Video

[lovernotafighter]

[The video began with an armorless Tucker looking vaguely worried; he wasn't exactly the best at hiding what he felt at any given moment, either with or without the helmet. Now? Now was no exception.

He cleared his throat. Sure.]

Hey, so exactly how bad would it be to be put on an Active Threat List? Like on a scale of one-to-ten?

[Nope. Not guilty at all. Nope. He didn't do anything wrong.]

Tooootally asking for a friend. Yep.

[Because he was friends with himself, dammit, so it wasn't untrue.

Crap.]

Comments

Re: action

[hardwearing]

[ And picking the lock would be easy enough, but Wash is a little too upset to go find tools to do so at the moment. He just keeps speaking at Tucker through the door, lifting a hand to grab at his hair. ]

It didn't say it wanted to help us. It said it felt bad for hurting us, that's different. That's the first step to maybe wanting to help us, and miles away from 'I'll destroy my people to help you.' It's terrified of feeling things, of course it's not going to agree to inflict that on its entire race! We needed to handle it carefully, get its trust, then see if it could be an ally. And I would've started with 'can we study you?' not 'help us reinfect your species with the emotions they intentionally eradicated that are currently making you miserable.' For fuck's sake, Tucker, it thinks it's sick! And you had to go and state an intent against the Null that they believe is worse than killing them -- at least it seems to understand why people want to kill it -- and get put on their goddamn hit list!!

[ He's shouting by the end of his rantsplanation, in the screechy way Tucker's only ever heard a few times that means he's extremely stressed. And he might've pulled some hair out, so he forces himself to let go and thump on Tucker's door in frustration instead. He's not actually as angry as he sounds -- it's fear for his friend, because so many people on the list actually died last time. A few Hadrielites were willing to comply and kill as ordered, sure, but then the Null came and so many more were hunted down specifically. Tucker can't die. He just can't. Wash won't let it happen. ]

Re: action

[lovernotafighter]

[Tucker knew that tone, knew the way that voice cracked in all the right places and what it meant. Wash was worried, was scared, and the long rant made the guilt pool in his stomach restlessly. He hadn't meant for all of this to happen.

But fuck if Tucker didn't have his reasons, too. Fuck if he didn't still think that he did it the right way.

He leaned against the door, brown eyes closed as he sighed.]

Dude, calm down. I'm not destroying shit; I was trying to find a way to end this without killing anything! I thought that if Name felt things and didn't want to hurt us or be killed by its own kind, then maybe it could share in this whole emotion thing with the rest and boom: that part of the war would be over. Everyone wins, no one's hurt, no one wants to fight anymore.

[He sighed, because, well, look at this mess.]

And if it didn't work, I at least wanted to know whose side it was on: us or the ones that want to destroy it. I needed to know and I needed other people to know, people like Caboose, who maybe we can convince not to be all B-Fucking-Fs with it now because of this shit.

[Wash, he was trying-- he was fucking trying instead of just falling into the lies--]

All I did was ask it a question. I couldn't fucking know this would happen!

[evocation]

[Kyna has mostly been hanging back, just making sure this doesn't all go too far south. She's not used to playing mediator—that's so far outside her skill set that it's absurd, but then Wash starts getting more and more worked up until he's shouting, and... Wow. She's never, ever seen him this worked up, this worried, about anything. He didn't even freak out this badly when the Null attacked.

It takes her a second to actually react, because she has no idea how to even start to calm him down. And yeah, Tucker's strategy was stupid, but this seems like a lot. So she reaches for Wash's arm gently, trying to tug him back.]

Hey, um... I don't think this is helping.

[hardwearing]

[ Tucker, please. The entire point of the war is that they don't want to have emotion, and Name is scared of what it's going through. It doesn't want to share the joy of having feelings! He can only reiterate that, and is drawing breath to do so when Kyna takes his arm and splits his attention.

...she's right. Arguing over something that's done already won't change it. He's just upset. His jaw works for a moment, then he visibly deflates.

Kyna has never seen him this worked up because the last time -- when she'd wound up on the list and then the Null attacked -- he'd had no idea just how bad things were going to get. He was a lifelong combat vet. He'd fought aliens before. He'd seen planet killers, and although he'd lost a lot of people along the way this had been something else. Part of him had believed that this time would be different, that his friends would survive, that he'd fight and make it through like he always had. But that hadn't been the case. And now that threat is looming again and he's got more people to protect. He'd completely failed at that last time around. The next time, he can't.

Wash takes a steadying breath, and then just looks tired. ]

No, it's not.