tucky | IC contact for lastvoyages

I wasn't doing either of those things. And he ain't a madman.

[She's incredibly pissed-off at him right now, but she'll still defend him on that front.]

[She bristles -- if the flood were still on, the wave of frustration Tiffany would get off of her right now would be absolutely overpowering.]

No? What would you call it?

For the first thing or the second thing?

What would you call asking him to talk about stabbing people through the eye in public?

[Because that's really almost as bad to her -- she's actually a little bit furious about it, she realizes, now that she says it aloud.]

That was disgusting! And to him, it was a joke. Funny.

Because it happens. It happens here and it happens off the Barge too, and I'm not gonna pretend I'm surprised or scandalized about it.

[She closes her eyes, admitting:]

When it's all in the-- you know, the theoretical, it ain't hard for me to talk about. Even like that, joking.

It's not theoretical, and it's not funny. And even if you don't care, you're giving him all this attention, encouraging him to talk about it, to keep thinking about it, to laugh about it. To laugh at you! And to make us listen to it while he does. It's cruel, Tiffany.

The next time you want to do that, if it's so funny to the both of you, take it off the line and I'll go.

[She's really forgetting what she came here for in the first place, right now.]

Edited (anachronisms lol) 2016-04-29 02:33 (UTC)

I'm not good at explaining this right now, Nina.

[Her voice is strained.]

I can try. I got reasons for doing stuff the way I do. But I don't know if you wanna hear 'em.

[No, she realizes, she doesn't. Not when she knows that whatever they are, they're probably going to make this all feel much worse.]

Maybe--

Maybe I want you to hear me -- did you ever think of that?

I didn't know I wasn't hearing you.

I know I ain't agreeing.

You can't disagree with me when you don't even know what I'm saying.

How do you know I don't know? Unless you're talking about something you ain't said yet.

What, then? What am I saying to you?

You're saying it's wrong, talking to him like I do. It's-- callous, probably. I think hearing it hurt you, and that part-- I'm very, very sorry about that. More sorry about that than anything.

[She breathes in deep, calming a little, but only very slightly. That's all true, but it's also not it at all. She clenches her fists in her lap, locking her eyes onto Tiffany's, willing her to take her seriously.]

I came here to feel safer. I thought we would be safer together.

[Seriously, what the hell was she thinking?]

I listen to that and I hear you throwing both our lives away. You laugh about all the violence, you-- make it normal, make it into nothing, and then you put a target on yourself, too.

If it was just you, I can't say I would understand, or that I wouldn't be upset, but you can't do those things and take care of other people. Or how do I feel safer here? If you're dealing with a man like that this way? I would be better off back with-- back in my cell.

I can't tell you to feel safe.

[She draws her legs up onto the couch, resting her forehead on them for a moment, giving in to the urge to hide her face and avoid eye contact - but only for a moment. Then she looks up again.]

If you don't feel safe with me, then-- then that's your feelings, and I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong. I can tell you I wouldn't hurt you. I can tell you I would protect you from somebody else - anybody else. And I'm not laughing at the violence. Not in the way you mean.

But Barge dying is different from regular dying where you don't come back to life, and I can't think of it the same. I just can't. I'm not gonna tell people it's not that bad, or that they gotta get over it, or-- nothing like that. But for me, my feelings-- I don't get worked out about it anymore. And I don't lecture people about it, not even the real violent fuckers. I try to look at things like a violent fucker would instead, 'cause I have been a violent fucker before and I know how it is.

This is not protection. You said yourself you know you hurt me, and so did he. And you're forgetting where we're going -- not Barge dying, regular dying.

[She swallows painfully, her fists tightening.]

If you want to be careless, be careless by yourself. You can't do that and try to take charge of things, talk about protecting people, talk about saving everyone. If you want to save us, you need to start focusing on that.

So which one do you want? Do you want to get us through the Land of the Dead, or do you want to keep going on this way? Don't tell me you'll do both. You can't. You won't.

Edited 2016-04-29 03:30 (UTC)

I'm not forgetting!

[She presses the back of her hand to her mouth.]

I'm not forgetting. I think about it every fucking day. You heard me talking about it to him. If the land of the dead is what it sounds like, it's totally different from here. There's different ways to think about it. And I'm focusing on it all the time.

If that's what you think you're doing, then all I see is you trying to think about it in so many different ways, trying to do so much, that you're losing sight of the entire thing.

[She lets out a sharp sound and shakes her head, smoothing out her skirt, pulling at it with anxious energy.]

Listen to yourself. You think about it all the time, but you still talk about-- about driving bones into brains like it's no big deal. [Although she shudders just to say it.] You say you're going to keep everyone together, and you tell Alfie Solomons you're going to come after him if he does the things you're asking him about on our network. You say you'll protect me, right after apologize for hurting me, right before telling me you're going to keep doing just the same thing.

It's no big deal to him. It's-- a little bit more of a big deal to me.

Maybe I can't protect you in the way you want me to. But-- what's the entire thing, Nina? The Barge? Everything outside the Barge? Both those things?

There's only one thing that matters right now: coming out the other side of that place. That's what I keep telling you -- if you want to be the one to do that, you can't do it twenty different ways! You need one plan. Or this is what happens: you make promises you can't keep, that you break right away, because you're thinking about them differently, and that's what matters to you.

[She shakes her head again and stands, rubbing a hand over her face.]

I can't live that way. I can't feel safe going there with you, knowing you're just going to keep throwing yourself at whatever comes along, waiting for you to do something else that scares me to death because you want to be more... open-minded, or whatever, because you're trying to do everything at once. You don't want to choose one way, but that's not going to work. So you tell me, Tiffany: who would you rather have with you? Me or Alfie Solomons?

[This is not in any way a rhetorical question, and from the strain in her voice and the way she's already physically withdrawing, going smaller, she sounds like she already knows which one Tiffany is going to pick.]

You're my friend. We've seen each other through bad shit. If I was picking somebody to have at my back, it'd be you. You said you don't want me saying I trust you, but--

[She doesn't always feel like she has a good grip on where she stands with Alfie, but there is one thing he's always been very clear on - he might be polite to her, he might even be nice to her, but she is the enemy to him, and she should not look to him for anything.]

Are you asking me who I want with me, or who I wanna talk to? Who I wanna listen to, who I wanna understand, who I wanna keep safe?

I'm asking you to make a choice.

[In a way, at this point, the act of choosing itself is almost more important -- at least for the small, unselfish part of Nina that is genuinely worried for Tiffany in all of this. The selfish part of her sounds completely miserable, like she already knows she's lost. She knows how hard this is, what she's asking.]

A choice to stop listening to him, stop understanding his ways. Because it hurts you, and it fucking makes sense why it hurts you; I understand why it hurts you. That kind of choice?

Yes.

[A choice, in her own mind, to focus, to prioritize -- but she thinks she could say that over and over again and it would never quite connect the same way for Tiffany.]

What if somebody you hurt comes and tells me to do the same thing with you?

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