outer_divide | voice; open

I really don't like the sound of this. [Another dome. Probably with their own Authorities. And this eerie, suddenly disappearing lake.]

How close did you get? Did you see settlements, or the remains of settlements outside that dome too? [Were people living there before the area was made barren?]

Boats. Fishing equipment. Skeletons resembling animals such as what you described to me. [In the lake that Dylan had seen on his way to investigate the weapons cache.]

[Dylan is silent for a while.]

We need to find out what happened. Maybe ask the locals. Even if the lake vanished a few generations ago, a large body of water up and leaving is the sort of story that gets passed down.

[He walks alongside him quietly for that while.] Someone should know. If no one else, the old woman. I enjoy puzzles, but I don't know how pressing this one is.

[Then he looks to Dylan.] Why did you come to find me if you can't trust me?

Edited 2012-04-24 23:55 (UTC)

It's not as important as figuring out how to protect ourselves and the city from the Authorities, but I don't like these sorts of mysteries hanging over our heads. I'd rather get it solved before it does become pressing.

[Gaheris' question is complicated. Dylan thinks before answering. He decides on the simplest of the many truths.]

I don't want you to die.

[He wants to argue that he wasn't going to. He was going to come back fine. He can handle this, and he's a survivalist and a walk in the desert might as well have been a walk in the park. Parched as he is, he would be completely recovered within a couple of days.

But his end of the resistance boils down to what he'd been wringing his brain out over, anyway. He's worried that Dylan risked himself to come out here after him.]

I don't want you to, either. [After all the warnings, the veiled hints, setting up the Andromeda to adequately defend herself...]

You said that I told you my reasons for doing what I did. When? [He doesn't look at Dylan then. He just follows the faint light pollution back towards the more familiar dome, as it's getting darker.] I need to know.

Right. [No dying. He shouldn't take the foolish risk of chasing Rhade out into the desert alone in response to Rhade's foolish risk of wandering out into the desert alone.

Then he tenses when Rhade brings up *that* moment.]

It was while you were shooting at me. [He says flatly.]

[He suspected, but he almost doesn't want to hear it.] You've seen me kill people, Dylan. When have I ever stopped to discuss it with them?

[He really doesn't want Dylan to die.]

I don't know why you decided that then was a good time to talk. I had other things distracting me at the time. Like trying not to get shot.

[The answer is obvious to him. But he doubts it will ever be to Dylan. Maybe it's for the best. It would probably bother him more.]

Then... I want to apologize. Not for doing what I haven't done, nor for siding with my people when I didn't want them taken advantage of, but for waiting that long to tell you why I was bothered.

I suspect- I can say why I hadn't prior to coming here. I was hoping that it wouldn't be necessary. [He forgets, sometimes, Dylan thinks like a human, and probably never looked more deeply at anything he did until long after the fact.]

[Dylan wonders, not for the first time, if things might have turned out differently if he'd noticed something wrong before he was being shot at.]

I suspected that you weren't happy about the treaty. A lot of people weren't happy about making peace with the Magog after... [Genocide isn't a strong enough word for what the Magog did.] Hell, even I had mixed feelings about it.

But I trusted you. There's a big jump between being bothered by a political decision and committing mutiny. I never thought you'd do that to me.

[He wasn't bothered just by the political decision. There was a lot more to it. But even now, he doesn't want to explain. He doesn't think that it'll do much good.]

I felt exactly that way about the Commonwealth. So it's alright if you hate me. I can accept that and understand it. But I don't hate you.

[He had been angry at Dylan for not noticing. But being angry with someone wasn't hating them.]

[He had hated Rhade at first. Too much was destroyed by the mutiny, too much was lost for Dylan not to hate. But the more he started to understand him, even after he was dead, the less he was able to hate him.]

Just before I woke up here I met your descendant. He was an Admiral on Tarazed. I was put in a position where I could take a giant step forward on restoring the Commonwealth, but to do it I'd have to destroy your descendant's life. A strong Commonwealth could mean the difference between a Magog victory or defeat. So there was my choice. Save the universe by letting a good man be unjustly destroyed, or side with justice and take my chances.

I didn't do it. I didn't let him fall to ruin. [He closes his eyes for a moment.] But by god I was tempted. And I still don't entirely know if I did the right thing or not.

[His descendent is a Home Guard Admiral (on a planet that he'd never heard of, but an Admiral nontheless)? He's a good man?

He reaches for his water again.] I'll selfishly say that I'm glad you didn't. [But does that mean Dylan doesn't hate him.]

Dylan, I- [don't think I would be able to live with destroying a good man, either. Would saying that help? Probably not. He swallows back the words by downing some water.] -I don't think we should leave these people even if we find a way home, not when their environment might be destroyed by short-sighted overlords. [Not what he was going to say, but it's close enough.]

He's almost exactly like you. Genetic reincarnation. [And Dylan called him a good man. That's a hint, too. He may have lingering trust issues regarding Gaheris, but he genuinely thinks that he has good intentions. That Gaheris is, at his heart, a good man like his descendant.

Dylan knows enough about Nietzscheans now to guess that what Gaheris is saying isn't entirely what he's really saying. But he's not sure what exactly it is that's not being said.]

I agree. We can't just abandon them. If we find a way home it'll just have to wait until these people are safe.

[He knows he could destroy someone who didn't deserve it, if it was needed. Most of the time they did (in his opinion), but someone who didn't? That he knew didn't? That would bother him.

That's why Dimitri managed to live through failed extraction. Even if Rhade had been kind to him in no other way.]

Does he hate me? [Because he doubts that the Nietzscheans would have been quiet about their victories.] If he's my genetic reincarnation, no Nietzschean should hate- [he clears gravel out of his voice, another drink] -themselves.

He doesn't hate you.

He heard two different stories about you. That either you were a High Guard hero or that you were part of the Nietzschean rebellion. He asked me which was true. [Two Gaheris Rhades, both of them real in a sense.]

I told him that you'd tried to warn me. [Even if he didn't see it at the time, didn't realize until it was too late.]

He chose to remember you as a hero.

[So in some other timeline, his genetic descendent is still capable of feeling good about himself. He's proud that he can. He's a little jealous that he will never have to deal with the same dilemma. He's grateful to Dylan for letting him make his own decision.

So after a brief nod, he says] Thank you.

[He crosses his arms over his chest, biting back an uncomfortable ache. When he speaks, it's almost just to hear himself talk about something else.] Do you recall that time our shuttle crashed in a planet's polar region? It was before the Treaty was signed.

The Wasteland's a lot easier than that was.

[Dylan's grateful for the change of topic himself. He needs time to process the things that Gaheris didn't say but might have said under the surface.]

At least in the Wasteland we've only got the natural elements to deal with. Not the natural elements plus a squad of soldiers sent to kill us.

We'll probably not lose our ears, either. [Though it's hard to tell. Rhade touches his own chapped lips, as if realizing for the first time that he's been out here that long.]

Hey, we only almost lost our ears that time.

[Gaheris has been out here for four and a half days now. Dylan for only one an a half. He feels dried out like leather after just that short time. He's going to shove water at Gaheris for days once they get back to the city.]

[His fingers remain there because he smiles, and he feels the tight skin threaten to crack a little.] Actually we still might. There are large insects out at night. Or an arachnid. Actually, I'm not sure what it was. [Camel spiders. They don't have those on future desert worlds.]

Just what a harsh and terrible climate needs, some giant deadly insects to go with it.

[He sees the rock formation on the horizon. He points it out to Gaheris.]

We'll rest there for a while.

Protein in times of need. [This is only half joke, but he looks at Dylan with a mildly displeased face. Surviving is surviving, but preferences were preferences.

Which reminds him.] ...How much food do you have? [He has enough but enough is not as much as his stomach would have liked.]

[Dylan looks at Gaheris in return and give him an expression of disgust at the idea of eating the insects. He will if he has to, but he'd really rather not.]

I was worried that something might have happened to your supplies, so I brought enough for both of us for seven days. [Three and a half days to find Rhade and three and a half to bring him back, plus a little bit extra. Dylan believes in being prepared. And as a heavy gravity worlder, he can carry quite a lot without feeling burdened. He had to sacrifice a few other things he would have liked to have brought--extra blankets, some tools--but food and water were more important.]

It's all pretty dry and dense stuff, but better than insects.

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