clonecumber | (no subject)

All right, so this is one of those scenes where I could never quite figure out the motivations, but I think I have an idea now?

Skirata makes a point to note that before this they had zero problems from Boss. He was taking his tasking well and wasn’t rocking the boat with anyone. He was calm and professional, if not content. It’s only now that he starts getting agitated. Why?

Then I realized a few things, and actually Boss has a ton of reasons to be anxious, starting with something that happens just literally moments before this scene:

Jusik, Sev, and Fi are taking an ass-chewing, and Skirata proceeds to hit Sev on the head. Hard. Hard enough to be audible to other people. He doesn’t strike anyone else, and Sev takes it flatly and doesn’t show any sign of distress, but I’m going to point out the obvious here when I say that these men were raised by FUCKING VAU. The man who nearly killed Atin. Extreme violence is the sort of discipline Delta expects when they fail, and Skirata--a stranger, a training sergeant, a man they know only by reputation and the fact he has a violent feud with their own trainer--is almost almost just barely not dishing it out, but is walking close enough to that line to make anyone edgy. And Boss is stuck on the sidelines helpless to do anything but watch this go down. No wonder he’s pacing like a caged tiger. He’s expecting Sev to come away bleeding.

And Skirata is confused by the sudden agitation from Boss, but, rather than connect the dots from Vau’s idea of discipline and how his own actions might read to Vau’s old trainees, what Vau’s old trainees might have been bracing for the second Skirata lined Sev up, tentatively pins it on Boss just suddenly developing a problem with authority, even though he’d given no signs of having a single problem with it before this point.

...Kinda weak.

(Not sold on this yet, but...I actually wonder how likely it is that Boss is watching Niner not because he’s angry with him, but to try and use his reactions to figure out how worried he should be. Skirata doesn’t really understand the whole heap of trauma he’s digging up here, though, so he doesn’t clue in, and Niner, already tense, definitely wouldn’t understand, and would probably read Boss’s eyes on him as accusation. Which, if he did, would have been putting his teeth on edge this whole time.)

Next there’s this whole...thing. And this is the other thing that didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, because Skirata notes right after this that Niner “takes the bait”? But I must be seriously misunderstanding the tone, because to me Boss actually seems to be going out of his way to be diplomatic here, whatever emotions he might have underlying it. He’s not overtly blaming anyone, is the thing. Not even Omega. If it happens to sound like he doesn’t trust Omega with his people, then...well...

Boss is still not trying to start a fight, though, if only because Skirata’s there. He’s wording himself too carefully for that. But Sev went off with Fi on tasking that more typically fits into Omega’s wheelhouse, and it went tits up almost immediately, and now he’s standing here in what must be one of his worst nightmares. It’s not surprising to me, considering where Boss comes from, that he would prioritize this never happening again. Leave the tasking with the people most able to handle it, minimize the possibility of failure (and the subsequent punishment), and all that. Rightfully or not, he’s probably thinking that if he--or Fixer or Scorch--had been partnered with Sev instead then this never would have happened, and he desperately wants this situation to not be happening.

Niner gets up in Boss’s face, though, and Boss is tense and agitated and more than ready to square up if Niner’s offering a fight, so we get this:

Which absolutely deserves a punch in the face, quite frankly, but it takes Niner pushing the issue to get them there. Boss might have been thinking it, but he wasn’t overtly needling at all until Niner went there first. (Niner, also stuck watching on the sidelines, who has lost brothers before, and probably is having waking nightmares at this very moment of how badly this whole thing could have gone wrong, and is more than ready to lash out as well. Two men with brothers to look after simultaneously facing down their worst nightmares and probably blaming each others’ man for being the bad influence that put them all in this situation--and they’re on a collision course.)

Basically: This whole scene happens because Boss is fucking terrified, and so is Niner. Skirata is...oblivious.