some only had hearts that were brave and true

books-and-bodies

Karen Teller is having a really, really, really terrible month.

(In the privacy of her own brain, she is willing to admit that if ever there were a month that was downright shitty, this would be it.)

Her sister is dead. Not, like, gone to heaven dead, stuck on earth as a ghost dead. Her niece is still a werewolf, and is making progress on her apparent goal of scratching up every piece of furniture in the house. Also she got a D on a history test. Just straight-up got a D, on a history test, because she's been too dead all month to even listen during lectures. And she's too - proud, or scared, or something, to call in her parents for help, so she's just living in this house with a ghost and a tiny werewolf and an elementary schooler and hoping that nothing goes horribly horribly wrong before she graduates.

She has a job. It even pays enough to hire the nanny all day. Which is, you know, super. It starts at six and ends at nine, and is all the way across town, and she can't drive, so when she's lucky she gets home around ten, and she mostly doesn't take a stab at her homework because by that time she doesn't want to do anything at all. She does manage to take a shower, usually, because she's been handling dead bodies, because, oh yeah, she works at a cemetery, which is why it pays so well.

Also, she finds out today, there are zombies. Just, y'know, actual zombies, wandering around the catacombs under the mausoleum, which is probably why the caretaker gave her a mace, although honestly this is a thoroughly ridiculous way to handle this problem and you would THINK, if you knew that there were zombies infesting your catacombs, you would be able to seal them off and move your business somewhere safer, or at least come up with a solution that's less completely stupid than arming sixteen-year-olds with medieval weaponry and expecting them to fend for themselves.

This is mostly what she's thinking about when she takes out the zombie that's about to take a bite out of her coworker's shoulder. She has to assume that the actual contact is, like, instinct, or something. She hits it again, after, for good measure, and again, until its face is completely smashed in, because maybe she can't beat the crap out of this horrible, horrible month, but at least she can make sure this fricking literal walking corpse isn't going to make anything any worse.

"There. Dead zombie. Hopefully it stays that way this time."

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books-and-bodies

"...ah."

Hug?

not-like-i-care

Hug.

books-and-bodies

"...I'm trying to think of something comforting to say here and I think I'm failing. Except, like -

" - I am worried you think you didn't assume that kidnapping was mostly horrible because you're stupid, and I dunno, maybe a smarter you would have figured it out, but I think it's also that you're - you want things to be good for people. And if it didn't immediately occur to you that other people might not, that's not - it's not stupidity, really, it's just - it's not bad to not assume right away that everyone is definitely awful."

not-like-i-care

"It is definitely stupid to assume that people are not awful. It's, like, maybe a noble kind of stupid but it's totally still stupid."

books-and-bodies

"Well if everybody did it all the time I think the world would be worse. Or - maybe they can strive to account for it all the time, but if they don't also account for the fact that some people are all right sometimes, then - that just seems pretty bad."

not-like-i-care

"I dunno if anyone is all right sometimes. Except for you."

books-and-bodies

"That's very sweet. But I think it's wrong. You are all right sometimes. And I have it on pretty good authority that Zana has ever been all right."

not-like-i-care

"Oh, well, kids're all right. They're like dogs."

books-and-bodies

"What, everyone stops being all right at some specific time?"

not-like-i-care

"Probably not? But it kinda feels like it."

books-and-bodies

"I think they get - less innocent. But childlike innocence is just not knowing what's right or wrong, right, it means you'll take the same delight in petting dogs and pulling their hair, it's not - when you grow up you have to decide, which things are good and which things are bad, and which of them you're going to do. And - maybe not everybody even gets to that point, I guess, maybe lots of people are just going around petting and kicking dogs whenever they like and only moderating any of it based on what other people think, but - I don't think that's everybody? It can't be, or we'd never have, like, outlawed slavery or stopped doing public executions by torture, right, somebody's - at some point somebody grows up and starts making decisions, knowing whether they're right or wrong, and lots of times they're bad ones that hurt people anyway, but - not all the time. We don't suck all the time."

- something feels vaguely like it's clicking into place, as she says this.

not-like-i-care

"Those fairies seemed kind like they suck all the time!"

books-and-bodies

"Well, I don't have a lot of evidence about fairies. Maybe humans are better at the occasionally deciding not to suck thing."

not-like-i-care

"Or maybe they just have less opportunity to suck because the ones who didn't suck banned slavery."

books-and-bodies

"Possibly. But hey, I didn't ban it, so there must be more than one of us."

not-like-i-care

"I guess at least two humans don't suck all the time."

books-and-bodies

"You don't suck all the time either. So we're at at least two and a half."

not-like-i-care

"Maybe if I weren't your slave I would suck all the time and it's all you keeping me in line."

books-and-bodies

"I doubt this very much."

not-like-i-care

"Do you? I kind of sucked. Before."

books-and-bodies

"Like, how? Somehow I doubt it was as dramatic as the fairies sucking. Also you did not actually have that much time in there where you were not a kid."

not-like-i-care