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[]

are you joking

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Elias.

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Roza.

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He's not one of ours. It's just different enough
Don't be mad, OK?

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you think I care if he's different enough? He's like them

don't tell me how to be

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I'm not telling, I'm asking, and you said no. So I won't ask again.
I want something from him, but I don't know what it is.

[ What she wants is to have a little bit of power. A little piece of leverage. It's always this sick stupid story — one where flirtation or even sexuality are things she can use, instead of get used by. So many ostensible femme fatales in the world, but that play has never panned out for her before. The conditions of her existence make it impossible. Nineteen, and telling herself she's the one in control. ]

Don't you ever feel that way?

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that's bullshit

[that she claims she doesn't know or telling him she won't ask again or how she said 'don't be mad' was telling on its own. elias stares at his phone screen and drags his thumb across the keyboard like it'll do the talking for him. he's conflicted.

a boy with a second chance at life does everything he can to survive and in doing so, puts himself in some of the worst situations possible.]

do you want me to lie to you?

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No

[ Succinctly. She knows he can lie like breathing, that's part of surviving, but —

Rightly or wrongly, Roza likes to think he'll do less of it, with her. Not none. But less. ]

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yes I feel that way

cw for oblique abuse references here actually whoops

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[ It's one thing to know it's true in your heart, and another to read its admission. Text makes it permanent. In this capacity especially, she thinks he's stronger than she is. Her breathing catches somewhere underneath her sternum, sticking in a place where she might cry, moisture hot at the corners of her eyes, but she won't. She won't do it.

She just thinks about it for a little while. ]

I'm sorry

[ That this masochistic bent has infected him, too. That he has to know what it's like. That she can't fix it and now they're both unfixable. ]

What do you do for it

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don't

[don't start don't cry don't tell him how sorry you are roza, he's heard it too many times and this time won't change a thing. elias moves forward and forward and barrels through the world without delicacy. torture ends and bruises heal, he'll breathe again on the other side.

roza won't. can't. not how he does. but here she is, searching for answers in the palms of a doctor who won't give them to her. she has a different kind of hurt inside her.]

I drive

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[ She ceases, immediately, all communication about regret, or loss, or change. Zips that up as tightly-wound as it needs to be, as though the near-break had never happened. ]

Yeah
I miss my fucking Jeep

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are you really going to do this?

[he asks, knowing she's made her decision.]

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I think so.
Unless he changes his mind or doesn't show up or something. Then I'd look pretty dumb, right?

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Roza idk how you'd look but it wouldn't be dumb
blessing in disguise or some shit

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Maybe. I don't even know what he wants, really, besides dancing. Last month they put him in one of those cages.
But if he did want something from me

If I gave it to him, would you think less of me?

[ Would you still want to touch me, is what that translates to, in Roza's language, in her framework of acceptance. Would I become contaminated to you, the only person here who was side-by-side with her when they themselves were caged, when only the tundra waited for them outside, even if they had managed to extricate themselves from the SLC. ]

cw more allusions of abuse

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[when she'd visit him during early hours, or when his clock would say 4AM and he'd know it was 2 or 3, he'd look at the round of her shoulder while she spoke. he memorized how her clothes hugged her even when she went walking. when she'd leave, he knew where she went, where mays took her. during lunch, he'd stare at the doors to the hall and grip his fork so tight it would bend. they were flimsy and he was, too. he used to have panic attacks, glued to his seat and unable to move, holding his breath til his lungs burned.

would you think less of me.

elias knew what they did to her and what everyone didn't do a thing about. this conversation opens old wounds and pours pounds of salt in bleeding flesh. he can feel his heart beating quick, thumping all the way up to his throat.]

no

no that's not possible

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[ They weren't people there, much less teenagers and then finally young adults. Their choices and spirits halved and hemmed in by the walls of a greater power — a power supported by the state, and by political institutions, and millions and millions of dollars — they became something else. Only choice makes you real, Roza thinks. Choosing to do something self-destructive is still a decision. Since the day the facility was set on fire, they have become two meteors compelled by the gravity of their own loss, childhoods permanently abbreviated. Their subsequent reconstructions scoring the night sky with their wildness, augmented by the untethered grief that can only be caused by a premature ruination of innocence.

There are pieces of him not quite missing, but concealed. Even now, the SLC robs him of time, of a sense of complete self-ownership. He makes his environment as controlled and comprehensible as possible because there is no knowing when to expect the visiting ghosts of good public policy, as young offenders funneled through a program meant to make palatable citizens out of them, all with no real oversight.

She thinks about the first day she saw him. Curly-tawny hair worn a little bit long, like a halo. Neither of them knowing what would become of them. Neither of them with a god to which they could pray. ]

OK
OK. I needed to know that

[ Because if he'd said yes she'd probably cancel the meet-up, and Elias could have used that leverage. ]

This place is fucked in so many ways, and I'm not glad we got taken by it
But if we have to be taken in the first place, I'm glad we're together for it.
Thanks for letting me be stupid sometimes

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[elias compartmentalizes the gears roza turns in his mind. they slot into place somewhere far away, an echo-dark cavern an invisible hand has forced his head to face. he can squint or shut his eyes all he wants but it's there. those parts are there forever and they don't rust or fall apart. roza looks at him from that place, and his reflection is in her eyes. he can see himself there.

they are alive and past those parts, but the past clings to them the same as a serrated knife lodges itself between muscle and sinew.

he has a terrible time responding to compliments while he's like this. or in general, this is no different.]

yeah well what else am I supposed to do? Tell you no?
That's not gonna work
I've done some stupid shit here too

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[ While every single piece of this is like sorting through the drawers of their shared injury, something about that gruffness makes her smile, helplessly. There is a sense of life to it — bitter, yes, like the rind of a ten-dollar orange up in the furthest north, but life — and to him, despite all those efforts to make him more shell than man. ]

You might be right. I am very stubborn, and we only have so many means of derailing one another

[ As seen previously on Voyeur. ]

Wait. What stupid shit did you do?

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enough to keep us distracted for a bit

nothing I was trying to make you feel better

[he lies lyingly]

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[ ]

What
Did
You
Do

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[complete 180:]

I'm not letting it slip you signed me up for that Buffy thing

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That is so sweet of you 🤍 I think you will have a nice time in lots of different ways

What did you do
I will come over there.

[ And do what? Probably bite him. ]

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no

come over or don't I'm leaving