futurology | VIDEO | un: huntsman

( this post has been a long time coming. he's needed time to digest the news of the fate of the deemer, and that's even without a heart. it's uncomfortable to be faced with a legion of those that suffered as he had, only worse. by all intents and appearances, there was nothing left of them now.

does that make him lucky? that a part of him still remains, however dismantled from being controlled for decades?

lucky or not, it gives him perspective. a lot of perspective. and for better or worse, he feels the need to share it, in the hopes the rest of the team might understand a little better. )

By now I'm sure all of us know the condition of the Demeers. That they are being manipulated and controlled by a force outside themselves. All information we have indicates that there is nothing left to them after the Taxara infiltrate, their personality wiped and their body lost as a vessel for the means of another.

( he grimaces, unable to quite look the team in the eye as he continues. )

I hope that most of you do not know what it feels like, to not be in control of yourself. It is not a feeling I'd wish on anyone, because I've lived it. I was enslaved for longer than I lived freely. When I was young and foolish— ( some of Audentes can remember that man, thanks to the time shenanigans back in Oska. the Huntsman, full of heart, but full of anger too. ) —I made a promise I ultimately refused to keep. And I paid for it, when an evil queen stole my heart and used it to control me.

( he's outing himself, as the man Sieglinde is trying to help. Graham himself is starting to realize that is too much weight for her to carry; he'll have to broaden his search. but not now, not when there's more important tasks at hand. )

She made me steal. She made me hurt. She made me kill. She made me... do whatever would please her. And I could not resist, nor escape, though it didn't stop me from trying. I have been in the place of these people, for longer than most of you have lived. If it is true, that there's nothing of them left after these creatures took them over, then they are lucky to not have to witness their hands doing the work of another. But even if they are not, believe me when I say living as a slave to the hatred of someone else is a fate worse than death.

If we cannot save them, we owe it to them to bring them to rest.

( it's a negative perspective, and he knows it. but if he were in their place, and he has been in their place... he knows what he would want. )

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Is it?

What happens when we get there? What happens when they resist, and from what we've learned of them, they will. What happens if we get them to another world and there's nothing left of their brain to be repaired, even if ALASTAIR can keep them alive?

What happens to the family they have left here?

( to him, it's far from simple. these are questions they have to ask, even if it's uncomfortable. )

I think their family would want us to try. And if ALASTAIR can keep shipping new recruits here, I'm sure they can be brought back.

[It's not that Keith is optimistic—right now, he just wants to be right. Anything that will match up with his desire to see if they can help these people is what matters most.]

From what I understand, it's not so easy as you think.

( he's been long enough to know. ALASTAIR was capable of great feats, yes, but not without cost. )

I want there to be a solution as much as you. I'm not suggesting we stop looking. Simply that we have an option if our search for a cure fails.

Yeah, but we knew that already. We didn't need your life story to figure it out.

[Not the king of tact in any definition of the word. Keith doesn't fully grasp the social significance of what Graham did here, but then, he doesn't know that he's been around for ... a while.]

The attempt was to lend perspective. I would hope that this sort of position would be difficult for most to imagine.

( apparently there's more of Audentes with experience than graham could ever have imagined. if he'd known, perhaps he'd have stayed silent. )

I don't think you rightly understand it still. As much as you want to help these people, you have the same information that I do. ALASTAIR couldn't provide a straight answer as to whether they could be saved, all information on the Taxara points to the contrary. Has it occurred to you that the Taxara themselves might be of more interest to ALASTAIR than those that are suffering because of them?

( if they were members of a rival, they could have vital information. seemed a good reason to haul so many back to Oska at such great cost, considering live extraction was so difficult. )

[The truth is that it hadn't occurred to him. But the moment Graham says it, he realizes that ALASTAIR might just be being smart. His cynical nature makes him mistrust most people, but that also means he can see the advantage of this.]

And why is it so bad to get information out of an enemy? That might further what we're doing on this team. I don't think it'd be good for us to run into trouble like this in the future, especially if we can put a stop to it now.

Then you're turning them from one pawn to the next. These people cannot consent to being test dummies for ALASTAIR's search for information. I imagine their family would rather have a chance to say goodbye and bury them, than to lose them for a greater good that was decided for them.

( honestly, that's a matter of perspective. some would consider those already lost to be a paltry sacrifice to helping the greater good. Graham is not without his biases, though at least he is aware of them. )

I've said what I needed to. The rest is up to the team.

[The truth of the matter is that Keith just doesn't have the perspective to understand the full scale of this situation. He just knows that he had a brief and rather memorable future where he might have been forced to lie to people he cared about as a sleeper agent. He can only see himself wanting to go free. But that's different.

Or mostly different.

He doesn't know if he is or isn't an alien, and it's a doubt that weighs on him now.]

I still think we should try to free them. But maybe we can get ALASTAIR to let us in on that process.

It's worth asking. If there's a way to help these people, not even I would vote against it.

( it's difficult to recover from that sort of experience, but he is. he wouldn't choose death if there's an alternative. and he doubts the Qorral lost to the Taxara would choose it, either. )

... Just one question. Do you consider us pawns now?

[It's worth asking, at least for perspective. Keith keeps going back and forth on it.]

Do we have a choice, whether we serve or not?

( they don't. ALASTAIR dresses it up as a job, but it's not. not truly. it's servitude, with supposed freedom at the end of the tunnel. )

Perhaps we were all drawn into this accidentally, yet they have the means to send us home. And the means to recruit outside of those who have no choice but to agree. They remove the option, and as long as that's true, we're not entirely free.

( the ironic thing is he likely would have agreed of his own volition, if he'd been given the choice. he has nothing to return to but death, he wants to do what he can to help others and he wants to keep living. but Graham will never be comfortable with the removal of consent. )

Yeah, but ... maybe they were having a hard time recruiting. Maybe they can't do all of that. [Keith was under the impression that it was harder than it sounds. None of them are as strong as Allura, anyway.]

Either way, I've been in this before. I've been forced into something like this before. I don't wanna stay here forever, but I don't want to sit around and think about how bad I have it.

I think I'll have it worse if my universe gets messed up.

I think it's important to remember our circumstances. Perhaps the time will come that we can do something about it.

( wrest some kind of freedom or autonomy from ALASTAIR. it was unlikely, but if he forgot the simple fact that he was being controlled, it was giving up on the last bit of power he had, and he refused to. )

They do some good, ALASTAIR. That good does not change the bad, at least in my perspective. Your perspective will alway be your own.

Yeah ... I guess so.

[It's not that he doesn't agree. But there's a part of Keith that almost willfully wants to act like aspects of the Voltron deal are perfectly normal.

So he wants it to translate over here, too.]

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