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therushingsky
"Heyyyy, you've reached the head office of the Atlas Corporation, leave a message and your number, and one of our people will get back to you."
therushingsky"Heyyyy, you've reached the head office of the Atlas Corporation, leave a message and your number, and one of our people will get back to you."
2/2
Date: 2019-01-18 02:41 am (UTC)I had a weird, weird conversation with Hux about this Fives stuff, months ago. Ultimately as shitty as it is, Fives is doing the same thing as Kylo, returning to his own time, trying to save people. Okay.
And maybe it's because you're a general or whatever. And you are doing your research, and somewhere in that you get away from just focusing on the people you're going to save, and it becomes like--
Weighing up what's worth burning so you get the ending you want the most.
And everyone in history who's ever done that has been able to justify it to themselves, but if you're telling yourself that you're on the side of the angels, and anyone who disagrees with you is complacent and apathetic--
I don't know what I can say to wake you up from believing that.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 03:34 am (UTC)And there are no angels. I'm a monster. I've known that for centuries. But I am a necessary monster. I've done everything I could do for my world, and I died for it, and now that - that certain cycles and powers are broken - if I went back, I would only do more damage than the fight was worth. I wanted to be done, Rhys, I cannot. Express. How much I wanted to die. How angry I was at the Admiral for telling me I couldn't, that I had to keep going, keep fighting, do something new. But Fives told me about his little brothers, and I thought, alright. That would be worth living for, lurching along for, learning to do something besides war for. So I care first about those children, who were made to be slaves and told to be proud of dying for the people content to accept the convenience of not fighting their own battles at the behest of another soul-sucking black hole of a tyrant playing every side. And I do believe I'll make a better galaxy than he does, but I haven't lost focus. I know exactly who I'm saving first, and who I'm willing to burn.
Does that make me justified? Hardly. It's not about justice, there is no justice, the millions I've killed never agreed to die for a chance at a better world, and I had no right to decide for them. Justice would never have allowed my world to exist in the first place. I can't...achieve justice, I can't imagine what it would look like. But I care about the future, and I can affect the future. And I've chosen the clones' future to fight for now because they get me in the few raw places I am weak, and because no one else ever would.
[He drags a hand down his face.]
You think I'm dismissive of everyone who disagrees just because I'm angry at you. Complacent isn't the same as apathetic. Complacent is the natural human state. People learn to bear what they must. People can be very good and not willing to push for change. If the system is designed insidiously enough, people can be completely right, that rocking the boat will cause bloodshed and suffering and only catastrophic destruction could succeed in truly changing things. But when the ship is being steered by a colder monster into pack-ice to starve everyone for generation after generation, the better to suck the marrow from their bones - then yes. I am going to call down catastrophe. I will burn the rigging and learn to swim. As carefully as I can, but I will fucking do it.
You can't wake me up, Rhys, because I am skullfucking awake. I am aware of the costs. I have suffered more than you can imagine, more than I could have imagined before it happened, for the chance to wake other people up to the course our world was on, to the truth that it didn't have to be what it was. I don't think less of you for being wary of catastrophe. But I do think less of you for being so proud of your certainty that everyone in history in every circumstance willing to burn something rotten to the ground is equally deluded, and every horror on every world is equally balanced and - ennobled and made worthwhile by the proud struggles underneath it, and so no one should ever try.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 04:19 am (UTC)Look, I get Fives's motivations. I get your motivations, but it is exhausting trying to convince you that I'm--
I'm not psychic, man.
When you argue, ferverntly, that the only reasons that I object to you erasing millions of people's lives is because I'm obscene, Because I can't be bothered to do anything about it, because I'm selfish and limited, because I think it's fine to deliberately allow generations of torture to continue, and because I'm too pleased with my own noble abstention to help--
How am I supposed to magically get from that, that you understand for one second that what you're doing isn't the moral absolute here?
On the other hand, you must have some mad psychic skills, because you got from "Everyone who does this shit has a justification for their actions." Straight to: "Everyone who has ever done this shit has had a delusional justification and all of them have committed crimes of exactly equal magnitude and I'm so smug that I know all about it, and what's more, every horrible world is justified because suffering is noble!"
Without me ever actually saying that.
Ultimately, you're a universe ending whatever, and I'm basically one of the nobodies who'd just end up erased if this ever happened in my world. So I can't stop myself from like-- not wanting you to do that. And I can't stop myself from thinking it's wrong, and that there are better ways of doing this than just deleting them all.
But whatever. I have my own deal. You save the kids, I'll save the rest.
And all that other stuff? Yeah, you wanna argue with someone about that, you can just build a straw man in your bedroom and put whatever words you want into it's mouth.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 04:42 am (UTC)You want me to wake up because I've lost focus, and everyone in history who's been in my place - which you know so much about - is even relevant, but you're not at all implying that it's the same?
I wish my universe never existed, not as it did for a good four hundred years before my birth. I would happily be erased. And I didn't have a bad life, until I made the first real moves to unhinge the Calendar in earnest. But I cannot remember the first time I saw someone publicly tortured to death. And when I was a kid I thought it was loud, and boring. And normal. That's just what happens. They're just heretics. Everyone knew that.
No exaggerations, no inferences. You said even garbage universes deserve to exist. And I think you're just wrong. Mine didn't, and neither did I, and neither did anyone else who watched and was warped by watching, forcing themselves to accept and believe it was normal and safe and good. And the ones who couldn't do it ended up on the table themselves.
Universes deserve nothing. Only people deserve anything, and we can't always give it to them. Maybe your anarchy isn't as impossible to improve without ripping up the foundations as the Heptarchate's ubiquitous and terrible control. That seems plausible to me. But you don't get to speak for all worlds. And when you put your own single wish to live against the possible infinity of warped future lives, it strikes me as - natural, understandable, but selfish.
[And because he is something very close to psychic, "I'll save the rest" is enough for him to cock his head -]
When you make your deal, make sure to leave Palpatine out, please. Or he'll poison whatever refugee utopia you think you can make work just as well as he did the galaxy the first time around.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 05:27 am (UTC)[He doesn't say this with any malice though, if anything he just sounds tired.]
I think that must be like-- I don't want to say a species thing, but. An us thing. Like, I get that you're not going to see it like that.
And your psychic powers are super busted, dude. I'm not going to tell you all the ways you're wrong, because I don't want you to feel bad, but you're way off.
[Pause]
Could I grab you in person for five minutes.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 05:40 am (UTC)[Sharply, wistfully wry. But he's being selfish over the clones. He wants them for him, he always wanted children, he's going to have a million and all he has to do is steal them and rewrite history.]
They aren't - exactly -
[He shakes his head.]
Nevermind. Sure. Where?
[He mostly figures Rhys is finally going to punch him after all, but whatever. Sure. Fine.]
no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-18 05:57 am (UTC)See you soon, Rhys.
[It's a few minutes before he knocks.]
Spam
Date: 2019-01-18 06:13 am (UTC)Hey.
[He gives Jedao a whole ten seconds to get used to that, before Rhys takes a step forward and just-- wraps one arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug.]
I'm sorry for shouting at you.
Spam
Date: 2019-01-18 06:32 am (UTC)When the hug comes, he's still for a moment of pure surprise, then melts into it, tucks his face into the crook of Rhys's neck, arms coming up to cling back tightly. He takes slow, deep breaths as he holds on, not quite letting himself shudder.]
I'm sorry for...calling you things.
[Even if he hadn't meant Rhys specifically, or Rhys as a person, with all of them - well, all the more reason to apologize.]
Spam
Date: 2019-01-18 12:31 pm (UTC)But whatever. Better egoism than apathy, right?]
I'm sorry your home world jacked you up so bad.
[Mumbled into Jedao's shoulder.]
You're not a monster, man.
[oh god damn it, is he crying? He's such a wuss. The only redeeming fact is that Jedao can't see.]
Spam
Date: 2019-01-18 05:59 pm (UTC)Just a fucking psycho then?
The word doesn't matter. I'm not....good. No one has to be delicate about it.
Spam
Date: 2019-01-20 12:12 am (UTC)[Ugh, how to say this in a way that won't start them both fighting again?]
It's like, that lever thing, right? You're on a train, and the train's going to crash, unless you pull the lever to put it onto a different track. But if you pull the lever, it's going to run some people down. And-- there isn't a right answer. Like, that's the point. Then, the second part of the question is: What if someone you love is on the train?
[All of this is muttered into Jedao's shoulder.]
Might be Psycho, but it's a really normal kind of psycho. Especially when it's kids.
Re: Spam
Date: 2019-01-20 12:21 am (UTC)You have to kill the guy laying the train tracks, obviously.
[Which is easier to say than I put everyone I loved on the train just to get to the switch.]
If there's no right answer, you have to change the question.
Spam
Date: 2019-01-20 12:41 am (UTC)[Because everyone would pull the switch if they loved the people on the trolley.]
Just, regular bad like the rest of us.
Spam
Date: 2019-01-20 02:23 am (UTC)He goes a little bit stiff, even as his hands clutch fistfuls of Rhys's clothes. It sounds awful and narcissistic, I'm not like the rest of you. But before Fives, he was so, so alone.]
I don't understand why you're so invested in this word.
Spam
Date: 2019-01-23 01:17 am (UTC)Feels very-- locked in, a word like that.
[He feels Jedao tense, and lifts a hand to rub in slow, reassuring circles on the other man's back, trying to soothe away some ember of his distress.]
Spam
Date: 2019-01-25 03:22 am (UTC)Why?
Spam
Date: 2019-02-03 03:27 am (UTC)You made a decision, and you did something shitty and difficult, and you're still hurting because of it. That's some real people shit. You just had to do it on a really scary, enormous scale.
Re: Spam
Date: 2019-02-04 06:51 am (UTC)[Truculent mumbling more than real argument.]
People are animals too. We have natures. Some parts of people are terrible.