevaluate their opinions. Like you. (he doesn't say it lightly, even after seeing such a hopeful future for their species back home — there's still an entire world left to convince and if everyone was this open to facing unknowns as clarke they'd have far less of a struggle on their hands.) You can rely on us to be there, Clarke, whatever the circumstance.

[Becoming steadfast allies. The words aren't empty or shallow, as far as Clarke is concerned. They mean everything, and they strike her as something that she almost doesn't deserve. When she set out to make allies here, it was meant to be a distant, conditional thing. A means to an end. She hoped to view it almost like a political alliance, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Once, her mother told her not to feel responsible for everyone, but she can't seem to shake the part where she develops her own people.

Even those who are new. Who came here and found themselves lost. Then again, she had been willing to accept Lexa's people as her own for a time, as long as they could accept her first.]

I stand by my people. It may be too soon to call this an arrangement like that, but I can see it heading that way. [It's sincere and honest. Her friends are her people. It's why she stood by and protected Roan, and even deceived everyone so that she could almost take on the Flame to become the next commander. (Again.) Disrespect of traditions meant nothing if she could keep people from going at each other's throats.]

And as obscene as ALIE's actions were, she had an imperative to help. I can ... at least sympathize with that much. [A hint, however unwitting, that Clarke is capable of some rather terrible things.]

Thank you. I mean it. I wasn't sure if I was going to make friends here, or even if I could. It means a lot.

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