The smile dims a bit when she calls her Rosie, but she hears her out. It'll keep, especially when she hears her start talking about Faith.
Rosita is already shaking her head by the end.
"Hey - you don't need to explain to me," she says, genuinely. "It's yes or it's no, and that's that. Love's important. You decide one day you need a warm body so you feel a little less alone, I got you. You decide the next you don't want anyone within five feet of you, it's cool." She dips her head a bit to catch Dinah's eyes with her own: "Yeah?"
Which also means - "And any sex is separate from the contract. It's something we do to keep safe here, and I take that seriously. That doesn't go away unless you intentionally, knowingly, deliberately fuck me or mine over."
Dinah nods. "Thanks. But I wouldn't do that. Use you? I'm - shit. I know there've been stories and shit about me from Roman but I swear I'm not like that. And I won't fuck you over. I told you, it was Jesus's idea, to help the damn plan. But it's my choice too and you seem... normal? Sane? It's fucking hard to come by here but I appreciate it."
"I don't think you would, or we wouldn't be having this conversation." Rosita is clever and canny, but she's not much one for manipulation; she doesn't lie or lead people on to get what she wants. She never has.
Although she almost laughs at the accusation that she's both normal and sane. She nods towards the couch.
"How 'bout we just talk for a bit? Start there." A beat. "I'll open: I don't like being called Rosie."
"A shithead ex used to call me that," she shrugs, moving to take the other end, able to move around the knife in a thoughtless way that speaks to how accustomed she is to having it exactly where it stays even when she sits down and makes herself comfortable.
"Didn't like it before that though. Sounds like a doll. And like - rosita is already kind of the Spanish equivalent of rosie? So it sounds weird to me, too."
That's a way to permanently stop Dinah calling Rosita 'Rosie'.
"Hey - I'm sorry." There's a beat. "I think Rosita's pretty. It's better than Dinah anyway. All I used to get as a kid was, 'You want fries with that shakes, honey?'" She chuckles. "Back home, I was Canary, but here, it's always Di or D."
Rosita frowns a bit. Nothing on the D/S finder has hit her particularly hard yet, just made her roll her eyes and wish they'd leave her out of it, but she doesn't know if that's because she's not bothered by old world things anymore or if they haven't been trying as hard as they seem to with other people.
"Fuck 'em," she says, deceptively simple even though she knows it's not. "Anyone outside of that ever use it on you? And Roman, obviously."
"Zsasz." She rolls her eyes. "I was 'little bird', 'little fucking bird', 'birdy', 'tweety'." Dinah mimics Zsasz sneering her name. "At first anyway. We kinda fell for each other? What's that thing called? When you fall for the guy who's hurting you? Anyway. It was Di after that."
"A terrible idea?" she chuckles, but it's not judgmental. Rather, she says it like someone who's had a few terrible ideas of her own, because she has.
"You wanna tell me a little about Faith?" she asks, willing to take no for an answer. Most of the people where she's from don't want to talk about the dead for good reason; but where she was from before that, they honored them, and Rosita is still deciding which way she wants to be now.
"Fucking worst. Roman fucking hated it. Fucking tried to drown Zsasz and fucking followed me to my new gig and fucking -"
He'd raped her. He'd stripped her, and Zsasz, and raped Dinah whilst Zsasz held her still and tried to take her mind off it. Dinah shakes her head and lets out a shaky sigh.
For a beat, she's quiet. "Faith was... we bonded over the shit we'd been through. Shit childhood. Growing up on the streets. Men who rip out your damn soul. We just... got each other. She'd made mistakes. I was making them but... we just got it. She was cute. Funny. So god damn beautiful. She said she didn't care, but she did. And when we kissed it just felt... right."
Rosita waits while she's quiet, watching but not afraid to look down at her glass of water, to give Dinah the time she needs to decide what she's going to say about it. She's already said plenty. Rosita doesn't need to make her relive the details unless it's something Dinah does herself.
What she chooses is to talk about Faith, and Rosita leans her head in her hands and listens.
"Those things have a way of sealing people together. How long did you know her?"
Rosita's lips quirk; she's never been in love with someone who loved her back, not really. She'd thought she knew the feeling Dinah is talking about, but in the end she was just an idiot, every single time.
“Is love ever something to regret?” Dinah smiles wistfully. “I just regret being sent home. We could have had longer. Just a little bit longer together. One more drink on the beach. One more kiss at sunset. One more morning waking up beside her. I’d give anything for that.”
Yes, she thinks, but doesn't - wouldn't - say. Everyone needs something to keep them going. It doesn't have to be the same thing that does someone else, so Rosita doesn't say it.
Instead: "That's always, though. That's life everywhere. I think when you're actually, really happy with someone, you'll always want more."
"Buffy sent me a real sweet picture. She must've taken it of me and Faith at some point."
Dinah scoots closer and shows the photo of her and Faith, lost in each other's gaze and each other's smile, to Rosita. Faith's a few years younger than Dinah, lighter skinned and dark hair.
Rosita leans over to see, and she's not so hard that she can't smile when she sees something like that. When she's glad, genuinely glad, that Dinah has something like that to keep. So many people where she's from... don't.
"Everyone I knew from before the virus hit is dead," she answers almost dismissively at this point; it's just a daily fact, one she's either processed or been forced to move past or both. Normally she'd leave it there, uninterested in trying to talk about ghosts she already buried or explain what her life was like back home to someone who didn't live it, but she looks at the picture again; Dinah has told her about Faith, about Zsasz, about Roman, about the terrible things Roman has done. Rosita can give up a story or two in the interest of more equal footing in a contract.
She sucks the back of her teeth, thinking, trying to decide.
"No one ever looked back at me like that. Not and meant it." No one is out there in the world, the last one or the next or this one, wishing they'd had one more kiss from Rosita Espinosa. "But there were a couple I might have thought were it for me."
"Man, I'm sorry." It's an inadequate thing to say really. Everyone she knows is dead. At least Dinah's been left, this time at least, with friends and with the knowledge that back home, people are waiting for her. Huntress and Montoya are waiting for her to lead them again. People need her. Rosita doesn't seem to think the same.
"They turn out to be assholes? I mean, you don't have to tell me. But you've listened to my shit when you don't have to. So if you wanna... I'll listen. Always."
She smiles, small and quick for the offer. It's not that she doesn't believe her, it's that she's still not used to being surrounded by people who would make it. There's not time for talking about the old world, or the people that were lost with it, or even along the way. When you have to save all of your energy for surviving day to day, there's none left over for simply talking about the past just to talk.
"Long story short: yes. Turns out that's kind of my type." Again, normally she'd leave it there. She makes herself ask: "How much is Jesus told you about where we're from?"
"I've decided I no longer have a type," she chuckles, and she does mean it. She's done with love. It's just not safe for her.
"The virus killed most of the world, like a proper pandemic. Did it fast, too. They called it the wild fire virus. And what the virus didn't get, the walkers - yes, the zombies - did. Or the bombs the government dropped on the major cities trying to stop the spread. Or the survivors that were desperate for supplies afterwards. It was a mess." It still is, in many ways.
"Any of us left alive, almost none of us have family or friends left from before. You just get shoved together with a group of strangers, and if you decide to stick with them, they become your new family. That's the kind of family me and J are - and it also means there aren't exactly a lot of stellar options for love anymore. Especially when we still lose people all the time to one stupid or unlucky move."
"Here is fucking weird now. I've lived in a world full of walkers for - god, years. More than ten. I barely even remembered how credit cards worked, let alone grocery stores, or Saturday morning yoga classes, or online shopping. Or phones."
She chuckles, because she can't explain how suffocating the city feels now to someone who never had to scrape roadkill up off hot pavement with their fingernails and pray it didn't kill them to eat.
"So I guess - that's my caveat. If I'm a bit weird sometimes, it's because I'm not used to all of this anymore."
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handleyourshit) wrote2032-07-23 01:51 pm
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Rosita is already shaking her head by the end.
"Hey - you don't need to explain to me," she says, genuinely. "It's yes or it's no, and that's that. Love's important. You decide one day you need a warm body so you feel a little less alone, I got you. You decide the next you don't want anyone within five feet of you, it's cool." She dips her head a bit to catch Dinah's eyes with her own: "Yeah?"
Which also means - "And any sex is separate from the contract. It's something we do to keep safe here, and I take that seriously. That doesn't go away unless you intentionally, knowingly, deliberately fuck me or mine over."
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Although she almost laughs at the accusation that she's both normal and sane. She nods towards the couch.
"How 'bout we just talk for a bit? Start there." A beat. "I'll open: I don't like being called Rosie."
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She moves to the couch, curling up on one end. "I don't care what you call me. Di, D, Canary... whatever you like."
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"Didn't like it before that though. Sounds like a doll. And like - rosita is already kind of the Spanish equivalent of rosie? So it sounds weird to me, too."
Mostly, though, it's the first.
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"Hey - I'm sorry." There's a beat. "I think Rosita's pretty. It's better than Dinah anyway. All I used to get as a kid was, 'You want fries with that shakes, honey?'" She chuckles.
"Back home, I was Canary, but here, it's always Di or D."
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Obviously she understands Di or D - and she certainly understands shithead kids and the shithead things adults say to them too sometimes.
However - "Why Canary? The voice thing?"
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It was about all she inherited.
“Roman called me Little Bird. I fucking hate that name. Makes me feel weak and shit. But you know that’s what they use every time on that DS finder.”
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"Fuck 'em," she says, deceptively simple even though she knows it's not. "Anyone outside of that ever use it on you? And Roman, obviously."
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"You wanna tell me a little about Faith?" she asks, willing to take no for an answer. Most of the people where she's from don't want to talk about the dead for good reason; but where she was from before that, they honored them, and Rosita is still deciding which way she wants to be now.
Cw non consent
He'd raped her. He'd stripped her, and Zsasz, and raped Dinah whilst Zsasz held her still and tried to take her mind off it. Dinah shakes her head and lets out a shaky sigh.
For a beat, she's quiet.
"Faith was... we bonded over the shit we'd been through. Shit childhood. Growing up on the streets. Men who rip out your damn soul. We just... got each other. She'd made mistakes. I was making them but... we just got it. She was cute. Funny. So god damn beautiful. She said she didn't care, but she did. And when we kissed it just felt... right."
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What she chooses is to talk about Faith, and Rosita leans her head in her hands and listens.
"Those things have a way of sealing people together. How long did you know her?"
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“But you know when it just feels right?”
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"Do you regret it now?"
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Instead: "That's always, though. That's life everywhere. I think when you're actually, really happy with someone, you'll always want more."
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Dinah scoots closer and shows the photo of her and Faith, lost in each other's gaze and each other's smile, to Rosita. Faith's a few years younger than Dinah, lighter skinned and dark hair.
"So what about you? No hopeless love stories?"
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"Everyone I knew from before the virus hit is dead," she answers almost dismissively at this point; it's just a daily fact, one she's either processed or been forced to move past or both. Normally she'd leave it there, uninterested in trying to talk about ghosts she already buried or explain what her life was like back home to someone who didn't live it, but she looks at the picture again; Dinah has told her about Faith, about Zsasz, about Roman, about the terrible things Roman has done. Rosita can give up a story or two in the interest of more equal footing in a contract.
She sucks the back of her teeth, thinking, trying to decide.
"No one ever looked back at me like that. Not and meant it." No one is out there in the world, the last one or the next or this one, wishing they'd had one more kiss from Rosita Espinosa. "But there were a couple I might have thought were it for me."
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"They turn out to be assholes? I mean, you don't have to tell me. But you've listened to my shit when you don't have to. So if you wanna... I'll listen. Always."
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"Long story short: yes. Turns out that's kind of my type." Again, normally she'd leave it there. She makes herself ask: "How much is Jesus told you about where we're from?"
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She hugs a cushion to her as she thinks about the answer.
“Zombies? Crazy shit going down and the world like… gone?”
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"The virus killed most of the world, like a proper pandemic. Did it fast, too. They called it the wild fire virus. And what the virus didn't get, the walkers - yes, the zombies - did. Or the bombs the government dropped on the major cities trying to stop the spread. Or the survivors that were desperate for supplies afterwards. It was a mess." It still is, in many ways.
"Any of us left alive, almost none of us have family or friends left from before. You just get shoved together with a group of strangers, and if you decide to stick with them, they become your new family. That's the kind of family me and J are - and it also means there aren't exactly a lot of stellar options for love anymore. Especially when we still lose people all the time to one stupid or unlucky move."
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“That’s…” terrible. Horrifying. Dreadful.
There’s a beat where Dinah doesn’t know what to say.
“I guess here is a bit more… settled? I guess?”
CW: starving survivor grossness
She chuckles, because she can't explain how suffocating the city feels now to someone who never had to scrape roadkill up off hot pavement with their fingernails and pray it didn't kill them to eat.
"So I guess - that's my caveat. If I'm a bit weird sometimes, it's because I'm not used to all of this anymore."
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