hybrid_prince | For Garrrr

“What is there to explain? Everyone here hates me and doesn’t want me here,” Gar says and he lifts a shoulder.

“I’m given the basics to survive but that’s all.”

That is clearly not enough of an explanation. Dorrek rises and moves toward the door, his footsteps heavy and his hands giving way to claws as he does so. And he says nothing to Gar.

Clearly someone will be in trouble shortly.

“Stop! Do you think bullying people is going to make it better?”

Gar didn’t really want to get anyone in trouble or hurt and even less so because he knew they’d take it out on him and Dorrek would never notice.

Dorrek whirls on Gar, fury in his eyes.

"You are my guest. I will not have you disrespected in this manner. It flouts my authority as Emperor. I gave orders, and they have ignored them. They do not get that choice!"

“And yet you haven’t noticed in all this time. Do you think you’ll notice when you react like this and they get worse when your attention is on more important things than the Earth plaything. Who didn’t you tell me that we are less than you? You tell people that they treat the people less than them like shit.”

Which is the whole issue the other failed to see in forcibly taking over earth and thinking it wouldn’t be a bad things for the people living there.

“Shouldn’t have told you anything,” Gar mutters.

The point is not very well taken by the Emperor. And still he looks livid. Looks angry. Looks ready to break someone over all of this. Looks ready to tear people apart.

"I am not a cruel man, Gar. Surely you have seen that much in the time you have been here. And if I allow this treatment of you, then I can expect no better for your world when I come to it. I will not have my authority so blatantly ignored. You will stay at my side, you will learn our language, and you will report when unkindness is visited upon you."

Gar looks down and it's not like he has a choice when the other decides something it's the way that it is. It's almost nice how he's so angry about it though... Gar knows he probably shouldn't think that way. There's a lot of dangerous thinking lately.

"The problem isn't going to go away if you keep telling everyone that they're superior to the people in my world even if they change around me..."

It's a pointless argument to make and yet he still makes it. "Don't hurt anyone on my behalf."

The Emperor deflates a little, the claws receding.

“I do not have eyes everywhere, Gar of Earth. Not here, not on your homeworld. I do my best, but I had trusted in you to speak of ill treatment. I am scheduled nearly to twenty four hours of our thirty hour day, and try to spare what time I can for you. My empire spans thousands of planets, locked in a war against my father’s people since nearly before yours had mastered fire. I am not a gentle man, I will not claim that. But I am also not omniscient.”

And he was definitely annoyed to find what was coming to pass under his nose.

“You... are meant for great things, and it is my hope to shepherd you to them. But you always look at me as nothing more than a captor.”

Gar could almost feel sorry for him — maybe he did a little bit... he still didn’t know why the other would have thought he ever would have mentioned what was going on. In truth, maybe he hadn’t been completely certain it was behind the others back at all.

“I’m not meant for great things. I just had shit luck,” Gar can’t just relent. He wouldn’t have been here if he hadn’t gotten that deadly disease in the Congo. It was shit luck, that was all. No meant for great things or fate. Random chance.

“And you are my captor if you don’t want to be you could always stop.”

Except he can’t because blah blah gotta rule the world.

Oh, he is meant for great things. Dorrek means him for them. But that can wait a bit. But Dorrek shakes his head at the other thing.

"The number of humans that will die if I send you back to Earth is far higher than that which would die if you remain here," Dorrek informs him quite simply. "Would you still have me send you home when such an act would cost millions of lives?"

Gar and Dorrek will have plenty of time to argue with it to be certain.

Gar frowns at that and he wants to argue that it doesn't have to be that way. Dorrek could choose another way couldn't he? If he was so powerful... He lifts a shoulder and looks down.

"Why must it cost so much?"

"Because if you go back, you will tell them of the Skrull and our intentions, our purpose," Dorrek points out. "They will know of our abilities, and thus will seek us. When we come to your world, it will be war, not subversion."

They are shapeshifters, Gar. And as warlike as the people Dorrek has been raised among are, they are shapeshifters.

"There is more than one way to come into power among a populous who is not prepared for our kind. And while the Skrull have not been the most patient over time, I am working on them. Your world will come into my hands, not by war if I can avoid it, but by means of subterfuge, lies, and distractions. We can look and sound like anyone, Gar. What need of I for war when I can merely replace your leaders? When I can manipulate things such that when the Skrull come to your world, it willingly bows a knee to us, because it is given over by those who rule? Those who are now my people?"

Millions, hundreds of millions, of lives could be lost through actual war. And few of them would be Skrull in Dorrek's opinion. But to make them a vassal world of the Skrull with minimal bloodshed is another beast entirely.

"What if I didn't tell anyone though," Gar sighs and he supposes there's no way to convince Dorrek that he wouldn't. He still hated the idea of the Skrull taking over the world and basically eradicating freedom of all the humans that lived on it but he also wanted to go home.

He didn't want to cause a war, though, so that would perhaps be incentive to at least keep his mouth shut but... still.

"I think you underestimate humans. They won't want to be subservient to you."

"I'm not naive," Dorrek sighs as he watches his young... what. Captive? Who knows how one should describe Gar. Dorrek just knows what he pities the man for being foolish. "You will speak. And there will be war. So tell me truly, you have seen my people. You have seen our strength. Perhaps only a little bit of it, but you have seen it. Will you truly subject your people to out and out war with us? Think of what all we might bring you, Gar. Our scientific advances. The safety and security of the whole empire at your backs. The ability to explore the stars, to have access to medicine you cannot fathom, to save your world from the destruction your people build for it."

Why does he care so hard about pitching the idea to Gar? Perhaps, Dorrek tells himself, it's about preparing for the day he will arrive on Earth and offer the same.

"Can you not imagine the strength that would give your people? The whole might of the Andromeda Cluster," and finally with that Gar can begin to fathom just how far from home he is, how alone, "at your backs. United with the Kree, who mostly control the Large Magellanic Cloud. Once we are united with the strong, creative, evolving people of the Milky Way, we will be an empire as none have ever known. None will ever threaten you again. That is what I offer. It will come to pass whether or not you will it. The question is how many lives you feel are worth losing along that path."

"Stop acting like it would be my fault even if I did tell them. You're choosing to do this no matter what might or might not happen. You act like it's just fate but it's not. You're making a choice. What you might bring comes at a cost of everything that actually matters to humanity."

Gar pushes his hand through his hair and then drops it down. It doesn't dawn on him at first how far that is away but it starts to sink in and it makes him feel worse... He looks crestfallen for a moment but then he tries to hide it and just stares at the table to the food that neither of them had really been touching.

"You're so blind." He mutters, though, but he figures Dorrek knows him well enough to know he wouldn't risk people getting hurt he'd not even wanted Dorrek to hurt the Skrull who were hurting him.

"Then open my eyes," Dorrek counters as he returns at last to the table and sits. "I told you, I cannot see everything. I do not have eyes everywhere. I will right what my people are doing to you, but if you think there is a better way for me to approach the situation with Earth, then tell me it."

Lives could be on the line, Gar. So the question is what is better. Freedom, or death.

"You don't want see any way but taking over Earth and anything else I suggest is useless to you," Gar says, looking tired.

"You don't even consider the idea of trying to make an alliance because you think that humans are lesser than you. How could anything I say be valuable to you? Stop pretending that it is."

"No," Dorrek counters. "I don't consider making an alliance because your planet is divided. Humans are violent creatures, enough to make even the Skrull and Kree look peaceful. Were I to present myself to your leaders, it would be a scramble for what I offer. So they can sell it and ignore those who are in need. Or so that they can crush their opposition with our military force. Earth is a planet that needs control and oversight and support. But if one offers hand to them, they only seek to grab and snatch."

ARgue against that point, Gar. He dares you. Tell him that if he comes to Earth then it won't be Pakistan and India trying to get Skrull tech to blow each other up. That the Russians won't grab what he offers and try to rule the world. That the drug companies won't steal every medical advance and sell it at a premium and continue to let people die without healthcare.

Capitalism and nationalism make Earth impossible to negotiate with.

"So you won't even give them the opportunity to try? You would be just as bad as the people you're making accusations against. Circumvent the governments, go to the people," because if he can just replace the leaders anyway why can't he just bypass them instead?

"The ones that allow facists to control them?" Dorrek asks. Clearly this guy has MORE than a bit of understanding of Earth's history. "The ones who elected men like Hitler to rule them? The ones that vote in politicians markedly acting against their own interests? The one who are already certain that lizard people are replacing people in power and coming up with the wrong lizard people?"

Again he shakes his head.

"An individual can be smart, Gar of Earth. An individual can reason and think and come to proper conclusions. People? People on your Earth are prone to mass hysteria and hedonism. Or, far worse, apathy toward their fellow man. I think, my guest, I have a better understanding of your world than you do. And that brings me no small amount of sorrow."

Gar just looks irritated at that. "I don't think you do. You're making wide sweeping generalizations. Maybe people did elect Hitler but they also didn't know what he was going to do. The entire economy had been decimated by World War I and people just wanted someone to make it better. You can't talk about those people without talking about resistance fighters and all the amazing bravery and resilience in concentration camps and in resistancce movements. There's people that vote for politicians who are against their interests but that doesn't mean they know that they are, not really," Gar shakes his head and maybe some people were just bad seeds but he didn't believe that of most of humanity.

"There aren't that many conspiracy theorists, they're just fucking loud and obnoxious."

Too many but still if they were talking the actual majority of humanity here then the broad sweeping generalizations Dorrek made weren't right.

"Maybe you have seen all those things but I've seen people fighting for better lives. I've seen people putting themselves in front of guns to protect children when they have nothing to defend themselves. Most people are good but good people don't usually seek power."

Which, of course, means that Gar sees him as...

"Then you believe me to be evil?" Dorrek asks, blunt and up front. "I am inherently unable to be good because I seek the power to help others? To end a war that has waged between my father and mother's people for millenia? I am evil because I care not to spill your blood or those of the innocents of your world?"

Gar did say most.

Gar lifts a shoulder. "Maybe not evil but... I also think you're blinded by your desire and that you'd rather take the easier ways because even war would be easier than actually working with humans instead of dominating them. So maybe you're not evil but you're not good either."

"You call it desire. I call it the duty that was set upon me since I was a child," Dorrek dismisses. "And if I do not do this, someone else will. Someone will attack your planet because the Skrull see it as a birthright. And your people will be decimated, Gar. In the truest meaning of that word. But by all means, have your opinions of me. You are, I fear, as frightfully naive as you are beautiful."

With that he rises again, abandoning food and table, and heads for the door. He cannot stand to speak to this foolish human any further. And there are other things he could do with his so rare free time. Like dealing with those members of his household who have made his guest feel unwelcome.

Gar knew that trying to get Dorrek to see there was more than two options was impossible. He felt powerless as he had since he came here.

"Whatever," Gar mutters at the backhanded sort of compliment and insult that had been sent his way before the other went to leave. He didn't try to stop him this time. But he didn't think anything Dorrek could do would make anything better.

That's just not how people worked Skrull or Human. Maybe he wasn't the only one that was naive.

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