handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

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

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"I didn't lie!" she laughs.

"I asked you a question and I insinuated." She snatches the brush, craning her neck to look over the paints.

"And I could probably manage a happy little tree. Or at least a tree. I don't know what makes them happy."

"Why wouldn't a tree be happy?" He reasons. He sets out the papers on the counter and lays out the paints.

"Imagine all the things they see that they don't have to worry about. Until we get vegetarian walkers, they're safe."

"Until someone comes along to chop them down for a house," she points out, smirking.

She also dips a finger into one of the pots of paint - yellow - and then boops him on the nose with it.

"You've been hanging out with K and Vrenille too much. Trees don't see anything."

"They might like music," he says. "There were studies done in the old world. And I made the mistake of telling K that, so if he ever accepts having his own apartment again I'm sure it'll be full of music and plants again."

She wipes her finger off on a rag, and smirks.

"Is that why he asked me what the big oak tree's name is?"

He laughs but it's that soft, hopelessly charmed laugh he has about K specifically. He grabs a rag and wipes his nose off. "He did not."

"He did," she assures him, smirking.

"I told him I hadn't named it, and he asked if I minded if he did. So. I guess you should ask him what its name is."

"I will." How can he not? He loves the way K sees the world.

He peers out the window, looking for the big old oak tree in question.

"You know you can't cut it down now."

"I wasn't going to. It's my favorite fishing spot."

Which is true, although they both know that if there comes a point in the future that it needs to go, well.

"He's nice. Weird, but nice."

"You like most of the guys I'm seeing. That's actually a relief. I'm afraid of what'll happen when I bring one home you hate." Which could happen. Jesus trusts so much more readily than she does.

"From your track record so far, I'm going to assume that you won't let me," she huffs at him. She didn't like any of them at first. She doesn't like anyone at first.

"But probably stab him."

"Try not to," he says, dry, with a little twist of a smile.

And, more carefully, "What do you think of Midnighter?"

"Hey, I can't help it. Instincts are instincts."

She has not stabbed anyone she hasn't meant to, as far as anyone here knows.

"Haven't talked to him."

That's a neutral assessment. That's good.

"You should. I'm going to be helping him run the Submissives resource center. And he lost Scott so...I think he's going to be at Broken Hollow more often."

She blinks.

"I didn't know Scott was gone." She eyes him a bit more closely, because she knows that he was closer to the man than she was - not that it's hard.

He cracks under her scrutiny. "I miss him," he admits, but it's not all out heartache he's expressing. He's lost too many people to fall apart now.

"I'm going to help Midnighter run the resource center. We'll keep that going. Scott would want that."

Something in her expression softens, too. They lose over and over and over again but it still hurts. It just can't become crippling again.

"I volunteered a bit there when I got here. Now I don't think you'd want me around, probably."

"People might not want a SIN guard around but I could use Rosita Espinosa's ideas," he says, shaking his head.

"Those are yours whenever you want - just try to stop me." As if anyone could.

She picks up her pencil again, and starts sketching on the paper she's supposed to be painting on.

"What's the problem?"

"I don't know how to run it and neither does M. We're both sort of waiting for someone to tell us what to do with it only I don't know if he'll accept anyone else taking charge. Maybe me, but..." He doesn't want to be in charge.

"It'll be okay. I know mostly what Scott intended with it."

"What do you mean, you don't know how to run it?" she echoes, not derogatory, but confused.

"It's just like a community. Bring resources in, inventory them, distribute them back out."

He sighs, fondly. "You make it sound so easy. You and Maggie and Rick always made it look so easy to run things."

He's seen Rosita run training groups.

"I never ran the community," she reminds him. "Just my little piece of it."

Whatever her mission was, whatever she was assigned to, Michonne left her alone to run it and that's how she liked it.

"We'll go by sometime if you want, and I can see if anything jumps out at me."

"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.

"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.