tucky | IC contact for lastvoyages

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?

Then you'll have to make another choice.

If I was trying to be all logical, I'd pick you - 'cause you're my friend, and you care about me. Hell, he'd tell me not to pick him, I think.

But I ain't so good at logic, and I can't pick either of you. Not for something like trying to pick who to hear.

[Which is more or less what she expected, as painful and frustrating as it is to hear. She draws in a shaky breath and lets it out slow, pressing her lips tight together at the end of it, but she nods.]

Then I can't stay.

Maybe I'm not making the right choices.

[She rolls over on the couch, pressing her fingertips into the fabric.]

They're my choices, and nobody's telling me to make 'em; I'm thinking about 'em and doing it on my own. But I don't know for sure they're all of 'em right.

I'm sorry I let you down.

You're not. You're just trying to avoid having to. You're choosing not to choose.

[But she's done fighting with her. The words are brittle and bitter, but without heat. She's used to being passed over, anyway; there's always something more important than her. She can't understand the logic or thought process behind this one, and that makes the hurt a little more bewildering, but at least she has other people to go to now. People who haven't tossed her away yet.]

I think you hope I'll decide to stay anyway, but I won't. I can't. I can't put my life in the hands of someone who can't-- who won't even make such a simple decision.

So have fun with the bomber and his nails. I hope that's very rewarding for you.

It's not simple to me. Do you understand? I wanna hear you, but I want you to hear me, too.

-- And fuck him; I'm not talking to him, anyway.

No -- you don't understand. I'm not arguing with you about this anymore. I'm done. I'm going.

[And obviously saying it doesn't seem to be sinking in, so she starts moving, going to pick up the few things she's left lying around -- a book, a hairbrush.]

You can be irresponsible with your own life, but not with mine.

I wouldn't be. You're wrong about that.

[She stays on the couch, but sits up.]

You ain't wrong to be mad, but you're wrong about me. I wouldn't-- sacrifice you; that's not it. If you don't wanna know the truth, that's fine, you don't owe me nothing, but you got the wrong idea about how I think.

[Nina very rarely curses, and even now she does it in Russian, but the heat rises back in her voice.]

If you don't understand how you already are, how you already did, then I'm definitely not staying.

You weren't staying in the first place.

[Because she wishes Nina would stay, but she definitely doesn't think she can talk her into it.]

You think I was laughing. Maybe you think I'd laugh if somebody hurt you. But I wasn't and I wouldn't.

No.

[She doesn't stop packing, her movements becoming increasingly frenetic as she shoves things into her bag; she's distressed enough now that for a change, even she isn't thinking about folding neatly.]

I think you would tell me you were very, very sorry, and you would mean it, and you wouldn't stop to think how anything you just did might have led to it, and then you would do all the same thing again.

I don't think gasping at him and telling him he's a monster and going, like-- how horrible, how dare you is gonna make him want to do that shit any less. I think maybe it would make him want to do it more. And I don't think he's dumb enough to think, well, Tiffany ain't getting outraged about it, so that means it ain't a bad thing to do.

Then you don't say anything. You shut the hell up and you let him talk into nothing until he gets tired of the sound of his own voice. That's how you deal with a man like that. You don't say, oh, how interesting, tell me more -- and you don't give him ultimatums!

Do you know why I haven't died here yet? Because I leave people like that alone.

Do you say that to all the wardens, or do you just say it to me? I'm supposed to be learning to understand people here, and listening to 'em, and hearing their side - I can't do that if I ignore them!

Then you can't protect me, and you can't keep me safe -- and I would say the same to any of you that wanted to call yourself my friend.

[And maybe that's another reminder of why she doesn't think she really can be friends, actual friends, with the wardens; maybe it just reminds her that she can't forget how alone she actually is here. It doesn't matter. It can't. Nothing but survival matters, at least until they're through the Land of the Dead.]

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