#some say we'll never get Beyond Thunderdome

[sedgewicke]

Honestly? As far as betrayals go?

It's no Thunderdome we can't get Beyond.

I think I'll keep it in my "Look, things are gonna turn out nice for Sedge this time!" AU. It'll build character. Dalinar will get those rose-tinted glasses he's inexplicably got on for Sadeas bashed off his face with a lead pipe, which I think we can all agree is sorely needed. And Sadeas can use this as an opportunity to properly air his grievances about, namely:

1) That one time Dalinar left him and Gavilar to fend for themselves against an assassin because he was too busy being passed out in a puddle of his own sick, and after Gavilar was murdered and Dalinar sobered up, he proceeded to pull the "UM, but where were you tho???" card, and he's still doing it six years later.

Because, uh. Controversial opinion? That's some completely legitimate shit to be extremely angry about. And by golly, this method of betrayal do seem to mirror that whole situation more than a little bit. But also I doubt it'll be brought up as a Motive That Actually Makes Sense, because why not just keep sitting on this issue?

And 2) Dalinar constantly (constantly) banging on about that damn book, which Sadeas obviously blames in part for Gavilar's death ("that book ruined him"), and likely believes has something to do with Dalinar's own apparent descent into madness. But on top of that, now he's trying to get Elhokar into his weird little book club, and Elhokar is already dealing with a rapidly worsening case of paranoia (which Sadeas attributes to Dalinar coddling him, and thus reinforcing his belief that he's in danger); the last thing he needs is to be exposed to some weird old book that seems to be tied to people goin' kinda nuts. Honestly, from Sadeas' point of view, it totally looks like the Kholin bloodline has got the madness in it, and it's all coming to the surface now for some reason if only there were a common factor in all of it. And because in this AU *throws down a "Fuck you, Sanderson!" card* Sadeas really does care about Elhokar, and isn't going to try and fuck him over because he suddenly decided that he wants to be king or whatever dumb shit's gonna happen (because Dalinar apparently needs to be hilariously wrong about everything Sadeas-related?), all that is a Big Problem.

And you know what? Why not add 3) if you spent decades doing war crimes with a guy, and all of a sudden he starts acting like this Swingin' Richard pinnacle of morality and righteousness, while also going on about how you and basically everyone else sucks and stuff? Yeah, you'd probably be kinda mad about it. That deserves at least a paddlin'.

Where the absolute... was I... with thi-- right, so the point is, now that Sadeas has finally acted on these six years of compounding beef and Dalinar finally understands that "Oh damn, this guy really does hate me", maybe now they can sit their asses down, have some Real Talk like a couple of Grown-Ass Adults.

Although, damn, that is a lot of Thunderdome to get Beyond.