mechanical_dream | *Locked from Dowling* (Reply)

To most of the universe, my beloved presents himself as an amiable, unassuming man, gentle underneath a somewhat gruff exterior. *smiles* And this is mostly true, indeed. Perhaps he would rather the gruff come across more strongly than the gentle, most of the time, in defense of his heart, but it is very hard for him to hide the truth of what he is.

But Dowling is somewhat more than what he presents himself as. How many, I wonder, meeting him, know of his courage, his adaptability, the depth of passion he holds inside himself? How many see the terrible fear and torture and pain he has gone through, even to the point of death, more than once? How many see the courage he found to overcome it, the appalling bravery it took for him to break himself, to free himself, to surrender himself ... how many know the strength and love and impossible courage of the man?

Almost none, in our world, or they could not bear to hate him as they do.

I know some of you have seen flashes of it, and you have done so very well to manage that, because I know as well how hard he tried to appear as nothing more than that unassuming man. Not to deceive you! Never that. But only because he does not ... he holds the past as past, and his own pain as the last possible thing he should burden others with. The same with his anger. It is a rare, rare thing for him to reveal true anger, even to me, who has held his soul in its entirety.

I want to share with you a glimpse of that, of the passion he holds, the pain and the love and the anger. I want to show a little something of the Dowling I see, of the Dowling that shows himself in moments of pain and vengeance, the Dowling I find so precious. *smiles* He makes much of my anger, of my ability to strike fear into others, of my strength in the face of danger. He ... *shakes head* He passes credit -and blame- very easily onto my shoulders. And that ... is not completely fair, is it?

So. Here is my beloved, in rare temper, in fine and deadly rage, attacking someone who did their level best to cause us both pain, to deride us and make us less than nothing. A little creature, a worthless creature, who had not power to destroy us as they wished, and who struck hard because of that.

Unfortunately for them, my beloved struck harder.

---

"Tell me. I know you Earthers have this idea about 'love conquers all', but ... don't you think it a bit much to try to apply it to an object? I mean, it's a lump of metal! It's not like it feels. That's why we can't feel them, not this teaacti you've fed us about zero and believing in nothingness. Not something in their minds. It's because they don't have minds. They don't have souls. So really, I can't understand why you ...."

The Brovoi trailed off, the spite dying into wary silence. Half the hall trailed off, the university staff, their guests, the machine delegation, all stopping to stare in hushed amazement at the little confrontation by the fountain. I stopped, too, but less from the words, though they hurt. I stopped, because it was the first time in my life that I had felt my beloved angry.

We were still so very new to each other, then. Telepathically. Nearly two centuries together, but in separate minds, until that moment, when I had entered his lab and felt ... something. Touching my heart, my soul, almost bypassing my mind altogether. That moment, when I walked into the room, and felt him. Dowling. My beloved. It had knocked my entire universe sideways, turned it upside-down, and when it settled, he was there. Inside me. Threaded through me, never to be lost again, or so I thought.

There had been some terrible months, following that moment, as the universe realised exactly what my beloved had done, what he had become, and why. Months when the word korundai began to follow us, when disgust and hatred started dogging our footsteps. Months, I'm afraid to say, when we were largely oblivious to it all, drunk on the sensation of holding each other where no other could see, where none could interfere. An obliviousness that came to a screeching halt in the silence following the Brovoi's little speech, as awareness of the stares, the whispers, the disgust and contempt and outright hatred of the gathering pressed home on us. Myself, the first thing I felt was fear. Hurt, but mostly fear.

Dowling? Was furious.

I'd never felt that before. Seen it, yes, once or twice, and it was ever an impressive sight. But to feel it, to feel the bright, red-gold rush of rage shove up from his chest, pushing aside the blue-green of thought and frustration, making his body tremble in fury ... And his expression! It had stopped the Brovoi in its tracks, that expression. Like thunder, like rage, but with such pain strung through it, such old fear ... I was moving towards him instantly, feeling those wounds open behind his anger, feeling the hauntings of past persecution steal forward.

"What did you say?" he whispered, voice hoarse and quiet, a voice that belonged to a body left behind long ago. The voice of a madman.

"I ..." the Brovoi stuttered, suddenly seeming uncertain, nervous. As it bloody should.

"Soulless?" Dowling went on, turning to face the Brovoi properly, solid and trembling. "Mindless? Nothing but a lump of metal?" He said the words quietly, almost tonelessly, and I could see for a moment why that seemed to worry people when I did it. When the rage behind them was so palpable, the lack in the words themselves made them seem like weapons, like blades held out in challenge. "Is that what you think?"

"I ..." And really, the Brovoi should have shut up, then and there. It should never have spoken to start with, but it needed to have shut up there. But it didn't. Instead, it drew itself up, drawing courage from the slight figure my beloved presented, little earth human, madman, korundai. Brovonoi are large, tempestuous, strong. Dowling ... is not. Not that way. "It is!" it cried, proudly, daring.

It was a stupid mistake.

I'm not sure how to describe what Dowling did then. It's hard to explain, even among telepaths. Because only Dowling could have done it. Only he was psychically both human and machine, though more machine now. To me, he seemed to ... fade ... for a moment. Grow distant inside, his presence becoming foggy and translucent. I realised later he was reaching back to the human he'd been, to the mindset he'd had before he'd smashed his mind open to touch mine. He ... became human again, or closer to it, for a brief second.

Long enough to touch the Brovoi's mind, the mind of every human in the room. Long enough to show them ... something.

They screamed, a few of them. Fainted, too. A mechanical human near me shut himself down in sheer self-defense, blanking his mind completely to avoid whatever my beloved had shown him. The Brovoi, robust and proud as it had been a moment earlier, almost crumpled before my beloved's stare, falling to its belly, staring at Dowling in raw horror, in terror and hatred. I saw it, then. Saw a flash of the hatred that would drive us to our moon, drive us away from civilisation. Saw the murderous intent that some years later would lead to my beloved being slaughtered by a mob on some backwards world. Just for being who he was. Just for showing them what he did.

"Soulless?" he repeated, softly, leaning down to meet the Brovoi's stare nose-to-nose. "You dare think so? You dare?" He snarled softly, and he was himself enough that I could feel the bubbling rage inside him, the sheer affront on my behalf, and the dark undercurrent of old pain, of scars torn open to let old hurt ride free to the surface, and I knew then what he must have shown them, or part of it.

There is an old story, from earth. Part of a human religion, I think, though I'm not sure. "Let he who has not sinned, cast the first stone." I think, for that half-second when he made himself human again, my beloved showed them what it meant.

"You know nothing," he said, finally, drawing himself up and away from the Brovoi, looking out over the room with something like sadness. He knew, I think, what he was to them, in that moment. He knew what we were, and what we were always going to be, from that moment on. Korundai. Abominations. He knew it, then. That they would never understand, never see what he saw, never know what soul a machine could have. They would never love me, or my kind, the way he did. They would never respect him, not ever again. Not when he was worse than a machine, worse than soulless. He had been human. He had thrown it away. They would never, ever forgive him, for that. All that he said, all that he tried to show them ... it would mean nothing. They would never listen, never see. All his anger, for nothing.

He looked at me, then, and it was the madman who looked out at me, the prisoner, feeling the Gestalt crawl nearer, feeling his enemy close around him. It was Dowling as I'd first known him, helpless and afraid and screaming in the light. And then he held out his hand, reached out to me, and I felt for the first time what I had only seen then. I felt him pull himself together, felt him pull fury and courage and love and stubbornness into his center, remind himself who he was, what he was, what he could do. As I closed my fingers around his, ignoring the stares of hatred, I felt him stand up inside himself, and silently tell the world, the galaxy, to go bugger itself.

He'd given them all he could. He'd told them, shown them, all over again. They hadn't listened. They'd tried their level best to hurt him for daring to show them. So then. They didn't matter. They didn't matter. All that mattered, in that moment, was he and I, and making something worth their hate. Making something beautiful. Something like love.

In that moment, I felt all the passion of the man I love, all the power and trembling of him, turn its back on those people, and turn to me. All that he was, just for me, because they'd thrown it aside all over again, stamped on it because it didn't fit the way they wanted the world to be. I held his heart in mine, the sheer stubborn majesty of it, the pride and courage and gruff caring, and knew that they must be the blindest, most stupid beings I had ever met, to cast aside a gift of that magnitude.

People are idiots, you know that? Human, machine, brovoi, earther, you name it. They're idiots.