[Audio]

[championoftime]

[Public]

[Set to right after the explosion.] You- the ship! There's something happening to the ship.

[He's sounding panicked. About as panicked as he was when Frostmourne was on the loose.] The old girl! She's scared! I can hear it! I need to- Admiral! Take me back at once! Admiral please!

They're eating it alive!.

[Private to the Admiral | Text]

Please send Rex somewhere else. Please let him leave. I don't ask for him. I ask for all the people he's been harming. Please just allow it, let the world be his salvation.

Comments

Private // Later

[championoftime]

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life fighting people? And then trying to escape it or hiding from it?

Because I can tell you for certain, as someone who has had to live that way... it's miserable and it doesn't improve. I have to, though. In every life I've had to. You have a chance not to.

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

I just want to be able to live my life on my own terms.

Private // Later

[championoftime]

Then you'd be a prisoner even if you escaped. Unless you were the last, lonely being in the universe you still have to live in the same world as everyone else, and that means living on their terms as well. Whether you know them or not. They're the ones that decide you have food. They're the ones that sell everyday products. They're the ones that act in TV shows and write recipes and build new businesses.

They don't take your abilities or compromise your freedoms because they don't want you to defend yourself, they do it because you can't tell when you're hurting them.

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

You know that's not the same as being trapped on the Barge.

[He sighs sharply.] I don't want to be somebody you hate.

Private // Later

[championoftime]

I don't either. [Someone Rex hates. Or for Rex to be someone that he hates.] I don't. I'm just hurt. I've been hurt quite a bit lately, not just by this. Some things take time to mend.

[And he's been having trouble finding that time in him.]

No place is the same. But you'll always be compromising yourself as long as you live how you're living.

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

I'm sorry. I don't-- know how to be anything else. [He sounds frustrated. At himself, this time, more than anything else.]

Private // Later

[championoftime]

Yes you do. I wouldn't be so frustrated if you weren't so far from the man that I met when I first came aboard this ship.

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

But this is what makes sense to me.

Private // Later

[championoftime]

How? It's visceral and uncivilized. Your using your scientific prowess for primitive urges and brief emotional gratification. It only would have lasted until you realized you'd rendered yourself alone in the world again.

And do you think the Barge is the only location capable of abduction? I've had more than one greater being do as much to me.

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

I wouldn't have been alone. It was an escape for everyone.

No, I don't.

Private // Later

[championoftime]

What about all the inmates that wanted to go home. Or the wardens that have nowhere else to go?

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

If my needs shouldn't come before theirs, why should theirs come before mine? You keep arguing for me to choose this life on the Barge for other people's sake.

It doesn't matter, anyway. It's finished. I'm not going to try to escape again, because it's pointless.

Private // Later

[championoftime]

Did you miss the entire point of people dying to save you? Or that after you destroyed the minds of so many people, damaged their relationships, many of them including Mr. Tucker forgave you. And you nearly made it impossible to share a future with his wife?!

The Barge is nothing in comparison to the rest of the world. What did you do because you had affection for a man with a generational grudge? What did you do because of your own hatred for a single man. You're purposefully missing the point.

I'm asking you to stop wasting your life on hatred. To stop thinking that the world is full of labrats and people you can abandon. You can't. You need them.

Private // Later

[requiresssacrifice]

Then what? You think I can switch off my entire way of looking at the world overnight?

Private // Later

[championoftime]

If people didn't choose a point in deciding they wanted to change there would be no such thing as New Year's resolutions. You have to start somewhere.