revivalproject | Indictment

Entry tags:

Indictment

WHO: Absolutely everyone.
WHERE: The diner.
WHAT: A decision has to made about threats to the community.
WHEN: After an attempted murder, a chaotic rescue, and an awkward reunion. Now.
WARNINGS: Nothing yet. Mark it if something comes up because...
NOTES: Structurally, this is a mingle, so you can decide what part of this is actually important to you. What you talk about in here doesn't have to be directly Beck-related, but for details about the incident, further organizing, and if you want to determine what your characters might have done/seen/heard in the meantime, this post is still good!

[NETWORK//text @ everyone]

Come to the diner. We have to talk.
If you don't show up, I'll assume you agree with me because you're incredibly intelligent and graceful. The city of Temba thanks you for your contribution to our justice system.

This was the last thing Tony wanted to do. The diner at least felt familiar, neutral--somewhere he could be in control, without having all of the attention on him. Being able to bask in the attention would have been so much easier. As it was, that felt like he would be inviting everyone to really examine the cracks in the armor. They were here because he had already lost control.

As if that didn't already feel enough like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, Tony found himself standing in a circle of seats that he had arranged, the tables pushed up against the walls, and couldn't honestly say how much that had been intentional. He raised a lip, and looked to Felwinter as though he would have any illuminating insight about productive interior design. He seemed like he wanted to be here even less than Tony did. Beck was his charge for the time being, though, and as awkward as it was to stand in his stupid chair-circle with the pair of them, Tony did appreciate having Felwinter there to keep an eye on their...problem. Even if having witnesses to his restless energy made it all the more humiliating. Felwinter couldn't sit on Beck forever just to make sure he didn't lure anyone else off the edge of a cliff, so they were all going to have to survive a little humiliation.

"I think the coffee's done," Tony declared, with absolutely no idea what state the coffee was actually in and readily moving toward the kitchen regardless. "Do you want one? I'll get you one. Do you do that sort of...?" He was still talking, and what Felwinter did or didn't eat and drink might have otherwise been something Tony pushed him about, but he was already mentally in the kitchen and trailed off as he went, flapping a hand to wave off any refusal of his offer or explanation about Felwinter's digestive situation. Maybe he would just stay in the kitchen and listen, let Beck hang himself.

Tony took a deep breath, pushing his sunglasses up his nose and squaring his shoulders, readying himself for a performance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Was that a compliment? It was difficult to tell sometimes, with Tony Stark. "Then I do not need to put further effort into impressing anyone," Felwinter said after considering a moment. Maybe he was attempting to be funny.

The Exo looked around the room again, at those gathered, at the guilty party. "Perhaps my solution is too simple. I will tell you now, if the boy had not intervened, I would have killed Beck. -or attempted to."

Unsure if he was supposed to laugh, Tony stared back, eyebrows still raised, like he was waiting for Felwinter to elaborate and save them both from the awkwardness. He wasn't as good at that as he was at being impressive.

While Tony couldn't say he was surprised by Felwinter's very final problem solving, it was still enough of a shock to him that he was willing to commit to it before he had even talked to Peter that Tony blurted, "What, why?"

Unfortunately awkward moments came in abundance around here, and Felwinter never quite knew what to do with them. Staring people down didn't seem to work as well and somehow made it more awkward. Was it just because the people here were so different from those he would come across back home?

He was a little surprised himself that Tony needed to ask that he took a moment to consider how to respond. "Operational necessity," he said, condensing his thoughts into the two words.

Two was not nearly enough words. Tony's eyebrows only crept higher, lip raising slowly, once again hoping that Felwinter would elaborate, and was stuck having to lead him through it. "It was necessary to kill him?" he tried to clarify. "Or it was necessary that you kill?" seemed less likely, overall, but Felwinter did seem like he was on the edge of it most of the time, so maybe it was a necessity somewhere in his programming.

"Our number is few, our objective already difficult. Our very environment poses a threat to us at times we cannot anticipate. Having someone in our midst who would actively do anyone harm to the agree he has intended for selfish reasons threatens the safety of everyone who are otherwise only trying to survive."

Felwinter seemed to frown a little. "I do not kill by necessity. Any kills by my hands are a response." His shoulders sagged in what might have been the expression of a sigh, feeling once again weary of everything. He looked out past the people, out at the open door and its framed light. "I just want peace."

What Felwinter was proposing was a very straightforward equation that Tony could easily follow; if all things were static, then either Beck would continue to pick them off, or they could reduce the number of deaths to just one. Nothing was ever static, though, and the finality of ending Beck's life didn't allow for that.

"Has killing ever brought peace?" he pressed, looking slightly desperate that Felwinter couldn't actually answer that--or if he did, that he saw the inherent flaw in the question. Was it peace, if it was made by violence?

"Potentially," Felwinter replied. Things had at least for him been better once he claimed the mountaintop keep for his own. He and Felspring hadn't been threatened by Rasputin after that, although who knew how long one could hide from a Warmind? ...except that his attention was brought to the fact that there were others who also sought better, who didn't have the same chances that he did. His metal brow furrowed slightly as he considered this.

"It depends on the peace sought. ...but I suppose in this instance, it won't come so easily."

At least he didn't have a confident answer. Tony wasn't entirely relieved, but his shoulders did drop a fraction without the tension telling him that Felwinter might have been correct.

"What if he, you know, just agrees to never do it again? Pinky swear," he suggested. "Killing him would have been a little bit hasty. Can't take that one back."

"Would you believe him if he said he agreed to such a thing?" Felwinter asked, looking at Tony, seeking his honest reply. To him it seemed unreasonable to believe a man who had openly lied and manipulated others with words, who still denied responsibility for his actions.

"Pinky swear," Tony repeated, like that held some monumental weight that had to be respected, only to abandon the intensity with a boneless drop of his hand onto his lap and tight nod to concede. Okay, it wasn't exactly a believable scenario, but that didn't make the finality of killing someone any less final.

"We can't know that, though, not for certain, unless we give him the chance to do it again. And now we're more prepared, we know what to be on guard for. He's lost his most effective weapon," he pointed out. "And it's--it's a precedent, that I don't want to establish. This place--I've done some terrible things here, that I didn't know I was capable of. And even if we always had are full faculties, and nothing was getting into our heads, we're from such different places--we're never going to have a consistency of morality, and we can't just kill people over philosophical disagreement, or not having the faculties to even know why something is damaging. There has to be an alternative."

"What is that alternative?" Felwinter pressed, wanting to know what options people were willing to provide, coming from a place where it wasn't dog eat dog. He paused.

"Do you forgive him for doing what he did?" Tony had been, after all, the main target.

Tony narrowed his eyes and tipped his head, considering. The alternatives that they would have back on Earth, his Earth, weren't exactly viable, either. They didn't have whole systems in place to ensure they worked. They hadn't been building enough of a community.

Felwinter's second question surprised him out of that consideration, though, and he raised his eyebrows, looking like he expected Felwinter to continue again before shrugging and flapping his hand. "Of course," he could more easily answer that one. "Not to the kids--I don't know, maybe, but for letting me fall..." It felt like he was supposed to have a reason, and that part was harder. He had to fall into thought again to form the right words without probing too uncomfortably deeply into his own psyche, focus rolling back up to the ceiling. "I don't have the bandwidth to hang onto stuff like that. It happens. People have their reasons. It was days ago," said like it was a millennium. "What we do next, that's more important, what's coming. At home, they'd probably put him in jail, so he couldn't do it to anyone else. Ideally, while he's isolated like that, we could get him the help he needs, deal with his brain thing, the antisocial thing, rehabilitate him."

Tony would have to forgive the stare again, as though Felwinter was trying to discern the thought process behind the surprising answer. He wasn't quite sure how truthful it was for how casual the response was, but Tony at least pushed forward with more of an explanation of sorts. Did it make any more sense? The warlord folded his arms, thinking.

"If he is willing," he said after a moment, after Tony had hopped back onto the previous train of thought. He cast a look over at Beck again. "Somewhere where he cannot do harm to anyone would be good. We will see if he accepts that he needs help. Thus far he has not even admitted to the things he has done."

"That's all pretty normal. Part of the puzzle," Tony replied with another shrug. "It's not often easy, if someone gets to the point where they're already incarcerated and are forced to see a therapist, they've already missed a bunch of lifelines on the way and we're down to digging out. Here, its--those lifelines weren't even available in the first place. I don't know if they would have helped, but I can see someone really spinning out just from being here. Do you feel stable here?"

No, it didn't sound like a simple matter. Things were more cut and dry back home. Was it like this or whatever Tony spoke of, back during the Golden Age?

Felwinter looked back at Tony, head canting slightly to the side. "For the most part. It is difficult to say when the very atmosphere warps and becomes unstable in what we can expect of the world itself. Otherwise it is calm. Under less unusual circumstances I probably would not mind dwelling here in the long term."

There was a stretch of silence where Tony stared back at Felwinter this time, only to then abruptly laugh and ask, "Which unusual circumstance are you drawing the line at?" The Exo definitely wasn't the first to want to stay, but Tony was pretty sure nobody got there because Temba made for such desirable real estate. "The kidnapping one? Or the one where they're watching everything we do?"

"The one where reality twists and warps and one cannot do a thing about it," Felwinter replied grimly. He could deal with being kidnapped, or even being watched so long as it wasn't to target him. "Where we are no longer ourselves, or in control of ourselves, and everything is set against us."

That was definitely the worst of it. For the people that did want to stay, Tony thought he could make this place pretty livable if it could be in any way predictable. So far, it was all just so much...magic.

"Listen, that's what I mean, you can't really hold that against anyone," he said. "Not when the moon is screaming at us and driving us crazy, and not when it's over--we can't assume that everyone's just getting over being pushed to the edge like that, when there's barely even anyone to talk to about it. I can't be surprised that someone might just snap, because I've been ignoring it when they were bending this whole time.

"The problem is a structural one."

Felwinter eyed him. "This case is not the best to judge such by. It was not the result of one breaking under pressure, it was calculated." He shook his head.

"Who does one turn to when we are all subjected to these occurrences, for the absence of any warning that they come? Under your illustration it would suggest that those who have been here longest are more subject to snapping depending on the duration of their experiences. What is the frequency of storms in this place? I have only been here for nearly a year, and I am still uncertain as to what would properly classify a storm. Was it when the moon screamed? Was it when the city and us were both changed, and an eye hung in the sky?"

Felwinter's confidence felt undue to Tony, who eyed him back dubiously, teeth grit and head tilted. They couldn't really know that. Sure, Beck seemed to hate him, but plenty of people hated him, and there was no way of knowing if Beck having someone to talk to might have kept him from acting on it.

"It's not a matter of duration--," was where Tony had to try to interrupt, waving a hand to dismiss that thought. Some people could handle a year of torture, and others would crumble right away as they arrived at the fountain, and neither case had any resources in the city. His hand dropped as he tried to calculate some reliable frequency, feeling frustrated and embarrassed again to not even have the answer to that question. A basic resource, what to anticipate.

"I don't know, either," he admitted. "Maybe just the ones that are literal storms--bad weather. Bad other stuff, too, of course. It's always different."

At least the warlord didn't demand an explanation in that- but he was in much the same boat, desperately seeking answers, wondering if perhaps someone who'd been here longer like Tony would know what he did not. He couldn't help that he always came off as intense, unfortunately.

"...was it always different? Even when the Agrii were here?" He turned his gaze away, drifting towards the ceiling as Tony had looked before, earlier, more a spoken thought then an actual expectation for an answer. They weren't getting anywhere with answers, and Felwinter was beginning to feel like they were only ending up in more of a hole than they'd started with.

"I do not think this matter will be settled with one meeting." Beck's fate, where their true concerns should lie, everything just needed....more. Of what, he couldn't say.

Tony had a little bit of context and some suspicions about how exactly the 'storms' behaved while the Agrii still occupied the planet, but he only followed Felwinter's gaze upward with another grimace because what he could offer didn't seem like it would help right now. He met Felwinter's eye again with a conciliatory shrug, then let his shoulders drop with the defeat of it.

"I think that's what I've been trying to say," he replied, throwing a glance around the room, and how weird it was to even have a bunch of people together. "This, him, it's a symptom. It needs work."

He wrinkled his nose, but his focus didn't return to Felwinter, clearly calculating as he swung himself up out of the chair to pace away his energy instead. They were still left with the immediate problem, and Tony wasn't any closer to deciding an effective course of action.

It was something of a relief and yet still frustrating as they reached no conclusion, save that the conversation had worn itself out. Felwinter watched as Tony went to stretch his legs, the Exo slowly turning to resume his position by Beck as he folded his hands behind him.

Society made things so much more complicated.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Indictment

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject