Maggie Davis (seamstress) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-10-04 14:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [10] october, maggie davis, roman scherbatsky |
WHO: Maggie and Roman
WHEN: October 1st, midday
WHERE: Rome's RV
WHAT: Maggie visits Roman for some supplies.
Now, he was a bundle of shirts on a couch- a placeholder for when she could feel things more honestly.
Maggie was holding on, bit by bit. Seeing Bishop had helped, seeing that things were happening had not. There was confusion following Maggie around, and her already low interest in the network and small understanding of it wasn’t helping. Usually, her M.O. would be to go lie down and not get back up, but… for once she was actually needed.
Her mind had focused on when Rodeo would bring his sister home, a babe in tow. So she had started gathering tee shirts to cut and sew into reusable diapers for the baby, more out of needing something to do than actual, immediate necessity. The camp was baking still, even with the sun about to blink out as she walked to the last RV door of her shirt hunt. At her hip was a broken laundry basket, around her head a scarf to keep her brown hair from blowing in her eyes.
Roman’s door was familiar to her, and when she pressed her hand to the metal and felt the heat. For a moment she paused, before knocking softly. It felt like an invasion to go to Roman, no warning, to ask for something that meant very little at the end of the day. But it was better than waiting in her RV for him to come to her, to prop her up and make her drink water. Sometimes she would be so out of it that the water would sputter back up, and she’d cough up like an infant. Other times she’d just cry until she couldn’t cry anymore and Roman would have to carry her to a bed.
At least she didn’t need carrying that day.
“Roman?” she called, voice almost carried away by the wind. It was a soft breath against the sun-warmed metal of his door, and when the man opened it, he filled his doorway like some slumbering bear woken from hibernation, blinking in the bright light. Maybe he had been lying down for a nap: conserving his energy for when it would be desperately needed, mulling over the details of their camp’s predicament. Maggie knew that to some this would be an imposing, fear inducing image. To her, seeing him standing there with his size and fuck you grin made her feel almost safe.
“Hey, Mags,” Rome said, his voice gravelly. He immediately gave way, clearing the space for her to enter. There was no reason to bar her coming in, after all; this place was like a second home to her anyway, familiar in its rumpled messiness, Valya’s blankets and pillows competing for space with Roman’s books, and his half-finished game of chess with Bishop sprawled over the little dining booth.
“What’s up?” (Said as if there were nothing wrong, as if this were just any regular visit. But there was a slight strain to his voice, recognisable to her after so many years: the smallest crack in the bedrock. She knew she could slide her fingers inside of the rock and pull out something dark and personal if she wanted. But as they’d said so many years before: ‘another life’.)
“I didn’t-” she began, stopping. She fought to find her words, like a child on stage for a spelling bee. Were there two or one ‘p’s in apprehensive? “I’m looking for shirts, for projects. If you have any, I can use them for new underthings,” she said. Maggie didn’t meet eyes anymore, not unless she was forced or had spent hours with the person. Sure, she could smile and joke and make conversation. But that raw, forceful energy of yesteryear was gone.
Roman had grown used to the way her gaze dragged downwards, all of Maggie angling towards the ground as if gravity were tugging inexorably and unavoidably on her; that wasn’t to say he liked the development.
“There’s a baby coming. It’ll need diapers too,” Maggie said. She squinted when she looked up at him, the sun shining behind to make a tinny, orange juice glow. It filled the RV, washing out the pale sofa and the dark wood panelling. Rome had settled against the kitchenette’s counter, but he gave a nod.
“Adelaide’s, right?” Word travelled around the Dog Park, even if he wasn’t an officer; gossip and rumour traveled between the tents faster than one could measure, mercurial and fast-flying. “Seems a bit of a failing in our stockpiling, no one thinking to pick up diapers for the resource hanger. If it hadn’t been her, someone’s bound to get knocked up at some point. You’re good for figuring out a substitute.”
He wasn’t sure if discussing babies in general might rip open those old wounds, leave her scabrous and bleeding, but he still didn’t pick his way carefully around the subject—the prospect of new life around the camp was a welcome one. Their people should be able to do more than deal out death with each hand.
When her infant had died, her breasts had still been full. She’d ached, and leaked, and had to find a breast pump to get some relief. It had felt so unnatural after breastfeeding five children, she’d sobbed at the time. Now she still felt a pain, as if it were a phantom limb. The pain of childbirth was nothing compared to the sort of pain that came with losing a child.
“Yes, Adelaide. It might be nice, to have a baby here,” she said, sitting down with Roman. Not across from him, but actually next to him so that their hips touched and she could feel his warmth and invite the comfort. Once, there had been a time when she’d thought the man next to her could be the undoing of her entire family life. Now he was all that was left.
“Roman, I want to… I’ve been thinking. About children. About my ability to have them.” She spoke softly, so softly it was barely audible. Her lips moved a bit more, and then she repeated herself more loudly. Her hands, dry and papery, settled on her knees. They felt bird like. “I want to ask one of the doctors at the hospital to make sure I can’t have anymore.”
He’d been prepared to walk back the length of the car and into his too-small bedroom to forage for old frayed t-shirts, but her presence beside him stilled his movement, and then her subsequent words finished the job. Her quiet, lulling words that could have easily been a yoga teacher’s mantras in another world and life.
Rome didn’t even look surprised when she said it. Maggie had been tiptoeing around her losses for two years, so it made a kind of sense that she’d shut down the possibility to gain something more to lose.
But his mouth thinned, his craggy face settling into a thoughtful frown. Maybe that would have scared the piss out of some people, but that face was capable of calming Maggie in a way nothing else could. “Are you absolutely sure?”
The particular cant of this conversation was casting his memories twenty years back. To that awkward, terrible conversation with Melissa, her announcement, their back-and-forths and arguments and the decision to give it a shot. The unpleasant surprise—the accident—that would become the light of his life. His reason for living. For Maggie, it reminded her of squatting on the bathroom matt and holding a pregnancy test in horror at 19. And then holding Dominic after giving birth. And four other cycles, all as special and unique as the first.
“Yes. I’m sexually active and I couldn’t handle having another child. Childbirth in this world aside, the idea… of having a child that isn’t Davy’s, the idea of being a mother who brought a child into this world. I wouldn’t want to survive.” She swallowed, the words resting on her tongue staying there. I would end my life. How could you do anything but that? How could bring life that would surely end so soon?
“I need someone to take me to the hospital once I find a doctor. I don’t know how to protect myself out there.”
“I can do it.” Unthinking, automatic, an immediate instinct as simple as breathing. He was already considering the logistics of it: he’d have to leave his Hellhounds cut behind, of course, and go incognito.
Maggie leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder for a moment. There was a difference between Maggie in the depth of her depression, the way she’d pull away from physical affection and treat it as if it were a gift she wasn’t allowed to have. Right then, she pulled into it, she fed on the warmth and lavished. “Thank you,” she said. The temptation to move her nose and take in his scent was there; but those were the action of a dizzy schoolgirl. She’d done it before, knowing damn well that as a married woman she’d had no right to give little parts of her heart away to Roman when her husband was a good man who loved her. Now, with Davy dead, she had taken all the bits of her heart up and sealed it tight. But it was hard keeping it closed, the lid kept loosening up; it was easier with Rodeo, harder with Roman. Hardest with herself. It was like she was stubbornly trying to close Pandora’s box, hands pressing firmly down on it, slamming shut on that last sliver of warmth and humanity.
Roman lingered for a moment, one hand flickering up to rest against her shoulder with the slightest of pressure. Just enjoying the closeness and familiarity of her presence. It was a small luxury he’d never quite grown used to denying himself, even as he was good at redirecting himself with asceticism and pragmatism in near-everything else.
Finally, reluctantly, the man stepped away from the sofa and followed through on his earlier intention. He wandered into the back room, started rummaging through the cabinets of clothes. Rome’s voice came floating from the back of the RV: “If that’s what you want, and you’re sure, then we’ll go. Once everything’s died down, and things are safer.”
It’s astounding what visuals can do for someone emotionally. When she’d been in college at ASU, Maggie had gone on an art walk with some dorm buddies and found herself entranced by a painting of a small lake with large blue-gray mountains behind it. She strokes had been thick, with a latex paint that gave it texture she’d wanted to reach out and touch. But the price tag had been too high, and her friends had moved on too quickly. She’d run to catch up with them. But that picture had given her the feeling of being small, but in an acceptable, reasonable, thankful manner.
When he re-emerged, he was carrying a little stack of shirts bundled in his arms; ones that had started wearing through at the collar and armpits, fabric loosening until there were gaping holes, almost as if they’d been shot through with bullets. They were all Roman’s, softened after years of moulding to his body, and scrubbing with the occasional wash. He hadn’t touched Val’s things, knowing his daughter would likely have torn into him for it. There just wasn’t as much fabric in her wardrobe anyway; there needed to be more material to cover his expansive frame.
“We were thinking of donating them to Ruth to use as kitchen dishcloths or something. But underthings and diapers for the baby, I think that’s a better investment for now.” Maggie nodded, and her brown eyes meeting Roman’s face. He had thick latex lines; the blue-gray mountain.
“Thank you,” she said, and she molded her lips into a smile. She stood and took the clothes, hugging them to her chest and ignoring the laundry basket she’d left outside the door. “I’ll let you know when I find a doctor. It could be a while.” She paused, and looked at the door, knowing that was where she was supposed to go next. They could both feel the exit there, sitting and waiting.
Their friendship, to Maggie, was fragile. She thought of it as a ballerina on pointe, gently turning and keeping balance only so long as nothing disturbed her. Like most people, she didn’t understand the musculature, the pain, the perseverance it took to get on pointe. She didn’t understand how strong they were, and when she spoke next she was sure she might be pushing the ballerina a little too much.
“Tonight- people are going to be gone I think. Everyone is either worried or out there. I don’t want to be alone tonight, Rome.” She wasn’t asking for sex, she wasn’t even asking for love. For the first time in a long time, she was asking for companionship instead of handing it out when it was asked of her.
“Then you won’t be,” he said.
It was as simple as that. There was a lot of companionship he wasn’t prepared to give—evident every time another brand-new camp bitch tried to drape herself against Roman at the bonfire, tried to linger outside the RV and bat winsome eyelashes at him, while the man stared bemused and impassive back. Then his hands would gently (or not-too-gently, if she didn’t catch the hint) guided her out.
Maggie was another story. Maggie was a fairytale turned wrong, Sleeping Beauty who wept because she had to wake up.
“You can crash with us. This anticipation, anyway,” and he gestured at the exit, indicating the camp as a whole, “is driving me crazy too. Vic’s going to be out there doing god-knows-what, and with his arm. Valya’s just about climbing the walls already. I’ll feel better having you around too.”
It was an easy admission. It didn’t feel like weakness; Rome knew what weakness was, and being concerned about your loved ones wasn’t it. To Maggie, it felt like a polite acceptance and making Maggie feel like her needs were okay and returned. Not just her pathetic requests.
She gave a real smile though- one that reached her brown doe eyes, and her head tilted as little as she laid the shirts onto the couch as if it were a placeholder for where she would sleep that night. She knew, and she was pretty sure Roman knew, that she’d end up curled next to the man and feeling married and whole and from a different year for a night.
Once, there had been a time in which she’d been tempted to leave Davy for Roman. It had been fleeting, it had been a brief window into what it would be like to be with someone who hadn’t married her at seven months swollen. Oh, she knew Davy had adored her. She’d been his wife, his lover, his mothering being. But Roman had been different, somehow. Now, he was a bundle of shirts on a couch- a placeholder for when she could feel things more honestly.
“Thank you. At least let me fix you something to eat.”
“You’re welcome, milaya. And hey, I would literally never turn down the offer of a home-cooked meal.” Rome’s low voice rumbled, his face broke into a smile. “Ruth’s crew puts on some good grub, but there’s nothing quite like a woman’s personal touch.” It was a shade of domesticity that he hadn’t experienced in years unless it was from this particular lady; not a relationship, but still family nonetheless.
A placeholder, an ellipsis waiting for something else, but that was okay. They’d take what they could.