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"Must be hard." Marcus couldn't actually sympathize. It had been so long since his early days that he could barely recall a time when he didn't only curse his immortality.

"Do you have the mark?" He asked instead, moving onto something more crucial to the immortality bit. And since this was likely going to be a case of 'I'll show you if you show me', Marcus took the initiative to pull up his t-shirt sleeve to show the mark of Cain. It was a circular scar, upraised, that was the source of his suffering.

It was the only mark that was on him still. Any other scars, even from before the mark had been perfectly healed when his body rebuilt itself from the many times it was destroyed.

"Mark from when I was hung? No. I have no scars anymore." Booker had no idea what Marcus was talking about. He didn't have any scars anymore. Since he woke up from death his body simply didn't get marks.

He really hated the sensation of regrowing teeth. That was probably the worst one.

Booker had cursed his immortality very shortly after learning what it was and its limitations. He wasn't going to pour that grief on Marcus because he was a stranger.

"No... The sign of the curse." The infamous mark of Cain as according to the Bible. Marcus didn't believe much from that book, but at least that much was correct. He got the mark when he was cursed shortly after killing Abel, and it had been with him ever since. He fully believed it was the source of his immortality.

He let his sleeve down and settled back. "I believe on good authority that this is the source of my problems. It could be different for you, I do not know."

Marcus didn't know what Booker had gone through, but he knew he had tried ending his curse since the bronze age. He had almost given up until Booker came into his life.

Their immortality clearly didn't come from the same source. Booker had no mark. While he thought his immortality was a curse because of his own misery no one had actually cursed him. At least, no one that he knew.

Marcus was something else. Ancient and marked but something that wanted him immortal for some reason. Marcus had said God but Booker was skeptical that entity existed no matter what Joe and Nicky said.

"I think we are very different beings." It would explain why Marcus never dreamed of them and why they never dreamed of him. It actually explained a great deal though Booker was not reassured that something else out there doled out immortality. "I have no mark and no curse. And my immortality will eventually stop."

He simply didn't know when.

That last thing Booker said was such a curved ball that it looked like it completed blindsided the older immortal. "What?" he asked, dropping out of their French as he tried to process the words.

"You know this? How? ...That other, Quyhn? They *died*?"

Marcus sat back heavily in his chair, realizing that perhaps Booker was right, they were different. Maybe the initial curse did change, or something else caused Booker's predicament. But whatever it was, apparently, it was going to stop for Booker. Marcus wanted to hope that this meant his would too, but if the nature of it changed, then maybe what was true for the younger immortal wouldn't be true for him.

He looked like someone killed his best friend as he finished the rest of his watered whiskey in one gulp.

"No, she's not dead but another did die. After some time our wounds don't heal anymore. I have uncertain immortality." Booker called it that early on when he finally joined Andy and the others. They were immortal for the time being and there was no telling when it would end. Every time he went down Booker didn't know if he would get up.

Apparently, that wasn't the case with Marcus. Booker instantly pitied him. True immortality had to drive a person insane. There was no way to spend centuries losing everything over and over again and not lose your mind.

"Seems to take awhile though. A few thousand years from what I know." Booker shrugged a shoulder. If there was something else that triggered the end of it he didn't know. He wouldn't know until his stopped but since he was only two hundred he figured he had a lot more time left.

A finite amount of years. If only that was true. But it wasn't for him, Marcus knew, because being the very 0first immortal, wouldn't he have gotten his turn already if it was?

But the way he looked at Booker was different now, there was a touch of envy, and more importantly, reserved. Like he wasn't sure anymore if this man was a good investment of his time, because unlike him, Booker was going to die one day. But the longing was definitely still there, because a companion for thousands of years, even one who may disappear, that was definitely still more than he had before.

"So there could be others." He was trying to be hopeful. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he could find others. They would still die, but each was long lived.

For once Marcus wasn't hiding anything from his expressions, he couldn't. These thoughts and feelings were coming too quickly and wildly to not be anything but open in his expression.

The distance Marcus left between them was obvious to Booker. He could see the other man draw back. His eventually mortality clearly didn't sit well with Marcus. Maybe he had never thought about his own death or that he could die. Maybe he couldn't given they were different beasts.

""Who knows?" Booker still wouldn't offer up information about the others especially now that Marcus had shown his interest was only in finding someone like him and not someone like Booker. His friendship seemed to be conditional.

Booker sipped at his whiskey and gave Marcus a minute to absorb all he had learned about him. It was strange to see another immortal take it in and turn it over in his mind. "There might not be another like you, though. Nothing that lives, lives forever."

"Then maybe I'm no longer alive." Marcus definitely felt dead enough inside to mean the words. He hadn't been living for a very long time. Someone once told him surviving wasn't living, and he had been surviving for so long that it wasn't really living. He hadn't had something to live for for a long while now.

Marcus had to process this and he badly wanted another drink. Waving for the server, he ordered another double shot of the whiskey, and whatever Booker wanted if he was finished with his.

"It's... a lot to take in," he admitted, waiting for the drink to arrive before he took a swig and let it burn down his throat. "I just want it all to end, you know? Watching it all turn to dust over and over... Then I thought there's you... but you're saying you'll someday go too."

Dramatic but fair. If Marcus truly couldn't die then, well, Booker felt bad for him. To live forever was really not living at all. Although, they had crossed paths. It was possibly Marcus could just keep meeting semi-immortal after semi-immortal.

"Someday. I'm too young for it to be soon but eventually it'll be my time." Booker felt he was living better than before. In his exile he hoped he had dragged himself out of the pit he was in before. Well, sort of climbing up.

Still, he felt a bit guilty ruining Marcus hopes and dreams. "You'll find another. We're out there. Just a matter of looking."

Turns out the discovery was a mixed bag then, sour grapes, not any solid solution to his cursed loneliness, but a possibility of semi-stability. Booker was still someone who could understand, truly understand, even though he didn't share the same eternity. A few thousand years was still a long time.

But it took him six thousand to meet one, who knew when the other would come about. But knowing they were out there... it was a start.

"Wouldn't wish this on anyone anyway," Marcus admitted, starting to accept the news. It got better when they went down with the alcohol.

"I think I'm going to get drunk here tonight," he announced in English since there was nothing more about immortality he wanted to talk about for now. It was more than he wanted already. "You're welcome to join me."

"You know, I used to do that a lot too. Trying to, uh, cut back these days." Booker wasn't exactly sober but he didn't drink himself numb every single day like before. He was trying to avoid getting drunk. "Someone once told me I was doing a shit job of living and I'm working on it."

He still loved and admired Andy a great deal and he missed his family every fucking day of his life. Booker spent a lot of time drunk before he sorted his shit out. Only a few more decades before he saw them all again.

"Good luck with it." Booker would sit and finish his drink and then maybe be sad in his safe house for awhile. He understood Marcus' loneliness all too well but he wasn't Nicky with wise words of comfort or Joe with his optimism. He was an ass and a bastard. The best he could do was drink a little bit.

"Haven't in a while. Hangovers in the mornings are a bitch," Marcus admitted as he mulled over his drink. But their conversation tonight, that was reason enough to want to indulge a little. Maybe it was blind self pity, but he felt like he earned it.

"What's there to live for? It's the the same... in a never ending cycle." He gave Booker a look and had enough sense left to not say more. It wasn't his fault that Marcus was stuck, and Marcus didn't actually want to pull him down with him. The guy was trying to live his life, probably not the best idea to here a depressed old guy like him ranting on about the futility of living it.

So Marcus swallowed his words along with the rest of his whiskey and thought if he should just buy the whole bottle for when they next came by for a refill. "Go on, you don't have to stay." As much as he would like Booker's company, he himself wasn't going to be a great one right now.

"I don't get them." The upside of healing as quickly as he did Booker always felt fine in the morning. It took a great deal of alcohol to get drunk and stronger the better but he never suffered the consequences.

"The point... is to do good while you can do it," he said with a little shrug. "Who knows what long reaching effects there are to it? Maybe you save the guy who cures cancer. Or kill the man that would be the next Hitler. Is it enough some days? No."

Booker hated his existence most of the time, especially without his family around but he kept going. He had to live better otherwise... well, that was really it. He didn't know what else there was. It would be drinking and fighting and misery like before.

Though, to be honest, he was fairly miserable most of the time. "But it's something."

Marcus wasn't going to get into it, but since Booker hadn't left and he was still joining the conversation, the lieutenant took it as an invitation to continue.

"To do good," Marcus repeated the other immortal's words. "I've put away murderers, drug lords, gangbanging bastards..." Marcus worked police, had for quite a while now in between stints of other things. And there was the reach of his alter ego, to cover what the law couldn't.

He shook his head. "Doesn't feel like there's a point to any of it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust... eventually that's all they are, good, bad... anyday someone could start World War 3 and it'll wipe everyone out." Wasn't that a recurring nightmare of his, to wake up one day in a wasteland with no life, no survivors, not a single person left around him but himself. That more than any past traumatic attempts to kill himself plagued his real fear.

"I can't give you hope," Booker said before he sipped his drink. "You have to find that for yourself. I can only tell you that's what keeps me going most days. Try and do good otherwise, what's the point?"

Marcus had forever. He had real immortality. Booker had his uncertain immortality. There was only so long he could do good and hopefully, it would be enough to make the world better in some small way.

"I'm hoping I see the end of cancer, honestly." He smiled sadly thinking back to Jean-Pierre as he always did. "If I can live long enough to see that it'll have been worth it."

But there was no hope. Marcus had tried and tried again to climb out of well that was the despair that was the process of living. The few times he managed to get to the lip, losing everyone dropped him back into that well more hurt than before.

Maybe with another immortal there, he could hold on a bit longer. Maybe.

"I remember the days when people didn't live long enough to have cancer, or before they even knew what cancer was." He switched back to French again, thinking it might be a strange conversation to have to have in English. "I have watched them come from wandering vagabonds to building civilizations that can reach the stars. In a few thousand years, cancer will probably be nonexistent."

Marcus took his next drinks of whiskey slower. "They all want to be immortal. If they only knew."

"No wonder in any of it? Nothing that thrilled you?" Booker had certainly seen things that gave him bursts of excitement. Computers were a revelation. Airplanes, those had amazed him and he immediately wanted to fly one. There were little things all over that kept him going until it was too much.

Marcus reminded him of Andy, reminded him of how he thought figuring out how to end it would free them all and how wrong he had been. There was no way for him to make Marcus see hope. That was on him and him alone.

"They are afraid, that's all." And Booker knew it all too well. His son had been afraid and hurting so he had lashed out. Booker had borne the brunt of it and it weighed on him. One day he might master that burden.

Marcus had really tried. "I have tried everything, hobbies, sex, new music..." Of which the newest ones given the immortal headaches instead.

He tried to catch up with the times, and new inventions were novel only for a few years before it became everyday. The discovery of the rest of the world, humans crossing the great oceans... now with the age of technology, things were novel only for a few months, but they were just repetition on a loop. It was getting harder and harder to find any enthusiasm for any of it.

"They want what they don't understand. Even when you give it to them, they still cannot unlock the secrets of the divine. What makes me... us...immortal... or what can kill us."

“If sex isn’t still good you’re having sex with the wrong people.” Even at his lowest Booker still liked sex. It was a good escape even for a single night. Even Andy still enjoyed sex after thousands of years. If Marcus was bored of that he was definitely doing it wrong in Booker’s opinion.

He leaned back in his chair, one arm thrown across it while he crossed his legs. “Everyone wants what they can’t have. Don’t pretend it’s different for you.” In this short conversation Booker knew that much about Marcus. The man wanted someone to live out existence with and he didn’t get it so he was bitter. Booker understood but he was no better than the people he put down.

“The only thing we have different from them is a long time. That doesn’t make us better or worse or above the same mistakes they make every day. We’re still human, not divine.” There was no divinity in this. They weren’t suddenly angels or holy avengers. They were just men and women with a long, long life ahead of them. Booker knew he wasn’t better.

That statement got the first chuckle out of the ancient human the whole night. "Sex is... sex. It's good for a few minutes, a whole night if I indulge. I suppose I haven't indulged in a while."

It was different having a conversation with someone who he could... open up to. Even if not to share all his secrets, being able to talk freely by itself was already a gift. Maybe it was the drink, or maybe simply having a companion to talk to after these years of loneliness, without a need to filter his content, the words flowed out.

"That's the point of wanting something, you don't have it. But I think I understand pretty well what I want." He wanted an end of the endless loneliness, an end to his curse, true death. "While the others who want what we have, they haven't a clue.

"And I'm not saying I'm divine. I'm not, I know I'm not. I'm human as they come, born from..." Marcus trailed off, shaking his head instead. "What I mean is the source of the immortality is. It must be." And a little book full of God's words verified it as well. "It is why I have not been able to unlock it, nor anyone else who tried."

Booker made a skeptical noise but knew better than to debate the existence of divine powers with someone who believed. Nicky and Joe were pretty steady on that while he gave up on God long before he was immortal. It was all bullshit.

"Like you said once they didn't have a word for cancer, now they can treat it. Give them another three thousand years and maybe they'll make themselves immortal." Not through divine power but science and technology, the forces that drove the world now as surely as religion had one done.

Booker almost hoped they did it even though he also knew that would lead to some ugly, ugly things. People like Merrick shouldn't have this but he wouldn't be upset if more people like Nile did.

"Or they might wipe themselves all out." Not to be pessimistic, but humanity did improve greatly in how they were coming up with ways to kill themselves too. Cain had only a rock when he did it. Now there was technology to destroy a small nation in one shot.

"It can go either way." And by his tone, Marcus didn't want to stick around to find out which.

It was a depressive topic to chase after, and Marcus tried to veer away, knowing it was a rabbit hole that led only to darkness. "Humans shouldn't have immortality. It is not something I would wish on the people I hated the most..." But the rare ones that he loved... He had wished it for it, at the time of their passing, but knew afterwards that it was better that they didn't. It was why he was afraid to love again too.

That was a difficult topic. On the one hand he had seen the good love could do for immortals. Joe and Nicky were so powerful together and so happy, how could he not want the same for himself? Booker would give a limb to go back and spend millennia with his wife.

But... more immortals would lead to more problems. It would lead to people knowing and more risk of capture. It would lead to people like Merrick using them not for the betterment of the world but for profit. Booker only needed to learn that lesson once.

"I suppose it's different for me. I know this will end at some point." Booker shrugged a shoulder. Nothing that lives, lives forever. Except maybe this man sitting across from him. Booker was still deciding if he believed that or not.

"Don't have to keep rubbing it in." Marcus didn't sound as bitter as he had been a moment ago. Still sour, but nowhere as bad. He just sounded a bit mellower, it could be the alcohol's influence.

"Maybe you're young, you can still have hopes and dreams." Marcus held his whiskey silently, swirling the amber liquid as he watched it circle. "Don't tell me it's not too late to have dreams. It's not the same, the aspiration to have a goal and see it fulfilled. I see only tasks that I will eventually complete. When you have all the time in the world, there's no incompletable task."

Except to find an end to his immortality. He hadn't given up though, not fully. He still kept an eye out and searched.

"I don't look forward to the future. If I do, that's admitting defeat."

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