"What? He blinks, slowly coming to his sense again, wrapping an arm around the little girl gently and getting to his feet. "Oh. This is Peace. Sorry, she's not good with strangers, ya know? And she's not on the official guest list."
That statement is coupled with a serious glance, that errs a bit on the side of pleading. He didn't tell people you were a bloodthirsty pack animal, you owe him keeping this little girl's secret. Okay? Peace, for her part, doesn't pay a lot of mind to Collette. Just a cursory, curious glance. But she's not afraid of teenagers the way she is around adults, and Stanley isn't tense, so she doesn't perceive Collette as a threat to them both. She just enjoys her cheese and plays with his hair some more. Her own hair is dark and kinky, but it's been carefully pulled away from her face and secured with a strip cut off of a hospital gown.
"She doesn't talk much. She's uh...last time....uh. Her ear got fucked up, you know? Things sound kind of weird to her I guess."
She'd be lying if she claimed that she'd not had similar thoughts, of saving someone, anyone, had she been given the choice. Collette hadn't. Nor had any part of her friends left behind been the sort to really pull someone through like that -- Collette's not sure Caesar went back to Paramjit, though she suspected he had.
It's another young girl, whose only crime had ever been to live in a free, difficult country. Only this one's alive.
Collette's gaze lingers with that thought. When she looks to Stan, she just smiles. "Official lists are boring anyway," she comments. "And my guess is if she's stuck with you long-term, you'll want to look into finding anyone familiar with speech therapy. Just the one ear?" She wonders if her equilibrium might be off, too, but she hadn't seemed to find moving around too awkward. Were the two related? She's not sure.
What she doesn't say are her other thoughts: how, why, what if she disappears and it's because we've changed the past and she's never been born? Those aren't thoughts she wants to feed Stan, no matter how often she's had them. No matter living through times where people she knew had been written right out of history.
"Can they do that?" Oh, god. They said they couldn't fix her ear and he'd just assumed that meant they couldn't help, but maybe it wasn't true. He really has no clue how to be a stand in for someone's parents. It's so much harder than it looks.
"I...yeah. Of course I want to fix it. I mean, I don't have money. Or skills. But maybe I can...uh. There's gotta be something, right?"
"Hearing aids, doctors, therapists who work on this stuff... I mean, all kinds of stuff, for different people, but speech therapy's common! I know we had people who worked on it at the hospital before, so... maybe someone up here did that. Back home."
Or when they all return -- if Peace is around at that time -- he'll find someone else who can help. "It's not a big problem, not at all! Even if she were totally deaf, that's be like, learning sign language and helping her with it. Kids pick new things up like crazy!"
"Sign language?" That's...maybe not a perfect solution. But that could work, until he's able to really fix it for her. In fact, when all his plants grow in...right. No plants. He'll have to think of a better way to pay for it. Maybe he can trade some blood to the vampires at the hospital...
"Yeah. Guess I never thought about it. You're way smarter than Petey." AND hey, he's pretty sure he knows some sign language. Though he can't remember how he knows it. But, yeah...yeah, actually he seems to know a lot of sign language. That he just hadn't needed until now, or something. Must've been from watching too much Sesame Street as a kid, maybe. Huh.
"Petey?" she asks, lifting the towel off the ground and holding it with one hand out to the side. She awkwardly manages to roll herself back slowly, aiming to end up by the sink. She doesn't judge it right the first time.
She grimaces, then tosses the towel toward the sink anyway. Close enough.
To his credit, Stanley stops dreamily making signs to himself, and hops up for a minute, shifting Peace to one hip. Together they get the towel into the sink. Success?
"Thanks. Can you wring it out?" She's not sure if it's more or less rude to just leave it there, but asking her to work with this sink, when it's higher than the ones in the apartments, is kind of...
Anyway, Collette looks back to the stain on the floor. "I think we have some kind of surface wipe... like baby wipes, only for cleaning. Did you need an extra blanket for her? I know we have a few at the clinic."
The statement is casual, it's clearly not something he thinks of as a big deal. She's little, she doesn't take up much space. At Collette's prompts, Stanley wrings the rag out and glances around for the surface wipes. He's not ambitious, it's true, but directions he's good at taking when he's not being stubborn.
"She have enough to wear? For that matter... do you?" Pointing down the length of the counter, she tosses out, "They're down there, I think. Bring me back one and I can help, too!"
He's about to answer, really. To reassure her that yeah, yeah, he traded everything and his soul for cute little tutus and pretty dresses when she got here. He even broke his network silence and asked for help.
But the second part makes his throat tighten unexpectedly. It's...it's the first time anyone's asked him if he needed anything, personally. For some inexplicable reason, it makes a little pang go through his stomach. But he swallows it, takes a breath, and shakes his head.
"No. I mean, yeah. She's got...stuff. I'm not neglecting her, I promise."
What he says and doesn't say, how he says it, the time until he speaks, all of that makes Collette pay even more careful attention. "Didn't say you were," she says cheerfully, though she guesses someone has. "Didn't hear an affirmative from you, either. So... what size shirts do you wear? Pants? Do you have socks? Clean pairs of underwear without holes in them? We've got extra boxers."
His shirt is pretty obviously ragged, so there's no use lying about it. But it's tough to answer. His chest feels heavy, though he wouldn't be able to explain why if someone asked. Instead, he settles for nodding. Yeah. Okay. He could maybe do with a new shirt. A new anything. He doesn't know whose shit she's trying to give him, but he'll leave them some green on the doorstep or something to make up for it. They can sell it if they don't like to toke.
A nod is all she needs. Collette nods in return, glancing back toward the ground. "Where're you staying here?" Where is about a room number. She figures he'll know that much, without her saying it explicitly.
It's not like he needs to memorize the number, honestly. Everyone always knows where Jesse lives, so that's all the directions he's needed. If she doesn't know, they're both going to have a tough time sorting it out. But he could always give her directions from the cafeteria if he needed to.
Huh. That's gotta be the first time he's met someone who didn't know where Jesse lived already. And honestly, with how intense Saul had been about the thing with Collette, he'd assumed...but no, that wasn't about Jesse. It was about Stephanie, wasn't it?
He shook his head, clearing it as best as he could. "I can give you directions from the cafeteria? Me and Peace spent a long time walking, you know? She doesn't like to go too far now. We haven't explored much."
She flashes him a smile, straightening up from her attempts at cleaning. "That'd be great, really! I'm pretty good with navigating." By landmark or description, her memory wasn't all that shabby for those sorts of things. "What about essentials? Toothbrushes, combs, stuff like that?"
And then directions were conveyed, and they were the same directions as last time he told someone how to get to his apartment from the cafeteria, due to this strange inability of his to memorize his new lunar address.
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That statement is coupled with a serious glance, that errs a bit on the side of pleading. He didn't tell people you were a bloodthirsty pack animal, you owe him keeping this little girl's secret. Okay? Peace, for her part, doesn't pay a lot of mind to Collette. Just a cursory, curious glance. But she's not afraid of teenagers the way she is around adults, and Stanley isn't tense, so she doesn't perceive Collette as a threat to them both. She just enjoys her cheese and plays with his hair some more. Her own hair is dark and kinky, but it's been carefully pulled away from her face and secured with a strip cut off of a hospital gown.
"She doesn't talk much. She's uh...last time....uh. Her ear got fucked up, you know? Things sound kind of weird to her I guess."
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It's another young girl, whose only crime had ever been to live in a free, difficult country. Only this one's alive.
Collette's gaze lingers with that thought. When she looks to Stan, she just smiles. "Official lists are boring anyway," she comments. "And my guess is if she's stuck with you long-term, you'll want to look into finding anyone familiar with speech therapy. Just the one ear?" She wonders if her equilibrium might be off, too, but she hadn't seemed to find moving around too awkward. Were the two related? She's not sure.
What she doesn't say are her other thoughts: how, why, what if she disappears and it's because we've changed the past and she's never been born? Those aren't thoughts she wants to feed Stan, no matter how often she's had them. No matter living through times where people she knew had been written right out of history.
Thinking like that would drive anyone crazy.
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"I...yeah. Of course I want to fix it. I mean, I don't have money. Or skills. But maybe I can...uh. There's gotta be something, right?"
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Or when they all return -- if Peace is around at that time -- he'll find someone else who can help. "It's not a big problem, not at all! Even if she were totally deaf, that's be like, learning sign language and helping her with it. Kids pick new things up like crazy!"
That's what her mom always said.
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"Huh. Yeah. Maybe."
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"Petey?" she asks, lifting the towel off the ground and holding it with one hand out to the side. She awkwardly manages to roll herself back slowly, aiming to end up by the sink. She doesn't judge it right the first time.
She grimaces, then tosses the towel toward the sink anyway. Close enough.
Most of it falls inside.
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To his credit, Stanley stops dreamily making signs to himself, and hops up for a minute, shifting Peace to one hip. Together they get the towel into the sink. Success?
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Anyway, Collette looks back to the stain on the floor. "I think we have some kind of surface wipe... like baby wipes, only for cleaning. Did you need an extra blanket for her? I know we have a few at the clinic."
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The statement is casual, it's clearly not something he thinks of as a big deal. She's little, she doesn't take up much space. At Collette's prompts, Stanley wrings the rag out and glances around for the surface wipes. He's not ambitious, it's true, but directions he's good at taking when he's not being stubborn.
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But the second part makes his throat tighten unexpectedly. It's...it's the first time anyone's asked him if he needed anything, personally. For some inexplicable reason, it makes a little pang go through his stomach. But he swallows it, takes a breath, and shakes his head.
"No. I mean, yeah. She's got...stuff. I'm not neglecting her, I promise."
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She can dig extra pairs up that should fit.
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It's not like he needs to memorize the number, honestly. Everyone always knows where Jesse lives, so that's all the directions he's needed. If she doesn't know, they're both going to have a tough time sorting it out. But he could always give her directions from the cafeteria if he needed to.
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He shook his head, clearing it as best as he could. "I can give you directions from the cafeteria? Me and Peace spent a long time walking, you know? She doesn't like to go too far now. We haven't explored much."
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