handleyourshit | TLV Inbox

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

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It is in fact locked, and once she hears him working on it she doesn't even bother to finish coming over from where she's sitting cross legged on the edge of her bed. The remnants of her last pack is still pressed to the side of her face, and there's some blood spattered down the front of her shirt, but not a lot and the rest of her is in one piece.

"Who told?" she asks, holding out her hand for the new pack.

"Shaw. Root's wife. Root is the woman you fought with." He looks Rosita over and offers her the ice pack. "She wanted to know how bad off you were. Looks like I get to tell her you won."

"Of course I fucking won," she huffs, though there's no boast to it. She's a survivor. She'll always fight with everything she has, although -

"She's damn lucky I didn't have my knife." When she switches out the packs, he'll be able to see the worst mark on her is a dark bruise on one cheek where she took an elbow aimed for her nose. There's blood crusted around one nostril, her eye is a little swollen, but nothing is broken and it won't last longer than a few days.

"I know she attacked you." Which makes his life easier. He won't have to fight to keep Rosita free. "I'll talk to Shaw, see if she thinks Root's going to be a threat again."

But he doubts it. He hopes not.

She wants to point out that she wasn't a threat this time, but Rosita knows she just as easily could have gotten the upper hand. Rosita will go armed again from now on, but so too might Root.

She shakes her head though.

"I think it was just what she needed to do. She tried to get out first chance she could."

"Yeah... you fought Shaw. Shaw's her wife," Jesus shrugs. "She just wanted to make it even. I'm just not sure since she lost it will count in her mind. I'll talk to Shaw, see what can be done."

He slides a knife out of a sheath. It's one of the two he came in with. "In the meantime, keep this, okay?"

She looks at the knife, but doesn't reach for it just yet. She wants it - she always wants a weapon, never left them behind on scavenging trips if she found one - but her eyes tick up to his first.

"You think I can't handle a little disagreement?"

"When did I say that?" he asks, wounded, just a little, by the question. By the insinuation that he doubts her, that his offer has a double meaning.

He's so tired of people assigning meanings to him that aren't there.

"I just want you safe. And if this makes you safer, I want you to have it."

"Not this," she answers, reaching for the knife, setting it beside her. She frowns, but she's all sharp edges these days, doesn't know how not to cut someone who gets in too close to her anymore.

"Shaw. Root. If one of them wants to talk to me, why are they going to you? If something needs to be resolved, why do I need to go through you to talk to them?" She shakes her head. "I can talk. She fucking jumped me, right out of the flood."

"It could be a lot of things. Maybe she thought you weren't in good enough shape to answer questions. I'm not your warden but I'm a warden, and Shaw is very by the book--I've helped her out before. Or tried to, anyway." He ended up making things worse but he blames Malcolm and Neal and himself for that more than Shaw.

"I don't know if Root wants to talk to you."

"That," she answers, crisply.

"That bullshit right there. I'm an inmate, not a pinche child." Which is why Jesus stating he was going to go back to talk to Shaw rankled, too, she realizes. Let the wardens handle it.

"I don't need the adults to talk about me, for me, behind my back."

Jesus looks at her, and he gets it. He does.

"Then be here when I answer her voicemail, okay?"

"What's that mean?"

There are so many words here that she knows, that mean such different things. And honestly, if Jesus does doubt her ability to talk calmly, there's good reason: she's on a hair trigger without even knowing it half the time these days.

"It means I haven't answered her yet. I wanted to check in with you first." He holds up his phone. "But I want to talk to her so I know if Root's still a problem."

She adjusts the ice pack, eyes narrowing on the phone, but finally she nods.

"Fine."

He nods, and starts to thumb over to his voicemail.

"Rosita... Root's my friend. But you come first. Okay?"

"Of course she's your friend," she sighs, and she knows - even she knows - that isn't the point he's making, but she pulls one foot up onto the bed with her, hugs her knee to her chest with her free arm.

"We'll talk after. It's fine."

So he has his talk with Shaw, and then he sets his phone aside and watches Rosita. "I do think you two would be friends."

And it wouldn't be the first time either of them made friends with someone after punching them in the face or trying to kill them.

Rosita stays quiet, doesn't speak, barely breathes while they talk. It lets her calm down a bit, lets her try to sort her thoughts out - although that's not a game she's been winning any time recently.

She huffs a soft sound, eye closed against the headache she's nursing.

"I don't need any more friends," she answers, dully.

"Well at the least maybe you two can reach a truce. I'd settle for 'neutral territories'." He won't push Rosita any further than she's already been pushed.

"I just want to be left alone, Jesus," she answers.

"If she can handle that, there won't be any trouble from me."

"I know you do." He does. He gets it. Sometimes even he feels that way. "But I need you to try. Like I'm trying. Remember?"

"I remember."

She sighs.

"I was going to call you. I was just slower than fucking married people."

He laughs softly. "I hoped...that if it you were seriously injured I'd know before Shaw did. You'd let me know."

A soft sigh. "I was pretty scared though. When she told me, and I didn't know."

God but he doesn't want anything to happen to Rosita.

"Well, if I'm dead in a stairwell, I can't really call you," she points out, but it's only dark humor even if it is true.

"We were both in the hallway when the flood ended. I was still getting my bearings, and she jumped me. Taylor broke us up before I could do any real damage to her." Because Rosita was, quite plainly, winning when she intervened.