skitter | IC Inbox

That makes sense. Human. He can just be human. Now he feels dumb for bringing it up, but he can't just back out.

"Well, I've only...ever been a thief. Rags the thief. And that's all I ever thought I could be. But, I don't know. Maybe I'm not just that? But if I'm not, I guess I don't know who or what I am," he tells her softly.

"It's fucking stupid."

"Obviously you're not just that." She doesn't say it dismissively, but she does say it like hard fact.

"Thief is a job, Rags. You can be a thief, but you still take your hand out of people's pockets and quit for the day. You're not nothing when you do."

He shrugs.

"I never stopped doing that," he tells her. "That was my life. Because if I stopped, I'd die. Even here, I still do it."

She reaches down for his hand. Come up here with her.

"Still think you'd die?"

He gets up, takes her hand, and follows her up onto the bed. "Ah, here? No. When I go home? Maybe. I don't know. My life is so fucked at home that I don't know what's going to happen when we go back. We're going to defeat Morien. Take down the Queen, I guess. And then life is going to change and I guess I don't have to be a thief anymore, but I don't know what else I'm going to be. I don't - have any other skills. I can juggle real fucking good."

She can't help the flicker of a frown - she hates the idea of him going home again. Fuck that place.

"You can take all the time you want here before you go home, though. Build some skills up. That's what I've been doing."

"That's - I kind of like being in the garden," he admits. "Not that I want to be a fucking farmer or anything. But I know that I can keep a garden. I can plant things and I know what they need."

He smiles. "I turned into a fae for a while, during the flood. Did you know? And I could fucking talk to the plants."

"Yeah? The plants say they need anything in particular?"

She pulls her hair back into a ponytail, letting a spider tie it, only in part because she remembers what else he turned into during the flood.

He also remembers, and it makes him grin.

"They all want more fertilizer because it tastes good?" he laughs. "I don't know. They're needy fuckers. But they don't know what they need. They just like to complain and tell me how they miss real sun."

Taylor chuckles. "Fine, good to know they're just whiners. I'll see what I can do about fertilizer. Was being a fae okay?"

"No. It was terrible," he grumbles. "I fucking hated it. Adrian actually saw me like that."

He groans a bit.

Dramatically.

"Did he see you like a ferret?" she asks, thumbing through her device for a moment.

"No, thank fuck," he mutters. "I did see him as a wolf, but that's something that he does on his own, I think. We fought a bit, though. That was alright. I could actually kind of keep up with him in that way."

Taylor looks at him, raising an eyebrow, and tilts her device enough that he can see the video of a small ferret bouncing around gleefully in coils of Taylor's webbing.

"Oh no!" he says, trying to reach for it.

"Take that off! Why do you have that!" he laughs.

She laughs, leaning back to hold it out of his reach. "No, I'm keeping it! You're going to be a warden sometime and I'll need leverage!"

He steps back and folds his arms across his chest. "You can't even prove that's me," he fires back. "That could be any fucking person."

"Yeah? Fine, I'll just send it to Adrian and ask if he's seen any other weasels on the boat."

Rags huffs. "Why would you do that?" he asks. "It's not like he'd get it anyway! He's so fucking stupid. He's the smartest, stupidest person I know."

"You're the stupidest smart person I know, so you're perfect for each other." She grins at, but shuts her device off. No risk of her sending it right now, anyway.

"Perfect for nothing," he mutters, hopping back down and pouting playfully on the floor. "Anyway, he's your warden. You shouldn't talk about your warden like that."

He rubs the back of his neck.

"Pssh. Wardens shouldn't be wardens if they can't handle some teasing. Especially temp wardens."

Even temp wardens doing her a large favor.

"That's true, but you've met some of these assholes. You know they can't take a little teasing how and again."

He raises his eyebrows.

"Yeah, but I bet he can. I wouldn't tease like..." She has to think about that, leaning back on her hands. "Yeah, actually, I can't think of a warden I wouldn't tease. Gotta punch up."

"There was that one warden that had to get his fucking boyfriend or whatever to come and tease back," he tells her with a roll of his eyes. "Because he couldn't take a little taunting from me. He's gone now, and we - came to an understanding. But he was the fucking worst at first."

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