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(no subject)

Who: Raylan Givens and Rachel Conway
What: Regrouping.
Where: Rachel's house, Flyside.
When: backdated to a few days after the riots.
Notes: n/a
Warnings: none so far, will update as needed.

It takes her a few days to reach out to people. It's not that she doesn't care.

It's that she cares so desperately, so deeply. Feels so much responsibility for everyone she cares about, too much to let them be dragged into whatever mess she's created.

But she can't be sure, at first, what that mess might be. She lets that small handful of days pass, lets time come and go and unfold and bring what it will. And it brings... nothing. Apparently.

No imminent danger, at least. Rachel still can't quite believe she walked out of the Arena with a fallen vigilante's sword down her boot and a purloined Militia agent's CiD slipped down her shirt, but she's apparently pulled it off. No one's come to kick in her door, no one's come to drag her away.

So now she can reach out. Now she can make sure the people most dear to her are all right without putting them in harm's way.

She starts at the top of the list.

are you okay?

She still can't bring herself to send even Raylan a voice or video message, started out paranoid after her curbside interrogation, got even more so after her thefts at the Arena. What if someone sees her face and remembers her? What if someone hears her voice and reads between the lines?

i'm at home.

Her new home, the house in Flyside he just got done helping her move into, in the days leading up to the riots.

come over when you can.

He works to help keep order in the city and to help those that need it and have no other resources. God only knows how busy he is right now, in the wake of everything that's happened.

i want to see you. i miss you.

And that, at least, requires no further explanation.

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"You too. At least, though, know one knows about the sword and CiD. And hey," wry, "Thames is perfectly legal."

Nothing to worry about!

She laughs in spite of herself, nestling against his shoulder. "Unlike my adventures, is that what I'm hearing?" But it's not an accusatory question; she's amused.

"I'll be careful. And I'll do what I can to make sure this 'nobody knows what I'm up to', like, stays that way."

"I think that's a good plan," he says. "I think, though, this makes it clear we can't just go on living with their rules indefinitely."

He never thought they could, but they'd gotten into a whole new realm of 'unacceptable.'

"Yeah, it's--"

She pauses, fumbling around for the right words. "Like, before. I figured I had to fear for, like, my security. My job, maybe my freedom. But not my life, not like this."

"Puts an even nastier cast on the whole kidnapping business, doesn't it?" he says, quietly.

Rachel nods against his shoulder, grave. "Yeah. Makes you wonder what the hell's really at stake, here."

"It does. I can't help feeling like someone - or more than one someone - is doing their damnedest to make sure no one can sit still long enough to ask that question, let along answer it."

"More than one someone," Rachel echoes. She lifts her head to look at Raylan. "I hadn't thought about that. You think maybe there's more at work here than just the city's gods?"

"Hell if I know for sure. But seems like there's a lot of corruption that looks regular-old human sized. Don't you think?"

What disturbed Raylan, now and then, was how strange Baedal wasn't.

"Yeah. Yeah, there is."

She doesn't move away, but she props her elbow against the back of the couch and rests her cheek against her loosely-balled fist. "Jack might be able to help there, too. He's a good man. But not everyone else is, in the circles he moves in. He might be able to just keep an eye out for anything interesting,"

"A good man in politics? Now I really have seen everything," he said, tilting his head to smile at her a little. He still doesn't trust Jack entirely, but he trusts Rachel's judgment, which will come to the same thing for now.

She laughs softly, studying his face. "Stranger things have happened, right? But I believe in him. I wouldn't have thrown my lot in with him if I didn't."

"Well, as you're obviously an excellent judge of character," he says, laughing himself, "I don't have anything to worry about. Well, aside from the militia. And any new monsters that turn up."

"I could do without either the rest of my life. Or at least for a good long while." She frowns. "I'm almost worried we're overdue for some monsters; it's been a while and it's been quiet on that front. I gotta wonder, too, if there's any significance to the monsters and disasters. Like, timing-wise."

Do they get terrible things thrown at them because people are getting too close to answers? Or is it all yet another thing to keep them off-balance or compliant?

"Good question." He doesn't have an answer, but it's worth asking. "Unfortunately, if it does, it's been working." They haven't really had an opportunity, so far, to notice whatever the monsters are distracting them from. At least as far as Raylan knows.

"Something else to figure out, I guess."

The fist she's propped her cheek against opens, and she scrubs her face with that hand, weary, worn down. "...I don't even know where to start with all of this anymore."

"Well. Maybe nowhere tonight, huh? It's been a long few days, I think you could give yourself a break." Said the pot to the kettle.

"No, no, I know, it's just--" She drops her hand, frowning slightly. "I have a hard time just letting things go. Sitting around doing nothing."

And she says this fully earnest, as if this bare, basic fact about her had somehow escaped Raylan's notice.

"And I'm really mad about what they did to Tom and what they did to you and what they did period, and I'm... I'm scared, too. And I don't like it, so I feel like I have to do something about it right now."

"I know what you mean - I do. And you've got every right to be mad. But there's nothing to do right this minute, so anything you find to do probably isn't smart. And I know you know that."

He leaned over and kissed her, lightly. "It's a lot, for one person, or even a handful of people."

She relents after he kisses her, sighing. "Yeah, I know. I know I need to think things through, and be careful. And I know I'm damned lucky I got away with as much as I did. I've just, like..."

Rachel shifts so she can curl back into his side. "I've never been so scared of being here. Not scared for my life and everyone else's, not like this."

"I think it's easy, when you first arrive, to see the place as an inconvenience." What with the pamphlet, and finding a place to live, and finding a job to make rent. Especially for people with a bent for problem solving, it's a series of problems.

But Baedal is worse than not getting home, and it's easy to push that thought away. By design, Raylan suspects, but also by human nature.

(He's often tried not to think that, if time passes the same way at home, Winona would have had the baby by now. God only knows what she thinks happened to him.)

He's quiet, thoughtful as Rachel resettles against him. He wants something to do about it as much as she does. Like it or not, for him this is about more than getting himself out now.

"Yeah. It's like--" She pauses, her hand lifting, a finger tracing a triangle in the air as she fumbles for the idea. "The hierarchy of needs, right? You have to see to your basic needs first: food, shelter, being able to survive. You can't worry about anything else until you see to that. So I think the way this place just snatches you and dumps you here with only the clothes on your back is on purpose. It keeps you from worrying too much, right away, about what's really going on."

And then by the time you start worrying about the bigger picture, you now neatly have everything to lose--your job, your friends, your place in the city. She doesn't think that's by accident, either. Even the fact that you're placed in a cohort has to be part of some bigger design; it gives a person a sense of community from the start, and probably some sense of security that they're not alone.

There's something else, too, something she's been loathe to give voice to, but she's been here nearly a year and a half now, and poked around enough to get a general idea.

"There's also the hope that you can go home. At first. Everyone thinks this is a temporary thing and they'll get out once it's solved. It keeps you from getting invested until you have something to lose."

"You think anyone does?" Go home, he means. He knows people leave, but it's not the same thing at all, and it's been a thought he's been picking at like a scab he can't quite leave alone even if he knows he should.

Sometimes he wonders where Tim's dog went, too.

"...I don't know," she confesses. "Like, I want to believe they do? I think we all hope they do. Not just because we don't want bad things to happen to people... but because we think, if he went home, someday I can too."

She lets her hand fall and come to rest on his chest. "But we don't know. Maybe they do. Maybe they wind up somewhere else. Or maybe... something bad happens to them. I hope not. But we have no way to know, not really."

"I guess not." If they ever found out, it would probably either be by accident - or because one of them went. Neither were very cheering prospects.

"But it's what's on everyone's mind, especially at first. That and fundamental needs - it's a fine one-two distraction punch."