welcome to the party, pal

[branchifer]

Who: Branch, Miguel, Tim, Boba, Dan, and Stacia
What: The supply and prisoner exchange
Where: The emptied out workroom floor
When: After all of Branch's chaos.
Warnings/Notes: Some blood, eventual cw mentions of cannibalism probably when Branch is hashing it out with Dan and Stacia, I'll put warnings in the subject.

[It's going to plan. And the heightened chaos is making it exactly as distracting and chaotic a situation as he was hoping for. The floor is cleared and there are people leading Elves and yetis to areas they've cleared, but traps can still be heard going off, sometimes randomly. Occasionally there's the angry argleblorgleblorg of a yeti getting chili powder exploding out of an air cannon to their face.]

[In some areas where traps were already set off and cleared, somehow (read: thanks to his 14-year-old secret accomplice) they've been reset, only to go off again.]

[It leaves things nice and unsettled and distracting.]

Comments

[branchifer]

[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.]

[hallelujahjunction]

I don't lock people up. [Dan can't speak for the group, but there's a sternness in his voice that suggests that he's not about to let others lock people up either.] Ain't nothing you did worth depriving you your freedoms. Ain't much folks can do to merit that. I done enough jail time to know how worthless it is.

[Absent any other options, Dan will take imprisoning someone over killing them, but usually it doesn't come to that. Usually Dan's methods work.]

I reckon I'd like to ask you what you think Bingle ought to do to make this right. If you want my opinion, since Bingle didn't know no better, he ought to apologize and promise not to play with nothing again without checking that it ain't alive and willing. And then we can talk about whatever else might could help you feel safe here among all us giants. Do that feel fair?

[credit_not_blame]

I'll back Dan on this one. [Stacia jerks a thumb in Dan's direction and grins. It's a little toothy.] And I'm very good at getting other people to agree that doing things my way is less annoying than fighting with me about it. You were acting because you were scared, not because you were trying to be a jerk.