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abrightboy

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From:

abrightboy

…She showed it to you?

From:

hippie_ninja

I saw it and asked her about it.

From:

abrightboy

She still likes it?

From:

hippie_ninja

Yeah. Yeah, I think she does. It was a good call, Malcolm.

From:

abrightboy

I don’t know a lot about your world except that it doesn’t seem like anyone has relaxed or done anything silly or fun since the world ended. I thought she might like frivolity that gave her something to do with her hands. And produced something.

From:

hippie_ninja

Yeah. You're right. No one in my world has hobbies anymore. No one has time for it. And Rosita--she's good at making things, learning new things.

From:

abrightboy

Well, I’m glad she likes it. It didn’t make her like me more, but that was only a secondary consideration anyway.

I’m glad she didn’t throw it over the side when she found out it was from me.

From:

hippie_ninja

[Rosita's too practical to throw anything away but Jesus hopes she held onto the gift for more reasons than that]

She doesn't hate you. She's...been through a lot. More than I can even say.

From:

abrightboy

I understand that. But hot tip: don't say that to her.

From:

hippie_ninja

[A soft sound that's not quite a laugh] Yeah she's not ready to talk about it. Honestly it took her six years before she'd talk about it with people who were there.

From:

abrightboy

I wasn't asking her to talk about it. I've been working on heeding people's boundaries. But the first time I did that, she accused me of hanging up on her. The second time she told me very explicitly to go annoy someone else, so I did.

From:

hippie_ninja

And you did the right thing. I hope she'll give you--and other people--a chance but it might be a while before she's ready.

From:

abrightboy

Other people?

From:

hippie_ninja

It's not just you she's pushing away. It's not personal at all.

From:

abrightboy

Oh. Well, that's weird, because it usually is. Not sure I know what to do with general misanthropy.

From:

hippie_ninja

Think of her as someone who's been hurt so badly, so recently, that everything reads as pain to her right now. She needs time to grieve and sort it out so she can tell the difference between friend and foe again.

From:

abrightboy

That describes a lot of inmates on arrival.

From:

hippie_ninja

I know. But she's the only one whose trauma I had a hand in.

From:

abrightboy

She can't blame you that much. She still talks to you.

From:

hippie_ninja

Yeah. She does. We have rules back home...you don't blame anyone for someone else's actions. So she doesn't blame me for the war because it was the Saviors who killed our people.

But since coming here, lately, I've just been rethinking all that. It's probably not healthy.

From:

abrightboy

So why do you think the war was your fault?

From:

hippie_ninja

I found out they had an arsenal. Then I brought them back to show them we had food. That's why they killed the Saviors; so my people would give them food.

From:

abrightboy

I hate to bring logic and reason into feelings I know little about, but when you didn’t die in the next five to seven days, they probably would have worked out that you had food without any help.

From:

hippie_ninja

No, I mean my people had food. We had a farm. Alexandria was dangerously low on rations when I found them. They could have fought us for it, but instead they were willing to trade: they'd kill the Saviors who were extorting us, and we'd let them have half of what we'd saved up for winter.

They were keeping me as a prisoner when I made the deal.

Edited Date: 6 Jan 2024 21:16 (UTC)