handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

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

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"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?"

"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."

"...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."

"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."

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

"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?"

"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."

"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."

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.

"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.

"Yeah. I am."

They seem to keep having this conversation or variations on it, and every time she really thinks she's doing okay, or doing better, or at least knows what to do to be better - and then something else happens.

Her brow furrows for a moment, and she opens her mouth to say something but then doesn't. She shakes her head.

"Did you see any weird lights while you were looting?"

"Yeah. Did you? Did you follow one?" He knows where they lead people. He knows about the beach.

"I saw a lot of them. I... Didn't follow them."

It was close, but she didn't follow any.

"Did they make you feel... Off? Too?"

"Yeah. As a rule following strange lights is a bad idea so I didn't either. But I followed someone who was. They ended up at the beach. It was bad." For most people it would be bad. "They made confessions."

"I mean, I know better normally, but these were..."

She shakes her head. Doesn't matter, didn't happen.

"That's all?"

"One person drowned." Jesus couldn't do anything about it, and he hates that. But he wasn't going to get dragged in himself. "Because he wouldn't."

She nods, slowly. Thoughtful.

It was a close call, but she can live with that.

"They were following the water at Creekside. Then I was looking for Caden, and we saw some after I found him. He kept me from following it."

"What made you want to follow it?" He can picture her out at the beach. He can picture her screaming out her confessions, each one torn from her by necessity.

"I thought - I thought it would feel better, if I did. It made me feel worse. Every stupid, emotional, shitty thought I've ever had, all the things I did back home. It dug them up, then it felt like a promise that I'd feel better if I went with them."

But Rosita is practical to the bone. She knows there's no easy answer for all the shit that lives in her head.

It had started to do that to him. He ran. But he runs; Rosita fights.

"How did Caden stop you?"

"He grabbed hold of me, and wouldn't let me get any closer. That last time, in the city when I was already wound up, I had to close my eyes to stop looking at them and he lead me away from them."

Maybe he saved her. Maybe she would have snapped out of it herself like she did the other times, but maybe not.

"I'm glad," he says softly. No one should be forced to dig those things up.

"I like him. He doesn't want me to, but I do. I'm not surprised you're getting through to him."

"He asked me to sign a contract with him."

She's not surprised by anything Jesus says, so she goes ahead and offers that.

"Sought me out and said I was the only Dominant here he could stand the thought of trying with."

That surprises him so much he actually laughs. "He did?"

This is a victory. "No one can resist you, Rosita. Every gay man in the city is safe with you."