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[handleyourshit]

  

This is Rosita.  I'll hit you back when I can.

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[handleyourshit]

"And then I'd just be yelling at someone else on the deck. Maybe for different reasons."

But maybe not, she says with a shrug, and a hint of a return smile over the top of her mug.

[loveisall]

That half smile makes his own warm.

"I'd rather you yell at me on deck."

[handleyourshit]

"I'm sure I would. I'm pretty equal opportunity when it comes to yelling."

She was trying to do better; trying to be better. Now she doesn't know.

The smile fades. "Did you - were you okay? Through all of that?"

[loveisall]

He nods. "Yes. I have a lot to feel guilty for, but no place can make me feel worse than I already do."

He does look down. "Eric and I saw Nora."

[handleyourshit]

Eric. She presses her lips together, wonders vaguely if this counts as cheating, just a bit.

But Godric was the one who set it up, so: "Who's Nora?"

[loveisall]

"My other progeny. She joined Eric and me centuries later, but - she stayed with us for a while. We loved her, but - in Eric's time, she died."

He clears his throat.

[handleyourshit]

As a rule, Rosita has learned not to ask people about their loved ones that died. It's cruel to them, since most of them weren't raised as she was. Since the loss is generally so fucking big, too big to know what to do with and keep moving forward.

But that's not how she was raised, and he already knows so much about her.

"What's a while?"

[loveisall]

"Few hundred years," he answers, letting out a sigh. "She went to work for the Authority, and got roped into their propaganda. As I did, for a while. But she and Eric fell out."

[handleyourshit]

She has a choice here, she realizes; continue pursuing the dead, ask about the living.

"And then she died. The Authority have something to do with it?"

[loveisall]

He shakes his head. It doesn't bother him to talk about her now, because she's still alive to him. He never felt her death. He knows that it happens, but - sometimes he can pretend.

"No. Not really. It was humans. They engineered a virus that - only vampires could get. It killed us, slowly. She was killed by that."

[handleyourshit]

Something in her face falls a little. Viruses. Fucking viruses.

"I'm sorry. It's... hard. To lose people that way."

[loveisall]

There was a reason he hadn't mentioned it to her. He nods solemnly, looking at the table.

"It hasn't happened to me yet. I didn't have to feel her death, but Eric was there."

[handleyourshit]

"How do you feel like he's taking this?"

She has a guess or two of her own, but she hardly knows him like Godric does.

[loveisall]

"Not well. He's been abandoned by everyone he thought he could trust. Everyone who is - his. He wanted to die with me, but I wouldn't let him."

He runs a hand down his face.

"It was a terrible mistake."

[handleyourshit]

Well.

She certainly knows how that feels.

"Which part?" she asks, anyway.

[loveisall]

"Thinking it was better for him to live without me. Thinking that it was the only way out."

He finally looks up to her.

"He deserves to have me, and he will."

[handleyourshit]

The corner of her mouth quirks, but there's something aching and small there, something cautious and sad.

"You've just got a list of people to take home, huh?"

[loveisall]

"Why not?" he smiles. "The world is cruel in so many ways. In many different universes. We are afforded an opportunity to create our own sort of space."

[handleyourshit]

The moment fades instead of being bolstered in turn by his smile, by his words. She drains the cooled coffee and sets the mug down on the table, shaking her too long sleeves over her hands when she wraps her arms around herself and leans back in the chair.

(It's Jesus's shirt.)

"Are we," she echoes wryly, not quite a question, not quite not.

[loveisall]

"We are."

He shrugs. "But it isn't obvious at first. Why?"

[handleyourshit]

She shakes her head,

"I just don't think it's obvious at all."

[loveisall]

"What do you see this place as?" he wonders instead of asking, instead of guessing.

[handleyourshit]

"It's... the space after. The space between."

She shrugs.

"It's not dying. It's not living. It's a crossroads."

[loveisall]

He nods.

"Alright, then what is the crossroads? Where do the other paths lead?"

[handleyourshit]

"I'm not so dense I've missed that the answer is basically anywhere a person could want," she answers. Sighs.

"I just also know nothing is guaranteed."