as_damaged | ☎ voicemail

"It wasn't just us," she counters, the slightest frown tugging at the forcible calm of her expression. "More like us than most curses, but not us. The differences aren't insignificant. Plenty of what happens here feels real; it doesn't change anything."

She doesn't look away this time, meeting his gaze like a challenge. The rest she doesn't trust herself to say; all the things that haven't happened that should have, all the wrong turns that mar the prescient memory of the wedding. Their wedding, for better or worse, sickness and health, over and done with.

"It changes things here."

His shoulders straighten into angled alignment, not defensive but determined if anything. He's not prepared to take the hypothesis that what happened didn't exist just because it falls into an imaginary place's definition of being all in their heads.

"You're acting differently towards me than you were two weeks ago. That's a change. Look at where we are. How do we know this isn't the trick and all those times, the curses we keep getting thrown together for, how do we know they're not a better reflection of something real? It's not where we are right now... why not in future? Real or not, it mattered. I think it might matter to you even more."

Ignoring a problem is his method, not hers. It's the coward's method. It means there's something she's afraid of. Finally he glances down, before the determination shows itself to be masking something anxious and unsettled.

"Have I... ever worn that ring before?"

"The fact that I tolerated you a little more easily before being publicly embarrassed seems like shaky grounds to make that kind of assumption." The doubtful, sarcastic bite of her words is softened by a faint uncertainty in her eyes. Or maybe it's his sanity she's questioning.

"If you'd worn it, wouldn't you know?" It's an evasion, though she doesn't think it'd be a lie (not precisely, at least,) to tell him no. She can't help but separate them; one from a divergent past, the other a destined parting. "Besides, what might happen at home has as little bearing on what happens here, as what happens here affects what will happen in the real world. It wouldn't make any difference, now, if we were married with three kids two years down the road, or if I were dead, or if we never spoke again."

There's an unspoken accusation laced through the words; not venemous, but weary. Wounded.

"You don't tolerate me," for once this isn't a complaint, but a point being made, "You pretend that's all you're doing, because it means I'll keep making an effort and you don't have to act like you care. But you do, or you wouldn't even bother with the pretence. I've seen people you really don't have time for."

Few and far between, and always for some just and moral cause. Worse people than him, is the chance he's taking. They have to be worse people than him.

Though, if asked, he wouldn't rate himself either.

"I'm in a picture with you I don't remember having taken. Perhaps I was wearing it then. I don't remember a curse handing out souvenirs of people from our pasts, either. Allison," it's such a slip he doesn't even notice, "If you really think that any one of those three options wouldn't be... among the most significant things I can imagine, then you really... you have no idea about me. At home or not."

The fact she's even chosen those three to mention raises a stream of other questions he barely dares ask but which will sit and itch under his skin unless he does. Home is a foreign concept, what might happen there only matters to him in so far as it adds to the puzzle pieces of his own consciousness he feels he's putting together here. Clues to what's really important.

Unable to contradict him there, she simply doesn't address that challenge. It isn't as though she can choose whether she cares or not; trying to explain why she'd rather keep her distance would be admitting too much.

"I didn't say it wouldn't be significant, just that it wouldn't change things. Not in a practical sense." She takes a moment to sip her drink again, resisting the urge to look away. "We'd still be the people we've become here, not the people we were or will be at home."

"It would change things. Knowing things about other people changes how we act toward them. If you found out I died, back home, don't you think you'd be a little nicer to me? If I knew here was all the chance I had to speak to you, I'd sure as hell make the effort."

He leans forward, arms folded across the table with one palm extended outward like an offering or invitation.

"What if this, here, is all we get?"

Her gaze dips to look at his hand, though she meets his eyes again almost immediately. It's not that she looks away to hide her feelings-- when it counts, she can draw the storm shutters, keep her thoughts off her face. It feels a little disingenuous, though, which is why she'd always rather avert her gaze.

"If this is all we get..." she begins, trailing off for a moment to find the right words, "Then I guess we don't get very much, do we?"

He sighs, just sighs, and though his shoulders bow he doesn't really move from the spot.

"That's what worries me."

Her lips curve up in something that is decidedly not a smile. Cameron leans in, arms crossing over her lap, and shrugs.

"What do you expect me to say?"

Other words are on the tip of her tongue, better left unspoken but rising to close her throat nonetheless. You left. You walked away. It's the truth she's been trying to bury for months. It explains everything; which is why she won't, can't say it. He ought to know. He must know already, or else he's a greater fool than she takes him for.

The ring weighs down her pocket, a smooth and silent reminder that she's not being truthful. But what should she say? Beginnings are followed, inevitably, by their endings. She knows that all too well.

"I haven't killed anybody, Cameron."

Suddenly his voice is just that bit too loud for the setting and he tries to cover with a growl and a cough against the back of his hand as people look around.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me for treason. It's been six months I've been trying to get back to a place where you're willing to call me a friend and it's so-- I didn't ask for this curse. I don't know why the damn place keeps throwing us together for anything like this, but I think overlooking the fact it does might be naive."

His shoulders lift with deeper breaths than the short, controlled exhalations he allows to escape. There's a lot being controlled here, under the surface, and unlike Cameron he's never been good at hiding that. It's why avoidance is so often his best policy. Facing something headlong brings too much to the surface, looking for an escape valve, and words he has to be careful of aren't it.

"If it had been someone else you married I'd probably have wanted to break his nose. It wasn't, and you look like you want to break mine. Would that help? You can do it, if it helps."

"Don't be ridiculous," she sighs, the last word trailing into a frustrated hiss of breath before she bites down on it. She leans back again, not uncrossing her arms, looking at him thoughtfully.

"Expecting things to be the same as they were before is naive," she counters, with a little twitch of a frown. It's not the curse-induced flings, it's what they're mocking that upsets her. The sense that for once she's seeing what ought to be and isn't; exactly what he's suggesting, except it's not the possibility that upsets her, but its negation. She can't comprehend how he doesn't see that; but certainly that's how it seems.

"Is it naive to think they could at least get better?"

There are too many 'befores' to choose from, really. Their friendship - relationship - has taken enough uptilts and downturns to please a hardened rollercoaster enthusiast. Somehow he misses the bickering and betrayal when he looks back over it (or feels oddly fond in recollection - he misses it).

"Or is this it? We're stuck barely speaking until a curse forces us to make-out?"

She reaches for her cup, just glances at it. Unfolding her arms doesn't open her up in the least. She fixes him with a long stare, not quite frowning but certainly, obviously in thought. It's not that she doesn't know what she wants to say; she doesn't know how to make him hear it.

"There are limits to how close we can be," she says quietly, after a moment. "To how far I can trust you."

It's surprisingly candid, for her, only because she doubts he'll follow it to the right conclusion.

"You think if you let yourself like me again, you won't be able to help liking me?"

It's almost a joke, on his part, the impossibility of that, the certainty of his bridges being burned. So he forces something close enough to a smile to go with it for just long enough to finally pay attention to his coffee. It's cooled to the point of unpleasant already, and he finds himself wishing he'd drunk it still hot enough to burn.

"Come on, you never liked me that much to begin with."

An unvoiced laugh aches under her breastbone, briefly. Cameron looks down carefully at her cup.

"It doesn't matter how much I like you, or don't like you."

Maybe that's too cryptic. She sips at her drink to avoid saying anything more.

☎ voicemail

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

Re: who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood

who are we to tell ourselves that we're misunderstood