handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

"I'm trying, too."

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.

"You want me to?"

He'd like that, Carver thinks.

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."

Like before, Carver starts at the bottom and works his way up. Careful of any tangles, to make sure it doesn’t pinch or snag as he works Rosita’s hair smooth. It’s a methodical process and he falls into it easily, readily.

It means something, he knows, that Rosita trusts him at her back. No matter what else is between them, that hasn’t changed.

“I had it long when I was younger. Not as long as yours, but down my back. Cut it off for a long time when I was enlisted.”

For obvious reasons. And then he grew it out because there hadn’t been any reason not to by the end.

“Leah’d cut it sometimes.” He huffs a little. “She wasn’t great at it. I bet yours’d look nice with flowers in it.”

"Mine looks nice however it ends up," she teases, just a little. Vanity doesn't put food in the belly or strengthen a wall so she hasn't prioritized it in a long, long time, certainly not over other things, but a taste of it survived with her.

Anyway: "You'll get to see soon enough." She hasn't forgotten about the only fiesta she cares enough about to try to do something about still; it was small and private last time, and it won't be much bigger this time, but she has a few things in mind. Flowers definitely factor in.

In the meantime, "I could do yours, sometime. If you want."

Day of the Dead is coming up soon, Carver remembers, and he nods slowly. He didn't celebrate last year, not really, not beyond the altar he already set himself to maintaining, but it could be different now. Maybe even something shared.

"Yeah?" He squeezes a hand to her shoulder briefly. "I'd like that."

He would, he realizes. No one's done anything to his hair for a long time.

She's been keeping an eye on it, honestly; it was one of those things back home that always fell by the wayside, but was something simple that could make people feel human again, so she liked doing it. She may not be starting a salon any time soon, but she has some tricks.

And Carver's hair is forgiving, like hers. He certainly doesn't look bad with whatever he's been doing up to now, but she smiles when he accepts. She nods, and focuses on the steady rhythm of his hands, his fingers, in her hair now.

"Then we will sometime. Whenever you like."

He works her hair steadily, getting it smooth, watching how it lays against her back. It's meditative in its way. Something soothing - for both of them, he thinks.

Something human.

"Okay," he agrees, just like that. "I'll come around after work sometime."

She nods, just a bit, not enough to disrupt what he's doing. Her hair is still damp from the shower, but drying the longer he works with it anyway. She likes it. She likes it more than she's willing to say, really, so for a time she doesn't say anything else.

She just lets him work, closing her eyes and leaning into the inside of his knee, listening to him breathe and knowing that for a time anyway, neither of them is hurting. For a time, neither of them will hurt someone else.

That's important, she realizes. Knowing they won't have to hurt someone else any time soon. At least as important as the reverse, not having to brace not to care, or to be put in the position to have to do that to another person. To fight.

She hasn't forgotten where they were before. She's quiet, savoring where they are now for several minutes, but she hasn't forgotten and she doesn't want to just leave it where it was, so eventually she says, quietly, "I was sixteen the first time a boy punched me."

The quiet stretches out as Carver works. Neither of them move to break it and for a little while, things settle back into a rhythm. This is what he wanted, Carver thinks: to feel like a person, to feel safe enough to believe he could have that for a little while without everything going so goddamn wrong.

Then she speaks again, and that’s in the air between them. His hand stills on the comb for a moment before he remembers to breathe and wishes, with a quiet sort of bleakness, that it wasn’t such a familiar story. But that’s the trouble with knowing a person, telling them your truth. You both have to live with the knowing, after, and it has a tendency to go both ways.

He sets the comb aside and begins sectioning her hair into two braids. Not too tight, but careful. Methodical.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he says, very quietly. It shouldn’t have, but the world doesn’t work the way it should. You take what you’re given and you assign meaning to it. You take strength from what you survive because you have to.

That, they have in common.

He goes still behind her, and she realizes she's gone still, too. Her eyes are open again and staring at the wood floor in front of her, studying the fibrous grain of the planks, waiting to find out which way he'll go. Her throat is dry.

His fingers on her hair when he starts moving again are certain and gentle, and she just stops herself from shivering under them.

"I never told anyone," she says a moment later. Clears her throat, says, "Not then or since. I never told anyone." She remembers it so much more clearly than a lot of things from before, though. Than other, worse injuries she's sustained, she remembers the shock and the pain of that punch.

"His name was Luis. I'd left home to move in with him, I had nowhere to go, and it was so - he said he was sorry, afterwards. Said I just made him so mad sometimes, and other people had said that before too, and I was arguing, so yeah. Maybe. And where was I going to go anyway? So I just stayed."

She stayed, because she was young, and stupid, and afraid.

"It was a couple months before it happened again," she continues, quiet. "And a year before he really beat the hell out of me."

Yeah, Carver thinks. He knows pieces of this from his brothers, his sisters. The quiet sort of melancholy in remembering. Pain is a lesson, Pope used to say. Only, sometimes Carver wonders if that's really true. If maybe pain isn't just pain, and then you make something of it in the aftermath.

"I never left," Carver says after a moment, very quietly. "I don't think I ever would have."

There was nothing left. No place for him except in the Reapers. Who else would have him?

He shakes his head, and keeps braiding her hair. Keeping it smooth, and even.

"He only hit me once," Carver adds. Quiet, like before. "Pope. Really hit me, I mean. And the rest was just what we did."

She nods, slowly. Closes her eyes against the heat behind them, grateful that it stops. Grateful that she has somewhere else to aim the things that twist up in her then.

"He had no right," she says, low but sharp edged. Piece of shit. "And it says more about him than you that he would."

He loved us, Carver almost says, he wanted us to live. But the words catch sharp in his throat. He just takes a steadying breath, and lets it go. He focuses on the braids, on getting everything smooth and neat.

"Luis didn't, either," he replies quietly. "No one had any right to do that to you."

It shouldn't have happened. But it did. And he tries to fight back the brittle, hurting part of himself that says it needed to. That it made them strong enough to endure the true test.

"Yeah, well." She didn't believe that then. Not for years, and she's discovered that she still doesn't, not really.

She doesn't have to say it though. He loved me. He wanted to have a family with me. She knows how it goes, how it sounds.

"I think it's bullshit, how easy it is to believe that they made us strong. They didn't. We were already strong, Brandon." It's easier to put strength behind it when it's we, not just I.

He finishes the first braid and lays it down gently against her shoulder, breathing out as he begins the second. Working slow, and steady. It helps, having something to do with his hands. Having something to focus on outside of his own racing, brittle thoughts.

"I want to believe that," Carver replies, quiet and sad. "I'm trying to."

It catches on him, though. All the things they both learned to take that become the things they could survive when the world ended. And that was a skill. That made them valuable, didn't it?

She takes a deep breath, and twists to look up at him when she feels him finish with the first braid. She makes herself look up at him, makes herself say what's easier to believe when she looks at him than when she looks in the mirror.

"No matter how hard you hit it, you can't make aluminum into steel," she points out. "We were already strong."