Here’s who deserves the blame, Brian: The Slaughterhouse Nine.
“What’s not fair is that I’m the one who’s tried to keep things sensible, to keep this group sane, and when push comes to shove, when I go with the majority because things won’t go smoothly if I don’t, I’m the one who gets captured and tortured. Your plan!”
And there it is. He just blamed her for him getting captured.
*pinches brow* Damn it, Brian.
“Don’t.”
“Are you going to tell me I’m wrong?”
“It- it wasn’t fair. You’re right. But I don’t deserve all of the blame here. I volunteered to be the person Trickster swapped out.”
Taylor is actually taking this better than I was expecting.
But somehow I don’t think “I was going to be the one recklessly thrown into the lion’s den” is going to appease Brian.
“Knowing there was no way you could, with your injury. So you let me.”
No, Brian. She’s not that manipulative.
He stared at me with an intensity that I couldn’t meet. I broke eye contact, looking down at my gloved hands, which were clutched together in my lap, fingers tangled. “Tell me, Taylor. If you don’t deserve blame, who does?”
Fuck off.
“Stop,” I said. I was getting flashbacks to my conversations with Armsmaster, now.
Well yes, Armsmaster was right about a lot of what he said about you too, in the early days.
“You say you’re not manipulative, that your undercover operation was pure in motive, but you are. You throw yourself into those situations solo, or you join in on whatever fucked up plan the others come up with, and you do it because it makes you useful, because you know we’d struggle without you, you’re making us dependent on you.”
I don’t think she’s doing that on purpose.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “That’s not- not what I’m doing. Every step of the way, I had other reasons. Strategies, or there were people I needed to help-”
“Maybe Bitch was right about you all along.”
Bitch’s precise assessment of Taylor seems to have varied a bit over time, care to elaborate on that?
I suppose it mostly boils down to “do not want”.
“That’s not fair.” This isn’t him. He’s still reeling from what Bonesaw did to him.
Yeah, let’s fuckin’ hope this is temporary.
That excuse did little to shake my worries that this was what he really thought. Was this the stuff he was holding back, every day he was with me.
It might be. We might be having brutal honesty hour over here. The alternative is mean lies for the purpose of hurting.
I’d actually prefer brutal honesty hour, I think.
I clenched my fists. Any resolve I’d had to remain calm was gone. “I would have done the same thing for Bitch! Or Lisa, or Alec, even! Are you seriously telling me you wish I’d let you die? You’re alive now! It worked out!”
Is it just me or is it getting warm in here?
“Because we got lucky! Christ, you always do this!”
Elaborate, please.
Put others at risk with plans that rely on luck?
Using my power, I checked on the others. One of the dogs had perked its head up at the shouting, but nobody else had roused. I didn’t take my eyes off Brian, though. The look in his eyes was scary. Angrier than I’d seen him. I’d unconsciously defaulted to the same defenses I’d used against Bitch: Eye contact, pushing back when pushed.
Whoops.
I deliberately lowered my voice. “Always do what?”
“You’re smarter than average, so you count on your ability to think up solutions on the fly, you throw yourself into these reckless situations, push and vote for the risky plans because you know that’s a situation where you thrive, where you offer the most to the group. Every step of the way, you do it. Pushing the all-out assault on the Wards at the bank, charging in to fight Lung after taking on Oni Lee, the fundraiser, confronting Purity, attacking Leviathan with zero backup, the attack on the Wards’ HQ-”
…he’s not wrong.
That stung, more than it should have, and it would’ve hit me hard anyways. I couldn’t read his expression, so I went by his tone of voice, by the anger, the bite in his tone. The fact that he’d brought it up so casually.
Oof.
So what, does he not believe her? Does he think that was a ruse in Taylor’s grand plan of betrayal?
I think he suggested that before. Maybe he never quite let go of his doubts.
Emma jumped to mind. She’d been my best friend once, as I was friends with Grue. She’d also flipped on me, turned hostile, and used private thoughts and feelings I’d shared with her to attack me.
Oh sheesh, we’ve gotten to the point where Brian’s being compared to Emma. This is bad.
I took a deep breath. “That wasn’t why we came to help you. And it wasn’t just me making the call.”
“Really? Because I remember you were the one who stopped Ballistic from putting me out of my misery.”
Yeeah. Maybe they should’ve tried to communicate with Brian about that first. Though it did turn out relatively well that they didn’t.
Now that I couldn’t raise those subjects without reminding him of what had happened earlier, I was lost.
“You shouldn’t have come for me.”
Oh boy, here we go.
I’m guessing he means because it put them in trouble too?
“What?”
“Should have left me there. I was as good as dead. Throwing away your life and the rest of the team, to try to rescue me?”
It’s because they care about you.
It’s not about numbers.
“You’re not thinking straight. There’s no way I’d leave you behind.”
“Right. Because you’re supposedly in love with me, so you go rushing off to rescue me.”
Oh shit, now he’s bringing it up.
I was getting an inkling last chapter that this subplot was resurfacing, because Brian kept doing things that seemed like they could, with shipper goggles on, easily be interpreted as him having feelings for Taylor that rivalled the familial love for Aisha in strength, even if he wouldn’t admit it. I’m not sure that’s what’s going on in his head, but here we are – it’s being brought up, made relevant again.
And who knows. Maybe he’s not entirely wrong in attributing this to Taylor’s attraction to him (if that’s even still a thing). However I don’t think that’s the full story, and I would be surprised to see her act any differently if it were Lisa, Alec or even Rachel who had ended up in Brian’s situation.
“Yeah.” His reply was delayed, almost begrudging. It didn’t sound gentle, or kind, or anything like that. It was more like I’d expect someone to sound if they were giving up the password to a safe at gunpoint.
Turns out “Yeah” is, in fact, the password to Brian’s personal safe.
“Sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure exactly what for, but the apology was genuine. The smile on my face was gone.
For a minute or two, neither of us said anything.
Awkward.
What had we ever talked about that wasn’t about our costumed life?
…fuck, good question.
…
…
…Aisha, but she’s since switched categories, was always relevant to Grue’s costumed exploits and is an especially sore subject right now…
…
…
…romance, but that would probably be the most awkward thing you could possibly bring up right now…
…
…
…itchy eyes…
At first, it had seemed like common sense. I was new to the cape scene, it was exciting, he was experienced, and he’d wanted to share his knowledge. We’d talked about our recent jobs, the implications, even jobs we were considering. I could count on one hand, maybe two, the times we’d done stuff that hadn’t been centered around powers and fighting and violence.
And even then – 3.1, 4.1 to 4.3, 6.3, 7.5-7.6 – you ended up talking about it.
He shook his head.
“None at all?”
“Didn’t need to. Didn’t want to. Felt better about keeping an eye out for trouble than about sleeping.”
Didn’t need to? Weird.
“Trickster and Ballistic are out there.”
“I know. I saw them step outside after Rachel came back.”
There’s no way they’d let him keep the lookout after what he’s been through.
I smiled a little. “Wasn’t so long ago that you were getting on my case for not sleeping enough, mandating that I get a certain number of hours before we moved on the Nine.”
Look, on one hand, in all fairness to Brian, you didn’t.
On the other hand I can absolutely related to the satisfaction of turning the tables on the “Krix go to sleep” crowd.
He didn’t respond, and he didn’t move. I couldn’t read his expression. Had I said the wrong thing? Should I not have mentioned the Nine?
I guess he’s not in the mood for vaguely humoristic nostalgia.
Oh, or what Taylor just said. That works too.
Maybe I should have left them in. Risking an eye infection was small potatoes compared to fucking up this interaction.
you say that now but
Except I couldn’t put them back in without having to explain why.
Pfft, gotta follow through now!
Why was this so hard?
“You get any sleep?”
Imagine this conversation in a Telltale game.
– “You get any sleep?”
– (Put lens back in)
> (Put lens back in)
[Brian will remember that.]
“Damn it,” I groaned.
He gave me a curious look. Or at least, that’s what I took it for; I was having a hard time reading his expressions.
“Forgot to take my contacts out.
Ohh.
Well, that’s another thing to add to my list of reasons I don’t want to try contacts. At least when I forget to take my glasses off before I fall asleep, my eyes are fine afterwards.
My eyes are going to be sore for a while, and I don’t have a spare pair of glasses to wear.”
He nodded.
Oh yeah, I suppose she couldn’t go back easily even if there wasn’t a risk of Shatterbird breaking out of Regent’s control. The Shattering would have broken her glasses whether she was wearing them or not.
“Sorry. So small a problem in the grand scheme of things.”
Ahh, that’s how it’s important. It leads into this observation, which might prompt further discussion between Taylor and Brian.
“You need to be able to see.”
I reached into my utility compartment and got a small case with the spaces for the individual contacts and contact lens solution, then pried my right eye open to pinch the thing out.
“pried my right eye open” is a phrase I would like to not read ever again, thank you.
A few seconds later, my other contact was out, and I was half blind. The way the shadows fell over Brian’s face, the shadows of his eye sockets made him look like he was wearing sunglasses.
Hah!
I couldn’t see the lines of tension, anger or anxiety. Whatever it was that’d had him awake, sitting up and staring into space at ten or eleven in the evening.
In my case, it’s Worm that has me sitting up and staring into a computer screen at half past ten in the evening.
(I’m going to end the session soon.)
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