ukan | spam; the last journal post

spam; the last journal post

[Getting on board was a moment of chaos. He remembers turning a corner, expecting to find fur and blood in his mouth, expecting maybe to get torn up in return, expecting maybe a bullet from above to take him down, too-

But instead he's somewhere metal, somewhere that smells of strangers and strangeness, and he's bleeding a trail but he runs for safety anyway. If there is any. If there are doors, anywhere, that he can open without changing back, because this has to be the FBI's work and so long as they think he's just a wolf, maybe they won't slit him open and poke around inside.]

[ooc: Lark is a wolf, for now. He'll have to change back sooner or later even if he doesn't want to, so feel free to tag him as human or wolf, just lemme know which.]

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Which, I admit, I have never seen back home. [Have a sly grin right back.] But a guy fights off alien invasions and a crazy German with a skull for a face, and he learns to accept a hell of a lot as real.

[He considers that answer, though. It's an interesting one, but...] It makes sense, honestly. And I can't even say that it's a good or a bad thing, but... [Have that sly grin again,] I can't imagine how you ever managed to keep enough patience to handle working in a courtroom.

[He actually respects that. Quite a lot. Arguing the law isn't his job, but he respects that law, and the people that work within the system, even if it's not perfect.]

There is a trick to it. [Leaning a bit closer, even though they're alone in the room] I only represent men and women in organized crime. Then I scare them into giving me almost all of their earnings. If they complain, there's the threat of jail- or death.

[Mostly death.] You'd be surprised how smoothly things go with a client when they suspect you really will kill them in their own prison cell.

Ah-hah. [Steve considers that, smiling almost secretively.] That's some trick.

I am vaguely familiar with the tactic. [A guy like Captain America? Yeah, you put him nearby, and a lot of people are willing to talk, just to miss the opportunity to meet his fist. He doesn't always like using that kin dof tactic, but sometimes it's necessary, and he'd rather scare people into talking than let innocents suffer because they don't have the information they need to stop something from happening.] It's pretty reliable.

Edited 2015-07-02 20:39 (UTC)

[Lark laughs and this is probably the moment he starts to really warm up to Steve, Warden or not. It's hard for him to get attached to anyone as grounded and stable as Captain America, for a lot of reasons, but when he can?

...Yeah he's thinking the poster is propaganda but the inspiration behind it is real.]

Have you ever learned something you didn't necessarily want to know, using it? I represented a drug pusher once who felt the need to tell me all about how his mother, a former stripper, went from being incredible to...well. The decline of a stripper-mother isn't something I bargained for.

[He makes a bit of a face - no, that is not a decline he'd like to hear, either, but he's got to nod.] Some people get talking, they don't know how to stop. Maybe it's a guilty conscience, maybe it's an attempt at self-preservation, but...

[He shrugs a little.] Most of the guys I've nabbed were fanatics. They don't break down like that, they're too mired in what they believe to go into the rest of it, too busy spitting in your face. I've got a couple of people, back home, though - when I find them and get them talking, I'm not gonna want to hear what they've got to say, but I'm gonna make 'em talk, anyway.

[He nods, wincing.] I represented a few in my earlier days. I'd never go back to that. I'll take deranged drug lords over someone who can't form an original thought, any day.

How often do you have to deal with fanaticism?

[His smile is dry.] Pal, I joined the Army to stop the Nazis.

[So, there's that, by which he means all the time. But,] Turns out, they weren't the worst the Germans had to offer. My mission was to take down the ones that were worse, and make sure the world didn't know about them.

I'm still working on that one, these days.

[Plus, there was Loki. He's definitely some kind of fanatic. Or something like it.] Makes organized crime look pretty damn civilized, sometimes. I don't imagine you've got it much easier, though. That's its own rats' nest, isn't it.

[He shakes his head] It's a mess, but they aren't like the Nazis. No matter how slick a crime lord is, people still know he is what he is. No one voted him in, no one threw him a parade. People are generally very happy when one of them is taken down in some way; no army will step in to try to save him.

I'm surprised it's still a work in progress, though. In my world we have neo-Nazis but they're mostly just kids clawing around for somewhere to put their anger and confusion.

Point. Although I can imagine there are some people that aren't happy to see them taken down, and that probably doesn't make being a lawyer a popular job, some days. [He cocks a half-smile.] Fortunately, you can defend yourself.

[He shakes his head.] We've got them, too. Plenty of kids - and men - who don't know what it was like, who don't even know what the word Nazi means, because they weren't even born when the Germans marched across Europe. They're not what frighten me, not really.

[Although they bother him, they bother him a lot. But so do a lot of things.]

The real challenge is the opposite. The world thinks I'm a defense attorney, bought and paid for by the mob. They think I might be a gangster myself. [He is. Just...not the kind they think he is.]

Without this group you're hunting down, what's going to be the next big threat? [Because there always is one.]

[Steve hums a little.] People're funny, huh? You'd think it'd be easier to see the good in someone - or at least, the good he's done. [He's not stupid enough to think that everyone does good things for the right reasons. But at least they can still do good things.]

[He considers that, letting out a breath.] I don't know. Honestly? Part of me's worried it's gonna be another alien invasion. Most of me thinks it's gonna be on the home front, though. There's plenty of messes left to clean up. There always will be.

Whatever it is, we'll meet it and do it one better.

[He remembers having told himself very similar things, as he'd taught his collection of gutter punks to fight trained and seasoned wolves.] The law of evolution. Adapt, or die.

--Did you say aliens?

Exactly. And if there's one thing I respect the hell out of humanity for, it's the fact that they can adapt to just about anything. And not lose a lot of things along the way, if they make a little effort. [Because adaptation is one thing, but adaptation while keeping the good things about humanity, like kindness and respect... he thinks that's more important.

He makes a face, laughing a little.] Yeah, I know how it sounds. About two years ago, someone named Loki - different alien - decided Earth should be his personal empire. He opened up a portal into New York, let his army of Chitauri through.

That didn't go over so well with the rest of us, you can imagine.

I've heard of him. I was a little...involved at the time, I never got around to asking about what he'd done to get here. Now I know, right?

How do you beat back an alien army?

[That's right - Steve had heard more than once that Loki had been on board before.] Now you know. He and I didn't exactly get along, but. [Shrug. Can you blame him? At least Loki wasn't his inmate.

The short answer to that? You get a Hulk and a nuke. The slightly longer answer:] You get a good group of people together and get them to work together. Then you almost lose some of them on the way.

[Part of him's amazed they didn't lose anyone. Most of him's just grateful. Thank God some people are just shitty at dying.]

Plus, the NYPD learned to take orders from a ninety-year-old in the stars and stripes pretty quickly.

[He laughs at that last part]

Be glad you weren't working with the LAPD. They won't take orders from God. [Sure maybe he's bitter at them from his career standpoint, but the LAPD has shot and killed an awful lot of wolves, too.]

What I'm hearing is we need a catastrophe to get the Barge to cooperate.

[And Steve grins.] Oh yeah? I'd believe that. They did steal my baseball team.

[He's quiet a moment, but he can't deny,] A big catastrophe always gets people to cooperate.

It doesn't mean I want one.

I don't doubt it. Which one was it? [He followed baseball loosely all through high school, but law school and then learning how to lead a double life ate up all his time after that.]

I know eventually we'll have one, but- I don't want one we can't control. The key is in nobody being seriously, or permanently hurt. Look what a rift there is now because no one can agree on how to handle the pain.

The Brooklyn Dodgers. [Emphasis on Brooklyn.]

The problem is, nobody ever gets permanently hurt. And it changes things. It changes people changes how they think, and I don't like it. Not that the death toll hasn't saved my ass, or my friends', but... I still don't like it. And I wonder if maybe that's part of the problem. Death's supposed to be permanent, and when it's not - everything changes.

[People can become infinitely more cruel, and they can even try to justify it to themselves.]

[Lark nods, the smile from the Dodgers crack fading as he thinks about the tension boiling all over the ship.]

You know what I would do if this was my Barge? I'd make it so the murderer suffered the death toll and the sense of slow healing right along with the victim. I'd make it so the murderer lost something proportional to how bad the murder was and how vicious their intent was.

[He blows out a breath, thinking about that for a moment.]

Part of me wants to say that's a brilliant idea.

Part of me wants to say it's not right, either way.

[He shakes his head.] Maybe what it boils down to is that I don't want the threat of punishment and suffering to be the thing that stops people from killing. I understand it may work, but is it really doing people the service we're here to do? It might be a good stopgap measure. But I have a feeling that you know as well as I do how often stopgaps end up staying in place long past when they should've been removed.

I know. But at least this way, the perpetrator would be forced into some kind of empathy--and if they're masochistic enough that the empathy doesn't matter, at least they'll be voluntarily giving up some power or talent or desire. It might get them to stop and think a moment rather than rushing on in blind panic.

There are people who don't care about what it'll mean for them, as long as they get what they want. That's not going to stop them, is it? [His expression is wry. Steve's thinking of Bucky, telling him that if someone hurts Steve, he can't promise not to retaliate. He knows for an iron-clad fact that Bucky would do whatever he thought he had to do, regardless of what it meant for him.

And Bucky is a warden.]

I think discouraging killing is a good thing. I think if this were a regular prison, that would be the end-all of what happened here. But it's not, and I think that here, stopping it at the source is a better solution.

But I also can't deny that we're not doing that, at the moment. We're not doing either, so I shouldn't shoot down any solution anyone's got to offer so quickly, huh?

That's true. The consequence can always be adapted, though. [Lark is also one of those people who would take revenge no matter what it cost him, so he understands. He also isn't sure what would stop him.]

I'm open to any idea that works without making life worse for everyone. [Lark tends to push his own ideas through but that's only because, at home, he is The Boss. No one else has all the cards. In a group setting like this, he's willing to let someone else--primarily Steve, at this point--have the reins. ...Some of the time.]

I guess it can. Maybe that's what needs to happen, anyway. Dealing with everyone the same way may not be the most effective means of doing anything around here.

[Steve thinks there should be consistency. But that doesn't mean doing things exactly the same with every inmate. That could be doing them a disservice, instead, forcing them to conform to a system that clearly isn't working as it should.]

I am, too. But I think we also should have a pretty good idea of what works means, [he puts in.] Anyway, it's nothing we're going to solve overnight. It's taken a long time, from what I can tell, for things to come to a head, and I don't even know that this is it. It still doesn't mean I want to let things go on this way, though.

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