Fade to Grey
Morality was a thorny issue.
Thorny, and very often murkier than most people would like to admit. On one hand, what was right and just seemed clear: to save the innocent, protect the weak, hold to your word, help others above yourself. Lofty ideals, where motivation and personal opinion made everything subjective.
Contemplative, Harry absently studied the canopy, drinking in the dark sky. As ever, the dagger in his hands was flipping restlessly from grip to grip. His weaponry for this trip was simple, and he was currently waiting for Peletier to blow out his steam at Shane. The man wasn't taking the order well, but Shane was... Well. From the sound of it, both bullying and manipulating him into submission, hissed half shouts making it through the open air of the camp with vicious, violent undertones.
The group was steering well clear, huddled around the furthest fire from the RV. No one wanted a part in it. Even Rick, looking serious, was keeping his peace. A tense, anticipatory silence: and not, really, waiting for it to blow over. More... Waiting for it to blow up. And, more importantly, not interfering.
Apparently he and Shance had not been the only ones who wanted to see Ed out of the picture, or...
A quick glance at Dale, where the older, softer man was shadowed by the canopy and studying the ground with a miserably resigned look on his face.
At the very least, humbled.
Just what was... right? To be factually correct, to be inescapably true: a definite, an absolute. Nothing was so simple. What was right for one person was an opinion, and an opinion that could be refuted. Was it right to kill to eat? Right to kill to survive? Right to bring justice, and if so, what was appropriate justice? What was morally acceptable as justice? At which point did justice become petty revenge, and vengeance become just as viciously horrific as the crime that had perpetrated it?
War left very little room for what Harry truly considered as 'right', for 'justice'. They became by-words, worn out by long winded speeches attempting to justify bloodshed, manipulation, lying, even outright population control and marshal law. For their own good, of course. He'd lost count of how many times he'd heard it, from different mouths.
That their cause was right, the ends justifying the means. From people who were thought of as good, as the spiritual successors of angels. From people more corrupt than Tom Riddle had ever been, who were widely considered 'Moral', who were 'Just'.
The Tom of this dimension had been mired in darker magic's than anyone had dreamed could be dug up from the ancient past, a peerless tactician and a shrewd politician. For him, the subjugation of the magicless, the muzzling of their weaponry and the unanimous quashing of their ability to strike at the wizarding world had been right. Had been... 'Just'. And the ends had been as clearly calculated and and coldly justified as the means.
For Alberta dumbledore and the Order, theirs, too, had been a 'Just' crusade. The quashing of a civil war that threatened the homes, lives and welfare of entire nations; of the world. The staunch belief that their way of life was the best way of life, and that victims could and would be born of it, but the suffering of a few children raised by Muggles, misunderstood and mistreated because Muggles didn't understand, was a small price to pay in the end for the greater security and stability of the whole.
Cycles, it all moved in cycles, even Muggle history replete with examples.
The stars seemed to shimmer, almost mocking him at the thought, but he knew it was simply the passive magic of the ward: the confrontation brewing by the back of the RV had set it on edge.
Harry knew where he stood. He knew, in his mind, what was right, what was just, and the war had molded a very, very simple way of dealing with it. What was right, was what happened. No matter the blood he had to get on his hands to do it. What was 'Just' was an extension.
The blade glinted dully in his hand despite the black paint he'd treated it with to stop it from shining like a beacon in dark.
Ed Peletier, however, was nothing so simple. To kill a man for the suffering he brought others would be nothing new, even deserved.
But what would it achieve? End the immediate suffering, perhaps, but it would do nothing for the damage already caused. If the man was to die, it would have to be Carol holding the knife, however literal of figurative. The woman needed to be the one to banish the shade and find strength from the act, or it's shadow would marr her and her daughters future forever.
The woman had a spine under all the ingrained subservience, a deafening will to live and save her daughter the agony the bastard visited on her. Every time she was beaten, that will kept her from crying out, kept her from giving the bastard the satisfaction, kept her as his focus so her beautiful flower would emerge unscathed. Never a fist on her precious flower.
He never tried to use legimency, as a rule. And with this group didn't need it half the time. The motivations were painted far too openly for him to really bother. But for every mage that learned the talent, the passive filtering of ambient aura's was one that was hard to shut down. He perhaps knew how badly Carol Peletier was screaming denial, outrage and fear in very depths of her soul, fearing the inevitable retribiution the argument would bring to her - and her daughter - at that moment better than she did.
The cage had been crafted too well however.
Even returning his gaze to the mother-daughter duo now, he could see the well hidden flinches, the tensing as Ed's temper struggled to blow against the mountain that was Shane's iron will. Too well crafted, convincing both that Ed was their master, their demon, and they would never be able to over-power him.
Ed Peletier couldn't just die, an unmarked grave or gibbets for a Shamblers stomach. A death well deserved, but it would solve... Nothing. It would fix nothing. It would be right, but it wouldn't be Justice.
The argument fell silent for a moment, before a solid impact rocked the RV and low, deathly serious words echoed through the camp. Too low for anyone to make out but him, and maybe the Dixons, who had kept to their camp and the closest to the RV. Certainly Merle's face had fixed itself into a smile more akin to a leer than anything pleasant.
"Earn your keep, Peletier. Or you will be more useful to this group as a corpse than alive, are we clear?"
The scent of absolute, total terror leaked from behind the vehicle in wafts, along with something that suggested bowel loosening. His nose wrinkled on instinct. Great. So now he was going to have to hunt next to that.
"Rick wouldn't-" The man babbled.
"Rick ain't coming to your recsue. No one is."
Silence, ringing only interrupted by the rustling of cloth, before Shane emerged from behind it and fixed the group with an unreadable look. The man's gaze flicked to him, the faintest of nods, before he drew closer to Rick and motioned the other man.
"Let's check the perimeter." The two blended into the shadows of the woods, Rick uncharacteristically silent the whole way, as Peletier stumbled out from the same spot Shane had come from. Red faced, shaking, a mess that jolted when he realised the entirety of Camp caper's residents were there and staring at him. A blustered, strangled sound emerged before the man too disappeared, this time to his tent, though not without a parting glare of absolute hate at Harry himself.
One he met with a stoic face, before turning to study his knife again. It was sheathed in a fluid motion, and him pushing off from the tree he had been leaning on seemed to break the trance the group had been kept in. Slowly, camp Caper seemed to start moving again, routines returned to with a hesitant sombreness, quite murmers of conversation breaking out. He started making his own way back to the woods, when the prickling of a heavy gaze made the hairs raise on the back of his neck: a periphery glance revealed both Dixon's and John turned towards him with direct, contemplative gazes of their own.
Almost unbidden, Harry smiled. Sharper than they let on, the lot of them.
He couldn't say it was a nice expession, such situations as this didn't call forth such: but it seemed to be what the Dixon's had needed to see as an answer. Daryl rose, shouldering his crossbow and started walking towards him, and Merle -
For once the man didn't seem to have a front, a facade of leering and aggressive rudeness. Behind his eyes, Harry, for the first time, saw the soldier. The man nodded towards Peletiers tent with a kind of finality, his own knife in front of him. The man had been cleaning his weapons methodically throughout, the same studied patience of a predator picking it's ambush spot.
To a Soldier, such things were never so easy as ' this was right', and action, once decided, was taken.
Sharper than they had let on, definitely.
Harry minutely shook his in turn, and waited to see understanding bloom in the soldier's eyes before he started to turn away.
There were, after all, preparations to complete.