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

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"Havijg nothing to grieve is a burden in itself," he says softly. "I tried it myself. I understand the appeal."

"So you can't just -"

Fuck.

Fuck.

"You can't just. Say shit to me."

"I said what I said because you deserve to know that I would never want to leave you. Because I care. I'm not just - saying shit."

He rubs the back of his neck.

"I know."

She swallows.

"I know. That's why I lashed out."

He nods. "Alright. I still forgive you. And - thank you for telling me why."

It isn't exactly what he was expecting, but it's not entirely far from his own guess.

"I'd understand if you didn't. I just - everything feels so fucied up. I feel fucked up. I didn't used to and I don't know if it's an improvement or not."

She feels crazy. She feels broken.

Edited Date: 2024-09-01 01:56 am (UTC)

"Unfortunately, I think it might be." He leans forward and links his fingers together. "I think you have to break yourself down here in order to heal correctly."

"And if it doesn't heal?" is the natural followup.

"How much can someone go through before they can't come back from it?"

"Maybe that's why I'm here with you? So I can help you heal instead of break completely," he suggests gently.

"I don't believe in like... destiny, and things like that. I don't believe the Admiral has any concentrated insight."

What she means is: "If that's why you're choosing to be here with me, to try to do that, then that's different."

"Then we will call it good luck because that's why I want to be with you," he says with a hint of a smile. "And I would have done it even if the Admiral put you with someone else."

"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.

That half smile makes his own warm.

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

"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?"

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."

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?"

"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.

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?"

"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."

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?"

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."

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

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

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."

"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.

"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."