handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

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

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She tried to talk about it. That's unusual for survivors, maybe for Rosita in particular, and he looks at her with a distinct warmth in his smile. "I'm proud of you. How did it go?"

"I still don't like the train." Can confirm.

"And I still don't like crowds." Also can confirm.

"And I didn't try to eat red meat for a week. But he stayed. He said he wanted to be there. And he said - he said he knew he'd fucked up, but he wanted to stay with me."

"He cares a lot about you." He won't spook her by using a certain four letter word, but he's seen the two of them. He's spoken to them about each other, he's seen them together.

"Did you let him stay?"

"I know that," she agrees, because she does. And she cares a lot about him.

But sometimes, that's not enough - this time, though, she nods and sighs.

"I did. I wanted him to, and he did. Told me it was just a bad moment and it would pass."

And it did. She's here, she got through it.

"Do you have moments like that? Where you start to feel that fear?"

"All the time. Usually, I can talk myself out of them. That one -"

She'd told Carver she was afraid that she was getting worse while he and Jesus were getting better. It feels distant now, not so stiflingly powerful as it had then, but she's thought it before in other ways, too.

"We ran into a group of people. They kept us in a train car in the open sun for days, and every now and then they'd come and get someone out, and you could smell meat cooking all the time. They weren't hunting, and those people never came back, but you could smell meat cooking. That's what did it."

He's heard of places like that. He's run across cannibals--not often. But it happens. Not on a scale she's describing, but it doesn't surprise him.

He's Jesus Rovia, though. Even unsurprised it bothers him. He's never become so jaded that he doesn't wince over hearing things like this.

"We need help, Ro."

It took her the better part of an hour to say to Carver what she'd just said to Jesus in four sentences; it had felt like an uphill battle all the way, like holding onto a cliff's edge and feeling her fingers slipping bit by bit every time she gave up a detail.

But now it's what it has been the rest of the time: something that happened, something that's over. She shakes her head as if to clear it, and frowns at him.

"What?"

"We're never going to learn to manage the panic without some kind of guidance. And I had that, a little, with Jean. She's gone. So now I've got...books. I've got the things I learned as a kid. And I don't know if it's enough sometimes." He struggles too, is what he's saying.

He's struggling more than he's let on to her or to anyone else.

"Yeah?"

If she still sounds skeptical, it's because she is. She has no idea how they're supposed to come to terms with bullshit like this, and anyone who's asking her to can get fucked.

Except it's Jesus asking her to. "There a chapter on the cannibalistic, undead end of society as we know it in your books?"

"The brain is sophisticated except where it isn't. Trauma is trauma to the brain. It's worth a shot." He gives her a tiny shrug; he's uncertain. He's afraid. But he's trying. "Some of the things that helped me seem to help Carver. He liked it, anyway."

She gives him a look. Don't try to leverage Carver with her.

But she also sees that timid movement, from a man who is many, many things - some of them at odds with the things she is - he is not timid. Something around her eyes softens.

"What are you worried about?" she asks, not qualitative, but quantitative.

He hesitates, but it's just Rosita. It's safe here. "What if I can't find real help here? It's all so sexualized... I don't want to be this way forever."

"Then we'll make it," she says immediately, firmly. The way they always do if something can't be scavenged: take the pieces they do have, fill in the gaps.

It's what she's best at, although she knows this isn't the same.

"Trained therapists just have access to information. That's the difference. A lot of information, yes, and internship hours and all that, I know. But they started out as people. If we have to figure it out the same way they did, we will."

"When I was a kid, the first time I ran away they had me talk to a therapist. I liked her so much I wanted to be a therapist when I grew up for a while." He laughs softly. "Didn't pan out. But maybe I can learn now. For myself if not for actually doing therapy for other people."

"It's what we do, J," she points out, more gently than she'd said the rest. "If there's no one left to do for us, we do for ourselves."

"Does that mean you're going to help?" Help find the books, if nothing else.

She tips her head, watching him.

"Always. Unless you don't want me to," she answers, "And honestly probably even then too."

Probably even then too earns her a little smile.

"I'm glad. Thank you." He breathes out slow, relaxing slightly. "We're more than the things that went wrong."

"Yeah. We are."

She still has her head tilted, watching him, but she smiles too.

"You would've made a good therapist." She's never been to one herself, but even without the training Jesus manages to get people to trust him, to tell him things. She can only imagine what he would do with a bit more knowledge.

"Tell me some things you've learned. From your book, or from Jean."

"Reframing some things has helped. Finding reasons to be glad I came through something bad. That's...been hard for me. It's harder to reframe parts of my childhood than it is to reframe things I've done since the world fell apart. Maybe because after I was an adult I had choices, and it still feels like I didn't when I was a kid." He shakes his head slightly. It's hard to even talk about being a kid, but he's trying to do it anyway in places where it's safe.

"And breathing. But you know that trick already."

Rosita doesn't believe in this the way Jesus does. It's not the first time this has happened between them, but it is the first time that to her practical mind, there's relatively little on the line. No one dies if they fuck this up, unless they really fuck it up. It's just the two of them, and there's already trust here.

She doesn't believe in it, but he does, and he needs her. She listens, and when he starts to trail off, she folds her hands in her lap where she's cross legged on the counter now.

"I don't know about you, but I would think it's also - for me, just to keep moving forward, I had to write everything before the virus off. It's like it happened to a different person, someone who died with that world. That makes it hard to connect to the things that happened back then, too."

"There were things I kept. I had to." It's a choice, being the way he is. It didn't just happen.

"If I let go of everything about myself I wasn't sure what would be left. I knew I wanted to see the new world that emerged. I knew I wanted to help it be better and to do that I couldn't let go of the things that really mattered to me. But maybe that would have been different if I'd had family. If I'd had anyone counting on me, anyone I was afraid of losing."

"You've always been strong that way," she says, quiet, respectful. She can never trace this piece of him back to its root, partially she knows because it just is him.

"But I mean - I had to make myself believe it was all gone. Every place I'd ever been or lived, every person I'd ever talked to or loved, every goal I'd ever tried for. I had to cut it out and focus on staying alive. I only came back to any of it later."

"And now you're getting some of that back. But you're not who you were when you let it all go." It has to feel on some level like dragging open an old wound.