EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.

It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.

But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.

Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.

The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.

A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.

Comments

[hassaran]

[ She nods. They both know it's true: she'll carry on alone if that's what's necessary. ] I don't want to. But it's become difficult to see an alternative.

I have loved you too, Darras, and I love the man you could choose to be, but I won't condone the life you've lived and want to go on living. Of course I didn't object to it when I didn't know about it, but now I do.

[ She might leave it there if it weren't for this compulsion to keep going, to say again what she's said before but maybe this time it will be believed, since he insists on not taking her at her word. ]

And I can't keep explaining only to have you tell me again that you don't understand. Men who do what you do and think like you think killed everyone I had, and every day others do the same, and I want to stop them. What is hard to understand about that? How many orphans have you made? Because it was fun at the time? Because you felt you deserved not to care? Your life was hard so it doesn't matter how many other lives you make harder? It's like you're a child I need to keep teaching right from wrong while you try to wheedle your way out of it and plead ignorance. It's incredibly unattractive.

You've had a year now to change and you haven't. You just go through the motions and then make the same arguments you made in Llomerryn. I don't know what the point of any of this is anymore.

[staysail]

[The miserable horror of it flushes into something else, just as quickly--twisted, complicated, darkening his face. And they're back in Llomerryn again, facing each other down in the little room above the tavern.]

Then say it.

[He snaps it out before he can stop himself.]

If that's the thing that will make you happy in this place, make it all worth it--

But you're lying to yourself. You made orphans too. Some of 'em I know, even. And you did it on someone else's orders, you did it 'cos it was right, against what was wrong--well, you still did it. Your life was hard and then someone took you aside and taught you how to do it all their way. Doesn't make you innocent. Doesn't make you any less a killer than I am, but you get to call it something different, dress it up and change its name and say it's all for the good. And you won't admit it. You won't look at it.

So again, say it, and this time, I'll abide by it. I'll be gone for good.

[hassaran]

I get to call it something else because at least I'm trying to do good. You've no right to judge how I do that when you'll barely even bother to wrap your mind around the concept!

[ She can snap as hard as he can. ]

And you've no idea what I look at because I can't talk to you about it, can I? if I did have doubts, why would I trust you with them? We already can't discuss my work at all without you deciding I'm just some poor sad puppet who needs to embrace the freedom of indiscriminate crime. And I will never do that. So either change or go, Darras. Find it in yourself to understand, or go, but I am not having this same tired argument ever again.

[staysail]

And if I had any doubts, any thoughts on any part of this, why would I share 'em with you? Because you'd not see it with any nuance. Because it's good or it's evil, and no room for the in between. Indiscriminate crime. Call it by a different name, it's just shades away from what you do. But you get the pass on it, and I don't.

All right.

[He takes a step backwards, away from her, his hands open and empty.]

You want me gone? I'm gone. See how far this all gets, without men like me. Or maybe I'll hang about yet and find it in myself to understand how it is you can stand there with all that judgement for me. We'll see, won't we.

[And he drops his hands to his sides at that, heavily, and turns to stride off, back toward the stairs by which he'd gotten here in the first place.]