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[handleyourshit]

  


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

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[handleyourshit]

"I know."

It's a problem she doesn't have a solution to - and one she chafes at, after years of being beholden to no one she doesn't care for unless she chooses to be.

"I'm just thinking we might have to adjust. Adapt to this place as it is." A beat. "After the shortest exit tunnel is secure, I want to shift K to something else for a while. Vrenille's working on portals for the rest."

[hippie_ninja]

"Where do you need help?" K will do it, Jesus knows. He'll do it without complaint, but Jesus wants it to be something K can enjoy. Something in the daylight, something around the plants.

[handleyourshit]

"I think working on the fields," she answers, because she's been thinking about it. She wants him to enjoy it too, and in this case it's also useful.

"With you. Planting and harvesting, and when to do what."

[hippie_ninja]

"He'll probably like it so much I could tell him it's a date," Jesus chuckles.

[handleyourshit]

"How you handle your love life is not up to me," she teases, although she does kind of agree from what she's seen.

Which: "Are you going to invite him to stay here?"

[hippie_ninja]

"Yeah. I think he's earned a place with us. I think maybe he needs to know it, though." That he's welcome with them.

[handleyourshit]

"What's that mean?" she asks.

The man puts in work out here. He showed up in the woods. That's enough for her when paired with the way Jesus goes stupid about him from time to time.

[hippie_ninja]

"I don't think he knows how much I want him around. Or that he's more than a workhorse around here." It's hard for K to get his head around being more than a machine, he thinks.

[handleyourshit]

"So tell him."

She's not sure which one is the problem at this point, Jesus not saying anything or K not understanding.

"If that doesn't work, use the rooms to show him."

[hippie_ninja]

"Does he get a room?" He's not sure how many she's divided up.

[handleyourshit]

She gives him a strange look.

"Of course. I'd suggest the one between yours and Vrenille's, but, you know. He can pick any of the open ones."

[hippie_ninja]

"Where is Carver's?" Because there's no way he doesn't still have one.

[handleyourshit]

She doesn't flinch, but she does just look at him for one beat, for two.

"Right where he left it."

[hippie_ninja]

He's not surprised. If she had changed that room into something else he would be.

"Does he know it's still there?"

[handleyourshit]

"He's been here. Twice. Door's still fucking closed."

She doesn't want to talk about this but she's also sick of people using that reticence to try and prove a point she's already well aware of.

"We've already talked about this. Nothing's changed."

[hippie_ninja]

"That's all I wanted to know. If anything's changed." He thinks it will, with time.

"He's doing better, I think."

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah," she agrees. She thinks so too.

"Doesn't mean I think the needle should move from where it is any time soon. I don't want to put that on him until he's ready. We can talk about it then."

[hippie_ninja]

"I understand." And he thinks it's wise, to be cautious that way without cutting Carver out or pushing him away. "I like how you've handled everything that happened. I'm proud of you. It takes a lot of strength to give someone a second chance."

[handleyourshit]

Rosita is not a woman that others could easily point to and say she needs approval; she doesn't. If she believes something is the right thing to do, she'll do it alone if she has to, even though she doesn't want things to be that way.

But it's nice. It makes her smile now, not the wide, delighted one when they're messing around or the thin, dry one reserved for sarcasm and strangers. Something softer, something only for those closest to her.

"I'm still just making it up as I go, and I don't know where we'll end up. It's not just up to me." And there are parts that are still hard if she lets herself think about it, but there's a lot that's been easier lately, too.

[hippie_ninja]

He likes that smile, likes what it means between the two of them and that after everything she's been through, that smile is still part of her.

"It's not. But I think he wants to end up in a good place with you. A happier place." He has mountains of evidence to support this, in case he sees any doubt in her.

[handleyourshit]

And there is doubt. There are parts of her that can't bear to believe in such things as happy endings anymore, not without risking what little of it she's managed to scrape together for herself now.

"Maybe," she hedges. "As long as I don't get greedy."

[hippie_ninja]

"It's not greedy to want to be happy," he says gently, but with understanding. "But I'm afraid to trust being happy, too."

[handleyourshit]

"It's not being happy I don't trust."

It's people, always people, lying to her when she finds a way to be.

"What is it for you?"

[hippie_ninja]

"By the time I'm ready to make a big leap forward with people they've already grown tired of me." A small, sad smile. A shrug. He's used to it; it still hurts. "So I'm happy and they're ready to leave. Or they're happy and I'm not. I've never really had it line up to where we were both satisfied."

[handleyourshit]

"Never?" she presses.

Never before, or never still?