[ For some reason he's still so damn surprised anyone around here feels compelled to keep talking to him like this. He does know she's kidding, though. Funny how some kind of tone can still come through even messaging like this. ]
Yeah. You'd hate it.
[ Another attempt at a dry joke, sarcasm really. Considering what they went through. She asks a reasonable enough question next, though. He sees it, thinks about it, considers not responding at all. Not for anything personal, not anything about her, it's just — a connection. She's a connection, of some sort. What do. That would be rude, though, and he's not that, even if he's kinda shitty at a lot of things. He was planning on keeping it, maybe selling it; place like this, it'd be real damn handy to have. An hour later — ]
Figured I would. Are you?
[ She asked him first for a reason and he realizes he's turning it back around but it's largely because suddenly he feels like the decision to keep the medicine or not is one of those choices he doesn't trust himself to be good at making. At least, not the right choice. ]
[ he really shouldn't be. she's pretty persistent, and stubborn, which makes a pretty powerful combination when it comes down to getting her point across.
and yeah, she is pretty relieved when he understands her joke and responds in kind. the sarcasm makes her laugh, and there's something fun in the way he doesn't just ignore her, either. but even if she wants to keep texting about nothing at all, the question she asks has her focus. and even if it takes him an hour, or longer, to respond - she's curious to know what he thinks.
are you?
she pockets the phone after that, not even sure of her own answer and a little busy too. so after amos' text, it's another hour before she finally realizes she's been thinking about it the whole time, and should probably stop putting it off. ]
I feel like I should turn it into the hospital or something. But also... I don't know. Do you think the hospitals are even safe? Keeping it is probably a better idea, but it's not like I'd know how to use it.
[ sorry, amos. you didn't ask for karen's existential crisis and yet... here you are. ]
[ He's picking up on that about her, and — someone's gotta be, right? Less of people like him, more of people like her. ]
Should do what you feel right about.
[ She feels like she should turn it into the hospital, at first. But the point she adds on, the question about the hospitals being safe, it tells him maybe for her there's not an immediate answer either. He doesn't often get pulled into a conversation like this, at least where his perspective seems to momentarily matter, mostly because he doesn't usually have a good perspective, he thinks. ]
We didn't ask to be here. We don't have a lot, but now we got this medicine. It's ours. Don't even know if I trust it but I figure this place has taken plenty already.
[ On the rare occasion it gives them something, he's holding onto it. If she's questioning the right thing, to him it means she shouldn't rush into doing what she thinks she should. Besides, if she decides to turn it over to a hospital later, least she still has it. He wouldn't judge whatever she does, and while he may be less indecisive, he doesn't have a problem with her thinking it over out loud like this. ]
[ what you feel right about. he says it (types it) like it's easy, and for a brief moment, karen just sort of stares at the words. because that's her problem, isn't it? she doesn't know what she feels right about. there's the 'right thing' in the sense that she knows that hospitals and doctors need to use this, need to have this to use. but also...
amos has a point, though. that they didn't ask to be here. that whatever here has turned out to be, it's something dangerous, and difficult, and violent. her gut asks her what she'll do if someone she knows, the few people she's met so far, needed this medicine, and if the hospital would have it for them. don't even know if i trust it. ]
Yeah- we probably should check it out first, anyway. If it's really what they thought it was. It's just weird that it showed up after everything. I don't remember grabbing it at all. You don't think this place makes a habit of that? Of us coming back with stuff even when we don't mean to?
[ if only she knew what was coming for her in just a few more weeks... ]
I'm thinking you imagine any kind of fucked thing that shouldn't ever happen and there's a good chance it'll happen here.
[ Sorry it's less optimistic, Karen, but he thinks that bit about there's a good chance leaves a little room for — not hope, but...whatever might come. It's not so much that he's a fatalist or a through-and-through cynic. Just a strict realist who doesn't expect much of anything except for life to do what it will. ]
But there's a good chance for a lot of things. Keep it. Think it's safer with you than anywhere else right now. You'll do the right thing with it.
[ This, at least, he feels very sure about. Keeping it isn't inherently selfish. Especially because he imagines at the first sign of someone she knows needing it, she'd give it up. Just seems the type. In a way, he imagines this like her taking care of people, her asking about it all to begin with. ]
And what about those of us with overly active imaginations? There's gotta be a limit somewhere, right?
[ no, it's not very optimistic. honestly, karen't a little concerned about it, too. back home, it was all starting to become real - this concept of other planets, of aliens, of dangers none of them had ever wrapped their head around suddenly at their front door step. karen likes to think of herself as open minded, but even she's had to work to really open her mind to these possibilities, and now this place is asking her to do so much more.
he's not wrong, though. that's the real problem. the longer that karen is here, the more she hears from the people she meets, nothing is too impossible. nothing is too dark.
it's the second text that makes karen pause for a moment, reading those words over a couple of times before deciding how she feels. you'll do the right thing with it. it's got a complicated sort of twist to it, reminds her a little too much of matt asking her why she didn't tell him about westley, about her brother, about how she knows what it means to take a life, and how she'll never be the same after.
amos doesn't see her that way, she doesn't think. doesn't see her in some perfect, innocent way. ]
How do you know? That I'll do the right thing?
[ they met under forced circumstances, in a place where neither of them really had a ton of agency. or much choice. how could he know what she would do, or not do, from that alone? how could he think she's that good? that right? she doesn't want to start feeling defensive, doesn't like how she feels a little like amos doesn't know her at all, but still. ]
[ He's not ignoring that first part for any reason except the second question feels like the sticky one. If he's getting this right. If he did answer, it would amount to, Guess we'll find out.
Instead, he speaks to what she's asked about the right thing. And no, he doesn't imagine her as perfect or innocent. Being good and righteous is never about being perfect. It's just anyone who — most of the time — isn't like him. Isn't shut off from feeling things. Doesn't see killing as just a thing that has to happen sometimes. ]
I'm the last guy you should ask about right and wrong. You fuck up a kid for the fun of it, we'll have an issue. Anything else you do, it's gonna be right because you decided you could live with it. I don't need to know more than that.
[ He doesn't have many hard lines, doesn't work up to caring about much outside of the innocence of kids. The shit he's seen done to them — he won't let that happen if he can help it. Unless he's got Karen completely wrong, he doesn't think that is ever a worry. ]
But you're asking about it and you're thinking about it. And I haven't thought about it at all.
[ Maybe that's not much of an answer to her, but to him — almost anyone thinking about it like this, really wondering if they should do this or that or the other thing, is caring about it on a level that Amos just...can't, and doesn't, about most things. That automatically separates Karen from him in his mind. And the people who are separate from him, they're either good people, people he needs to protect, or people that are some kind of monster even he hasn't become. And who or what Karen is, he just can't see her being that kind of evil. Everything else — well, he has a pretty high tolerance for fucked-up-ness considering. ]
[ that instinct of an answer is closer to what karen is assuming she'll get. there's no way for either of them to really know until the moment happens, and for all that karen wants to think she would do the right thing, but she won't really know until the moment happens.
I'm the last guy you should ask he says, and karen doesn't know how she feels about that. her instinct riles against it, because isn't that the case for him? he went out of his way to save her, is half the reason she made it out of that room, and now? I don't need to know more than that.
it reminds her so much of frank - very suddenly, very overwhelmingly. it's a different kind of moral code, one that maybe isn't always as simple as black and white. right and wrong. ]
You've got a sense of something, I think. If you didn't, I'd still be in that room. It might look different, but it doesn't make it wrong.
[ it both is and isn't an answer. but it does make her consider amos in a new light. it fits in with her impression of him, someone who did what he needed to do to survive. someone who, when presented with the possibility, did do the right thing.
but they also have only met once, and she's not entirely sure if she's prepared to argue with someone like amos about his own morality. yet. and he has given her something to think about. something that takes her a moment before he finally decides what to do. ]
I might keep it for now, and see what happens. But thanks for talking me through it.
Is everything else okay with you? Settling in okay?
[ truth is, that was most of what karen wanted to talk about. but she also cares, and does want to make sure amos has a place to stay, a job, is settling in fine. she's sure he is - he seems like the type to figure these things out.
and she'll keep the small talk going - whether or not amos' responses get even more spread out, and the conversation finally slows to a stop. however it happens, he's not on her 'random texts' list. hope he's excited!!! ]
[ He gets the sense this might become a thing and while he wouldn't know if he's ever been excited about anything, he — doesn't completely mind. It's not that he's never had people ask after him like this, check on him, but someone he's only just met, it's unfamiliar territory, the kind of thing he's not used to. The way she reached out to him to begin with, even. It's a level of caring about others — and showing it — that's foreign to him.
You've got a sense of something.
Any sense she thinks he's got is what he's learned from others. People like her, in fact. But he'll leave that go. ]
Yep. You?
[ Despite how few words that is, when he asks, You? it's not just a formality. He wouldn't bother with this kind of thing just to "be polite" if he didn't give a shit at all. So whatever she might offer up, if she's got a job, or anything else, he'll hear it. ]
ooc; i am pretty good to wrap around here if you are! c: I know we have another thread going, too, but also if you had something else you wanted to do / wanted them to just kinda chit chat for a little bit, I can be UP FOR ANYTHING. I JUST LOVE THEM!!!!
[ oh, it's definitely a thing. the mere fact that she texts to ask him about his day and gets a response makes it a thing. karen doesn't need an entire community, doesn't need thirty or forty people who she is constantly in check with. she does, however, need at least a couple. needs at least one.
amos, however long it takes him, does respond. asks her a question in return, too. and maybe it's a little silly, but this connection, just this text, is suddenly so important to her.
she's only been in the city for a couple of weeks at this point. has only interacted with a handful of people. less of them she's kept contact with. even less who she actually feels the need, the want, to text casually like this. but then again - she just needs someone. so- sorry amos, if that wasn't your intent. but the question opens up a dam. ]
As much as I can, I think. Had someone help me find a motel room- it's nothing fancy, but it doesn't smell too bad. And I managed to get a job at the Pavilion, stocking shelves and checking people out. It's not bad, but I just never thought I'd end up back in retail again.
[ ooc; this could be a good wrap spot but I LOVE THEM TOO and want all the things with them!! this might kickstart him texting her sometimes too :3 ]
Means I'll see you sometime.
[ This might seem non-commital, but in his mind, it's the opposite. 'Sometime' is vague, yeah, but though the city isn't a tiny thing, if she's stocking shelves and checking people out, chances are good they'll bump into each other. More than that, they've established each others' phone numbers, and he's figuring she isn't planning on being shy, so it's almost guaranteed.
He doesn't have a room yet himself, but he tends to stay parked at one of the motels. He'll get a room soon, though, he just doesn't say any of that out loud for no other reason than that how she's doing is more interesting to him.
Mentally, he makes note of what she's telling him; that she's got a room, she's got a job. Objectively, these are good things. Things he wants her to have, in fact, because it means she's got a roof over her head and a way to make money, to get food in her, get the things she needs. A little closer to being okay enough. And that is something he wants — for her to be okay here. ]
[ ooc; I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!! and yes he should text her every now and then. c: ]
Yes it does. :)
[ she doesn't view it as non-committal. if anything, she sees it as almost playful, joking, in a way that she's starting to think is just amos' way of joking. it makes her smile all the same, having his phone number, not being immediately shut out.
at the moment, karen doesn't press. she wants to ask where he's staying, what motel he decided on, what life is like there and where he's settled up, but she knows that might be a lot. it's only been a few days, and she doesn't want to be annoying, and figures this might just be it. little does he know that job she's got will be gone in just a week or so, thanks to the gridlock of the resort, but that's okay too. she bounces back. she'll get a new job.
and, then again, even if worse comes to worse, she'll have amos' number to call, too. and there's comfort in that, too. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Yeah. You'd hate it.
[ Another attempt at a dry joke, sarcasm really. Considering what they went through. She asks a reasonable enough question next, though. He sees it, thinks about it, considers not responding at all. Not for anything personal, not anything about her, it's just — a connection. She's a connection, of some sort.
What do.That would be rude, though, and he's not that, even if he's kinda shitty at a lot of things. He was planning on keeping it, maybe selling it; place like this, it'd be real damn handy to have. An hour later — ]Figured I would. Are you?
[ She asked him first for a reason and he realizes he's turning it back around but it's largely because suddenly he feels like the decision to keep the medicine or not is one of those choices he doesn't trust himself to be good at making. At least, not the right choice. ]
no subject
and yeah, she is pretty relieved when he understands her joke and responds in kind. the sarcasm makes her laugh, and there's something fun in the way he doesn't just ignore her, either. but even if she wants to keep texting about nothing at all, the question she asks has her focus. and even if it takes him an hour, or longer, to respond - she's curious to know what he thinks.
are you?
she pockets the phone after that, not even sure of her own answer and a little busy too. so after amos' text, it's another hour before she finally realizes she's been thinking about it the whole time, and should probably stop putting it off. ]
I feel like I should turn it into the hospital or something.
But also... I don't know. Do you think the hospitals are even safe?
Keeping it is probably a better idea, but it's not like I'd know how to use it.
[ sorry, amos. you didn't ask for karen's existential crisis and yet... here you are. ]
no subject
Should do what you feel right about.
[ She feels like she should turn it into the hospital, at first. But the point she adds on, the question about the hospitals being safe, it tells him maybe for her there's not an immediate answer either. He doesn't often get pulled into a conversation like this, at least where his perspective seems to momentarily matter, mostly because he doesn't usually have a good perspective, he thinks. ]
We didn't ask to be here. We don't have a lot, but now we got this medicine. It's ours. Don't even know if I trust it but I figure this place has taken plenty already.
[ On the rare occasion it gives them something, he's holding onto it. If she's questioning the right thing, to him it means she shouldn't rush into doing what she thinks she should. Besides, if she decides to turn it over to a hospital later, least she still has it. He wouldn't judge whatever she does, and while he may be less indecisive, he doesn't have a problem with her thinking it over out loud like this. ]
no subject
amos has a point, though. that they didn't ask to be here. that whatever here has turned out to be, it's something dangerous, and difficult, and violent. her gut asks her what she'll do if someone she knows, the few people she's met so far, needed this medicine, and if the hospital would have it for them. don't even know if i trust it. ]
Yeah- we probably should check it out first, anyway.
If it's really what they thought it was.
It's just weird that it showed up after everything. I don't remember grabbing it at all.
You don't think this place makes a habit of that?
Of us coming back with stuff even when we don't mean to?
[ if only she knew what was coming for her in just a few more weeks... ]
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[ Sorry it's less optimistic, Karen, but he thinks that bit about there's a good chance leaves a little room for — not hope, but...whatever might come. It's not so much that he's a fatalist or a through-and-through cynic. Just a strict realist who doesn't expect much of anything except for life to do what it will. ]
But there's a good chance for a lot of things. Keep it. Think it's safer with you than anywhere else right now. You'll do the right thing with it.
[ This, at least, he feels very sure about. Keeping it isn't inherently selfish. Especially because he imagines at the first sign of someone she knows needing it, she'd give it up. Just seems the type. In a way, he imagines this like her taking care of people, her asking about it all to begin with. ]
no subject
There's gotta be a limit somewhere, right?
[ no, it's not very optimistic. honestly, karen't a little concerned about it, too. back home, it was all starting to become real - this concept of other planets, of aliens, of dangers none of them had ever wrapped their head around suddenly at their front door step. karen likes to think of herself as open minded, but even she's had to work to really open her mind to these possibilities, and now this place is asking her to do so much more.
he's not wrong, though. that's the real problem. the longer that karen is here, the more she hears from the people she meets, nothing is too impossible. nothing is too dark.
it's the second text that makes karen pause for a moment, reading those words over a couple of times before deciding how she feels. you'll do the right thing with it. it's got a complicated sort of twist to it, reminds her a little too much of matt asking her why she didn't tell him about westley, about her brother, about how she knows what it means to take a life, and how she'll never be the same after.
amos doesn't see her that way, she doesn't think. doesn't see her in some perfect, innocent way. ]
How do you know?
That I'll do the right thing?
[ they met under forced circumstances, in a place where neither of them really had a ton of agency. or much choice. how could he know what she would do, or not do, from that alone? how could he think she's that good? that right? she doesn't want to start feeling defensive, doesn't like how she feels a little like amos doesn't know her at all, but still. ]
no subject
Instead, he speaks to what she's asked about the right thing. And no, he doesn't imagine her as perfect or innocent. Being good and righteous is never about being perfect. It's just anyone who — most of the time — isn't like him. Isn't shut off from feeling things. Doesn't see killing as just a thing that has to happen sometimes. ]
I'm the last guy you should ask about right and wrong.
You fuck up a kid for the fun of it, we'll have an issue. Anything else you do, it's gonna be right because you decided you could live with it. I don't need to know more than that.
[ He doesn't have many hard lines, doesn't work up to caring about much outside of the innocence of kids. The shit he's seen done to them — he won't let that happen if he can help it. Unless he's got Karen completely wrong, he doesn't think that is ever a worry. ]
But you're asking about it and you're thinking about it. And I haven't thought about it at all.
[ Maybe that's not much of an answer to her, but to him — almost anyone thinking about it like this, really wondering if they should do this or that or the other thing, is caring about it on a level that Amos just...can't, and doesn't, about most things. That automatically separates Karen from him in his mind. And the people who are separate from him, they're either good people, people he needs to protect, or people that are some kind of monster even he hasn't become. And who or what Karen is, he just can't see her being that kind of evil. Everything else — well, he has a pretty high tolerance for fucked-up-ness considering. ]
no subject
I'm the last guy you should ask he says, and karen doesn't know how she feels about that. her instinct riles against it, because isn't that the case for him? he went out of his way to save her, is half the reason she made it out of that room, and now? I don't need to know more than that.
it reminds her so much of frank - very suddenly, very overwhelmingly. it's a different kind of moral code, one that maybe isn't always as simple as black and white. right and wrong. ]
You've got a sense of something, I think.
If you didn't, I'd still be in that room.
It might look different, but it doesn't make it wrong.
[ it both is and isn't an answer. but it does make her consider amos in a new light. it fits in with her impression of him, someone who did what he needed to do to survive. someone who, when presented with the possibility, did do the right thing.
but they also have only met once, and she's not entirely sure if she's prepared to argue with someone like amos about his own morality. yet. and he has given her something to think about. something that takes her a moment before he finally decides what to do. ]
I might keep it for now, and see what happens.
But thanks for talking me through it.
Is everything else okay with you?
Settling in okay?
[ truth is, that was most of what karen wanted to talk about. but she also cares, and does want to make sure amos has a place to stay, a job, is settling in fine. she's sure he is - he seems like the type to figure these things out.
and she'll keep the small talk going - whether or not amos' responses get even more spread out, and the conversation finally slows to a stop. however it happens, he's not on her 'random texts' list. hope he's excited!!! ]
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You've got a sense of something.
Any sense she thinks he's got is what he's learned from others. People like her, in fact. But he'll leave that go. ]
Yep. You?
[ Despite how few words that is, when he asks, You? it's not just a formality. He wouldn't bother with this kind of thing just to "be polite" if he didn't give a shit at all. So whatever she might offer up, if she's got a job, or anything else, he'll hear it. ]
no subject
[ oh, it's definitely a thing. the mere fact that she texts to ask him about his day and gets a response makes it a thing. karen doesn't need an entire community, doesn't need thirty or forty people who she is constantly in check with. she does, however, need at least a couple. needs at least one.
amos, however long it takes him, does respond. asks her a question in return, too. and maybe it's a little silly, but this connection, just this text, is suddenly so important to her.
she's only been in the city for a couple of weeks at this point. has only interacted with a handful of people. less of them she's kept contact with. even less who she actually feels the need, the want, to text casually like this. but then again - she just needs someone. so- sorry amos, if that wasn't your intent. but the question opens up a dam. ]
As much as I can, I think.
Had someone help me find a motel room- it's nothing fancy, but it doesn't smell too bad.
And I managed to get a job at the Pavilion, stocking shelves and checking people out.
It's not bad, but I just never thought I'd end up back in retail again.
no subject
Means I'll see you sometime.
[ This might seem non-commital, but in his mind, it's the opposite. 'Sometime' is vague, yeah, but though the city isn't a tiny thing, if she's stocking shelves and checking people out, chances are good they'll bump into each other. More than that, they've established each others' phone numbers, and he's figuring she isn't planning on being shy, so it's almost guaranteed.
He doesn't have a room yet himself, but he tends to stay parked at one of the motels. He'll get a room soon, though, he just doesn't say any of that out loud for no other reason than that how she's doing is more interesting to him.
Mentally, he makes note of what she's telling him; that she's got a room, she's got a job. Objectively, these are good things. Things he wants her to have, in fact, because it means she's got a roof over her head and a way to make money, to get food in her, get the things she needs. A little closer to being okay enough. And that is something he wants — for her to be okay here. ]
🎀
Yes it does. :)
[ she doesn't view it as non-committal. if anything, she sees it as almost playful, joking, in a way that she's starting to think is just amos' way of joking. it makes her smile all the same, having his phone number, not being immediately shut out.
at the moment, karen doesn't press. she wants to ask where he's staying, what motel he decided on, what life is like there and where he's settled up, but she knows that might be a lot. it's only been a few days, and she doesn't want to be annoying, and figures this might just be it. little does he know that job she's got will be gone in just a week or so, thanks to the gridlock of the resort, but that's okay too. she bounces back. she'll get a new job.
and, then again, even if worse comes to worse, she'll have amos' number to call, too. and there's comfort in that, too. ]