———

Before I dig into the topic at hand, I have to set the scene for those who don't know the game, or have forgotten in the fourteen years since the game launched.

Spoilers in the post below for Act 1-3 of the Imperial Agent, Sith Warrior, and Inquisitor storylines, Act 1 of the Jedi Knight storyline, the post-Act 3 Battle of Ilum flashpoint, and for various expansions including Rise of the Emperor, Knights of the Fallen Empire, Onslaught, and Legacy of the Sith. Assume that all reference links to Wookieepedia contain major spoilers.

SWTOR is an MMO set 3600 years before the Skywalkers crashed through the ceiling tiles of the galaxy, though it's not to say anything was less chaotic back then, just different chaos.

(Pictured: Anakin Skywalker, circa 32 BBY-4 ABY)

In this time, the titular Old Republic is opposed by a Sith Empire, which is precisely as functional as one might expect. After a decades-long conflict that ended with a Sith victory but left both sides exhausted, a state of cold war began. The Jedi, their Grand Temple destroyed, left Republic space to settle on an ancestral world. The Republic, battered and reeling, tried to recover its stride through use of its superior size and resources, and producing a truly unhinged number of superweapons.

The Sith Empire, in some ways, tried to pretend everything was fine for quite a while. They had successfully forced the Republic into a favorable treaty to end the war. They'd gained territory, they had a lot of work to do there.

…But as things started to look more and more like war again, they were left with the uncomfortable realization that they had sorta kinda killed most of the Sith in the last war, and Imperial citizens in good standing weren't producing enough Force-sensitive kids fast enough to rebuild the losses. Might've had something to do with most of them being dead.

The Empire, of course, is an absolute clusterfuck of a society. Slaves toil to maintain its power. Children of a slave and a citizen will be citizens themselves—unless they're "aliens", a category that includes everyone that isn't a human or a Sith pureblood, the original Sith species.

Being a citizen isn't great either: The Force-blind face mandatory conscription into the military, and can never rise to the highest echelons of society. Above them, the Sith act as a semi-hereditary aristocracy of evil space-wizards that serve an immortal, eldritch Emperor, their living god who has also kiiiind of gone AWOL for reasons only a few of them understand. He's torn between doing his job or staring at a living paperweight, and the paperweight has been winning. He also recently got trapped by an evil hole in the ground, it's complicated.

With the Emperor incommunicado, the duties of the state fall to the Dark Council, a ruling body of up to twelve Dark Lords of the Sith. Each have their own sphere of governmental influence, which are, one can only assume, very dark as well.

Presumably, the Dark Council had something to do with the inevitable yet still surprising solution to their space wizard deficit: over a thousand years of laws were suddenly overturned. Slaves, aliens, and prisoners were not only permitted to become Sith, it was now mandatory that they report for induction into training programs if they possessed any hint of Force-sensitivity.

This is how one of the eight protagonists of the MMO gets their start: if you play the Sith Inquisitor plotline, you begin as a former slave who has survived basic training and made it to the Sith Academy, where your teacher dearly wants to kill you. Your first mission: survive school.

I'm sure this is very relatable to quite a lot of you.

Now that I've got my PhD with only a few gray hairs, I'm looking back at this premise and thinking: This would completely upend the social framework of the Empire. You'd have every established Sith Lord in the Empire scrambling to kill these threats to their power, or harness them against their enemies, or both.

This is actually canon, but canon never touches on the broader, systemic implications of what the new Sith would do, and who they were before—Sure, the overseers of the training programs seem to be doing their damnedest to kill and undermine the newbies while maintaining plausible deniability, but enough of them survive to reshape the Empire. We know that. You play as one of them.

How in the fuck did the Dark Council ever manage to get this policy implemented in the first place? Obviously they did somehow, but the specifics are never mentioned.

But the specifics have the possibility to be hilarious.

The Dark Council itself is composed of Sith who either killed their way to the top, or inherited their seat from their Sith master—who they probably murdered. Turnover on most Council seats is incredibly high. The Spheres of Ancient Knowledge, Technology, and Military Offense each have three different Councilors within a single year, for example.

This also means that whoever ends up in charge of a Sphere might be entirely unsuited for it. Who heads up the Sphere of Expansion and Diplomacy? The least diplomatic guy on the Council, naturally. He goes by Darth Ravage, which fits in well enough with the three different Darths whose names mean 'death' (Thanaton, Mortis, and Rictus). The player can even end up as Darth Nox--'Darth Night'. You get the title by killing one of the Darth Deaths.

So, which of these barely-domesticated evil goths probably voted to allow 'inferior' beings to become Sith, overturning a fundamental tenet of imperial sith philosophy? Probably not the guy in charge of Sith Philosophy! We never see him, but he seems to have been a traditionalist. On the other hand, Darth "Murder has no rules" Ravage might not be huge on tradition, so we can mark him down as a "maybe". But he doesn't seem to be an instigator for something like this.

But on the subject of instigators: Darth Jadus.

Darth Jadus is an experience. While many of the other Council members make it quite clear they're angry enough to chew on the furniture, Jadus unnerves all of them by being utterly calm and composed, as long as you don't count how intensely fervent and irrational he sounds when he starts talking about the Dark Side. He's unhinged in a distressingly hinged-seeming way.

Heading up the Sphere of Intelligence, Jadus is a noted iconoclast on the Dark Council, using his authority to open Imperial Intelligence positions to aliens. He chooses slaves and Force-blind citizens to be his advisors and agents, ignoring the traditional power structures of the Sith. He prefers his literal cult following of fanatical adherents instead, who see him as a visionary savior, a terrifying inevitability, or both.

This means he seems to have basically no interest in elevating other Sith. In fact, he hates the way the rest of them run the Empire. Making more of them might potentially be against his interests.

Or at least it would be, if he didn't have some long-running secret plans that he wants to keep the other Dark Council members from catching wind of. Advocating for slaves, aliens and convicts to become Sith would superficially fall in line with his philosophy, and just raising the idea in public could cause such social chaos that his true plans would benefit from it. Jadus is also the most genre-savvy sith in the entire game: he seems to almost be aware at points that he's neither the protagonist nor main antagonist, and thus his evil plans involve not messing with either of them. When he jostles up against the main plot and realizes he has no plausible means to derail it, he responds by leaving the plot entirely.

Given the tactical chaos and uncomfortably fourth wall-touching strategies Jadus makes use of, let's mark him down as a "yes".

But Jadus is an unpopular one on the Council. He's creepy. Sith HATE feeling creeped out. That's supposed to happen to other people, dammit, not them! And with his disinterest in politics and his deep interest in foisting his manifesto on everyone, he's not the most effective Dark Councilor.

He might be able to pull in a few—Darth Decimus, head of Military Strategy, seems to have been quite willing to exploit any advantage he might be able to squeeze out of a situation. Fun side note, his voice actor also played the First Order officer who was just so done with Hux at the beginning of The Last Jedi.

[Video Description: A compilation of Mark Lewis Jones as Captain Moden Canady from The Last Jedi, with the video quality partially encrunchified by YouTube. This includes all of his shots from the film, from arrival of the Seige Dreadnought Fulminatrix, to the extremely annoyed look he gives the fireball that kills him. Sound supervisor Matt Wood was apparently pretty sure "FIRE ON THE BASE!" was going to be used as an EDM drop, and I can confirm, I've heard it out in the wild.]

Who else have we got rattling around in this Council, who might have extremely ridiculous reasons to vote yes? Well, we have Darth Vengean, head of Military Offense, was all about the Offense. Who needs defense? That nerd Darth Marr? HA! No, Vengean wanted to restart the war with the Republic. More bodies for the war machine would probably be fine with him.

Speaking of that nerd Darth Marr, Darth Marr.

Apparently he designed this armor himself. Solid effort, my man.

Marr is in his sixties by the time the game happens. He's one of the longest-surviving Dark Councilors, and he sounds so tired of his coworkers in every scene he's in. Heading up the Defense of the Empire, Marr also is the de facto leader of the Dark Council, by dint of being the only adult in the room.

Much like Jadus, he distances himself from the backstabbery and rivalries among the Council members. Unlike Jadus, he 100% means it, and has been focused on not making the Empire explode. He eventually ends up as the unofficial leader of the Empire until he gets one-shotted so hard it makes his ghost chill out a bit. He keeps the spikes, though.

So, if there's anyone on the Council who might vote for this on purely practical grounds, and has the power to push others into agreeing with him, because so help him if they don't stop holding duels in the conference room he's going to turn this Empire around—

Nobody listens to him on that, by the way. Both the Sith main plots involve duels in the conference room.

In fact, one of those duels is egged on by our last suspect. Marr might be a contender for longest-running Dark Councilor, but there is another candidate: Darth Vowrawn, who seems to be having a much better time being on the Council than Marr. I suspect the only reason why he doesn't have a bucket of popcorn with him in the Council chambers is because somebody made a rule that he had to stop doing that.

Vowrawn is a surprisingly cheerful old bastard who seems to have turned his hobby into his job. He shows up 'fashionably late' to someone else's attempted coup, after lamenting he can't sell tickets to the clusterfuck that's about to commence. In the expansions to the game, he can outmaneuver and outlive all of the competition and end up becoming the Emperor, at the age of 87.

Vowrawn is also indifferent towards the Empire's blood purity doctrine--he supports the ascension of a Zabrak to the Dark Council, and takes one as an apprentice as well. Beyond that, Vowrawn would have to support this move, because he's instrumental in any large project like this, both politically and practically. While the others I've mentioned all have roles explicitly to do with the aggressive expansion or protection of the Empire, Vowrawn heads the Sphere of Production and Logistics. In essence, he's the one who can decide whether all these other bozos get to eat or not.

If Vowrawn didn't accept this change, then it would have failed. So, he's a definite "yes" by default.

Speaking of bastards who are still active well into their eighties, we have one last major figure who isn't on the Council that likely advocated for this: Darth Malgus.

[Video Description: The "Deceived" trailer, set ten years before the game. God, I love this thing. This was the first trailer I saw for the game, and it got me, it really did. The Sith are just as ridiculous as they should be, combined with choreography that feels a lot more crunchy than lightsaber combat had been before, with distinct combat styles for the two main fighters. It's quick, it's impactful, and it's got a memorable conclusion. Love it.]

Malgus is as anti-racist and anti-classist as Jadus is, but without the insane transcendental Dark Side philosophy. Instead, he has an insane philosophy of bettering the Empire through eternal war, which he believes everyone should have an equal ability to participate in. He is what would happen if a Warhammer 40k character had an inside voice.

[Video Description: The "Disorder" cinematic trailer, set before the Legacy of the Sith expansion. Malgus is 75 here. Man's held together by spite and screws and whatever nutrients you can absorb by being thrown through walls. He's fully given up on the Sith Order at this point and is trying to do his own thing, and he makes it look rad. The choreography has only gotten better, goddamn. Why did it take me three goddamn years to watch this. IT'S REALLY GOOD.]

Malgus is a big deal in the military, with a lot of support from both the Force-blind soldiers and earning the loyalty of a surprising cross-section of Sith. We know this, because he nearly hijacks the Empire at one point in the early expansions. He'd be into this idea, and he probably advocated for it. While he'd have the most direct interaction with the military-related Councilors we already have in the "yes" column, he also has a history of annoying the bejeezus out of other Sith on "his" turf, so who knows! He may have been more persuasive to the others we haven't dug into.

And we can't really dig into all of them at the depth we have with some. Despite how bogglingly huge SWTOR is and the two thousand four hundred and ninety-five named characters and "Additional Voices" credits in IMDb, we never meet some of the Dark Councilors. If you don't play all the eight main storylines, you won't see all of them in the game. I'll admit, I've never seen Darth Hadra, because I've never gotten that far in a Republic-aligned storyline! The Sith you encounter in their stories can often be more one-note, because they're purely there as antagonists rather than people you are legally required to hang out with, and thus have more opportunity to pester mercilessly.

[Video Description: A clip from my own Warrior run-through, featuring my big lad Rejalgar, his coolest friend Vette, and his boss, Darth Baras, who is presently having a screaming tantrum, which Rejalgar makes worse with the most delightfully straight-faced "Is there a problem here?". The Warrior plotline lets you play things sincerely evil, sincerely noble, or sincerely hilarious. Do you want to see Jedi bluescreen when a Sith just straight-up refuses to be violent? Do you want to sidestep a boss fight by offering a family a government pension, something your boss commends as being very devious and evil? Do you want to break up a fight between gangs by threatening to eat them? Come play the Sith Warrior storyline, and be the chaos you want to see in the galaxy!]

[Video Description, from a clip I uploaded to YT specifically for this post after I found out you can only upload one video per tumblr post wtf: A clip from my Inquisitor run-through, featuring my extremely shirtless lad, Sericus, playing coy and a little airheaded when called up by his Sith master, Darth Zash. Back in the day, Purebloods weren't supposed to be played as canon for this storyline, but there were tweaks later made to dialog that provided a canon explanation for how someone with visible Sith ancestry could end up in this situation. The storyline, however, unfortunately does not fully account for a character whose ideal job description is 'villain's beautiful and deceptively intelligent consort, the true power behind the throne'. It assumes you're playing a character who wants to go conquer and/or do mad wizard-science. Bonus points for eventually letting you marry your eight foot tall razor-faced cannibal thrall though, that's very fun.]

Why don't we see all of the Dark Council? Well, because they're ultimately not important to the story as a group. Events keep you locked tightly under the purview of just one or two of them on the Sith side of things, before the post-game and expansion plots launch you into the experience of being a major player in Imperial affairs, and Imperial affairs launch themselves at you in return.

Everyone realizes the Emperor wants to eat them. Then he dies, except he doesn't. Malgus takes over the Empire for a few weeks. Marr takes over, but half the Council is dead and the rest are still in orientation and are probably also dead, because their would-be successors assassinated them. The Emperor, only mildly inconvenienced by also being dead, eats a planet. Then things go completely off the deep end, and the Dark Council is no longer your concern at all.

It's economical storytelling to not belabor the rest of the Councilors, and playing through as an ex-slave Inquisitor, you continue to face enough challenges directly linked to your background that the resistance feels systemic, even if you don't actually see all that many others who are facing the same issues.

But I think there's a lot of potential for some really wild storytelling in there. Your character receives some level of basic training before they reach the Sith Academy, along with a whole batch of ex-slaves. What did that entail? How was it organized? What happens when folks from abolitionist movements start being trained as sith, gaining all the attendant legal authority over the life and death of others?

And what about the prisoners who were released for training? While one canon option is to play a character who was facing immediate execution for participation in violent anti-Imperial resistance, at least a fair chunk of Force-sensitive prisoners were probably serving longer sentences. What happens when prison gangs start gaining a foothold in the Sith Academy, where they're too dysfunctional to even form Mean Girl cliques? What happens when some of their members become full Sith? How many of them might have Hutt backing, or even funding from the Republic Secret Intelligence Service?

These are the sorts of things the Sith themselves are terrified of. This earns a very sarcastic thoughts and prayers to them, of course. Yet it truly is wild to think about the decision-making process that went into this massive societal shift that the game treats as simply a piece of inciting incident for two plotlines out of eight: Twelve unhinged people sat down in some extremely high-backed chairs one day and voted to give everyone equal access to lightning.

--

Little love sessions that rule me Titan Prometheus, pull me in the light; A little mist feels so familiar Come in close so I can feel you one more time. But on your horizon, oh Come put your own mouth on me Underwater Quickly 'cause it'll all In a moment wash away. Thought of Eurydice, When I look back on what was forbidden. Where you a fantasy Or just some myth I could create? -Beta Radio; On Your Horizon

--

2007

--

"C'mon, shirt off," Ted said, hauling out the Bug's first aid bag, which was extensive enough to put most paramedics to shame. Because it was a hell of a long flight from Arizona to Switzerland, and now that they weren't landing in the wrong century, creating looping paradoxes or fleeing OMACs, he could finally start fixing things instead of just reacting to them. "It's nothing I haven't seen before."

Booster eyed him archly, which was reassuring, but then obligingly started stripping out of the top half of his costume, moving stiffly enough that it was obvious all that adrenaline he had to have been running on since saving Ted had abandoned him. "Okay, but will you still respect me in the morning?"

An easy crack flitted to the tip of Ted's tongue, but an instant before he said it, he realized just how far away they were from a time when it wouldn't sound barbed and mean-hearted. So, he smoothly shifted to something that was probably funnier anyway, "Only if you promise not to press charges."

It got Ted a chuckle; not quite the bright bark of a laugh that he was hoping for (hadn't heard in longer than he cared to remember), but sincere nonetheless. But any humor for him vanished instantly when he got a look at just how beaten Booster was.

And he'd been running around with Ted, Dan and Jaime for hours before this.

"Jesus, Boost," Ted said, eying the blood-soaked bandage barely clinging to Booster's upper left arm, which was only especially notable because it hadn't stopped the man from bleeding all down said arm, the color fresh enough to be alarming. Ted knew that suit — or, at least, he knew the version of it Booster wore before Doomsday — and therefore knew it couldn't be bled through, so just the thought of his best friend dashing through time to save him while actively wounded made his own hands ache down to the bones. And that wasn't even accounting for all the other, less-immediate bruises and cuts and scrapes, or the blood dried in Booster's hair from where Max kinda-sorta shot him in the head, all because—

—god, all because he literally leapt in front of a bullet for Ted. And even though Ted knew that it had been longer for Booster than him, it still felt like it was immediately preceded by Booster getting hit by fucking lightning just all of a couple days ago.

"It looks worse than it feels," Booster said, the shrug in his voice rather than his shoulders. But then he made a sour sort of face. "Actually, no, 'cause it feels gross and cold and sticky and I'm amazed my sleeve didn't make a— a shlorp sound when I pulled it off."

It no doubt said something about their lives — as heroes, as friends — that this still wasn't anywhere near the worst shape Ted had ever seen Booster in. Or the worst shape Ted had ever worked on him in, for that matter. Though that didn't mean it didn't hurt anyway. "I'd have guessed more a squelch. What the hell happened to you?" he asked, even as he dropped the first aid kit and went to get water, because this was gonna take a hell of a lot more than anything he had in his kit. And because if he didn't act, he'd scream. "Did you get shot? I mean, did you get shot before Max almost blew your brains out?"

"Yeah. I think it was a .38." Booster sort of leaned sideways, probably so he wasn't getting too much blood on Ted's upholstery. "It's okay, it's fine. And better Max aim at mine than yours. There's enough empty space around mine to make it harder to hit," he added, in such a bad attempt to sound hearty and upbeat that Ted almost did scream.

Several attempts at sentences tried to crowd into Ted's mouth at the same time, which meant he failed to actually spit any of them out; sentences about how it really fucking wasn't okay or fine, sentences about how Ted wouldn't trade the integrity of his skull for Booster's ever, in a million years or lifetimes, no matter how messed up things had gotten between them. Sentences about how he could still hear right through that dysfunctional stoic bullshit because he was the one who'd always been able to hear through it—

—except for when he had chosen not to.

"Just— don't," he finally managed to say, coming back with washcloths, buckets and towels. He set the empty bucket down, the full bucket on the edge of the auxiliary control panel and breathed out, trying to set it all aside. "Let your arm hang down straight. I'll leave your shoulder for later," he said, going to grab a bottle of water out of the mini-fridge ('cause water didn't expire) and dig a couple pills out of the first aid kit.

"I can clean myself up, you know," Booster pointed out, which was not helping Ted get rid of that urge to scream.

"Good thing I didn't ask you to," Ted snapped back, more shortly than he meant to. The words were nothing particularly barbed, but when his tone made Booster flinch around the eyes, he winced internally and took a few breaths and made a major effort to soften it. "Man, Max just nearly gave you an aneurysm and you leapt in front of a bullet for me. If I don't do something, I'm going to— I don't know. Lose my damn mind. So let me do this. It's not like I've never put you back together before."

"Literally, once or twice," Booster said back, the corner of his mouth quirking up. He took the two pills Ted handed over, then the bottle of water for a sip to wash them down. Then he let his arm hang like Ted told him to, sagging a little more in that awkward lean.

Ted stepped back to the closet and brought back a blanket, rolling it up so Booster could rest his side against something softer than the arm rest, then pulled on a pair of medical gloves, crouched and got to work mopping off the coat of blood on his best friend's arm, working from just under the wrecked bandage and letting the water run red into the empty bucket under it. "More than once or twice. Someone shoulda given me another degree by the time that was over. Maybe a doctorate in biomechanics."

"Or sainthood, if not," Booster said, eyes closed, and therefore mercifully oblivious to Ted intermittently studying his face.

"Saint Theodore?" Ted asked, then scrunched his nose. "Saint Ted of Chicago. I can maybe live with that."

"Patron saint of insect-themed superheroes, mechanical geniuses and disgraced former-footballers?"

That made something in Ted's chest ache, something wholly unrelated to his replaced heart valve. "Sure, why not," he agreed, hands moving on autopilot, rinsing and occasionally scrubbing gently at a more stubborn dried patch. When Booster shivered, he stood up and hit the temperature controls with an elbow, raising the heat in the Bug, then went back to work. "You didn't tell me how you ended up catching a .38 round."

Booster shook his head, both the beating and exhaustion evident on his face without his mask and visor to help hide it. He didn't really look any older than he had when Ted had left him in the hospital, but he did look a kind of— unfamiliar tired. A kind Ted hadn't ever seen on his face before. "I don't want to talk about it. And it doesn't matter. All that matters is— you're here. Everything else— we can fix anything else."

Ted didn't like that answer, but he also didn't know exactly how to push on it. He wasn't so convinced of that; he'd known the moment they stepped out of the lab and saw all those OMACs that it wasn't going to be as simple as the Black Beetle had claimed. That time didn't necessarily want to accommodate his continued life.

And he didn't need anyone to tell him that whatever bullet Booster caught before he'd tried to catch the one Max had fired, it had been in the pursuit of saving Ted. Just like he'd come back from Miami to try to help Ted, only to end up scorched and electrocuted and not breathing on Ted's lawn, as the house burned down behind them; Ted could still feel the echo in his wrists and elbows, only a couple days old, of those chest compressions.

"How long has it been? Since— since?" Ted asked after a bit, more quietly, getting into the lines of Booster's palm, where some of the blood had managed to leak all the way into his glove.

Booster opened his eyes and looked at Ted for a long moment, mouth in a line, then briefly turned his hand and linked their fingers before letting go. "Sixteen months. Give or take a few days. In real-time, I mean."

Christ. A year and a quarter more. Ted held still, then went back to cleaning, jaw flexing as he absorbed that.

A year and a quarter. He went to open his mouth to ask what had happened in that time — to the world, to their friends, to his best friend — but the words stayed in his throat. But he knew without asking that— that he'd been mourned. And maybe that was where that unfamiliar kind of tired on Booster's face came from; maybe that was what a man looked like after he'd been mourning for a year and a quarter.

He turned Booster's hand back and forth gently, then let it go, satisfied it was clean. He'd gotten as well as he could around that bandage, but he wanted to wait for the pain medication to kick in before he peeled it off and redressed the wound it wasn't really protecting anymore. Not that it would take much to remove it; blood had loosened the tape already. "Lemme have a look at your head," he said, instead, stripping off that pair of gloves for new ones.

"You know, there are costumes you can wear if you wanna play nurse," Booster said, but he obligingly tipped his head enough to let Ted look at where the bullet had grazed him just above and a little behind his right eyebrow.

Ted snorted, even as he used the back of his hand to hold Booster's hair out of the way. It wasn't a bad wound, though it could use a rinse; anything more serious would set it bleeding again. "Sorry, buddy, you don't pay me enough for that kind of service. And lemme tell you, white pantyhose would pull the hell out of my leg hair."

Booster smirked at that, which was admittedly a pretty damn welcome sight. "And blue tights don't?"

Ted shrugged, though it was with a bit of a smile, as he leaned over to grab a clean washcloth and towel. "No more than gold fiberweave does yours. I'm gonna rinse this off, it'll probably sting."

"Joy," Booster deadpanned back, heaving out a long breath and sagging a little more. Like some kind of hound-dog laying on a porch. Ted figured that was probably the vicodin kicking in, which was confirmed when Booster (inconveniently) furrowed his eyebrows and asked, "What did you give me?"

"Tylenol," Ted said, which was some of the truth, because he knew when he'd handed those pills over that Booster was probably going to kick about it. "—mostly. Stop with the eyebrows."

Of course, Booster ignored him and even left one eyebrow raised, though Ted had to allow that might have been instinctive rather than intentional. "Mostly?"

"Mostly Tylenol. A little hydrocodone," Ted admitted, making a mental note to stock more sterile saline wash, pressing the dry towel to Booster's jaw and letting the still-warmish water run down over the graze to soak into it.

Booster scowled, unsurprisingly, though he didn't really react to the rinsing. "Thanks for the warning."

"You'll forgive me when I'm redressing your shoulder," Ted replied, unrepentant. "Who the hell taught Hunter to wrap a shoulder, anyway? Presuming it was Hunter. Did he seriously just slap that on and let you run off into trouble with the equivalent of a cheap-ass band-aid?"

"I didn't exactly give him the opportunity to protest," Booster said, sulking a little. Though Ted knew Booster had probably already forgiven him, or would within short order. "Or do a better job."

Booster wasn't really the martyr type, Ted knew; he had no moral qualms with being patched up or taking painkillers and his sometimes ridiculous levels of stoicism had nothing to do with masochism. Early on, he'd been skittish about potentially developing an addiction to something, terrified of becoming his deadbeat addict dad — which Ted had understood and tried to work around — but he didn't like being in pain any more than most people did and would escape it given the opportunity.

The main problem with Booster, Ted had discovered quickly, was that he just didn't tend to think to ask for help; at least, not unless he was actively being killed at the time. No matter how bad it was otherwise. And when help was offered, he had a hell of a hard time accepting it. Or— more trusting it. Most of his stoicism was down to not knowing how to trust in the kindness or good intentions of other people, not for any desire to be a stoic. At least when it wasn't a dogged attempt to push through to whatever goal, anyway.

Their friendship had been close enough and real enough that Ted knew Booster trusted him, though. Enough for Booster to let his guard down. Enough, even, to sometimes ask Ted for help with something, though that was pretty dependent on the thought occurring in the first place and required Booster swallowing his pride to do it. But there had been plenty of times Booster hadn't, and Ted had discovered only in the midst or after the fact that Booster was hurting or in trouble; still, it never crossed Ted's mind that there was any distrust involved in that: Sometimes it was because Booster thought he'd work it out himself, and sometimes it was fear of being a burden. Sometimes, too, it was just not realizing he could or should ask.

As such, Ted had developed a pretty good set of instincts when it came to his best friend. Which was how Ted knew this time that Booster wouldn't be happy because he'd inevitably crash into a narcotic-soaked sleep, and relatively soon. In fact, Ted had picked a dose that would guarantee it; since he'd spent a year keeping the man alive — through some periods of real, godawful suffering — he knew precisely what it took.

(Ted also knew exactly how much Booster's long hair had weighed because he'd been the one holding it back while Booster sometimes threw his guts up into trash cans, suffering without word from migraines that came on after Doomsday; those only tapered off after about a year. Or how, during that time he was in that bulky, awful prototype armor, he'd take beatings with no forcefield and walk around bruised black in parts, down to bone. He'd had teeth broken and crowns put on, just like many of them had. After the Devastator took his arm and wrecked his chest, he'd grit his way through phantom limb pain that the pain-blocking circuitry couldn't stop. Sleeping during that time had been an especially wretched thing for him, because the armor acting as a walking version of an iron lung couldn't be streamlined further, so there was just no way Booster could ever get comfortable; he was chronically sleep-deprived. The few times Ted had to straight-up anesthetize Booster during that time — because taking his prosthetic arm off and working deep where mechanics met flesh would have been a cruel thing to do to someone conscious and capable of feeling it — and Booster had gone under and come back with tears wetting his temples. Relief, Ted knew; however brief, an escape.

In all that intimate knowledge, though, the one that haunted Ted — even during their worst periods of disconnection and anger — was the one and only time he'd gotten to hold Booster through most of a night; Ted still remembered the weight and heat of Booster sleeping on him, against him, and sometimes he hated himself for thinking about it, and sometimes he raged against it, but sometimes he woke up aching for that ghost with his own temples wet and a sob caught in his throat.)

"This isn't deep enough to put anything on it," he said, drying Booster's face off, having gotten most of the blood out of his hair. "How're you feeling?"

Booster leaned a little after that towel in a way that made Ted's heart sore, when Ted took it away, and his voice was hoarse when he just said, "Tired."

It didn't take a genius with six degrees to know it encompassed something more than physical.

"I'll bet," Ted said, because he sure as hell believed it. "Once I get your shoulder fixed up, provided you don't got something else that needs patching under your fiberweave, I'll grab you a t-shirt and sweatpants and fluff up one of the cots. Speaking of, how's that feeling?"

Booster had opened his mouth to no doubt protest being sent to bed, but he was definitely lagging, because Ted could watch him forget the protest and recalibrate to answer the question, "Uhm— distant. Kinda. Not bad."

Well, that was a decent answer. Ted carefully peeled the ruined bandage off, but then swore a blue streak under his breath. Beyond it being a through-and-through gunshot wound, exit side ragged and more open and worse than the entry side, it had gotten perilously close to the joint. No wonder it kept getting reopened. The patch-job Hunter had done was beyond shoddy, too. "—you might want something to bite on for this, 'cause it's not gonna stay distant."

Booster managed to pry his eyes open a little bit and rolled his head over, eying his own shoulder. "Oh. Yeah, s'pretty bad, huh? Good thing the suit did the real lifting."

Ted shook his head, dropped the old bandage and dressing into the trash, then stripped that pair of gloves and threw them out, too. He stepped back and got the lone bottle of sterile saline wash out, then the hemostatic gauze, roll gauze, tape, bandages, lining it all up in quick and easy reach. "How do you wanna do this, Boost?"

He thought for a second that Booster was going to doze off before answering, but then Booster said, sleepily, "Pin me down, I guess. I'll try'n hold still, but—"

There was no way in hell Booster was gonna be able to keep from flailing when Ted packed those open wounds, but Ted knew from too much experience that Booster wouldn't throw a punch at him, either, not even mindless with pain. There was only once, in all the long years, that Booster had actually even tried: Ted had been mercilessly jabbing him in every weak spot he could reach, angry and wanting to hurt Booster as much as he'd been hurt by Booster ignoring him and making light of his heart, and after an amount of abuse that made Ted nauseous to think about now, Booster lashed out back. He hadn't connected, hadn't even tried too hard to. Ted had avoided it with an easy lean to the side, and then it devolved into a screaming domestic (pretty much) in front of Manga Khan and everyone else.

But even years before that, Booster had let Ted — Ted, who had no forcefield or power suit, who was dressed in a dirty sweatshirt and jeans, angry and depressed — pin him down to the floor of the Bug and draw back a fist and rage at him, but only after Ted took several cheap, mean shots at him verbally as a warmup. Ted's only saving grace there, in memory, was that he never brought down the fist he had cocked back, because he was pretty sure Booster would have taken it on the chin rather than let Ted break knuckles on his forcefield.

Ted had— fuck, Ted had enough things to be guilty over just in what he had done and said. He was pitifully grateful not to have more.

"Okay," he breathed out, halfway to himself, eying what they had to work with positioning-wise. "Scoot your butt back deeper into the seat. I'm gonna put my knee in the chair and lean into you and put an arm around your neck, but try not to thrash around too much anyway. You sure you don't want something to bite on?"

Booster moved on a delay, but did what Ted told him to do. "Nu uh. We're not in some Old West cowboy movie."

Somehow, Ted smiled there, even as he finished staging everything for the new positioning so he could grab it quickly and got on his third set of gloves. "What, pardner, ya don't want no prairie dew poured over that there hole ya got drilled in ya?" he asked, layering on a bad drawl as he put his knee in the seat and used it to pin Booster's left leg to the side of the chair, and the bulk of his weight to press his best friend back into his own arm, both of them now leaned awkwardly over. He winced a little as he wrapped his left hand just above and behind that gunshot wound, but that was the best they were going to be able to do with what they had.

"Plumb sure I don't, sawbones," Booster mumbled into Ted's side, which — miracle of miracles — made Ted laugh.

"Good, 'cause if I had whiskey, I'd probably rather take a belt myself right now," Ted said, dropping the accent and taking a bracing breath before getting to work.

It wasn't too bad just irrigating, though Booster hissed like a snake and wiggled around a little. But when Ted had to get serious, it was awful for them both; the entry wound didn't end up needing much beyond more secure compression than it'd had, but the wide-open exit hole needed properly packed, or it was just going to keep reopening and bleeding and risking infection. And doing the packing meant listening to the bone-chillingly jagged noises Booster made, meant Ted having to hold his struggling best friend down, and by the time it was most of the way over, they were both a wreck of sweat and tears, though thankfully not much in the way of more blood.

Ted had been mindlessly shushing and soothing, just that automatic thing a person did when they were trying to comfort someone, but he didn't know if it helped. Still, he had to give a ragged little chuckle when Booster said, still gasping into Ted's ribs, "I definitely haven't— haven't forgiven you yet."

Ted finished gingerly putting on the last piece of tape, but then eased back and tried to catch his own breath. "Worst part's over, but I'm not done," he said, shuddering from the tension as he stripped the gloves off. Everything else could be done barehanded from here. "We'll see if you change your mind."

Because Booster would. Ted already knew that. Because Booster always did forgive him.

"There can't be much more," Booster complained, leaning forward to rest his head against Ted again, and finally releasing the fist full of Ted's undershirt he'd been death-gripping. But given he was already shutting back down, breathing slowing quickly, Ted figured the forgiveness was imminent, though it might not be said aloud.

"Nope," Ted said, just resting there with his knee on the seat and his best friend sagging against him. "Re-bandage that properly, get you into some comfortable clothes, strap on a sling so you don't go moving that arm before you have to, then you sleep. Probably in that order."

Hell, he was gonna take the rest of his own costume off, since it was such a long damn flight. And likely trust his autopilot while they were over the North Atlantic so he could catch a few hours sleep of his own. He'd been running hard — and was still sore as hell from the explosion that had taken out the other Bug — and he was kind of amazed he hadn't crashed yet himself.

Booster shook his head, but didn't sit back up again. And even the head-shake seemed time-delayed. "I don't want to sleep."

It might have sounded like a kid after being told it was bedtime if one only considered the words, but that wasn't the tone. Ted petted the crown of Booster's head for a couple seconds because he wasn't sure what answer he could give, aside that. "Need you to sit up some, buddy. I can't work my magic if I'm your leaning post."

After another moment that stretched, Booster sort of sat up, though Ted had to stop him from overcompensating by leaning against the seat-back again. Luckily, the process of bandaging a shoulder that was already clean and dressed was a lot less gruesome than doing the dressing; instead of just trusting some tape to hold through heroic antics, Ted wove the bandage up over Booster's shoulder, but then anchored it around across his chest and under his opposite arm, making sure it was positioned such that Booster would be able to get his costume on over it.

By then, there weren't any words exchanged, let alone bantering; Booster was a fraction of consciousness away from ragdoll-status, and Ted could feel every physical and emotional blow he'd taken himself since Barbara had informed him he was being robbed blind. For that matter, he could feel the ones from before that, too; not the physical there, but the emotional. The echo of his anger and Booster's careless betrayal wasn't gone — how could it be, when it had hurt that deeply? — but Ted had already been trying to disarm it the first time he'd flown across the ocean to go confront what turned out to be Max Lord on a power trip.

(His mind was still shying back from the word vagrant in Booster's file, though. It had kicked him in the gut once it sank in, but there had been no time since to ponder the implications attached. The timing. But where was that rich old hag Booster had married? It wasn't that long since the Super Buddies broke up. There were always at least a few people who would normally bring up any Booster-gossip to him, but no one mentioned a divorce?)

Ted tried to shake it off because now wasn't the time to try to deal with this. Instead, he wrestled Booster out of the rest of his costume and into sweatpants and a t-shirt, the former of which was Booster's and had been kept clean and stocked in the Bug since all the way back before the JLI had broken up, and the latter of which was Ted's own, telling himself that a shirt fit for his broader shoulders would be more comfortable and refusing to think too hard about the real reasons why.

A sling and a fluffed up cot later and Ted hauled his best friend out of the seat, sliding in under Booster's good arm. "All right, c'mon, Boost. Just a few more feet and you can sleep it off for awhile."

Even with one of them right at the edge of consciousness and the other sore and out of shape, they both knew how to move together still: where their arms fit and the balance of their weight where it intersected, and how and where their footfalls would land as a unit, rather than as individuals. And if Ted would have known how everything would play out after they arrived overseas, that he was going to rush back to his own ending, that there would be no real time for the most important things, everything might have played out differently.

He may have hovered the Bug somewhere safe for as long as it would have taken to work things out between them; to give them that time, long enough to talk and to make the inevitable regrets more bearable. And probably there would have been lies, but then truths, and probably there would have been shouting because no one had ever been able to hurt them like they were able to hurt each other, and almost certainly there would have been apologies and tears.

But he didn't know then, and so all that was left were the tears.

"Don't go," Booster mumbled brokenly into Ted's shoulder, once they were sitting on the cot, the one hand he had available tangled in Ted's undershirt again; too sedated to sob, but Ted could feel those tears hot against his skin before they slid down his back and cooled. "Don't go," Booster said again, a plea he would repeat in increasingly desperate forms before it was all said and done.

"I'm right here, Michael," Ted answered, and he tried to sound gentle and calm and sure and soothing, because he wanted just as desperately to believe he would continue to be right here and that all the things wrong between them would have the time and space to heal. "I'll be here when you wake up," he added, which was the truth; "I'm not going anywhere," he added, because he wanted it to be the truth.

Already, he had been planning ahead: Wash out Booster's costume, clean himself up. Eat something, which he hadn't done yet, because thank everything he'd always kept his Bugs stocked with non-perishables. Fluff up the other cot, sleep for at least a few hours. (Stop thinking about sleeping in this one with Booster against him.) And finally, strategize for how they were going to wrench the world back to rights again.

Yet still Ted sat, his now-sleeping best friend sagged against him anew, smelling of iron and salt and suffering and home, and in those moments, there was nothing more important in the universe.

alright so, starting off, afaik the first reference we get to jason's age post-crisis is in TEC #571, in which we find out jason is turning 12 that same year. i am 90% sure that COIE took place in mid-late summer, and since TEC #572 took place around christmas, we know jason turned 12 in the same year and therefore around the same time as COIE. from there, since we know dick turned 20 right after COIE in november, dick and jason must be 8 years apart in age

but then also, according to o'neil in the letters column of batman #412 and the math we get in batman #416 (~1 year in the past + ~18 months = ~2.5 years), batman #412 took place ~3 years after batman #408 & #409, which, if jason turned 12 the same year as COIE, would put batman #408 & #409 absurdly far back in the timeline and make literally no sense. however, we could ignore TEC #572’s xmas setting since it’s mostly irrelevant, and just say TEC #571 happened after the new year, which would fix the issue i just described and make more sense given he was still 12 in batman annual #12. this would make jason's 11th birthday around the same time as COIE and stretch his age gap with dick up to 9 years

but then also, TEC #790 shows jason's 18th birthday which took place in the same year as tim's 16th birthday in robin #116, making their age gap 2 years, and then, if jason turned 11 around COIE and was 12 in batman annual #12, then he really couldn't have been older than 12 when he died, which would mean 2 years would have to have passed from ADITF to ALPOD

BUT THEN ALSO, dick was at most 21 in deathstroke the terminator annual #1, which was definitely after tim's introduction, and if jason was 12 in ADITF then dick was 21, which would make tim and jason the same age instead of 2 years apart

but then alsoooo, even if you ignore TEC #790, jason is pretty clearly intended to be somewhat older than tim, and, more importantly, everything from ADITF -> deathstroke annual #1 happening between april (when jason dies) to dick’s birthday (which i'm like 90% sure was in october atp but it might've still been november actually i can’t remember) is fucking insane. so ADITF must have taken place the previous year, which would make dick 20 when jason died, knocking dick and jason's age gap back to 8 years and tim and jason's age gap up to 1 year

but then also. if dick and jason's age gap is 8 years then jason's 12th birthday is back to being around COIE, which just reintroduces the same issue of batman #408 & #409 being absurdly early in the timeline from before, unless we ignore the ~3 year gap from batman #408 & #409 to batman #412 given by batman #412 & #416

But Then Also, jason's death date was never actually stated in the 80's, so you could argue ADITF happened earlier in jason's 7th grade year, which would give ADITF -> deathstroke annual #1 enough room to breathe, while still letting batman #408 & #409 be ~3 years before batman #412, making jason and dick's age gap 9 years again

but then also...you could argue the same thing for jason's birthday because if they were just thinking of him as a 7th grader he could’ve actually been 13 when he died, which would actually make sense because of that one game card from the 80’s that said he was 13. and if jason's birthday isn't in august then...i don't know lol