[ It doesn't make him feel better. He doesn't think there's anything anyone could say that could make him feel better about any of this as realizations keep ticking away in the back of his mind. It's going to take him a while to get through the scope of this, let alone processing it.
But it makes him feel less like he's the only one this fucking matters to, and that's something. She could have tried to hold this over him in any of a dozen ways. She didn't. ]
I mean it. Thanks for telling me. I know I haven't exactly sounded grateful, but that's because I tend to get kind of shitty when I'm having an existential crisis. My bad.
I figured a lot of this out a while ago. Only reason why I'm not still freaking out, I guess.
[There's not much that Amy can feel smug about - and as desolate and hopeless as all this is, the fact that she figured it all out two years before Tattletale does bring her some small sense of satisfaction. Almost enough to fight off the uncanny feeling that she should feel worse about all this than she does.
She should be freaking out, right? She should relate to Krouse's reaction here.
She doesn't really. It always sucked. Heroes, villains, capes, powers. There was never anything remotely romantic about any of it. And some small part of her has wanted it all to burn to the ground for a long time now.]
It's not like there's anything we can do about it.
[ He's assuming that's the case. If Amy was able to excise their infection, he'd think she'd have mentioned it.
And as soon as he thinks that, he knows he wouldn't take her up on it even if it was a possibility. Whatever it might mean for him down the road, however much his skin crawls at knowing what he did to himself, he's not giving up his power. What else does he have? ]
No use crying over spilled milk or thwarted alien invasions.
She already knew everything. She just dressed it up as nonsense, so people dismissed her as crazy. When I touched her hand, I started to connect certain dots. She worshipped Scion.
That paired with a bunch of Bonesaw's ramblings helped me reach certain conclusions. I tried to warn Dragon a few times, but it never worked.
That was a few days after I arrived in the Birdcage, I think.
[She was in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, she doesn't super remember.]
[ Longer than he'd have guessed, if he'd been guessing. Maybe it's the combination of everything else beforehand, but he can't really work up to being upset the news hadn't gotten around earlier. He wasn't in a state to care, and clearly, it didn't make a difference to the people who should've. ]
At least you tried. Not your fault it sounds crazy. Or that your witnesses were actually crazy.
I hope the conspiracy theorists got a kick out of it in the end. First Cauldron, then Scion. The world really is controlled by a shadowy secret organization and aliens. Surprise.
[ He'd missed catching the big reveal up close and personal, but he'd heard enough in the panicking and furious secondhand wave before the Protectorate managed to shut it back down. ]
It wouldn't have helped, really. Dragon got taken out in the end by a group of non capes sponsored by Teacher.
[It does actually make her pause when he talks about Cauldron. A few dots connect in her head. Judging by what he's unaware of - and what she was aware of at the time - there's something he knows that she doesn't. It's not as if the negotiations held in Cauldron's headquarters were public knowledge but all the cell leaders knew at least... then again, they were only held after Behemoth's death, which she kind of assumed was after his time.
Hm.]
Surprised you know about Cauldron.
Fucking hate those guys.
[She's not sure she could have gotten out of the Birdcage without them - or that they would have won without Doormaker and Clairvoyant to bolster Taylor's ability.
Still. Cauldron violated something that used to be important to her - complicated, something she deeply resented - but it was important. And they tainted it. Rotted it to the core.]
That's the first thing Krouse thinks when he reads what Amy has to say about Teacher. They did it, and what gets him about it is the slippery, disorienting lurch of that they coming in the form of the collective inclusive.
Logically, he knows that it's right. In the future he hasn't lived out, he's with Teacher until he dies. He knew that, so he knows that he contributed to the overall plan, part of the conduit that kept Teacher connected to Saint. A negligible role, in the larger scheme of things.
It's not responsibility he's feeling. It's a tiny flicker of obedient satisfaction, and he recoils from it like he reached out in the dark and sank his fingers into a swollen, hot patch of rot.
It almost makes talking about Cauldron, and what he knows about Cauldron, slightly more appealing by contrast. ]
I was still in Brockton Bay when the Triumvirate got found out.
They clamped it down fast, but word travelled faster. I picked up enough of the high notes to say I couldn't agree with you more.
[ Unlike the topic of Teacher, his feelings here are uncomplicated. He fucking hates them too. There are enough obvious reasons anyone should that he doesn't have to get into the specifics of his personal ones. ]
All those noble heroes, worse than most of the Birdcage. Fucking Lab Rat did less human experimentation.
[No mention of it. So Teacher must have been planning it for a long time then.
Irritating, but she's not quite enough of a dick to hold it against Krouse. Billions of people dead and for what.]
Lab Rat also helped more than they did against Scion.
[Not quite true. But Lab Rat is a big reason why Taylor Hebert survived long enough to become Khepri - something which Cauldron had absolutely nothing to do with.]
That was their supposed end goal. Preparing humanity to fight against Scion at the end. Eidolon was vaporized, Legend did nothing, Alexandria's corpse was being puppeted around like a doll, and the rest of them hid in a bunker.
[She decides not to bring up the Endbringers. She's not sure why. Trickster and his Travellers were there when they fought against Leviathan - when Neil and Eric both died. Maybe the fact that America's most famous and iconic heroes were responsible for all of that death and devastation makes the ugly feeling in her chest intensify.
Her childhood was spent in guilt and shame over failing to live up to that very standard. That very standard that the greatest heroes humanity had to offer never even touched. Her fucking dad was locked away in a cage never to be let out - while they all got to fly free and condemning millions to die.]
[ Krouse types Good in the text entry window and lets it float there, one stark word hanging in his field of vision. He deletes it with a blink.
Amy's cynical, but there's a line somewhere. He doesn't want today to be when he discovers the limits of her newfound distaste for the world's greatest heroes. He pushes off the floor and walks into his bedroom to sit on the edge of his mattress, fingers resting on his end table next to the only picture frame in his apartment.
"Eidolon's dead," he says, to no one who's going to hear it. ]
So much for the greater good.
[ That's not surprising, except for the corpse puppeteering, but even that's just another fucked up detail. Later, when he thinks through the pieces she's giving him, he thinks he'll be able to put together a reasonable idea of how it must have happened.
He's just not doing it yet. For once, he doesn't have to. It hasn't happened yet, and it's already over. And if he thinks about it like that, he might as well get one small thing over with. While they're sharing. ]
I know I die.
I don't know if you knew that. It's not like you'd have a reason to. I doubt anyone was keeping track. But if you did, I thought I might let you know you don't have to sidestep it.
It's fine. I'm over it. Bound to happen sooner or later. Just seemed awkward leaving it up in the air.
Did she know? The death toll was so big, so full of people she'd met in passing and then never thought about again - that she thinks it might have just slipped her mind.
Prior to all this, he was someone she met in indirect association with a group of people that she resented. 'Can you grow us wings?'
Billions of people died. Most of her old classmates, her aunt. Taylor Hebert.
And somehow that's the one she's stuck on.]
I didn't.
I wasn't on the front lines. But the death toll was massive.
[ He doesn't have any proof, one way or another, except that he doesn't see a reason for her not to be honest when it comes to trying to clip off whatever remaining slivers of hope she seems to think he might dare entertaining.
The fact she got it slightly wrong clinches it. If she understood him as well as she acts like she does, she'd have told him he survived, numb and empty and enthralled.
She can't take away a future he already didn't have. ]
Everyone dies someday. I'd rather not dwell on it.
She also mentioned the two of you had prior world saving experience. That, I thought she was stretching. Guess not.
[Amy remembers the truth that Victoria didn't tell her about her own future. That everything will get worse and that she'll get worse.
Is it shitty of her to think she kind of wishes she could have just gotten the 'You die' reveal? Rather than the gut churning agony of uncertainty about whatever it is that happened?
Obviously.]
That's one way to put it.
Makes it sound like she's a lot more cooperative than she actually is.
[ There's probably something funny about how quickly he slips back into practicals in the middle of dealing with life (for whatever it's worth) altering information. Plenty of practice, he supposes.
It's easier, anyway. He spares a moment of gratitude to Amy for being willing to let his situation go, even if he can't imagine she has much else to say about it. People she actually knew and possibly even liked died. Not a lot of space to fit in some acquaintance in the ranks.
But she's still not trying to, and he still appreciates it. ]
Triangulation. It's a classic.
I did piss her off. On purpose, this time. So if anything goes off on that front, that's why.
I'm still holding up my side of the agreement. I can't say if she will, but I got the impression she knows she needs you enough to not deliberately fuck you over while she fucks me over. But who fucking knows.
[ He has his own opinions about Tattletale's sense of 'when the situation calls for it', but those are the breaks. Amy has to work with Tattletale regardless of how trustworthy she is, and it's easier if you convince yourself that the snake you're handling follows a set of rules you can learn. ]
That's my problem, anyway. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.
Now I think I'm going to go stare at the ceiling for a while.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2024-06-09 05:16 pm (UTC)[ It doesn't make him feel better. He doesn't think there's anything anyone could say that could make him feel better about any of this as realizations keep ticking away in the back of his mind. It's going to take him a while to get through the scope of this, let alone processing it.
But it makes him feel less like he's the only one this fucking matters to, and that's something. She could have tried to hold this over him in any of a dozen ways. She didn't. ]
I mean it. Thanks for telling me. I know I haven't exactly sounded grateful, but that's because I tend to get kind of shitty when I'm having an existential crisis. My bad.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-10 04:44 am (UTC)I figured a lot of this out a while ago. Only reason why I'm not still freaking out, I guess.
[There's not much that Amy can feel smug about - and as desolate and hopeless as all this is, the fact that she figured it all out two years before Tattletale does bring her some small sense of satisfaction. Almost enough to fight off the uncanny feeling that she should feel worse about all this than she does.
She should be freaking out, right? She should relate to Krouse's reaction here.
She doesn't really. It always sucked. Heroes, villains, capes, powers. There was never anything remotely romantic about any of it. And some small part of her has wanted it all to burn to the ground for a long time now.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-11 03:04 am (UTC)[ He's assuming that's the case. If Amy was able to excise their infection, he'd think she'd have mentioned it.
And as soon as he thinks that, he knows he wouldn't take her up on it even if it was a possibility. Whatever it might mean for him down the road, however much his skin crawls at knowing what he did to himself, he's not giving up his power. What else does he have? ]
No use crying over spilled milk or thwarted alien invasions.
When did you know?
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 04:51 pm (UTC)She already knew everything. She just dressed it up as nonsense, so people dismissed her as crazy. When I touched her hand, I started to connect certain dots. She worshipped Scion.
That paired with a bunch of Bonesaw's ramblings helped me reach certain conclusions. I tried to warn Dragon a few times, but it never worked.
That was a few days after I arrived in the Birdcage, I think.
[She was in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, she doesn't super remember.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-12 09:12 pm (UTC)At least you tried. Not your fault it sounds crazy. Or that your witnesses were actually crazy.
I hope the conspiracy theorists got a kick out of it in the end. First Cauldron, then Scion. The world really is controlled by a shadowy secret organization and aliens. Surprise.
[ He'd missed catching the big reveal up close and personal, but he'd heard enough in the panicking and furious secondhand wave before the Protectorate managed to shut it back down. ]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-13 09:24 am (UTC)[It does actually make her pause when he talks about Cauldron. A few dots connect in her head. Judging by what he's unaware of - and what she was aware of at the time - there's something he knows that she doesn't. It's not as if the negotiations held in Cauldron's headquarters were public knowledge but all the cell leaders knew at least... then again, they were only held after Behemoth's death, which she kind of assumed was after his time.
Hm.]
Surprised you know about Cauldron.
Fucking hate those guys.
[She's not sure she could have gotten out of the Birdcage without them - or that they would have won without Doormaker and Clairvoyant to bolster Taylor's ability.
Still. Cauldron violated something that used to be important to her - complicated, something she deeply resented - but it was important. And they tainted it. Rotted it to the core.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-14 09:13 am (UTC)That's the first thing Krouse thinks when he reads what Amy has to say about Teacher. They did it, and what gets him about it is the slippery, disorienting lurch of that they coming in the form of the collective inclusive.
Logically, he knows that it's right. In the future he hasn't lived out, he's with Teacher until he dies. He knew that, so he knows that he contributed to the overall plan, part of the conduit that kept Teacher connected to Saint. A negligible role, in the larger scheme of things.
It's not responsibility he's feeling. It's a tiny flicker of obedient satisfaction, and he recoils from it like he reached out in the dark and sank his fingers into a swollen, hot patch of rot.
It almost makes talking about Cauldron, and what he knows about Cauldron, slightly more appealing by contrast. ]
I was still in Brockton Bay when the Triumvirate got found out.
They clamped it down fast, but word travelled faster. I picked up enough of the high notes to say I couldn't agree with you more.
[ Unlike the topic of Teacher, his feelings here are uncomplicated. He fucking hates them too. There are enough obvious reasons anyone should that he doesn't have to get into the specifics of his personal ones. ]
All those noble heroes, worse than most of the Birdcage. Fucking Lab Rat did less human experimentation.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-14 04:14 pm (UTC)Irritating, but she's not quite enough of a dick to hold it against Krouse. Billions of people dead and for what.]
Lab Rat also helped more than they did against Scion.
[Not quite true. But Lab Rat is a big reason why Taylor Hebert survived long enough to become Khepri - something which Cauldron had absolutely nothing to do with.]
That was their supposed end goal. Preparing humanity to fight against Scion at the end. Eidolon was vaporized, Legend did nothing, Alexandria's corpse was being puppeted around like a doll, and the rest of them hid in a bunker.
[She decides not to bring up the Endbringers. She's not sure why. Trickster and his Travellers were there when they fought against Leviathan - when Neil and Eric both died. Maybe the fact that America's most famous and iconic heroes were responsible for all of that death and devastation makes the ugly feeling in her chest intensify.
Her childhood was spent in guilt and shame over failing to live up to that very standard. That very standard that the greatest heroes humanity had to offer never even touched. Her fucking dad was locked away in a cage never to be let out - while they all got to fly free and condemning millions to die.]
no subject
Date: 2024-06-15 06:27 am (UTC)Amy's cynical, but there's a line somewhere. He doesn't want today to be when he discovers the limits of her newfound distaste for the world's greatest heroes. He pushes off the floor and walks into his bedroom to sit on the edge of his mattress, fingers resting on his end table next to the only picture frame in his apartment.
"Eidolon's dead," he says, to no one who's going to hear it. ]
So much for the greater good.
[ That's not surprising, except for the corpse puppeteering, but even that's just another fucked up detail. Later, when he thinks through the pieces she's giving him, he thinks he'll be able to put together a reasonable idea of how it must have happened.
He's just not doing it yet. For once, he doesn't have to. It hasn't happened yet, and it's already over. And if he thinks about it like that, he might as well get one small thing over with. While they're sharing. ]
I know I die.
I don't know if you knew that. It's not like you'd have a reason to. I doubt anyone was keeping track. But if you did, I thought I might let you know you don't have to sidestep it.
It's fine. I'm over it. Bound to happen sooner or later. Just seemed awkward leaving it up in the air.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-15 12:33 pm (UTC)Did she know? The death toll was so big, so full of people she'd met in passing and then never thought about again - that she thinks it might have just slipped her mind.
Prior to all this, he was someone she met in indirect association with a group of people that she resented. 'Can you grow us wings?'
Billions of people died. Most of her old classmates, her aunt. Taylor Hebert.
And somehow that's the one she's stuck on.]
I didn't.
I wasn't on the front lines. But the death toll was massive.
I guess Tattletale told you.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-16 12:21 am (UTC)I don't think she was lying about that one.
[ He doesn't have any proof, one way or another, except that he doesn't see a reason for her not to be honest when it comes to trying to clip off whatever remaining slivers of hope she seems to think he might dare entertaining.
The fact she got it slightly wrong clinches it. If she understood him as well as she acts like she does, she'd have told him he survived, numb and empty and enthralled.
She can't take away a future he already didn't have. ]
Everyone dies someday. I'd rather not dwell on it.
She also mentioned the two of you had prior world saving experience. That, I thought she was stretching. Guess not.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-17 04:20 pm (UTC)Is it shitty of her to think she kind of wishes she could have just gotten the 'You die' reveal? Rather than the gut churning agony of uncertainty about whatever it is that happened?
Obviously.]
That's one way to put it.
Makes it sound like she's a lot more cooperative than she actually is.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-18 04:06 am (UTC)It's easier, anyway. He spares a moment of gratitude to Amy for being willing to let his situation go, even if he can't imagine she has much else to say about it. People she actually knew and possibly even liked died. Not a lot of space to fit in some acquaintance in the ranks.
But she's still not trying to, and he still appreciates it. ]
Triangulation. It's a classic.
I did piss her off. On purpose, this time. So if anything goes off on that front, that's why.
I'm still holding up my side of the agreement. I can't say if she will, but I got the impression she knows she needs you enough to not deliberately fuck you over while she fucks me over. But who fucking knows.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-18 04:10 pm (UTC)["Was never under the impression that it should be yours either."
There are a lot of heroes around. Some of them live up to every ideal the Protectorate pretended to value.
God, she sucks.]
She just wants you to think she will.
She can cooperate when the situation calls for it but she hates it when she's not in control.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-20 02:28 am (UTC)[ He has his own opinions about Tattletale's sense of 'when the situation calls for it', but those are the breaks. Amy has to work with Tattletale regardless of how trustworthy she is, and it's easier if you convince yourself that the snake you're handling follows a set of rules you can learn. ]
That's my problem, anyway. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.
Now I think I'm going to go stare at the ceiling for a while.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-21 03:59 pm (UTC)God. I really hope I don't.
Thanks, though.
I'll talk to you later.
no subject
Date: 2024-06-22 05:07 pm (UTC)Talk to you later.