OOC: Fight with Sabitha Commentary Part 2
Log: Fight with Sabby
Date: June 8, 2006
Players: Sabitha & Rossi
Part 2 continued from Part 1
Sabitha stares for a moment with a disbelieving stare that dissolves after a moment into a harshly bitter laugh. "Are you /serious/?"
"Why not?" Rossi bites back through set teeth. "I'm just a cop. Homo sapiens. I'm disposable. You're supposed to be the next stage in human evolution. What makes me less disposable than you? Or is it Percy? He'll pull the strings to get me erased, but he won't for you?"
"She didn't take a year and a half of your life!" Sabby shoots back. "One memory-- /one/. That's all she needed. I don't even-- Even if she were /willing/, for some unexplainable bizarre reason, to make /any/ sort of sacrifice for /me/--"
Curious that she doesn't seem to think so. Her arguments against it sound terribly feeble. She doesn't sound, to him, like she's arguing logic; she starts sounding like she's arguing loss. Not, "I can't," but "I won't," the way people argue against performing a course of action that they don't want to do, when they don't want to come straight out and say, "I'm not going to do that."
"Why not? She was willing to make a sacrifice for /me/."
"No," Sabby corrects shortly. "She made a sacrifice for Percy."
"So ask your boy toy." Rossi's head flags high: shades of Leah, shades of /before/. Again, the smile, saccharine and perfect and black, pitch black. "Ask for an out."
"She knows I want out, Chris." Sabby's voice drops quiet again, anger suddenly drained from posture and expression. "I haven't hidden it."
Hah. Hah hah. Really really really inconvenient.
There's a train of logic here that is, I admit, inconvenient on the OOC balance. These are all options available to the character, after all, but there was some wanking that had to take place so that the character could continue to be playable. My apologies to the player for pushing that line. I wasn't really thinking that one through so much. Blame Chris.
That last part, what Sabby said, that Emma knows that she wants out because she hasn't hidden it -- there's no reply for that because there's nothing worth saying. What she's saying there is, "I have been passive, and I've waited for someone else to do something." Made it clear ... what? By being grouchy? By being pissy? By being rude to Emma? What has she done? What action has she taken? The implication is that she's done nothing at all.
Rossi stays as he is, still rigid, still riding on the long line of his temper. Needless to speak. He glowers at her, throttling the first retort, throwing silence like a stifling blanket between them.
"You think I'm staying because I'm a coward."
Silence still. Answer enough.
"You think staying is the /easy/ thing to do."
And here we lapse back into the terse exchange between characters: stripping down the physical, emphasizing the audible. I like this a lot. I like silence, though Rossi doesn't use it too much. His weapons are his voice and his presence, so silence -- for him, it seems like a retreat, or a withdrawal, and that's exactly what it is here. He's withdrawing. He's washing his hands of her.
Rossi's hand opens and closes, flexing by his thigh. Dry eyes stare, unblinking. "I think you made your decision. I think you decided what you'd keep by staying is more important than what you lose."
...and this is why. She's made her choice, yet again, and it was the easy one.
So unfair of Chris to call it that -- but it is, really. It's the choice of comfort rather than courage. Status quo. Huddle in the shadow of power and hope it doesn't crack and fall on you. His phrasing here was a little odd to me, for some reason, but it's right and, I think, justified by what's happened until now. She hasn't made clear what she thinks she will lose, but his knowledge of Emma Frost and her involvement in Sabby's life -- the money that led to comfort, career, all that -- makes it clear what Sabby gains ... so that's what comes first. In the balance of things, it's that the benefits outweigh the losses, and if Chris was one of the sacrifices to her continued comfort, well. So be it.
Chris really doesn't have a very good opinion of Sabby here, does she? Um. It's odd to think that even with this opinion, he still could have (and probably would have) forgiven her. He's an odd duck.
"By staying, I stay alive. So does everyone I care about." Sabby returns the stare, although her eyes blink rapidly, breaking and meeting his gaze with every flutter of lashes. "Maybe I am a coward, then. But I want to stay /alive/, Chris."
A shadow leaps in the hollow of his throat, timing itself to a staccato beat. "Believe it or not, Melcross, I'd prefer to keep you alive, too. You've never even tried." Rossi gestures in a quick sweep of hand, dismissing the question. He turns away, back still stiff, to hobble towards the rear table: dignity, indignity. "It doesn't matter. Forget it. Fucking /forget/ it."
Life/death is not a zero sum game for Rossi. His behavior in the past has made that perfectly clear. Poor Sabby. They're speaking totally different languages.
I am running out of steam! Boo. Rossi's done talking, really. The continuation of this conversation is because Sabby pushes it, not because he's got any inclination to talk more. His passions tend to burn themselves out, anger especially, and in the aftermath he suffers remorse (sometimes) and occasionally depression. All that energy he has isn't infinite, and the level of his fury with Sabby earlier wasn't something that he could sustain for long, not once an element of practicality crept in and pointed out that he was getting nowhere with this woman. Chris is stubborn, but there's only so long you can beat your head against a brick wall and fool yourself it's doing any good. He's already burning out, and with the burnout comes an element of apathy, emotional indifference. You know. Whatever.
"You don't know," Sabby tells him quietly, barely audible. "What you're talking about. Christopher Rossi."
"Why don't you tell me for a change?"
"Because I am already afraid that you are dead because of what you have handed over to Homeland Security, and /hell/ if I'm going to put the final nail in your coffin. /Hell/ if I am."
Unseen, a quicksilver grin twitches across Rossi's face. Satisfaction, vengeful and anticipatory. "You're a worrier, Sabby. You already pulled the trigger once. Show some balls and pull it again."
Again, he asks. Tell me. It's a last-ditch effort, and not even a serious one at that. She chooses not to. Fine. That stab of disappointment, annoying in and of itself because he should know better than to be disappointed, briefly recharges irritation. I ... don't really know what I was doing with this last pose. I'm a little embarrassed with the physical side of it. WTF? The verbal, I'm okay with. Ignore the physical part, folks. Brief moment of utter incompetence rearing its ugly head.
Hurt flashes clean and clear across Sabby's face, a bullet struck home by Rossi's words. She stares at him across the distance and finds no words in answer.
The detective pauses, head slightly turned to wait for a response. None forthcoming, he begins limping his slow way down the hallway again. "Clean yourself up," he suggests, reaching out in passing to pop open a closet door. "There're some towels in there. Take a shower. You can borrow some clothes."
Rossi finally, finally! shuts down the conversation for good. He's neutral again, which is safe; obliging host, without any emotional bits and pieces to make things messy. In its own way, this is also cruel, this distancing -- but it's as much for Rossi's protection as Sabby's, and he doesn't see it that way. That is to say, if it hurts her, it's unintentional. He's trying to build the armor back up again so he can deal with the shambles of his life with what pride he's got left.
While I'm proud of Rossi for having made it through this entire exchange without really betraying the extent to which he'd been destroyed by what Sabby did, I'm also kind of disappointed because it would've made for a slightly different scene. Opportunities lost! Oh well.
Sabitha stares after him, but makes no move to follow. Her right hand curls into a helpless fist at her side. After a few moments she requests shortly, "I need cab fare."
Well. That shows balls, anyway.
"Heading home?"
"I don't have any money."
"How'd you get here?"
"He left me outside your apartment."
I'm bizarrely pleased by this little exchange here. So humdrum. So inane. So utterly inconsequential and conversational. It's a marvelous, throwaway counterpoint to the storm that just passed and is still hanging over their heads.
A pause. Rossi, silhouetted against the open window visible at the far end of the hall, plants his hand on the wall and turns to regard Sabby. "Who?"
Sabitha lifts her hand in a fluttering wave. "Magneto."
Another pause while Rossi considers. "How's he doing?" Then he turns away. His body moves out of the bedroom entrance, disappearing into the room beyond. There is rustling there, small sounds of a man in motion.
"I didn't ask."
There are very few people in the world who would take that in their stride. Kidnapped by Magneto? Huh. How is that old fart, anyway? Chris can see how Sabby's doing, and obviously Magneto let her go without doing her any serious harm. He can't spare anything more for her. No more emotions, no more involvement; he's bleeding a little too much already. So instead he substitutes with physical gestures. Tokens. The shower, the money -- they're proxies for the kind of emotional investment he can no longer spare enough of himself to make.
No reply floats down the hall. Rossi emerges again, making his painstaking way down the corridor in return, good hand ghosting along the wall with a wallet caught between the fingers. "What did /he/ want?"
"He wanted to know where Emma Frost is." Sabby's eyes follow Rossi quietly, and her hand slides down to curl around her opposite arm again, careful in the hold of it.
"Where is she?" Back in the living room again, Chris flips open the black leather and thumbs out bills, one-handed and practiced.
"I don't know." Sabby's voice is a soft echo of her repeated refrain.
Another throwaway, that question about Emma. He doesn't really care, but asks because he should. Sabby says she likes the image of Rossi counting out the money, and so do I. There's a quality of one person buying off another here, and while she uses the phrase 'Judas,' I view it more as a bribe: if I give this to you, you will get out of my sight. And there is, really, a kind of contempt even in the monetary generosity, even if Rossi himself isn't doing it deliberately. It's ... sordid. This is what you came for, this is what you care about, so here. Take it and get the fuck out.
In case it has somehow managed to escape you, Rossi was really upset at Sabby.
Green eyes skip up, their color retreated from the blaze of earlier. "You lying to me?" Ten. Twenty. Forty dollars. Rossi tosses the bills to the sofa's back.
"Emma Frost trusts me about as much--" Sabby breaks into a short laugh and shakes her head, bitter. "As you do."
Forty-five dollars. Three more on top of that. "Makes sense," Rossi says with a swift, bitter jag of smile. "She can read your mind."
"I am not so much of a coward," Sabby answers without a smile, or inflection of tone, "That she has to read my mind to know what I think."
Go, Sabby! I read this pose and I think about Leah, for some reason, the way she would raise her chin and flag her head high in defiance. This is Sabby's flag pose, taking a little of her own back.
Rossi's question about whether Sabby is lying to him is another throwaway, and I didn't invest a whole lot of effort into describing the voice because of it. He's asking for curiosity's sake. He doesn't reasonably expect an answer that he'll believe, and again, like I said above -- he doesn't really care. But it's an indication that he doesn't care enough, either about the question or the questioner, to bother trying to read her to make that judgment for himself. In essence, he's saying he doesn't know Sabby. Not this Sabby.
The billfold is empty. Rossi flips it shut again and tosses it aside, a frisbee slant that lobs it to a bouncing skid off the coffee table. His chin tips to indicate the money. "That's all I got."
Sabitha's eyes drop to the bills. They raise again to Rossi. Her voice slips out quietly as she nods. "Thank you." There's a moment's pause while she leans forward to scoop it up and then she adds, "I'll send you a check."
"Keep it." Rossi watches with blank eyes as Sabitha takes the money, following the sweep of green bills up to the angle of arm and finally, the woman's face. "I owe you a few meals anyway."
"No you don't. I'll send you a check." Sabby meets Rossi's gaze for a moment as she slides the bills into her pocket and then jerks it away.
Money means nothing to Rossi. He's not ambitious in that stuff. Acquisition of materials is meaningless to him, so he seriously doesn't care if people pay him back. He has no pride wrapped up in that. It stands to reason that it would mean something to Sabby, not that she pay him back so much but that he not reduce their past to a series of items on a balance sheet.
...and hey! Sabby's player wrote something similar in her commentary, so go, me!
Rossi says nothing.
Sabitha's head turns toward the door, followed shortly after by her body, and she takes the few steps required to close the distance. Her hand curls against the knob, and it feels cool and clammy under her touch. She pulls in a breath as she pulls open the door and offers to the hallway, quietly, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I got you mixed up in this."
"Don't worry about it, Melcross. It's not your fault." Rossi's eyes half close, his face drawn with the aftermath of wrath: grey ash and cinders. "It's mine. Should've known better."
Sabby needs to leave, and she needs to leave NOW, because Chris is starting to spiral into that black pit of self-hate and self-doubt and depression that's been eating at him since this whole thing with unwindexing started. Is it unkind of him to absolve her of blame now, after all that? Maaaaybe. Doesnt matter. It is his fault, and it will continue to be his fault until he gets perspective. Which ...
...he doesn't have yet. He hides it well! But his off-camera, NPC intimates will know that something's wrong. Something continues to be wrong. Beston might have a clue, and Julia and Mike, but other than them -- there isn't anyone left that he can talk to about this, except maybe Xavier. Except that's my alt, goddammit. I don't know. Maybe I should write a Xavier/Rossi scene? It just occurred to me that Xavier might be seeing Rossi as a private patient on the side, irregularly, when Rossi feels the need to vent at someone about stuff that the department shrink can't know about.
"You should have stopped," Sabby breathes without looking at him. "When I /asked/ you to."
The detective does not bother to answer that. He leans into the straightarmed support of his arm into the sofa. "Get the fuck out, Melcross."
Sabitha's back tenses, straightens into a rigid line, and there's some sort of quiet sound that echoes from deep in her throat. She steps out into the hall and closes the door behind her.
In the solitude of his apartment, Chris Rossi sinks into his sofa's corner and buries his face in his hand.
And those are the last things that Rossi ever says to Sabby as himself. Their next encounter doesn't count -- it wasn't him -- and that'll haunt him more than he's ever let on on-camera.
Date: June 8, 2006
Players: Sabitha & Rossi
Part 2 continued from Part 1
Sabitha stares for a moment with a disbelieving stare that dissolves after a moment into a harshly bitter laugh. "Are you /serious/?"
"Why not?" Rossi bites back through set teeth. "I'm just a cop. Homo sapiens. I'm disposable. You're supposed to be the next stage in human evolution. What makes me less disposable than you? Or is it Percy? He'll pull the strings to get me erased, but he won't for you?"
"She didn't take a year and a half of your life!" Sabby shoots back. "One memory-- /one/. That's all she needed. I don't even-- Even if she were /willing/, for some unexplainable bizarre reason, to make /any/ sort of sacrifice for /me/--"
Curious that she doesn't seem to think so. Her arguments against it sound terribly feeble. She doesn't sound, to him, like she's arguing logic; she starts sounding like she's arguing loss. Not, "I can't," but "I won't," the way people argue against performing a course of action that they don't want to do, when they don't want to come straight out and say, "I'm not going to do that."
"Why not? She was willing to make a sacrifice for /me/."
"No," Sabby corrects shortly. "She made a sacrifice for Percy."
"So ask your boy toy." Rossi's head flags high: shades of Leah, shades of /before/. Again, the smile, saccharine and perfect and black, pitch black. "Ask for an out."
"She knows I want out, Chris." Sabby's voice drops quiet again, anger suddenly drained from posture and expression. "I haven't hidden it."
Hah. Hah hah. Really really really inconvenient.
There's a train of logic here that is, I admit, inconvenient on the OOC balance. These are all options available to the character, after all, but there was some wanking that had to take place so that the character could continue to be playable. My apologies to the player for pushing that line. I wasn't really thinking that one through so much. Blame Chris.
That last part, what Sabby said, that Emma knows that she wants out because she hasn't hidden it -- there's no reply for that because there's nothing worth saying. What she's saying there is, "I have been passive, and I've waited for someone else to do something." Made it clear ... what? By being grouchy? By being pissy? By being rude to Emma? What has she done? What action has she taken? The implication is that she's done nothing at all.
Rossi stays as he is, still rigid, still riding on the long line of his temper. Needless to speak. He glowers at her, throttling the first retort, throwing silence like a stifling blanket between them.
"You think I'm staying because I'm a coward."
Silence still. Answer enough.
"You think staying is the /easy/ thing to do."
And here we lapse back into the terse exchange between characters: stripping down the physical, emphasizing the audible. I like this a lot. I like silence, though Rossi doesn't use it too much. His weapons are his voice and his presence, so silence -- for him, it seems like a retreat, or a withdrawal, and that's exactly what it is here. He's withdrawing. He's washing his hands of her.
Rossi's hand opens and closes, flexing by his thigh. Dry eyes stare, unblinking. "I think you made your decision. I think you decided what you'd keep by staying is more important than what you lose."
...and this is why. She's made her choice, yet again, and it was the easy one.
So unfair of Chris to call it that -- but it is, really. It's the choice of comfort rather than courage. Status quo. Huddle in the shadow of power and hope it doesn't crack and fall on you. His phrasing here was a little odd to me, for some reason, but it's right and, I think, justified by what's happened until now. She hasn't made clear what she thinks she will lose, but his knowledge of Emma Frost and her involvement in Sabby's life -- the money that led to comfort, career, all that -- makes it clear what Sabby gains ... so that's what comes first. In the balance of things, it's that the benefits outweigh the losses, and if Chris was one of the sacrifices to her continued comfort, well. So be it.
Chris really doesn't have a very good opinion of Sabby here, does she? Um. It's odd to think that even with this opinion, he still could have (and probably would have) forgiven her. He's an odd duck.
"By staying, I stay alive. So does everyone I care about." Sabby returns the stare, although her eyes blink rapidly, breaking and meeting his gaze with every flutter of lashes. "Maybe I am a coward, then. But I want to stay /alive/, Chris."
A shadow leaps in the hollow of his throat, timing itself to a staccato beat. "Believe it or not, Melcross, I'd prefer to keep you alive, too. You've never even tried." Rossi gestures in a quick sweep of hand, dismissing the question. He turns away, back still stiff, to hobble towards the rear table: dignity, indignity. "It doesn't matter. Forget it. Fucking /forget/ it."
Life/death is not a zero sum game for Rossi. His behavior in the past has made that perfectly clear. Poor Sabby. They're speaking totally different languages.
I am running out of steam! Boo. Rossi's done talking, really. The continuation of this conversation is because Sabby pushes it, not because he's got any inclination to talk more. His passions tend to burn themselves out, anger especially, and in the aftermath he suffers remorse (sometimes) and occasionally depression. All that energy he has isn't infinite, and the level of his fury with Sabby earlier wasn't something that he could sustain for long, not once an element of practicality crept in and pointed out that he was getting nowhere with this woman. Chris is stubborn, but there's only so long you can beat your head against a brick wall and fool yourself it's doing any good. He's already burning out, and with the burnout comes an element of apathy, emotional indifference. You know. Whatever.
"You don't know," Sabby tells him quietly, barely audible. "What you're talking about. Christopher Rossi."
"Why don't you tell me for a change?"
"Because I am already afraid that you are dead because of what you have handed over to Homeland Security, and /hell/ if I'm going to put the final nail in your coffin. /Hell/ if I am."
Unseen, a quicksilver grin twitches across Rossi's face. Satisfaction, vengeful and anticipatory. "You're a worrier, Sabby. You already pulled the trigger once. Show some balls and pull it again."
Again, he asks. Tell me. It's a last-ditch effort, and not even a serious one at that. She chooses not to. Fine. That stab of disappointment, annoying in and of itself because he should know better than to be disappointed, briefly recharges irritation. I ... don't really know what I was doing with this last pose. I'm a little embarrassed with the physical side of it. WTF? The verbal, I'm okay with. Ignore the physical part, folks. Brief moment of utter incompetence rearing its ugly head.
Hurt flashes clean and clear across Sabby's face, a bullet struck home by Rossi's words. She stares at him across the distance and finds no words in answer.
The detective pauses, head slightly turned to wait for a response. None forthcoming, he begins limping his slow way down the hallway again. "Clean yourself up," he suggests, reaching out in passing to pop open a closet door. "There're some towels in there. Take a shower. You can borrow some clothes."
Rossi finally, finally! shuts down the conversation for good. He's neutral again, which is safe; obliging host, without any emotional bits and pieces to make things messy. In its own way, this is also cruel, this distancing -- but it's as much for Rossi's protection as Sabby's, and he doesn't see it that way. That is to say, if it hurts her, it's unintentional. He's trying to build the armor back up again so he can deal with the shambles of his life with what pride he's got left.
While I'm proud of Rossi for having made it through this entire exchange without really betraying the extent to which he'd been destroyed by what Sabby did, I'm also kind of disappointed because it would've made for a slightly different scene. Opportunities lost! Oh well.
Sabitha stares after him, but makes no move to follow. Her right hand curls into a helpless fist at her side. After a few moments she requests shortly, "I need cab fare."
Well. That shows balls, anyway.
"Heading home?"
"I don't have any money."
"How'd you get here?"
"He left me outside your apartment."
I'm bizarrely pleased by this little exchange here. So humdrum. So inane. So utterly inconsequential and conversational. It's a marvelous, throwaway counterpoint to the storm that just passed and is still hanging over their heads.
A pause. Rossi, silhouetted against the open window visible at the far end of the hall, plants his hand on the wall and turns to regard Sabby. "Who?"
Sabitha lifts her hand in a fluttering wave. "Magneto."
Another pause while Rossi considers. "How's he doing?" Then he turns away. His body moves out of the bedroom entrance, disappearing into the room beyond. There is rustling there, small sounds of a man in motion.
"I didn't ask."
There are very few people in the world who would take that in their stride. Kidnapped by Magneto? Huh. How is that old fart, anyway? Chris can see how Sabby's doing, and obviously Magneto let her go without doing her any serious harm. He can't spare anything more for her. No more emotions, no more involvement; he's bleeding a little too much already. So instead he substitutes with physical gestures. Tokens. The shower, the money -- they're proxies for the kind of emotional investment he can no longer spare enough of himself to make.
No reply floats down the hall. Rossi emerges again, making his painstaking way down the corridor in return, good hand ghosting along the wall with a wallet caught between the fingers. "What did /he/ want?"
"He wanted to know where Emma Frost is." Sabby's eyes follow Rossi quietly, and her hand slides down to curl around her opposite arm again, careful in the hold of it.
"Where is she?" Back in the living room again, Chris flips open the black leather and thumbs out bills, one-handed and practiced.
"I don't know." Sabby's voice is a soft echo of her repeated refrain.
Another throwaway, that question about Emma. He doesn't really care, but asks because he should. Sabby says she likes the image of Rossi counting out the money, and so do I. There's a quality of one person buying off another here, and while she uses the phrase 'Judas,' I view it more as a bribe: if I give this to you, you will get out of my sight. And there is, really, a kind of contempt even in the monetary generosity, even if Rossi himself isn't doing it deliberately. It's ... sordid. This is what you came for, this is what you care about, so here. Take it and get the fuck out.
In case it has somehow managed to escape you, Rossi was really upset at Sabby.
Green eyes skip up, their color retreated from the blaze of earlier. "You lying to me?" Ten. Twenty. Forty dollars. Rossi tosses the bills to the sofa's back.
"Emma Frost trusts me about as much--" Sabby breaks into a short laugh and shakes her head, bitter. "As you do."
Forty-five dollars. Three more on top of that. "Makes sense," Rossi says with a swift, bitter jag of smile. "She can read your mind."
"I am not so much of a coward," Sabby answers without a smile, or inflection of tone, "That she has to read my mind to know what I think."
Go, Sabby! I read this pose and I think about Leah, for some reason, the way she would raise her chin and flag her head high in defiance. This is Sabby's flag pose, taking a little of her own back.
Rossi's question about whether Sabby is lying to him is another throwaway, and I didn't invest a whole lot of effort into describing the voice because of it. He's asking for curiosity's sake. He doesn't reasonably expect an answer that he'll believe, and again, like I said above -- he doesn't really care. But it's an indication that he doesn't care enough, either about the question or the questioner, to bother trying to read her to make that judgment for himself. In essence, he's saying he doesn't know Sabby. Not this Sabby.
The billfold is empty. Rossi flips it shut again and tosses it aside, a frisbee slant that lobs it to a bouncing skid off the coffee table. His chin tips to indicate the money. "That's all I got."
Sabitha's eyes drop to the bills. They raise again to Rossi. Her voice slips out quietly as she nods. "Thank you." There's a moment's pause while she leans forward to scoop it up and then she adds, "I'll send you a check."
"Keep it." Rossi watches with blank eyes as Sabitha takes the money, following the sweep of green bills up to the angle of arm and finally, the woman's face. "I owe you a few meals anyway."
"No you don't. I'll send you a check." Sabby meets Rossi's gaze for a moment as she slides the bills into her pocket and then jerks it away.
Money means nothing to Rossi. He's not ambitious in that stuff. Acquisition of materials is meaningless to him, so he seriously doesn't care if people pay him back. He has no pride wrapped up in that. It stands to reason that it would mean something to Sabby, not that she pay him back so much but that he not reduce their past to a series of items on a balance sheet.
...and hey! Sabby's player wrote something similar in her commentary, so go, me!
Rossi says nothing.
Sabitha's head turns toward the door, followed shortly after by her body, and she takes the few steps required to close the distance. Her hand curls against the knob, and it feels cool and clammy under her touch. She pulls in a breath as she pulls open the door and offers to the hallway, quietly, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry I got you mixed up in this."
"Don't worry about it, Melcross. It's not your fault." Rossi's eyes half close, his face drawn with the aftermath of wrath: grey ash and cinders. "It's mine. Should've known better."
Sabby needs to leave, and she needs to leave NOW, because Chris is starting to spiral into that black pit of self-hate and self-doubt and depression that's been eating at him since this whole thing with unwindexing started. Is it unkind of him to absolve her of blame now, after all that? Maaaaybe. Doesnt matter. It is his fault, and it will continue to be his fault until he gets perspective. Which ...
...he doesn't have yet. He hides it well! But his off-camera, NPC intimates will know that something's wrong. Something continues to be wrong. Beston might have a clue, and Julia and Mike, but other than them -- there isn't anyone left that he can talk to about this, except maybe Xavier. Except that's my alt, goddammit. I don't know. Maybe I should write a Xavier/Rossi scene? It just occurred to me that Xavier might be seeing Rossi as a private patient on the side, irregularly, when Rossi feels the need to vent at someone about stuff that the department shrink can't know about.
"You should have stopped," Sabby breathes without looking at him. "When I /asked/ you to."
The detective does not bother to answer that. He leans into the straightarmed support of his arm into the sofa. "Get the fuck out, Melcross."
Sabitha's back tenses, straightens into a rigid line, and there's some sort of quiet sound that echoes from deep in her throat. She steps out into the hall and closes the door behind her.
In the solitude of his apartment, Chris Rossi sinks into his sofa's corner and buries his face in his hand.
And those are the last things that Rossi ever says to Sabby as himself. Their next encounter doesn't count -- it wasn't him -- and that'll haunt him more than he's ever let on on-camera.