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

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I do want him to feel loved.

Rosita doesn't trust anyone here, and has no interest in trying. Not really. But Jesus is from home, Jesus is someone she already knows, someone she does trust has already chosen to trust. And he's talked about similar themes with her about this man.

She tries another cautious sip with the milk, flashes a thumbs up, and considers.

"Do you? Love him?"

"Yes, of course," he says with no hesitation. Love comes easily to Godric now. It's something he's had to work for, something he's had to want. There is vulnerability in it, of course. There is always the chance that he could be hurt, but he doesn't think too much about that any longer.

The pain is only proof that love had been genuine, and that's the feeling he's chasing.

"I know that he holds himself back, and that's fine. I know that he's been hurt. I know little about your world, but I know that relationships are hard fought and difficult to maintain for a thousand reasons. I am grateful for what he can give, and I will do the same in return."

Love used to come easily to Rosita - and she was willing to suffer for it to have it, willing to work for it. Anything good, anything worth having, is painful and hard.

Now it just hurts. Now she wants nothing that even looks like it, is not willing to risk it, but she watches him anyway.

"You have a partner though," she points out. "And someday, you'll leave here, I'm assuming."

"I do. Archer. We're - companions. We've been together a while." He leans back. "We have a home by the ocean. I've told Jesus that he's welcome to come, but he won't accept. We both know it. My life is - quiet. Peaceful. Each day is much like the one before."

He lets out an unnecessary breath.

"That isn't the life he wants."

That's not, she thinks, why he won't come. She's not going to say that though. Not to Godric.

"Seems like a difficult thing to be up against, partners with a life together. He says you have tattoos older than the Roman empire. You say you've not been with a human in quite some time."

Seems pretty novel. Pretty short lived.

He nods. "My ink is from my village. When my people were called Gauls. I have - a brand from the Romans, when I was their slave."

Godric links his fingers together in front of him, thinking. "I don't know what you mean by - 'up against,'" he adds.

She shrugs, stirring sugar into the coffee, trying that too.

God, it's so fucking nice to have these things again.

"Maybe give it a good think," she suggests. "That was like, France, right?"

He knows what others have said and he knows what he believes, but he's never noted anything amiss. Strange, but he makes a mental note to talk with Jesus again very soon, in case he's missed something. It might go well with the coffee.

"France, yes. I don't remember the exact place. My human memories are spotty, and it's difficult to put modern day geography on my village when all I know is that there was a small river or stream that led to the ocean. And it was close enough that Julius Caesar found us a threat."

"Yeah, well, by all accounts Julius Caesar was a dickhead, but I probably don't need to tell you that."

It's one thing to just... be aware that Astarion is over two hundred years old, but he's from a completely different world, so she can just take him at face value. This, though, is history she knows.

"I can't even wrap my head around what that must be like."

"It was hell," he says plainly, looking past her, over her shoulder. "If I'm very honest. When Jesus talks about having two different points in his life, the before and the after, that's - that's something I understand. Only the world didn't change suddenly, I changed suddenly. But there was the before, when I was a child who liked to eat apples and was chased by old women away from the berry vines, and the after, when I would follow the soldiers of war, picking off the ones who wouldn't make it and hating the world and everyone in it."

"There must be an after after too," she comments.

"You don't seem to hate the world and everyone in it now."

Or he's hiding it very well, which she's seen before, which is why she's still not able to talk herself out of being wary altogether.

"You're right, I don't. But that has been a recent change... and a more gradual one."

Being angry is exhausting, and he couldn't continue like that.

She wraps both hands around the mug, but leaves it sitting on the counter. Claiming it, savoring it, but not keeping it. She drums her fingertips silently along the outside of it, just once.

"Was your before and after when you were... what, turned?"

"Mm. My master was a cruel man, sadistic in many ways, but at least as a human I had the thought of death, or of running away, to comfort me. He stripped both of those dreams away in one evening."

He picks up the pot of coffee, silently offering her more, should she want it.

"In my world, Makers can always find and control their offspring. Death against his wishes and running away was nearly impossible. I spent nearly a century with him."

Rosita is often quick to show teeth, and it's not a bluff: she will back it up if provoked, if threatened. But the sharp edge isn't all there is to her, and she winces at the thought of that, shaking her head to the offer of the coffee even as she studies the surface of what she already has.

"That's awful," she says, simply, heavily.

"It was," he agrees, setting the pot down and folding his hands. "I killed him, though. I seized my chance, as I had tried a hundred times before, and I managed it. Escaped, and - well, the story goes on from there."

"Good," she says, succinct and bloody and sincere.

"Assholes should get what's coming to them more often."

"There is a time and place for it," he half-agrees. "I regret a great many deaths in my life. His is not one of them."

He looks over to her, eyes first on the mug, then her face, recalling her message to him earlier.

"I am not a violent man any longer. But that doesn't mean I won't protect myself or others by any means necessary."

She stands for the scrutiny, though she doesn't look up from the coffee. She can still feel him looking at her.

Once violence is in you, it never really leaves, she wants to say but doesn't.

"You didn't say anything wrong," she says instead. "But the whole system is bullshit."

He nods, though it's more of an encouragement than an agreement.

"It isn't a perfect system by any means, no. Will you tell me what you've found troublesome?"

First: "Were you ever an inmate?"

"No. Which I know gives me less to understand," he tells her.

She nods; at least if he knows that much, she can shelf it for now.

"So - you're out living your life. Doing whatever you do. And then, you die. You remember all of it, you feel all of it, you go through all the emotions - and then you wake up here." It's abbreviated, but then, for this specific point, it stands.

"And this isn't the afterlife, or at least it's not any afterlife I've ever heard of. And there's no explanation, no nothing, just here - and you're an inmate. You're the same as you've ever been, but now you're an inmate, and no one can - or will - tell you why. How this decision was made. Or what you need to do to get out of it. You're just here, guessing, while a second group of people who did choose to be here are supposed to keep an eye on you except - surprise. Most of them don't have their shit together either."

Now she does look up, rubbing her thumb over the handle.

"Would you fucking listen to anyone?"

"Of course not," he says, nodding once. "Especially with some of the wardens here."

"Of course not," she agrees. "Except every month, here comes some new asshole who didn't care about talking to you before, but now they're a warden, and you're an inmate, and Sky Daddy says you're they're responsibility for the month so now they want to know if you're okay. If you need anything. Knowing full well they don't care who you are or why you are the way you are and they're going to prove it because next month they're going to move on to whoever else their name gets said with, or? Or they're just going to fucking leave right in the middle of everything."

Her voice is calm, measured, but clipped. She meant it when she says she hates everything about this.

"And when you tell them to fuck off, you're not interested in playing, they make sad mopey eyes at you and act like it's not crystal fucking clear why you wouldn't want to talk to them - and occasionally, they try to tell you that you're going to be sad, you're going to be lonely because you don't let anyone help you, except fuck them. Obviously. It's still a viable goddamn choice in this fucked up environment."