handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

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

They don’t speak as they walk. Carver shoulders the pack and breathes cool, clear air, and he thinks about how he carries Dulcinea in his pocket and how he used to carry Matthew on his back. When the weight felt like something he could always bear no matter how long they marched or how hard things got.

It changed somewhere in the middle, Carver thinks. He’s so tired, now. But he can’t ever say that so he doesn’t, he just follows alongside Rosita and marks the traps she shows him, the toll of survival and all the work it took to build this place into something worth having, worth fighting for. He was offered a room here once, but—

Yeah. He got tired that time too, didn’t he?

Carver just exhales. “I’ll take the one I picked.”

There are implications to that, things they aren’t saying and haven’t played out, but there’s no time. This is just happening, isn’t it?

There are implications, things they aren't saying, things Rosita has been specifically avoiding and still would be if things were different. But they're not different, there's a pronounced need now, and that means none of the rest matters. Get everyone through alive, and triage afterwards. Right now it only means what it means.

Later, well. Later is later.

"Alright," she agrees, and leads the way up the staircase.

The door to the room he chose is still closed, but when Rosita opens it and steps through it's obvious there's been work done. Debris cleared out, and the old drywall and insulation pulled down so she could get to the wiring and the plumbing, but she's also put a few things in here as well. There are a couple books on the windowsill, and where the wall needs to put back together properly there is the framework for shelves. Appropriately sized for books, but there's nothing there, just space or something could be.

There's a mattress in plastic up against the wall, and a desk that she found in another room and moved here at some point. The light turns on when she flips the switch, and the glass in the window is intact now.

She presses her lips together, and looks over at him.

"We'll move some vent covers from other rooms and make sure dulcinea can't get into them," she offers, setting the pack she has down. "I'll go get some tools."

Let him get settled without her staring at him. She didn't want to do this this way, but now there's no time.

The room looks different since the last time he was in here. More settled, the place coming together. There are books on the windowsill. Space for shelving. A desk, and a mattress. Electricity. Space that no one has taken over, or claimed for their own.

Carver scrubs at his face and sets the pack down. It's hard to focus. He ought to secure the area, make sure he knows where everything is, all the angles. Plan out where he wants to lay his own traps. Bells, at least, in case the dead get past the perimeter.

He sits down on the floor and lets the kitten out, watching as she totters around the room, mewing and exploring everything. She hops onto the desk to tap the books delicately with her paw, tail raised high like a banner. Carver leans his head against the wall, watching her. He'll hide weapons in these walls, he thinks. Show Rosita and Paul where they are in case things go bad. Just in case. They can secure this place, he thinks. They could hold it.

Dulcinea squeaks. Then, to Carver's surprise, she comes back and jumps onto his shoulder. Sticking close this time.

He's there when Rosita comes back, staring at nothing, the kitten chewing on his hair. "You can put me to work," he says softly. "I'll be steadier tomorrow."

It takes her a minute to come back. In part this is because of the work it takes to pry up some vent covers from other rooms that she anticipated being a higher priority for habitation than this one. In part, she just wants to give him some time to settle, and herself sometime to put her game face back on. To think about what it really means that Carver is staying here, at least for the time being.

Most of it is practical. She has a list of things that need done in the back of her head, but not everything on it is suitable for everyone she has available to her. Caden has construction skills, but his paranoia isn't the useful kind. Carver has practical experience, but not only is he spun, but he may be gone in the morning.

So she not as she drops her tool belts and the metal vent covers to the floor and crouches to start fitting it.

"I will. There's plenty still to do, and I don't have as much time as I'd like. Magpie lives in the room downstairs, and he doesn't like anyone even down that hallway, but you can go anywhere else. This is the only room I can promise is secure for the kitten." Practical things. House rules. She doesn't have many, and he'll follow most of them because they're cut from the same trauma, but she says them anyway.

"Guest shower is next door. I don't use that one, so let the water run a bit, but everything should work. I'll throw some extra sleeping bags on this mattress, and we'll figure out what else we need to get. We'll see how you feel in the morning, and go from there."

Back home, Leah or Pope would've put him to work hours ago. Kept him too busy to think, or ran him through enough training to knock the disruptive thoughts right out of his skull. Leave nothing but dead sleep in its wake. He understands the reasons. Part of him wants that - something brutal to focus on, nothing but work and practical things.

The rest of him is tired, and the thought of it is aches at his soul. It never ends, does it?

He rests his head against the wall, watching her, and nods just once. They'll have to talk about this, he knows, because he can't stay here for long without the city coming sniffing around to have a say about it. He's got no contract now and there's a line tattooed on his throat: there are consequences to that, always. And if he's not careful, he'll bring them down on everyone in proximity, not just himself.

Maybe he should just fuck off and live in the woods for a while. Simpler for everyone.

"I'll make food for everyone in the morning," he promises softly. He'll earn his keep at least for the night.

Aside from the interpersonal difficulties of Carver being here, of circumstances forcing something she had been hoping would someday be a choice, Rosita hasn't completely forgotten the rules of the city. She's already considering how to get around them, and where her responsibilities lie: the two contract partners she already has, that she has promised protection both aloud and by signing a piece of paper with them, or a man she shares separate but overlapping, life changing trauma with, who she considers one of her people regardless of law or social status? Who has rejected how she's chosen to oppose the city before already, and may well again?

The answer is nothing like simple, and she doesn't have one yet. They have a maximum of three days before she has to have one, and she will; if this is when she has to show her teeth, has to fight, then she will - but that's not a clean, solid answer. That's what's going to keep her up all night, so she focuses on hammering and screwing the vent cover into place, which doesn't take nearly long enough before she's done, before she's standing to pull the mattress down from where it's just been leaned against the wall.

"I need some help anchoring the generator, too. And I want to put up a shed out on the south property line, so I need to get the framework together for that and sort through scrap to see what I have and what I need to find still." She glances over. She knows about staying busy. She's never really stopped since coming here, not for longer than a few hours at a time.

It doesn't heal anything. It just changes the threshold over time. He should have the option, especially since he told her he wanted it back when she asked him to fight.

"There's plenty to do. Food's a good start."

There’s always work. Survival doesn’t come from nothing and they know better than most what it costs just to endure even without the dead clawing at the threshold. The sheer, endless hours of it: getting clean water, gathering and preparing food, making sure there’s a shelter warm enough to keep everyone alive. Duplicity tries to catch them with softness, with ease and luxury, but it’s a trap baited too obviously: he and Rosita will never be caught in it. Not like this.

Carver just nods, scrubbing at his face again. There’s no room for laziness. Everyone has to do their part, pull their weight. “I’ll help you,” he agrees softly. “Whatever needs to be done.”

However this shakes out, he won’t be a burden to her.

"I know," she says, and lets that be enough for now. Which just leaves what to do next, what to do now. She knows what she'd be doing. She knows exactly what she'd be doing to glue the pieces of herself back together and keep moving, absent an enemy to bloody, a threat to put down.

She moves over in front of where he's sitting, and folds down to join him, facing him. She drapes her arms across her lap and, one by one, pulls her gloves off. She sets them on the floor by her knee and leaves her hands, bare and empty, between them.

"It's gonna be okay," she says, softly. Promises. It's thin, and weak in its lack of detail or likelihood, but she says it all the same. They've survived loss before, and they know that's what this is. It's going to be okay - or it won't. One option gives them power while the other takes it, and it's not much but she offers it and she offers the upturned palms of her hands.

For a moment, Carver just watched her as Rosita settles next to him. As she strips her gloves off and offers out her hands—nothing but scars and bare skin, no armor to shield the delicate joints. Dulcinea squeaks and bats at Carver’s cheek, wanting to play or maybe just get a reaction, any reaction, and Carver wishes distantly that he felt something more than empty right now. Maybe in time, maybe not. He thinks people hit a wall eventually: when the losses stack too high to bear. Maybe this is finally his, after years and years of fighting wars for Pope.

He breathes out. Then, slowly, he strips his gloves off. Right, then left. He sets the gloves aside, the armor he’s carried for years upon years like an extension of himself. And then he takes her hands in his, smoothing his thumb along the ridge of her knuckles. It’s gonna be okay, she says, and maybe one day he’ll believe that.

In this place, at least, they aren’t dead.

Carver closes his eyes. He doesn’t have conversation in him right now, but he holds her hands in his, and breathes out.

Rosita doesn't have anymore conversation in her, either; if their positions were reversed, she wouldn't believe herself either. She wouldn't believe anything could be okay on a long enough timeline. She, in fact, doesn't.

But he takes his gloves off, and he takes her hands, and it's what she has to offer: skin to skin contact, warm and living, present. She lets him hold onto her, her fingertips resting lightly on the backs of his hands where they curl over. And when he closes his eyes, she leans forward - she pulls him forward, not insistently, but encouragingly - to set her head against his.

He can lean on her for a while. He can take what he needs, even if it's just air in and out of his lungs.