a series of differing perspectives

who: Corey and Roach
where: The library
when: Night

After parting ways with Maddy, it had taken Roach a while to muster up the courage to head to the library. Every time he began to head in that direction, he stopped himself, panicked, and headed across town instead. Even with the pills in his pocket, knowing how much they would help her, he couldn’t bring himself to face Corey. He didn’t want to see the look on her face when she saw him, the person she’d thought was her friend, who would never hurt her, but had hit her so hard Roach was certain he’d cracked a rib, if not broken one or more. His unexpected meeting with Maddy had helped somewhat--now he knew that she’d never been afraid of him, that she hadn’t thought he was some kind of monster that had to be avoided at all costs. Except... now he actually was.

Roach sat on the floor of the library’s basement, looking down at the things in his hands: the container of painkillers, and a battered copy of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It had been his favorite book as a child, when he still had parents who would read it to him, and now he and Corey used it as their signal to meet up. If he left the objects together, Corey would know who the pills were from, but he worried that she might be out too long, that someone else might come by and take them. He couldn’t bear the thought of her missing out on some relief from the pain she was in because he was too much of a coward to look her in the eye and see exactly how much she probably hated him after what happened that morning.

Corey, knowing night had fallen, had her own mission in mind. She was off to find Roach. She didn't figure he'd be around, considering the look on his face this morning. She imagined he figured that she wouldn't want to see him, or was angry with him or something. He did that sort of thing. The guy liked to beat himself up a lot. So, after she figured night was on, and she'd be able to be outside for a longer period of time, she had gotten up to go find him. This task proved ridiculously easy, considering when she headed up towards the basement, she saw him sitting there.

Quiet for a moment, she didn't say anything, just watching him sitting there, looking a little like the world was a really terrible place. Drawing in a breath quietly and letting it out--though not as deep a breath as she normally would have--she ghosted up closer. "Just made my job easier." she said, voice quiet as she came into view, coming out from behind the bookshelf.

“Shit,” Roach said, exhaling sharply in surprise. That was twice today a girl had snuck up on him--friends of his, luckily. Although with Corey, now... he didn’t know yet. He looked up at Corey, noticing immediately that she was carrying herself differently. His eyes dropped from her face to the place he’d hit her and stayed there, his face falling even more. He stood up, taking the book and the pills with him. The book... he didn’t know if they’d be needing that anymore, and the pills he held out to her. “I got these for you,” he said, quiet, not looking into her face, not moving any closer to her either.

Stepping fully out into the basement, she stood straight, though yes, she was carrying herself a little differently than usual. Her left arm was held in closer to her side than usual. But she reached out to take the offered bottle, frowning down at it. "What are they?" she asked, the words on the label meaning nothing to her. She looked up from the bottle to him. "And are you okay?" she asked. "I was just coming to find you. Figured you'd be...not so great right now." she said, instead of going for 'I figured you'd be in a world of blackness and hurt'.

“Painkillers,” Roach said, letting his arm drop back down once she’d taken the bottle. “They’ll help... with the pain. You take one with water... just try not to take too many, they can make you sick.” He put his empty hand in his pants pocket, still not looking at Corey. It bewildered him how she could ask how he was, after what he’d done to her. “I don’t have any broken ribs,” he said, after being quiet a moment.

She nodded, looking down at the bottle again, and she shook it, to try and gauge how many pills were in there. "Have you taken any?" she asked, ignoring the bit about the ribs for the moment. "And you look like hell." she told him. She stepped closer. "C'mon." she said, planning on heading up to one of the bathrooms up there, where she could take one of them. Because she was a tough girl and all, but she did, in fact, fucking hurt. On a fairly massive scale. She just wasn't letting on to that fact, because clearly? He wasn't over it.

“I can carry you,” Roach offered again. He had no idea how much she’d been moving during the day, but if it was anymore than just walking up to the basement to find him, it was probably too much. Roach had never broken a rib himself, but... he remembered his father coming back from a fight with one, how it had put him out of the ring for weeks. If his giant, hard-edged father hadn’t been able to take the pain easily, he couldn’t even imagine what Corey was feeling now.

"That's the second time you've offered that today." Corey noted, looking back at him over her shoulder. "And if you carried me, you'd probably just put weight on my injury and that would just hurt. Besides. I'd never live it down. Don't worry about it." she said with a quirked little half smile. "I'm fine." she assured him. And okay, so she wasn't, but she really just wasn't going to tell him that. She still hadn't seen the thing, so as far as she was concerned, if she couldn't see that it was really awful, then it might not be. That was her running theory and she was sticking to it, damnit.

Roach frowned, still staring at some point between Corey’s shoulder and waist. He’d hurt her and he couldn’t even do anything to help it--if he tried, he’d only make it worse. “You’re not fine, Corey,” Roach said, his voice tight. He’d been so terrified that she’d hate him and she was just glossing it over instead. He’d fucked up and it wasn’t okay. At all. “I know I broke your ribs. I felt it.”

Drawing in a deep breath that stopped short due to the spike of pain in her ribs, Corey let it out in a rush. "Okay, if that's how you want to play it." she muttered, walking back over to him. She looked at him for a long moment, then stepped closer, since he still wasn't looking at her, so she put herself into his direct line of sight, trying to catch his eyes. Sure, it was closer than she usually stood to him, but if he was going to play the 'I'm not making eye contact' game, she was going to counter that. "I'm injured. It's happened before. It'll happen again. Yes, you hit me. But you didn't even know it was me. I knew what I was walking into there." she told him. Because she'd been absolutely aware of the situation. It hadn't been an accident.

It was a little difficult to avoid Corey’s gaze when she was suddenly standing right in front of him. His eyes fell on her face and he cringed; she looked like she was in pain, and worn down by that pain over the course of the day. And he’d done that to her. That was his fault. “But I should have known,” Roach said, his forehead creasing. “I... I completely lost control and you got hurt. I nearly killed that guy too--I fucked up the whole plan and I hurt you. We were there to hurt the ones who hurt Pepper and I just... I hurt you instead, Corey.”

She went to cross her arms, but winced and stopped. Right. That was a gesture she was going to have to edit from her normal body language for a bit, apparently. "Look." she said. "I know you, okay? I know how you get, and okay, I've not seen that before, but I knew what I was seeing. I was looking at you, about to kill a guy. And Dodge, he was just standing there. And sure, he was telling you to stop, but I was watching--you didn't so much as twitch. You didn't hear him. And he wouldn't have done shit about it fast enough. So, I stepped in, because it was that, or watch you become a killer. I chose to take the hit. In my book it was a small price to pay. Besides, I kicked the wind out of you in return, right? We're even." she said. Then her tone lightened a little bit. "I wasn't going to stand there and let you do that. And there is no 'instead'. You handed out plenty of hurt to those guys. What happened with me was something else. And I knew it would happen when I grabbed your wrist. Why do you think you caught me where you did? If I hadn't been expecting it, you would have caught me in the face. But I was moving already, knowing you were going to take the swing at me. I kicked you because I didn't know if you'd quit after the first one. But just--keep that in mind, okay? I knew what I was doing. I chose to go that route. I don't blame you in this, neither should you."

“But if I hadn’t lost control to begin with,” Roach insisted, “it wouldn’t have happened at all. You wouldn’t have had to take that risk.” He slumped back against the wall, rubbing his hands across his face. “It felt like... it felt like it was him.” Corey knew exactly who Roach was talking about. “And I just couldn’t stop. I was barely even thinking about Pepper anymore. It just... it was something else. I wanted him dead.”

Corey was quiet for a long moment, taking that in. She nodded, and she very carefully leaned against the wall next to him, just in a bit of an awkward manner due to her injury. Still, she wanted to be there for him, and she could understand what he was saying. "I get that." she said, nodding a little. "When's the last time you talked about it?" she asked. "I mean really talked about it." She figured it'd been a while. And she was aware that last she'd checked she was the only person who even knew. She didn't know if that was still true though. The last time they'd talked about that kind of stuff was a while back now. There'd been a lot going on around them since.

Roach looked over at Corey as she leaned next to him, then looked down at the floor. He shrugged, wincing--the pill he’d taken had worn off by now, and his shoulders were throbbing again. “Dunno,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Whenever we last talked about it, I guess. Nobody knows anything, still.” Maddy had some idea, he was sure--he was in an orphanage, so obviously his parents had died somehow. But she didn’t know the particulars, and certainly not the worst of it.

Nodding a little, she noticed his wince. "C'mon." she said, standing straight, and she reached out to tug his sleeve a little, so he'd follow her. "We're going to take some of these, you're going to look at my back and see what it looks like, and we're going to talk for a while." she told him, like this was her new plan, and she figured he should just smile and nod and follow through on that.

Look at her back? Roach... did not like the sound of that. If his knuckles were badly bruised just from the pressure of the nuts whenever he struck someone, he really, really was not looking forward to seeing exactly what sort of damage he’d done, especially on someone he cared about. “Corey, I... I don’t think that’s a great idea,” he said, following after her. “And I got those pills for you. I already took one, okay? The rest are yours.”

Corey made a face. "If you really don't want to, fine. But I can't see it. It's kinda in an awkward place. I don't know if there's cuts or anything." she explained. She wasn't doing it just to make the guy feel bad. But she also knew that she'd need to at least partially take her shirt off, and there weren't a huge lot of people she'd be okay doing that around. Or, more specifically, he was kinda it. She knew she wasn't in any danger of him doing anything strange with that. Dodge would take it as some permission to try and get grabby with her and she'd be forced to cave his nose into his skull. But Roach? He wouldn't ever look at her that way. He was far too hung up on Maddy for starters. But even beyond that, Corey was a girl who was pretty well aware of the fact that she was just some tunnel rat girl with scars on her face. She wasn't anyone's idea of girlfriend material. "And whatever, I saw you wince. so I don't care if you took one, you can take another one." she told him firmly.

Roach frowned. She was right, there could be cuts, and it was too easy for street kids like them to get their wounds infected. She’d cared for dozens of his own injuries, he could take a look at this one. Especially since it was his fault. “Alright,” he conceded, on that point at least. “But I really, really don’t need any pills--I’m just sore. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. You need them more than I do. Just... please, hold onto them for yourself? Please?”

"Technically, I'm just sore too." Corey said. Or, she thought. She might have cracked ribs. But even if she did, there wasn't anything that could be done about it. She'd have to ride it out, end of story. Ride it out and hope that she got better fast. Or that she wasn't in any physical altercations in the meantime. That would be helpful. "I'd feel better if you weren't sitting around suffering for no reason." she told him honestly, heading through the darkened library easily, the lights from outside leaving long squares on the floor that she always skirted around even if she didn't have to. Then she got to the bathrooms, which didn't have any windows to the outside, thankfully, and she slipped inside, waiting for him so she could shut the door and flip the light on.

“I’m not suffering,” Roach said, following Corey thought the library. “I’m not even that badly hurt. You are, and you’ll be hurt longer than I will.” Why were all the girls he knew so damned stubborn? There was a first aid kid on the bathroom wall that Roach took down, resting it in the sink so he could go through it. It was full of bandages, mostly, supposedly for papercuts, but there was some gauze and antiseptic that he could use if Corey had more serious damage. He hoped she didn’t, but if she did, he was prepared.

Corey watched what he was doing, then sort of self consciously turned her back to him, pulling her shirt up over her head. She held it to her chest, leaving her back bare to him and she then sat down on the floor indian style, so she could partially hunch over. Not that she had a whole lot to cover or anything, it wasn't like she was a girl who was well endowed as it were. And again, there was that bit where Roach was Roach, and probably wouldn't even notice she was girl-shaped anyways. Still, she didn't ever get any level of undressed around people, so it was a little nerve wracking, and goosebumps rose up on her skin, as she suddenly felt cold. She dropped the conversation about the painkillers, and then searched for something to say, but came up dry for once.

Roach did notice that she was girl-shaped. At the sight of her stretch of bare back, he even started to blush, but it faded quickly when he saw the damage he’d done. The whole area had blossomed into a mess of dark purple and black; he could even see the darkest spots, four spots of crusted blood where the nuts on his fingers had cut into her skin. He looked a bit like he had killed someone as he got a handful of toilet paper and wet it, gingerly cleaning out the cuts. For as big as he was and as much damage as he had caused to others that morning, he was incredibly gentle, being slow and careful, pausing whenever Corey hissed in pain. Once he cleaned out the cuts, he lightly pressed his fingers against the spot where her skin was unnaturally bumpy. “I definitely broke one,” he said, quietly. “Maybe two.”

Funny how all those nerves about her shirt evaporated the second he started to work at cleaning the wounds. Pain had a way of shoving shit like that to the side. She was trying extremely hard not to make any noise. But she couldn't help it. She hung her head, her short hair falling into her eyes and she was shaking a little bit, by the time he pressed down into the spot that hurt the worst, and she did give a little pained cry, the sound loud in her ears in the closed space. It was helpless, something she couldn't have stopped if she'd tried. She couldn't even snap at him for the moment, she had to concentrate on breathing, and that wasn't the easiest thing to manage right then. Stop shaking. Stop. Stop feeling it. Something. Quit shaking. she told herself adamantly, though it had absolutely no impact on that tremble in her form. She recognized she needed to say something, that he'd spoken to her, but she couldn't quite yet.

Roach felt like shit. Corey was very, very obviously in a whole heap of pain and it was his fault. He’d hurt her. He’d broken her ribs, he was making her feel like this, shaking and crying out in pain. “I’m... I’m going to tape it down. It’s supposed to help with the pain. You should probably take a couple of those pills now.” He’d remembered it from when his dad had broken his ribs, how his mother had lovingly taped down the area. It hadn’t been like this though. Some outsider had been responsible. He pulled out the roll of tape from the first aid kit, pressing the end of the strip against Corey’s spine, stretching it across the broken rib, muttering a, “Sorry,” as he reached around her to secure the other end over her sternum. He did it again with the other rib that seemed broken, then more tape on either side of the area.

The second Roach said she should take some of the pills she had the cap off the bottle and she dry swallowed four of them, without a word. She didn't know how many to take but they seemed really small, and she hurt in a really big way. And she couldn't quit fucking shaking. She tried to accommodate him as he put the tape on her, for the moment not even caring that he rather had to work around sensitive girl-bits as he did so. If he said it would help with the pain, she was all for that. Yes, please. She was all for sighing up for that. Because god. It had been killing her all day, but she'd iced it earlier and that had helped some. But actually having the wounds cleaned, and the whole bit prodded at, that was spiking everything up. Of course, she'd also spent a good chunk of the day unconscious too, so that probably had dulled a little of her senses on that score. She tried to regulate her breathing more, which worked to some extent, and at least she felt a little calmer. She finally turned her face to the side, looking at him through the dark fall of her hair. "Still better than you killing someone." she told him, voice a little shakey along with her form, but she felt the need to say it right then.

“Doesn’t seem that way,” Roach said back to her, glancing up at her face and then looking away again. When her ribs were all taped up and the cuts taken care of, her backed off, packing the kit back up and replacing it on the wall. Roach hurt people all the time, but he’d never hurt a friend. He didn’t care what sort of under-the-bridge scum he tore apart, how many slobbering drunks he beat up or people smaller than him... but hurting the people he cared about? He felt like a monster. Corey was in so much pain and he’d have done anything to keep her from feeling that way, even if it meant killing someone.

Corey was quiet for a few moments, before she moved, setting her back against the cold metal door of the stall. It wasn't ice, but it was slightly better than nothing. She kept her eyes on Roach for a long moment, saying nothing, but she was calming down more. Her breathing slowed, and evened out, and she found a better place in her own head. "Think about it." she said, tone light, though it slightly echoed in the room. "You kill someone, and one of two things happen. Either you go to jail--not acceptable, or Dodge and his gang are all of a sudden players on the map, not just a kid's gang anymore. Dodge isn't fit to lead a parade, Roach, and you know it, somewhere deep down. No way in hell would he be able to handle that. Not in a way that wouldn't be like asking to get all of you killed." She fell quiet, just letting her pale blues rest on him. "I'll heal.The rep gets out that you don't fuck with Dodge's friends, but nothing goes too far. Tell me that wasn't worth it." she said. "Or tell me that I fucked up, and you were just about to stop. That Dodge yelling would have got through before you went too far."

Roach was silent. She was right, he wouldn’t have stopped. Hell, were it someone else he’d hit instead of Corey, he might not have even stopped then. He would have continued until there wasn’t anything left of Charlie’s head, just Roach’s fists slamming into core and asphalt. “I should have stopped though,” he muttered, coming in from a different angle. “I shouldn’t have let it get that bad. If I’d had more control...” But he’d been angry and upset about it even from days ago, when Corey had run into him on the stoop. This had been a long time building.

She nodded a little, looking up at the lights. They were making her eyes ache, and she finally started the process of getting to her feet, which was easier to do when one had their shirt on, or alternately, wasn't at all caring about near nudity. But she wasn't in luck on either score. So it was an awkward process, and she turned her back to him again t very carefully pull her shirt back on. "C'mon...the lights are hurting my eyes." she said. She headed for the door, pulling it open after she shut the lights off. "What was going through your head?" she asked. And it wasn't an accusational tone in the slightest. It was an honest question.

“Killing the one responsible,” Roach said, following Corey out of the bathroom and back down the hall. He had considered going over to help her with her shirt but that... didn’t seem totally appropriate. “It just... it stopped being obvious what he was responsible for. I kept thinking of what Pepper must have felt... and then what I felt...”

Corey made it to one of the first long tables in the darkened library, just close enough to one of the streaks of light coming in that she could see him well enough. Then she crawled onto the top of the table and laid on her uninjured side. She was exhausted. But she was thinking about what he said. "That ever happen before?" she asked. "Where the lines got blurry like that?"

“Sort of,” Roach said after a moment’s contemplation, pulling up a chair near the table and straddling it, his arms resting on top of the chair’s back. “Never that bad, though. It was... different. There was a guy right in front of me that had hurt Pepper, just a kid, a girl... and maybe he’d hurt her like... like I’d been hurt. And I wanted to kill him for that. For hurting both of us... except he hadn’t hurt me at all...” He sighed, rubbing at his face with his hands. “I don’t understand...”

Listening, Corey watched him. "This all get brought up again because of what happened to Pepper?" she asked. "You haven't been thinkin on it have you? Not til this?" she asked, just to be sure. She didn't know if she'd missed something major, and really sincerely hoped she hadn't. She watched the little glint of light she could see reflected in his eyes, studying what she could see, but mostly listening. People talked too fucking much sometimes. Corey tended to do more listening.

Roach nodded, folding his arms across the top of the chair again, resting his chin on his arms. “Yeah.” Corey was the only person he’d told all of the details of his life. Dodge knew that his parents had been killed, and that’s why he was in the orphanage, but that was all. He’d even been incredibly vague about how he’d got his scar, to the point where they just made up ridiculous stories every time someone asked about it. “I try not to... it’s just... it’s easier if it’s not on my mind all the time. If I forget about it a little.”

"Yeah, I know." she said softly. Quieter than she usually was. She did have to admit, she thought she had it far better than him. He had a much better memory of what had happened with him than she did of what happened to her. Still, she understood, and she knew she was the only one who really did. Who even really knew. "When you're feeling like that, I want you to come see me, okay?" she said. "I don't think you should be alone, and I don't think you should be around people who don't know what you're going through. Maybe if you just take that time out, next time you won't hit that same point." she suggested. It was a theory. Really she didn't know if there was anything that was quite going to die that fire down in him, but it was the best she could offer. It wasn't like there was a fix. There wasn't. Nothing was going to take back what had happened to him. All she could do was try to work damage control as much as she could, because she cared one whole hell of a lot what happened to him.

Roach remembered every detail. It had been years, but he still remembered the way his parents’ blood had felt against his cheek, bound and unable to move out of the puddle. He remembered looking into his mother’s face and recognizing the exact moment she died, the way the lights had gone off in her eyes. He remembered the light changing in the room as night passed on into day, the moment when the police burst into the room, the pins and needles in his arms as they untied him, the scratchy wool of the blanket they wrapped around him. All of it was still fresh, still painful. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Roach said, his words slightly muffled behind his arm. “What if... what if I go off again? And then there’s no one else around to do what you did...”

"Wouldn't happen." Corey said, immediately, with a hard conviction in her tone. "You wouldn't want to hurt me. There'd be nothing that would set you off, you have to have some kind of kick into that shit. It wouldn't just randomly happen. Never has before, and even if it's on your mind, you wouldn't take it out on me. This was an incident that happened because of fucked up shit. Not because you're some kind of unchecked beast. There's a big difference." she told him, and started to reach out to get the hair out of his eyes so she could see them better, what with him hiding behind his arm, but pain lanced up through her side and she didn't quite complete the movement. Instead she just let her hand rest down on the table top between them, thinking maybe that gesture would have been weird in the first place. Maybe. She didn't know.

Roach jumped when Corey moved slightly, the movement obviously hurting her. He didn’t know what she’d been planning on doing, reaching out like that, but he brought his chair closer so he could get whatever it was she needed. “Doesn’t feel like that big of a difference,” he said, once they’d both got situated again. “If I could do this... what else could I do? I just... I hurt you really, really fucking badly, Cor. You didn’t see it, but I did. I don’t.. want to do that again. I don’t want you to be in a position where you could get caught in that again.”

She gave a little rueful half smile. "Yeah, I don't want to have to do it again either." she assured him. "So, we figure out a way that it doesn't. We figure out some way to calm you down, or get through to you, or maybe you just lay off beating people up for a while. Which--I know that's your role with Dodge and everything, but maybe it's time that took a break too. And if he doesn't understand then he doesn't understand, but you need to do what's best for you and right now, you look to me like you're cracking." she said. "And I don't wanna see that happen. And you don't, and you don't want to hurt people. So...start with just coming to see me when you're feeling like that. If nothing else it takes you off the streets, and someplace separate but safe." she said. She realized he'd moved closer, but she was self conscious now about her actions there, even less sure that it would be okay to do so she didn't do anything immediately.

Roach tried to smile when Corey did, but it fell flat. What he’d done was horrible, and he couldn’t make a joke about it, he couldn’t laugh when Corey laughed. Cracking? Probably. His foundation had been shaking for days and it would take time before he got things as stable as they’d been... or as stable as he could get them. “That’s... that’s the other thing. Dodge...” Roach pushed out a slow breath, running his hand over his hair. “I ran into Maddy today, in the park. She said that, this morning... Dodge came to see her and she mentioned how I used to get like that in the orphanage, and she’d help me out, calm me back down. And Dodge got really mad about it, so mad he hit the wall, right above her head. And she has bruises on her arm, from where he grabbed her the other day. Between that, and what he’s been doing with Evelyn and Jessie... I think he’s gone too far, Corey. I don’t know what’s been up with him lately, but... after that day when Roy was sick, even before then... he hasn’t been the same.”

Frowning, Corey shut her eyes for a moment. She swore softly beneath her breath, knowing at the very least what that had to be doing to Roach. Especially considering how he felt about the girl in question. That had to make it even worse. Though one thing was clear that she picked out of there. The girl calmed him down. Maybe he shouldn't be coming to see her, maybe he should be going to see Maddy when things got dark. Which was a thought that had with it some underlying emotions she couldn't quite place or understand, so she ignored them and pushed past it all. "Maybe you just need her." she said. "If she calms you down." she clarified.

Then she moved herself onto the next topic, even if it was kind of a hard push for her to have to give. "Dodge didn't actually earn his title. He inherited it after that asshole, Patrick. He stepped up to fill the role, but it wasn't his to start with. He wasn't chosen, he just...was there when things fell apart. I don't think he was ever cut out for this shit. He doesn't have the mentality for it. When you're a leader, you have to think of them. It's always got to be about them. Everything you do, everything you think about, if you're worth anything as a leader it's got to be there. Dodge is one of the most self centered pricks I've ever met. It was only a matter of time before this shit happened. Before he got far too big a head, where that arrogant ego of his got far too inflated for him to even notice anything else. I just don't know what to tell you to do about it. It's not my place. and I know that sometimes I don't see things, because it's your world not mine. I don't have a perfect view. all I know is..." she paused a moment, then put it the way she thought Roach might understand best, something that kind of just came to her. "Dodge has a collection of things he's stolen from people, things he's taken because he wanted them. I have a collection of gifts people have given me because they thought I deserved them."

“She doesn’t know anything,” Roach said, pressing his cheek against his fist, elbow resting on the top of the chair. “She... knows that my parents were killed, but I never told her what happened. I guess she... knows it’s something bad. I always had... a really hard time at first, in the orphanage. I did that a lot at first, couldn’t think, I just... I wanted to hurt whoever I could. I was so fucking angry all the time. She was the only decent thing in that place.” He swallowed hard, shaking his head--it never felt quite right, talking to Corey about Maddy. He didn’t know why, but he knew it wasn’t a great idea to linger on the subject for too long. “But you’re right, about Dodge... he was Patrick’s favorite. But he hasn’t been dealing with this on his own well. He feels too... guilty about it or something, I don’t know exactly.”

Corey didn't know what to advise there but she thought it was clear if Maddy had that affect on him, if she really could just snap her fingers and he was okay again or whatever it was that she did, then that right there was the key. If he needed tempering, that was it. It was a lot of pressure to put on the girl, but what choices were there? Corey didn't have the ability. She had the balls to stop him if she had to, but that was definitely the hard way. And it wasn't that she wouldn't do it--she would. But still. It didn't make her feel as better as it should, though. Still, she wouldn't drop the idea. Ultimately, she wanted what was best for Roach, and if that was it, that was it. Plus, maybe with the Dodge bullshit blowing up, and him getting closer to her he could finally have his chance with her. Or something. She might just drift back a little in that case, let him have room.

"Maybe it's time she did know." Corey suggested lightly. "Or at least some of it. If she can do that with you, if she gets through that anger, which is pretty clearly still there, maybe that's just it." she said. "Maybe it's just what you need." she repeated. "Think about it." she said. Sighing, she looked away a little. "Maybe it's time you stopped being Roach." she added, tone almost inaudible there, but then she let things go quiet for a few minutes as she wrested her attention back to Dodge and what Roach was saying there. "I don't think it matters why Dodge isn't dealing well. I know shit got fucked up, and I feel bad for him about that, but pitying the guy doesn't fix the situation, and it also doesn't mean he gets a free pass to fuck up everyone else's lives." she said. "Doesn't matter what is going on with him. He's not pulling his weight how he should be."

“Oh, she knows,” Roach said, looking at Corey with a guilty look. He hadn’t meant to let it slip, but he’d been so angry at Dodge then, at his blatant hypocrisy that he’d had to say something. “I didn’t say everything--hell, I don’t even know everything, but I... basically confirmed that she wasn’t the only girl Dodge has been running around with. I just got so pissed, you know? How could Dodge get so upset at.. having to share Maddy, when he’s playing three girls--at least three--right under their noses?” He shook his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Maddy said she’d talk to Dodge, let him know that she’s... backing off or leaving him. But I don’t trust him, Cor. I honestly don’t know what the hell he’s going to do. So I’m gonna... talk to him. because things haven’t been right around here for a long time.”

"Not that." Corey said. "I meant with you. Maybe it's time you told her about you." she stressed, bracing herself before she sat up on the table, pulling herself into a darker shadow, though he was still lit alright. "I was talking about that. With her, with you." She'd thought she'd been clear. She'd even said maybe it was time for him to quit being 'Roach'. Maybe she hadn't put it loudly enough. Then she turned her mind to the issue he was talking about. Closing her eyes, she felt the soreness radiating out from her ribs, and actually took that as a way to focus herself from the other part of the conversation that Roach wasn't having anymore.

Dodge. Maddy. Other girls. Right. "I wouldn't be far away when she does talk to him. Within earshot, just in case." she said. "And if you are going to talk to him, do it somewhere where he can't call in the rest of the boys to beat on you." she said, having heard what had happened to Roy before. And considering how off the rails Dodge seemed to be lately, he couldn't put it past him to turn on one of his own. maybe she was being harsh, but she was a girl who liked to err on the side of caution when it came to certain things. One of them was Roach.

“Oh, right,” Roach said, blinking. Telling Maddy... it hadn’t even been an option in his mind. He didn’t really want her to know that about him. “I don’t... no.” He shook his head. “No. With you, it’s... I trust you. Not that I don’t trust Maddy, but... you understand. I wasn’t as young but we were both on our own after, sort of. I just... I don’t know how Maddy would react. I don’t know how anybody would react. It was hard telling you and... nothing changed. We were okay. It was scary as fuck though and I don’t think I could do that again. I don’t... I don’t think things would be the same if she knew. Besides, she still calls me Ethan. I’m not Roach to her anyway. That came later.” He shrugged, smiled, weakly. What it came down to was that Roach was hiding himself from the people he cared about. No one knew who he really was--it was better than they didn’t know. Only Corey did and after what had happened... it was more of a curse than a blessing. He frowned, though, when Corey mentioned being alone when he talked to Dodge. What bothered him was that he’d been planning it that way... he just hadn’t realized why until she said so. “Jesus...” he said, rubbing at his face. “Things have gone all wrong.”

Corey was frowning, and she slid her legs over to the side of the table, letting them drop down to swing slightly. She was close to him, but her back was to the light, so she could see him much better than she knew he could see her. She was listening, alright, she just didn't really like what she was hearing. She was quiet again for a spell after he finished speaking, just to be sure there wasn't more. Then she went on herself. "Why do you think things wouldn't be the same if you told her?" she asked, because that seemed important. She could understand the rest of it. How he might not have the emotional fortitude to go through with talking about it to someone else. They shared that, that mutual damage, that deep seeded wound, but it wasn't like they sat around and swapped stories about it all the time. It was just something they shared. And it was a mutually exclusive sharing, even if she was suggesting he widen his circle out more. But either way, she could understand not wanting to relive it while he told the tale--and she knew him, he would--but he was worried that her reaction would alter things. That was the part she didn't like so much. She didn't address the last bit because what could she say? Yes. Things had gone very much all fucking wrong.

“Because,” Roach said, quietly, his voice muffled by his hand against his mouth. He dropped it after a moment, running his thumb over the bruises on his knuckles. “Because... then she’d know who I am. They all would.” He swallowed hard, staring down at the rectangle of light on the floor. “Then I’d know who I am. They’d all look at me differently, I’d be that guy... you know, who... who all that shit happened to. It’d be real, then. I’d be somebody else. I’d be Ethan, whose parents were killed and who was... who was tortured after. I wouldn’t just be Roach anymore. And they’d all know it.” He was rambling, his voice halting and quiet. “But it’s okay with you,” he said, looking up into Corey’s face, swathed in darkness. “Because we’re... both something different. Even we don’t talk about it all the time, it’s enough that... you know and things haven’t changed.”

Her response was immediate. Her voice was low, a little sharp, and adamant. "There is nothing wrong with you." she said. "You're screwed up like everyone else is, but what happened to you--it happened, and maybe it makes you who you are. And if they don't know you, then maybe you're shorting them. Maybe you should be Ethan. Or learn how to be." She was quiet for a moment, looking down, hair back in her eyes. "It is real. But it's not the only thing you'd be. And if that is all they see then maybe you need better friends." Not that there were tons of pickings around. Hell. The fact that he was there with her said a lot. Some tunnel rat girl no one ever really saw or knew. Yeah that probably said a lot. Maybe that was why they were friends. It was okay with her because she wasn't really there. Or, not there as in a part of the world up there. She was a shadow there. A trick of light you thought you saw then dismissed, because nothing was there by the time you got to really looking. She did it on purpose. That was a pretty terrible thought to have in mind, but she didn't say anything about it. As usual, Corey was more about listening than she was about saying more than she had to. And that? She didn't need to share.

Roach looked up at Corey, then looked away again. What she was proposing was... terrifying. Lifting the veil? Corey was the only person who really knew about him not because she was hidden away from view, because she was half a person, but because she knew what it was to sit in the blood of the people who cared about, to watch them die, and to end up with nothing afterwards. She knew that. She understand that. She could look into the face of what had happened to him and not run screaming from it and Roach loved her for it... loved her in his own way. He couldn’t say the same about anyone else he knew, but he hadn’t given them the chance to prove otherwise. “What if there is no Ethan?” Roach said after a long moment of quiet, tension in his already aching shoulders. “What if... what if Ethan is who hit you? What if Ethan’s what makes me... lose control like that? Shouldn’t I keep that away? Maybe I shouldn’t have even told you...”

"You had to tell someone." Corey said. "It's too much to carry on your own." Which she understood. And while she'd not told anyone else either, she had different reasons. She had people to take care of. She needed people to have faith in her that she could handle anything. She couldn't go into some deep, dark damage that lurked in the bottom of her mind. She had to be stronger than that. But him? He wasn't in the same position. He had more freedom than she did. "And of course there's an Ethan." she said. "You just told me that Roach is someone else. So you have to know there's someone else in there. Roach is just a title, a persona. A mask you put on for a long time because it worked for you, and...I don't know, probably let you escape for a while." she said, following the logic as she spoke as opposed to speaking about something she'd thought of before. "And what if it was? I--I see you as you. There isn't a separation for me. You're just you. You hit me. I knew it was coming. Doesn't matter to me what name you slap on it. Doesn' matter to me because that was my choice and I made it, fully aware of the consequences." She reached up to drag her fingers through her hair, but let it fall back into her face again. "I think if you keep things locked away when they do come back--maybe that's why you lost control. Because you've been just holding everything back, and now that it's resurfacing you don't remember how to deal with it anymore." Which was a blind fucking guess, but it sounded logical.

It did sound logical, but it didn’t mean that Roach liked hearing it. He’d hit Corey--he couldn’t escape that much. And somehow, she could look at him and talk to him, stand to be around him. He didn’t understand it but he was glad she did... she was too good a friend to him, and losing her would devastate him. “Maybe... maybe I just need to... let things get back to normal,” he said, avoiding the topic at hand. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, and doing what Corey had suggested--telling others, letting himself... be Ethan, sounded entirely too terrifying to even consider. If they knew... they wouldn’t like it. “Though I don’t know how normal things will be after I see Dodge...”

"Weren't you the one who just got finished telling me that everything's fucked up? Normal lately hasn't been working." she pointed out. "And yeah, you're going to talk to Dodge, and Maddy's going to talk to Dodge, and that shit isn't going to go well." she said. "No matter what you do, unless Dodge takes too many crowbars to the head in the next ten minutes, it won't go well. He's got an ego that's out of control. He isn't even trying anymore to think about other people, so far as I can tell. So things are fucked. End of story. You deciding to just let everything go back to 'normal' not only isn't a great plan, but I don't think it's even possible. Not now."

“Yeah,” Roach agreed, though he didn’t look happy about it. “I just... I don’t know what happened. Not trusting Dodge anymore. I just never thought I’d have to... have a talk with him, like I have with other people. It’s just... it’s Dodge. He’s my friend. Except he’s something else now.” He’d looked away, but he looked up at Corey again now. “You were right, what you were saying the other day, about Dodge, about how he is. I just didn’t want to see it. I still thought he could fix it, that he knew what he was doing.”

"That's the problem. He doesn't know what he's doing, and I think he stopped paying attention to anyone that wasn't him a long time ago." Corey said. "And of course you didn't want to see it. Like you said--he's your friend. That just doesn't make what he's up to lately okay." she said. "I guess all you can do is know what you know, try to talk to him, and be prepared for it all to blow up." She paused. "...and take anything you can't live without out of the apartment before you talk to him." So he didn't lose anything or have to go back there for anything.

Roach blinked at Corey, swallowing a lump that suddenly seemed to have appeared in his throat. Take his things out of the apartment? Well... it made sense, didn’t it? Dodge had always made a point of keeping their personal relationship and his role as the group’s leader separate. Roach and Dodge argued sometimes, didn’t see eye to eye on some things, but Roach had never been afraid that he’d lose a place to stay, not really. But this... he didn’t see how he could go back after this. If he told Dodge off, told him that he’d been going way too fucking far and that Maddy knew everything, that Roach didn’t trust Dodge anymore, how could they possibly continue to live together after that. This was the boy that Maddy had said scared her, who’d bruised her--Roach had said he didn’t want Dodge as his family anymore and he’d meant it. He’d just... hadn’t quite realized that would mean he’d end up on the street--really on the street. “I don’t even know where the hell I’d go.”

"Stay with her." Corey said. "Stay with me." She added. "You know where my place is. You can go there whenever you want." she said. And she'd just let people know that if they did happen to notice someone that wasn't her hanging out in her nest not to violently eject them. She was thinking he'd rather stay with Maddy, though. Plus--above ground and all. Roach was a big guy, some of the tunnels were low hanging. Still, she wouldn't not tell him he had a place to go. It wasn't like most people would be stupid enough to try and find him down there.

“Oh... I can’t,” Roach said, looking a little flustered by both options. He shook his head, tangling a hand in his hair. “Staying with Maddy... that’d kind of be rubbing Dodge’s face in it a bit, wouldn’t it? She probably wouldn’t want me staying with her anyway.” He looked at Corey, smiling a little at her offer but shaking his head on that as well. “And I take up enough space with you even when I’m just there for a while... I can’t put you out like that. I guess I’ll... I’ll figure something out.”

"Dodge is going to be pissed no matter what." Corey pointed out. "So, whatever about him. He shouldn't have pulled the shit he has lately. And as for me, my place isn't that small. I've got the room. If you don't want to stay with me, fine, but the offer's open, and I wouldn't mind. I'd probably feel better at least knowing where you were at." she admitted, though she wasn't positive if she should or not. But it was out there. It was the truth, after all. She knew otherwise she'd be worried about where the fuck he was and if he was safe or not.

Roach’s smile grew slightly. “Enough room for me and Snow, Smokey, Red, Little Bastard, Ace, Oz and Toto?” He shook his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. “No, they’d probably just want to stay in the apartment.” It felt nice, though, that Corey would want him there. And he knew she meant it, too--she didn’t say things she didn’t mean. “I’ll see what I can do first. You’ve got a nice thing going there, Cor... I don’t want to get you all cluttered and claustrophobic and makes things uncomfortable for you. And God would probably have a fit.”

"I live underground. Claustrophobia isn't a problem." She had the opposite problem, actually. Too much open space was what did her in. "And you're not clutter, either, and just--don't do me any favors. The offer's there. Take it or no. It's up to you." Though she would feel better if he did stay with her. People wouldn't be stupid enough to try and go down there to find him, and he was the only one(living above ground) who knew exactly where her nest was. "God likes you. He'd be happy to snuggle, I'm sure."

“Alright. If I can’t find anything else, I’ll be here.” Roach didn’t care how much Corey said otherwise--he knew that he was a big guy, that he took up a lot of space. He’d be a burden anywhere he went, making already cramped living situations tighter, and he especially didn’t want to burden his friends. But it wasn’t like he’d really be able to get his own place without any money or job either. He glanced over at a grandfather clock situated by the door, frowning at the time. “Shit... Dodge is probably back at the apartment by now.”

She didn't say anything for a few moments. "You leaving?" she asked. She was already thinking that he shouldn't, that she was worried about him. That she didn't want him going into this right now. But she didn't think that he would take it if she told him that. Maybe she'd follow. Just in case. Just in case something bad happened, it wasn't like he'd know she was there unless she let him know. She wanted him to confront Dodge when he wasn't going to get his ass handed to him for it. Shit. She was really worried about this entire fucking situation. She held her tongue, though, just waiting for him to answer.

Roach was quiet for a few moments, thoughtful. “No,” he said, carefully. “No. He’s probably back there by now, and if he’s probably pissed after talking to Maddy this morning. I’ll... I’ll wait, ‘til I can catch him alone and we can hash this out ourselves. And... after I get my stuff, I guess.” Not that Roach had too much stuff to get, anyway. What few clothes he owned, a few copies of children’s books his parents had read to him, and a battered photograph of a ten year-old Ethan Gray and his parents. And Snow, of course--the other cats could stay, but Snow was coming with him wherever he was going.

That had Corey relieved. She exhaled slowly, relaxing just a touch. "Good." she said. Which left her not knowing what else to say after that. She did realize that the pills she'd taken were starting to kick in. When she drew in breaths she didn't have to stop them as soon as earlier. Of course, maybe part of that was the tape Roach had put on her too. "Is there any place that he wouldn't risk calling the rest of the boys in?" she asked, thinking about everything.

Roach frowned. “I... really want to believe that he wouldn’t, at all. We’ve been through so much together, I want to believe that he wouldn’t do that to me. But... he gets totally unreasonable when Maddy’s involved. He kidnapped her, he stole her bed, he called the boys on Roy when he was sick. So I don’t know what he’d do anymore.”

"Maybe he won't. But I would rather have you prepared for the worst and be pleasantly surprised rather than caught unawares and I have to find you in an alley somewhere." she said. Because she would. Like she knew she'd be stupidly worried just waiting to find out what the hell happened. If she wasn't spying in the first place. But with her mobility cut down and her not knowing when things were happening to start with, she didn't know if she'd get to do anything of the kind. "Plan for the worst. And if it doesn't happen, then good. And if it does...well you're covered."

Roach nodded, but his frown hadn’t budged. He didn’t like thinking of Dodge this way, but how could he ignore the signs, the facts? There were some wires crossed in Dodge’s head if he thought it was okay to get so angry at Maddy or at Roach or at whatever it was, to punch a wall near Maddy’s face because of a relationship dynamic that had existed before either of them knew him. Hell, those wires were crossed when he thought it was okay to keep Maddy to himself while he ran off with every girl that struck his fancy. Fact of the matter was, Dodge thought a lot of things were okay that weren’t, and now it was obvious the repercussions his skewed moral compass were having on the people around him. “Yeah... I’m not too good at lurking but I’ll see if I can catch him somewhere.”

"Don't lurk, just ask him to meet you someplace on your own, and if he isn't okay with that, then ask him to meet you someplace where he wouldn't possibly risk having anyone do shit to you." Corey suggested. "I....when do you want to do that?" she asked. She wanted to know when he was looking to do it. So she could be around. Even if he didn't know it.

“I guess... tomorrow, sometime,” Roach said. “I’ll get my stuff and stash it somewhere.” Asking Dodge to meet up with him sounded way too polite for how Roach was feeling underneath his pain over Dodge’s behavior--he was mad as hell at Dodge and Roach didn’t deal with his anger well at all. He wasn’t looking forward to it being that pretty of a scene. “Cor,” he said, shifting his focus to Corey instead. “Don’t try to be there. You take it easy--there’s no reason for you to go dragging yourself over the city for me.”

She didn't deny that was what she was thinking. It really very much was, after all. "I don't like the idea of you not having back up at all, even if I couldn't do much about it." she admitted. "I know you're a perfectly capable person and everything, and I would probably just slow you down more than anything, but I just...I want to know you're okay. And I want someone around to call the fucking cops if he does something stupid. I don't want you to be alone on things."

Roach grinned a little, crooked. “The cops aren’t gonna do anything about some street kids getting into a fight. But don’t worry about it, Cor. Even if I’m kind of busted up right now, I’m still twice Dodge’s size. There’s not too much he can do to me.” Unless he had a weapon or about eight other kids with him, but Roach wasn’t going to mention any of that. He hesitated a moment, then said, “If I stay here tonight, will you stay put tomorrow? I could keep an eye on you tonight, get you anything you need so you’re not walking everywhere. And I’m not Dodge, I’ll stick to the other side of the room.”

"They wouldn't come down for that, but they'd stop it if they saw it. Who says someone would have to tell them the truth about what was going on?" she suggested. She was figuring if she told them there was a murder happening or something they'd show up right quick. But that wasn't the point. She looked really torn when he asked the question. "If you promise me that you'll stick to plans. Not doing anything unless the rest of the boys aren't around, and not letting him get the jump on you." she said. "And I trust you. You wouldn't have to stay on the other side of the room." she told him, thinking that would just be silly. Especially in light of the fact that he'd just been putting tape around her chest area and hadn't even accidentally felt any of her bits.

“Scout’s honor,” Roach said, not addressing her idea about the cops. He really didn’t want more people getting involved in this than necessary, especially not the cops. He might have been worried that Dodge wouldn’t make things a fair fight if other boys were around, but that didn’t mean Roach legitimately feared for his life. “Are you sure you don’t need me to carry you? Last time I’ll offer, I promise.”

Corey carefully slid down off of the table, and quirked an odd little look at Roach. “Why are you so intent on carrying me?” she asked, because he had offered that particular service quite a few times. So, she wanted to know what was up with it. If he really thought she was too frail to walk on her own, if he just had some deep seeded need to carry around hurt girls, or what. She wasn't asking in anything like an aggressive tone, she just was curious by now, and so she asked, head tilted just a little to the side as she regarded him. He knew she could walk.

Roach looked at Corey with an odd look of his own, thinking it was a sort of strange question. “I just figure it’d be easier on you than walking on your own,” he said. “Faster, too, since you wouldn’t have to stop or be careful how you step.” He hesitated, looking away for a moment. “I just... I want to do whatever I can to make things easier for you, since it’s my fault you’re in so much pain anyway.”

"If there comes a time where I can't walk, you can carry me." Corey told him. "Til then, I'll stand on my own." Though it was oddly sweet, the gesture. It got a little smile out of her, something that sometimes could be considered a rare expression on her features. Corey tended to be a serious kind of girl. She walked past him, the expression lit by the window. "C'mon. You don't have to keep beating yourself up over things. I knew what I was doing. And we'll figure something out to help you." Even if she wasn't at all sure what that might be. But she started leading them back towards the basement, thinking he'd fit under the table she had set up as her 'bed'. The table was big enough, they'd both fit under there. And it'd be warmer.

Roach smiled back at her. “I figured you’d say that.” It was rare that even Roach got a smile out of her, and he always treasured them when they showed up. Street kids had way too few reasons to smile as it was. In his opinion, though, he had plenty of reasons to beat himself up over what he’d done--he’d seen it, the bruises, the irregular bumpiness of her side caused by the broken ribs. He’d done it, he’d hurt it, even if it had been an accident. She’d forgiven him, but it shouldn’t have happened at all. It was over and done with but he couldn’t loosen his jaws on it, just like he couldn’t with his family. But he wasn’t letting that on anymore. Those doors were shut for the night--he’d let the demons back in later, when Corey couldn’t scold him for it. “We’ll just have to see what happens tomorrow. I will, anyway. You’ll be sleeping in.”

"I don't sleep in." Corey said. Generally, she didn't, anyways. She had things to do, or people showed up with things she needed to take care of. It occurred to her that she didn't know how she'd sleep since she'd be sharing a sleeping space with someone, something she'd never really done before. Still, she led the way down to the basement, then headed in past the crack in the foundation towards her nest. She paused, though, before she stepped out of the low light from the basement into what would be the pitch black of the tunnels, not needing the light herself, but she wanted Roach to be close. She wasn't sure if she should snag his hand or something, just to be sure he didn't get himself lost. After all, that was one of the real dangers of the tunnels that had nothing to do with it's inhabitants. It was so easy to get lost if you didn't know where you were going, and once nightfall hit, unless you had light of your own, most of the places down there were blacker than a new moon night in the middle of a downpour. She hadn't thought she'd find Roach so soon, she'd figured she'd hunt him down elsewhere so she hadn't thought to bring a torch.

“Yeah, me neither,” Roach murmured. He didn’t sleep much to begin with, that odd pressure in his chest waking him up at odd hours, preventing him from going back to sleep. Not tonight, though. Tonight Roach felt exhausted, both from what had happened that morning and what would be coming tomorrow. Once they hit the dark tunnels, he stumbled a bit, muttering a startled, “Christ.” Corey usually had a torch on her when they came down here, so it was rare that he could remember just how goddamn dark it was. He pulled his matchbox out of his pocket, lighting one of them and following after Corey until it burned down to his fingertips.

“Sorry.” Corey winced faintly at that, and then sighed, leading fast as the match was lit, and then when it died out, she reached out and lightly grasped his wrist, starting to lead him along. Even if he did know what directions to go to get to her nest, in the dark like this, it wasn't something one could judge well. Unless you were used to it, two feet in the darkness like the tunnels could seem like half a mile. And everything echoed, so there wasn't even proper cues with that. Still, she'd been running around the tunnels since she was little, she knew exactly where she was going.

Letting himself be led like that was a whole lot better than singed fingers, so Roach wasn’t complaining. He’d been down to her nest countless times before so while he roughly knew the way, it was still impossible for him to really gauge where it was when he was there. The entire environment was different than being above ground--none of his senses were any good down here. “Probably better than I’m not carrying you,” Roach said, stumbling a bit, even with Corey holding onto him. “I’d probably have tripped down here and broken both of our necks.”

Switching her grip from his wrist to his hand, she smirked faintly. "Probably." she said, though she sounded like she was teasing. "I'll have to remember to leave a lamp somewhere up there again." She'd used to have one, though someone had stolen it. She hadn't found a replacement yet, or not one she was willing to give up. She needed the lantern in her own nest for herself, after all. Her nest that they were coming up on, so she led them around the corner, and then up towards her nest, pausing to light the lamp she had in there, sending a warm glow into the cave space.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Roach said, smiling in the dark, teasing right back. Once they reached the nest and the lantern was on, he blinked hard, squinting against the seemingly harsh light. “I always forget how dark it really is down here,” he said, rubbing at his eyes.

Corey carefully made her way towards the table with the cloth over it that hid her little 'bed' from normal view, her ribs twinging as she had to shift more due to the uneven terrain, but she didn't say anything about it, and the pills he'd given her definitely made it easier to take. Setting the lantern down by the table, she looked back in his direction. "That's why a lot of people are here. Because it's so dark. No one'll ever find them." she said. "This is where people go to get lost." Which was true. After all, the people down here? They were the ones who wanted nothing to do with the world above anymore. If they were just normal homeless people, they'd be finding places to squat at least, doing other things, even if they hung on the fringes of society, they still hung on. But her people? The ones down here? They were deliberately making sure no one even knew who they used to be, let alone could be tracked down. They were the city's lost souls.

Roach nodded, picking a spot parallel to Corey’s bed and sitting down on the floor. He understood it, Corey’s role, the purpose of the tunnels. And he’d come down here so often over the years to see her that the darkness, the labyrinth of pitch-black tunnels, didn’t disturb him anymore, except when it caught him off guard, when he remembered how easy it was to lose yourself when you didn’t mean to. Roach wasn’t ready to get lost, though. He still had things to do in the light. “I don’t know how you managed to find them down here,” Roach said, “but I’m glad you did. ... sort of, anyway.”

Corey pulled back the cloth on the table, watching Roach sit down. "I said you don't have to stay over there." she said. "There's room under here." she pointed out. It was an old dining room table, there was definitely room. "I didn't so much find them as they found me." she said. "Or someone brought me here...it's a little fuzzy." she admitted, glancing down for a moment. He knew how little she'd been when everything had happened to her. So the time period after that stark clarity of having watched her new parents get gunned down was a little in and out in her mind. But there was a lot of the actual event she remembered with clarity she wished she didn't have. Especially because she remembered not understanding. Not getting what was going on so much.

“Oh, no,” Roach protested, flushing a bit. He hadn’t slept with another girl since he was thirteen, and there was a very big gap in the things that went on between thirteen and seventeen. “You need all the room you can get. I’d probably roll over on you or something, make things even worse. I’m good over here, it’s fine.” He shook his head, grasping for the subject change. “Better here than a lot of places up top.”

"Look." Corey said, sighing. "Down here? There are things. Living things. God's buddies, other sorts of animals, and laying out in the open down here? Not a great plan." she explained. "Just humor me, and come here. Lie down. I'll get blankets." she promised. Though what she was saying was true. You had to be careful, sleeping in the tunnels. There were a whole host of other creepy crawlies that would just love to creep up on the unsuspecting if you weren't prepared for it. She was, and they didn't head into her nest much to start with, though she didn't want to take the chance, either. The last thing Roach needed was to get bit up by things just trying to sleep. She didn't answer yet about which was better, here or a lot of the places topside, because she thought it had a hell of a lot to do with a person's personality, and what they were running from in the first place.

Roach’s shoulders hunched slightly, looking like he was getting a very serious case of the heebie-jeebies. Forget rats; he really didn’t like the idea of some giant sewer cockroach crawling all over him when he slept. Imagining waking up with it on his face, antennae twitching, was all he needed to crawl under the table. Once there, he shifted a bit, trying to make himself as small as possible, and it still seemed like he took up far too much space. “Are you sure this’ll be comfortable for you?”

"Quit being a little old woman about it." Corey teased, getting more blankets from where she kept them in an old trunk. Roach was a bigger guy than she was, he'd need a better blanket than the one she had in there. Bringing it over, she handed it in to him, before she very carefully crawled in after him, tugging the cloth back into place, making the light inside there much dimmer. She'd kill the light after Roach was asleep. She figured he'd want to have it for a while. Now lying down was going to be a bit of a challenge for her, and she sat half hunched, not even sure how to go about it.

“Am not,” Roach protested, taking the blanket from her. He was in middle of spreading it out over himself when he looked up and saw Corey sitting there, hunched over slightly. “Need some help?” he asked, not even sure how he’d go about helping her lay down. He might have been going overboard with his concern, but she was his friend and it was his fault she was hurting.

She made a face, a little embarrassed. "I was asleep earlier, but not anything resembling comfortably." she admitted. "I'm trying to figure out how to lie down where I'm not going to be hurting myself more." Since really, the idea of laying on broken ribs seemed to be such a fabulously bad idea--and at the same time, ribs? Were fairly prominent features on a person. So it wasn't like she could avoid them entirely. If she laid on her back, that wouldn't work, if she laid on her side--maybe. Her stomach had been how she'd been laying earlier, and it hadn't been comfortable for her.

“Maybe try laying on your opposite side?” he suggested, going with what she was thinking. He took a side of the blanket she’d given him, bunching it up a bit to make a sort of pillow for her, to soften the surface she’d be laying on. “Try that?” he said, sitting up a bit, hands ready to help her get situated if she needed it.

She looked a little doubtful for a moment, but then laid down, carefully, taking her time with it. She settled on her side, and used the little pillow he'd made for her. The piled blankets she used for a mattress were comfortable enough beneath her, but pillows didn't last all that long down in the tunnels. She drew in a breath, and let it out slowly, sort of testing that it was an alright position. And after she adjusted a little more, she settled better. "Yeah, this'll probably work." she decided, looking up at him. "Thanks." she said.

“Good,” Roach said, smiling. And then he realized he was laying next to a girl and it was back to red cheeks. He settled back down, shifting a bit awkward for a moment, trying to figure out what to do with his arms. He eventually just folded one behind his head to keep it out of the way, resting the other on his stomach (since it hit the wall when he folded that one too). “Thanks for letting me stay down here for the night,” he said, once he’d gotten situated.

She sort of watched him settling down, since she was laying on her side facing him. "You're welcome." she said. "though I know it was just you placating me so I don't follow you around tomorrow." she added. Not that she seemed to hold that against him. But she did remember why it had come up in the first place, and it was more a deal so he didn't have to worry about her shadowing his steps tomorrow. Even if she was still going to worry, and she had no idea what was going to happen. She wished she did. She wished she had answers. Something. Some angle to play that would ensure that Roach would get out of things alright, and no one got hurt. But nothing ever worked out that nicely.

Roach tilted his head so that he could look at her, smiling sheepishly. “Yeah, it was that,” he said. “But I did need a place to stay too. The... timing is off. I can’t go back yet. I have to wait until Dodge isn’t there. Get my stuff, get Snow... you know, I’ve been there so long now, I can’t even imagine being somewhere else.”

Nodding, she could understand that. But then again, she was a girl who knew if she had to live above ground, she wouldn't do well. She'd freak out eventually. And by 'eventually' she meant 'straight the fuck away' because her agoraphobia would kick in hard. She'd be a wreck. So, she could understand his not being able to picture being someplace else. Plus, Dodge and everything had been such a huge part of his life for so long, she could imagine he was at loose ends entirely. "It'll be okay." she promised. "You'll figure something out. You're a smart guy. and I know it'll be weird to be someplace else, but you'll find somewhere. And til then you've got places you can stay." Like here, for one, but she'd already gone over that, she didn't want to start harping on it again.

“Come tomorrow and I won’t have a choice, I’ll have to figure something out.” Even if Dodge didn’t outright kick him out of the apartment, things would be too strange after their talk--the talk Roach doubted he’d be able to control himself during. That, and... he didn’t know how much respect he had left for Dodge. Not enough to continue taking orders from him, that was most likely. A wide yawn broke through his thoughtful silence, and he looked at Corey again with a sheepish smile. “Guess we’d better get some sleep. You sure you okay there?”

She quirked a little smile at him. "I'm fine." she said, for what felt like the hundredth time that night. But it was at least nice to know he was concerned. That was better than him just not giving a damn. "Close your eyes, and go to sleep." she said. "I'll leave the lamp on for a while." she added. She might actually just let it burn down, for his sake. It wasn't like she couldn't find more oil somewhere. She'd rather he was comfortable and felt safe than skimp on something she could find more of later. Oil was replaceable, Roach's peace of mind was not.

“Alright. Just making sure.” Roach kept his eyes open a while longer, just enough to return her smile. “Goodnight,” he said, letting his eyes close, relaxing as much as he could on his sore back. Pain (and girl next to him) aside, he was asleep quickly, his breathing evening out, everything else still. Despite everything that had been pulled up over the course of the day, there were no dreams, just blessedly empty darkness and sleep.