Extreme Makeover: Keeliai Edition - March Log

[wrathfulkhan]

Characters: Everyone who's interested in pitching in!
Date: Throughout March, until the 21st
Location: The Palace of Landed Sky and surrounding environs
Situation: Let's tear this bitch down.
Warnings/Rating: Drug addiction/withdrawal references in the Dust threads, most likely

The demolition is now in full swing and will last until late March, largely run by Zanru and the Metalworkers (as part of the deal), though individual Foreigners can be hired to help (and the help would likely be appreciated, as the Foreigners are going to get some of this too). Hired Foreigners will report to Xuiyu, as Zanru herself is too busy to be on-site. Gene can be found helping with the destruction, in his armor more often than not, over the course of the demolition project, and answering questions and taking suggestions from Foreigners and kedan about what to do with the newly freed land.

However, from the 4th to the 11th, there is Dust contamination, which is sickening some of the workers - Foreigner and kedan alike. It's not too much of a hindrance, and the demolition seems to be on track to finish on-schedule, by March 21st.

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OOC Note: If you need a big-name NPC, please contact the mods directly! Kedan workers can be NPCed by anyone. If you want Gene specifically, please make a note in the subject line and I will throw him at you! (Also, I apologize for not getting to last month's starters; February got away from me. Please feel free to reuse them!)

Comments

[highprofilerichkid]

"Gene..." Tony sighs. He scoots a little closer to Gene and starts rubbing his back. "Look, I... You're not the same person you used to be. I know you're trying to make up for what you did. And if I didn't think you meant it, I wouldn't be here. But I also know you're not perfect. If you're trying to do the right thing, and you don't always, well, get it right - that doesn't mean I'll hate you."

[wrathfulkhan]

"Uuugh," Gene says into the pillow. The backrub is appreciated, but he still feels like shit.

"What if I don't ever get it right?" he says, sounding scared.

[highprofilerichkid]

"You've gotten a lot right already. You'll be okay. I know you will. We'll be okay." Even if it takes a long time to get there. "Come on, why don't you have some food? You need to eat."

[wrathfulkhan]

"I don't know how I get things right. Mostly I just fuck it up. I fuck everything up." Part of this is because he's sick and unreasonable, and part of it is because he actually does believe that he's no good.

"You eat it. I'm not hungry." A lie.

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony's pretty sure that's not true and Gene's just being stubborn. "I already ate. You haven't had anything all day." He nudges the tray closer to Gene.

"You don't fuck everything up. You fucked up a lot of stuff, yeah, but then you fixed it." More or less. "If you were a bad person, you wouldn't even be trying to fix it."

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene's about to argue the point when his stomach rumbles, betraying him. He sighs and rolls over, looking at Tony.

"Does it really matter if my intentions are good?" he asks. "I had good intentions the whole time - or at least, I thought I did. All I did was make everything worse."

[highprofilerichkid]

"Of course it matters."

(Obviously intentions matter. If your intentions were bad and you accidentally caused a bunch of good, that wouldn't make you a good guy, just a bad guy with hilariously ironic bad luck.)

Tony pushes Gene's hair back from his face, wearing a faint, thoughtful frown. "Maybe you made things worse because you only had people showing you the wrong way to do things." His mother. Zhang. The Tong. Positive role models had been somewhat lacking in Gene's formative years. "You don't have to be what they made you anymore. You aren't that anymore."

[wrathfulkhan]

He frowns, and closes his eyes. "How do you know?" he demands. "How do you know I'm not what they made me into anymore? I could be a, a sleeper, waiting until the moment's right for some signal to...to just fuck everything up all over again." A Manchurian Candidate scenario is not totally unheard of, especially given Gene's upbringing. Who knows what nastiness lurks in his subconscious? Gene sure doesn't, so how can Tony be so certain?

[highprofilerichkid]

"A sleeper agent? What, like the Bourne Identity?" Tony pokes his shoulder teasingly and smiles a little. "Or Firefly? You see a subliminal message in a commercial and turn into an unstoppable punching machine? We have really weird lives, but that's pretty out there, even for us."

He picks up one of the fruits from the tray and holds it out to Gene. "They're not here. They don't control you anymore. You can be the person you want to be, if you work at it. I know because of how much I've seen you change already."

[wrathfulkhan]

"Not like that," he says, shrugging. The time bombs in his head he's concerned about are more subtle and more destructive than what Tony's talking about. He's worried that he's damaged, broken somehow, and will never be able to fully let his guard down.

"You've noticed one of them, haven't you? Why I barely let you touch my neck, even though I know you won't hurt me."

Or he likes to think Tony won't hurt him, anyway.

He hesitates before taking the fruit, and scowls at it as though it's done him some great personal wrong. "I'm worried that I might have more problems I don't even know about yet, and they could pop up and I could do something awful."

[highprofilerichkid]

The frown returns. "That's different," Tony says, taking up the hair-petting again. "You can't control that. It's not your fault. And that's not the same as intentionally hurting people."

It breaks Tony's heart that Gene equates abusive triggers and reflexive panic with calculated, premeditated malice, and thinks he's just at fault for the first as he would be for the second.

"If you're afraid that something could make you freak out and do something you'll regret... We'll just keep an eye out for it, okay? If it ever happens, I'll get you out of there. Take you someplace you can calm down. I'll look out for you. I promise."

[wrathfulkhan]

"I should be able to control it," Gene says vehemently, some of the earlier anger showing in his voice - but this time, it's directed at himself. "I'm nothing without control. And I don't want to use that as an excuse to do bad things - that I can't help it because I'm sad or out of control. I need to...I need to take responsibility for what I do. Something I've been ducking for years."

Yeah, he's been up late several nights since they'd gone home, staring at the ceiling in wide-eyed horror as the magnitude of what he'd done there had caught up with him.

"That's why I'd stay in Keeliai forever, if I had a choice. To avoid...responsibility."

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony doesn't respond for a while: he honestly doesn't know how to respond to that.

"I don't think taking responsibility for what you've done means letting people hurt you as much as they want," Tony says eventually, the words slow and uncertain.

Taking responsibility for his actions is what Tony'd said he wanted Gene to do. And a few months ago, the idea of Gene returning home to face his just deserts would have filled Tony with satisfaction. Now it just fills him with misery and dread.

Maybe he's just selfish and biased and doesn't want to lose Gene. Or maybe 'taking responsibility' doesn't quite mean what he used to think it did.

"Trying to fix what you did wrong and making sure you don't do it again; sure. But punishing yourself forever, and blaming yourself for how other people hurt you— that's not... that doesn't fix anything."

[wrathfulkhan]

"It doesn't?" Gene says, and laughs bitterly. "I always thought the world worked on the rule of an eye for an eye. And I'm due a lot of blinding; I can't ever make up for what I did." The implication that by staying he remains a coward is left unsaid.

"I won't do it again. How could I? And if we go home...I vowed to turn myself around and protect the world. I want to make things right. But I'm scared, Tony, I...I don't want to lose you."

This is the most open he's been about his fears in a while. Thanks for that, Dust.

[highprofilerichkid]

"You're not going to lose me." He's stuck around this long, Gene - you're not going to shake him off any time soon. "You want to make things right, and I want to be there to help you."

Gene's still holding the uneaten fruit and staring at it like it insulted his fashion sense. Tony sighs. "You should eat your dinner." He picks another fruit off the plate, and starts nibbling at it himself to encourage Gene to do the same.

After he's taken a few bites, Tony starts talking again. "You know my dad used to make weapons, right? Stark International used to be as bad as Hammer Multinational. He shut down the weapons manufacturing division when I was born and never told me about it. I was really pissed about that for a while, too. I asked him about it, and... he said he wanted to make up for his mistakes. He didn't want to raise a family in a world where he was causing violence and profiting off it. It's not like he can go back and... un-invent all the stuff he made and undo the harm it caused, but he said he wants to spend the rest of his life making stuff that will help people, instead. So, that's... I think that's what you have to do. Just keep trying to help people. Whatever you did in the past, you can do good things in the future. Maybe you can't ever make up for what you did, but if you let that drag you down, and you just give up... then all the good things you could do are never going to get done."

[wrathfulkhan]

Tony's attack on his own piece of fruit seems to give Gene the motivation he needs to eat it, and he chews it while Tony speaks, thinking.

It's ridiculous on its face, of course; he's nothing like Howard Stark. There's no good he can bring to the world. The rings he has were always meant as weapons, never tools. Howard Stark's wit and will could be bent to good. His own...he's not so sure.

"I don't know if I can," he says, and places the fruit down, his head sinking into his hands. "I don't think I have good things in me."

[highprofilerichkid]

"You do." Tony puts down his fruit too, wraps his arms around Gene's waist, and rests his head on his shoulder. "You're a good person, Gene. You've just made a lot of mistakes. But you've done better here, and that's what counts. Stop beating yourself up."

He moves one arm and nudges the tray again. "You're sick, and you haven't eaten anything. You need to rest. How about you hold off on worrying about doing good deeds until you feel good enough to actually do things?"

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene groans and puts his head down on the table. "I can't. I can't stop trying to do good, don't you see? Then that means I'll just be...bad...again."

He sounds like he's on the verge of tears, and his head's all muddled. He doesn't think he can be better. He's not sure at all that he can be good.

[highprofilerichkid]

"You don't look like you're up to doing much bad right now, either," Tony pragmatically points out.

"You're not suddenly going to turn into a supervillain again because you took a sick day. That's not how it works." Tony tightens his awkward little side-hug, giving Gene a reassuring squeeze.

"You worked too hard on the construction, and you got sick. That's all this is. And now you need to rest so that you don't collapse on the construction site and end up in the Healers' Guild getting lectured by Raine. Rhodey always got on my case when I was getting too wrapped up in Iron Man stuff and pushing my limits, and he was usually right. Same goes for you. You can't help anyone if you're too sick and tired to see straight."