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[handleyourshit]

  


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

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[hippie_ninja]

"I'd like that. It's got a good start, I just feel like it could do more. Reach more people." That, of course, is what he's good at: reaching people.

[handleyourshit]

"Well that's not running it. That's expanding it," she points out, but she's not surprised. That's what Jesus always does.

But she sighs: "You know your friend told me I should consider thinking of us more like a guild than a community?" Not in so many words, but it was the point he was trying to get through to her.

[hippie_ninja]

"He's here talking to you without me, I think he qualifies as our friend now," Jesus smirks. He's pleased they get along, relieved they've bonded even if the reason that happened was the cruel joke the Creator pulled.

"What's the difference between a community and a guild?"

[handleyourshit]

"Apparently a guild can have a guild house, but mostly everyone is off doing their own thing towards a common goal," is what she took away from it, mostly.

She ignores the our friend part.

"He also suggested I was the de facto leader."

[hippie_ninja]

"That might be what we have here," he admits. He's not sure how he feels about it, though. He likes having his own space; it's one reason he doesn't live with Drake. But he also misses the Hilltop sometimes.

And he knows how badly Rosita misses Alexandria.

"Why don't you call Vrenille a friend?"

[handleyourshit]

She sighs.

"He is. We are." She's not trying to deny that part and she wouldn't. They went through something together.

He did his best to help Jesus. She won't ever forget that. "I'm just still working out what to even do with that."

[hippie_ninja]

He gives her a curious look. "Why do you have to do something with it? Why can't it just be?"

[handleyourshit]

It earns him a confused look in return.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

[hippie_ninja]

He shakes his head. "What do you need to figure out in order to be his friend?"

[handleyourshit]

"How to act," she answers, like it should be obvious.

"And don't look at me like that. I know, alright? I'm just... still working shit out here."

[hippie_ninja]

"He already likes you," Jesus says, but with a certain warmth. "And Carver. And me. He likes survivors, no matter how hard it is for us sometimes."

[handleyourshit]

"I know. I like him too."

She tips her head, looking around them.

"He told me he feels more comfortable here than he does at the Manor in some ways. Says it feels more like home to him, even like this. Especially like this."

[hippie_ninja]

"That doesn't surprise me." But it does make him smile, make him feel a little relieved. "I don't think I could get attached to anyone who doesn't understand all...this, on some level."

[handleyourshit]

"I think you're doing just fine," she says, firmly, even a little proudly. She told Vrenille once that Jesus is nothing short of a miracle where they're from.

She meant it. "Are you?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Yeah. I'm good." He smiles slightly. "Better than. Things have been really good lately. Having Broken Hollow and Creekside to go to has helped a lot."

The city gets to be too much for him sometimes. He hasn't had a panicked moment like he did on that rooftop, but he has smaller moments where he has to just go.

"Are you?"

[handleyourshit]

"I'm good," she says too, almost automatically, and in the context of how they used to mean it regularly, she is. She's functional. She's here. She's physically in one piece.

But then she catches herself, shading in the long rail of a fence taking shape on her page.

"Mostly I'm good. Sometimes I'm not. I don't know what to expect here, you know?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Yeah," he agrees with a soft exhale, like letting go of something heavy. "Mostly I'm good, too. Sometimes it's hard to take the train. Sometimes... Sometimes I can't make myself get on it."

[handleyourshit]

"...yeah."

It makes her wonder, then, if Carver said something - but she's sure she would have heard by now if he had. Jesus's strength is not being circumspect, not about that. About her.

It's not really a surprise they have similar hangups. "Crowds. I hated the looting. I kept waiting for it to turn bloody, to get messier than it was."

[hippie_ninja]

"I kept wanting to find you during that. But I couldn't stop myself from looting." He grimaces slightly. "I have new caches set up through the city now."

[handleyourshit]

"I was fine," she answers. "I'm fine. But it just... reminded me of the old world, you know?"

[hippie_ninja]

"I know. I do." And he wishes she would talk more about it. "You were in the city, in Texas, when the panic set in, weren't you?"

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah."

Normally, this is where she would drop it; it's where every survivor would drop it, given the choice. No one wants to think about the fall. No one wants to remember all they lost and the things they had to do, especially in the early days.

"Dallas."

[hippie_ninja]

"Me, too." In D.C., but all of the nation was a hellscape by then. The bombs went off in the major cities and that was it.

"I never thought I'd see a city again. You probably didn't either. That time we went to the Smithsonian, I thought it would be harder for me than it was. This? A living city? It's so much harder for me than that was."

[handleyourshit]

She shrugs. That hadn't been hard for her at all - even though she'd never been to DC, let alone lived there like he had - by that point and she knows exactly why.

"It was all just... landscape by then, wasn't it? I know I'd already accepted things were never going back to the way they were. Most people around me finally had too. So it was just more of the same, really. But this -"

Yeah. This is hard to know what to do with.

[hippie_ninja]

"I hadn't even touched on any of that with Jean. And now that she's gone.... It's just been harder. And it makes me worry about you. You're going through this, too." Reassimilation, and all its pitfalls.