therushingsky | IC Contact Post

Wait, these are the smoke bombs?

[Rhys's entire face lights up, then he glances down at the one in his hand. No. No he shouldn't. Remorsefully, he places it back in the bag, and glances back up to Stan.]

Okay, I'll be careful with them.

[Careful to use them when Stan isn't looking.]

What else have you got for me?

Yep! Made 'em myself!

[Saltpeter and the heads of a lot of matches, among other things. Sometimes you just don't have the cash to buy smoke bombs!

The second thing is secret enough that Stan casually glances around the lounge first. He hasn't been on the barge all that long and doesn't know if this is a thing wardens do, or if they're supposed to hoard all of their secret knowledge of their inmates. But Stan, who has been an inmate in places where getting out is trickier than graduating, thinks that's stupid.

He's supposed to get Rhys graduated, and a more honest person might make their inmate play more guessing games, so they can try and figure out for themselves what angle the Admiral's going for. But Stan is a cheater through and through, and if they're going to do this his way, they're going to do it the cheating way.

So, he slips his hand into his jacket and pulls out Rhys' file...and hands it directly to him.]

Figured you might want this.

[And, there it is. After six months of hectoring the Admiral, and cycling through temps, it takes two minutes of being paired with Stan to get it back.

It's a relief. But it also kinda stings. In the same way as being paired with Stan at all stings.]

Thanks. I guess you read it already, right?

[Not an accusation. It's the smart thing to do. Rhys turns it over in his hands, once, then flips it open.

It starts young. He flips it shut again, glancing up at Stan.]

Hey, let me ask you something: What's going on with you and Bill?

[Stan just shrugs at the first question.]

Would you believe me if I lied and said I didn't?

[It wouldn't be the smart thing to do here. Of course he read it. The follow-up question trips him up though, and he actually looks pretty surprised.]

Bill? Why?

[Maybe he should have seen this coming though, since Bill was so ticked off in the first place.]

I'd give it back to you and tell you to do your job better. I want to graduate, dude. And this is the program.

[Said with a bit of resignation. Before glancing up at Stan.]

I was actually at the point where I was going to start brute forcing getting paired with someone. Me and Bill went through a list of names of unpaired wardens. I'd started messaging them to try and get cozy enough with someone to get the Admiral to make it official.

Two weeks ago I was doing this, and the second we get started, the Admiral sticks me with the guy who killed Bill back in his own world?

[He glances back down at the file.]

Making this work is trying to scrape something good out of a move that the Admiral only made to mess with us. That's why.

[Or to punish them for trying to get any kind of control over being imprisoned here.]

[That's...interesting. Stan's not really sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that he's been working with Bill, mostly because he has no idea why Bill would be invested in someone else's graduation. It's definitely a cause for concern though.]

Oh. That.

[There's a strange tone to that though - not guilt or annoyance, but as though Rhys literally reminded him that it was a concern at all.]

Look...I'm not the guy who can fill you in on most of it. I don't actually know most of what happened, and I know that sounds like bullshit, but this is what I've got.

[Ugh. He doesn't like having to fess up to this, but he and Rhys have to be on the same page if they're going to get anything accomplished here. Plus the whole thing gives him a headache if he thinks about it too hard.]

So I guess he...tried to take over the world? In some...Weirdpocalypse thing? And in all that he tried to kill my great niece and nephew, and definitely messed with Ford a bunch too. I probably cared a lot more about that than the whole wrecking the world thing? Anyway, you know Bill, probably better than I do right now. Little pointy demon guy, so you can't really kill him the normal human ways.

[That would have made things so much easier!]

He wanted into Ford's noggin for...something. So, me and him tricked Bill and switched places, so he actually made that deal with me. And...uh. That's where it gets kinda complicated. We had this memory gun...thing? Don't ask me how it works, but basically I took a bullet for the team and had my whole memory erased, and took Bill down with me. 'Cause he was in my head, 'cause he thought I was Ford.

Hmm.

[That's exactly the kind of over complicated explanation he'd have to give to someone about half the stuff that happened at home. He's happy to just draw a line under it all being messy.]

I think I saw video of him trying to fight your great niece and nephew, and just getting nailed in the eye repeatedly by them.

[It was a flood. And it was pretty funny (Sorry Bill).]

I don't really-- look, me and Bill are really close but it's hard for me to blame anyone for not wanting to have their family killed by a triangle with a god complex. But what's going on with you two here? He said you're taking everyone he cares about?

[A pause, then, slightly cooler:]

Wait, are you sleeping with Betelgeuse already?

[Because he's seen the smoke signals on the horizon, but if that's already going down and he missed it then he'll be annoyed.]

What?! No! I mean, technically I owe the guy a date, but it's not like he's called to collect on it.

[Stan, who doesn't quite know exactly how connected Bill and Betelgeuse are, is caught off guard by the jump from point A to point B.]

Anyway here? Bill's just being a baby. We were gonna pull the trigger and have me actually remember what happened, but I backed out of it. You see, if I remember? He gets to come back to life. Ford said the guy's changed and I wanna believe him, but...look, even as Bill's friend, you've gotta know the guy's got conman written all over him, right?

[He's not really trying to be insulting. That's just how Bill comes off and Stan figures it's obvious to everyone who isn't a complete sucker.]

So I told him I wanted to see for myself if he was a decent guy now or not, and he didn't like that. After a few weeks he got sick of it and told me he tried to kill the kids. So...I was kinda pissed off and I told on him to Ford and made Ford just tell me what happened - with the memory gun stuff, it only really comes back from looking at photo or video of what happened. Basically, Ford's told me a story about it and Bill's still dead and has to actually graduate like he's supposed to.

[The whole thing is extremely complicated, and Stan seems annoyed by how complex it is, even as he tries to explain it.]

Ford thinks it's more about him thinking that Ford's gonna choose me over him and...eh, it checks out. I don't think that's all of it by a long shot, but it checks out. Now he's acting like I'm going around stealing all his friends on purpose and throwing fits about it. I mean, think about it - I didn't steal you, right? You got assigned to me!

Hmmmmmmm.

[Sus pi cious. Rhys tenses a little more when Stan describes Bill as being a baby about this.]

Yeah, Bill's a conman, but so is the Admiral-- and, y'know what, you know that probably better than any other warden I've talked too. But yeah, Bill's being a baby because he doesn't want his chances of existing again to all be on that guy, and when it comes to him, you're suddenly very trust the system about making sure he graduates like he's supposed to.

[Rhys leans back in his seat, gaze flicking to the side, obviously annoyed.]

Y'know your brother was an inmate here too. If someone had shown up and held the exact kind of power you have here over his head - then used him being mad about that fact to justify keeping that power? I bet that would have brought out the best in him too, right?

Edited 2020-06-03 13:12 (UTC)

[Stan bristles at being accused of complying with the system. How dare you!]

Look, it's not about that. What you're not getting is that I gave him a chance and he blew it! All he had to do was show me what Ford saw in him, and sell me on him actually being a changed triangle - whether or not the Admiral thinks so. And--

[Stan frowns. This part, he hesitates on. He hasn't admitted it to anyone yet, not even to Ford, and part of him was kind of hoping it would have just gone away if he buried it deep enough.]

...He's an idiot. He doesn't know how close he was, or he never would've done it.

[Stan had been mulling it over mere moments before Bill told him he tried to kill the kids.]

He figured that if he told me that much, I'd run off to Ford and demand he give me back my memories - and thus Bill wins and gets back his life, and pretty much hasn't changed at all. I don't care about what the Admiral thinks - I care that he's trying to play me and my family like fiddles. He can work with us or he can work with the Admiral, and he's the one who decided he doesn't wanna work with me here.

You can't see what Ford's seen in him because you only showed up yesterday, while the rest of us have been here for years. Of course you're not going to be able to tell how much he's changed. Maybe he blew it, but you were running a rigged game.

[Rhys sits back, folding his arms, looking at Stan narrowly.]

If he'd gone to you playing the nice guy and trying to be someone he wasn't, you would have smelled a fake. Instead he told you the worst thing you could possibly know about him and of course you decided to burn his bridge outta here. You're just-- one more guy keeping him stuck here because he can't guess what your vague standards for having changed enough are.

He didn't have to play the nice guy! He just had to keep doing what he was doing, and then he decided to play me instead!

[Stan just groans, and pinches the bridge of his nose.]

He was doing the right thing! He was looking out for Ford, and he reached out and got me involved when he needed to! I was starting to really buy it. And it wasn't like a...y'know, "I'm trusting you with this thing I did" thing. He baited me with it, and he went behind Ford's back to do it! Absolutely nothing about that tells me he won't just turn around and off everyone if I give him his life back.

I'm not the Admiral. The bar is literally so low it's lying on the ground. All he has to do is try and if he can't do that much then I can't trust him to be alive. And me and Ford, we've been pretty up front about that the whole time.

[On the upside, he's still talking about it in present tense. Bill apparently hasn't completely blown his chances.]

He's been doing that for months without having anything on the line, then you show up and tell him you want proof that he's changed-- what's he supposed to do?

[Rhys is kind of sharp, still, watching Stan closely.]

What do you want, evidence that he's changed and wouldn't do anything that could hurt your brother? [Rhys lifts a finger.] Or evidence that he's figured out how to not overthink all of his interactions with everyone and try to pull peoples strings? [Lifts a second finger, on the opposite hand.] Because there is a big difference between those two things, and no one on this ship is kidding themselves that he's got them both down.

[Spreading those two fingers really far apart, before dropping his hands.]

He was supposed to just let me get to know him while I didn't know anything about him, while I could be mostly unbiased about it. It wasn't perfect - I still knew we'd erased him outta my brain for a reason, even if I didn't know what that reason was - but I was at least giving him a chance to do it with a mostly clean slate. As for what I want...

[He thinks hard about t, because he's not an idiot. Rhys is Bill's friend, so if he can help him out at all, he probably will. He's not going to trust that this will stay between them.]

...Mostly both. Obviously he's gonna still overthink - everyone does that. But I don't want him pulling strings and I don't want him hurting anyone, especially Ford. You know, basic decent person stuff.

[It shouldn't be that hard, come on.]

[Rhys throws up some finger quotes for what he's about to say:]

"I just want to get to know you while casually holding your life and the future of the guy you're obsessed with in my sweaty old man hands."

[He drops the finger quotes, levelling with Stan:]

Dude, you can't have that. You can't ask someone to be themselves, and to show you the best side of themselves, while at the same time holding an axe over their head. Especially not here.

[Rhys is quiet for a minute, at that last comment, then, finally:]

He's not a person, Stan. He's an ancient alien intelligence trying to unlearn millennia of this shit, and cram himself into human standards for good and bad. I don't know what graduation is going to look like for him, and I don't know if-- acting like a basic decent person, for him, isn't just going to be finding which strings to pull to make sense to us.

[He pulls the Margarita towards him, glancing down into it.]

But I know that he'd do anything for Ford, even stuff that he should probably be stepping back and letting Ford do for himself. You seriously do not know how far the guy's come.

[Stan glares and crosses his arms.]

If you want me to feel sorry for the guy and give him his life back, you can forget it! It's my call, and until I feel like he's not gonna turn around and use that to literally murder everyone I love he's not getting a free pass from me, and I'm not gonna let you sit there and tell me that's unreasonable!

[Sure, the means aren't the most ethical, but it's the best Stan has for now. He's particularly annoyed because they've actually tried to give Bill the fairest shot possible.]

They're all I've got and they're the only thing I care about. I'm not sacrificing their safety for Bill. It's not happening. Either he convinces me he's changed for the better or he graduates the old fashioned way, end of story.

Edited 2020-06-03 16:15 (UTC)

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