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Archer turns his head to look at Adelaide when Charlie starts to babble back at him and catches that nebulous something clouding over her smile before he turns back to frown down at the countertop. Chief though he is now, Archer will always think of himself as a detective first, and this dimming of expression is filed away in his thoughts with the early hour and the little changes here and there that he's caught but hasn't been able to interpret. He wishes he wasn't so damned tired or so weighed down... but he's not going to let it stop him from at least attempting to turn the tables on this conversation when he can get his head on a little straighter. Archer resolves to see what he can glean from Adelaide before leaving this kitchen. It's part of their give and take and the very least he can do, since she's so ready to listen to his stalled and stilted words now. Archer's is a burden he can't fully put down, but he can rest a while here and still keep hold of it. Her elbow nudge to his arm causes him to glance sideways at her and offer up that half-smile of thanks, understanding the gesture.
The smile fades off at the words, but that's more because he understands them, too, and turning his head now causes him to get a glimpse of sadness from Adelaide. He finishes with the cans and slides a cutting board toward himself as he listens intently to what she is saying.
He wants to tell her that one day Charlie won't just read about chickens in books, that one day he'll see them, that he'll see pine trees, and snow, and all sorts of shit that doesn't sound like a fairy tale. That one day he'll live out in the open. But Archer doesn't make promises he can't keep. Archer isn't exactly fond of lying, either. He wishes for all of those things, to be sure. It's a small thing, the hope of Archer Avery, a well protected little flame that's withstood gale-force winds, diminished but not doused.
He doesn't tell Adelaide that he stepped into the role of chief for Charlie, for her, for Bran, for any of their friends, even for Thomas. But he did. Archer sure as hell didn't do it for himself. In his lifetime, Archer's pretty damn sure he's not going to see any of the stuff he hopes Charlie will get to see, that he hopes Ads will get to experience again. Yet he'll lay down his life for that chance. It's a dangerous thing to think that he'd rather die in harness than languish idly, if safely, but it's the truth. It's more dangerous still because with this new responsibility comes the very real chance that Archer will revert to a mindset that can only be described as workaholic, a drive to do everything he possibly can to keep everyone safe all of the time, setting himself an impossible task and dooming himself to failure. Archer tells himself that the threat of nightmares kept him from going to bed; his mind wouldn't quiet, however, clicking through everything he needed to remember to do now that he was chief, interspersed with images of Grady and Roccolini, a tableaux of zombie and victim, then corpse and corpse.
He's honestly not sure whether he wants to hear that no one can do the job better than he... and that makes Archer hate himself just a little bit, that thin slice of pride he feels, how misplaced it seems in the fucked up world that now exists. He is good at what he does, he and Bran both, but just the same he doesn't recommend promotion this way. It's gratifying to hear just how much he's appreciated and Archer decides to hold onto that as the takeaway: that he'll do the job well and there are those who will be grateful that he does.
Archer selects a knife and sets to work on halving the canned carrots; the green beans are fine just the way they are. "Thanks, Ads," he says, almost gently. Archer only has two tones when his emotional armor begins to show cracks, and he's speaking just a little too quiet for it to sound gruff.