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[weaponwithoutpurpose]

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[weaponwithoutpurpose]

He closes the door behind him and latches it shut. "No. It was the breach," he says and finally, finally sees her. His thumb brushes last his ring finger automatically, searching for something that isn't there. A ghost of a relationship.

He breathes in, waiting for the disconnect of feelings. To feel a rush of affection that isn't his own, that belongs to the Jacob of that place. It doesn't come. All he feels is exactly the same, and for a moment, he doesn't realize what that means. Maybe it was some sort of sham marriage. Maybe it wasn't important.

Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe the two feelings are the same because he is absolutely and completely in love with her.

He crosses the room to wrap his arms around her.

[handleyourshit]

Rosita, in turn, is a mess. Fight or flight in her case demands she cut off all emotion - good and bad - to survive, and she doesn't get a choice in that. It's just what happens, born of years of abrupt, traumatic hypervigilance and a daily quite literal fight to see the next. She hasn't let herself think about it since she saw the body hanging in the common room and reacted.

She reached out to Jesus, but she came here, though. She came here first, and here she stayed, and now here he is too. She's relieved to see him in one piece, and the depth of that would be a bit startling for her if she let it - unguarded, unrestricted. Incautious.

But she goes all too easily into that embrace, which had been a bit in question and she's relieved, too, to be wrong about it. She curls her fingers into his jacket, and breathes in deep against his chest.

"I'm glad you're okay," she offers, quiet but fierce.

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

Bodies hanging from hooks is, unfortunately, nothing new for Jacob. His brother, both brothers, were fond of putting heretics' heads on pikes. Setting them out in fields on poles. John, especially, was a fan of hanging bodies.

Jacob knows, though, that this is a horror that has more negative connotations with most people. So he holds her there a moment.

"Yeah, me, too. I'm glad you came here," he adds because it's important that she know.

[handleyourshit]

It's not new for her, either.

She's just been on the opposite end of it from Jacob, and she wasn't ready for it here, for some reason. She let down her guard, and that's how people die.

She shakes her head. "How's Astarion? He told me he wanted to sleep and that I shouldn't come by tonight."

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"He's fucked up from something." He keeps his arms around her, taking as much comfort from her as he can. "Something in the breach. He was the big man and it still ended in shit. He said he - felt like he was starting over somehow. I dunno. He's real down. I just stayed with him a while."

Jacob knows what that depression feels like. To want to lie there and do nothing. To feel like everything was futile.

[handleyourshit]

"I'm glad he let you."

Astarion tends to hold her - and everyone, she knows; it's not specific to her, but she's not exempt from it either - at arm's length when he isn't at his best. Historically she's let him, for a lot of reasons.

She stays right where she is for the moment, too, listening to his voice rumbling in his chest.

"You didn't give him the choice though, did you?"

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"Nope."

He closes his eyes. "Told him I'd stay with him while he was gonna wallow and he told me I didn't have to. Fucking typical. So I said I didn't have to but I wanted to. He didn't push me away. Didn't fucking touch me at all, so - I stayed."

[handleyourshit]

"Breaches are hard on him."

For different reasons, in different contexts, she suspects.

"But I think it's important both that he knows we don't have to, and that he gets to choose to stay a bit separate if he wants to."

She thinks Jacob did the best he could.

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"He stays too long on his own, he'll start to tell himself that it's fine. I just don't want him convincing himself that we don't- want him around, you know?'

He presses a kiss to the top of her head. "But we can give him some time. I don't want to go back out there with all that shit just yet anyway."

[handleyourshit]

"He told me I could come by in the morning, so I'll go by in the morning."

She's worried about that too but she's willing to leave set time periods, with set ends, for him to take for himself.

"They caught the guy already. There's posts everywhere." He kisses her hair, and she smiles without thinking about it. "I still don't want anything to do with it."

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"Don't. Stay here a while," he mutters, breathing in deeply. "Leave the pack. Sit with me."

[handleyourshit]

Now she does pull away, enough to be able to look up when she asks, "Would that be alright?"

Breaches are hard for a lot of people, not just Astarion. She tries to be as aware of that as she is respecting her own needs, too.

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"More than. I - don't want to be by myself right now anyway," he admits. "No. I mean, I want to be with you." There's a sort of hesitation in the second admission, as if he was trying to keep himself together. For her.

[handleyourshit]

The first would have been enough, would have been something she could be content with in the long run. She's already starting to nod to agree.

The second stops her cold though, hits something much, much deeper and more tender in her. The part of her that's still Rosita Espinosa-Seed is unsurprised because of course, of course her husband wants to be with her right now. Always.

The rest of her, the tarnished and ragged and fractured and dull Rosita Espinosa who knows how to take down a walker, scrambles to pave over how it tugs at something vital in her, clearing her throat and looking away quickly, briefly, before she continues to nod.

"Okay. Yeah. I -" Desperately want that too, only slightly more powerful than the desire to not have it used against her. "I'd like that."

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

After a small, accepting little nod, he steps away to take off his boots. "You want me to keep Mae in?" he wonders, not wanting to exasperate her already high tension.

He doesn't think anything of this moment. Jacob Espinota-Seed loved his wife fiercely, and everything they did was in tandem. Now, though...well, it's all thd same. Easy movement to sit on the bed, bring out a water bottle.

Watch her.

[handleyourshit]

It's harder for her to remove the things she uses like armor, to drop her pack by the door, to leave her boots beside it. She does it, though.

And she shakes her head. "She's been cooped up a long time already, it's not fair to leave her." Her caution around Mae is not because she wishes the dog ill, by any means.

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

He leans over and unlatches the crate. She doesn't come barreling out as much as she yawns and meanders, sniffing Rosita's boots and pack.

"I'll take her out once all this is fucking sorted," he mutters, gesturing to the door and all of it out there. "Come on. We probably should talk about the breach, huh?"

[handleyourshit]

Rosita is braced for the charge - Mae is a young working breed, after all - but when what happens is much calmer, she even offers a palm and a light scratch between the ears.

She looks up, though, at that.

"Should we?" She would have been content just to sit with it, she thinks; to let it fade and occasionally enjoy the moments that are gone, just like she always has.

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

He's been knocked on his ass too many times by her. Leaving her crate is an essential skill. And now she gets a few pets, which she likes.

She does try to investigate the pack more, though, nosing underneath it.

Jacob shakes his head. "Yeah, we should. That's not something I can just - shake off."

[handleyourshit]

There's food in there, but nothing she thinks will interest a dog; all the same she mutters, "Leave it," to her, and then shifts her entire attention over to Jacob.

She drops her knife into her boot, and crosses over to him.

"Okay." Her either, honestly, but she's largely used to grappling that kind of thing alone. "What about it?"

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

Mae does indeed leave it, but she isn't happy about it and so sneezes into her boots before finding something else to sniff.

Jacob reaches out an arm to her. "I don't know. I - I was happy there, though. It felt really nice."

[handleyourshit]

"I was too."

Which is a hard thing to admit. She sits down beside him, and tucks herself under his arm, sliding one of her own around his waist.

"I don't think I've ever actually been that happy."

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"I know I never have. But that breach, it - fuck, it felt more like me than anything else. It was like someone took me and put me in that city. Same person. Same feelings."

He wraps that arm around her. "Maybe that's why I'm less - fucked up about it now than usual?"

[handleyourshit]

"I used to be that person."

There is a line drawn straight through Rosita's life that separates it into was and is.

"Now I'm something else."

[weaponwithoutpurpose]

"That isn't a bad thing."

And he fumbles a moment, looking up to the ceiling. "You can't always be that person."

He swallows hard. "I know I'm not, either. And - " He shakes his head. "But you aren't completely...not."

He knows he's rambling, but the more he talks, the less he has to think about the fact that he's happy here. Right here with her.