futurology | VIDEO. UN: LOKI

[ the sound of the wind storm hollows dully against the cave walls. Loki's squidge, Bacon, can half be seen crawling in the confines of his tacky green jacket and over his knee from where he sits, sometimes ducking and squeaking when a particularly large gust hits. to keep it from screaming, Loki offers his fingers absently, which the little squidge pulls on with its pudgy arms before ducking low again. ]

Hello there, it seems like we'll be waiting this out for some time considering the weather-type circumstances. While we're all rotting away, etcetera etcetera, I thought we could amuse ourselves with a game. A little bit of team bonding funtimes, so to say. [ he twists a dark nailed hand in the air, gesturing. ]

Soo—oo ... it's called Two Truths and a Lie. How do you play? Glad you asked, it's simple! Give two true statements about yourself and add a lie to the mix, shake it up then toss it out there and see if your team members know you well enough to spot the lie.

Usually this is done with copious amounts of alcohol, but we're lacking at the moment. [ pause. ] But—ah—you could always enjoy the satisfaction of being right. It's not like we're doing much else.

NOTE | Feel free to threadjack if that's your thing!! :****

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... So, you hoped for the best and got the worst but they weren't bad?

They didn't hurt anyone; we just wanted different things is all. Not everyone who deceives to you is a bad person. Sometimes, they're just doing what they have to in order to survive.

[Keith flashes back to Rolo and Nyma, who definitely fell squarely into that. They said they wanted the paladins to succeed ... but on the other hand, they definitely sold them out.]

It's not that I haven't come across that. [Though Keith had been too indifferent to really care about Rolo and Nyma at the time.] But what if you were just a bit more suspicious of them? Don't you think it would've turned out better for you?

Nothing turns out well for people where I'm from. In the end, I wasn't any better or worse off, and I only had the chance to be better off because of their help. So ... [ She shrugs. ] I can't say really.

[Well, that got dark pretty quick. Keith can only imagine that something terrible happened there, or just ... that it is terrible.]

What happened to wherever you came from?

[ Well, it can't hurt to explain more. In fact, Rey seems surprisingly unemotional about the whole thing. She has many open wounds, but this isn't one of them. The empathy she feels for them is too considerable, particularly now that she's left the planet and has a better idea of what it's like out there. ]

Jakku's one big desert, see. If you want to have anything to eat or drink, you need to scavenge something to trade from the ships that crashed there. I found one that I could get going again, but I needed their help—not just to make sure other scavengers didn't loot it while I was asleep, but to haul the parts we needed from other ships and keep finding enough parts to trade for food while we were working on it.

I wanted to trade it once we got it ready to fly—we'd have gotten so much food for it. But they only wanted to leave. So they took it. I stayed on Jakku, and everything went back to normal. So you see: I was no better or worse off for having trusted them.

[Truthfully, he'd ask why she stayed, but he knows that people have their reasons. Why did he live on the edge of a desert for a great deal of time following things that could have turned out to be meaningless? What if that cave full of lions meant nothing at all? What if he was stupid to think someone would eventually show up?

Keith is a pretty cynical guy, but that's not a thing he can really judge for.]

Sounds like you guys had different priorities. You wanted to stay, and they wanted to go. I bet if you worked out a deal, you could've helped them steal the ship after you got your food. But maybe they didn't think you'd risk it.

I'm not sure I can really judge, though. I'm not good at guessing what people want from something myself. [If he thought they'd needed food, he'd ... think they'd need food.]

You're probably right.

[ Which, maybe, means that Keith's way of thinking, and theirs, was really the smarter way. Suspicion made sure you got what you wanted. But she just can't feel too bad when she didn't lose anything but a possibility. ]

If I'd been too paranoid to trust them in the first place, though, neither of us would have gotten what we wanted. So even if it gets me in trouble, I think I'd still like to believe the best of people.

[He understands that, but there's one thing he doesn't get. Yes, he understands not wanting to leave for whatever reasons she had. But—her home sounds rough. How can she be so trusting?]

So, let's say I get that. But why do you come from a place like that and still believe in the best of people? I mean ... were the people that good there that you couldn't help it?

[A natural pessimist and loner, Keith has only met a select few to really inspire that thinking in his short lifetime.]

[ No one's ever asked that before, and it takes some pretty serious reflection for Rey to decide. She's never thought about why she feels that way—she just does. Maz Kanata said it was because the Light was always with her—at least, that's what she took it to mean now, in this context. But Rey ... ]

I guess because ... I've met bad people. The people on Jakku aren't bad people; they were only doing what they needed to do in order to survive, and I was one of them. When that's all you see, you have to hope that somewhere out there, where people don't need to scrape by, things are better than that.

[It's clear that this line of thinking doesn't entirely make sense to Keith. Like, he gets it, but he can't absorb it.]

I have a feeling that you're either better off or worse off because of it. [Really ... that means both things ... it's like he doesn't want to concede that she has a better outlook.] But either way, you're likely a better person than most. [He will concede this, though.]

[ It's an assessment that no one has ever made of her—at least, not directly. There were shades of it in Finn's plea for her to join him, in the irreconcilable places they were at on Takodana, and thinking of it now saddens her. ]

Thank you. [ her brow furrows. ] I think. [ since they probably just determined it's not necessarily for the best. ] You should give Loki a chance. Hear him out, at least.

... I'll think about it.

[Saying he'd do it and then end up not giving him a chance probably wouldn't be fair, so he's honest in his reply: he will think about it.]

And if you find out that you're right, then ... I'll help you out, okay?

Sure.

But uh—as he's helpfully pointed out, he can see this.

Thanks, though.

VIDEO. UN: LOKI

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