betterthanaplan | The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Monday

"And I've been trying for years," Octavia said, finally letting her gaze drop to the table to between them.

Maybe she needed to regroup for a second.

Duke nodded, buying himself a few moments by sipping his coffee. It was a little too hot, and he couldn't really taste it, but at least it kept his mouth busy so he didn't say something stupid.

He took a breath.

"I didn't want to listen to you, before," he said. "I was freaked out, and hurt, so I hurt you. Now, I've -- I've heard about it from that man in your -- and from Lucifer, but." He swallowed. "Can you tell me now? I promise I'll listen. Just listen. Not attack."

Slowly, Octavia looked up. With her eyes, not with her head.

"Where do I start?" she asked. It sounded a little helpless, but still like a genuine question. How far back did he want to go?

That was a good question. Duke felt he had a decent grasp on how she ended up in charge, so. . . .

“Luce said you all were going to run out of protein?”

Octavia wasn't even remotely surprised he went for that.

She swallowed, and chewed on the inside of her bottom lip for a second before she spoke. And when she did, her voice was carefully flat, all rasp.

"We had a hydro farm," she said. "It was supposed to keep us going for five years. But two years in, it started to fail. Soy bean crop got infected."

In all the years since the dark one, she hadn't talked about this to anyone but Lucifer.

"We could save it, with seeds from the healthy plants. But only if we eradicated the rest. Which was going to leave us without protein for an entire year."

"So . . . you had to find another source." Duke nodded. "I understand that." He flicked her a tiny smile. "Remind me to tell you about the Benton sisters later."

Octavia wanted to ask whether they'd been farmers.

But she knew better than that.

And lighter questions wouldn't make this any easier. "We already had the fighting pits."

"How did those get started?"

Something in Octavia's tone softened. Probably didn't make sense from the outside. "Death had to be the enemy," she said. "Bunker was overcrowded from the start. There had to be... consequences. For going against the common good."

She chewed on her lip again.

"But I didn't want us to be exactly like the Ark. People had to have a -- a chance."

Duke didn't know if that was any better than what the Ark did. But he also had no idea how he could have done any different.

He didn't say any of that. He'd promised to listen, and that was what he was determined to do.

"What, uh. What did you do to the losers? Before the soybeans failed?"

"Honored them with whatever burial rites we could."

The bunker hadn't been very good for most things people had been accustomed to from before.

Duke nodded again. "And, uh. Then you honored them . . . differently."

Octavia's gaze was briefly a little more sharp.

"They died so we could live," she said. "Omon gon oson."

Duke swallowed and set his coffee aside.

He had not put that together yet.

"Right," he said. He wasn't judging. He was just listening. "And that -- not, uh. Honoring them. That became a crime for the pits?"

"Yes."

Octavia hadn't touched anything at all on the table. Now it seemed unlikely that she would.

Flatly, she added, "It wasn't my first choice."

"Tell me, then," Duke said. "Tell me why."

"Same thing happened on the Ark," Octavia said. "The people that went through it, they had a choice. And with their choice came guilt that the entire generation never recovered from."

She shook her head.

"I didn't want that for my people. I couldn't let them go through that."

And here. This was the sticking point for Duke. Because while he understood what she was saying intellectually, his gut still rebelled at the idea of taking away people's choices. He bit his lip hard and forced himself not to look away. Not to bristle. He took another long, measured breath.

"Did it work?"

"You weren't there," Octavia said mildly, off that look. Even with how he tried to hold his reaction back, it didn't take a genius to figure out this was one, if not even the thing he had trouble understanding.

And how would he?

As for his actual question...

"They don't blame themselves," she continued. "They blame me." Even the people who'd pushed her into it in the first place. "They can rest easier because they have someone they can point to that forced their hand. So, yes."

Edited 2020-11-24 20:55 (UTC)

And people said Duke had a martyr complex.

Another measured breath.

"I wasn't there," he agreed. "I can't -- I have no idea how I would have reacted if I was. I do know I'm sorry you had to take all that on, though."

"That was my choice."

Mostly.

Eventually.

It didn't sound to Duke like anyone made any real choices in all this.

But he was listening. Not judging.

"It explains a lot," he said instead. "Kind of -- everything. Since you've been back."

"Does it?"

Octavia had a lot of trouble seeing herself from the outside. Always had.

Duke nodded. "Especially the . . . the nightmare stuff. You didn't want me to see any of that, right?"

"Of course not," Octavia said, shakinh her head just a little, then looking off past his shoulder. "Still wish you didn't know, if I'm honest."

Even though she knew it was better that he did.

At least now he could make his own mind up about her, and she could stop feeling like she was lying to him just by being around him at all.

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