exsilium | text; a bit past midnight!

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text; a bit past midnight!

so if you somehow had the choice to stay here or go home right now what would you do? pretend you don't have, like, a few days to think it over or anything. you just have to pick. 60 seconds or less! i just want to see what people would do

[No ulterior motives here; she really is simply curious to hear what people have to say about the topic. Listening to different opinions on a large subject like this is a good way to spend a night - or morning, as it were.]

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what happened

i mean if you don't mind saying

[There's so many ways she can answer that, but Ahiru doesn't need to hear about Steph having a daughter or nearly getting killed or her father dying, so she sticks with something simple:]

people stared caring about me

[Her mom got clean and for the first time in her life it felt like she had a mom. Plus Tim and Cass, as well as the Birds taking care of her.

That's what changed, really. All the bad things might have impacted her, but what's made the real difference is thats she wasn't alone anymore. It softened so much of her anger.]

[She understands that all too well.]

yeah sometimes that's all it takes

i'm glad you found people who're good to you

[She also doesn't say that most of them ending up leaving her anyway. That's not the point, and it'd just sound bitter.]

a lot of other stuff happened too but i think that was the important thing

was the other stuff good stuff

[after a delay:]

not really

but it's okay, that's just part of my job

what job

the whole vigilante thing

sometimes the bad guys win

yeah :( but as long as you're still safe you can keep making sure they won't win forever

yeah

[She's not sure what else to say, because that just makes her think about the fact that half the fights she goes into, she doesn't expect to "stay safe".]

[She doesn't know Steph well enough to be certain, but the shortness of that response is like a warning flag that she's said something that hit a nerve.]

hey you know everything is going to be alright, yeah?

[It won't, probably, but.]

i know. we're gonna fix it.

[But she's thinking about the life expectancy of a vigilante, now, and she knows that once she goes home, she's probably only got a decade left. At best.]

[It's too difficult, trying to tell exactly the tone that would have been said with, so she switches over.]

Steph, are you okay?

[That's a surprise, but she answers the call without much hesitation.]

Hey, Ahiru. I'm good.

[And she sounds it, there's even a smile in her voice. It's only a little put on; she is generally okay, she's just thinking about unpleasant things right now.]

Okay, I just wanted to make sure. I didn't mean to be all heavy and stuff, so I'm sorry if I was.

It's alright, I think the question was always likely to lead to heavy kinda stuff. I knew what I was signing up for.

I don't know about that! I mean, a lot of people have been pretty positive about it. But I'm glad you don't mind. We should talk about something nicer anyways, though!

Hey, tell me about something good that happened to you this week.

[She thinks about pointing out that it's hard to be positive when a whole city was destroyed, but she's so caught off guard by the request that all she can is let out a startled laugh.

She decides not to answer with the first thing that comes to mind.]

Um, I finally finished making my home city in the VR room and took a couple people to see it. That was fun, I don't think my eardrums have recovered from Jesse's excited screaming.

[Jesse is a geek, news at 11]

[She knows she won't be able to forget it as long as she's here, but thinking about it all the time as she has been makes her feel like she's drowning. She won't be able to move forward if she can't come out of that feeling. So it's nice to hear something good, and even more than that, she hopes it helps Steph feel a little better, too.]

Oh, oh, that's cool! Do you think I could see sometime? And Jesse - that's the guy from Saul's world, right?

Sure, if you want. [It's an easy agreement, even if she's not so sure on who exactly she'll let into Gotham. Which she knows isn't fair, it's not like she owns the city (and she's not Bruce), but sharing the simulation she made feels pretty personal.

The question about Jesse is easier.] That's him, he does the cookies and stuff, too.

Yeah! I bet it's cool. I can show you mine, too!

I always thought the cookies thing was a really good idea. I don't know him, but I bet he's nice.

Well it took a long time to make, so I hope it is.

[Since there's no Gotham in this world, she had to build the simulation from memory.]

He can be a sweetheart. [She's not sure if nice is the right word, though Jesse always seems to make an effort for kids, at least. Even if Ahiru isn't quite a kid.]

Yeah, I bet it would. Especially if it's big! Is it big?

Mm, that's good. It's really bad here, so it's nice to see that most people haven't let it, like, make them worse people.

It's about the size of New York City, if you've been there.

[It's pretty big.

The comment about people getting worse feels like a knife slipped between the ribs, even if she knows Ahiru can't have meant it like that. She's done a pretty good job of not thinking that way, recently, but it doesn't change the fact it's practically all she could think for the last couple of months.

She tries to think of something to say, but the words stick in her throat.]

I haven't, but I've heard it's really—

[oh. This time, she's certain she's struck a nerve accidentally.]

What's the matter?

text; a bit past midnight!

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