He actually looks a little more tense when she starts going through his. The start of it: the mad dash from Blackwater up into the mountains. Those horrible, cold weeks there, buried in the snow, hunting for the whole group, unable to mourn the people they lost.
Then his doodles when spring came. Descriptions of Valentine. The night with Lenny, the robberies in town, Hosea's little play with the girls so they could ostensibly get away with it.
Mary.
Fuck. His voice is soft and hoarse when he replies: "I regret a lot of it. I know why I did what I did, and I can't change that. I don't care about-- the damn money we took from types like Leviticus Cornwall, or killing folk that was out to kill us. But I did a lot of harm to a lot of people didn't deserve it."
It's different, over a hundred years away, but it doesn't feel too dissimilar. Tess has been a refugee from societal collapse and a fugitive from justice for over half her life now, and it's strange to think that the life in these pages seems more familiar to her than her own teenaged years. She's lost people. She's got someone she loves and can't really be with either, albeit for wholly different reasons. Hell, she's fallen out of love with people she idealized, people she thought had the right way of things.
Problem was she decided to go all-in instead of get the fuck out.
"Alright," she says, and she hates how unsure she sounds about it. She doesn't actually know who her innocents are. She has never really let herself think about it for longer than minute, here or there.
She swallows a lump in her throat.
"Is that why you're a warden? You set other wayward souls straight, you get your deal, you've paid back what you've done?"
He holds his hand out for the bottle he'd only just passed to her. He needs a fucking drink if he's going to be dealing with all of this honesty.
"Wish I was thinking that selflessly when I came here," he admits to her. He asks her for the journal back, and leafs to a page to which he's stuck a few photographs. He gives it back to her, so she can see one photograph.
"Truth be told, Tess, I was dyin'. The doctor here patched me up, but there was nothing for it back home." He still doesn't sound like he's fully reconciled himself with that fact. He can't dare believe he'll actually have a life after this.
"Things was fallin' apart. Everyone was dead, or had the good sense to run before it got too bad. But there were two people left who had no one else to help 'em. John... John died, right before I got here. That's his wife Abigail, and their little boy Jack. The Pinkertons came and took her, and if I don't get her out alive that little boy's not going to have anyone left in this goddamn world. I came here to get his momma out of jail and give them both a fightin' chance."
She hands the bottle and the journal back to him, and she sits down next to him on the cot. Admittedly, she's tired too. It's been a long couple weeks and nobody really knows enough about that to understand how much she's run herself ragged, and she's feeling raw enough as it is without letting anyone poke at her wounds.
Tess mulls over that picture long and hard. Lots of kids have no one, she reasons. Not your fucking kid, so why care about one little boy?
But she's not that heartless, either. Especially not after what she did to Joel, either.
"You reform me or this little boy grows up without anyone, and you'd be dead too," she says, a little cool, but she's still here, isn't she? "You're in a real shit position."
"Get it?" she finishes. "Yeah. I know. But believe it or not, it is on me. You're lucky you didn't get saddled with some genocidal maniac."
For a fleeting instant, she wishes she was one. It'd be easier. It'd make her feel like less of a joke –– big contraband boss, reduced to some fool who chooses to care now, after she'd already thrown kerosene on the flaming shit-pile that was their world.
"I actually give a shit, I don't do any of this for laughs," she says, and she almost feels like she has to convince herself a little. "I just don't know what I'm supposed to do to be a better person. I don't know what that looks like."
He doesn't bother touching her, clapping a hand onto her back or knocking his knee against hers. Right now, they're not there yet.
"You read my journal. You saw what I did. Murderin', robbin', cheatin'. Somewhere along the line I did something that was good enough to get me here. It ain't a clear path, I am sorry to tell you."
Honestly, the fact that she's saying she gives a shit, that she wants to maybe improve, that's a huge sign for him. But he won't rub it in, make it loom larger than she can take.
For a miserable heartbeat, she's sure she's worse than him. There's something romantic about the Old West, at least. Outlaw cowboys get movies made about them and whatever damage they managed to do with a six-shooter. She is reasonably sure that she's a disease, no better than the fungus that indiscriminately ravaged America and beyond, taking to the wastes of American society to strip it of whatever it had left. And for what? Extra rations? The ability to say she did? Nobody would know her name, anyway. She did it for no fucking reason. None. She doesn't even have the luxury of saying she was raised that way.
She shakes her head, and she leans over to take that folder back. She flips it open and pushes it towards him, a finger over human smuggling.
"You see this? That little girl I smuggled? If I hadn't done that, I don't think I'd be here at all. That's the only good thing I've done in years and I didn't even take it out of kindness, I just sort of... realized it along the way."
"You realized that was the right thing to do, for people that wasn't you. Ain't that how it is?"
He won't try to tell her she's a better person than she thinks she is. She's probably bad, if she's here. She's done a lot, a lot of bad things. But he doesn't care for the framing of that statement.
She shakes her head again, firmer. Her voice comes a little quieter:
"It was just a Hail Mary, Arthur. I knew I only had a couple hours left to live. If I wasn't already completely fucked, I probably wouldn't have done it."
But she's not so sure of that, either. It's difficult to say what she would have thought or done if things were different. It's impossible to comb out whether it was for Ellie or the world at all, or just for her own conscience.
Honestly, he doesn't care, and he shrugs when she says that. "Doesn't matter. Even if you hadn't done it, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I like you, and I think you got what it takes."
“Well, it does matter, and you don’t really know me enough to like me,” she shoots back, and she knows she’s full of shit because she liked him plenty too off just one afternoon of drinking and palling around.
She stands up, just to pace, wounded leg or not. The adrenaline pounding through her has to go somewhere, one way or another.
“What’s the goal, anyway? Not shoot people? How does that make anything right?”
"I only survived there because I did what I did," she retorts. Did what she still does, technically. She sighs hard, trying to stay calm. "I don't get to go back and be some kid's hero. I have no idea where Joel took the kid we were smuggling. I can't exactly catch up and help get her to the Fireflies."
"Sort of," she says. The older ones, anyway. "It was a long fucking day, Arthur. I did a drop, and some assholes jumped me ––" she gestures at her cheek "–– so I went off and dealt with the guy who sent them after me. He'd fucked me over on a deal, alright? Sold my guns to the fucking Fireflies, so I had to take another job for them for an even bigger return. My partner and I had to smuggle this kid out of Boston, but it got bad really fast. We found out she was important. She has the cure to infection."
"You been here a while, though. Gettin' in fights?"
He makes very, very sure not to sound judgmental here. He knows he's got a way of doing that, but look at him- is he the kind of guy to judge someone for fighting?
Tess sighs, and she stops pacing, shifting her weight to one leg. Wouldn't be the first time someone's called her on it, certainly won't be the last.
"Okay, fine, yes," she says. "When I showed up here, bleeding out, another asshole took the opportunity to mug me, so I tracked him down this week. I dealt with it."
Tess can't talk. She's looted plenty of bodies. She might've put the person out of their misery first, though, especially if they were an infection risk.
“Okay, I’ll let you know if that’s ever on the table.”
Killing anyone doesn’t make much sense to her if everyone comes back, anyway, but she doesn’t say that. She mulls it over a minute, though, and then asks:
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Then his doodles when spring came. Descriptions of Valentine. The night with Lenny, the robberies in town, Hosea's little play with the girls so they could ostensibly get away with it.
Mary.
Fuck. His voice is soft and hoarse when he replies: "I regret a lot of it. I know why I did what I did, and I can't change that. I don't care about-- the damn money we took from types like Leviticus Cornwall, or killing folk that was out to kill us. But I did a lot of harm to a lot of people didn't deserve it."
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Problem was she decided to go all-in instead of get the fuck out.
"Alright," she says, and she hates how unsure she sounds about it. She doesn't actually know who her innocents are. She has never really let herself think about it for longer than minute, here or there.
She swallows a lump in her throat.
"Is that why you're a warden? You set other wayward souls straight, you get your deal, you've paid back what you've done?"
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"Wish I was thinking that selflessly when I came here," he admits to her. He asks her for the journal back, and leafs to a page to which he's stuck a few photographs. He gives it back to her, so she can see one photograph.
"Truth be told, Tess, I was dyin'. The doctor here patched me up, but there was nothing for it back home." He still doesn't sound like he's fully reconciled himself with that fact. He can't dare believe he'll actually have a life after this.
"Things was fallin' apart. Everyone was dead, or had the good sense to run before it got too bad. But there were two people left who had no one else to help 'em. John... John died, right before I got here. That's his wife Abigail, and their little boy Jack. The Pinkertons came and took her, and if I don't get her out alive that little boy's not going to have anyone left in this goddamn world. I came here to get his momma out of jail and give them both a fightin' chance."
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Tess mulls over that picture long and hard. Lots of kids have no one, she reasons. Not your fucking kid, so why care about one little boy?
But she's not that heartless, either. Especially not after what she did to Joel, either.
"You reform me or this little boy grows up without anyone, and you'd be dead too," she says, a little cool, but she's still here, isn't she? "You're in a real shit position."
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"It ain't on you. I'm not gonna hold that over your head. But I thought you should know, so you..."
Get why he's here. Why he's participating in this at all, when he's done what he's done and he's here as a warden. He isn't here for himself.
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For a fleeting instant, she wishes she was one. It'd be easier. It'd make her feel like less of a joke –– big contraband boss, reduced to some fool who chooses to care now, after she'd already thrown kerosene on the flaming shit-pile that was their world.
"I actually give a shit, I don't do any of this for laughs," she says, and she almost feels like she has to convince herself a little. "I just don't know what I'm supposed to do to be a better person. I don't know what that looks like."
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"You read my journal. You saw what I did. Murderin', robbin', cheatin'. Somewhere along the line I did something that was good enough to get me here. It ain't a clear path, I am sorry to tell you."
Honestly, the fact that she's saying she gives a shit, that she wants to maybe improve, that's a huge sign for him. But he won't rub it in, make it loom larger than she can take.
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She shakes her head, and she leans over to take that folder back. She flips it open and pushes it towards him, a finger over human smuggling.
"You see this? That little girl I smuggled? If I hadn't done that, I don't think I'd be here at all. That's the only good thing I've done in years and I didn't even take it out of kindness, I just sort of... realized it along the way."
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He won't try to tell her she's a better person than she thinks she is. She's probably bad, if she's here. She's done a lot, a lot of bad things. But he doesn't care for the framing of that statement.
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"It was just a Hail Mary, Arthur. I knew I only had a couple hours left to live. If I wasn't already completely fucked, I probably wouldn't have done it."
But she's not so sure of that, either. It's difficult to say what she would have thought or done if things were different. It's impossible to comb out whether it was for Ellie or the world at all, or just for her own conscience.
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She stands up, just to pace, wounded leg or not. The adrenaline pounding through her has to go somewhere, one way or another.
“What’s the goal, anyway? Not shoot people? How does that make anything right?”
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"Way I understand it, the goal isn't always the same. You gotta go back to your world, you have to be able to survive there."
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"Doing what you did there?"
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He makes very, very sure not to sound judgmental here. He knows he's got a way of doing that, but look at him- is he the kind of guy to judge someone for fighting?
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"Okay, fine, yes," she says. "When I showed up here, bleeding out, another asshole took the opportunity to mug me, so I tracked him down this week. I dealt with it."
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"What asshole was this?"
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"I said I dealt with it, didn't I?"
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“Okay, I’ll let you know if that’s ever on the table.”
Killing anyone doesn’t make much sense to her if everyone comes back, anyway, but she doesn’t say that. She mulls it over a minute, though, and then asks:
“You going to be checking on me every day?”
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He shrugs. "You ain't got a job yet. I was hoping I could talk you into joining me for custodial every other day, but I'm not your daddy."
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