If me reciting what you did back to you sounds like a lecture, maybe that tells you something?
But it's cool, because you think he's trash, right? And his ankle's only twisted! (Don't worry, I promise I'm paying really close attention to your answers!)
It tells me I'm still capable of very basic tone inference.
I think he's an idiot slavemaker who hunts children to salve his ego, but trash is more concise. I have not attacked him going about his own business on this ship, and I will not in future, barring possible barge interference in my priorities and choices.
But if he gives me an excuse, I will hurt him.
When I realized he actually had no plan whatsoever, I left. But if he couldn't do the kind of first-year level recon it would have taken to know we were already enemies and prepare accordingly
[There's a momentary pause.]
I'm sorry, but there are levels of incompetence I can't be expected to presume, even from him.
He didn't come with a plan to hurt you in any way, because yeah, he's dumb and he didn't really consider you his enemy. So you attacked him without being threatened in any way whatsoever, but it's his own fault, because... he should have had a plan to hurt you?
Don't apologise to me. Not for the message, and not for this.
A plan wouldn't have saved him. He shouldn't have approached me at all. Why in the world should I allow an enemy who's lied his way into my home any opportunity to threaten me?
When I was six years old, I went swimming in the river, even though my mother told me not to. I almost got my leg eaten off by a salamander. I've still got notches on that femur. That was my fault. Sufficiently stupid choices have consequences.
I'm not an animal. I'll take my share. He chose to abduct and brainwash children and use them for battle fodder. I chose to shoot him in a way that would be both painful and disarming, healed him enough to stop him from dying, and briefly restrained him.
The fact that I chose not to stun right away? That part's my fault.
That salamander story is the most bullshit thing you have ever said to me, in an increasingly long list of bullshit things. You're not a fucking Salamander biting someone out of a predatory instinct that you can't control, you're an intelligent person who decided to respond to an idiot playing dress up with totally unnecessary force.
The fact that you chose to do that instead of stunning him? Yeah, pretty sure that makes pretty much all of this your fault.
And don't give me that line about how much you care about the 'brainwashed child soldiers'! The thing about child soldiers is that they occasionally manage to grow up, and if you gave so much of a crap then maybe you'd give the guy some slack for having such a fucked up view of the world.
Don't preach to me about how he's been brainwashing child soldiers, while kidding yourself that he is anything more or less than what one of those children grew into.
I don't know if you care or not, but if they deserve your empathy then he does too. If they don't, then don't use them to justify what you did to him.
Fives didn't. Alec didn't. Fucking millions of clones didn't. He had more power than any of them, and he's used it to make more.
[And, in Jedao's opinion, he forfeited any last right to that defense when he went after a fifteen year old with a sniper rifle. But he won't say that, because he doesn't trust Rhys not to pass it on to Hux, only for Hux to take it out on her, and underestimating her less this time.]
That wasn't my premise. Obviously not all child soldiers grow up to be the goddamn worst case scenario, but he did. Take it from someone who read his file? He didn't stand a fucking chance.
And you know what? Good for Fives. Good for Alec. Good for everyone who had something come into their life and nudge them off a path that'd kill them and dump them here with oceans of blood on their hands and no fucking clue how to exist in the world if they're not at war with everyone.
And what did you do with your power, back home, Jedao? Hell-- look what you do with your power here.
[Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you, you massive hypocrite.
Rhys isn't doing plans within plans here. He's tentatively confident that Hux isn't planning on any violence in retaliation for this, just like he hadn't been planning any violence against Jedao in the first place, so all this feels like to him, is his inmate being punished for the tiny, difficult inch of progress that they've earned together.
Fives didn't have a nudge, and he didn't have a chance. He'd be dead if he weren't here. I destroyed a nine hundred year old interstellar empire that used ritual public torture as its main power source, but thanks for playing.
You've seen his file, and I haven't. Fine. But you haven't seen any other files. If you think no one in any universe has ever had it worse and come out better, you're deluding yourself.
He's got a chance now, if being general didn't count somehow. If living in a universe where the concept of a republic existed didn't count. Now he's here. If he can take it, fine.
Holy shit, do you have a four second memory or do you only admit to having done fucked up things back home when-- when--
[When it's their last conversation. When they both talked about having had to do terrible things and not knowing if the cost was worth it.]
If doesn't matter if I'm delusional, and it doesn't matter if other people came from worse and turned out better, because I'm not the one using it to justify torturing anyone. And yeah, you could have done worse to him, I fucking bet you could have done worse to him, because you clearly got a lot of practice being one of the good guys back home.
You are a fucking hypocrite, man. If you want to dole out punishment for the awful things people did back home, well, you and me had a lovely conversation about that once, and you know where my cabin is. Don't bother to wait for whatever dumb arbitrary bullshit you'd consider to be a good enough excuse, consider this your permission.
Oh, I'm absolutely a monster. There were no good guys back home. But you asked what I'd done with it to try to score points, and you don't get to, because at least I can say I'm a monster who did something useful.
I hate him for things he's done here. What he did at home just adds ballast to the ship. But if it were just that, I wouldn't hold it against him. Might not be friends with him, but not this.
It wasn't torture, and it wasn't punishment. It was enemy action. Entirely accidentally provoked, apparently, which makes the whole thing a fucking farce, but still. Does the first order not have fucking spies? Does the first order treat spies they catch very gently?
I don't care about permission. Enemy action is the only excuse.
[Speaking of people who don't know how to exist without war.]
[Rhys laughs, and it's a gross, unhappy, giddy sound.]
You should talk to him some time. Tell him what you just told me, then, ask him what he thinks it was like being born into the New Republic, and what he was trying to do back home, and who the good guys are in his world. Seriously, it'll be like a record looping. And yeah, no points for anyone, couldn't agree more.
Enemy Action-- God, right, okay. Yeah, they probably do have a concept of spies. Like, if someone breaks into your cabin and steals sensitive documents, then you go open fire on them, in the stupid, useless hope of getting your documents back. That's probably enemy action taken against a spy as well, right?
I mean, he already got put in the infirmary for that. Lost all of his weapons and allies, and has slowly been coming to terms with the fact that he did something insane and awful and just has to live with that, but I guess I should give him his guns back and tell him he was right after all because it was enemy action, after all.
Well some children had to be both. Might mean when they grow up they have kind of a skewed perception of what age someone becomes a threat to you.
Either way, considering none of you even come from the same universe? Nah. Bullshit. I don't buy that him being a general makes him any more your enemy than me being a major corporate power does.
And yeah, he's terrible at it. He's way out of his depth. I mean, everyone's out of their depth when someone they have no issue with violently attacks them without provocation, but let's be real:
He brought a gun to a knife fight with a teenager and lost. He could have been armed to the teeth, and my money would still be on you. Only then I wouldn't find it so fucking gross.
That isn't what I said. Being a general doesn't make him my enemy, a whole stack of other shit does. Being a general makes him a soldier, and soldiers get engaged as soldiers. As effectively and immediately as possible.
I'd bet on me too. That's no reason to be careless.
...that's why I'd bet on me.
I genuinely struggle to comprehend that he didn't already have an issue with me. My life's work when I leave here is going to be the preemptive unraveling of his beloved empire. I've said it publicly, it's not hard to find.
Well you don't get to handle it differently. He's been on a ship with a conveyor belt of people who want to destroy his universe before he's ever born, and believe it or not, he hasn't hurt any of you. It's just something him and me are working on. So now you've done this, and he will think you're his enemy, so I guess next time you decide you want to hurt him, you can tell me that he definitely knew, right?
And if it's not you, hell, maybe it'll be Fives. Or maybe it'll be Phasma. Or maybe it'll be someone else like you, or Credence, who he doesn't even know hates him because you picked the other side in a war that I'm still trying to get him out of. Maybe he's just going to keep getting murdered by pieces of shit like you--
And I'm just going to keep getting fucking messages, and having my item go off, and having to drag his stupid body to the infirmary.
[If it wasn't already obvious, this is where Rhys's voice just breaks. He's furious. He's furious, and he's hurt, and he's tired, and--
And it's traumatic. Finding your friend, shot up, or terrified, or bleeding to death, over and over, and seeing a future stretch out where it just keeps happening.]
Guess you could have done that differently, but it was his own fault for whatever bullshit reason you come up with next.
[Almost gently. Jedao has....a pang of feeling, remembering everyone's dismissal of Horseriver's dismemberment, because he was an asshole who used mind magic on a warden. Because nobody knew him, because nobody but Jedao and Annie liked him.]
You keep demanding and haggling with my reasons. The fact that I have reasons for choosing to do what I did is not the same as reasons it was all his fault. I thought I made that distinction earlier, but I guess not.
What do you want me to say, Rhys? That I actually didn't have any reasons, that I'm a spiteful prick who hurt him on a whim, totally at random, because I just love hurting people?
I'll say it, if that's what you need. If you want to punish me, walk me down to zero or shoot me in the wrists, I'll let you.
No. That was Credence. No warning from him either, or not one that Hux could understand.
[Rhys's energy is sapped, but while the fight is slowly going out of him, it's not replaced by any warmth.]
Everyone has reasons to hurt him. Everyone is friends with someone on this boat who has a reason to be his enemy, and--
And I don't think you did it at random, or on a whim. But I don't know if you didn't enjoy it. Or if it didn't satisfy you. Or if you can recognise that it was wrong, or if you won't just do it again, or do something worse the next time he does whatever.
What I need is for you to never hurt my inmate again.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Text
Are you actually interested in the answers to any of these questions or do you just want to lecture me?
Text
But it's cool, because you think he's trash, right? And his ankle's only twisted! (Don't worry, I promise I'm paying really close attention to your answers!)
Text
I think he's an idiot slavemaker who hunts children to salve his ego, but trash is more concise. I have not attacked him going about his own business on this ship, and I will not in future, barring possible barge interference in my priorities and choices.
But if he gives me an excuse, I will hurt him.
When I realized he actually had no plan whatsoever, I left. But if he couldn't do the kind of first-year level recon it would have taken to know we were already enemies and prepare accordingly
[There's a momentary pause.]
I'm sorry, but there are levels of incompetence I can't be expected to presume, even from him.
Text
He didn't come with a plan to hurt you in any way, because yeah, he's dumb and he didn't really consider you his enemy. So you attacked him without being threatened in any way whatsoever, but it's his own fault, because... he should have had a plan to hurt you?
Don't apologise to me. Not for the message, and not for this.
Text
When I was six years old, I went swimming in the river, even though my mother told me not to. I almost got my leg eaten off by a salamander. I've still got notches on that femur. That was my fault. Sufficiently stupid choices have consequences.
I'm not an animal. I'll take my share. He chose to abduct and brainwash children and use them for battle fodder. I chose to shoot him in a way that would be both painful and disarming, healed him enough to stop him from dying, and briefly restrained him.
The fact that I chose not to stun right away? That part's my fault.
Re: Text
The fact that you chose to do that instead of stunning him? Yeah, pretty sure that makes pretty much all of this your fault.
And don't give me that line about how much you care about the 'brainwashed child soldiers'! The thing about child soldiers is that they occasionally manage to grow up, and if you gave so much of a crap then maybe you'd give the guy some slack for having such a fucked up view of the world.
Text
Text
Don't preach to me about how he's been brainwashing child soldiers, while kidding yourself that he is anything more or less than what one of those children grew into.
I don't know if you care or not, but if they deserve your empathy then he does too. If they don't, then don't use them to justify what you did to him.
Text
Not all child soldiers grow up to be like him.
Fives didn't. Alec didn't. Fucking millions of clones didn't. He had more power than any of them, and he's used it to make more.
[And, in Jedao's opinion, he forfeited any last right to that defense when he went after a fifteen year old with a sniper rifle. But he won't say that, because he doesn't trust Rhys not to pass it on to Hux, only for Hux to take it out on her, and underestimating her less this time.]
Text
And you know what? Good for Fives. Good for Alec. Good for everyone who had something come into their life and nudge them off a path that'd kill them and dump them here with oceans of blood on their hands and no fucking clue how to exist in the world if they're not at war with everyone.
And what did you do with your power, back home, Jedao? Hell-- look what you do with your power here.
[Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you, you massive hypocrite.
Rhys isn't doing plans within plans here. He's tentatively confident that Hux isn't planning on any violence in retaliation for this, just like he hadn't been planning any violence against Jedao in the first place, so all this feels like to him, is his inmate being punished for the tiny, difficult inch of progress that they've earned together.
Because Jedao thinks he's trash.]
Text
You've seen his file, and I haven't. Fine. But you haven't seen any other files. If you think no one in any universe has ever had it worse and come out better, you're deluding yourself.
He's got a chance now, if being general didn't count somehow. If living in a universe where the concept of a republic existed didn't count. Now he's here. If he can take it, fine.
Tell him not to waste it on me.
voice
[When it's their last conversation. When they both talked about having had to do terrible things and not knowing if the cost was worth it.]
If doesn't matter if I'm delusional, and it doesn't matter if other people came from worse and turned out better, because I'm not the one using it to justify torturing anyone. And yeah, you could have done worse to him, I fucking bet you could have done worse to him, because you clearly got a lot of practice being one of the good guys back home.
You are a fucking hypocrite, man. If you want to dole out punishment for the awful things people did back home, well, you and me had a lovely conversation about that once, and you know where my cabin is. Don't bother to wait for whatever dumb arbitrary bullshit you'd consider to be a good enough excuse, consider this your permission.
Re: voice
I hate him for things he's done here. What he did at home just adds ballast to the ship. But if it were just that, I wouldn't hold it against him. Might not be friends with him, but not this.
It wasn't torture, and it wasn't punishment. It was enemy action. Entirely accidentally provoked, apparently, which makes the whole thing a fucking farce, but still. Does the first order not have fucking spies? Does the first order treat spies they catch very gently?
I don't care about permission. Enemy action is the only excuse.
[Speaking of people who don't know how to exist without war.]
voice
You should talk to him some time. Tell him what you just told me, then, ask him what he thinks it was like being born into the New Republic, and what he was trying to do back home, and who the good guys are in his world. Seriously, it'll be like a record looping. And yeah, no points for anyone, couldn't agree more.
Enemy Action-- God, right, okay. Yeah, they probably do have a concept of spies. Like, if someone breaks into your cabin and steals sensitive documents, then you go open fire on them, in the stupid, useless hope of getting your documents back. That's probably enemy action taken against a spy as well, right?
I mean, he already got put in the infirmary for that. Lost all of his weapons and allies, and has slowly been coming to terms with the fact that he did something insane and awful and just has to live with that, but I guess I should give him his guns back and tell him he was right after all because it was enemy action, after all.
voice
One of these is a legitimate enemy.
Also your grasp of counter-espionage is terrible, but apparently so is his, so whatever.
voice
Either way, considering none of you even come from the same universe? Nah. Bullshit. I don't buy that him being a general makes him any more your enemy than me being a major corporate power does.
And yeah, he's terrible at it. He's way out of his depth. I mean, everyone's out of their depth when someone they have no issue with violently attacks them without provocation, but let's be real:
He brought a gun to a knife fight with a teenager and lost. He could have been armed to the teeth, and my money would still be on you. Only then I wouldn't find it so fucking gross.
voice
I'd bet on me too. That's no reason to be careless.
...that's why I'd bet on me.
I genuinely struggle to comprehend that he didn't already have an issue with me. My life's work when I leave here is going to be the preemptive unraveling of his beloved empire. I've said it publicly, it's not hard to find.
If I'd known, I'd have handled it differently.
voice
Well you don't get to handle it differently. He's been on a ship with a conveyor belt of people who want to destroy his universe before he's ever born, and believe it or not, he hasn't hurt any of you. It's just something him and me are working on. So now you've done this, and he will think you're his enemy, so I guess next time you decide you want to hurt him, you can tell me that he definitely knew, right?
And if it's not you, hell, maybe it'll be Fives. Or maybe it'll be Phasma. Or maybe it'll be someone else like you, or Credence, who he doesn't even know hates him because you picked the other side in a war that I'm still trying to get him out of. Maybe he's just going to keep getting murdered by pieces of shit like you--
And I'm just going to keep getting fucking messages, and having my item go off, and having to drag his stupid body to the infirmary.
[If it wasn't already obvious, this is where Rhys's voice just breaks. He's furious. He's furious, and he's hurt, and he's tired, and--
And it's traumatic. Finding your friend, shot up, or terrified, or bleeding to death, over and over, and seeing a future stretch out where it just keeps happening.]
Guess you could have done that differently, but it was his own fault for whatever bullshit reason you come up with next.
voice
[Almost gently. Jedao has....a pang of feeling, remembering everyone's dismissal of Horseriver's dismemberment, because he was an asshole who used mind magic on a warden. Because nobody knew him, because nobody but Jedao and Annie liked him.]
You keep demanding and haggling with my reasons. The fact that I have reasons for choosing to do what I did is not the same as reasons it was all his fault. I thought I made that distinction earlier, but I guess not.
What do you want me to say, Rhys? That I actually didn't have any reasons, that I'm a spiteful prick who hurt him on a whim, totally at random, because I just love hurting people?
I'll say it, if that's what you need. If you want to punish me, walk me down to zero or shoot me in the wrists, I'll let you.
voice
[Rhys's energy is sapped, but while the fight is slowly going out of him, it's not replaced by any warmth.]
Everyone has reasons to hurt him. Everyone is friends with someone on this boat who has a reason to be his enemy, and--
And I don't think you did it at random, or on a whim. But I don't know if you didn't enjoy it. Or if it didn't satisfy you. Or if you can recognise that it was wrong, or if you won't just do it again, or do something worse the next time he does whatever.
What I need is for you to never hurt my inmate again.
voice
If he doesn't attack me, or hurt other people to get to me, then I will not hurt him again. I told you that, and it's still true.
I promise I'll warn him next time. If I'm misinterpreting again, he can correct me.
Re: voice
[At this point you've basically said everything he needed to hear, Jedao. He just hasn't forgiven you.]
And that's probably the best I'm going to get out of this, so I'll take it. Later.