[—and there is one particular crazy we are trying to deal with—he's the one who fucked the sand steamer a few weeks ago if you heard about that—and it's not impossible that he'd come here but we did not tell anyone we were coming here and we have an agent on the ground trying to find him so we can hunt him down]

"Mm. Crazies we've dealt with before. I'm going to want to get a full rundown of everyone we're dealing with, but if that's all..." She makes a bit of a face. "... I'll want to check with everyone, but. ... That sounds like a risk worth taking."

He really wants to say something more, wants to promise that it'll work, that he wants it to work just as much as they do, but it would be farcical. At the end of the day, they have a lot more to lose than he does; if the town explodes and he's buried under several tonnes of rubble he will still survive. So even though it's true, saying that he will spare no effort to make this work will ring hollow. If wishes were fishes we'd never go hungry, and pretty words cannot actually make up for the difference. He will try as if his life depended on it, but his life does not, actually, depend on it.

So instead of saying any words he just sends a wordless feeling of encouragement and something-like-gratitude and a truthful earnest desire to make this work.

"That's freaky, man," says Carl. "I got a feeling but it's not my feeling but it feels like it's my feeling. I don't like it."

“You said it.” Sigh. “Fine. We’ll get everyone together and talk. Were there more supplies?”

Yvette has, by this point, distributed everything from the car.

“There’s more, we’ll need to make another couple trips.”

“All right, well. Get going. Whichever way we decide, we’re not turning down supplies.”

She’d make a comment about Rosa’s sparkling personality, but, well. Fair enough, really, even if it does kind of hurt. It’s a far cry from the warm Rosa she knew before.

“Right. C’mon, I’ll help you lie down in the backseat,” she says, as she goes to help Zash, and half carry him to the car. He is absolutely not walking back. It’s inefficient, and furthermore healing factor or no, he’s been shot. A lot. “You should be finished healing by the time we get there, right…?”

[enough to get going]

[I had hoped to explain things under better circumstances. show them a plant. but... they were right. it's not right to try to just show up as saviours with gifts from on high that have mysterious strings we only half tell them about]

[but I really don't think this is the same thing as what Nai did to you]

[The parallels are nonetheless present, love.]

Zash is deposited into the back seat, with a little kiss to his forehead before she goes back around to drive.

[I'm not going to beat myself up too badly, but. I should have... thought of an exit for them in advance if they wanted nothing to do with our mysterious nonsense. Informed consent and all that.]

[...yeah. fair.]

And now that they're in the car he can take his trousers off to get rid of the bullets that hit his legs one by one...

...but then there's a clink of something that's not a bullet, and Zash starts laughing.

"Hmm?" wonders Yvette. "Did you lose your earring, dear?"

She doesn't see how that would happen, but that's the only explanation she can think of, so.

He did not, no.

Zash reaches down to the floor of the car and then offers her a ring that had been in one of his trousers' pockets and which he had aggressively not thought about until he managed to forget, so as to not ruin the surprise. He didn't then have a plan for how he'd remember the ring again, he just figured it'd happen eventually, but he didn't want the game to be over before it'd even begun.

So, here he has it, a silver ring with blue jewelled veins the colour of plants. The colour of his eyes, and hers now.

"For all intents and purposes we're already married," he says in a rasp, his voice and lungs still not fully recovered, "but... I want people to look at you and know that."

.... Well, she's in the middle of driving, but she can stop the car so she can safely melt.

"Well now I'll need to get you a ring, too, won't I," she says, grinning from ear to ear and presenting the appropriate hand to him.

Ring goes on finger, and he's grinning, too.

Not all is right with the world but at least it's not terribly wrong, right now.

[I love you]

"I love you too," she says softly, then she leans back to kiss him. It's a little awkward and involves a bit more gymnastics than she's usually comfortable with, but it's the principle of the matter, okay.

[lovelovelove] she sends, as she then gets back to the very serious job of driving this tough little car that still fucking lists to the left.

".... why does my car have bullet holes in its windows, by the way. When did that happen," she wonders out loud, a little amused.

[when Morgan was rescuing me from jail the police chased after us and shot at us]

"I see. Well, we're going to have to see about getting those fixed. At some point. Probably at the same time we handle the damn steering drift on this thing."

[we could always just get you a new car. at this point I think we're really no longer worried about how killable anyone here is.]

Aaaand that was the last bullet so he can put his trousers back on and then his ludicrous red jacket.

"No, no, I've gone and grown attached to this one. We've bonded. I'm now going to do my level best to drag this hunk of metal along as long as possible."

It'll feel a bit like Vernon is still with her, that way.

...yeah, fair enough, really.

Though she's in his head and he's not so good at not-thinking about things that she won't catch a thought along the lines of how he got out of the habit of keeping mementos of the people he lost long ago because if he hadn't he'd be having to drag a whole city with him everywhere he went.

Yeah, so he now carries them on his skin! Don't think she doesn't know your game, mister. She has suspicions about that earring and bright red coat, too, she already knows his gun is a memento. Let her come to her own coping mechanisms for how they will continue in a world that falls apart around them.

...the coat was a gift from Luida, and the earring from Rem, so. Yeah, also fair enough.

(Nai was given a matching earring by Rem, for his other ear. Zash has not seen him wear it since the Fall.)

.... Yeah. Damn, she'd meant for that to be banter, not striking a sore spot.

[Sorry, dear.]