Lunch with your Immortal Enemy

So Charlie had built Angelo up as some paragon. Even before meeting him, he'd decided that Angelo was good and worth sharing his deepest darkest secrets with.

It wasn't good.

"A panic attack is a mental breakdown, Charlie," Angelo said. "I have no authority to take your job away from you. What I do have is a responsibility to ensure that people are safe. You had a full blown breakdown in front of me. You looked at the facts--the facts that were very clear--and you had a breakdown because you had decided that another version of you had gone through with your plan. You refused to listen to me or anyone else talking with you. You continued to argue with me even when I pointed out that you were clearly not related in any way to the world Jason's from. It's my job to report when someone is acting like that, so I did, and I'm not going to apologize because I took your job away. If you'd been fine, the school wouldn't have done anything, but you're not fine."

He certainly hadn't been fine then, and Angelo was doubtful he was fine now.

"Well, if this is your attempt to fix things, you're doing a shitty job," Angelo said, right back to annoyed. "What was the first point I made? The first of my three points? And what was your response to it?"

Angelo was having a hard time believing that Charlie was even being genuine in his olive branch, considering his response.

It was hard to really believe that Charlie was genuine in any of his actions. Even if Angelo hadn't noticed the napkin and the powers at work there, Charlie's choice of topics, his tone of voice--it all bounced violently back and forth, refusing to settle. One moment Charlie accused him of not caring as long as it was swept under the rug. The next he said that he'd looked up to Angelo as a figure of stability. Then, from one beat to the next, he was begging for time and accommodations as he tried to get used to the new world he was in.

Angelo didn't know what to make of it.

If he was smart, and a bit more brutal, he'd have written Charlie off entirely. Charlie had given him every reason to, with the constant attempts at emotional manipulation. Even in his apology he'd done all the same things, but Angelo was not that kind of person. He had a hard time walking away, even when he should have.

Even when sense told him walking away was the right answer.

"If you want brutal honestly, then you'll get it," Angelo said, latching firmly onto what Charlie had said. "I can't tell if you're doing these things by accident, or if they're intentional, but I'm going to just assume you're ignorant for the sake of argument. You included a whole lot of Angelo you're so right, and then buried it under a lot of because I know I am a terrible monster, hoping I'll say 'no, you're not a monster, you're just a man', but you're not going to get it. What matters to you, exactly? What do you care about? Is it being respectful and having a place in normal human society? Are you trying to make up to people? I don't know what it is you want."

And without knowing that, Angelo couldn't even be undeniably harsh with him in the very general hope that some of it might get through to him.

Angelo very nearly said write a book. It was the answer, after all. Want to impart your knowledge and make sure it was there for the future? Write a book. Nice and permanent and didn't get you arrested for accidentally murdering a kid, or whatever.

"The island is a second chance, but that second chance starts when you walk in the door," Angelo pointed out. "People will forgive whatever happened before you arrived, but the clock starts ticking the moment you're here. Should have secluded yourself to start, gotten some therapy, figured shit out first."

Instead, he'd hopped in and fucked things up.

"And all that is putting aside whether it's even right to do that."

Angelo scowled, but it was less harsh then it had been. He hadn't really expected Charlie to 'get it', but he'd said it anyway, because it needed to be said.

"Have you considered how your powers could bother people? How they could be an issue? And before you go down that path, I don't mean your intrinsic 'I'm an undead abomination' thing you have going, I mean the undead army and all that shit."

It was terribly, painfully clear that Charlie had flat out never considered the implications of his shuffling undead horde. Beyond the fact that he had an army, there were a mess of other ethical and social issues that went with it.

"There are lots of undead around. They walk around with their own power, under their own control. They made the choice to be undead, or else they've made the choice to keep living. Your army didn't. Your army's made up of stolen corpses, and anyone who's from any sort of culture that cares about burial will end up upset by that. There's probably whole groups of people who are convinced you're keeping those people from the afterlife, unable to rest until they're put down. Respect for the dead, Charlie."

Angelo didn't believe that much, at least. He thought it was awful and disrespectful, but he was a reaper. He knew there were no souls in the shambling corpses that Charlie had pulled out of his big stone box.