myresponsibility | 036

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036 | VOICE

So, we've got a lot of people talking about finding stuff to do, or like, being kind of out of synch with the rest of us, timeline wise - between psycho brain experiments anyway, dude, really? - and since Lydia was talking about movie nights and stuff, I was thinking we should watch Star Wars again.

I know it's weird doing this kind of thing when like, people know about some of us from movies or whatever, but where I'm from, if you wanna get by in the 21st century, you've gotta see it.

Actually, maybe we should make a list. What other pop culture stuff should people definitely know about?

[This post is brought to you by Peter being really unwilling to discuss certain things.]

[Private to Blight]

[... He probably should have said this earlier, but he didn't, and he's not sure he's sorry about that. He's needed some time, and so has Powers, probably, because just. Jeez. Way to hit close to home, flood.]

Look, you can totally ignore this, or not respond or whatever, [He won't be offended.] But I wasn't trying to mess with you. I don't even know what any of that was. The Batman I've heard about isn't some teenager in the future.

So. Sorry. Believe me, I wasn't planning on any of that.

[For a lot of reasons, most of which he's not sure he wants to discuss with you. It's for the best, considering he still doesn't love talking about his own depressing origin story. u_u]

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Yeah, we talked.

[And he doesn't need a lecture on what he owes him - he knows. And has been beating himself up about it and tried to think of ways to make it up to him, and it's not something he's planning on messing up.]

I don't know who he was, so I don't know what's the same and what's just me. [A lot of stuff felt like his life, just... different, so he doesn't know if that's more him or whoever Batman's supposed to be.] I guess I could tell you what I remember.

Edited 2014-06-22 00:18 (UTC)

[Blight still doesn't turn around to look at him, and his voice stays cold.]

Please do.

You hired guys to murder my uncle - who's basically my dad - and I sort of stole the Batsuit, and since it kind of wasn't a disaster, he - [He feels weird revealing his identity even if a Bruce had been here before, call it loyalty to Tim and an understanding of how shitty it is with people knowing who you are behind the mask.] Decided to give me a shot at doing it full time and kind of helped me out when I messed stuff uo.

Other than the cranky old mentor thing, that's not super different from my stuff, so.

[There's a pause while Blight tries to carefully take all that in, and without reacting.]

Replace 'uncle' with actual father, and far as I know you've basically got it. I don't actually have knowledge of how McGinnis and Wayne first crossed paths, but I can believe that.

Don't suppose you also have memories of the part where you...he...threw a canister in my face filled with nerve gas? [His voice rises a bit at last, on that.]

I guess so, yeah.

You..."guess so"? [He looks sharply back across his shoulder, and the area around his eye sockets briefly flashes a bit with the heat of his indignant anger.] Are you being serious?

Look, a lot of it's not super clear anymore. This kind of stuff fades once the flood's over, and it didn't happen for me. The other stuff sticks out more because it kind of did.

Well let me fill you in on some of the details then, since they've gotten fuzzy for you. That Batman interrupted a shipment my company was trying to make in the middle of the night - when I tried to stop him, he threw some of the gas at me.

[Blight turns around all the way and walks forward, enough to come up behind a desk in the foreground and slam both his hands down onto it as he leans forward, glaring.]

In order to stop it from killing me, I had to be treated with an extremely high dose of radiation. Guess what happened.

I'm sorry about that. Seriously. It sucks.

But beyond making a million other not great decisions, you killed his dad. And I'm going to be honest, it's kinda hard for me to have a lot of sympathy because I know exactly what that's like.

What puts you in a place to have any right to question my decisions?

Because sorry, but they were lousy ones. Maybe he threw the nerve gas, but the only reason you're like this is because you murdered his dad.

And like, fine, maybe you didn't pull the trigger, but you totally planned it. That's basically as good as being the one who actually killed him.

I wasn't intending to argue that point. I had him killed by a loyal subservient, of course I may as well have done it myself. But so what?

Am I supposed to feel guilty for an incidental involving an employee that I was barely aware of? Warren McGinnis made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and not realizing there would be consequences for his actions. He had access to information that I needed buried. He should have realized what he was teetering on the brink of, and gotten out of the way. But he didn't. He choose poorly.

[He sneers, briefly, almost as reflex.]

That's life; the cost of doing business. He had to learn it the hard way.

That's not the cost of doing business, that's being a psychopath. And that's why you're stuck here.

Well, now. Don't we consider ourselves somehow the expert. You know, I am so very sick and tired of every last one of you here thinking the circumstance give you the automatic right to impose over me your idea of ethics.

It has nothing to do with me being a warden, it's that I've done this already. I mean, obviously you don't care, but stuff like this is why people turn into superheroes or criminals.

So what? More like so everything. Believe it or not, there've been plenty of successful people who haven't turned into radioactive murderers.

It has nothing to do with being a warden? More like it has everything to do with being an inmate. As soon as I arrived I was as good as branded; there's the idea that I had to have done something worthy of a sentence here, and so you're all on a witch hunt to try and find it. Only right and wrong are objective terms, and it's not my fault mine don't correlate with yours.

Far as I understand it, there are plenty of reasons for a person to turn to a life of vigilantism. Or of crime. Of course there's always a story, it wouldn't make for the time spent worth relating it otherwise. But I'm sure you don't stop to consider the life stories of every single person you cross paths with for more than a second. So why should I?

Because not doing it this time? Made you like this. Not Batman, not his dad, not other people's business strategies: you did it, because you decided you didn't care about McGinnis. If you're that pissed off about it ruining your life, you should care about that if nothing else.

But whatever. Obviously you've got this all figured out, so you can totally go back to feeling self satisfied about your eternity stuck here putting up with the Admiral because you're totally not supposed to be here. I'm sure that's super fun to lord over people.

[His face affixes itself in a silent snarl, and there's a long pause where he contemplates shutting the line off by hurling his communicator into the wall, during which his anger is so heated it wouldn't be a surprise if Peter could somehow hear it.]

Who's attempting to lord over whom right now?

[He almost lost it during the flood - not once, but twice. It's only by reminding himself of that failing this time he's able to dial it back again. And even then, it's only barely.

He knew responding to this would likely end up being a mistake.]

I don't know why, out of all the possibilities, you ended up getting thrown into that suit during all of this. But regardless of your own personal history, it doesn't make you an expert on much of anything: not Gotham, not it's so-called heroes, and certainly not my own history.

You're just a boy, who signed up for this pleasure cruise in pursuit of some pipe dream ideal you should have long outgrown. You get this one, this time, for free, because as you said...it was an accident.

I won't be so forgiving in the future. Interpret that however you will. It's nothing less than what you've been doing this entire conversation anyway.

[Peter doesn't bother responding. He might be a sassy idiot, but he knows you're not listening even a tiny bit, so why bother? He's got his own issues to work out thanks to the flood.]

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036 | VOICE

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