(no subject)

[watching_you]

"...Knew I should have taken up smoking..."
There are some things you just have to do.
Veronica sits on her bed crosslegged and fumbles with a lighter and an old pair of jeans. The pants show signs of age: patches, the occasional tear, all stitched amateurishly. A nearby Swiss Army knife and spool of black thread may be considered as evidence, should the people wish it.
Life, after all, is a series of choices,
The trick, she has discovered, is to burn the fabric without really burning it. She doesn't want to light a fire. Alarms would go off and Backup would bark, and there would be hell to pay.
and if you want to keep being who you are,
Instead the goal is to toast the pants.
then there are certain choices which need to be made.
It's kind of like roasting marshmallows.
Sometimes the choices to be made are obvious.
A knock at the door just as Veronica burns her thumb. With a curse she tries to suck on the injured finger and say "Come in!" at the same time.
Sometimes they are hard.
Keith sticks his head around the door frame. "Are you..." She's holding a lighter and pants: any potential second halves of that sentence die before he can speak them. "What are you doing?"
These ideas are not mutally exclusive.
Veronica gives him an (expertly perfected) innocent look. "I'm -"
But if you're the kind of person who's going to call
But she owes him honesty. After all they've been through over the past few weeks, she owes him that.
the other side of the world, to find out if someone who's
"- Would you believe that I'm going to help my friend, who lives in a postapocalyptic parallel universe, build up his castle so that he and his fellow survivors have a better chance of outlasting the dragons that have spread all over his version of Earth?"
not quite a stranger is okay -
"Well, since you're asking? No, no I don't believe that at all."
and if you're
"In that case it's for a school play."
the kind of person who will make a promise based on
Keith squints at her, skeptically. "You've already graduated from high school."
what should have been,
"Okaaay," she says appeasingly, "Summer camp. Now -"
instead of what is,
Veronica holds up the pants, in all of their rugged glory.
and the gap in between -
"Do you think your jeans would look more or less like this if you'd been living in a world without Old Navy for the past twenty years?"
then you're probably the kind of person who's going to follow through.
Tilting his head, Keith gives the garment a critical look. "Nah. I'd never fit into a size six. You flatter me, though."
No matter what it takes.
Veronica sighs, wearily, not saying 'what would I do without you?' out loud, in case fate is listening again.
Because that's who you've chosen to be.
"Thai for dinner?" Keith asks.

"Sounds great," she says. And in time she gets back to work.