[When Branch sees Jack walk up, Elf in tow, he doesn't go into a full panic again - Dan and Stacia have helped defuse that potential bomb - but he does dart around the chair table leg he was pressed against, limping around it to fearfully pear around it from the other side, just in case.]
[But what comes is a gentle explanation, not an attack, not an attempt to feed him to said Elf.]
So you're telling me he just decided to do it on his own. Nobody gave me to him?
[Branch sounds deeply skeptical but at Jack's gentle nod in response, he stands there, balancing on his good leg, clearly trying to work out if he believes him. Eventually, he sees enough of the genuinely contrite expression on the face of the Elf himself - someone small, like him, even if he's bigger in comparison - that he comes to a conclusion.]
[It's the one Poppy would've tried to lead him to at a time like this, even though hope is difficult and trust is even harder.]
[At the realization that maybe this hadn't needed to blow up as much as it had, he lightly knocks his forehead against the table leg and then slides to kneel there with his head against it.]
[He's completely spent at this point. He's exhausted by the situation and deeply exasperated with himself and his own clearly disastrous way of reacting to things, including putting someone in a cage.]
[He put someone his size. In a cage.]
[The situation could've not have gone any other way, given his paranoia. The inevitability of his reaction, how impossible it'd been to cut it off, how it really couldn't have happened any other way with a wake up like that, just makes him feel broken.]
So what now? [He still has his colors but his voice is flat.] Are you going to lock me up? The bergens do that if someone does something wrong. Do humans do that?
[His people don't. They don't have a jail. Their idea of justice is entirely reparations-based. If you've done something wrong, once the community calls it out as such, you fix it.]
I did that to someone else. I locked him up.
[It's very fortunate they don't plan to. Having that much control taken away, even for a relatively short time, would genuinely destroy the last shreds of any mental health he's clinging to right now.]
no subject
[But what comes is a gentle explanation, not an attack, not an attempt to feed him to said Elf.]
So you're telling me he just decided to do it on his own. Nobody gave me to him?
[Branch sounds deeply skeptical but at Jack's gentle nod in response, he stands there, balancing on his good leg, clearly trying to work out if he believes him. Eventually, he sees enough of the genuinely contrite expression on the face of the Elf himself - someone small, like him, even if he's bigger in comparison - that he comes to a conclusion.]
[It's the one Poppy would've tried to lead him to at a time like this, even though hope is difficult and trust is even harder.]
[At the realization that maybe this hadn't needed to blow up as much as it had, he lightly knocks his forehead against the table leg and then slides to kneel there with his head against it.]
[He's completely spent at this point. He's exhausted by the situation and deeply exasperated with himself and his own clearly disastrous way of reacting to things, including putting someone in a cage.]
[He put someone his size. In a cage.]
[The situation could've not have gone any other way, given his paranoia. The inevitability of his reaction, how impossible it'd been to cut it off, how it really couldn't have happened any other way with a wake up like that, just makes him feel broken.]
So what now? [He still has his colors but his voice is flat.] Are you going to lock me up? The bergens do that if someone does something wrong. Do humans do that?
[His people don't. They don't have a jail. Their idea of justice is entirely reparations-based. If you've done something wrong, once the community calls it out as such, you fix it.]
I did that to someone else. I locked him up.
[It's very fortunate they don't plan to. Having that much control taken away, even for a relatively short time, would genuinely destroy the last shreds of any mental health he's clinging to right now.]