multiversallogs | "murder" sounds a bit fancy.

Who: Kate and Jason
What: a talk about morals, or possibly the lack thereof
Where: the Apache
When: late afternoon
Notes: this happens after Jason went to visit Steph and met Hermione, and also after he talked to Tim.
Warnings: vigilante philosophizing, moral ramifications, merciless rationalization

He doesn't think about it now, but he might later: Jason's actually really happy. Not the way you're supposed to be happy, maybe, but he's never put any stock in that. The thing is, he's busy and he has a purpose. His talk with Barbara went better than he could have imagined. Even Stephanie and Tim didn't go terribly. But it would be completely remiss to forget Stephanie's friend. He remembers the way she looked the night they killed Henry Jennings. In a lot of ways, he has no patience for that, no sympathy — the Militia are as bad as anybody he's ever killed before, and in certain aspects, worse.

However, he'd also seen how good she was. There's no lone rangering this shit, and she would be an asset, if he can convince her the cause is worthy. Maybe a part of him is still annoyed he never brought Mia around. Though he doubts this Kate is anything like Mia apart from their embrace of archery, it seems apt, in a slightly grim way, that he should be on his way to meet her at the Apache to make his case. This time, there will be 100% less kidnapping and blowing up of stuff. The context is completely different, and anyway, Stephanie would do her damnedest to kill him. If he can't convince her, he'll try his best to leave her in a better frame of mind. Refusing to kill is not necessarily problematic, in his mind. As long as she isn't going to pull a Batman on them, it's not a big deal.

Though Kate hadn't seen his face that night, he's wearing the same jacket, he moves roughly the same way. He glances around the bar for her as he heads towards a booth, where their conversation will likely go uninterrupted.

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Something about his calmness disturbs Kate, aside from him being super calm around the topic at hand. It isn't cold, calculated calmness, but some kind she can't quite put her finger on. She'll sit down and figure it out herself later or just ask Steph for details once they get through the inevitable awkwardness that's been hanging between them since that night. Right now, Kate just pushes it to the side for later as she shifts in her seat.

"And the guilt?" What about that? Does he ever feel guilty? Has he ever?

Jason shakes his head at the question.

"They deserve it. Sometimes they deserve more. And don't ask me who am I to judge — there is no higher power, there's only what we can do for each other. I'll never feel guilty about killing these assholes. What I'm concerned about are the consequences I don't calculate right, or don't foresee at all. Kill a guy, maybe that leads to someone else's death, someone who didn't deserve it. Maybe it puts someone in deep shit. Whatever I do, it could change a lot of things, and I can't know about all of them. That I'll feel guilty about. But I'm not gonna let these shitbags roam free to rape and kill. And here we just can't afford to do anything else."

Now he leans in just a little, barely more than a slight shift in his posture, the incline of his head. His voice doesn't get any lower than it was already, to keep their conversation between them; as calm as he's stayed, Kate has stirred up some intense feelings about the situation, and now he speaks with little awareness for their surroundings, just him to her.

"It's gonna be like that here. There'll be reprisals for what we do, they will crack down on innocent people when we hit them. And I'll feel guilt for that. I'll remember every name. But it can't continue like this, it's got to change."

She wonders what would they say knowing that she voted the way she did even though she was once raped herself and her mother killed. They'd probably look at her funny and tell her to get over it because those people clearly didn't care about her so why should she care about them enough to let them live. They would be logically right, but still, there is something inside Kate that just stops short of taking that fork in the road. Maybe she'll never get past it. Maybe she will. The future cannot be seen right now.

"You think killing them, reducing their numbers will make them stop?" She's not being condescending, just curious. The militia can recruit more and more soldiers however they do to replace the ones who aren't around anymore. It sounds like an endless battle to her.

Jason would never say anything like that, though until it comes up, that will remain a moot point.

"No, that's not even vaguely feasible. If it were someone else would've already done it. Five hundred years this place has been around, and the Militia's been in place from the fucking beginning. We are far from the first to try this. We need to learn everything we can and that's all I'm willing to discuss in public."

What he says makes enough sense to pass by Kate. Enough for now, anyway.

Reaching for her device and slipping it back into her coat pocket, Kate feels they've discussed all they needed to for the moment. She keeps her stance and so does he, but there's a compromise there that she'll need to get used to. "I'll keep my eyes and ears open."

She slips out of the booth, but turns around to look at him with a slight grin. "And ask Steph about you."

"murder" sounds a bit fancy.

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