[quote=@Tatterdemalion]“Heap punishment on my head, but let us save her if we can. Lock us in cages, but set them together. Make me do penance in her name, shame and denounce me for her crimes, whatever must be done, I welcome it. Only do not make me abandon my oldest, most ill-treated friend.

“Please.”
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"You did not [i]let[/i] her do anything." Vasilia counters deftly. "[i]She[/i] made her decisions, not you. You have given her more second chances than she’s deserved, and every single time she’s spat in your face. You ask us to risk all of our lives on the [i]chance[/i] that this time could be any different. You know we cannot do that."

[quote=@Thanqol]"And Praetor Bella saved us," she said loudly, a voice that cracked against the plastic walls of the Anemoi. "She broke a reign of shadows and cruelty, made us masters of our own house. And this is [b]our[/b] house. You would abandon the Praetor because you fear what she will do? You should fear what [i]we[/i] shall do if you turn your faces from the only soul who ever showed us kindness."
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The full weight of her attention falls on the mouse, and to her surprise, she stands unmoved. "So either we let her on board, where she can doom us at her leisure, or we leave her behind, and you’ll do it for her. Wonderful! You really do take after her."

[quote=@Thanqol]"Did you hear about the Ikarani?" said Mynx, speaking with a dry throat into the silence. "The last time I worked with her she dropped a space station on a city to kill a single target. Millions dead. That's what they [i]do[/i], that's what they're like. Natural disasters and freak accidents are their tools of murder. And yet, on Salib, not a single civilian died. Who told her to care about collateral damage? Who put chains on the earthquake? Because it wasn't the Kaeri, and it wasn't the Master of Assassins."
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"She has [i]two[/i] standards, now, is that it?" The laugh in her voice grows dangerously unplayful. "Why haven’t we stopped to memorialize her tale in song? Saints of her virtue don’t come along [i]every[/i] day."

[quote=@Balmas]
"I do not want to see her hurt. She's hurt us, yes. But I still find it hard to divorce her now from the friend she was on Tellus.

"Surely, we can afford to show her [i]some[/i] mercy, if the chance arises?"
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Her mouth opens. Her beat arrives. And she cannot make her cue this time. “The friend she - and how much will we put our necks out in search of that ‘chance?!’ The friend you know isn’t there anymore. She is [i]dead.[/i] And none of you-”

Dolce rests his hand on hers, and squeezes. Enough to forestall further argument. Enough to remind her that he has heard her, and will not dismiss her. Enough. It is enough, my dear. She makes a show of straightening her jacket as she steps back behind him, taking her place at his right hand.

The arguments have been made. Now it is his turn. All he really had to do was put up his sail, and surrender to the popular result. But was the right choice always the popular one? Should his mind always be changed, if enough people spoke out against him? Would Vasilia accept that there was nothing he could’ve done?

No. No, it was his turn. Or else why even have a Captain?

“When our journey started, I recognized Bella not for who she was, but for the position she found herself in. One with a task assigned to her, and punishments awaiting her should she fail. Punishments worse than those she had already received. What a shame, I thought, that we were all at cross purposes. In those days, I prayed for the opportunity to meet her in a moment of quiet, before the fighting could have a chance to start. Maybe I could, in some way, make her burden a little lighter. Wouldn’t that have been something?” He smiled, wistfully, to remember such bright days. “But that is not what’s happened. To simply say she was thrust, unfairly, into this conflict, and acts only out of hurt, excuses the decisions she’s made. Does a…terrible disservice, to those she has hurt.”

“But, as it so happened, my first impression was entirely wrong. I was wrong about her choice in the matter. And I was wrong about the circumstances she’d found herself in. ‘Unfair’ hardly begins to cover it. I have seen a _glimpse_ of the darkness hanging over the Empire, and I very nearly did not survive it. That she has taken a step - [i]any[/i] step - out of line, cannot be understated. She has stayed her hand, even a little, when the consequences for failure are impossibly high, and I cannot ignore that.”

“Which brings us to the present: We have no guarantees that she will take any escape we can offer her. All we have is a chance that she might. All we can do is decide whether we will extend our hand. We are under no obligation to offer her another chance. If we were to turn aside, we would stand well within our rights to do so. The choice is ours, to make as we see fit.”

The breath catches in his throat.

“...I have thought long and hard. I have asked all who could tell me about her, and listened to their stories of the Bella they knew. And yet, if I had her here, and could ask her any question, and know that she would tell me the whole truth, I cannot begin to imagine what she would say if I asked her [i]'why?'[/i] Why wasn’t it enough, to have my wife in chains? Why did your mission need you to take her…” To his shame, he could not stop his eyes from watering. Please do not think less of your captain, oh noble crew, if his sleeves are stained. “...why? Why did you have to hurt her so much?”

“I can’t see any benefit to it. I can’t see any sense in it. If I cannot find an answer. If there [i]is[/i] no answer. What do I make of her, then?”

“If Redana were here, she would make of her an old, ill-treated friend, still terribly close to her heart. Jil makes of her the one, good Captain she’s ever served under. Mynx makes of her one who still feels mercy, in spite of the peril it could bring her. Alexa makes of her an old friend, who may yet still live. I cannot make myself believe any of it like they do. I can’t ignore my own feelings, my own sight, in favor of theirs. But. Maybe I don’t have to.”

“When the Starsong first found me, huddled in their ventilation ducts, all they knew is that I was a cook and a stowaway. And yet, they welcomed me in. All that I am today, I owe to that one offer of kindness and mercy.” All the way up to the chair he now occupies, the one that demands he choose. “I cannot see why Bella deserves mercy. But I can see what it’s done for me. I can see that my crew, my friends, those that I love, wish to show it now. What answer of Bella’s can change that?”

The choice was his, in the end. To make as he saw fit.

“I. Don’t know what this attempt will cost us. I hardly know what I would do, if I were to see her every day for the rest of this voyage, but we will deal with one matter at a time. If the attempt would cost us our mission, our lives, then there is nothing to be done. Such is the fate we are dealt, and we must find a way to press on. But if the chance exists, then by the name of Zeus I swear, we will not leave Bella in the hands of the Master of Assassins.”

So as the Thunderer hits her mark, so too will they all return in triumph, or not at all.

“We leave in half an hour. Prepare yourselves.”