She hadn't admitted it before now, either; none of the people she was closest to were people she was sleeping with anyway, not then, not since she'd been so angry with Carver. So hurt. No one had noticed - or at least, Sara probably had, but she certainly wasn't going to be the one to tell her otherwise - until she fetched up against Rhys anyway.
So she'd just done it and moved on, like so many things she's done over the years. So yes, she gets it. And she gets what he says next even though it hurts a little to hear, watching him, lowering the kitten down to the floor so she can entertain herself without risking falling off the counter.
"Do you feel like it helps?" she asks, earnest. "Or is it just familiar?"
The kitten mews, tail waving like a banner as she explores the kitchen. Carver takes a steadying breath, watching her. Focus, Carve, Leah murmurs in his ear. Stay here.
He watches Rosita. It's a fair question.
"I don't know," he says finally. "I think sometimes it keeps me from getting worse, but that's not the same thing as helping."
"No, it's not." She has her hands folded together now that there's no plate or fork, no kitten; she rubs at the nail of one thumb with the tip of the other, thinking. Chewing the inside of her lip as she decides what to say.
"That's how we survived. There's no happy ending, but there's not getting worse. Not doing worse. If that's where you focus, it's doable. If that's where you live, you're still alive." Once you know how that feels, you don't ever forget it, no matter what the current baseline is. No matter if there's no reason to be stuck in survival mode now.
"For me, it hurt at first. It hurt bad." She swallows. "But then it became something else. I can take a punch, and if I can, then it felt better. It felt like I have what it takes and they don't. Now if it happens, it just happens."
Everything comes back to survival in the end. What you can take. How hard you can fight back. Carver nods slowly, watching Rosita. Wondering what would've happened to them if they hadn't been made into the kind of people who can take a punch like it's nothing.
They probably would've died when the world ended, he thinks. But they didn't.
"First time someone hit me, I mean really hit me, was bootcamp." He shakes his head a little at the memory: it's not a good one. He knows, now, that the instructors weren't supposed to hit them. Not like that. But it was necessary, he thinks. "I learned how to take it. That felt - better. And then later, it was proof I could survive. That I wouldn't slow the others down."
She's thought about that a lot, how the things that hurt her most before were the things that helped her live to now; how now, she's found out it's fairly common for someone to assume she had training before she had to face the world without grocery stores or cars or anywhere reliable to live.
"It was one of the few things I could feel good about," she agrees, voice dull. "I wasn't good for a lot, especially early on, but I could suffer better than a lot of people around me. I could take it and get back up. When it felt like no one would ever be happy again, I had that, and it made me feel something like good."
She shakes her head. "It's not a mystery, why it still feels good now. We know, now."
“That counted for a lot,” he agrees softly. Being able to take it, to endure. “Especially at the beginning.”
When the ground was constantly shifting underfoot, the world not yet settled into its new shape. Being able to endure was the same as surviving, as keeping your people going. Nothing mattered more.
“I think it gets twisted sometimes,” he adds, in that same quiet tone. “‘s why it’s harder with people I care about: they know me.”
And isn't caring always the hardest? To experience, to body. To lose. She's not condemning him; she already agreed that she does, or is capable of anyway, something similar.
"I didn't... want anyone to worry. It was just something I needed to do right then, so I could be someone closer to who my people know. I didn't want them to worry, and I didn't... want anyone to be ashamed of me for needing it." His voice is quiet; hers is almost toneless, but she fights through anyway, tries to find the words. Tries to find a bridge to offer, in case he was thinking or feeling the same things, so they can get back on the same side of it. So they won't be alone.
It’s not something Carver talked about back home: it just was. He was part of the command structure, responsible for the others, part of a larger mosaic. He had a part to play and it was his job to ensure that he never slowed the others down, never became a burden to them. Otherwise, their deaths would be his fault—a sin to carry until the end of days.
Their deaths are his fault, Carver knows. He got caught. He got stupid. The only kindness was he didn’t have to live with it for long.
He swallows hard. He would have been crippled if he’d lived: maybe not forever, but for long enough. Out of the fight one way or another, and a burden to the others. Yet another sin.
“I care about you, Rosita,” he says, very quietly.
Wherever her mind was, wherever her thoughts were spinning and trying to get to, he chooses something to say that stops her cold.
It's not that it's a surprise; she knows he does, she's known it for a long time. They're important to each other. They've done things that prove they both know that, they both have shown it. It's easier to shoulder some times than others, for different reasons, but it is true. It's not even the first time they've actually said something along the same lines.
But never so simple, so straightforward - and never in this context. This most shameful corner of who they are, who they had to be to survive to get here, the marks they're left with after. Her hands are still clasped with each other on the counter, and she's not entirely aware of how she digs her thumbnail into her skin when she's not paying attention to it.
Don't say shit you don't mean, she thinks, vicious even to her own mind. Luckily, her throat is too tight to say it, and she breathes in past it, harsh.
"What?" she manages instead, stupidly, the only point at which the questions she has intersect. What does that mean? What does that have to do with what they're talking about? What is she supposed to do with it? What now? What next? What does he want from her in turn?
The problem, Carver thinks, is that he never says this shit at the right time. He blurts things out and then the consequences echo—he should’ve shut up, let the moment breathe until they’re both steadier instead of while they’re still bodying the aftermath. All these things they don’t talk about until they are, and then he adds this to the mix?
It doesn’t matter that it’s true. That’s besides the point. Time and place, Carver thinks quietly, and unhappily. Now look what you did.
He watched how Rosita clasps her hands, how tightly she holds herself. As if braced for impact. Who could blame her, given the givens?
“I just—you were here when I needed it,” he says finally, lowering his gaze. “And I want to be there for you, when you need it. I know I don’t get it right all the time, but I—I just wanted to say that.”
These, she'll think later, are two separate issues; there's the abuse, a word she knows now that she's out of it, past it, more than it, and then there's the loneliness and its attendant grief. They both hurt. They wrap around each other and grow into shapes around one another, become indistinguishable. But they are different.
She was aimed at one, she was ready and willing for the one, but this blindsides her and she's quiet for several long moments, feeling much smaller and weaker than she is. Every time she thinks she's gotten her feet under her for this, got her head on straight, she ends up fucking spun.
She sets it aside. She does her best to set it aside and hear him, hear how it ties in, hear exactly what he means by it and no more and no less.
"I'd... like that," she says finally, softly. Didn't she just say that he tries? He doesn't get it right all the time, but no one does, and he tries and so she tries too: "I care about you, too. I -" She swallows. "I want us both to be alright. I want us both to make it."
To survive in this new way. In this new life that's come after after.
The silence stretches out. Carver doesn’t break it, just holds there and watches Dulcinea as the kitten totters around the kitchen and chases after shadows. She’s fearless and bold. Nothing’s ever hurt her—not yet. Maybe that part comes later. Maybe she ends up just as brittle and mean as him, infected by proximity.
Maybe not, though. That’s the hope, isn’t it?
Carver lifts his head, watching Rosita carefully. “I want that, too,” he admits.
It doesn’t feel like a safe thing to admit, or to want. But he does.
Want is such a strange thing, she thinks; alone it doesn't mean anything at all. But without it, nothing else can mean anything either. Not like this.
It's a spark off a flint, something that goes nowhere and dies immediately without anything of substance to catch on to grow into a proper fire - but without it, everything else is just a stack of wood and lint, is only what it always was. So tiny, so negligible, but so vital.
She huffs a sound that isn't quite a laugh at the realization, wry and self-deprecating; she has never wanted to live a life completely devoid of passion. It was how she justified a lot of her early decisions, her early mistakes. And now it's... whatever this is.
"You were there," she tries to explain. "After the pit. I needed someone then, someone - exactly like we said." That she didn't know, that might hurt her and she could hurt back and they could just go on their way after. "And the next time you... weren't an option."
He was part of it, and she was half out of her mind, barely herself at all. Feral and rabid and willing to make others bleed for the mistake of being close enough for her to do it.
“Yeah,” Carver echoes quietly. It’s complicated and he can’t make it simple—he doesn’t think anyone can. But they’re both here, watching each other, speaking quietly and trying.
He’s quiet again. Then:
“Sometimes I feel like I’m getting better. Doing things a new way, a better way. And then sometimes I snap right back to how things were back home, how I was back home.”
He thinks she knows what that’s like. Getting stuck in the wake of old, battle-won reflex.
“But, I asked you to come and you came. It helped.”
Half the battle is showing up; they used to live in a world where that was true. It's the best thing she can promise, sometimes, here. She won't always know what to do. She won't always be able to change anything. But she will show the fuck up.
She forces herself to relax her grip on herself, one finger at a time, looking at the crescent mark pressed into her skin. She didn't draw blood, but she could have; the depression stays.
"It took us years to become who we were back home, and we had to. It's only been a year here -" For her anyway. She glances up, knowing he was here first, but not much longer. Not like Vrenille, who was here at the start, years ago. "- and we don't have that pressure. It makes sense that it's hard. I do it, too."
These things take time, Carver knows. It took time to become what they were, and so it follows that the shift here will take time in turn. An evolution. You begin as one thing, then you become another in starts and stops. And then maybe the pieces of themselves they thought were dead get a chance to breathe again.
Carver watches Rosita for a moment, then nods. And then he takes a risk and steps closer, reaches out a hand to touch her arm. Every motion telegraphed, in case it isn't okay. In case it's too much.
"But we are different. I used to think people just got worse, that there was no fighting that. But we're different now, both of us. That's something, isn't it?"
The moment he moves, she's watching him. Not warily, not with caution or suspicion, but merely watching. And then she realizes he's reaching for her, and she considers bracing.
But they are different. Not worse, maybe not even better, but different. Whatever else she's confused about, whatever else she hasn't decided, what she does know is he won't physically harm her, not intentionally. He reaches, and she shakes her fingers loose of each other on an exhale, turns her palm up towards him.
"Yeah," she agrees, quiet. "Yeah, that's something."
He takes her hand in his. Loosely, still, but he twines their fingers and squeezes her hand briefly. Breathe out, he thinks, and he does. He meets her eyes and nods just once.
"Do you want to lie down?" he asks quietly. "We could just - lie down for a bit. Watch the kitten."
She doesn't particularly, but he does or he wouldn't have asked; wouldn't have suggested it. And she doesn't not want to, does want to be close, does want to do what he wants to do, so she nods.
"Okay." She's full now, anyway, and there's nothing like a good lounge to digest. She curls her fingers around his, squeezes once herself and then pulls their hands off the counter. "Couch? Or bed?"
It's not the sort of closeness he seeks often, that he risks asking out loud. It would have been different back home, with a brother or a sister, but that's not what they are to each other. They understand each other, Carver thinks, but they aren't the same. It's more than not wanting to be alone: he wants to be around Rosita right now, and she agrees quietly, squeezes his fingers just once.
"Okay," he echoes, watching her. After a moment, he kneels down and wiggles his fingers so Dulcinea will come running. "Wherever you want."
She has a room here; she helped Jesus build on an addition to his, but she has a separate bed, one she could take him to if she wanted to, if they did.
She doesn't know what he wants yet, from today, from this place, from her. She knows what she hopes, but she also knows better by now than to even look at that. She knows better than to open that door, so she waits while he collects the kitten, then leads him to the wide, overstuffed sofa.
"It's been a while since you've done my hair," she says when they get there, twisting to look over her shoulder at him.
He cups Dulcinea in his hand and she chews on his fingers with her little needle teeth, purring away. Brave girl, Carver thinks fondly, and he follows Rosita quietly. He smiles when she speaks, though - it has been a while.
She does. It's a little embarrassing, maybe, how much she craves the simple, soft things, even if she never acts on it. Even if when she chooses to ask, it's usually for something that could be cast as practical.
Could be, but isn't. "Mmhmm," she hums, leading him to the couch, glancing at the kitten, before she's reaching to pull her pack over from where she dropped it. There's a comb in the front pocket, always. She pulls it out as she folds down to sit on the floor.
"I'm going to have to cut it again soon, but I wanted to enjoy it long for a bit first."
Carver hums a little, setting Dulcinea down on the couch and then sitting down next to her, holding his hand out for the comb. “It looks good like this. Always does.”
There are practical concerns, always, but sometimes they can enjoy these small indulgences. Feel human for a bit.
She hands it over, and then gives him her back; it's easier this way, she thinks, and while she's not done with what they were talking about before she can let them breathe into this for a while.
"I've always liked it long. Mama used to braid flowers into it for fiestas." She smiles when she says it; it was so long ago, the memories are nothing but fond. "Had a rough few months while I was learning to cut hair myself, but I'm pretty good at it now. I used to do it for a few people back home."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handleyourshit) wrote2032-07-23 01:51 pm
no subject
So she'd just done it and moved on, like so many things she's done over the years. So yes, she gets it. And she gets what he says next even though it hurts a little to hear, watching him, lowering the kitten down to the floor so she can entertain herself without risking falling off the counter.
"Do you feel like it helps?" she asks, earnest. "Or is it just familiar?"
no subject
He watches Rosita. It's a fair question.
"I don't know," he says finally. "I think sometimes it keeps me from getting worse, but that's not the same thing as helping."
CW: abuse mention
"That's how we survived. There's no happy ending, but there's not getting worse. Not doing worse. If that's where you focus, it's doable. If that's where you live, you're still alive." Once you know how that feels, you don't ever forget it, no matter what the current baseline is. No matter if there's no reason to be stuck in survival mode now.
"For me, it hurt at first. It hurt bad." She swallows. "But then it became something else. I can take a punch, and if I can, then it felt better. It felt like I have what it takes and they don't. Now if it happens, it just happens."
cw: abuse mention
They probably would've died when the world ended, he thinks. But they didn't.
"First time someone hit me, I mean really hit me, was bootcamp." He shakes his head a little at the memory: it's not a good one. He knows, now, that the instructors weren't supposed to hit them. Not like that. But it was necessary, he thinks. "I learned how to take it. That felt - better. And then later, it was proof I could survive. That I wouldn't slow the others down."
Re: cw: abuse mention
"It was one of the few things I could feel good about," she agrees, voice dull. "I wasn't good for a lot, especially early on, but I could suffer better than a lot of people around me. I could take it and get back up. When it felt like no one would ever be happy again, I had that, and it made me feel something like good."
She shakes her head. "It's not a mystery, why it still feels good now. We know, now."
no subject
When the ground was constantly shifting underfoot, the world not yet settled into its new shape. Being able to endure was the same as surviving, as keeping your people going. Nothing mattered more.
“I think it gets twisted sometimes,” he adds, in that same quiet tone. “‘s why it’s harder with people I care about: they know me.”
no subject
And isn't caring always the hardest? To experience, to body. To lose. She's not condemning him; she already agreed that she does, or is capable of anyway, something similar.
"I didn't... want anyone to worry. It was just something I needed to do right then, so I could be someone closer to who my people know. I didn't want them to worry, and I didn't... want anyone to be ashamed of me for needing it." His voice is quiet; hers is almost toneless, but she fights through anyway, tries to find the words. Tries to find a bridge to offer, in case he was thinking or feeling the same things, so they can get back on the same side of it. So they won't be alone.
cw: internalized ableism
Their deaths are his fault, Carver knows. He got caught. He got stupid. The only kindness was he didn’t have to live with it for long.
He swallows hard. He would have been crippled if he’d lived: maybe not forever, but for long enough. Out of the fight one way or another, and a burden to the others. Yet another sin.
“I care about you, Rosita,” he says, very quietly.
no subject
It's not that it's a surprise; she knows he does, she's known it for a long time. They're important to each other. They've done things that prove they both know that, they both have shown it. It's easier to shoulder some times than others, for different reasons, but it is true. It's not even the first time they've actually said something along the same lines.
But never so simple, so straightforward - and never in this context. This most shameful corner of who they are, who they had to be to survive to get here, the marks they're left with after. Her hands are still clasped with each other on the counter, and she's not entirely aware of how she digs her thumbnail into her skin when she's not paying attention to it.
Don't say shit you don't mean, she thinks, vicious even to her own mind. Luckily, her throat is too tight to say it, and she breathes in past it, harsh.
"What?" she manages instead, stupidly, the only point at which the questions she has intersect. What does that mean? What does that have to do with what they're talking about? What is she supposed to do with it? What now? What next? What does he want from her in turn?
no subject
It doesn’t matter that it’s true. That’s besides the point. Time and place, Carver thinks quietly, and unhappily. Now look what you did.
He watched how Rosita clasps her hands, how tightly she holds herself. As if braced for impact. Who could blame her, given the givens?
“I just—you were here when I needed it,” he says finally, lowering his gaze. “And I want to be there for you, when you need it. I know I don’t get it right all the time, but I—I just wanted to say that.”
no subject
She was aimed at one, she was ready and willing for the one, but this blindsides her and she's quiet for several long moments, feeling much smaller and weaker than she is. Every time she thinks she's gotten her feet under her for this, got her head on straight, she ends up fucking spun.
She sets it aside. She does her best to set it aside and hear him, hear how it ties in, hear exactly what he means by it and no more and no less.
"I'd... like that," she says finally, softly. Didn't she just say that he tries? He doesn't get it right all the time, but no one does, and he tries and so she tries too: "I care about you, too. I -" She swallows. "I want us both to be alright. I want us both to make it."
To survive in this new way. In this new life that's come after after.
no subject
Maybe not, though. That’s the hope, isn’t it?
Carver lifts his head, watching Rosita carefully. “I want that, too,” he admits.
It doesn’t feel like a safe thing to admit, or to want. But he does.
no subject
It's a spark off a flint, something that goes nowhere and dies immediately without anything of substance to catch on to grow into a proper fire - but without it, everything else is just a stack of wood and lint, is only what it always was. So tiny, so negligible, but so vital.
She huffs a sound that isn't quite a laugh at the realization, wry and self-deprecating; she has never wanted to live a life completely devoid of passion. It was how she justified a lot of her early decisions, her early mistakes. And now it's... whatever this is.
"You were there," she tries to explain. "After the pit. I needed someone then, someone - exactly like we said." That she didn't know, that might hurt her and she could hurt back and they could just go on their way after. "And the next time you... weren't an option."
He was part of it, and she was half out of her mind, barely herself at all. Feral and rabid and willing to make others bleed for the mistake of being close enough for her to do it.
"But since... yeah."
no subject
He’s quiet again. Then:
“Sometimes I feel like I’m getting better. Doing things a new way, a better way. And then sometimes I snap right back to how things were back home, how I was back home.”
He thinks she knows what that’s like. Getting stuck in the wake of old, battle-won reflex.
“But, I asked you to come and you came. It helped.”
no subject
Half the battle is showing up; they used to live in a world where that was true. It's the best thing she can promise, sometimes, here. She won't always know what to do. She won't always be able to change anything. But she will show the fuck up.
She forces herself to relax her grip on herself, one finger at a time, looking at the crescent mark pressed into her skin. She didn't draw blood, but she could have; the depression stays.
"It took us years to become who we were back home, and we had to. It's only been a year here -" For her anyway. She glances up, knowing he was here first, but not much longer. Not like Vrenille, who was here at the start, years ago. "- and we don't have that pressure. It makes sense that it's hard. I do it, too."
no subject
Carver watches Rosita for a moment, then nods. And then he takes a risk and steps closer, reaches out a hand to touch her arm. Every motion telegraphed, in case it isn't okay. In case it's too much.
"But we are different. I used to think people just got worse, that there was no fighting that. But we're different now, both of us. That's something, isn't it?"
no subject
But they are different. Not worse, maybe not even better, but different. Whatever else she's confused about, whatever else she hasn't decided, what she does know is he won't physically harm her, not intentionally. He reaches, and she shakes her fingers loose of each other on an exhale, turns her palm up towards him.
"Yeah," she agrees, quiet. "Yeah, that's something."
no subject
"Do you want to lie down?" he asks quietly. "We could just - lie down for a bit. Watch the kitten."
no subject
"Okay." She's full now, anyway, and there's nothing like a good lounge to digest. She curls her fingers around his, squeezes once herself and then pulls their hands off the counter. "Couch? Or bed?"
no subject
"Okay," he echoes, watching her. After a moment, he kneels down and wiggles his fingers so Dulcinea will come running. "Wherever you want."
no subject
She doesn't know what he wants yet, from today, from this place, from her. She knows what she hopes, but she also knows better by now than to even look at that. She knows better than to open that door, so she waits while he collects the kitten, then leads him to the wide, overstuffed sofa.
"It's been a while since you've done my hair," she says when they get there, twisting to look over her shoulder at him.
no subject
"You want me to?"
He'd like that, Carver thinks.
no subject
Could be, but isn't. "Mmhmm," she hums, leading him to the couch, glancing at the kitten, before she's reaching to pull her pack over from where she dropped it. There's a comb in the front pocket, always. She pulls it out as she folds down to sit on the floor.
"I'm going to have to cut it again soon, but I wanted to enjoy it long for a bit first."
no subject
There are practical concerns, always, but sometimes they can enjoy these small indulgences. Feel human for a bit.
no subject
"I've always liked it long. Mama used to braid flowers into it for fiestas." She smiles when she says it; it was so long ago, the memories are nothing but fond. "Had a rough few months while I was learning to cut hair myself, but I'm pretty good at it now. I used to do it for a few people back home."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
Re: CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
Re: CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
Re: CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
Re: CW: domestic abuse
CW: domestic abuse
Re: CW: domestic abuse
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Re: CW: domestic abuse