tushanshu_logs | [OPEN] You tell me of our future that you planned...

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[OPEN] You tell me of our future that you planned...

Characters: Bakura & OPEN
Date: February catch-all log
Location: Various around Khatronma for the first half of the month, then Keeliai and outside the city.
Situation: Assorted run ins. Open starters in the log, closed starters in the comments. Or add your own!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings if needed in subject headers.

A. KHATRONMA DOCKS, LANDFALL, EVIDET
He's spent almost the entire visit to the continent in Khatronma, having not realized he was desperate to get away from Keeliai for a while until he was actually way from it. Once he was, the air seemed less heavy around him, and he began taking interest in the things he saw. The massive shipyards were fascinating, and the temperature controlled dome let him spend hours walking up and down the berths to examine them.

At the moment, he's stopped his wandering in favour of sitting on the edge of a personal boat shed, the door propped open and an older Bresilykian man inside, working on the overturned hull of a sailboat, or something like it. The Evidet native is keeping up a steady chatter of conversation, and seems to be mid-story about a sailing race that his parents met during.

For the sentimental content, Bakura doesn't even look like he minds. He's even listening, at least well enough to interject with observations and questions during pauses, but he's not carrying the prickly aura he normally projects.

B. WATER SECTOR, KEELIAI
back in Keeliai however, the weather was still bitterly cold. Unfortunately, he still had to go out in order to buy food and necessities, and the hassle of walking all over to find kedan who were willing to sell to Foreigners without ripping them off left him distinctly frozen. He would have been glad to return back to his accommodations had he not been stopped on the street by a crowd of kedan partly blocking the street that ran alongside the canal. They were pulling on skates and venturing out tentatively onto the frozen waterway, and one of them offers a pair of rudimentary skates to the thief.

"No," Bakura said, shaking his head. "Not interested. I don't know how, anyway."

C. JADE SCHOOL OF KUNG FU DOJO, WOOD SECTOR, KEELIAI
Bakura hadn't been here in almost a year (almost two years, if one counted the year that had passed in the Dreaming, and while he was away) and he'd only stopped because he'd been passing by while on his way to something else. But the something else wasn't pressing, and the dojo looked once again abandoned, and so he'd let himself past the low gate and onto the property. He wasn't sure what he expected to happen -- no angry elements came crashing down on his head -- and he touched the clean metal lock on the door.

Ryou must have put that on there. He knew that the dojo had been deeded to the teen when Korra had left the turtle. Now, with Ryou gone as well, it seemed as though it would slip back into disuse.

The lock takes only a moment to pick, and he leaves the door open to step inside. It's immediately obvious that efforts were already made to clean it, but that they hadn't gone very far. Bakura takes a quick tour around the building, making mental notes about what he finds, until he ends up back outside of the dojo's front entrance, staring up at the building with a contemplative frown.

"Hmm..."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tony hadn't really wanted to leave the lab, but the kedan he'd been working with had started to look a little alarmed about how much work he'd been doing without taking any significant breaks for food or sleep. Though he has no interest in sleeping, maybe a walk and some lunch is a good idea.

Khatronma is a nice change of pace from Keeliai, and there's all sorts of new foods to try, so that's where he goes.

He's not looking for Bakura, but the man is certainly at the forefront of his mind, and when Tony sees him sitting on the docks talking to a Bresilykian man, he gives a start.

He stops. "Bakura?"

The Bresilykian man pauses in his tale after Tony speaks, nodding agreeably to show he does not mind being temporarily interrupted -- he has, after all, been bending Bakura's ear for the better part of an hour already -- and the thief turns to the younger teen.

"Hello herset," he answered. "Here to buy a boat?"

"Uh. No." And what does 'herset' mean? "I was actually... Gene and I were talking about some... stuff."

He looks awkwardly at Bakura for a couple seconds. "...Can I buy you lunch?"

Translation: he's having dumb boy feelings and he wants to inflict them on you, Bakura. Quick! Run while you still can!

"Some stuff," Bakura echoed, raising an eyebrow. That could mean any number of things, but the thief found the prospect of nearly all of them interesting, so he bade the shipbuilder goodbye with a thanks for his stories.

"It's a fool who turns down free food," he said, gesturing toward the commercial district of Khatronma. "Lead on."

Tony nods gratefully and starts walking. For a while, he doesn't say anything, and just walks beside Bakura wearing a distant expression and a faint frown.

"Have anything in mind?" he asks, as they near the commercial district and the food stands come within smelling distance. He's stalling, a little, but he hadn't expected to run into Bakura like this, so he's still trying to get his thoughts in order. Also, Awkward Talks are less painful when you have something to plausibly occupy the inevitable awkward silences, like food.

Bakura doesn't mind the silence, although trying to decipher it is an interesting puzzle in itself. "I don't suppose they serve koshari here," he shrugged. "So anything is all right. There's a lot of outdoor places to eat in this city... makes sense, given the amount of workers. Besides, this isn't a date. You don't have to worry about making a good impression."

Tony chuckles halfheartedly at the joke. He doesn't even bother asking what koshari is.

"How does fish sound?" It's his own, weak attempt at a joke: they're on the docks of a port city. Most of the food is fish.

He follows his nose to a promising stand, and gets two to-go orders of... something. Something fried, probably of the fish variety. He hands one to Bakura. "No idea what it is, but it smells good."

~~spoiler: it's actually tunicate~~

Bakura takes a bite, and it's only after he's chewed and swallowed it that he comments in an offhand manner, "For future reference, not everything that comes out of the sea is fish. Whenever your birthday is, make sure someone gets you a fishing rod for it. Eating what you pull out of the water might give you a better idea of this."

They find an area with benches, so they can at least sit, but far less formal than a table and chairs. "So?" Bakura prompts Tony after a moment.

Tony appraises his mouthful of not-fish: chewier than he was expecting, and with a surprising acrid tang. It's not awful, just... weird. And, yeah. Probably not fish. "Huh," is all he says. It's edible, and he didn't come here to discuss the local cuisine.

He glances at Bakura, then looks away again. "Gene told me. About... what he did to you."

"Did he now?" Bakura takes another bite of his food, evidently having come to terms with the unique taste without too much fuss. Like Tony said, it's edible, and he is hungry.

"That's a surprise... but then, he has done some surprising things lately. If your plan is to distract me with food and attempt to finish the job, whether on his or your behalf, there are more subtle ways to go about it."

It sounds like a joke, but he's not in a joking mood, and it's not one he finds very funny anyway. "Not what I had in mind," he replies, with a brief, tight smile.

"I was— I want to..." He trails off. He isn't sure how to phrase this. "He said when he apologized to you, after, he— offered to let you kill him as payback, but you didn't, and you came to some kind of... understanding." Whatever the hell that means.

Tony frowns and pokes at his not-fish, still searching for the right words. "Did you forgive him? Why didn't you try to get revenge? What made things... okay between you?"

"I didn't because there's no point to it here, where nothing stays dead that aught to. Killing him would be, what, a day or two inconvenience? Perhaps I think I'm worth more than a slap on the wrist," the thief answered coolly.

"But tell me: why do you care, and why are you under the impression that I should tell you anything about it? It's not a huge deduction that you're asking without telling him you were planning to."

Oof. That took a quick turn for the not-so-friendly. Tony looks a bit taken aback, but... right, okay, he can see why this might be a touchy subject.

"I'm sorry. I... I guess I want to know if I can still trust him."

Tony doesn't like how harsh that sounds, but at its core, that's really what this is about.

"If you come to a near-stranger for advice on whether you trust him or not, then you already don't trust him," Bakura said bluntly. "Now you're just looking for validation."

He took another bite of his food, although it was clear that he was not done speaking. When his mouth was clear again, he continued, "So maybe the question you should be asking is whether your level of trust in someone is the standard by which you believe they're worth, because I would think that the two have very little to do with each other. You can trust someone, but that doesn't make them a 'good' person. You can think the worst of someone, but that doesn't invalidate a good thing they may do. A trust might change how you deal with them, but it isn't the sum of what they are."

That really throws Tony for a loop. He fights down the impulse to blurt out a denial. Bakura doesn't look like he's done, and Tony's... not entirely sure he's wrong?

He wants to trust Gene. He had trusted Gene. But that trust had been so, so hard to give, and the fact that Gene had been hiding this secret the whole time is a heavy blow. And Tony's still trying to figure out how much it changes things between them.

When Bakura's done talking, Tony looks at him for a few seconds, and then bluntly says, "You're not just a stranger. You're the guy he murdered." Which, in Tony's eyes, gives him a fair amount of authority to speak on the matter.

He doesn't think he agrees with the rest of that, either. Good people are trustworthy, bad people aren't. To Tony, that's just a self-evident truth. The only thing you can trust bad people to do is whatever benefits them most.

But he's here to hear Bakura's perspective. He frowns.

"So which do you think he is? Good, or trustworthy? Or neither?"

"Asking one murderer if another murderer is a good person proves to be the paramount of faulty logic," the thief laughed.

"And for as long as I've been around, I've yet to meet anyone who's never told a lie, or never kept a secret, and I don't imagine I ever will. You're looking for a clear answer where there isn't one, herset. People aren't like that; things that should be easy, aren't. Do I trust him not to try the same thing in coming after me? Yes. Do I think the rage he acted in, is who he is? No."

Then he shrugged. "But ultimately, neither of those things matter. Think of it this way: imagine that I said no, Gene is not to be trusted, and that he is terrible. You seem ready and willing to take my word at it, so we'll say you agree with me. But then I leave here after we're done eating, find that old boat-builder, knock him out and toss him into the ocean to drown. Now is my judgement on the hebnay invalid? Is my opinion now worth less weight than it was before?"

...Seriously?! Is anyone on this turtle not a murderer?!

"Well, yeah," Tony answers, bewildered. Of course he wouldn't trust Bakura's opinions on anything if he went off and killed some guy. Murderers aren't generally trustworthy - that's kind of his whole point. "Are you saying I shouldn't have asked you?"

This is not helping.

In Tony's defense, the turtle did seem to attract a disproportionate ratio of killers. Bakura merely shakes his head at the teen's assertion.

"I'm saying that the standard you've just claimed is that someone is only worth your consideration until they do something to devalue themselves to you," he said. "Everyone may have their own priorities, but yours are going to leave you lacking for a great many things, allies and friends not the least of them, to say nothing of relationships, herset."

He blew a few stray white hairs away from his face as the breeze picked up, obviously thinking how better to make this point without simply cuffing Tony upside the head. Well, one more attempt at it, at least.

"And if you were to tell someone -- the hebnay or anyone, it doesn't matter -- that you cared about them, or that you loved them, and were truthful. Then somewhere down the road, you make a mistake of your own, assuming you don't consider yourself too pure and above the rest of the rabble here. But you do something that's wrong, and not only are you not trusted going forward, it invalidates what you claimed before. And that person says to your face, 'no, you never did care, because of something you hadn't done yet but one day might, you were a liar even then'. Is that right?"

His priorities are just fine, Bakura, 'scuze you. And so are his friends. Tony's frown turns more sullen.

But the second part of Bakura's response takes root a little better. Tony's expression softens to something... not a whole lot less confused, but more thoughtful, at least.

He picks distractedly at his meal, then slowly replies, "I know he cares. I know he wants to change. But I don't know... if that's what matters. I can't just forgive him for everything and trust him no matter what, can I? He keeps messing up and... I'm not the only one he hurts. I don't know how many second chances I can give him. I mean, it's not just about how I feel or how much he cares or if he's good or trustworthy, is it? There's got to be consequences, or justice - or there's no difference between doing something right and doing something wrong."

He gives a frustrated sigh, and puts his head in his hand. "Sorry. I'm not explaining this well. But that's why I wanted to talk to you. Because you're one of the people he hurt. Do you think he deserves another chance?"

Without looking up from his own meal, Bakura reaches up and knocks Tony upside the head (and not a light tap, either) then continues eating as if nothing was wrong. At least he waited until Tony wasn't mid-bite to do it.

"Stop being an idiot. Wanting to change, wanting to... believe that you can be better, when all evidence is to the contrary, is the only thing that matters. Stop counting chances, Tony Stark. It's not a numbers game. You want to know why I didn't kill him afterward? Because I had something far more effective planned. To put him into his own mind, because -- as I'm sure you know -- a person is their own worst enemy. But when I spoke with him, I realized he was already doing that to himself. He was already reliving his mistakes, and it didn't need shadow magic to bring about. Not every form of justice, of ma'at, ends with someone in jail and the other party feeling vindicated. It doesn't mean there's no difference between right and wrong, it just doesn't work like that."

Bakura put his food -- mostly finished now, despite having done the majority of the talking in this conversation, on the bench next to him and stretched his arms behind his head for a moment. "So yes, I think he deserves another chance. If you can't see why you should, then... I don't think he's the one whose motivations you should be questioning."

Tony makes a surprised, indignant noise and rubs his head, but doesn't interrupt.

Everyone is their own worst enemy - an uncomfortable, unexpected reminder of Tony's encounter with Malicant. Enemies like him aren't dangerous because they lie; they're dangerous because they use the truth. Tony laughs humorlessly. "Now you sound like Solomon."

Tony had faced the worst version of himself down in those caverns - suddenly he wonders if that's what Gene faces every day, looking back at the person he used to be. Is that justice?

Not the kind Tony's used to, Bakura's right about that. Tony's version of justice is something that he'd granted Gene a reprieve from, because Gene wanted to change and because Tony had always liked Gene more than he should. Justice was something he'd allowed Gene to avoid - not something that Gene had been meting out to himself since the day the Makluan ship had arrived.

Tony finishes his not-fish in silence. When he's down to greasy crumbs, he says, "Thanks. I think... that helps."

There's some stuff Bakura said that he's pretty sure he doesn't agree with, but it's given him a lot to think about.

Most importantly, he believes that, finally, he has a slightly better understanding of why Bakura had forgiven the murder. Forgiven may not be the right word - moved on from? considered the score settled? Either way... That, really, is what he'd been looking for. (He just got a whole lot more than he bargained for along with it.)

"Like Solomon," Bakura echoed with a scoff. "Hopefully less pretentious, thank you very much."

He didn't seem to know what to make of Tony thanking him however, and only shrugged in response. "If you say so, harset. I can't say I've had anyone ask me for that sort of advice before."

Okay, that makes Tony laugh. He's glad he's not the only one who thinks Solomon's a stuck-up jerk.

"I don't think I've asked for this kind of advice before." Then again, it is a pretty unusual sort of advice. It probably doesn't get asked for a whole lot, by anyone. "But thanks for giving it. I know it was kind of out of nowhere."

For all his magic and convoluted past, Bakura still considers himself a fairly practical guy. Having not had the best experience with those of privileged lines, there has always been that aspect of Solomon that rubbed the thief the wrong way.

"I'd hope this not a frequent thing you run into," he agreed. "And it's fine. What are you going to do with Gene now?"

Tony looks slightly pained by the first half of that. "You'd be surprised," he mutters. It happens all the time, Bakura. All the time.

Let's stay focused on this particular betrayal of trust, though. "I don't know," Tony sighs. "I can give him another chance, or... I can leave him. For good." Those are the only two options, at the end of the day. And now that he's said it out loud, he really doesn't like the sound of the latter.

"I don't want to hurt him," Tony finishes, very quietly.

[OPEN] You tell me of our future that you planned...

A - Feb 6th

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