mothmansplaining | [IC INBOX

"Yes, I did."

"So...so you can't say the Barge didn't work for you at all."

"I think," Ford says, "that it's like a reality show. Did you watch any of those, during your time on Earth?"

"Oh - yes, a couple times. Greg liked them."

And Amethyst, and Garnet had tolerated them and Pearl would find something better to do. But she's trying not to think about them too much.

"Sometimes, the people on those shows get married. Or off the island, or a lot of money. But that's not the point, is it? There are better ways to find someone to marry you, but the point is to make it as entertaining to watch as possible. I believe that's what's happening here."

Rose looks uncomfortable.

"But why would someone or something that powerful play with people's lives and deaths like this, just for entertainment?"

"Who knows? Maybe there's not much to do up in their dimension. Maybe they just don't think we're that important. Or maybe there's another purpose to putting us on this boat. It was one of the things I was hoping to ask them when I tried to break into their world earlier this year."

She supposes, glumly, that the Diamonds wouldn't care about playing with mortal lives if that kind of thing was what they found amusing.

"Maybe they want to help us as a whole but the Admiral's just...really bad at it?"

"It's true that I don't know how a Barge under an effective Admiral is run," says Ford. "I'd like to compare notes with someone who's been on board another one, but the last time we were around other Barges, I had other things on my mind.

"The ship we're on is stolen," Ford continues. "The last time the Admiral was brought in for a performance review, the Authority declared him incompetent and was going to decommission the ship. However, rather than accept his demotion with professionalism, the Admiral chose to run away, stealing another Barge and pulling us all on board against our will. He's either made us all accomplices to his plan, or the whole thing was for show, and we're in the same situation we've always been. The Authority doesn't seem like the kind of beings it's easy to steal from."

Ford sits back.

"I'd like to bring the ship back to them. Get some answers about why things happen like the haunted house and the mistletoe. Possibly get us all a competent Admiral, one who doesn't let five-sixths of us fall through the cracks. Or possibly end the game they've been playing with all of us."

He thinks there's a way to reach the Authority. He just doesn't know how.

Rose thinks about that, then frowns.

"Do you think there's a way? To go back to the Authority?"

"I do. I just don't know what it is yet."

This is said with absolute conviction. It isn't just a guess; there's something that's made Ford believe it.

And she doesn't fail to pick up on that.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Some time ago, I made contact with a being I have reason to believe is one of them," he says, "through a magic mirror in a port. I didn't catch everything she said, and she couldn't hear me, either, but I'm positive I saw her say, I'll be waiting."

And sorry, but boy howdy that apology is NOT accepted.

"Maybe she doesn't know either," she reflects.

"Could be," Ford says. "I don't know, Rose. There are too many things about the Barge that don't add up. Too many unanswered questions. There was a time I would have done anything to make it a better place, but when I actually tried to do it, most of the ship didn't seem to think it was worth trying. So, I stopped.

"I'm working on smaller projects now. Safe things, like quantum-entangling pets with their owners, and studying why people on the Barge disappear so that maybe I can find a way to prevent it. But I still believe we're being used for something, and I think it's for someone else's fun."

Rose tips her head, curls bouncing lightly.

"What did you do to change the ship?"

"I tried to go right to the source," he says, heavily. "Bill Cipher and I secretly built a portal, a wormhole that we could use to reach the world he believed the Authority was in. He told me it was in the same place as the people who created him, and I believed him. Unfortunately, we were wrong about their location, and the mission was a catastrophic failure."

He looks at Rose tiredly.

"I don't recommend trying to escape. Even if you make it to an entirely different plane of reality, the connection that tethers inmates to the ship can't be deliberately broken. The ship followed us through the wormhole, but because the tunnel began inside the ship, the whole thing sort of....turned inside out. It was a nightmare, and I had nothing to show for it."

"I would never try to escape," she says, with passion. "I'm not going to abandon everybody else here when they're suffering!"

This doesn't rule out a large amount of other stupid shit she might very well still do.

"No, it isn't." The Dendarii are her home and her family, and Taura loves them dearly. Especially Miles, and Laureen, and Green Squad. But none of them have that kind of familial relationship with her.

"Three years ago, I joined a mercenary fleet. They're the closest I've ever had to a family. It was nice," a wholly inadequate word, "growing up with people who cared about me, even if it wasn't real. Thank you for that."

Ford's heart is a great big mess of emotions here. Some of the featured feelings are:

- love for his very good daughter
- loss of his very good daughter
- pain at breaches being not-real
- regret that he has not yet untangled the watch-data from the breach so that he can change the subject to something safely scientific
- concern at his not-daughter not having family until three years ago
- is she eating enough??
- how does he say the right thing here without accidentally making her mad??
- feelings are uncomfortableeeee

Luckily(?), Ford is not good at processing feelings and tends to blurt whatever's on his mind.

"You were a good kid," he says. "I mean, I'm sure if you had been a little scamp, I'd have loved you just as much, but the way you were made it easy. Any parent would be lucky to have you."

A weird conversation to have, but one they are definitely having.

His expression falls a little bit.

"I'm sorry you didn't have that."

Her face softens (if it can be called that, what with her fangs) into a smile at the praise. Taura leans forward and reaches out one big, clawed hand to take Ford's for a second, squeezing gently.

"I was part of a small batch of experimental prototypes for genetically modified soldiers, and the planet I grew up on is essentially an enormous, well-organized black market." She's alright, though. "I'm well rid of it. The people who made me can't have me back. I have better people now."

"Still, I'm sorry you were brought here," Ford says. "The Barge isn't a good place. You undergo a lot of reality-altering events that you don't have a choice about. Often, they're painful, or humiliating, or just plain dramatic. For some people, it's worth it to have a chance at life. But for the ones who would rather die, there's no escape. And not all the wardens understand what it's like to be trapped here."

"I thought that was me," she says. "At first I thought I wouldn't mind if I stopped existing like I chose, but the thought of meeting my son - and now I know how people here are suffering..."

"Oh."

He squeezes her hand back. Both their hands are kind of weird, aren't they? Too big, genetic anomalies, but she isn't afraid to hold his hand and he isn't afraid to hold hers.

"I know something about what that's like, actually," he says. "Thanks to another transuniversal Barge event. Cloned, raised in a lab, meant to be a weapon." It hadn't ended well. Poor Weapon X-618. "Now, it wasn't exactly real either, and it wasn't the same as what happened to you, but I'm glad," he says, another word that isn't adequate to describe what he feels about someone he'd thought of as his daughter until a few days ago being raised in those conditions, "that you're out of it."

If the people who made Taura showed up right now and tried to take her back, Ford Pines would probably end up demoted. Sometimes that's just how it be.

"It's a complicated situation," Ford says. "And changing it isn't easy. My mistake was taking the whole thing on myself, and not asking anyone else on the Barge if they wanted to be involved with my Authority search. Some of them don't! Some inmates want to go back to their own worlds and don't care about anything else. Some wardens come from worlds so terrible that they can't go back. Others need their deals badly enough that they're willing to gamble with inmates' lives. And some are just along for the ride, because they don't mind if inmates are miserable because they're having fun."

Whoof, someone is still bitter.

"And I have to respect that. Not everyone wants the ship to change. So I'm stuck working on projects for people's pets and hoping I can make sense of the data from disappearances while the Authority watches the whole thing, and no one does anything about the inmates who can't get out."

His family died in multiple breaches. Thankfully, that shit has stopped, but he suspects it's because it stopped being fun to watch after the first two times.

[IC INBOX | lastvoyages ]

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cw: suicide ment

blanket cw from here

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