maskormenace

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[ When a familiar face pops up on the network, he's looking a lot less dead than he had looked during his last appearance. In fact, he looks entirely well aside from the dark circles underneath his eyes and a slight pallor to his skin, something that can be attributed just as much to stress as it can injury. ]

Hey, everyone. It's Jaime. And the Blue Beetle, I guess. That cat's extremely out of the bag.

[ He takes a deep breath. ]

I don't really know what to say, except that the Negotiator's dead, so everyone should be safe now - not that I'm the guy you have to thank for that, but the people who did were just doing the right thing. And that I'm sorry, for everything about happened. I knew that the Negotiator was bad news, but I didn't think - I didn't think he'd do that. But I knew. And I'm sorry I didn't do anything about him sooner.

[ He glances off-camera for a moment, teeth worrying at his lip. He looks like there's something else he wants to say, but he eventually leaves the matter be. ]

If there's anything I can do to help anyone who was hurt in all that, it's the least I can do. And... thank you to everyone who tried to help, or who fought back. From me and the Scarab. He -- I -- [ He shakes his head. ] Ah, damn it.

[ Words have never been his strong point. He cuts the feed. ]

[ NOTE: This post comes a couple days after THIS ordeal! If you'd rather see him in person, whether in the hospital (the first day), at his home, or evading the press, feel free to check out my CATCH-ALL. ]

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Yes there was. There's always a third option, even if you can't see it right away.

[ The way he says it is more mantra than anything else, a truth held close to his chest. ]

...how are you feeling?

Like what? Forego the truce entirely, so he would have used his devices sporadically over months, and months, hurting other people and driving you into obsession? Or maybe, keep him tethered, or locked in a cage, before he'd done anything foul in this world, driving people to distrust you, and ruin the goodwill you've built in the world, and keeping you prisoner just as completely?

Those ones seem like pretty poor choices to me, too.

[ guess who isn't answering the question. ]

Edited (swype is a menace, news at eleven) 2018-11-22 15:01 (UTC)

Those aren't the only choices. I could have told more people about him - people I trust. Or kept a closer eye on him. Or - or something. I don't know. Just because I can't think of what I should've done doesn't mean that option doesn't exist.

[ He wishes, so badly, that Ted were here. He would have told him about the Negotiator. And he would have known what to do. He just knows it. ]

Maybe they're not. But if you can't think of the answer now, after it's over, then how could you have possibly found the answer before it started?

Just because you could have made different choices, it doesn't mean they would have been better.

And it doesn't mean they would have been worse either. It's not -- it's not about that. Not being able to think of something isn't a great excuse.

[ It's the part of being a superhero he's always failed at. He tries to stay on top of things, the best he can, but the plotting, the contingency plans, the sussing out who's a danger and why and what to do about it - he sucks at that. He's always sucked at it.

Maybe it's the difference between him and the people who really wanted to be a hero. Sometimes he just feels like some guy who got powers playing pretend. He sighs. ]

I never wanted you guys to get caught up in all this. I'm sorry.

[ Hadn't they been through enough? ]

I know.

[ Soft; softer than the rest. It's not the right response for forgiveness, but it's hard to forgive what isn't a failing. ]

I don't know if it's much consolation, but... you weren't his primary target. You know? It's not like he would have packed up his weapons, and left, and tried again later if you weren't there.

We weren't caught up in your problem. That guy is his own problem.

[ A pause. ]

... And when he comes back, you two won't have to try solving it alone.

I don't know. I don't know what he would have done if I wasn't here. I mean, we were blackmailing each other, pretty much. Me worse than him.

[ Jaime is the one who blackmailed him out of running for office, after all. ]

...he ported out before he did all this. And he came back mad.

It's hard to imagine that whatever you did here was enough to send someone from "zero" to "hostile takeover of the Moon."

... [ a pause; she's weighing her options. there may be no other time to ask. ]

... You've never told me. What your history is, with him, in your own world.

I didn't?

[ He'd thought maybe it would have come up with the previous version of him - some sanitized version of it anyway. He'd thought as much when he told her he had killed the Negotiator and she hadn't inquired any further into the matter.

Then again, it's not a huge surprise. He hasn't told anyone here the full weight of it. Nobody asked and Jaime sure as heck wasn't about to share. ]

Do you know what the Reach's plan for Earth was in the first place?

No. I told you before, didn't I? He and I weren't friends like that.

[ That's the assumption she's making, anyway — it certainly hadn't come up when they talked before, at that carnival. She takes a breath, searching her own memory. ]

I know that Khaji Da was of the Reach, originally. His innate language is theirs. The Negotiator claimed that Khaji was "malfunctioning technology," but that was probably because the other Khaji had him in a cage, at the time.

That's all I know, except what you told me. About the end.

[ The whole "he died and I killed him but regret it" thing. ]

I guess I just thought when you didn't ask, you already knew.

[ He's quiet for a moment. It's been a long time since he's had to talk about this. And, frankly, he's very rarely had to talk about this at all; nobody here asks, and nobody from home needs to. It was all broadcast for the world to see. What happened here is some strange perversion of that; Jaime had broadcast all of the Negotiator's little secrets, so the Negotiator had broadcast his own. ]

Right. So. The Reach is a planet of conquerors and slavers. They go to planets without tech as advanced as theirs, and then they plant a Scarab on the planet. The Scarab is programmed to wait until the planet's tech has advanced enough for it to be useful for labour and resources, and then it finds a host. And Khaji found me.

[ That's leaving out a lot, he knows, but she asked about the Reach, not about Khaji's remarkably complex life. They say that Khaji's only different because of his exposure to magic, but Jaime's never been wholly convinced. He rather thinks it had always been in Khaji the whole time - he just needed a little kindness to get it out. ]

That host is their eyes and ears, planet-side, so they know how to approach the situation. For Earth, the plan was to put mind control tech in the water supply for a century or so. Maybe two. After that, they'd mine the planet of all its resources, using us as free labour and me as their enforcer, and then they'd move onto the next one. It's kind of their modus operandi.

[ Not for the first time, Ruka realizes the difficulty with Jaime. It's not that he goes out of his way to hide things, or keep secrets. He never bent over backwards to obscure the existence of Khaji Da, or his life as the Blue Beetle. The secret kept so well because that's just the way Jaime is — he never offers these things about himself out of nowhere. He probably doesn't get tripped up in half-truths because he rarely has to give them in the first place. He doesn't give out answers if nobody asks the questions — but who would think to ask those questions without a reason?

She's not like that. Ever since she was young, between her powers, and the people around her, and the cycles of the City, and everything else, she's always grappled with knowing too much about the people around her. Names she was never given, or hurts that were meant to be buried, futures that hadn't been revealed. Hollow places where hollowness should not exist. They were never things offered to her — Ruka either came by her knowledges by accident and happenstance, or by deliberation and subterfuge, yet regardless of the how or the why, always with it seemed to come resentment, and aversion, and distrust. Of course she'll twist arms and claw her way through the walls around her if what's hidden is important enough, but she hates doing it. Why would she invite that kind of conflict, that kind of pain, for anything less than the immediate and the critical? Why would she venture anywhere she wasn't invited, when her every movement seemed despised?

I just thought if it mattered to you, you would ask me.

I just thought if it mattered to you, you would tell me.

So Ruka says nothing in response to his first confession, remaining quiet on her end of the line with her face shielded under the crook of her elbow as she listens. After all this time, she's not sure what kind of story she expected, but she doesn't think it was this. She thinks she should be more surprised. Perhaps she is, a little — that it's not humans, doing the conquering, and the enslaving, and the manipulating.

It leaves her with more questions than she knows how to ask. If they were so awful, why did he feel so much guilt for the Negotiator's death, in that world? In this one? If that was their plan, and the Negotiator party to it, why give him a second chance at all? Was there some potential there he saw, or was it simply hope?

There are other questions, too, given life by the way he speaks, his pauses and hesitations, in the rough patches of his voice. If he never answers questions that haven't been asked, how many times has he explained this, before? How many times is he explaining it, now? For all that he reaches out to the people around him when they need help, for all that he buries his suffering than put it on anyone else, for all that he waits for others to make the first move—

She sighs. Everyone leaves in the end, anyway. Once everything comes to light, once he really understands her, the friendship they have will sour, anyway. Once all the pieces come together, once he knows what she's done, he'll only feel betrayed, and resentful. It's inevitable.

It's inevitable, but he doesn't know it yet. ]

Neapolitan or rocky road?

[ Jaime hasn't explained the history between himself and the Negotiator with great frequency but had, perhaps foolishly, assumed that questions would be coming up. The whys and the hows, the exact history between them, how to overcome him, what his ultimate goal was --

He wasn't expecting a sharp left turn on the matter. ]

...what?

Ice cream flavors. Neapolitan, or rocky road? [ Repeated, a little firmer — as though it was a matter of mishearing what she'd said, rather than confusion as to why. ] Or are you more of a, mint-chip-and-cookie-dough kind of guy?

I -- uh --

[ Ruka! You can't just do this to him! ]

Cookies and cream? I guess? [ Sweet on sweet. Predictable. ]

Alright, see you soon.

[ too bad?? she's doing it anyway?? ]

[ RUKA!!! ]

I - uh - okay.

[ You know you can say no, Jaime. ]

[ it's too late. she's already called him out on never saying no to her. can't start now.

At any rate, between "interstate porting", the commute to and from each Porter site, and the requisite stops along the way, it's just shy of forty minutes later that someone hits the #15 doorbell.

(Somehow, the paparazzi that had been previously camped out there all seemed to have been picked up and moved to the end of the street. Nobody's hurt, of course, but quite a few are remembering why they usually don't park on imPort lawns uninvited.)

Ding-dong. ]

[ Jaime opens the door tentatively, only a crack at first, peering cautiously through it. It's only Ruka, of course. Khaji had told him that the paparazzi wasn't there anymore but he's so averse to seeing - well, seeing anyone that he hasn't been able to shake off his paranoia. The only reason he's letting Ruka in now is that even if he wanted to turn her away, she's doing him a kindness.

That, and she'd clearly been through the wringer to help him. Or at least to help clean up after the mess he'd made. He's not so ungrateful as to turn her away now. Not that being here is going to do her much good. Jaime already knows he's miserable company for most, let alone an empath. ]

Um... hey.

[ It's a very different mood from the last time she came to his house. Not so cowed by her own hurts and fears, her posture is straighter, emboldened. She's still wearing her bike helmet—the easiest protection against being photographed, after all, is obscuring what makes the photographs valuable in the first place—and with each arm she's holding a weighted plastic bag, opaque, contents obscured. ]

Hey. [ She offers one arm to Jaime, silently asking him to take the bag. She gives him a couple seconds to react on his own, but if he hesitates too long, she'll resort to harmless force — dropping the handles of it over his nearest wrist, and slipping past Jaime into the house if he doesn't make room for her himself.

Ruka has mentioned before that Jaime has never refused her anything. He's never said no to a request, never lied to avoid a topic, never so much as pretended to be busy to delay a conversation. Always, Ruka offers him ways to slip out of responsibility. To dismiss the heavier things, to avoid burdening himself. He never takes them.

This is not that. The way she immediately strides towards his kitchen without so much as pausing to take off her boots, or her helmet — it's forceful and direct in a way Ruka usually isn't, and does not even offer him the space to say no. ]

Where do you keep the plates?

[ Jaime can tell, dimly, that something is different about this. Ruka's not usually this pushy about darn near anything. It's part of why everything about their friendship has been in tentative pushes from either direction, ebbing and flowing as they get busy, neither party willing to infringe upon the other's space as though worried about the fragility of what they've created. But Jaime's easy to push around at the best of times and now, rendered quiet and meek through what had just happened and the potency of his own despair.

He stands in the doorway for a moment too long before managing to catch up with her, movements slow and sluggish, as though he'd just woken up not too long ago. ]

They're in the cupboard.

[ By the time he gets to the kitchen, the transformation has already begun. Her bag is up on the kitchen counter, emptied out, a series of closed takeout containers staggered along the remaining space. The helmet is off, sitting on the seat of the kitchen table. The cutlery drawer has been located (after some trial) and rests open; the cupboard flips open as he crosses the threshold, and Ruka is collecting plates, and cups, and bowls. Nothing of her face is visible, though — not with all her hair loose, curtain of green hanging down past her shoulders, a little messy from the drive. ]

You can put those in the freezer for now. [ His bag contains a half dozen pints of ice cream, a few different flavors — but half of them are different variations on cookies and cream, the rest a motley of vanilla, chocolate, and some brownie-caramel-cookie-dough monstrosity. ] I wasn't sure your go-to for Thai, so there's a bit of everything.

[ Because you can't bring over comfort dessert without obligatory overboard comfort takeout dinner. ]

[ The true answer is that, generally speaking, Jaime will eat anything. He frequently does too, still young enough that his metabolism burns it off almost immediately. He doesn't say anything at first, though, rendered speechless by Ruka coming in like a whirlwind of activity, puncturing the soft bubble he's surrounded himself with, the real world creeping back in to confront him. If he had it in him, it would make him feel a little foolish, cloistered away at home, dressed like a -- well, slobbier than usual.

He watches her move around the place like she owns it, his own movements as tentative as hers are sure. ]

I... thank you. You didn't have to.

Maybe not, but you weren't going to let anyone else, were you?

[ She's still distracted by the set-up, so she talks more to the cupboards than to Jaime himself. There's the surge of aroma as she pops open boxes — freshly steamed rice, and coconut curry sauce, spiced meats and lightly fried vegetables, noodles; really, anything they offered.

Realizing her comment, she turns finally, plate in hand. ]

I mean... if they asked, you turned them down. Right? No matter who it is, or what they offered.

[ Her mouth pulls a little at the corners, though not for a smile. ]

I do the same thing.

[ ...yeah. He's been called out again. It'd be easy to chalk it up to her empathy powers, but empathy's just that: the ability to know what another is feeling without necessarily knowing why. The only reason she can read him this well is because she's taken the time to get to know him and, somewhere down the line, taken the time to understand him.

Jaime's not sure if he should feel discomfited by that or not. It's been a long, long time since anyone's been able to read him as easily as she always seems to. ]

...Yeah. Probably.

[ She does do the same thing, doesn't she? He's always known that about her. It's part of why he's been so steadfast in the face of her pushing him away, at least in the beginning. It feels a bit odd, watching someone else take ownership of his place when he's used to being the one puttering about, being a decent enough host to offer food and drinks and the bare minimum of helping make others comfortable.

At least he can recognize, even now, that the food smells good - and that it's way too much for one person to eat alone. ]

It just seems easier that way.

[ She gets it. ]

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private; audio; ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ welcome to hell i guess

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action, because... im lazy. you knew i would be.

as a fellow lazy, i respect that

grips ur shoulder, and also, railroads ur boy

u kno what sometimes he needs the railroading

he needs and deserves it (and i can't believe they're still not dating)

because they're FOOLS

THE GREATEST FOOLS

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