maskormenacelogs | May Swear In

Entry tags:

May Swear In

WHO: Everyone!
WHERE: Nonah's Fairgrounds
WHEN: May 12th
WHAT: May Swear In
WARNINGS: None expected; please warn in threads if necessary

Spring is finally beginning to fade into summer with weather starting to warm, and the trees and flowers beginning to blossom into their peak, and what better way to celebrate the welcome change in weather than with a FAIR?

The fairgrounds have been transformed overnight with a swath of rides and attractions filling the field from one edge to the other. There is, of course, a booth for imPort registration that's positioned near the entrance of the fair. Even so, imPorts with an interest in registering may have to ask a fair worker for directions. The signage on the registration booth is, for some reason, faded and easy to miss among the bright and bold banners and lights drawing attendees to the different game booths that line the paths further into the grounds. Must have just been poor planning on someone's part!

Further into the park there are a wide array of the standard carnival games. Games include from balloon pops where you can win your very own "signed" copy of imPort photographs, but does anyone actually remember signing any photos…? There's also a ring toss that no one can seem to win, but the prizes include items like a water bottle discarded by Tony Stark, or dried flowers from one of Persephone's actual vines! Or maybe you'd like to prove your sharpshooter skills by knocking milk bottles down with a pellet gun? Prizes range from cheap, poorly painted figures of popular imPorts, to a handful of detailed and poseable figurines of both imPorts and famous media characters for the very best shooters.

Past the games are the many, many different food booths. You can chow down on Fried Stuff On Sticks, offering fare ranging from deep fried cheesecake on a stick to deep fried corndogs on a stick to a variety of tempura on sticks. (It counts!!) Or perhaps you prefer a healthier roasted meat? There's no shortage of options for that: roast turkey, roast beef, roast bison, roast alligator? Strangely few, if any, of these booths offer any vegetable options, but intrepid imPorts can find a booths offering superfood smoothies, quinoa bowls, or fruit parfaits tucked away at the very end of the food court.

And don't forget the main attraction (at least, the attraction Galla is most pleased with): CAPTURE THE FLAG. A parcel of land roughly the size of two side-by-side American football fields has been fenced off, and a brightly colored banner that looks like it manifested directly from the 90s is hung across the entrance, inviting all to enjoy! Inside, there is a scattering of trees to provide some natural cover in addition to man-made structures like sections of wall, pieces of large construction pipe to crawl through or hide in, and, of course, the different flag bases:

Yes, those are inflatable dinosaur heads inside an inflatable Jurassic Adventure. The flags are located inside of the temple the top of the "mountain" which, conveniently, has a rock climbing facade just in case climbing to the top of an inflatable hill is too difficult for some players.

Capture the Flag games are held hourly, and imPorts can choose to compete against each other, against natives, or even to team up with local native attendees! When competing against or with natives, imPorts are asked to refrain from flight, mind-reading, or teleportation, but it isn't a rule being strictly enforced. In fact, apart from those requests, imPorts are encouraged to use their powers as much as they like! There are natives lined up around the perimeter to watch the games play out, so why not give them a show to remember?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ It's easy enough to choose a place. All fairgrounds come with their share of barns, of exhibition halls, of sprawling little two- and three-story buildings for market vendors and grade school art shows — the kinds of things communities love, but that imPorts could rarely be paid to notice. It helps that even the ones that are used have unused halls — a phantom slip of a small shield through a locked door, and opening the handle from the other side makes getting in a breeze.

It's through, and up, to a wide-windowed cavernous hall, unlit save for the natural sunlight; the whole west side of the fairgrounds stretch out below in crowded panorama. (She would have preferred the roof, but too many imPorts can for that to be anything like private.

As she leads the way, she doesn't press for conversation, her thoughts instead turning inward, dissecting what little she's gotten from Jaime thus far, and what even less she's gotten from the Negotiator himself. If Jaime says they have a truce, then they've already spoken in this world; the date the Negotiator gave for his City memory doesn't make sense for the timeline she remembers. Did he leave and come back, and escape her notice? Perhaps that was more likely than making up a date and hoping for the best — but who knew, just yet?

Finally alone, but not any more ready for the conversation ahead, Ruka sighs, sitting down on one of the shelf-like window ledges, back against the glass. ]

Did that guy tell you anything about the other you, in the City? [ A pause. It's even less likely, but— ] —Has anyone else?

...a little bit.

[ It's Jaime's turn to feel uncomfortable, though it's more on Ruka's behalf than it is on his own. Hearing about his own death has become a startlingly normal occurrence, and one that bothers him less and less. They're versions of him, not him, and he's fairly certain most versions of him find an early death. They court danger too often for that not to be the case.

It's different when he's looking someone for which that was their friend square in the eye. It's not so remote then, not like when he was talking about it with the Negotiator who couldn't care less about Jaime's death. ]

I've mostly only heard about the other me from you and the Negotiator, but I heard the most from him. He told me that the last version of me had a truce with him, which we started back up again. He also told me that I died, and that he didn't do it.

And that after I died, Khaji, um, decided to take the reins. Punish him for it.

[ She remains composed as he says it, the thing she had wanted him never to know — I died — but her hands ball and tighten at the rejection of blame. Of course he would say that. Does she believe it? Not any more than she did back then, uncertain and hurt and wanting to believe in Khaji Da and wanting to believe in justice as more than a veil worn by revenge.

But that version of Khaji Da doesn't exist in this world any more, and neither does that Jaime. The relationship those two had, the nuances of it — that was unique to them, just as the subtleties of this Jaime and his scarab are unique to them, standing before her.

Knowledge changes things. And even if Khaji Da had made the wrong conclusion, there's no one else who can explain what happened. ]

... It's close to the truth, [ said quiet, her attention still not on Jaime's face, ] but it's... it's not the reality of it. It wouldn't have gone on for as long as it did if that's all it was.

I'll tell you what happened, but, I never got all the details, in the end. I don't know if Jaime got them all, either. We didn't talk about it, afterwards. [ Her lips flicker in a smile, struggling for traction. ] Just because I knew he was the Blue Beetle doesn't mean Jaime ever really talked about what it meant, with me. That's not the kind of friends we were.

... Anyway. It's... it's not that he died. He didn't, completely. [ She takes a breath, deep and audible, and after that pause, she finally finds her footing, speaking deliberately. ] Two civilians were in a public square when they were shot in unidentified gunfire. One was a regular person; the other was Jaime. She died; he didn't. ... He was shot in the head. He was hospitalized.

... The scarab fixed everything he could. Kept his organs from shutting down while he repaired the tissue, but when it was all said and done, his body was perfectly fine, but it wasn't enough. [ She pauses. ] When we talked about it, Khaji Da said that he couldn't detect any independent brain activity. He was alive, but the part that made him Jaime was gone.

[ The reality of it was much worse, because they were holding onto hope. ]

[ Jaime nods along, unable to help himself from wondering at the that's not the kind of friends we were. Ruka had been terribly young in the City, and Jaime must have been a good few years older. Is that why? Or was it the same thing Jaime can't help but do with everyone, push aside whatever he's feeling because it's too difficult to talk about, reject what's going on until directly confronted by it? Maybe that's why she called him during the bomb. Because she saw what he had done and knew he wasn't going to call anyone else, knew him better than he knows her.

Or maybe it's for some different reason. That wasn't him. That was a different guy, that Jaime, and there's no way of ever knowing how alike or how dissimilar they really are.

And then, of course, is the question of Khaji riding Jaime's corpse around. He takes a deep breath, slightly unnerved, but not as much as he should be. None of what he's feeling is as much as it should be, even to an empath; the emotions that should accompany this, the shock and horror and disgust, are mostly absent, replaced by a sense of confusion, urgency, concern. ]

I... knew it had to be something like that, with Khaji taking over. Otherwise he would have had to find a new host. [ Jaime's quiet for a moment, turning it over in his head. ]

But I - but that version of me came back afterwards, right? Which means that either a miracle happened or something happened to Khaji Da if the City operates the same way that this place does.

[ He picks it up faster than she'd have liked. She tries to keep herself steady, but gripping her hands together and locking her elbows doesn't quite stay the trembles of her arms, the guilt and the grief that have stayed, buried and vital, like bulbs waiting for the right spring rain before blooming once more.

She swallows, but she nods. ]

Yeah. It worked differently there. We didn't have nanites, or continuum, or any of that. When an imPort really died, the body was exPorted, basically. They usually imPorted back in a day or two later, but they still... left. ... If he'd let the body die, then Jaime and Khaji Da both would have exPorted, even if he did find a new host. More likely than not, anyway.

It was a risk he wasn't ready to take. He wanted answers, and... he wanted to do right by Jaime, too. [ She swallows again, but it's harder this time, and she turns her head so he won't see how rapidly her good eye blinks back the beginnings of wetness. Maybe she doesn't need to defend what Khaji Da had done, and late amends will do nothing, but the words keep coming. ] He kept the Blue Beetle active. He kept up with all the things that mattered to Jaime, even if it was... totally pointless in finding out what happened. He still helped people, and kept up with Jaime's friends, and... I mean, he even told me what was going on without me having to force it, and, like, plotted out optimized driving routes so I could get my driving hours in just because it's something Jaime would have done. He just—

[ —it's a delirious, useless little tangent, and even if it's urgency she feels from Jaime now and not revulsion, not disgust for what may have happened to that alternate self, she remembers how other imPorts had reacted. (Remembers who it is that told Jaime this happened in the first place.) (Remembers how she used this fear, when—) ]

—wanted to do the right thing. He must have been afraid of dying, too.

... but... no, it wasn't a miracle. The only way Jaime could come back, or go home, was if he died.

[ (Would he have forgiven her? There's no way to know for sure.) (Nothing good will come of saying it.) ]

It wasn't a risk he would have ever taken. And everyone else who knew, they just... I don't know. But none of them would do anything, either.

[ (Nothing good. But she's always known she would have to.) ]

... So... I did.

[ Jaime is comfortable with the idea of his own death. That's been made abundantly clear throughout this conversation, through the remove with which he's able to see it, less horrified than he ought to be at the idea of Khaji steering his corpse around, at being dead in the first place, at having others know him as dead. But this - this gets to him. He swallows, paling a little as he imagines Khaji in that awful position, wonders at what his friend must have been thinking, at not getting even the possibility of finding a new host or detaching himself from Jaime altogether as he should, as Jaime's always known that Khaji eventually would.

His own death, he can accept. And he can accept worlds in which Khaji never awakened as well, knowing how poorly things could have gone. But to have someone kill Khaji while he's still cognizant, still innocent? That puts a bolt of nausea through his gut. ]

So you killed... Khaji asked you to kill him? He never even tried to detach himself from me?

[ The air freezes in her lungs, and then burns, and then falls to ash; frustration, disbelief, a heaviness that isn't quite anger but maybe it might as well be seize and fill her organs, and for a moment, she says nothing. Her hands release their hold on one another, and instead grip the ledge of the window. She propels herself to her feet; her sandals don't have weight enough to make an impressive sound, but there's an echo to it in the empty hall. It's only a few steps — not towards Jaime, but not really away, either.

Always assuming the best of her. It reminds her of the first time they met, in that jailer's cafeteria, and without knowing her he'd tried to find some way to bend reality to absolve her of guilt. Of blame. And maybe he'd been right, that time, but he isn't now.

Maybe it is anger. Maybe it isn't. ]

Nobody ever asks for my help. [ Nobody ever wants it. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe there's too many reasons to count. Her hands shake, balled into fists at her sides. As usual, they're gloved; as always, it's that single ever-familiar shade of red. Maybe there's a reason for that.

It hurts to speak, but sometimes it's easier when it's painful. ] A city full of heroes, and you think he would have asked me? I was fourteen. No. He never tried. He never asked. Once he decided it was the Negotiator's fault, he imprisoned him. The cage would only hold him if Khaji stayed close enough to power it — the scarab chained himself to his grief, and his anger, and his regret, and he was never going to let go of any of it. He wanted to do the right thing, but it was all wrong.

[ She pivots, and for the first time looks Jaime in the eye — one the same age as her, but one who never knew the City, and how much harder and darker and more painful it was there, who had not seen how much she'd changed in only three years, who could never truly understand how much Jaime had meant to her, and how much she'd wished there was any other way, and how much it still hurts now even though her friend had come back, even though everything had worked out the way she wanted, and how regret is self-feeding and self-defeating when she wouldn't take it back even if she could — and maybe, just maybe, he'll finally see the real her. ]

So, yes, I killed Khaji Da.

[ Jaime doesn't move, neither to step away from her, nor to step towards her. He's spent so much time trying to understand her, trying to see things from her perspective, trying to understand what exactly the City was like and how it affected people, but now he's just trying to understand what the heck happened. It's easy to remove himself from the picture when discussing his own mortality, even that of his alternate selves, but Khaji... the thought of him going through undue suffering pains him. He's already suffered so much in what is, essentially, an incredibly short life. Khaji takes care of Jaime, but Jaime takes care of Khaji too. The thought of Jaime dying and leaving Khaji to rot in his own grief, to be taken out by another is unthinkable.

He's supposed to die, and Khaji's supposed to choose the next Blue Beetle. That's how it works. ]

Khaji doesn't care about people's ages, [ Jaime says, quietly. ] He doesn't get it. He's not - he's not like us.

[ Sometimes, Jaime thinks Khaji still doesn't quite grasp that Jaime will die one day, and that he will be on his own. He's tried to talk to him about it before, the idea that one day, no matter what Khaji does, he will die. If his is not a violent death, he will just get old.

But Khaji is ancient. He's existed since before the pyramids were built. The idea of a violent death he can prevent is something he can grasp, but mortal lives remain beyond him. If Khaji did not ask Ruka for help, it's because he didn't think her capable, or he didn't want it.

His Khaji, anyway. How different could they be? ]

Did you kill him to free the Negotiator, or - or did you kill him because you wanted your friend back?

[ Khaji doesn't care bout that, but that kind of mollification doesn't work. She shakes her head, a slight gesture, the force of her feelings still restrained in her trembling arms. ]

I know that. Maybe he wouldn't on his own, but Jaime did. Because of that, neither of them would have wanted me to—

[ To hurt, to suffer, to live with the guilt of any of it, to carry any more hurt on her shoulders and in her heart, to deal with any of it alone. She doesn't say any of it. Instead she takes another gulp of too-cold air, wishes she had her eye or her rings or her bracelet to center on, and shakes her head. Anger without heat, and remorse without regret. Her arms cross; how she wishes she could rip this whole day to pieces so neither of them would have to remember this.

If she can't destroy it, she can bury it. Right? She shouldn't have said anything at all; it hurts too much to speak. She shouldn't speak any more to it.

Her attention drifts to the window, and the bright spring day outside, the festive atmosphere so far removed from them it feels like looking at a photograph of a foreign landscape. ]

... Of course I wanted to see my friend again. I'm not stupid enough to deny that. That doesn't mean it's why. I'd already lost everyone else, after all.

[ It would take honesty — true, full, sincere — to buy forgiveness. The price only seems to climb with every passing moment. And if she can't pay it, she'll certainly lose what little friendship this Jaime is willing to ascribe her. ]

What's one more?

[ Even then, Ruka lost everything? Jaime had thought - hoped - that her life in the City had some joys in it, that her current bitterness is because of losing everything in the City, not everything that came before that. To feel that way at the age of fourteen...

It's not unheard of. Not in the least. Jaime's seen it, again and again. But even now, he wishes that it hadn't been an experience Ruka had gone through, simply piling on misery after misery that seems to be her life.

He stares down at his lap and then, absently, puts one hand on his own shoulder, creeping towards his spine. Khaji flashes and pulses, as though to greet him or to reassure him. Jaime's not sure which one it is. ]

He was right. It shouldn't have been you.

[ Jaime would have never wanted that out of a child. Slowly, as though trying to measure his words, he says, ] I know that that version of me and this one - we're not the same person. You don't need me to tell you that. But I think we were similar enough to know what had to be done. I've... had talks, with people. Contingency plans. They know that they need to kill me if I ever lose control, if I'm ever a danger to anyone else.

[ He'd had that first conversation four years ago. It had been a terrible thing to put on these people, to put on people who ostensibly love him, but he demanded it of them anyway. The cost was too great.

But he would have never put it on Gon, or Killua, or Ken, or even Tara. That means his previous self would have never put it on Ruka either. ]

Why was it you? Why didn't anyone else step up to the plate?

Edited 2018-06-18 00:40 (UTC)

[ The slow way he speaks, working through it more carefully, more openly — it's enough that she crosses her arms tighter, but locks her knees in place, keeping her feet rooted to the ground. She wasn't lying when she said she and the earlier Jaime never talked about that sort of thing — in truth, she had no idea if he'd considered a possibility like that, or made contingencies like the boy here confesses. She doesn't know.

But the possibility exists, doesn't it?

He asks, and she can only shake her head, sighing — arms uncrossing for one gloved hand to comb through her hair, pushing fringe back from where it sticks to her face. ]

I couldn't tell you. I mean, not. Specifics. What other people thought, what they... tried, or didn't. It... wasn't like here.

[ Her lips purse for a moment, but for all that she thinks and thinks and overthinks everything she says, for all that she tries to bind herself up and hold herself back to keep her fragile little piecemeal self from breaking, action comes easier sometimes.

This time, it's approaching Jaime, and sitting down beside him. It's staring at her knees, and the floor, and her hands, fingers plucking at the tips of her gloves, edging them loose, one by one. ]

Jaime arrived with the first group of imPorts — I arrived four months later. I don't know what sort of things happened in that time, but... it must have been very different, than the kind of experience you had. He... it was an open secret. [ One glove pulls free. She works on the other. ] The first time I met the Blue Beetle, he told me his name, and took off his mask. I didn't even realize it was the kind of thing that heroes kept secret. Most of them didn't.

[ A tangent. She shakes her head, focuses on her breath, and presses on. ]

Anyway... I don't know all the people he knew, or all the friends he made. It always seemed like he had a bunch — other heroes his age, and people from his own world, or people he went to school with, and... all of that. But... as the years went by, I could see the same hurt in his face that I felt in my heart. He was losing people, too, over and over. His friends would come back strangers, or his mentors wouldn't know him, or they would leave and come back, remembering, over and over again. It wasn't something he really talked about to me, but... it's not like I couldn't see it.

... We were some of the only people who stuck around the whole time. Us and like, a couple of shitty old white dudes. [ She glances at Jaime, rolling her eye a little. The more things change, right? ] So... even if he'd tried to make plans like that with his people, they might have already been gone.

When it happened, I remember most of them were adults. Real adults, not like us, now. And to them, Jaime was still just a kid too, so... I don't know. Maybe they were afraid it wouldn't work, or didn't want to hurt Khaji Da if that was the only way about it. Or, maybe he didn't tell as many people as I thought, that Jaime was gone in the first place. I don't know. I mean, he told me, so I thought that meant everyone else would know, too. And Abby had to know, since she came back after Khaji Da took over, but I don't know anybody else. I can't really go back and ask.

[ Bare of the gloves, her hands flex in the chill of the building's cooler air. Intention wavers, and they settle on the nest of fabric. ]

It was... two months, I think. Between when it happened, and when it ended. Khaji had the Negotiator imprisoned for that whole second month. I know people tried intervening there. Maybe they tried, and didn't succeed. But after so long... I knew that if I didn't do something, nobody else was going to. They were always kind of useless when it mattered.

... He always did so much for me. I... I just wanted to help him, for once. Even if it meant I never saw him again.

[ Jaime doesn't look at Ruka as she sits down. He's not sure if that's to take some of the pressure off of her while she unwinds her speech, going down the path of a memory that nobody would care to relive, let alone someone who lived through it when she was fourteen, or if it's so he can keep it together long enough to puzzle his way through this, figure out how to deal with how something can feel so remote and so personal at the same time. It's easy to say that what another version of him did doesn't affect him. It's harder to believe it when the ramifications of his past self's actions are in front of him, in the form of his most terrible enemy and -

Well. And someone he'd really like to be his friend. ]

Yeah, [ he admits. ] The people I made those plans with are gone now too.

[ But he's confident that he doesn't have to say it for people to take him down. Batman will figure out a way. Green Lantern would probably relish the opportunity as much as his past self did. And... he wouldn't wish that fate on Laura, but he knows she could kill him with a word if she needed to.

It's also not a surprise to hear that Ruka feels indebted to the past Jaime, in some way. It makes sense, considering what she's said to him, the way she's tried to bolster his spirits in the past. She's doing him a kindness but she's acting on a memory as well, the same as he's doing with Shinji right now.

The two of them are birds of a feather that way, he supposes; masochists, unable to step away for the good of themselves or others. It worked out for him and Shinji. He hopes it will work out for the two of them as well. ]

...I'm sure it's what he would have wanted. Not the how, but the what. [ He pauses, then finally, he looks at her. ]

You've already told me more than enough. But there's just one thing I don't understand. How? Khaji Da's strong. Stronger than me. He's... he's not easy to take down.

[ The question in his gaze isn't necessarily about her power, but about the cost. Is that how she lost her eye? How she gained any of her scars? Nobody can walk away from something like that physically unscathed. ]

[ Her lips quirk for a smile, and her laugh is a puff of exhale, voiceless. She threads her fingers together, the smallest knuckles aligning, and breaks them away again. ]

I know. ... But, I don't think there's anyone I couldn't kill, if I tried.

[ It doesn't sound like bragging. It doesn't sound like pride. It's a terrible realization she had a long time ago, and knowing that she would never want to doesn't erase the mental picture of it. It lingers in her mind like stains on glass, for a venom contained too long — remnants of a time when darkness always seemed to shift at the corner of her vision, when day would become night with memories consumed, when it was fear and paranoia and resentment always running through her poisoned veins. That sort of hatred doesn't inhabit her anymore, but damage remains.

One thumbnail scratches another. ]

If you want to be pedantic about it, I'm the one who ended his life, but I'm not the one who murdered him. It was my decision, but... I was afraid I wouldn't have the strength to do it. So I thought, who would have the strength to win against him, against someone that desperate to survive? Then, who would be the easiest to convince to do it?

It's a lot easier than you'd think, talking someone into doing it.

[ She doesn't need to look at Jaime to know his reactions, but she does anyway, a glance at the corner of her eye. ]

But don't get it confused, Jaime. I'm the one who made the decision. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't. If that guy hadn't succeeded, I would have done it myself.

That death is still on my hands, even if I used someone else's to do it.

[ For once, Jaime doesn't bother arguing. She's right. He doesn't think that she should bear guilt for doing what had to be done, what Jaime himself would have asked another to do, for something she did as a child, but it's aligned with his worldview. You're as responsible for what you did nothing to prevent or what you indirectly affected as you are for going in and intervening directly. This belief's brought him nothing but grief, but he abides by it nonetheless.

Maybe he'd lie if she didn't have empathy. He's not sure. All he knows is that if he tells her any variety of empty words, she'll know.

(He is still, abstractly, relieved that it wasn't her hands that did the deed.) ]

Good. I know it doesn't - I know you still feel responsible for it, but I'm glad you're not the one that did it. [ She was too young for that. Too young to ask for another to kill the empty shell of her friend too, but he'll take small mercies where he can. ]

...Do you regret it?

[ She can't say no, and she can't say yes; simple answers are pointless, because they're both true. But even if the feeling is abstract, his words expose relief well enough — reveal that sense of weight falling away — and just how predictable it is makes her mouth taste sour.

It's a sense so familiar, it's almost comforting. ]

I wish I'd done it sooner, [ she says instead, attention fixed on the far wall, ] instead of waiting so long. I don't think I expected anyone else to, even then.

... He never knew I had anything to do with it, and I know he would have never forgiven himself, if he had, but I wish I'd done it myself. Then we wouldn't have been able to pretend nothing happened, and I could tell you something that's actually useful.

Edited (shruggies) 2018-06-23 03:17 (UTC)

[ Jaime shakes his head. ] Thank you for telling me as much as you have.

[ He's not happy with what he's been told, but... it's good to know. It will help him understand where the Negotiator's coming from a little better and, perhaps more importantly, it will help him understand where Ruka's coming from as well. It's just hard to know what to say or how to say it, particularly when he doesn't know how someone can react to a thing like this.

Either way, Ruka hadn't had to tell him. She could have refused, or lied, or just verified Negotiator's story or do any number of things. That she's willing to share the truth means something. ]

What else would you want to be able to tell me, really?

[ He can't imagine that she'd glean a whole lot from a version of Jaime she directly killed either - he knows himself and while he has a great many skills, talking trauma like that out has never been one of them. ]

[ Thank you gets a quirk at the corner of her mouth, not for speaking and not for smiling, but not quite nothing, either. ]

More than I know how to explain, I think. How did it happen? Why? What made Khaji Da think it was the Negotiator, after that long? I mean, if he was jumping to conclusions, based on other things, he wouldn't have waited a month to do something about it, right? Even yours doesn't strike me as the patient type.

[ She looks down, once more, at her bare hands. She wonders if they really are trembling, or if it's only a trick of her watery vision. ]

I'd want to tell you if you could believe what the Negotiator told you. ... Whether that history has a chance of repeating.

For what it's worth, I think he's telling the truth this time. I don't think he would have mentioned it at all if he was the one responsible for it - even he'd know that that would be a stupid lie. Besides, I want to give him a second chance. He deserves a chance to make all this work.

[ He feels like he's responsible for the way Ruka looks right now, how difficult this has been for her - but he can't reach out to console her, can't tell her anything that will make her feel better, fold her into an embrace. It's not his place. Not when he can't tell her anything for sure.

But she shared a part of herself, and shared it willingly. He needs to do the same. It's only fair.

When he speaks, his voice is quiet but sure, masking the fact that his heart is hammering away in his chest, masking his own shame and regret, the fact that this is something he can't share with just anyone. ]

Bet you your Jaime left out a couple things, if his life went the same way as mine. We killed the Negotiator. I don't think this version of him knows it yet, though. [ He takes a shallow breath, swallows. ] So even if he did do it, that makes us even. It's time for us both to try to be... better.

[ She doesn't say anything to his assessment of the Negotiator's honesty; he's not asking her to agree with him, at least, so she can keep her suspicion and doubt to herself. I want to give him a second chance — she can't really stop him from trying. But Ruka doesn't believe what people say so easily, and between the two... maybe it's guilt that makes her want to believe the other Khaji was right, and maybe it's guilt that makes Jaime want to believe the Negotiator now, and as it is, neither of them would have much luck swaying the other. That's alright, she thinks; his Khaji Da will look after him, and she can... probably not accomplish much, in all honesty, but intentions remain. If she can prevent some damage, some repetition... then she has to. That's all there is to it.

Caught in thoughts like these, Ruka doesn't notice how long the silence hangs between them, but she feels the shift of feeling like a current in the air. It pulls her easily back into the present moment. He can speak as steady as he wants, as sure and (other-)self-effacing as he can get away with, but it's only the three of them here, and it's Jaime's heart that speaks the loudest; it doesn't hide how he feels. In a strange way, it makes the words themselves more unexpected — a confession she wouldn't have expected from Jaime, a confession she wouldn't have expected him to give to her, and, more than any of that, a confession she didn't have to wring out of him by force.

The fact they killed someone in the first place should be more of a shock than its confession. It should be. But even good people are full of darkness, and it's been a long time since Ruka has expected anything less than the worst.

Still. It's an honesty. And it's instinct to reply with something dismissive, something to make the confession seem smaller and easier to handle, but she can't bring herself to be that cruel. She waits, and she weighs, and considers what to say first. ]

... You don't want to go through it again. [ She speaks quieter, too; she shifts, turning to make it easier to look at Jaime now. She probably still looks a wreck, hitting the threshold of crying so many times but never quite starting, but there's nothing she can do about that now.

What's more important, in this moment? In the future? What matters more? ]

... But, if he doesn't know about it now... there's a chance he'll find out. If he jumps forward in time, in your original universe, or he encounters your memory of it, or... a hundred other ways you can't anticipate. If it happens... would he keep to a truce like this?

Will you be okay?

[ Jaime pauses to scrub at his face, get some of that strange emotional build-up out. He doesn't know what he's feeling anymore. He hadn't had to live through any of that - and poor Ruka had; she looks like she could use the kind of cry that she's clearly holding back as it is - but it's still strange to hear about and just as awful to contemplate what his life will bring now that the Negotiator's back in it, knowing that he died in the way that he did. ]

Yeah. Honestly, Ruka, I didn't ask you about him to grill you about anything. I asked you about him because I know I'm going to be okay. I'm not scared of him anymore.

[ What can the Negotiator do to him, really? Beyond outing him as the Blue Beetle, he has no power over him anymore, no access to his minions or to his technology, no way of controlling him and Khaji or controlling the people of this city. But he knows what the Negotiator's done in the past, and what he may do again. ]

But I am worried about what he'd do to the people around me. [ The people who are important to him - and in some odd way, Ruka's up there. ] That's where he'd take his anger out, not on me. I just needed to make sure that you knew.

[ And, as it turns out, she knew all of that and more. He shouldn't have expected anything less. ]

[ It's propriety alone that has her glancing elsewhere when he's so physically trying to erase the evidence of his turmoil — it's not like she can't feel him struggling with it, and if he spared himself a moment for thought, he'd know she felt it, too. It's a moment like this that she considers using that last resort — using her shield powers to isolate them from one another, a translucent barrier to keep his feelings in his own space, or to cut herself off from receiving them. But translucent is still visible, and for all that she wishes a barrier existed between them, to allow him the privacy of his own heart, she knows how most people would react to so blatant a wall.

She takes a breath, and wishes she could be steady enough for them both. ]

I know. ... [ I shouldn't have said anything, she thinks to say, but knows how that conversation would go — they don't need to have it. Instead, she falls quiet again, still trying to piece together something useful. ] ... but 'okay' isn't just, you know, being sure you'll win in a fight. Dying isn't even close to the worst thing that could happen, to people like us.

[ It's meant to mean imPorts on the whole. It doesn't. Her voice is too soft and the conversation too grave for it sound any broader than this room, this conversation.

You don't need to worry about me, she wants to say, but she'd mean it for so much more than the Negotiator, and they're both too raw and sensitive for her to hide it, or for him to miss it. She's not that important, but to remind him of that would be counter-productive. She has to keep her focus on what's important. ]

Anyway... I don't know what he's capable of, specifically, but I can handle anger. And, besides, most people can't get close enough to hurt me.

So, I'll be okay. I promise.

...If you say so.

[ Dying isn't the worst thing that could happen to him, not by a long shot, but Jaime already told her his worse fear. As long as he can keep the people around him safe, he can't worry about the kind of thing the Negotiator would want to do to him. How could he? Jaime can't even begin to imagine anything the Negotiator could do to him that would be worse than going after other people.

He's not afraid of dying and he's certainly not afraid of pain. He's just worried that Ruka's the exact same way. ]

Just do me a favour and if he starts being weird at you, or - weirder than normal, let me know? But otherwise, I'll trust you on that one.

[ He claps his hands against his knees, letting out a puff of air. ] We should probably get outta here, huh?

[ She considers enlightening him. That she doesn't know what normal is supposed to look like from the Negotiator, or weird, or the threshold between them; she gets the feeling that what he thinks she knows far exceeds what she actually does. It'd been there in his derision before, about what the other Jaime didn't tell her — but that meant he was assuming that guy did tell her things, didn't it?

She considers it, but they're both tired of talking, of this heavy atmosphere, and she thinks both of them need more than a couple minutes alone to figure out how to get their feelings back in order before they're ready to face the outside world again. The bubble is growing thin. ]

Wait.

[ The word is out before she thinks it, but the course of it is a complete form in her mind; it is a thought to give and unwrap, rather than construct in pieces. And so, with that quiet protest, a request without urgency, Ruka continues — laying her hand atop one of Jaime's wrists, to still him from standing.

Her gloveless fingers are cool to the touch. ]

Before you go. I just. ... You didn't have to warn me. Or... tell me anything else. You never have to, with me. You don't owe me anything like that. I know that. ... But you did anyway.

[ Her hand remains still, where it's left; she doesn't look at his face. ]

... So, I... want to say thank you. For trusting me with it. Not many people would.

[ She's right. He didn't need to tell her any of this. Part of it had only seemed fair, tit for tat, but that's not the only reason he told her - how could it be? There are so many people here who have shared much of their lives with him and he's given them little in return. One of his failings, perhaps, but one he can live with.

It's not the same with Ruka for a few different reasons he's aware of, and a couple of others he can't quite put his finger on. But for all that this conversation has been something of a nightmare, he doesn't regret hearing it, nor does he regret telling her more than she strictly needed to know.

Hopefully that doesn't change. For the time being, he places his hand atop hers and gives it a squeeze before removing it. ]

...you're welcome. Thanks for being cool about it.

[ Not everyone would have taken him killing the Negotiator in stride. In fact, he's pretty sure nearly nobody would be. Looks like he chose to confess to the right person. ]

I'll catch you later?

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