playinginsand | (no subject)

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Tobias isn't brooding. He doesn't brood. He just... looks like he is.

He sits cross-legged on the ground in front of the small house they've been working to restore. It's a poor attempt at a meditative position, but it is an attempt. He tries to do that whole deep, calm breathing thing, but it doesn't come very easily. Which is ironic because he never really had trouble staying calm before. It used to be his default mode, and now he has to struggle to stay centered and...

He sighs.

This doesn't seem to be working.

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"Where do you want to go?" It's not a sarcastic question. Not a biting response to belittle her suggestion. It's genuine.

Tobias is willing to try something, anything, to get out of the strangling uselessness of the past month. And he hates knowing that he's keeping Rachel cooped up. She wasn't made for that. She's supposed to run free.

"I don't know."

The meat sizzles when it hits the pan. She stares at it for a minute before turning around, leaning a hip against the wall and looking at the boy at the table with cool blue eyes. "Just... somewhere, I guess. Anywhere else. There's nothing here."

For them, for him. Nothing really comes or goes, nothing new happens, it's...

Stagnant.

Tobias sat in silence for a bit. Not because he was thinking about the suggestion, but because... it was almost comfortable. Almost what they'd used to have.

Eventually he shrugs. "You're right."

Somewhere new. Start over. Don't try to adapt to your old place when something's changed about you, but change everything and be so wrapped up in it, there's no time to worry.

Rachel smiles at him. It feels uncomfortable, almost. It's been a while since she smiled like that.

"We could-"

Talk to Jo, find out where to go, where they might be needed. Assuming that Tobias wants to fight at all anymore. He hasn't shown any desire to learn.

Her smile falters a little. It's a question she hasn't been ready to ask him yet.

It's a question he hasn't been ready to ask himself yet.

But... maybe he'll be able to. Eventually.

He smiles a bit himself, just as uncomfortably as she does. "So... what? We just pack up and start walking?"

For a second, she'd worried he'd pursue that, start another fight. Though with all the awkwardness, she's almost been craving their old fights.

His response, though... his response is better.

Rachel's smile comes back, slow and natural, and she shrugs. "Sure. Why not?"

Tobias actually chuckles at that. "Do we get to eat first?"

Oh, right. That. Rachel blinks and glances back at the stove before facing him again with a smirk.

(it might be the first time he's laughed since they came here)

"We're leaving the books behind, though. No way am I hauling those all over the country."

"Don't look at me," Tobias smirks ever so slightly. "I'm not carrying more than I have to." He was still skinny.

Well, so is she. They'll need to actually go get supplies for this... like walking shoes.

Walking to get places.

Rachel makes a face at that thought but it doesn't last long. Not with a plan and Tobias smirking.

"I guess we could get a car," she points out quietly, turning to get the meat off the stove before it burns, but there's no excitement in it. Moving in a car, going too fast, missing any of the small things they both might be willing to do - or fights they might be forced into if they're already on foot...

"I don't drive," Tobias shrugs. "Though I guess I could learn." He sounds torn. Car doesn't sound like all that great a choice for travel, but learning to drive might be sort of fun.

They'd picked up that SUV ages ago, but it had only been a day of driving and neither of them had ever done it again. No point, really.

She passes him a paper plate and takes a seat at the table across from him, fingering a plastic fork. "We can just walk, too," Rachel points out - and grins at him, teasing. "Of course, we'll have to go shopping for shoes. And while we're there, we could both use some new clothes..."

This time there's an actual laugh from Tobias. "A trip to the mall? Just like old times?"

Rachel grins at him, bright and wide, even while she shrugs. "The movie theater looks like it hasn't worked in over twenty years, but I bet someone's re-opened the Cinnabon."

Like when they all used to meet in a big group, before it was too dangerous. And someone would buy the giant bun and put it in the middle and they'd all try to grab a bite before Ax would grab the whole thing, paper plate and fork and all, and try to shove it into his mouth.

"Cinnabon..." Tobias shakes his head. "Those were the days, huh?" When they were so much younger. And despite all they'd seen they'd been almost innocent.

They'd been surprisingly close to it. Rachel's grin dies down to a smile, no less pleased but more thoughtful. "Yeah," she agrees quietly.

When they all still had families and places to go to feel safe and a purpose they believed in.

"Yeah, they were."

"What happened to us?" he asks. Even though he knows the answer: they won. At any cost.

He gets a little laugh in return, which might seem out of place. But it's as bitter as it is amused, and Rachel looks up from picking at her meal to smirk at him.

"We didn't give up."

"Be careful what you wish for, huh?" Not that he regrets it. Not even losing Rachel, as much as that hurt and as bitter as it made him. It wasn't like they could have given up. It just wasn't an option.

The smirk fades away and Rachel gives him an even look. "You think so?"

How would things have turned out, for all of them, without the war?

"I don't know..." Tobias shrugs. Thinking about life without the war got dangerously close to thinking about whether or not he and Rachel would have really ever gotten to know each other if the secrets hadn't thrown them together.

Even Rachel's thoughts go in that direction. Most of her concerns about the war, and the hypothetical 'if it never happened' question have to do with her own future, her own well-being and purpose if no one had ever given her a weapon to fight with. But only because it's the only question she's still not sure how to answer.

"I knew your name long before we walked across the construction site, Tobias."

"I'm pretty sure you knew everyone's name ever," he smiles fondly. He'd always thought of Rachel as intensely social. Despite what the war had done to her.

She smirks at him. A less serious girl would stick her tongue out, but Rachel's smirk teases well enough all on its own. "Well, I noticed you," she says instead, grinning a little. "We didn't have a lot of classes together and you weren't exactly running up to introduce yourself. But I knew you before Jake started talking about you."

...and the swirly he'd found him in.

Tobias blushes. Which is annoying. Stupid human body and its stupid involuntary reactions.

"Well," he says (almost mumbles, really), "I noticed you too." Though how anyone could fail to notice Rachel was beyond him.