The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom (and Beyond!), Wednesday afternoon

[betterthanaplan]

Duke had plans with Octavia today to show her the ocean -- or the parts of it that could be easily reached from Fandom in an afternoon, anyway. So while he waited for her to arrive, he puttered around his boat, checking over the engine and bilge pump, plotting a couple possible routes on his charts, and checking the weather reports and tides for anything that might give them trouble.

Everything looked good for a lovely day at sea. He put together some beer and snacks, and sat back on his favorite bench with his ukelele while he waited.

A pair of porgs hopped up on the crate by his feet. He did his best to ignore them.

[for one!]

Comments

[okteiviakom]

"It's home for you," Octavia said. "Right?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Best one I've ever had," Duke agreed. ". . . Admittedly that's not a very high bar."

[okteiviakom]

"The quarters I just called my home was my prison before I was in prison," Octavia noted with a rather dark sort of muted humor to her tone. She shook her head. "Your low bar is safe with me."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke rolled his eyes. "Do not get me started on prisons. I've been in several."

Both literal and metaphorical!

"What'd they put you in for?"

[okteiviakom]

"Having been born."

She said much too easily, considering how he was only the second Fandomite to ever be told that.

There was a slight, sarcastically perky-by-Octavia affectation to the head tilt that followed. Sort of downplaying the whole thing. "You?"

[betterthanaplan]

Duke quirked an eyebrow at that, but didn't press.

"Theft, mostly. Some fraud. Been accused of murder once or twice, but they never managed to make that stick. First time was for trespassing. Joke was on them though, since the only reason I broke into that place was to find somewhere warm to sleep. At least the jail was heated."

Not that he ever got much sleep when he was in a cage.

[okteiviakom]

Probably said some things about Octavia that she could hear 'murder' and not bat an eye at it. Didn't even have to do with whether it was baseless or not.

"I couldn't sleep for the first week after they locked me up," she rasped, watching him. "Rations were better than what I was used to, though."

[betterthanaplan]

"All they ever gave you at the Haven jail was slim jims," Duke said. "I got my revenge though. Fucked with their vending machine. No Baby Ruths for them."

[okteiviakom]

"That's not a loss." Magnus kept shoving snacks and candy at her. She'd former Opinions. "But, no peanut butter cups either?"

[betterthanaplan]

"They didn't have any to begin with. Haven PD has terrible taste."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia snorted. "Good riddance, then." You know, as if she hadn't been vehemently against them already. "Peanut butter cups are the best."

She was quiet for a second again, watching the water.

And shrugged. "I guess they had to feed us on the Ark. I bet starving us would not have let them feel as good about the mercy they were showing us by not just imediately floating us, the way they did every criminal over eighteen."

[betterthanaplan]

". . . Floating. Like -- launching you into space?" Duke looked suitably appalled. "Jesus."

[okteiviakom]

"Mm-hmm," Octavia hummed with the tiniest nod. "Right through the airlock. Doesn't matter what the crime was, either. Treason, murder, vandalism? You get caught and you're an adult, they're floating you."

Capital punishment went great with everything!

[betterthanaplan]

"Jesus," Duke said again. He felt vaguely ill at the idea. "And let me guess, there's not much by way of trials or appeals, either."

[okteiviakom]

"Everyone gets a trial, but some are shorter than others," Octavia said, the dry tone a little muted, now. "Pardons are practically non-existent."

It was a form of population control, but she took one glance at his face and decided not to point that out.

"Sorry if this is upsetting," she added, in slightly more of a murmur. (Also, if? O, come on.) "Or too depressing."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shook his head. "You're just kind of confirming that I really don't need to be going into space," Duke said. "I'm not stupid enough to claim no one on Earth ever decided to just straight up murder each other as a way to keep law and order, but still. At least here I know how to run away."

[okteiviakom]

"I'm sure space on a private ship like this one would be fine," Octavia noted. "Space stations just hang out in orbit, however... I can't recommend."

Her hair didn't really need pushing behind her ear, but she found herself doing it anyway.

"Sixteen years of experience hiding on one, and let me tell you," she added, sighing quietly. "There's nowhere to run or hide."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shuddered, not entirely performatively. "Sounds like a total nightmare to me."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia snorted. It came out sounding a little soft.

"Do you want to hear the most nightmarish part?"

[betterthanaplan]

"Sure," Duke said wryly. "Hell, I'm already traumatized, might as well go all the way."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia shot him a wry look back, but there was an odd note of warmth to it. Don't ask her why.

"I wasn't supposed to exist, because Mom already had Bellamy," she said. Just to clarify what it was really about. "And because I wasn't supposed to exist, I couldn't leave our quarters, ever. But, just in case that wasn't bad enough, there were surprise inspections. Guards would come in and check everything was how it was supposed to be."

And to harrass her mother.

"And there was this part of the floor that my mom had pried loose, and underneath, there was this tiny crawlspace that could be hidden by the piece of floor and then Mom's workbench over it. And that's where I would go, whenever there was an inspection. For sixteen years. And that hole did not get any bigger along with me."

[betterthanaplan]

Duke shook his head. "I had my share of hidey-holes growing up, but at least I got to pick mine myself. How'd you end up down on Earth? Sounds like if you'd been caught you would have been locked up until you were old enough to, uh, 'space'."

[okteiviakom]

"I would've had my trial at eighteen, then been floated," Octavia confirmed with a nod. She couldn't know whether that would have been the outcome, of course, but she'd always assumed. "Instead, I came to Earth at seventeen on a dropship. The Ark started running out of resources a full century ahead of schedule, but the ones in charge didn't know how far along Earth was in its healing process."

And here was where her tone got really dry. "So who do you send to the ground to check out if it's survivable yet? Good, law-abiding citizens, or a hundred of your most expendable?"

They'd literally been called that in Counsellor Jaha's video message, to their faces. Expendable. Explained some of Octavia's rather bitter tone, there.

[betterthanaplan]

"You mean kids, right?" Duke asked, a little sharper than he'd intended. "Like you were, just stuck in a shitty situation and trying to make the most of it? Fuck, I really hate people sometimes."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia did not seem to mind the sharpness one bit.

"If nothing else," she said, mildly, "at least I got to be the very first Ark-born person to step back on the ground."