TLV: IC Contact

[sixfeetofdirt]

Careful; I bite.

Comments

[handleyourshit]

"And don't you forget it," she agrees, smiling again too. She bumps his shoulder again and then goes for her pack.

"I brought pants. If the tear is pretty straightforward I can mostly manage, but this one's not been going well."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Alright. Why don't you set the patient down over there?" he says, gesturing at the worktable where his sewing machine sits. His image in the mirror flickers and fades away.

[handleyourshit]

She glances back at the mirror at the movement, thoughtful, but she keeps moving to do as he says and find a seat.

"Clothes have been less pressing than food. It doesn't go bad, at least, but we'll run out of things to scavenge eventually."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Naturally. And making cotton from scratch is a rather more involved process than growing food, as I understand it."

He sits down on the stool at the worktable, looking at the damage. It's a messy tear, not the kind of split seam that would be an easy fix.

"Mm. Patching this may be our best option."

[handleyourshit]

"I thought you might say that."

She dives back into her pack again, produces another oair of pants of similar fabric, but shredded much worse.

"I brought scraps. And also, someday I still want to learn at least the basics of textile weaving. If we can just get a blueprint..."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"The library here would be able to explain how to build a loom, I'm sure," Astarion suggests. "It's not a skill I'm at all familiar with."

He picks up a sheet of thin paper and folds it into a size that would cover the tear with room to spare.

[handleyourshit]

"It's okay. I'm sure I can find something."

She sets the sacrificial pants beside him, and settles down to watch, paying rapt attention.

"It's part of what pisses me off about this place so much. The things people take for granted, without even thinking about it."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"We have very little but time," Astarion agrees. "I've learned a great deal in my time here. Admittedly, much of that was so I could follow even a basic conversation about Earth's culture, but - still."

He's working as he talks, slowly and deliberately, so that Rosita can watch and take note.

[handleyourshit]

And she does, watching as carefully as though he might be wiring explosives.

"Are you glad you have Gale here at least?"

[sixfeetofdirt]

"...Yes. Though it's a little odd to know he's not quite the Gale I travelled with. Close enough to get along with, though, certainly."

[handleyourshit]

"Still, someone familiar, someone you don't have to explain all the details of your world to," she suggests.

"Jesus is from a few years ahead of me. I get what you mean about the weirdness."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Yes. I'm from ahead of Gale, as well, though it seems our paths have diverged somewhat regardless. He...kept slightly different company to myself."

[handleyourshit]

"The version of me Jesus knows survived the fight where I remember getting shot and coming here."

It's... a problem, though she tries not to let it be.

"Like that you mean? Or something different?"

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Different, I think. There are...divergences in a history we otherwise share, long preceding both his death and mine. Different people, different events, but the same broad arc."

[handleyourshit]

"This place is fucking weird."

She sighs.

"I can't decide if that actually makes it harder to figure things out, or if I'm just... inflexible."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Most people don't have to be 'flexible' enough to deal with a place like this," Astarion observes. "I hear there's such a thing as being so open-minded your brain falls out, and you've a stronger head than that. It's something I admire about you, actually."

[handleyourshit]

"That my brain hasn't fallen out of my head?" she answers, dry.

[sixfeetofdirt]

"That you're practical and thoughtful," Astarion says, just as dry in return. "I - struggle to give much thought to anything beyond the immediate future."

[handleyourshit]

"You seem to be having a better time for all of that."

She's compared him to a cat, but she's the one who's feral and standoffish.

"But I'm not surprised."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"I'm doing fine here," Astarion says mildly, "where all my needs are met and little changes from month to month. I....honestly don't know if I'd last a tenday in a world like yours."

[handleyourshit]

"I wouldn't let you fall," is what she offers, seriously.

"But that's the rub, isn't it? Here is not there, or wherever either of us goes next, or anywhere but here. I have no idea if I should adapt to here, or hold on to what's allowed me to survive out there. I wouldn't know what to tell you even if you were asking."

She reaches to pick up the pants, to study the stitches he's put in and the way the edges match up.

[sixfeetofdirt]

"Can't you do both?" Astarion wonders, as he watches her. "You spent years in that place. The lessons you learned won't be so easily forgotten just because you're taking up some new ones, surely."

[handleyourshit]

"Two," she answers, quietly. It feels like more, but the truth is, "It's been two years since the virus. And the hardest lessons are the ones I'd have to forget about to be happy here."

Always be ready for what you have to be taken from you. Always be ready to be lied to, or stepped on, or traded.

"People are hideous, Astarion. All that keeps most of them in line is the threat of punishment."

[sixfeetofdirt]

"I know," he says - quietly, solemnly. He's seen, and intimately experienced, what even people in a 'civil' society are capable of when that threat of punishment is removed.

"But is that kind of lawless world the one you plan on returning to?"

[handleyourshit]

Having inspected the patch, she turns the garment to another tear and starts setting it up how she remembers him doing.

"I don't know. But even if it isn't, I'm worried I wouldn't be able to stop waiting for the new world to fall, too." That's the price for thinking ahead.