neverjoinyou | lastvoyages IC Inbox

Bill throws out his arms, exasperated.

"YEAH, OKAY! I MIND THAT YOU DIED! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"

Edited 2019-05-09 23:24 (UTC)

"It's what happens when you get hit with a ton of energy!" he almost snaps.

"I KNOW THAT! WHY DID YOU JUMP IN? I DIDN'T ASK YOU TO!"

"Because it's what I do!" Luke does snap this time, staring at Bill like the answer is so goddamn obvious he's amazed he's even having the conversation. "Because you were in danger and it's my job to protect you!"

"NO, NO!"

Bill starts pacing, hands tucked behind his back and flying in tight little ovals.

"I HAD IT HANDLED. THE SITUATION WAS UNDER CONTROL!"

"No," Luke says firmly, "it wasn't. You don't control me. You don't control my actions or my desires. Or my... my instincts. And my instinct is to protect those I care about. Is it a good instinct? I don't know--it's definitely not a survivalist one. But it's who I am. I didn't set out to die, that day, Bill. And it hurt. And I might not have come back. But I can't say I wouldn't do it again, because I did what felt right at the time."

"YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE EVEN HAD TO!"

"Why? Because you should've gotten away with it? You didn't. You upset people, you made a choice, and they made a choice to come after you. That's just how it is, Bill, and how it happened. Even you can't foresee every outcome. Sometimes things go better than we plan, sometimes worse. But there's always a variable you can't predict or control."

"BECAUSE I SHOULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING!"

Knowing what he knows about Wings, and Gold, and the spell, and the loophole, and the information he gave out as bait -

"I'M THE ONE THAT TOLD HIM YOU COULD KILL PEOPLE INSIDE THE SPELL! I THOUGHT HE'D BURN HIS CHANCE ON ME, NOT YOU!"

Luke stares at him.

"He did," he says after a long moment, as if trying to piece together what part of this Bill's missing.

"UUUGH, BUT YOU GOT IN THE WAY. I SHOULD'VE KNOWN. I SHOULD'VE KNOWN!"

He goes back to pacing, in the opposite direction this time.

"LOOK, I LIED TO YOU, ALRIGHT? THE GUY THAT MADE ME IS DEAD. BUT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT."

Early on in the port, Bill stole the body of the man who created him. Pretty routine. Luke had been there for that.

Just before the final fight, Bill had become a triangle again. He'd dodged questions about why, and where his creator's body had gone, and claimed it was still intact.

As apparent proof, he appeared to be wearing the same human body during the fight where Luke died, and stood next to him as a human. That's as much as Luke stayed alive to see.

"I WAS WEARING AN ILLUSION. ERSKINE WAS SUPPOSED TO KILL ME, WHICH WOULD DESTROY MY PHYSICAL FORM! EVERYBODY WOULD SEE HIM KILLING THE MEAT PUPPET I WAS INHABITING - IT'D BE HIS FAULT THE GUY WAS DEAD, AND NOBODY WOULD GO LOOKING FOR A CORPSE!"

This doesn't surprise Luke nearly as much as maybe it should. Is he disappointed? Yes, but he's not shocked. But he does realize that any progress with Bill has an as-yet undetermined number of steps back for every one forward.

"I realize this doesn't make sense to you," he says slowly, thinking it through for himself. "But I'm going to tell you, anyway. I'm more upset that you lied to me than that you killed him. And if Erskine had killed the man, I wouldn't have been angry--because he'd have done it thinking he was taking down someone he thought was dangerous." Luke rubs his eyes with his hand. "But you knew I'd be upset that you killed that man, and so you knew enough to know it was wrong. Or at least, that I would think it was. Why do you care?" He watches Bill closely, though his expression is actually more curious than angry. "What made you hide it?"

He remembers the conversation with Fives, reluctantly.

"THE GUY DIDN'T DESERVE ANYTHING LIKE THAT. I JUST WANTED TO DO IT. AND I DIDN'T WANNA EXPLAIN MYSELF TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING THAT MEANS THEY COULD BE WRONG."

Luke shakes his head.

"You're not making sense," he points out. "You're admitting he didn't deserve it, and that the people who disagree with you are wrong. You can't have that both ways. We don't agree with you because he didn't deserve it. You're acting like there's no context for any of this. Just you getting what you want, versus not. That's not the same thing as morality.

"IT'S NOT MORALITY! IT'S - "

Bill turns, breaks eye contact.

"HE REALLY HAD MY WORLD IN HIS FIST, WINGS. WE WERE JUST PUPPETS, AND NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR THAT. THEY THINK I'M CRAZY 'CAUSE I CAN'T PROVE I'M RIGHT. BUT I KNOW. I'VE ALWAYS KNOWN. AND IF I KEPT HIM ALIVE, I'D NEVER BE ABLE TO STOP WONDERING WHICH THINGS I DID WERE REALLY COMING FROM ME AND WHICH WERE COMING FROM SOMEBODY USING ME FOR ENTERTAINMENT. I'D NEVER BE ABLE TO KNOW IF I WAS REAL OR JUST THOUGHT I WAS."

Luke takes a deep breath.

"Don't you think I wonder that every day since I got here?" he asks quietly. "I've spent the past four years of my life trying to life up to a future that people a lot older and a lot smarter than me believed was my destiny. I broke that future, and then I came here--and learned it had all been someone else's holofilm. So what am I supposed to think? Am I real? Am I a tool of the Force? Is my life being written by a filmmaker or a cosmic power? And if I never do find out, how do I move forward?"

He does not expect Bill to answer any of these questions.

"It is about morality. Because morality is about choosing right or wrong. And yeah, it's more complicated for you, because you learned something that affected your perception of whether you can choose. But here's the thing--either you chose to kill him, which was your moral choice, or you simply did what was written. So either way, has anything changed?"

"IT CHANGES TO ME."

Bill turns back around.

"LOOK, I DON'T KNOW ABOUT HOW ALL THIS INTERACTS WITH RIGHT AND WRONG, BUT I KNOW PEOPLE DON'T BELIEVE ME OR DON'T CARE WHEN I TRY TO EXPLAIN THIS. AND I BET THEY WOULDN'T BELIEVE YOU OR CARE EITHER. THAT WAS MY WHOLE REASON I NEEDED HIM DEAD. SO IT WAS JUST EASIER TO NOT EXPLAIN IT AT ALL. LET PEOPLE THINK WHATEVER THEY WANT, I DON'T CARE."

The big sulk he's doing now indicates that he does, in fact, care.

"That's why we're here," Luke insists, growing slightly irritated again. "To figure out how 'all this' interacts with right and wrong! You went straight from assuming people don't care about you to needing some poor man dead. Don't you see what a huge leap that is? Don't you see that something being difficult isn't a good moral reason? Gods. I risked everything to avoid killing the one person everyone in my life told me had to die for us to win the war, because I thought there had to be another way. Don't you think I would have fought for another way for you, too?"

Bill looks ... a little lost. He holds up his hands in a T-shape: time out.

"EITHER - I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN OR YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN. OR BOTH."

Awesome, so it's like every other conversation they've ever had.

"Okay," Luke says, considering. "So which part do you want to start with?"

"I CHOSE TO KILL HIM. I'D HAVE KILLED HIM WHETHER OR NOT PEOPLE UNDERSTOOD OR CARED WHY."

Bill shifts. Okay, so, what's a good metaphor...

"YOUR DAD NEEDED THE EMPEROR DEAD TO BE FREE. IF YOU WANT TO THINK OF IT LIKE THAT, GO AHEAD.

Luke waves away the metaphor--he doesn't need to think about dad. And it's not the same thing.

"It's not the same thing," he says. "Let me start with this--you say you chose to kill him, but did you? Can you be sure? If your theory was correct, how do you know you chose to kill him?"

"BECAUSE HE WOULDN'T HAVE WANTED TO DIE."

Easy one. The guy wasn't the kind to set up long cons that his death would benefit, wasn't suicidal, had stuff to look forward to.

Wings is really still sitting, huh.

Bill reluctantly floats down lower, near the tops of the grass.

Try to be patient with him, Bill--Luke is trying to use logic.

"Okay, so he wouldn't want to die. What allowed you to kill him, then, if he controls you? I mean, just the fact he didn't expect you to be real and in his universe? Because... it seems like if you had the free will to do what you did--get into his universe, take an action he could not control--you also have the free will to have gone about this a different way."

Does that make sense?, his expectant expression asks.

"THE BARGE."

He does have an answer for that one.

"THIS PLACE - "

Bill gestures up to the ship looming back the way they came.

"THIS ISN'T HIS DOMAIN. I'D NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO PULL THIS OFF WORKING OUT OF GRAVITY FALLS, HE MADE SURE OF THAT!"

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