I think so. When she dueled John Gaius, it was the same format. Except this time, I was the referee and witness. For ours, we agreed on the weapons beforehand — no powers.
No? She kicked his ass all over the Peaks. Bet you'd have gotten a kick out of that.
( another pause, thinking. )
I've got the impression she's overestimating her knowledge of their practices a little bit. ( they'd kicked her out when she was, what? eight or nine. )
The only other significant thing I can think of would be the cats, and I don't think even the Minstrel is going to be able to wrangle one of those.
[Complicated. More complicated than he really wants to think about, has just accepted it's important to Mavis and moved on. It helps that Gaius isn't here any more. Which hurts Mavis in turn. Complicated.]
None of them are left to fact-check her, so it doesn't matter. Whatever she thinks is how they did things is how they did things, now.
The challenge seems to be at the heart of what she considers Kuruko culture.
Ianthe's people apparently have a similar tradition. It might be worth asking her about how they do things, if you're interested. Or you could ask Mavis — she’d probably tell you.
I don’t think it’s really about the insult itself in her case; it’s more about not wanting to be seen as weak. ( which, oddly enough, wasn’t that different from how his people saw romantic interest — except his people thought personal relationships were selfish, putting individual needs before the community. )
I didn’t just make her want; I’m an outsider who helped kill her people. On some level, she'll always hate me for that.
When we first got dropped on the ground, he kind of made himself in charge. Talked the right kind of talk, acted the right kind of way, so we all listened to him. I listened to him.
But we were a bunch of criminal kids with no laws for the first time. We were assholes. I was the worst. So when they find the Chancellor's son dead, killed with my knife, it was easy math. Ark law is any crime gets you floated. No airlocks on the ground, though, so they string me up, and Bellamy's the one who kicks the box out from under me.
Only I hadn't killed Wells. This kid, Charlotte, had. Bellamy knew that, but he didn't want to kill a little girl, and he would've let me hang for it if she hadn't piped up that it was her. They cut me down, I want her head, Bellamy grabs her and runs into the woods, and me, I get a mob together and go after them.
She jumped off a cliff, in the end. She killed herself and they exiled me, left me there. The Grounders find me, torture all the information they can out of me, then make me sick and dump me back at the camp to spread it to everyone else. Bellamy wanted to kill me, but Clarke doesn't let him, and while they're sick, I kill the two guys who tied the rope they hanged me with. Tried to kill Bellamy, too. Strung him up. Kicked the stool out from under him. So he'd feel what I felt.
He got saved, same as I'd been. Definitely wanted to kill me as soon as he saw me, after that. But the thing was, the whole world was coming for us. Grounders wanted to kill us, Mount Weather wanted our blood, ALIE wanted to stick computer chips in our brains. And even with the rest of the Ark down on the ground, we were still the only ones who really gave a damn about us.
I saved his life a few times. He saved mine. I don't think there's anyone in the universe who knows me better than him.
( it’s a lot to take in, definitely more than he anticipated. he remains quiet, giving murphy the chance to speak his mind.
as murphy goes on, the pieces start to come together — the earlier guardedness and then the swift jump to assuming he'd be rejected. discarded. it was his pattern.
he exhales slowly, rubs at the bridge of his nose. ) I don't care if she's angry at me, as long as she's alive to be angry. ( this feels important to clarify, and not just because it now extends to murphy. )
But I don’t really enjoy hurting people, even if it’s necessary. And at the time, it was necessary. It wasn't just my life on the line.
We were sent to negotiate the use of some old mines in the area, not to pick a fight. ( their arrival hadn't been exactly welcome, but that was business as usual. )
While there, I noticed some suspicious activity and brought it to my team lead's attention. Our policy is to assess and evaluate any potential threats or assets. And the power was too significant to ignore. ( murphy has some idea of what mavis is capable of, but he has no idea what she actually feels like; how it's like peering into the heart of a supernova. )
Unfortunately, the situation soured pretty quickly when we tried to investigate further. We were outnumbered, and they underestimated us.
( the real kicker, of course, was that the mines turned out to be totally useless. )
Yeah. Crap always goes sideways a lot quicker than people think.
[He'd said as much to Mavis. People were messy. Sometimes small things snowballed before you realised they'd even happened, whether anyone wanted it or not.
This wasn't the topic he'd really meant to touch, though.]
But you said she's always going to hate you on some level. I'm saying I think I might always hate Bellamy, on some level.
You were comforting me. ( a touch of surprise, now. unsure of how to process this new information. does he admit to not feeling guilty about what he did? that, if anything, knowing what they’d done to mavis only makes him want to do it again — worse, even? )
[It's still strange, hearing that. He isn't sure it ever won't be. Telling people about his past usually feels like a confession, a revelation of something terrible, a reason not to stay with him. It's hard to think of as people wanting to know because they want him.]
Well, you already got one dose of my screwed up today. I'll give you a break before the next load.
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You said she set the terms. Is that because you were the one who made the challenge?
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It needed to be a level playing field.
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[Except it was Gaius' fault that he wasn't, so.]
She said anything else about them to you? Any other Kuruko rituals or anything?
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( another pause, thinking. )
I've got the impression she's overestimating her knowledge of their practices a little bit. ( they'd kicked her out when she was, what? eight or nine. )
The only other significant thing I can think of would be the cats, and I don't think even the Minstrel is going to be able to wrangle one of those.
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[Complicated. More complicated than he really wants to think about, has just accepted it's important to Mavis and moved on. It helps that Gaius isn't here any more. Which hurts Mavis in turn. Complicated.]
None of them are left to fact-check her, so it doesn't matter. Whatever she thinks is how they did things is how they did things, now.
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Ianthe's people apparently have a similar tradition. It might be worth asking her about how they do things, if you're interested. Or you could ask Mavis — she’d probably tell you.
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[Why he was pissy about it.]
What it means is what's important. Some places, you can just pretend you were insulted about something and make a duel happen. Easy.
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I didn’t just make her want; I’m an outsider who helped kill her people. On some level, she'll always hate me for that.
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I ever tell you about Bellamy?
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Not really, no.
cw: child death, murder, suicide, hanging, violence
But we were a bunch of criminal kids with no laws for the first time. We were assholes. I was the worst. So when they find the Chancellor's son dead, killed with my knife, it was easy math. Ark law is any crime gets you floated. No airlocks on the ground, though, so they string me up, and Bellamy's the one who kicks the box out from under me.
Only I hadn't killed Wells. This kid, Charlotte, had. Bellamy knew that, but he didn't want to kill a little girl, and he would've let me hang for it if she hadn't piped up that it was her. They cut me down, I want her head, Bellamy grabs her and runs into the woods, and me, I get a mob together and go after them.
She jumped off a cliff, in the end. She killed herself and they exiled me, left me there. The Grounders find me, torture all the information they can out of me, then make me sick and dump me back at the camp to spread it to everyone else. Bellamy wanted to kill me, but Clarke doesn't let him, and while they're sick, I kill the two guys who tied the rope they hanged me with. Tried to kill Bellamy, too. Strung him up. Kicked the stool out from under him. So he'd feel what I felt.
He got saved, same as I'd been. Definitely wanted to kill me as soon as he saw me, after that. But the thing was, the whole world was coming for us. Grounders wanted to kill us, Mount Weather wanted our blood, ALIE wanted to stick computer chips in our brains. And even with the rest of the Ark down on the ground, we were still the only ones who really gave a damn about us.
I saved his life a few times. He saved mine. I don't think there's anyone in the universe who knows me better than him.
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as murphy goes on, the pieces start to come together — the earlier guardedness and then the swift jump to assuming he'd be rejected. discarded. it was his pattern.
he exhales slowly, rubs at the bridge of his nose. ) I don't care if she's angry at me, as long as she's alive to be angry. ( this feels important to clarify, and not just because it now extends to murphy. )
But I don’t really enjoy hurting people, even if it’s necessary. And at the time, it was necessary. It wasn't just my life on the line.
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cw: implications of violence and genocide
While there, I noticed some suspicious activity and brought it to my team lead's attention. Our policy is to assess and evaluate any potential threats or assets. And the power was too significant to ignore. ( murphy has some idea of what mavis is capable of, but he has no idea what she actually feels like; how it's like peering into the heart of a supernova. )
Unfortunately, the situation soured pretty quickly when we tried to investigate further. We were outnumbered, and they underestimated us.
( the real kicker, of course, was that the mines turned out to be totally useless. )
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[He'd said as much to Mavis. People were messy. Sometimes small things snowballed before you realised they'd even happened, whether anyone wanted it or not.
This wasn't the topic he'd really meant to touch, though.]
But you said she's always going to hate you on some level. I'm saying I think I might always hate Bellamy, on some level.
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( huh. )
You were comforting me. ( a touch of surprise, now. unsure of how to process this new information. does he admit to not feeling guilty about what he did? that, if anything, knowing what they’d done to mavis only makes him want to do it again — worse, even? )
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I don't know if that's what I was doing.
[Comfort would be straight up reassurance, wouldn't it? Telling Aristaeus that of course Mavis didn't hate him. Or that she wouldn't forever.]
More like... It's part of it, I guess. Sometimes stuff happens with someone, and no one else is ever going to know it like you do. You and them.
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He sounds like a good man, your friend.
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Yeah. More good than's good for him, most of the time.
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( even danny. )
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Well, you already got one dose of my screwed up today. I'll give you a break before the next load.
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