2019-05-28: A Reasonable Sort of Justice
- Log: 2019-05-28: A Reasonable Sort of Justice
- Cast: Ivan, White Knight Leo
- Where: Kilika - Town Center
- Date: May 28, 2019
- Summary: Ivan goes to Leo for help getting through to Lubov about cancelling the Caravan Kinship assassination assignment. But uh. Not in those words.
===========================<* Kilika - Town Center *>=========================== Kilika is an island off the southern coast of the Spiran mainland, consisting of a small port and village, a large jungle and a Temple of Yevon. The island is renowned for being the hometown of High Summoner Ohalland, who was a star blitzballer before retiring from the game to complete his Pilgrimage and defeat Sin. As a result of this history, the Beasts are one of the most-loved teams in the entire league, and even rival blitz players will stop to pray at the Kilika Temple before a particularly critical game. The port of Kilika was recently ravaged following an attack by Sin, and the surviving residents are slowly rebuilding. They have received unexpected support in the form of the outlanders who serve the false goddess Althena. A few dozen soldiers and craftsmen are using their strange arts - as well as old-fashioned skill - to help with restoration. The Temple of Yevon has put out the word that this assistance will be tolerated so long as the Guardsmen refrain from proselytizing their false creed; an uneasy sort of feeling hangs over the entire village as a result. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXsmMuXLtuQ
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Asking for help is not exactly Ivan's favorite thing to do, especially when he has to do so in a way that narrowly sidesteps admitting he's an assassin to the most intimidatingly righteous person he has ever met in real life. Maybe it will be easier than he thinks! This is, after all, somehow sort of a misguidedly non-secret activity that he was expected to eventually admit to in the hopeless hope of gaining favor for Lubov. There is some hypothetical universe in which this is all just a silly misunderstanding that could easily be smoothed. All he needs to do is not mention that it's also the latest in a long line of sneaky and dishonorable murders.
He can PROBABLY get through a few sentences without saying anything like that. (Though it's also kind of like trying not to think of pink elephants.)
Eventually, he steels himself to make the attempt and goes looking for Lord Leo, who he finds aboard the Destiny. Ivan approaches cautiously. The shadow of Operation Mi'ihen is still hanging over the Guard, and Leo most of all, perhaps. It seems presumptuous to bother him over Ivan's own nonsense, though this is technically a life-or-death matter.
"Er, Lord Leo? I had... some questions about the Caravan Kinship."
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo sits alone at a table in the officers' mess, stirring a bowl of soup with a spoon. The look on his face is halfway between upset and contemplative. He stares into the bowl as though it had answers hidden somewhere in its depths.
"...Ivan," Leo says. He looks up, blinking a moment before settling into his usual calm, confident demeanor. His face tightens a little as Ivan continues, but beyond that, he doesn't seem terribly put out. "The Caravan Kinship," Leo says. He's trying to be calm--objective, even. He's mostly successful. "What manner of questions, pray tell?"
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
There's a bit of a guilty grimace when Ivan catches Leo looking... sad, and an impulse to just nope right back out the door again. But isn't ignoring it and pressing on regardless probably the hoped-for reaction in this sort of situation? He instead takes a few steps inside, and takes a breath.
"My employer has gotten extremely interested in apprehending them," he says. "But I think he may have... the wrong idea? About what sort of... justice... you're hoping for... with the whole situation."
He replays his own words in his head a few times, hoping he didn't accidentally confess to few dozen murders without noticing.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo looks at Ivan for a long moment, allowing him to continue as he sees fit. "Did they swindle him?" he says. "Or--does he hope to bring them to justice for their crimes against the Red Priestess?" His tone changes, growing a bit angry--but the anger isn't directed at Ivan. "Make no mistake, Ivan. Justice is always and admirable pursuit, but true justice is not the will of the mob. True justice only comes to pass when compassion walks hand in hand with righteousness. If the offending members of the Kinship will not repent--if they persist in their crimes against Althena's Chosen--then they will reap what they have sown."
"I still don't know why," Leo says. "I'd thought they were reasonable."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan freezes into a statue of sorts and nervously stifles any facial expression whatsoever as Leo attempts to explain to him the finer points of justice and righteousness to him. Never before has a lecture by such a true master of a discipline fallen upon the ears of such a hopeless audience.
"Actually, it's... not so much that he wants to do justice for its own sake as that he is a big... admirer of you--...you know, you are quite famous with your deeds and reputation, and he was hoping to do something that would..." Ivan's vocabulary has deserted him. "...impress you."
It's a good thing he isn't actually trying to make Lubov sound dignified, because he just sort of dunked that one into the garbage.
"Uh. I'm sure you get that a lot. I was trying to say it better, but that's how it is, I guess. It's just that his idea of--" he swallows. "Well, uh...what is it they've sown, in your opinion?"
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo blinks. "...Oh," he says. The corners of his mouth twitch, as if a smile were trying to form there. After a moment, it finally breaks the gridlock. "Is that... is that it?" It's a little subdued, but the confidence is back. "I can see why he'd feel I was worthy of such. More should strive to be so virtuous in this fallen age."
'Well, uh...what is it they've sown, in your opinion?'
Leo's brow furrows. He takes a moment to answer. "No amount of money would ever make up for what they did to my dear sister," Leo says, "but--I don't wish to see them hang for it, nor do I wish to see them rot in prison. If there is goodness in them yet, I wish to see them make amends. If they continue down this path, then..."
Leo trails off. He hadn't thought about that much. It's not a pleasant train of thought.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan was not expecting Leo to lap up the flattery. Doesn't he notice all of his subordinates wandering around him starstruck all the time? Ivan assumed he'd be sick to death of by admiration by now. ... ... well. Maybe there's no such thing as too much hero worship? And Ivan is relieved to actually hear him say he doesn't want the Caravan Kinship to hang, since up until this point that was just a hopeful assumption.
"I was sorry to hear about what happened to Lady Mauri. I don't... personally... know a lot about justice, so I wasn't sure what outcome you might want. But I still thought what my employer was going for, maybe wasn't..." He shifts his weight uneasily. All right. Here goes...
"Do you know how sometimes, when you want to be sure you do something better than anyone else would, you might be tempted to do... more that what was asked of you? Even though sometimes more is not better? It's kind of like that. He means well--" That line sort of sticks in Ivan's craw, but he gets it out regardless, now that he's on a bit of a roll. "He really does mean well, but he wants to do even more than just capture them, so you will really notice and be impressed by him. And -- what that sort of turned into, I guess, is that he's been putting kind of a lot of pressure on me to kill them."
Ivan gradually tenses throughout that little speech, so that by the end of it the pitch of his voice is noticeably higher than normal. At the end of it, he kind of holds his breath, looking a bit like a string about to snap.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
"Admiration does strange things to some," Leo says. "And if he means well, then..." Ivan continues. Leo blinks. The smile fades, replaced by a look of confusion, then anger. "He what? Why would he--" The White Knight stares at Ivan for a long, uncomfortable minute. He's not so clueless that he can't see the tension in Ivan's body.
"But you don't want to kill them," Leo says, after a moment. "Or you wouldn't have told me."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
A part of Ivan wants to deny it just out of pure routine, but no, he actually needs Leo to see both himself and Lubov as relatively innocent in this scenario for it not to blow up in his face. He decides from the initial burst of anger that it's not a good idea to also confess that he already tried to kill two of them several times before coming to Leo. Instead, he nods, as best he can in statue mode.
"I... I've met some of them, and you were right, they seem ...really... reasonable..."
With reasonable being a euphemism here for 'obscenely, outrageously nice,' but that's not something to say to Leo after they attacked his sister, so Ivan will just use Leo's own vocabulary and hope for the best.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo nods. The anger fades from his face, replaced with something more like the contemplative sadness Ivan saw when he first walked in. "This world would be a much easier place if one could draw such lines effortlessly. The Kinship is... misguided, yes, and home to heretics and heathens, but I have also seen them risk their lives, time and time again, to protect the innocent. That they would stoop so low as to attack such a gentle soul is... inexplicable, even if one of those Statues was at stake."
"But... that you had doubts about your employer's order speaks well of you, Ivan. Few would have the courage to do what you've done here."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
...This is a little bit more intense than Ivan knows what to do with, and he has a sense of having nudged a large boulder over a peak toward some unknown barelling course below. He indulges momentarily in a vision of unintentionally unleashing such zeal from Leo that Lubov would actually brought to justice and completely and forever defanged.
But there was one other time that Ivan thought he had won against his father, and that particular memory is inextricably linked to another one a few moments later, of a sword being driven into his back...
Strangely, the idea of 'winning' has been about as threatening as losing, since then. Thinking he's won is just a way of inviting a painful correction from the universe.
He waves his hands a little, trying to dispel the aura of justice gathering around Leo.
"That's--that's some really generous praise, but I really think it's just a misunderstanding! And I knew you were really reasonable yourself, so you wouldn't do anything awful to me if you found out. But I do need some help getting him to understand you don't want that kind of justice, if you could spare me the favor."
IN DOUBLE DEBT TO LEO, WHO ALREADY SAVED HIS LIFE.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
"If it truly is a misunderstanding, then it must be corrected." Leo says this as a simple statement of fact--as though he could solve the matter just by telling Lubov that assassination is way over the line. "When we return to... Rolance, is it? When we return to Glenwood, I would gladly accompany you." He smiles, just a little. Whether Ivan realizes it or not, his confession has given Leo something to deal with that isn't the growing tension between the Guard and the Temple.
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan is hoping a message from Leo about assassination being way over the line can accomplish exactly that -- if it can't, then Lubov is just straight up completely mad and there's nothing for it. But the return home could be... months out? Years? Possibly never, if they all die trying to fight Sin?
Also, it would be awkward for Leo to meet his father and put a certain missing piece of the story together using his eyes and basic reasoning skills. Not to mention the part where Ivan would probably get shanked for blatantly painting Lubov in a bad light to the person he was trying to gain favor with.
Ivan winces. "That's... really generous, too, but I was thinking... possibly something smaller and more immediate? An announcement about bad things happening if they're turned in dead instead of alive? A message? But not a message about how I told you that I thought his plan was crazy, maybe that you intervened in an attack, and it came out that way..."
Ivan's shoulders sag. "...you probably don't lie, do you?" Of course Lord Leo doesn't lie.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
Leo has seen unscrupulous nobles before, and in his days as a soldier he sometimes wanted nothing more than to set them all straight--to remind them of their duties to their people, and to the Goddess. Even now, though, he can't just swoop in and scare them all into good behavior. There are far more dire threats to deal with.
Maybe, though, if Lubov is as reasonable as Ivan claims, it won't have to come to that.
"I'll have our scribes clarify the matter," Leo says. "Rest assured, I still intend to speak with him, but..." He stops, seeing the way Ivan sags. "And rest assured that I will not allow any harm to come to you. If you fear retribution, you need fear no longer."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
Ivan relaxes a bit at the offer to have 'scribes' take care of it, which seems safely impersonal. But then Leo continues with how he's going to talk to him anyway but don't worry because he'll non-specifically protect Ivan from retribution.
Great, so he's doomed after all. Well, at least it won't happen for a while. Maybe they'll die first! Or Leo will forget. There's a lot of other stuff Leo has to do between now and the end of all this.
"Thank you," he says. "You saved my life before too, so if there's any way I can repay you..." How do you repay a debt to a person you work for, who can order you to do anything anyway? Well, it's not like that isn't a question Ivan hasn't been asking his whole life, already. At least Leo probably won't want to be paid in murder.
<Pose Tracker> White Knight Leo has posed.
"I was only doing my duty," Leo says, with a wave of his hand. Nevertheless, Ivan reminded him of all those Guards whom he couldn't save. The White Knight sobers a little at the thought of it. "But if that alone isn't enough, then remember those who fell doing the Goddess's will. Remember those who died for a world free of Sin, and honor them with your words and deeds."
<Pose Tracker> Ivan has posed.
That... doesn't... sound doable. Oh well. Ivan kind of would have liked to repay Lord Leo if he'd asked for literally anything other than 'be a good person.'
"I'll do my best," he says. That's not quite a lie. He really does think that being more noble and moral would be quite impossible for him.
"And if you think of anything more concrete, just let me know. I'll be here. Thank you again for hearing me out."