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Around when they posted on the network. I'd been wanting to go see if I could figure out what was going on with the signals gunnery picked up but when they posted it really hit me.

Was it the sort of compulsion where you don't want to but can't help it, or the sort where you feel like you really want to?

The latter. I had to stop them at all costs.

[ There's a brief delay. ]

Would you like some eggs?

Eggs would be great. What kitchen?

One nearest your room.
Take your time. I'll get started.

[ On fried eggs, specifically, because he doesn't trust the tinned milk not to ruin some of the only fresh food on the ship. He isn't a very good cook—an issue of impatience and inattentiveness—but these eggs are for Kate, not for him, so whenever she turns up he will be focused very hard on not burning them. ]

[ Kate's a few minutes, long enough to wash her face and put on a clean shirt before she sidesteps into the kitchen, worn purple converse quiet on the metal flooring. She's got her bow, as always, but leaves it on an empty chair to approach Remus at the stove. She leans over to look at the progress of the eggs, and then however well or badly they look to be coming she braces a hand on his shoulder and goes up on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. ]

Thanks. [ She sets back down with a squeeze of his arm and heads over to one of the cupboards, crouching to dig around, shifting cans and tins aside. ]

I've got bread we can toast, and I think a couple of tomatoes left, if you want. That's like half an English breakfast, right?

Throw in some beans and I might forget where I am for a minute.

[ Also considered: I would kill for sausage. It didn't seem appropriate. He looks away from his eggs long enough to glance down at her. His ears are a little pink, maybe, at the very edges, but he's getting better about that by the day.

He will ask her serious questions soon. Until then, the eggs aren't burnt yet. ]

How do you like the yolks?

God knows there are plenty of beans. [ Kate grabs a can from one of the many in sight and places it on the counter before reaching her bread and produce in the back and dragging them out. She eyes the tomatoes uncertainly, but seems to judge them acceptable. ]

Runny is better than hard. [ Definitely not what she said. ]

If possible. [ Bread gets sliced and put in the toaster, tomatoes cut in half and put in a pan of their own, the heat jacked up recklessly high beneath them to catch up with the eggs. Beans can just go in the microwave, right? Sure. ]

Edited 2015-05-11 04:32 (UTC)

I'll do my utmost. [ Which isn't really so bad. The eggs turn out a little too brown one one side, with the yolks maybe one-quarter solid, but they still look like eggs. That's good, as far as Remus Lupin's Cooking is concerned. Kate better appreciate.

He waits until they're seated with plates and a couple bites out of the way to abandon small talk. ]

It's the same for me, or close to it. [ He doesn't look up from the beans he's marshaling onto his fork. ] A lot of people assume we lose consciousness or—become something different, but it's me all the way through. [ A pause to chew and swallow. ] I think I'd rather feel like I wasn't in control, if I had a choice, instead of really knowing what it's like to feel capable of that.

[ So that's a very long way of saying he might sort of understand. Or he at least sympathises. ]

You know it wouldn't have been your fault.

[ Kate absolutely appreciates the effort, and has zero complaints about the state of her eggs as she knife and fork cuts toast, tomato, white and yolk all together into a bite.

She chews as she listens, eyes directed somewhere on the table just between their plates. It looks less like she's avoiding eye contact and more like she's just thoughtful, and she looks up about halfway through to listen more politely. Lips purse at the last, and she spends a moment balancing beans onto a little bit of everything else, eating it with better-mannered neatness than it warrants before finally replying. ]

Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's part of what bothers me about it. I mean aside from the whole 'there is something in my head that can control me' thing in principle being horrible, I just--. I don't know how it works. I don't know if it put all of that there, or if it was playing strings that already existed, you know? Am I actually capable of what I was going to do? And if I'd done it....

[ She trails off, lips thinned to a pale and narrow line as she twirls a fork in the over-medium bit of her egg. ]

If I'd done it, and then fought the compulsion off, wouldn't it be? My fault? If I can fight it off-- and I could, I did, eventually-- then isn't it on me that I didn't sooner? It shouldn't have taken me that long to recognize that it was wrong.

No.

[ He hasn't thought further than that, admittedly. Remus has his share of immovable principles—kindness is better than cruelty, people are at least roughly equal in value, hurting innocents is bad—but the nuances are patchwork, stitched together as situations call for them, with little holes to allow the people he loves to slip through.

He buys time with a mouthful of beans. ]

You thought you had to to keep everyone safe, didn't you?

Yeah.

[ It doesn't appear to assuage Kate's guilt or whatever this is that she's feeling, though. She pushes food around on her plate for a minute before finally realizing she's doing it and deliberately eating another bite or two. ]

But people do terrible things for what they think are good reasons all the time. It doesn't make them less terrible. Half the villains I've ever encountered really believed they were going to make the world a better place. I mean it's not-- sometimes people do do bad things for good reasons, sometimes it's the only way to save people. I wouldn't say everyone who's ever killed someone is the same, or the same amount of bad, or something. I don't know. It's just not who I want to be.

[ Remus chews his way through those first few sentences and then doesn't take another bite, even though his gaze stays on his food until she's finished. When he glances up, his smile is a little strained. ]

I'm glad you've had the choice.

[ He means it. Maybe it sounds a little pointed, but it's only because he doesn't know how else to say it. If he wanted to make a point, he'd ask what amount of bad he is, exactly. He pushes some egg onto the edge of his toast instead. ]

It wouldn't have been your fault. [ He's had time to pull together justification for the instinct, now. ] You're extraordinary, and that's brilliant, but whatever is doing this to everyone--if someone is holding you under water, you're not to blame if you drown. It's good if you're stronger than they are, but it isn't your fault if you're not.

[ Someone might try to make a similar argument about Peter Pettigrew, but Remus would hit them in the teeth before they could finish it. ]

Edited (so much repetition ) 2015-05-28 19:21 (UTC)

[ Kate has the good grace to wince at the strain and the pointedness, which are both fair and deserved. She isn't really sure how to respond and while normally that wouldn't stop her from replying anyway, she can also tell he isn't really finished, so she plays with arranging egg on toast and waits.

And actually blushes, just a little. 'Humble' isn't really a word that gets used to describe Kate very often, but someone else calling her extraordinary and in this context is enough to trigger a brief moment of something that approaches modesty or shyness. Just a moment, and then she picks her head back up from its lean over her plate, mouth pressed into that same flat, thoughtful line. ]

I guess when you put it like that. [ The consideration she's giving to what he's said is both serious and genuine, but it isn't actually foremost in her mind anymore. She fiddles with her fork, rolling the stem back and forth between fingertips for a moment before she speaks again. ]

You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but-- what was it like? How did it happen?

It was a war, Kate.

[ That sounds conclusive, a little weary, I don't want to talk about it--and she did say he didn't have to. But he does want to, sort of. It's more that he's on the tipping point between two levels of friendship, the one where he tries to be there for people and the one where he trusts them to do the same for him, and he needs a moment and a mildly wary glance at her face to decide to cross over. ]

We could stun people, we tried to when we could, but that meant they would get back up. We've only got one prison, and going there is arguably worse than dying. Not to mention he had a whole army of werewolves, and containing a hundred of them every full moon for the duration of a life sentence would be a lot of trouble. [ Which is terrible. But if anyone can say it, it's him, right? ] And the giants.

[ Not everyone would count giants as people, but not everyone would count Remus as people either, so he does. He's staring at a spot of nothing on the table and tapping his fork into his eggs. He notices and stops at the same time he realises he's not quite answering her question. ]

I think the only time I had a clear choice and really meant to do it was after Edgar Bones died. They got his whole family. His youngest was five. Right after that, when we caught a few of them off guard--I'm sorry any of it ever happened, but I'm not sure I'm sorry for that.

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