fourthsaken | IC inbox!

i wot it did.

i think...i think that my world and culture are very, very different than any other. and i think what i consider 'nasty' is a far cry worse than what you do.

i can't lie to ye, jade. there are dark and dangerous parts of me. not to you, never to you, but...i was born and raised a gunslinger. i was born and raised to kill. and when ye are raised, from a wee thing, to kill...

bert. i know you'd never hurt me.

are you at the ranch? i'm coming over.

good. i wouldn't, and i figured ye did, but i wanted to be clear.

aye. but ye don't have to, i'm not upset or having any sort of emotional crisis. I'M alright with the man i am. but i've been here enough and know enough of other ways and other peoples to know that many would disagree with me on that point. so i don't talk about it. it's not out of shame or self loathing, just out of...not wanting to have to defend my culture and raising every five moments in a conversation.

so ye needn't rush to my side to soothe my troubled heart or anything like that. part of training, too. being perfectly alright with doing what are objectively terrible things.

but if ye just want to come over to be together proper, then i welcome the visit.

of course i knew that.

i just... i wanna see you. and i swear i won't make it a big deal or make you defend your upbringing or pity you or anything like that. i just wanna be with you right now.

it's culture, again. in the world of gunslingers...many people fear us.

then come on over. and i want it clear...i don't intend or want to HIDE anything from ye. but there's just lots i don't talk about. like i said a'fore, it upsets people.

i'll never be afraid of you. promise.

i get it, kinda? there's a lot of shit i don't talk about because it freaks people out. like, you don't know how my mom died. or why i've been arrested like, a lot. or how many times i've almost died back home. i've only told you a little about my weird dreams and shit...

that means a great deal.

aye...sort of like that. only...it's different when it's things ye've gone through and things ye've DONE. and when those things don't bother ye and ye come to learn that as it happens, they're things most people would be very very bothered by. and ye aren't in a world where ye can just say 'gunslinger' and it doesn't matter, because when ye're the law, anything ye do is alright, really.

i've done bad things too, but i think i understand. you did things that people here would think aren't okay, but it was okay for you to do them back home?

aye, that's the meat of it. my world is different and brutal and even there, i belonged to a group for whom the rules were different.

i sent my first man to death when i was ten years old. he was someone i liked, he was kind to me, the castle cook. but he was a traitor, he was going to poison a village, kill everyone. roland and i heard him talking about it, we were hiding in the kitchen, sneaking pie. so we told ro's da, the king. and he and his men arrested hax and sentenced him to die the next day and he had roland and i go and watch it. because it was our duty, because his death was on our hands. and that's the sort of thing that's normal in my culture.

they made you watch an execution when you were ten?

aye. alone, without our fathers or our teacher. and they had us scatter sweet bread, under the gallows, after. for the crows. we rode double on my pony down to the field a'fore anyone else to inspect the gallows, and then we sat on a hill and we held each other's hand and we watched.

you must've been so scared. that's so screwed up that they made you do that.

scared? no. excited to get a free day, and then...angry because i realized then and there i wasn't a normal child and i'd never been and never would be. but that passed and then it happened and...

i tried to make a big fuss to roland, that i'd liked it, and it was good,
and i was eager to be able to end traitors and enemies with my own hand.
but mostly...i didn't feel much of anything. other than hurt that a nice man hadn't been nice at all.

god, we were so different as kids. my goldfish died when i was like, 8 and i cried for days.

it's just how i was raised. there's a saying in our world, 'gunslingers deal in only death'. we get used to it quick.

i dunno if you should have to get used to death.

fyi, i'm almost to the ranch.

i don't either, but i am. used to it,
i mean.

i'm on the roof!

[She doesn't send back a message this time, instead floating up to the roof about five minutes later. She offers Bert a soft smile.]

Hey.

'allo my love.

[Bert's stretched out on the roof, smoking, his long awkward legs folded over each other. And perhaps the topic of conversation got to him a bit more than he admitted, because it's not a tobacco cigarette he's smoking. He's just thoughtful, really. There's a lot of things to think about.]

[There's a lot Jade doesn't know, still. Things he's been through, things he's done. Things he's seen. What he shared over text is just the mildest bits.]

Pull up a shingle.

[His thoughtful and more serious mood doesn't go unnoticed. Jade settles next to him quietly, hugging her knees to her chest, but not before unearthing a chocolate bar from her hoodie pocket.]

I brought dessert this time.

Have I mentioned today that ye're the most wonderful woman there is?

[Bert smiles, snubbing his smoke against the roof and tucking the dog end behind his elongated ear.]

I've got a mighty hankering for sommat sweet.

Wanna stay over tonight?

You've definitely mentioned it before, but not today... [And she never gets sick of hearing it. She unwraps one end of the chocolate bar from her favorite fancy chocolate shop, breaking off a small piece for herself before handing the rest over to Bert.]

I'd really like that. You want company?

Course I do. I near always want you with me, Jade. I just know we aren't there yet.

[Bert breaks off a bit of chocolate for himself, the words casual and easy. He'd love it if Jade were with him every night and every morning and every time in between. But that time will come.]

[It's a tempting offer, even though Jade knows that really, she's not ready to stop living with Soeki and Oliver yet. But the idea of spending more of her free time with Bert, it's incredibly tempting.]

You know that it's not that I don't want that, right? I just... I wanna keep living with Soeki and Oliver too. But it's not because I don't love you. I just... You're right. I'm not ready yet.

Oh, I kennit. It's not time. It doesn't bother me any, I knew a'fore we paired up that your world's different about this sort of thing. Makes more sense than how we did it.

[Bert stretches out his legs and leans back, looking upwards. He doesn't mind taking it slow at all. So what if they don't live together? They see each other whenever they'd like, either here at the ranch or at Jade's place. He's not in any rush to move her in.]

Eld's balls, back in my world, we'd be married already. Whether we wanted to be or not.

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, JADED. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 005.04.008.13 * CHARACTER NAME/ALIAS has joined 005.04.008.13 <JADED> hey, you've reached Jade. <JADED> leave a message or whatever and i'll get back to you. <JADED>** God, I hope this shitty thing actually works.

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