xp_logs | Doug and Marie-Ange (backdated)

Some fences aren't as easily mended.

Marie-Ange had quite clearly wasted little time in making North's former office her own, Doug noticed as he walked into it. He went straight to the chair facing her and sat down in it. "Did you know?" he asked plainly. "About my sister," he amplified when she looked up from whatever file she was reading to look at him.

The office was not -entirely- Marie-Ange's. She'd left one - wound down - clock on the wall, and there was quintet of prescription drug bottles tucked into a bookshelf, almost out of sight. But the rest was all blueprints and art supplies and white boards, and the hand-drawn tarot decks she tended to prefer. And several pairs of shoes peeking out from under the desk, because she had a habit of taking them off and forgetting them. "Do you think I knew?" She returned the question.

"Would I be asking if I had a firm idea one way or the other?" Doug shot back. Marie-Ange was very good at answering questions with questions, all while looking inscrutable. It was...vexing.

"I want to know what you think, first." Marie-Ange explained. "Do you think I would have told you such a thing, or left it unknown so you and your family could be hurt but the future would be unchanged, or something else entirely?" Knowing where she stood with her co-workers was one thing. Knowing what her ex thought of her was another.

Doug frowned. The question had been niggling at him since Marie-Ange had returned. It was probably a good thing she had been gone while events had happened, or he might have been far more...distraught about it. "My heart wants to believe that you'd have told me no matter what the outcome would have been. My cynical side says you would have done and said whatever you thought necessary to obtain the best outcome." He shook his head. "But really? I don't know. And I don't -like- not knowing." Especially when it came to her.

It was a fair question. Marie-Ange was not entirely sure what she would have done either. "Best is a subjective term, Doug. What do you mean by 'best'?" She certainly was not going to tell him that she would have just left Katie Ramsey die - even if she might have in a terrible set of circumstances, that was not something you said to someone.

And there she was doing it again. "What you perceived as the most favorable long-term outcome for...whatever." Doug glanced at the ceiling, and then at the far wall, before looking back at Marie-Ange. "You know, I still have no idea what criteria you measure possible futures by." And as he'd just mentioned, he didn't like not knowing.

"Are you going to explode into a little ball of ones and zeros if I refuse to explain my criteria to you?" This was possibly the last time she could answer a question with another question, but Marie-Ange was not actually going to explain her criteria to Doug. Or anyone, necessarily. "After all, I have not exploded into a pile of chalk and watercolors because you never bothered explaining yourself to me."

"Are you trying especially hard to be..." Annoying. Ridiculous. Inscrutable. Doug could take his pick of adjectives, all of them were fitting. Then he cocked his head. There was...something about the way her hands lay on the desk, a subtle tension in the way she was working at keeping a studiously neutral expression. She was testing the boundaries, he realized, seeing how the ways they both had changed would affect their working relationship. "All you have to do is ask," he said.

"Looking at a thing changes that thing." Marie-Ange said. "And you needed to know what would happen, with your divided loyalties." She waved a hand sort of dismissively. "I know, you do not think they are, and I know, you have a speech you give about trust and why you are on the Court and all of that. If you are forced to examine your reasons for doing those things, would your reasons change? Or would the reasons you give all of us change?"

Doug rattled that concept around in his head. The problem was, at yet another remove, would considering whether or not examining his reasons would change something in and of itself change things? And so on, and so forth, down an infinite well of recursion. "At the end," he said wearily, "I do what I think I must, based on the information that I have." Just as Marie-Ange clearly had. He wanted to be upset with her for keeping secrets, but mostly he was just tired, and understood what she had done better than he ever wanted to.

Marie-Ange nodded. "Now try to spend six months doing that every day, and having to decide if what you are doing is worth it, and worth any possible price you fear you will pay." For at least most of the last month, she was sure the time spent in New Orleans would end with Zoe Ishihara killing her in revenge. "If I had known about your sister, and had told you, it would have changed how you acted. You already know what happens when you have unrestricted access to my predictions."

That one hit Doug like a punch in the gut. "Forget I asked," he said, standing stiffly from the chair and crossing to the door.