[closed]

[secondnature]

CHARACTERS: Rey and Keith
DATE: The evening after they return from Boneyard Junction.
WARNINGS: N/A, but will update if something comes up.
SUMMARY: Keith found a holodisc and finally looks at it, and he pieces it together with the end of Rey's fight with the Reverend. AKA I really want to make an Animorphs joke about yeerks and slugs so here it is, here's the reference.

By time Keith had found the holodisc, it had been too late to really look at it. Believing that it might just be a lot of ALASTAIR nonsense, he hadn't set aside the time to raise it in front of his magitek to look at it. And then the fight broke out, and then Rey killed that guy, and then—and then it was all a mess, all a bunch of confusion. Keith hadn't seen the slug slither out of the guy's head, but he had seen Rey bend down to pick something up. It wasn't the time or the place to cross the distance to check on her. Other Deemers were either still fighting or escaping, and Keith was taking the whole thing hard.

By time they get back, it was clear that something was wrong. The saloon was empty of most of its employees and things just looked bad. In a fit of brooding, Keith wandered off to finally look at the holodisc alone, and the information he found was confusing—at first. At first. And then he slowed himself down and tried to think about it like he thought about the whole deal with the messages and the lure of the blue lion and everything else. Once he did that, it felt as if it was abruptly clear to him exactly what was going on. It wasn't like he had a perfect solution, but a number of questions find their answers. Or ... it felt like there was a path to them. That was more accurate.

Seeking out Rey took a little more work, but once he found her, he raised a hand and then motioned for her to come to him. They have to talk. Some part of his stomach twisted at the memory of her filling the Reverend with bullets, and he realized that she might not take this information well. What if she killed an innocent man? What if that man had been taken over against his will? What if?

Comments

[forcevisions]

When they all arrived weeks ago, Rey had been one of the few not to find her home in the saloon—not for lack of trying, but when they'd turned up empty, it seemed obvious to her that she was best suited to living outside, and couldn't be too sore that she hadn't found a place to stay under a roof.

It made it convenient to escape and process what she had done. It wasn't just the shrill sound of the slug's death that haunted her, but the emptiness of the Reverend's eyes, and the question of what the psychic wail of the slug meant for that murder.

If there'd been another way to stop him, if the slug had come out in some other way, then she could have—

She heard footsteps, and looked up quickly to see Keith approach. She sat behind the saloon, back pressed up against storage barrels, butt squarely settled in the dirt. Guilt clouded her eyes, and she averted them quickly and stowed the corpse of the slug in her pack. She wasn't sure what she was going to do with it yet. Not at all. But she knew she wasn't ready to let it go.

"What do you want?" She groused, turning her face fully away from him to stubbornly rub her knuckles below her eyes, just in case they looked red with the confused watering they'd been doing. She didn't know how to process what had happened—hadn't been able to get anywhere with trying yet.

[secondnature]

If it weren't for the reason that he was here, Keith might have bit back at her for her sharp response. Keith merely clenched his jaw instead and rocked back onto his heels while considering the right words. Nothing came to mind, not right away, and he made sure to count to five to regain his patience. He realized right away that he was worried about her, and that she didn't look good. For Keith to not notice, it usually took two things: someone being openly and obviously upset, and for him to know the person well enough to spot both those things. He realized he was at that point with her. It was strange.

Instead of responding right away, he chose to sit down on the ground in front of her, legs bent back so he could press his arms over the tops of his knees. He gave her a moment to compose herself before he prepared his own words to speak. And then he did, eyes watching some point on the back of the saloon just beyond her head. It felt like the best he could manage right now. "I think I found something you need to see." He hadn't even shown it to the other paladins yet. He would—he had no doubt about that.

But Rey had to come first.

He extended the holodisc to her after a beat of considering more words. "Use it next to your magitek."

[forcevisions]

He settled down before her, on her level, and he didn't pry, and that relaxed Rey's shoulders—on the other hand, though, it also told her that something was very desperately wrong. Keith ought to have been bickering with her. The lack of animosity made her wary enough to listen with rapt attention, and she watched his hand extend with just enough hesitation to straighten her back before she took it.

"What is it?" It looked familiar enough, comparable to tech that she'd seen in her own universe, and that was relatively comforting. But the design was different than anything she'd used, just similar enough for her to discern its function: data storage of some kind. Rey turned it over in her palm, then reached into her torn and dirtied uniform to pull out the long magitek pendant she wore because of the ease with which she could tuck it away.

[secondnature]

Her question wasn't an easy one, even if Keith knew it should have been. He decided to point his eyes away from the wall behind her to the ground. "I—uh, I saw your fight." While he clearly felt uncomfortable about the whole thing, he worried more about her. How would she handle the news she was about to get? Would it be something that would help? She looked like she was in bad shape.

Yeah, no, he was certain it wouldn't help.

"I saw it, and I had this disc. It's from when ALASTAIR was here before. I think it might ... explain some things." Only at the end of these does did Keith look up toward her, eyes expectant. He wasn't great at comforting people. That was better left to Shiro or Hunk, but he figured it'd be strange to just ... send Rey off to someone who would be a stranger.

So, here he was, prepped to maybe have to do exactly that.

[forcevisions]

Fight seemed a generous term for it. Rey's expression hardened, the set of her eyes telling all too clearly how it had gone over for her; something had roughened within her in answer to what she'd felt she had to do, what she now questioned the necessity of.

She couldn't settle on what to make of Keith's timing, showing up like this with information that would apparently lend context to her fight.

So she looked down at the disc and tried to see what she could make of the data on it, scanning through warily as though she expected to find something she didn't want to see. With the way Keith was acting, it was hard not to feel that fear.

[secondnature]

"Patient" would never be a word to describe Keith. There were a lot of words that would instead be used, and most of them would be the antonyms of that. His mouth remained closed at first as he observed her, and when he felt like it was enough time, he made himself count to five first just to ensure that there was some distance between his version of "enough time" and anyone else's.

"I don't think the Deemers are really—" he began, mouth opening and closing at the same time. "Uh, what I mean is, I think whatever they are, I think it's ALASTAIR's fault. But whatever they've done, they've ... they've changed the people they've taken over."

That was the real kicker. He had seen a different Rey, a Rey from the future who had known hardship and knew how to strike out on her own. This Rey was someone else. She had hope. But what she did, from his perspective, didn't leave a lot of room for that. Keith didn't want to seem accusatory. Weren't they damaging Galra ships all the time? There were people on them, evil or not. And that Reverend definitely seemed ... well, something like evil.

It was just a different type of it.

[forcevisions]

His words echoed in a distant part of her mind, a background track to the way the forefront processed what she could read now. She started out alert and focused—extreme threat, it said, and the picture of the Taraxa was undoubtedly the slug she'd picked up. For the briefest of moments, those words afforded her hope.

What came next was worse for that hope.

Brain scans. Host. An entire species lost to slavery. Worse, ALASTAIR permitting them their parasitic influence. Skimming the bulk of the file was enough; she dropped the holodisc and clasped her hand over her mouth to suppress a cry of disgust, both with ALASTAIR and with herself. It was a horrified sound, a croak that sounded like the first real brush with death.

No other sound would come out of her throat, though she gaped and fumbled for words. She couldn't look Keith in the eyes, not now. Not when she was certain. Not when he knew.

She felt sick.

[secondnature]

Why was this duty left to him? Keith knew that his small and limber frame granted him access to more holes than a lot of other people, but he now wished that someone ... better at this could have found the disc. In the heat of the moment, Keith was usually terrible at knowing when to offer comfort. He knew that it was important here, but the thought and feeling of it still escaped him. What was he supposed to say? Or do?

"Rey ... you didn't know," he said finally. He wasn't any good at this. He knew he wasn't, but he was at a loss. Why didn't he bring Shiro with him? When it comes to comfort, Shiro was always like one of those ... uh ... machines full of weird candies in bubbles. But the candies in bubbles would be comfort. (Keith never really saw the appeal to those things growing up. Weren't they too small to be worth anything?)

"And we—" Ugh, what would Shiro say here? Whatever it would be, it'd be good. It'd be amazing. Trumpets would sound because both he and Rey would feel better. That sentiment escaped him now. "We'll do something. I don't know what. But we will." His words were resolved, but not their delivery. His delivery made it seem like he doubted they could do much of anything.

[forcevisions]

"Will we?" She looked up at him, shaking her head. The ground didn't feel solid beneath her anymore; rather, she felt adrift, floating through space untethered by the planet's gravity now that she felt like ALASTAIR couldn't necessarily be trusted with that something. Keith, surely. Doubt hung in the silent beat that passed before she clarified. "Have you read the same file I just did? ALASTAIR allowed them to continue like this. What makes you think they'll have us do anything but leave them to enslave another planet?"

As much as it contradicted everything she wanted for herself, as much as it threw her into a tailspin to consider that the one truth she'd hoped for, that ALASTAIR was good and trying to save the universe regardless of their methods, it helped her in that exact moment too to search for an enemy that was not herself. It took the burden of the Reverend's execution off her chest, at least for a moment.

[secondnature]

From Keith's perspective, it sounded like an excuse to be angry and give up on the spot. He might be terrible at consolation and reassurance, but he was darn good at managing to be pushy and jerk-like at exactly the right moments. Jaw clenched, he looked at her as if she was crazy.

"Are you even listening to yourself?" he snapped quickly. Keith at least didn't feel like he had to struggle for the right words. "We aren't ALASTAIR. Our orders from them don't mean anything if it's getting more people hurt. I'm willing to bet that more than a few people on our team of people here won't like what their bosses did. If they try to stop us from cleaning up their mess, then really, it says a lot about them. But we can't just quit because we're afraid of that."

Keith had a belief that no matter what, people had to keep pushing forward. It was hard. As someone who dropped out of school and lost his direction in life, he knew that first hand.

But he hated people giving up. He hated people just ... stopping. He thought the situation was bad, but doing something wasn't out of the question. Not yet.

[forcevisions]

There's bite in the way he snaps back at her, and though Rey's instinct is to bristle with the wound it leaves, she can't say that she doesn't deserve it; feeling sorry for herself in this position rather misses the point of what she had done. She has no right to it. Still, there's a definite look of surprise and injury that flickers through her eyes before it's replaced by steely resolve and acceptance of the message he insists upon her.

He's right, of course. They don't have to act within the confines of ALASTAIR. But to lose her measure of her own judgment and to doubt ALASTAIR's intentions all at once takes a lot of the wind out of her sails, left her on unsteady ground, adrift and unanchored. It doesn't feel like anything is certain right now.

But Keith seems certain, so she clings to that.

"You're right. We need to tell them what we've found: warn them about the Deemers, and about ALASTAIR's history with the Taraxa. They deserve to know who they're working for, and how to handle the Deemers." She swallows thickly, thinking about her own mistake, about the fact that telling anyone will mean admitting she killed an innocent man possessed.

[secondnature]

"That's what we'll do. But first ... first, I think one of us has to go to ALASTAIR and demand answers." The suggestion hung in the air only long enough to be preserved before he pressed on. "Actually, I'll handle it." He might not know how to make her feel better, but Keith was good at being a pain in the butt and going against people of authority. It meant a lot to him to be able to finally ... demand something solid, rather than something based upon suspicions.

"No matter what they say, we'll tell people the truth regardless. And if they try to silence me, you'll know." Keith was cynical enough to believe that "silencing him" was definitely on the table.