not coming back

who: charlie and jason
when: a while back
where: the park

Charlie was still out of luck on the job front. He'd been trying for a few days, but so far no one had seemed to want someone sent to the pen on their payroll, especially for what he was pinched for. He had been busy grumbling to himself about the stupid cycle that perpetuated, but he'd gotten tired of it. So he'd gone to the park, to just sit and try and figure things out. He had a paper with him, and he was looking through the help wanted section. Dodge had given him some money, but it really hadn't been much. Which was probably good, and yet at the same time left a bitter taste in his mouth. To say Charlie had mixed feelings on everything would have been understating it entirely.

Jason for his part was utterly baffled by the turn of events that had occurred and still didn’t understand why Charlie hadn’t come back with Dodge the night he’d gotten out and so he decided to find out for himself. The weather had finally let up that morning and he was confident enough with using his cane now to head out by himself and so he’d done just that. Finding where Charlie was staying hadn’t been hard and it hadn’t taken more than a few words to discover his friend had headed to the park so Jason did just that. Thankfully it didn’t take too long to find him and even then his knee was throbbing painfully with the exertion so he didn’t waste time trying to decide what to say. “Mind if I sit Charlie?” he asked, approaching the bench, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice as various feelings battled it out in his head at the sight of his friend.

Charlie looked up at being addressed, and he recognized the voice right away, even before he laid eyes on his old friend. He paused a moment. "Hey, Huck. I wondered if you'd be turning up." he said. Then he nodded. "Free country." he said as his version of agreeing. He did pause, however, eyes landing and staying on the cane. "That's new." he said, with a light tone of questioning on the end. Was it a prop? They'd used those in the past.

Not knowing what kind of reception he was going to get, Jason was glad Charlie hadn’t just told him to get lost but at the same time, there was no warmth to it either and that stung. He snorted at the observation of his cane and carefully maneuvered himself to sit down. “Yeah, I picked it up a couple of months back,” he replied, steeling his features as pain coursed through the ruined joint. “Place in Little Haven, the guy does nice work.”

Frowning slightly, Charlie watched Jason move, and how it was a whole lot less than a natural sort of motion. It was deliberate. Not someone who was just dropping himself on a park bench like normal. "What happened?" he asked, concern plain there in his tone, in his expression. Regardless of his mess of feelings on the matter of his old associates, he didn't actually wish any of them ill. (The black eye he'd handed Dodge didn't count)

“Would you be shocked if I told you a girl was involved?” Jason replied, the concern in Charlie’s voice warming enough to tease a wry smile out of him, it being far too easy to fall into a familiar pattern with his old friend. “Her brothers took a disliking to me, warned me to keep away from her.”

The smile and quiet laugh was short lived, but immediate. "Not even a little bit." he said. "I'd be more shocked to find out it didn't involve a girl." Dodge and Huck and their women. Neither one of them was any good at keeping their hands to themselves. They were rarely without someone they were trying to charm the skirt off of. "I take it their warning was less verbal and more physical." he said, it wasn't a question. "Did you actually listen?"

Jason nodded, his earlier smile waning. “Bullet to the kneecap has a way of sticking in the memory,” he replied, hand unconsciously going to rub over the joint. “I haven’t seen the girl since.” Something which bothered him far more than he’d expected to, his thoughts dwelling on Eily O’Malley more than they probably should.

That had Charlie blinking. It was clear he was surprised, he'd expected something more like just a good beating, but a bullet? That was serious business. So much so that his initial shock at the idea that the guy would back off even after being warned off was obliterated. "Wow." he said quietly. "I'm sorry." he said, knowing getting kneecapped wasn't something that really healed. That cane was going to be a part of his old friend's life for the duration.

“Yeah me too,” he said quietly, his eyes on the ground as he rolled said cane between his fingers, the fine quality of the item little consolation given the necessity of its use. “But enough about me and my sob story, I want to talk about you.” Looking up at Charlie, Jason’s face was set though there was little concealing the hurt in his eyes. “Why aren’t you coming back Charlie?”

Sighing, Charlie dragged his fingers through his hair, and slumped back on the bench. "Do we really need to have this conversation?" he asked, though it was clear he didn't actually expect an answer. "There's a lot of different reasons." he said. "And I know you lot haven't changed. Hell, Dodge sure as hell hasn't. He's still the arrogant ass he was back when we were kids. Only I don't care anymore. He can't wow me anymore with his grand ideas, or confidence in himself." He was quiet for a moment before he continued. "Whatever you're doing, you're still working an angle. I don't know what it is, and I don't want to know what it is. I just can't be a part of it."

Dodge had said Charlie didn’t want to come back the night the younger man had gotten out and it had thrown Jason for six; since they were children they had been running round together - yes they had always been getting up to trouble, normally out of necessity but they had been together. Hearing Charlie’s reasons for himself made it easier to understand on some level but that didn’t change how it made Jason feel. “But we’re...” The words ‘a family’ sat on the tip of his tongue but he didn’t let it past his lips; Charlie had family, not that he saw them these days but he had them, knew what it was like. Jason had never had that until finding the crew and now with Charlie saying he wasn’t coming back, that family felt like it was falling apart. “...a team,” he settled on saying, the word feeling woefully inadequate.

Charlie knew what Jason had meant to say. It wasn't hard to deduce, mostly because he felt the same way. But at the end of the day... "You have no idea what it was like." he said quietly, eyes fixed to the ground as he sat forward. "And I was only there for two years. And you know what happens when they pinch someone for the second time? It means your sentence is harsher. It means they figure you didn't learn your lesson good enough the first time, and they'd better pound it home all the more." He pulled at a loose string on his ragged overshirt. "Felt like a lifetime, Huck. When I'd check the day and I'd be devastated to learn that what felt like months had been weeks. What felt like weeks had been days. If you think life on the street was hard, this was harder, and I was on my own. I didn't have any of you with me. I was alone."

His voice wavered just for a moment, and he gave himself a second before he continued, sitting up straight again as a clear wall slammed down behind his eyes. It was in the set of his jaw, and when he spoke, it was in his voice. "So I don't care if Dodge wants to show up and smile, and laugh, and say 'hey we're up town, we made it!' like I should join in. Like what I've been through was nothing. And what's he want me to do? Just go right back to working under him? Whatever. No. Maybe he doesn't care. Or maybe he doesn't have the emotional depth to actually understand, it doesn't really matter. I am never going back. Which means I'm not joining whatever scheme you lot are working on. You got there because I took one for everyone, and it got me nowhere. No way in hell am I coming back."

Guilt over what had happened to Charlie wasn’t a new feeling for Jason but hearing his friend talk about prison, that slight tremor in his voice, it hit him like a punch to the ribs, leaving him feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him. Before he had a chance to say something, anything, a barrier was thrown up and the hostility in Charlie’s voice sent him reeling. “Charlie, I...” He stopped, words failing him, leaving him floundering in uncertainty.

Charlie shook his head. "Don't." he said. "I know. You didn't mean it, you didn't know, you're sorry I got pinched...fill in the blank. I know." Looking over at Jason for a second, Charlie exhaled. "Just doesn't change anything, Huck." he admitted. "Doesn't change what happened, doesn't take anything away and doesn't make anything better. And I know you still consider me family, or a team, or whatever it is you want to call it, but I've been fending for myself for two years now. And apparently you lot have been moving up town, and have more than enough money to throw around that you've got a piece like that." he said, motioning to the cane, which was, in fact, finely crafted.

Feeling like he’d been slapped in the face, all Jason could do for a moment was sit in silence, the incriminating cane feeling suddenly heavy in his hands. He wanted to say that it was only money, that it didn’t mean anything but he knew that wasn’t true. As much as the society life might rankle him, that he wanted to believe that having money didn’t change who he was, things were different now - two years was a long time. “I’d give it up you know,” he said quietly, his gaze turned to the ground. “Call me a sentimentalist but I’d rather go back to the way things were before if it meant you hadn’t taken that fall.”

"No you don't." Charlie said. "You say that, right now, because you're feeling guilty. But whatever life you have right now? Clearly you're sitting pretty, women troubles aside. And let's not forget the reason I got sent up in the first place was because we were in the middle of a robbery. Because we didn't have anything. Well, guess that particular problem is fixed, for you." And he couldn't find a single person around who wanted to hire him. Life wasn't turning out to be all that nice to him. "So, no. I don't really believe you'd trade the stability and high life you all got to have." Charlie said, though there was a lack of bite to his tone. It wasn't an accusation, it wasn't meant to be. He wasn't angry about that sentiment, he just knew how the world worked, and more importantly, he knew what it was like to be a Have Not. They all had. So to get somewhere, to be on top? That wasn't something you gave up once you had it. Most people would take the statement in stride, but Charlie knew better, and couldn't accept the unfulfillable sentiment.

Maybe it was purely guilt that had prompted the sentiment but that didn’t change Jason feelings on the matter, that people mattered more than money. At the same time though, he wasn’t so impractical as to not hear the truth in Charlie’s words and he ran his hands through his hair. “Can’t deny things are better these days,” he replied, glancing up at his friend. “But it doesn’t change how I feel.” Reaching into his jacket, he tugged out his wallet and pulled out the few bills that were in there, wishing he’d thought to bring more with him. “You gonna pop me one if I give you this?” he asked, holding the money out towards Charlie.

"Dodge got hit because he's an asshole, not because he offered me money. He didn't do that til after I'd hit him." Charlie said. He didn't know what to do about the offer, however, and that was clear. He didn't really want to take it, but at the same time he knew he needed it, especially with the job search not going well. In the end he hung his head, unable to look at his old friend, and didn't actually answer.

Had it been anyone else calling Dodge an asshole, Jason would have leaped to his friend’s defense but Charlie knew the older man as well as he did and with everything that had happened, he figured he was entitled so he didn’t say anything. He didn’t comment on his friend’s discomfort at first either, though he felt another pang of guilt at making Charlie feel that way - he knew how difficult it must be for the other man but he couldn’t sit and do nothing. In the end, he slipped the bills into his friend’s pocket in a reversal of a tried and tested pickpocketing move. “It’s there if you need it Charlie,” he said quietly, a steadiness in his voice that spoke volumes.

Hearing that was just as awful as the offer of money. Because he'd had a whole lot of proof in the past the past two years that when he needed something, no one was there to help him. And he was out now, and apparently the rules had changed again, but he couldn't accept it. Couldn't just pretend nothing had happened and go back to a mentality that allowed him to trust people. It didn't work like that. "See you around, Huck." he said, getting to his feet and turning to head away, head ducked down, hands shoved into his pockets. He couldn't handle any more of this conversation. Not right now.