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[rickitikitarr]

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[rickitikitarr]

[Ricki snorts, and sips his tea.]

Want my big news?

[formerself]

[This warrants a blink, and he tilts his head in interest.]

Yes, Ricki, I do.

[rickitikitarr]

I punched Peter in the face. Finally.

[Rolling his eyes ceilingward at his own behaviour.]

[formerself]

[Eggsy laughs, mostly out of surprise.]

Just for laughs, or'd you have a fight?

[rickitikitarr]

He was giving me shit about the port.

[He explains, with a laugh of his own.]

My temper got up.

[formerself]

Oh. Well, fuck.

[He pulls a face - if he didn't know about falling overboard as a Barge phenomenon, or at least couldn't pull that background reading immediately to mind, it's vanishingly unlikely that Guillam did either.]

He thought you just - showed up an' signed up, that that was you?

[rickitikitarr]

That was me. That's exactly the work I did for Peter.

[Shaking his head.]

The first words out of his mouth were practically 'I recognize you when you're working.'

[formerself]

I know, Ricki. I know it could have been you.

[He knows he's capable of being that person. It wasn't nice to be right up against it, but - he's always known. He wasn't kidding, when he said he understood why Ricki's an inmate.]

But you never chose to do any of that shit, that week. That's what I'm talkin' about.

[rickitikitarr]

Well, Peter wasn't aware that there was a distinction.

[He says. Shrugs.]

I didn't mind that.

[formerself]

So you socked him one for unrelated reasons.

[He peers at Ricki for a second.]

Who won, then?

[Because he finds it hard to believe it just - ended there.]

[rickitikitarr]

He was bitching about the death toll, and being trapped somewhere pointless.

[Shrugging.]

I've been killed here. Often when I'm kept unarmed, on account of who I am in this place. Peter lives every other day of his life with the choice to leave, or stay with a gun to hand. He should just get the hell out, if it's that bad. He's allowed.

[After all. He shrugs.]

We both hit the floor and I got out of it, before a librarian could come find us and toss me in zero.

[formerself]

[Eggsy grimaces. They've discussed this at enough length that Ricki will know Eggsy has no sympathy whatsoever for Guillam's position there. He's not convinced it would be a Zero-able offence, suspects Guillam might have intervened to point that out, but--]

Yeah, fuck that. He deserved it.

[rickitikitarr]

Nah. I probably read a lot into it, he was likely just blowing off a little steam.

[Shaking his head.]

But it was worthwhile.

[formerself]

You've probably done him a fuckin' favour. Means he might not go runnin' his mouth 'round anyone might do a bit more than just punch him.

[rickitikitarr]

Well- not running his mouth so much as remarking that he hadn't liked dying-

Ugh, I might owe him an apology. Well- I'll do the right thing and not do so, so he can hang on to the karmic balance, he'll enjoy that more than actually talking it out.

[formerself]

[Eggsy gives him a look to suggest that is probably enough like running one's mouth for some of the Barge's less rational passengers.]

Yeah. Who the fuck actually talks about their shit around here, anyway.

[This isn't a deliberate reference to the fact that they're both on the brink of utter failure as therapy patients, but it's the first thing that springs to mind after he says it. Fuck it. He's found a(n admittedly unconventional way) to get some sleep, and it doesn't involve feeling vulnerable and humiliated in the office at the back of the Infirmary.]

[rickitikitarr]

I have to go back to Cambridge, don't I?

[Making a face.]

Fuck.

[formerself]

[In the interests of not being a massive hypocrite, all Eggsy can really do is shrug.]

I dunno. If it's helping?

[rickitikitarr]

He pointed something out to me. Which is that I honestly do want to change, and that I honestly do want to go home to my little girl. The thing that keeps holding me back is the fucking principle of the thing, and what it'll do to my sense of self to submit to a broken system.

[formerself]

[Eggsy takes a sip of tea but it's mostly to buy him a few seconds to think. Eventually he has to ask:]

What's it gonna do to your sense of self to not?

[The longer he digs his heels in out of principle - more breaches, more floods, more of the day-to-day humiliations of being an inmate and all that entails. That seems to be more toxic to a person's sense of self than any amount of progress might be.]

[rickitikitarr]

Not ideal, right?

Cambridge's advice is ignore everything else and just do what I want.

[Shockingly simple, but- it actually stands a chance.]

[formerself]

Well - yeah.

I mean, fuck, the system's always gonna be here but you don't have to be.

[rickitikitarr]

And it'd be a shame to cut off my nose to spite my face, when in the days before my death I was actually trying to leave espionage.

[formerself]

[This is news to him - so, how did you die? seems like the kind of question you don't ask under any circumstances - and it shows.]

...yeah. Yeah, it would be.

[He can't help but wonder:]

What were you gonna do instead?

[rickitikitarr]

Fallen back in in six months in desperation.

[Head shaking, bemused.]