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[stand_unshaken]

 

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[stand_unshaken]

"You're number one," he repeats, not for the first time. "Good."

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess nods, and lets silence hang there for a beat. Much as she’d rather talk about this than the bullshit she’s been up to, it feels hideous to stew on it, drinking coffee like it’s an average hangout. She purses her lips.

“Not always fun for you, though, when I think about me first.”

[stand_unshaken]

"That depends on the way you're puttin' yourself first," he points out. "You're workin' on the future, or just messing around in the present?"

[dog_eat_dog]

"The present is all that really matters," she replies. It's all fine to talk about the future in the abstract, where she'll go, what she'll do, but it feels about as real as chatting with Joel about an imaginary vacation. "And I know how petty that is."

[stand_unshaken]

"Don't know that it's petty. You live from day to day long enough, maybe you stop being able to imagine things like that. The future is for other people."

He looks into his coffee and takes a sip.

"But it ain't. The present matters, but so does the future."

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess grimaces. It is for other people.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that," she replies. "I could plan for the future all I want, it doesn't do anything to get me there if I've got no control over what happens in the middle."

[stand_unshaken]

He shakes his head. "You know I understand that. Planning big, and keep getting blindsided by Pinkertons, or the weather, or other people fucking up. I always wondered if it was just the magnitude of the plans, gettin' in the way of things."

[dog_eat_dog]

"I know," she replies. "But I'm just getting by with what I need, and getting blindsided just happens sometimes. As long as you get out alive, you can put the rest behind you.""

[stand_unshaken]

"I always thought like that," he agrees. "From when I was a kid, duckin' out underneath my daddy's fists. You know when it changed?"

[dog_eat_dog]

"No," she replies. She can't imagine growing up dodging violence and ever changing that –– every child she's encountered since the outbreak has only been worse for it, far more miserable than any kid she'd known growing up. Something like that seems set in stone. "When?"

[stand_unshaken]

"When that doctor told me I had tuberculosis. That I oughta find somewhere warm and nice to convalesce. When I figured out I was gonna die."

He leans forward, cup of coffee totally forgotten.

"I couldn't look back, and I couldn't look forward, until I thought I was no longer going to be a part of the world."

[dog_eat_dog]

Tess just watches him, mulling that over.

"And you're still barely planning for your own future," she points out. "Just other people's. Abigail's. Jack's, John's. Mine."

[stand_unshaken]

It catches him off-guard. He thought he had been planning for the future, despite their jokes about the subject earlier. Planning John's future - thinking about Tess' - isn't that good enough?

He falters a little and nudges his coffee cup, for the pleasure of watching the black liquid ripple. "I... I know what I want. What I like doin', in life."

[dog_eat_dog]

"Yeah, and I'm sure you could survive as some wilderness man, hunting to eat and trading whenever you need a new pair of jeans," she replies. God knows people still live that way in her time. "But I know what I like to do, too. That's not the same as planning for the future."

[stand_unshaken]

He grimaces, aware she's right. "I don't think I can keep on goin' travellin' every which way. But settling ain't too easy, neither."

[dog_eat_dog]

"Not enough people around, too many people around," she replies, nodding. "Hard balance to strike."

[stand_unshaken]

"I ain't that much of a loner that I could be happy all on my own," he agrees. "Besides. I won't away from all the danger, not closer to it."

[dog_eat_dog]

“Probably for the better,” she replies, but there’s something frustrating about that too: “You spent your entire life getting good at surviving, at dealing with that danger, for what? To start all over?”

[stand_unshaken]

"Maybe for the pleasure of peace, once the danger's passed."

He shakes his head and shrugs. "But maybe there ain't no rhyme or reason. It just happens, right?"

[dog_eat_dog]

“Everything just happens,” she replies. Breaking into Yunlan’s place had felt that way too, like an impulse she’d spared mere seconds of thought justifying. Violence feels like pleasure when it carries you through another day. “I don’t think I can do peace.”

[stand_unshaken]

"You coulda done peace, here, and you ain't doin' it."

So. Why?

[dog_eat_dog]

That cuts deep.

"Kind of hard to turn the other cheek when other people are into an eye for an eye," she replies. "And I think I've been a whole lot more peaceful than I could be. A couple scraps in seven months isn't much."

[stand_unshaken]

"I ain't tellin' you it's not peaceful enough," he points out, seeing the way she'd flinched. "I'm fucking shocked I made it this long without getting in any real fights, and sometimes that's just 'cause I don't wanna get demoted."

Which is a terrible fucking reason not to shoot a man, but he knows where he came from.

"There's always gonna be people out there wantin' something from you that you ain't willin' to give."

[dog_eat_dog]

She wonders if getting demoted would even deter her, if going back to her world to die feels like a struggle. It says wonders for his self-control just the same.

"And I'm supposed to just ignore it when guys like Yunlan or William push my buttons, disrespect me?" She shrugs one shoulder. "I don't like getting messed up but sometimes there's no other way out."

[stand_unshaken]

He shakes his head. "No, that's... that's a fine line. Difficult to really make a good call about this. I try not to get in a position where my buttons can get pushed," is the best he can do.