[ Another knock at the door. This time he's outside, once again outfitted in black. Hat on his head. He's more settled than that other man, more deliberate and at ease in himself. His gaze still bright and curious, just colder. His eyes don't light up when he sees her.
He has her maps tucked under one arm. ] You look like shit. [ He says once he's had a good look at her, abandoning all that composure and offering a smile that's broken down the middle. Lapsing back into tenderness, if only for a second. ]
[ She really does look like shit. Hair disheveled, wrapped in a sweater that’s seen much better days, pajama shorts short enough to show off the bright pink and still-healing laceration he’d given her in their last fight. She looks at him, and then at his mouth. For a moment she considers something stupid, but she decides differently. There’s no point. She knows how she is supposed to feel, and that doesn’t need to be tested. ]
Yeah, well, it wasn’t worth it.
[ She steps back to let him in. It’s dangerous, in her mind, but what’s he going to do? Hurt her more?
She turns her back on him to go fetch his knife. ]
[ He wants to pull her close—has anyone done that, is anyone here for her?—but it's easy now to pry out that feeling. Hold it up to the light. Put it aside.
William steps inside, into what feels like her space. Picks out the little changes—the surfaces uncluttered by books, the disassembled drawer on top of the dresser. It seems more than a little unfair for her to put all that effort into sprucing up the barge and wind up in the same crappy room. ] It's my understanding [ wry, accent smoothing the edges of his voice but not, somehow, softening it ] that's not why people do those kinds of things.
I want—I wondered if you'd talk to me about these. [ He takes out the maps, handling them carefully. Raising his eyes to her. She should lie down. ] You can sit down.
[ Much as she'd like to stay on her feet and project some sort of unwavering strength, it's all gone. Just bending to get the knife out from her bedside drawer is enough to make her light-headed, and she doesn't even have the energy to argue that people are selfish, no one does things without some sort of carrot at the end or a whip behind them.
She just fixes him and the papers with a dry look and sits herself down on her bed, setting the knife down next to her. Two weeks ago she wanted him dead for scavenging little scraps of information on her from her own backpack, but maybe it's some sort of consolation that he has something on the real her. The one who breaks things instead of trying to fix them. ]
[ After a moment's pause, he hooks his hat on the bedpost and sits beside her. The knife between them.
He appreciates that. Fitting.
First he unfolds the map sketched on the faded menu of some long-gone cafe. Briefly imagines (he's done it before) its former life listing foods and prices, coffee spilled on it. He touches the description in the lower corner. ] Ellie. [ A look to Tess—quick and unguarded, ready to hold her gaze or not. Then he goes back to spreading the maps over his knees, the QZ and the route to the checkpoint.
[It takes Tess a moment to puzzle over why this matters to him, and she decides she doesn't care –– it's a change of topic, and she'll take it. She breathes a long sigh, one that feels like it's bottoming out her lungs, and she nods, looking over them.]
That's about Ellie, yeah.
So this is where I live. My partner and I are smugglers, we move contraband in and out of the city. Mostly guns, alcohol and drugs, but I do a little bit of everything. I like to have options.
[ She runs over the events of the day in her mind, and she leans over on one hand to study the maps with him. Must be strange, putting together her life from something like this. It's all marked in Joel's neat little block letters, her little remarks in his hand. ]
The day before I got here, the Fireflies hired us. They were desperate and a whole bunch of Fireflies had died already, so I talked my way into a pretty big payout. A big cache of guns in exchange for smuggling the kid.
[Tess pauses and catches his glance, looks at him real hard and feels out his thoughts on smuggling children. It feels right to assure him that she is a bad person, anyway.]
[ He leans toward her, not quite touching. Watching her face, her eyes—wondering what it is that's holding her together, here on the other side. She looks so drawn. Skin and bone all over again.
She might know the look he has when she catches his eye. Thoughtful, abstracted. In the thick of a story. Thinking about what she's telling him now, and Emily, and how despairing Tess had been that day in the library, contemplating a world without Ellie. ]
How do you do it? [ In the practical sense, he means. He's confident she'll take it that way. ] Smuggle a child.
[She does. The corner of her mouth curls, just a touch of wickedness, the mark of a person who takes a measure of pride in her work no matter how unsavory it gets. People can be carried and sold like any other cargo. Sometimes survival calls for it.]
When you smuggle an adult, they might be scared, but they're stronger, and they usually have a hell of a lot more experience and common sense. Kids in my time are tough, but they're still kids. Someone's got to have an eye on them at all times, you have to get them up and over wreckage, you've got to keep them calm. She'd never been outside the walls so there was a lot of learning on the fly.
[A pause.]
My partner doesn't really like working with kids, so managing them falls to me. The girl was good, at least. Did what she was told.
[ Outside the walls. His head tips to the side and he studies the red line on the map. Thinks about it again, living in a world split so cleanly into before and after. Knowing only the after. ]
Hard to imagine you as a calming influence. [ It isn't, though. He'd come home and she'd read what he'd been through on his face, in the set of his shoulders. Would know whether to reach for the bandages or his hand.
And the conversations they'd have into the night. ] When'd you learn her name?
[ Tess gives a sharp little breath out, somewhere between amusement and exhaustion. Not the first time she's heard that, but also not something she believes about herself, either. It's just something kept behind a different kind of wall. ]
Compared to Joel, yeah, sometimes.
[He knows Joel's name, but she regrets saying it anyway. Should just be partner, both indifferent and hierarchical at once. She pushes back an ugly thought and takes the Firefly map up.]
I already knew her name when we got this. We picked this up off a bunch of dead Fireflies; they were supposed to meet us at the Capitol building for the handoff. [ A beat; he'd know it by another name, maybe. ] The Massachusetts State House.
[ He looks up for whatever's left of her expression. What he notices is the forms he takes, how he flows through her talk: Joel past and present tense, partner and proper name. The two of them as a balancing act. ] Never been. [ A smile plays at the corners of his mouth. Doesn't quite take hold. ]
[ Her expression is tight, attempting to be distant about it. Turns out a decade together –– or not together –– doesn't just vanish overnight like it's supposed to.]
I'd been once before, on a field trip.
[ Old presidents had been there, too. Paul fucking Revere did the dome on top, some approximation of a contractor turned American hero. And if she wasn't brought to the Barge, her body would have rotted on the floor, remembered by no one. ]
It was hard but I was happy with it. Even when I realized I was done for, I still thought... as far as last days go, I could say I was at the top of my game. All the pieces fell into place. It was worth it.
No, I mean... [ He ducks his head, hair scattering into his eyes. Brushing up against that other self. A fractional hesitation and he puts out his hand, palm up. Matter of fact. If she takes it—she won't take it—it'll be rough, shaped around the handle of his knife.
He keeps going: ] The weather. How you felt that morning. When did it happen? When did you know, what was the first thing you—your first regret?
[ She watches him with the ghost of a frown; it feels strange, wrapping her head around the thoughts of this person she knows and yet doesn't, and though she impulsively lifts a hand to meet his, she can't. Her hand hovers and then falls. Tess shoves those feelings down like she's clamping the lid down on a boiling pot. If he wants an answer, he can have that instead.]
It was early summer. I woke up alone, and I was used to that, but I hated it anyway. [ No last night with Joel to speak of.] And the next morning, when I still hadn't slept and it had stormed overnight, I felt like I was on top of the world. But when we were cutting through a museum because the road was blocked, the roof collapsed and Ellie and I got split from Joel.
[ She pauses to tense her jaw for an instant, to tamp down some impulse to get upset about it, but she knows it's behind her eyes anyway.]
A Runner got me. I got it off and away before he caught up with me, but... I saw him, and I knew I had to keep it from him to finish the job. I regretted that.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Hahaha. I don’t think it’d fit under the door. Come back and get it, I’ll open up.
[ Not like he hasn’t already seen her vulnerable, anyway. She considers the question and adds: ]
Trying to do the right thing.
no subject
[ Another knock at the door. This time he's outside, once again outfitted in black. Hat on his head. He's more settled than that other man, more deliberate and at ease in himself. His gaze still bright and curious, just colder. His eyes don't light up when he sees her.
He has her maps tucked under one arm. ] You look like shit. [ He says once he's had a good look at her, abandoning all that composure and offering a smile that's broken down the middle. Lapsing back into tenderness, if only for a second. ]
no subject
Yeah, well, it wasn’t worth it.
[ She steps back to let him in. It’s dangerous, in her mind, but what’s he going to do? Hurt her more?
She turns her back on him to go fetch his knife. ]
no subject
William steps inside, into what feels like her space. Picks out the little changes—the surfaces uncluttered by books, the disassembled drawer on top of the dresser. It seems more than a little unfair for her to put all that effort into sprucing up the barge and wind up in the same crappy room. ] It's my understanding [ wry, accent smoothing the edges of his voice but not, somehow, softening it ] that's not why people do those kinds of things.
I want—I wondered if you'd talk to me about these. [ He takes out the maps, handling them carefully. Raising his eyes to her. She should lie down. ] You can sit down.
no subject
She just fixes him and the papers with a dry look and sits herself down on her bed, setting the knife down next to her. Two weeks ago she wanted him dead for scavenging little scraps of information on her from her own backpack, but maybe it's some sort of consolation that he has something on the real her. The one who breaks things instead of trying to fix them. ]
Yeah. Sure. What about them?
no subject
He appreciates that. Fitting.
First he unfolds the map sketched on the faded menu of some long-gone cafe. Briefly imagines (he's done it before) its former life listing foods and prices, coffee spilled on it. He touches the description in the lower corner. ] Ellie. [ A look to Tess—quick and unguarded, ready to hold her gaze or not. Then he goes back to spreading the maps over his knees, the QZ and the route to the checkpoint.
He'd taken care of them. ] Talk me through it?
no subject
That's about Ellie, yeah.
So this is where I live. My partner and I are smugglers, we move contraband in and out of the city. Mostly guns, alcohol and drugs, but I do a little bit of everything. I like to have options.
[ She runs over the events of the day in her mind, and she leans over on one hand to study the maps with him. Must be strange, putting together her life from something like this. It's all marked in Joel's neat little block letters, her little remarks in his hand. ]
The day before I got here, the Fireflies hired us. They were desperate and a whole bunch of Fireflies had died already, so I talked my way into a pretty big payout. A big cache of guns in exchange for smuggling the kid.
[Tess pauses and catches his glance, looks at him real hard and feels out his thoughts on smuggling children. It feels right to assure him that she is a bad person, anyway.]
no subject
She might know the look he has when she catches his eye. Thoughtful, abstracted. In the thick of a story. Thinking about what she's telling him now, and Emily, and how despairing Tess had been that day in the library, contemplating a world without Ellie. ]
How do you do it? [ In the practical sense, he means. He's confident she'll take it that way. ] Smuggle a child.
no subject
When you smuggle an adult, they might be scared, but they're stronger, and they usually have a hell of a lot more experience and common sense. Kids in my time are tough, but they're still kids. Someone's got to have an eye on them at all times, you have to get them up and over wreckage, you've got to keep them calm. She'd never been outside the walls so there was a lot of learning on the fly.
[A pause.]
My partner doesn't really like working with kids, so managing them falls to me. The girl was good, at least. Did what she was told.
no subject
Hard to imagine you as a calming influence. [ It isn't, though. He'd come home and she'd read what he'd been through on his face, in the set of his shoulders. Would know whether to reach for the bandages or his hand.
And the conversations they'd have into the night. ] When'd you learn her name?
no subject
Compared to Joel, yeah, sometimes.
[He knows Joel's name, but she regrets saying it anyway. Should just be partner, both indifferent and hierarchical at once. She pushes back an ugly thought and takes the Firefly map up.]
I already knew her name when we got this. We picked this up off a bunch of dead Fireflies; they were supposed to meet us at the Capitol building for the handoff. [ A beat; he'd know it by another name, maybe. ] The Massachusetts State House.
no subject
What was it like, that day?
no subject
I'd been once before, on a field trip.
[ Old presidents had been there, too. Paul fucking Revere did the dome on top, some approximation of a contractor turned American hero. And if she wasn't brought to the Barge, her body would have rotted on the floor, remembered by no one. ]
It was hard but I was happy with it. Even when I realized I was done for, I still thought... as far as last days go, I could say I was at the top of my game. All the pieces fell into place. It was worth it.
no subject
He keeps going: ] The weather. How you felt that morning. When did it happen? When did you know, what was the first thing you—your first regret?
no subject
It was early summer. I woke up alone, and I was used to that, but I hated it anyway. [ No last night with Joel to speak of.] And the next morning, when I still hadn't slept and it had stormed overnight, I felt like I was on top of the world. But when we were cutting through a museum because the road was blocked, the roof collapsed and Ellie and I got split from Joel.
[ She pauses to tense her jaw for an instant, to tamp down some impulse to get upset about it, but she knows it's behind her eyes anyway.]
A Runner got me. I got it off and away before he caught up with me, but... I saw him, and I knew I had to keep it from him to finish the job. I regretted that.