theboywhowaits (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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trans_92011-06-12 11:05 pm
theboywhowaits) wrote in trans_92011-06-12 11:05 pm
Entry tags:
Custody Battle [Closed]
He really only intended to talk, eyes dark with rage and head throbbing in an almost rhythmically.
But he needed to know. An accident, sure. He could handle that. He could be frustrated and push for a policy change, but he could accept it. Accidents happened, they were frustrating, but dwelling on them only made the situation worse and lowered his effectiveness. He knew that. He'd learned that practically on the first day at the hospital. Things happened, and then you moved on and dealt with the next things happening.
But this...if Conner was right, if Tim was right, and he had no reason to believe that either would lie or make this sort of assumption.
An attack. On his family. That could not be tolerated.
'Never start a fight, it's ok to walk away, Rory. Strength is knowing when to walk away.'
'When what you love is threatened, spare no effort in protecting it. Mercy is for peacetime, kindness for your allies. To your enemies, show only the edge of your blade.'
He was fairly certian he was slowly losing his mind. Memories that weren't his pounding against the back of his temples until he just wanted to retreat, meekly, back to Conner and Molly and Amy.
But he couldn't, his legs wouldn't stop, his fists clinched furiously at his sides. Nothing in his face showed any of the mental turmoil, only rage that his family had been threatened.
He felt like something had possessed him, as though he might explode if the right sequence of buttons was pushed.
The door to Neuropathy swung open easily under his hand and it wasn't hard to spot his quarry. "Did you think no one would notice?" The words were cool, controlled, tightly leashed with threat and fury.
But he needed to know. An accident, sure. He could handle that. He could be frustrated and push for a policy change, but he could accept it. Accidents happened, they were frustrating, but dwelling on them only made the situation worse and lowered his effectiveness. He knew that. He'd learned that practically on the first day at the hospital. Things happened, and then you moved on and dealt with the next things happening.
But this...if Conner was right, if Tim was right, and he had no reason to believe that either would lie or make this sort of assumption.
An attack. On his family. That could not be tolerated.
'Never start a fight, it's ok to walk away, Rory. Strength is knowing when to walk away.'
'When what you love is threatened, spare no effort in protecting it. Mercy is for peacetime, kindness for your allies. To your enemies, show only the edge of your blade.'
He was fairly certian he was slowly losing his mind. Memories that weren't his pounding against the back of his temples until he just wanted to retreat, meekly, back to Conner and Molly and Amy.
But he couldn't, his legs wouldn't stop, his fists clinched furiously at his sides. Nothing in his face showed any of the mental turmoil, only rage that his family had been threatened.
He felt like something had possessed him, as though he might explode if the right sequence of buttons was pushed.
The door to Neuropathy swung open easily under his hand and it wasn't hard to spot his quarry. "Did you think no one would notice?" The words were cool, controlled, tightly leashed with threat and fury.
no subject
He kept his expression calm and neutral, and didn't seem the least bit startled. He casually looked around the room in minor confusion, then back at Rory, almost as if to say was that directed at me?
"...Is there something I can help you with?"
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His hand drifted to his side, reaching for a sword that wasn't there and squeezing into a fist when he didn't find it.
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"Look, I understand that a great number of people are upset over the power outage in the Medbay, but that, however, was simply an accident. A routine diagnostic of the electrical system, one which is scheduled to run every week, happened to be a bit too much for an aging power coupling. It failed, and caused a cascade reaction that took out the secondary coupling in the process. Fortunately, no lives were lost.
"I believe that Engineering has already begun repairs on it. We don't anticipate that particular problem happening again."
He sounded like he was reading a press release, one that he had read dozens of times and was slightly bored with reading again.
"Now, if there's nothing further, I do have more work to do."
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He shifted, eyes cold, hand a tight ball of tension at his side, longing for the weight of something. "What I do need for you to understand, Mr. Luthor, is that if you lift a finger against my family or the patients in my care again, and I don't care how much of an accident you make it appear to be, I will find whatever this ship has that passes for an airlock and I will put you out of it. Problem solved. You can continue playing the innocent while your lungs collapse and your blood boils. Stay away from Conner, stay away from Medical unless you're injured, and stay away from the rest of my family. If you feel the need to attack someone who can't fight back like a petty coward again, do yourself a favor and don't."
The words felt almost alien in his own mouth, clipped and angry and direct. More brutal than he thought he was capable of. But they were his words, they were what he wanted to say. Just...more vicious than he'd probably meant to be.
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"You remind me a lot of Conner, you know. You have that same paranoid obsessiveness. Much like him, you're looking for enemies where there are none, and making wild accusations based solely on flimsy circumstantial evidence; It's an old ship, parts fail. And also like him, you get all indignant when I won't apologize for things I never did, and all offended that I won't tolerate your empty threats instead of cowering before them."
He actually placed a hand on Rory's shoulder.
"Because I can see that you're emotional, and clearly not thinking rationally, I'll allow you to leave, and I'll forget this one offense this one time. Go, take a walk, have a drink, have a good cigar, and relax yourself. You can come apologize for being such an overly dramatic jackass later." The words were delivered patiently and soothingly, like a parent talking down an upset teenager who thinks the world has ended because they woke up with a pimple.
"But if you persist in making threats against me, I will be left with no alternative than to take the appropriate steps to protect myself." And you can take that how you want it, Rory. But you have been warned.
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"I'm not asking for an apology, Mr. Luthor. How childish to think I might want something like that from you. You mistake the point of this visit. This is a warning, Luthor. Touch my family and I will kill you. Touch my charges and I will take the Punishment for seeing the world left a little more empty of people like you."
His lips twitched in an almost smile at the tone, eyes hardening further. Emotional was likely the last word one could use, his voice had never even risen above a low growl. He might not have looked very intimidating, three-day-old scrubs and no weapons to be seen, but emotional...no. He was frighteningly calm. His hand tightened by his side, some tiny part of his brain awake and noting that a hand on his shoulder would make it almost easy to over balance the man in front of him.
"You're very confident, for a man who waits to attack until his victims are helpless. I'm certian Conner could have done a great deal of damage, sleeping in that tube. You are the worst sort of coward, he is not yours to destroy at will. If you think to harm him again and it won't be an apology I'm returning for." He looked completely unfazed by the veiled threat or the close proximity they were currently standing in, even taking a step forward before he spoke again. He drew himself up to his full height, voice dropping further. "This is is a promise, Luthor. My family, my son, and my patients. Touch any of them again and there won't be a corpse to bury."
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"Stacy, who else is in Neuropathy with me at the moment?"
||Crew member Rory Williams|| Stacy responded.
"Thank you, Stacy." Lex smirked a bit.
"You see, Rory, whenever you threaten someone like that, it always comes with a massive Catch-22. Up until five seconds ago, I didn't have the slightest idea who you were. Let alone your family or your charges or whatever insipid thing you've been blathering about. Nor did I particularly care.
"And, to be perfectly frank, I still don't care. But, since you insist that I say away from your family and from your charges... well, you're going to have to tell me who they all are. After all, I do need to know who to avoid, don't I? Where are they? Logically speaking, if you want me to avoid them, I'll have to know where they are such that I can arrange to be somewhere else, right?"
Lex didn't smile, but there was a genuine sense that he was laughing at Rory on the inside. "I don't think you thought your cunning plan all the way through." He raised both his eyebrows, as if just pointing out how irrational Rory was being.
"But we both know you won't do that, since you probably think I should avoid everyone because you're that stupidly irrational. Its funny how you can me out to be the monster, yet you're the one shouting about killing people. I'm sure Security would be very interested to have that information on file. And let's be blunt, if you actually had the balls to make good on any of your warnings, there wouldn't be a warning, you would've already tried.
"Only a child would posture the way you do. Its cute on teenagers, but on an adult its just... pathetic. And I think I've entertained your deluded and ineffectual attempt at being a man for long enough." Lex lifted his hand from Rory's shoulder, and lightly patted him on the cheek in a patronizing manner. "You're done wasting my time now, son. I have work to do."
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"I don't think you know anything about me, Mr. Luthor. Or you would know you just made a very grave error. You attacked my charges and my family once already. Perhaps it was only an accident." The way he said it implied he didn't believe for a moment it was. "But I am very old, far older than a man who needs to wait for his targets to be infants, and I have killed before to protect what I love. You are nothing but a maggot, feasting on the leavings of things far stronger and more dangerous than yourself. I was warning you for your own safety. A gentleman's war, because I can be civil." Unlike you.
There was no laughter in Rory's eyes, no humor. Only a flat statement of fact.
"Monster? I never said that. Monster is such a relative term, evil actions can be done by good men and evil men can do good things. I don't favor it, too limiting. Do what you like. But touch what's mine and there will be no other warning." The hand that hand been coiled at his side lashed out at the face pat, hand angled to cause the maximum damage without driving shards of bone into his victims skull. His father had taught him that. For the purpose of practice that shouldn't end with death. There was a sickening crack and Rory stepped back, nearly spitting on the floor, shoulders shuddering in the first sign of emotion since he'd entered the room.
When he spoke again, his voice was cold, controlled."You should get that looked at. It's broken, I'd suggest getting ice on it before it starts to swell." He turned to go, message delivered. "I'll leave you to your work, Mr. Luthor."