(no subject)
burn the city down (to show you the light)
PG-13-ish // 2044 words
"You're not my wife," Isaac said. "You're not my wife, he repeated, just to make the point clear.
warning for mentioned character death and gratuitous use of lyrics. in canon, Jack really was a fan of these bands; I'm not making it up.
“You’re not my wife,” Isaac said. “You’re not my wife,” he repeated, just to make the point clear, dropping his jacket down on the couch and taking a few steps forward into the room. He was a little proud, in the bit of his mind that wasn’t busy falling apart, of how even the words were; he would’ve thought his voice would’ve shaken, but it had been strong.
The woman - well, he supposed she was a woman, although he wasn’t going to count on it - standing in the middle of the room frowned, her green eyes losing a little of their sparkle. “Oh, Nancy dear,” she said, “that hurts, it really does.”
“You -- you are not my wife.” He balled his hands into fists at his sides to keep them from shaking. “My wife was shot while we were on a diplomatic mission that turned sour. My wife died in my arms a week shy of two months ago. My wife was buried a little less than a week after that. My wife is in the ground. You are not my wife.”
She smiled, a little flash that barely did more than quirk the ends of her mouth up for a moment, and the expression was so familiar it hurt. “That wasn’t me,” she said. “That was my evil twin. I’m ashamed of you, that you didn’t know the difference.”
“Jack was her own evil twin. You are not Jack.”
“Of course I am, dearheart.” She made a face for a moment, came a few steps closer to him. “Now, Nancy dear, I know -“
“Don’t call me that!” The shout tore its way from his throat before he could stop it, but it wasn’t much different from anything else he could have said. He was torn between pride and self-loathing at seeing the hurt on her face, but he couldn’t let himself think of that. “My name is Isaac to everyone but my wife. She was the only person who could ever call me Nancy. You are not my wife; therefore, you call me Isaac.”
She sighed, looking down at the ground, and wrung her hands together. “Okay,” she said, still not looking at him, “I give up. You’re right. She was buried a month and a half ago, I admit. And I’m sorry. But,” she said, finally looking up at him, and her eyes were shining. She must be about to cry, he thought, and once more was torn between being glad and hating himself utterly. “I’m her in all the ways that matter, I really am. I promise you, all the important parts of Jack are here, in me.” She put her hand to her chest. “No two ways about it.”
Isaac frowned, letting his hands relax at his sides. “What does that even mean, ‘all the ways that matter’? Who are you?”
“I’m Jack,” she said, quirking her eyebrows. “That’s true, you know. I am. You remember, six or seven months ago, headquarters decided that they wanted backups in case any agents got severely wounded on a mission but withdrawing would only cause more turmoil?” At his nod, she continued. “And so you two wore those monitoring device things around for about a month?”
“Yeah, vaguely. I forgot about it after a while.”
“You were supposed to,” she said, and smiled. “It - basically what it did, okay, was it monitored your thought processes, your idiosyncrasies, your speech patterns, your everything. That way the techies at headquarters could make the most accurate copy of you as possible, so that in case of an emergency, the copy could be brought out and, with any luck, nobody would notice.”
“So, wait, okay. You’re telling me that that’s what you are. A copy of Jack.”
“Yep.” She nodded, smiling again, clearly a good deal more at ease now. “I know your first instinct was to hate me. I don’t really blame you. But please, remember that your wife is inside me, somewhere. I mean well, I promise you. I really do.”
He laughed, suddenly. “The road outside my house is paved with good intentions. I hired a construction crew, because it’s hell on the engine,” he sang, smiling a little. He knew exactly what Jack was going to say in response: “I could write it better than you ever felt it, baby,” she’d say, and leer, and probably wiggle her eyebrows.
Instead, the woman in front of him tilted her head to the side and squinted, saying “What? I didn’t think you drove,” and the illusion he’d had for those lovely few seconds was shattered.
“It’s a song lyric, by Jack’s favorite band.”
“… oh,” she said, biting her lip. “I can’t - who are they, again?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, suddenly unspeakably angry. “My wife knew their name. My wife would have quoted more of the song back at me. You are not Jack in all the ways that matter.”
“I can, I can learn those things, though, it’d be easy. Minutiae aren’t hard to pick up,” she said, earnest. “I can get better.”
“No,” he said. “No, you can’t. You want one simple, succinct reason you can’t?”
“Yes, please,” she said, and that was one more sign of how messed up this situation was; his Jack would never have just let him tell her she couldn’t do something like that. She’d never go down that easily.
“My wife,” he told the woman standing in front of him, “was insane. I was madly in love with her. I know this to be true. She had MPD/DID - multiple personality disorder. For every person she interacted with, she had a different alter. Jack was her alter for me. How many of you are there in there, hm?”
A look of confusion crossed her face, and she crossed her arms across her chest. This, too, was familiar, inasmuch as Jack ever showing stress was familiar, and once again he was struck by the idea that he shouldn’t be doing this to his wife, the person who made his life worth living, but it was weaker this time. “There’s just me,” she said finally. “Jack. Jack Armin. Just me.”
“Yeah, exactly. Her name, in case you were curious, as far as the paperwork was concerned, was Dextra Sinistra, but that’s beside the point. The point here - and I do have a point, I promise you, it’s rare so you’d better stand up straight and pay attention - is that if you are the only person in there, then you are not Jack in ‘all the ways that matter’. She may have been getting better, over the last few years; she may even have been what some people consider legally sane. This does not change the fact that for a very long time she had something very wrong with her head, and that has never happened to you.” He paused, relaxing his hands from the fists they’d formed again. “You’re completely sane, am I right?”
“I’m - yes. I’m completely sane. At the present moment it’s physically impossible for an android, which is technically what I am, to be insane and have all of its coding functional; you cannot program insanity.” He noticed that as they got farther away from the illusion that this red-haired, green-eyed woman was his wife, she left the speech patterns farther behind. He liked it. It made this easier. “So yes, I am sane. I have never had multiple personality disorder. But,” she said, suddenly, “You said yourself that she hasn’t been like that in a long while. Why does it matter, if that’s the case?”
“No, it’s not just -“ Isaac cut himself off, pressing his hands to his eyes for a moment. He was suddenly very tired. He didn’t want to deal with this. If the mission he was about to leave for required this, well, he’d just quit. He’d go and be a librarian, just like his mother had always wanted.
“It’s what?”
“Oh. It’s - I’m sure you have it in you, in your programming, hard code, whatever, that my wife made references to a lot of things. Song lyrics, sure, but it went beyond that. She made allusions to everything.”
“Right,” the woman - well, android, it would be easier if he just thought of her as an android - said. “Lots of pop culture, high culture. Everything.”
He nodded. “Yes. It wasn’t just that, though. This is - this is the most linear conversation I have ever had with someone who looks like my wife, do you realize that? I’m sure you have all our old conversations recorded; you can go look, if you like.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I know what you mean. She made a lot of logic jumps. Thing A is connected to thing B, but only if you follow the connections from A to C to F to H to Z, half of which only make sense in the head of the person making the jumps.”
“Exactly. If there was one thing I could ever count on when I was talking to Jack, it was that I could start a conversation in one place and end up half the world away, with no idea how I got there. It was - it was endearing, to be honest. We never had a dull conversation,” he added, and felt himself smiling. “You can’t do that, can you?” he asked, and knew the answer already.
“… no,” she said, after a long pause. “I can’t do that. It requires speculation, and occasional lack of logic, neither of which are in my programming. I’m physically incapable of speculation, actually. Drawback of being rooted in code.”
“I knew that, as it happens. All you can do is follow, in a manner of speaking. Give me a bitter cause to lead,” he sang under his breath, and half-smiled at the curious look on her face, even though it hurt. “Another song she liked,” he explained.
“Oh.” Her face fell farther. “I can try, you know. I can try. I will try.”
No.” He shook his head. “I believe you can, I mean, I know you’ll try. It won’t matter. You’ll never be able to be her. You’ll never even be able to be a reasonable facsimile. It’s not worth it, really.”
“I - all right. I believe you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. Please, just. Please leave.” She nodded, biting her lip as she walked through the living room and toward the door, and he couldn’t believe he was kicking his wife out of their home. It wasn’t his wife, though. It wasn’t his wife, no matter how much this android looked like her or sounded like her or moved like her or, he realized as she passed, smelled like her.
“Goodbye, Isaac,” she said, stopping at the door. He nodded, and she turned to leave, but turned back a second later. “You weren’t lying when you said you were madly in love with her, were you?”
“There are many things I’d lie about. That’s the last one.”
“Right,” she said, and nodded herself. “I - I apologize if this is painful to you, but can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, yeah,” he said, because it couldn’t get any worse, and she was about to leave.
“What does I’d burn the city down to show you the light mean?”
“It’s another song lyric,” he said. “Another by her favorite band, actually. It’s basically, um. In the broad sense it’s about a lot of things, but Jack took it literally. She told me once that she would burn the city down to show me the light.” Isaac paused, letting himself get lost in the memory for a second. “So would I, as it happens,” he finished. “She was my whole life.”
“Oh,” the android said, frowning. She looked at him for a moment or three, very carefully. Then: “I know I can’t replace your wife. I know you don’t want me to, either. Please know this, though: I would, if I could.”
It wasn’t true; her programming didn’t allow her the capacity to do such a thing. He didn’t say that, though. “Thanks,” he said instead, and when she was gone shut the door on all that was left of the only woman he’d ever loved.
PG-13-ish // 2044 words
"You're not my wife," Isaac said. "You're not my wife, he repeated, just to make the point clear.
warning for mentioned character death and gratuitous use of lyrics. in canon, Jack really was a fan of these bands; I'm not making it up.
“You’re not my wife,” Isaac said. “You’re not my wife,” he repeated, just to make the point clear, dropping his jacket down on the couch and taking a few steps forward into the room. He was a little proud, in the bit of his mind that wasn’t busy falling apart, of how even the words were; he would’ve thought his voice would’ve shaken, but it had been strong.
The woman - well, he supposed she was a woman, although he wasn’t going to count on it - standing in the middle of the room frowned, her green eyes losing a little of their sparkle. “Oh, Nancy dear,” she said, “that hurts, it really does.”
“You -- you are not my wife.” He balled his hands into fists at his sides to keep them from shaking. “My wife was shot while we were on a diplomatic mission that turned sour. My wife died in my arms a week shy of two months ago. My wife was buried a little less than a week after that. My wife is in the ground. You are not my wife.”
She smiled, a little flash that barely did more than quirk the ends of her mouth up for a moment, and the expression was so familiar it hurt. “That wasn’t me,” she said. “That was my evil twin. I’m ashamed of you, that you didn’t know the difference.”
“Jack was her own evil twin. You are not Jack.”
“Of course I am, dearheart.” She made a face for a moment, came a few steps closer to him. “Now, Nancy dear, I know -“
“Don’t call me that!” The shout tore its way from his throat before he could stop it, but it wasn’t much different from anything else he could have said. He was torn between pride and self-loathing at seeing the hurt on her face, but he couldn’t let himself think of that. “My name is Isaac to everyone but my wife. She was the only person who could ever call me Nancy. You are not my wife; therefore, you call me Isaac.”
She sighed, looking down at the ground, and wrung her hands together. “Okay,” she said, still not looking at him, “I give up. You’re right. She was buried a month and a half ago, I admit. And I’m sorry. But,” she said, finally looking up at him, and her eyes were shining. She must be about to cry, he thought, and once more was torn between being glad and hating himself utterly. “I’m her in all the ways that matter, I really am. I promise you, all the important parts of Jack are here, in me.” She put her hand to her chest. “No two ways about it.”
Isaac frowned, letting his hands relax at his sides. “What does that even mean, ‘all the ways that matter’? Who are you?”
“I’m Jack,” she said, quirking her eyebrows. “That’s true, you know. I am. You remember, six or seven months ago, headquarters decided that they wanted backups in case any agents got severely wounded on a mission but withdrawing would only cause more turmoil?” At his nod, she continued. “And so you two wore those monitoring device things around for about a month?”
“Yeah, vaguely. I forgot about it after a while.”
“You were supposed to,” she said, and smiled. “It - basically what it did, okay, was it monitored your thought processes, your idiosyncrasies, your speech patterns, your everything. That way the techies at headquarters could make the most accurate copy of you as possible, so that in case of an emergency, the copy could be brought out and, with any luck, nobody would notice.”
“So, wait, okay. You’re telling me that that’s what you are. A copy of Jack.”
“Yep.” She nodded, smiling again, clearly a good deal more at ease now. “I know your first instinct was to hate me. I don’t really blame you. But please, remember that your wife is inside me, somewhere. I mean well, I promise you. I really do.”
He laughed, suddenly. “The road outside my house is paved with good intentions. I hired a construction crew, because it’s hell on the engine,” he sang, smiling a little. He knew exactly what Jack was going to say in response: “I could write it better than you ever felt it, baby,” she’d say, and leer, and probably wiggle her eyebrows.
Instead, the woman in front of him tilted her head to the side and squinted, saying “What? I didn’t think you drove,” and the illusion he’d had for those lovely few seconds was shattered.
“It’s a song lyric, by Jack’s favorite band.”
“… oh,” she said, biting her lip. “I can’t - who are they, again?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, suddenly unspeakably angry. “My wife knew their name. My wife would have quoted more of the song back at me. You are not Jack in all the ways that matter.”
“I can, I can learn those things, though, it’d be easy. Minutiae aren’t hard to pick up,” she said, earnest. “I can get better.”
“No,” he said. “No, you can’t. You want one simple, succinct reason you can’t?”
“Yes, please,” she said, and that was one more sign of how messed up this situation was; his Jack would never have just let him tell her she couldn’t do something like that. She’d never go down that easily.
“My wife,” he told the woman standing in front of him, “was insane. I was madly in love with her. I know this to be true. She had MPD/DID - multiple personality disorder. For every person she interacted with, she had a different alter. Jack was her alter for me. How many of you are there in there, hm?”
A look of confusion crossed her face, and she crossed her arms across her chest. This, too, was familiar, inasmuch as Jack ever showing stress was familiar, and once again he was struck by the idea that he shouldn’t be doing this to his wife, the person who made his life worth living, but it was weaker this time. “There’s just me,” she said finally. “Jack. Jack Armin. Just me.”
“Yeah, exactly. Her name, in case you were curious, as far as the paperwork was concerned, was Dextra Sinistra, but that’s beside the point. The point here - and I do have a point, I promise you, it’s rare so you’d better stand up straight and pay attention - is that if you are the only person in there, then you are not Jack in ‘all the ways that matter’. She may have been getting better, over the last few years; she may even have been what some people consider legally sane. This does not change the fact that for a very long time she had something very wrong with her head, and that has never happened to you.” He paused, relaxing his hands from the fists they’d formed again. “You’re completely sane, am I right?”
“I’m - yes. I’m completely sane. At the present moment it’s physically impossible for an android, which is technically what I am, to be insane and have all of its coding functional; you cannot program insanity.” He noticed that as they got farther away from the illusion that this red-haired, green-eyed woman was his wife, she left the speech patterns farther behind. He liked it. It made this easier. “So yes, I am sane. I have never had multiple personality disorder. But,” she said, suddenly, “You said yourself that she hasn’t been like that in a long while. Why does it matter, if that’s the case?”
“No, it’s not just -“ Isaac cut himself off, pressing his hands to his eyes for a moment. He was suddenly very tired. He didn’t want to deal with this. If the mission he was about to leave for required this, well, he’d just quit. He’d go and be a librarian, just like his mother had always wanted.
“It’s what?”
“Oh. It’s - I’m sure you have it in you, in your programming, hard code, whatever, that my wife made references to a lot of things. Song lyrics, sure, but it went beyond that. She made allusions to everything.”
“Right,” the woman - well, android, it would be easier if he just thought of her as an android - said. “Lots of pop culture, high culture. Everything.”
He nodded. “Yes. It wasn’t just that, though. This is - this is the most linear conversation I have ever had with someone who looks like my wife, do you realize that? I’m sure you have all our old conversations recorded; you can go look, if you like.”
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I know what you mean. She made a lot of logic jumps. Thing A is connected to thing B, but only if you follow the connections from A to C to F to H to Z, half of which only make sense in the head of the person making the jumps.”
“Exactly. If there was one thing I could ever count on when I was talking to Jack, it was that I could start a conversation in one place and end up half the world away, with no idea how I got there. It was - it was endearing, to be honest. We never had a dull conversation,” he added, and felt himself smiling. “You can’t do that, can you?” he asked, and knew the answer already.
“… no,” she said, after a long pause. “I can’t do that. It requires speculation, and occasional lack of logic, neither of which are in my programming. I’m physically incapable of speculation, actually. Drawback of being rooted in code.”
“I knew that, as it happens. All you can do is follow, in a manner of speaking. Give me a bitter cause to lead,” he sang under his breath, and half-smiled at the curious look on her face, even though it hurt. “Another song she liked,” he explained.
“Oh.” Her face fell farther. “I can try, you know. I can try. I will try.”
No.” He shook his head. “I believe you can, I mean, I know you’ll try. It won’t matter. You’ll never be able to be her. You’ll never even be able to be a reasonable facsimile. It’s not worth it, really.”
“I - all right. I believe you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. Please, just. Please leave.” She nodded, biting her lip as she walked through the living room and toward the door, and he couldn’t believe he was kicking his wife out of their home. It wasn’t his wife, though. It wasn’t his wife, no matter how much this android looked like her or sounded like her or moved like her or, he realized as she passed, smelled like her.
“Goodbye, Isaac,” she said, stopping at the door. He nodded, and she turned to leave, but turned back a second later. “You weren’t lying when you said you were madly in love with her, were you?”
“There are many things I’d lie about. That’s the last one.”
“Right,” she said, and nodded herself. “I - I apologize if this is painful to you, but can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, yeah,” he said, because it couldn’t get any worse, and she was about to leave.
“What does I’d burn the city down to show you the light mean?”
“It’s another song lyric,” he said. “Another by her favorite band, actually. It’s basically, um. In the broad sense it’s about a lot of things, but Jack took it literally. She told me once that she would burn the city down to show me the light.” Isaac paused, letting himself get lost in the memory for a second. “So would I, as it happens,” he finished. “She was my whole life.”
“Oh,” the android said, frowning. She looked at him for a moment or three, very carefully. Then: “I know I can’t replace your wife. I know you don’t want me to, either. Please know this, though: I would, if I could.”
It wasn’t true; her programming didn’t allow her the capacity to do such a thing. He didn’t say that, though. “Thanks,” he said instead, and when she was gone shut the door on all that was left of the only woman he’d ever loved.