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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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