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Who| Roland Deschain and Firo Prochainezo
What| talking about sad things
Where| the detainment center
When| late february
Warnings/Notes| nothing really, mostly talk of death and war, etc

When he's not trying to keep his body in good condition - and there's something insulting about the fact that he has to, that becoming withered and weak and no longer being able to count on his body, the one thing which, through everything, he has always been able to depend on, is even a danger here, on top of everything else - Roland is trying to keep busy. Not much way to do that, in this place, but it's all he has. He sits in this prison's open rooms, where at least other prisoners can come and go, where there are people.

He doesn't pay much attention to them. Everyone he'd care to pay attention to is gone. Nearly everyone. He only needs them to be there, needs the guards to be there, too, a reminder. Something to keep him still.

Signless is still out there, somewhere. Alain is still out there. Alive and fighting. They might be, anyway. Doesn't help as much as he needs it to.

He takes apart those two mechanical fingers, sometimes, sets all the pieces out very neatly, cleans them, puts them back. The first time he'd taken them apart in this place with the dull, sorry excuses for tools which are all the guards will let him use, Signless had just returned. He'd needed the other man's hands to keep his own steady. Roland's hands are very steady, now.

Other times he sews. He doesn't need to. Roland hadn't thought, back before this Panem's rot had broken into real war, that he could give less of a shit about clothes than he did then. But the guards will let him use a needle, they will let him have thread, and so when the cogs and gears of those two fingers are as shining and clean as they are going to get he sews useless loops around the edges of the collar and sleeves and every edge he can find. Something to do.

Something to keep him busy, and he does it all with singleminded focus, with the sort of look about him that tends to make anyone passing take a second look at whatever's in his hand, trying to figure out what it is that's so important about thread or needle or splayed out metal bits of him. He pays no mind.

This does not mean he is not aware, of course. If he has nothing else, he has his instincts. He has always had those, and it would take more than even this long, slow sink into this mire of isolation and grief to convince him to abandon them. A part of him is aware of anyone entering whichever room he's in, will note it on the rare occasion that it is someone he cares to know. He'll look up, watch with an intent, steady focus, and if they pass by he will look back down at his hands and start them moving again. Something to do.

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When Firo enters the room, he scans it until his eyes light on a familiar face. This time, Roland is the lucky winner and Firo immediately trots over his way.

Passing by Roland isn't something Firo'd consider under normal circumstances (though he still wonders why the guy doesn't seem to try to steer clear of him), and it's certainly not something he's going to consider when they're both trapped in this place. The Detention Center reminds him somewhat of life as a child on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. The environment may be completely different--and at least there's somewhat reliable food here--but it's the loneliness that's important. That feeling of being surrounded by people who, Firo assumes, would happily throw you to the sharks or tear you apart themselves.

So the company of a friend is a refuge that he couldn't turn down. Even putting that aside, he worries about Roland. He tries to tell himself that he'd want to check in on anyone just to make sure they're in one piece and still around. A perfectly acceptable reason.

But he can't deny that he has a deeper worry about the man himself, too. How could he forget that distant look in his eyes and the way he grabbed onto Firo's arm after he'd been reminded of that strange room? And his tears, too. Not signs of weakness, of course--he wouldn't dare think that--but definitely causes to keep a close, protective eye on him. Those are thoughts that Firo tries to shove away as he approaches.

Firo imagines Roland doesn't recall mentioning his knitting to him all that time ago, but seeing the man work with the thread brings the incident immediately to his mind. He waves a greeting and tries to peek in at the sewing. "Is that that knitting stuff you were tellin' me about?" Knitting, sewing--it's all the same to an ignorant gangster.

Roland acknowledges the wave with nothing but a blink, his steady stare going on a moment, taking Firo in. Really taking him in, processing the fact that he is here with Roland, wanting to make any memories of sitting near him here carved in deep and easy to access. There are some of his talks with Karkat, who Roland will now never speak to again, which are not quite so clear in Roland's mind as he would like them to be.

"Knitting," he says after that long moment, breaking the stare to look down at what it is his hands are doing. "Did I- Ah. That was quite a long time ago, wasn't it? Well remembered. But no. Knitting uses two such tools like this -" and here he holds up the needle, "- only not so sharp, and much larger. I would never be allowed something like that. The yarn either, maybe, although someone out there ought to know how many things here I could use as a killing tool, if I'd a mind to."

It's something he never would have said, before this war really started. Maybe he would even have been cautious a few months ago, wary of implying out loud and near so many unfriendly ears that he would even consider such a thing. Roland is aware that he wouldn't have. He does not bother thinking too closely on it.

"No, it's sewing. Although some might try to call this, what I'm doing with this, embroidery." Roland studies the useless, uneven loops of thread in front of him for a second or two, head tilted. He grunts.

"Do you truly not know it? Every boy in Gilead could at least sew a tear in his shirt closed before he even picked up a weapon. Or maybe that was only the gunslinger boys. No, my knitting days are long behind me, I'm sure. You haven't picked it up, even in all your time in this land?"

Firo's grin brightens just a little at the compliment to his memory, no matter how small. And Roland seems to recall the moment too--that's good.

Like a good student, he listens to the explanation as he settles in. His eyes widen slightly in surprise when Roland talks openly of his deadliness. He would've thought that the man would avoid anything that could be thought a threat to their hosts; he had seemed so intent on carefulness and diplomacy before. But this is Roland, so he forces himself to relax. Surely there's a reason that Firo just doesn't understand.

He's taken aback by the question, too. If not for the context and the fact that this is a friend, he'd be sure the suggestion that he learn to sew would be an insult. "Of course not. A guy who goes around doin' stuff like that would never hear the end of it."

Considering Roland, he's quick to qualify. "...Where I'm from."

He gives the current project another glance. Perhaps it's his lack of knowledge, but he can't see any pressing need for what Roland's doing. "Why?"

Personally, he thinks he might rather fidget unproductively if he had to kill time.

"Why did we learn? I'd ask you why men in your land don't. A man who stays home with the servants cleaning him up all year may afford to let the skill molder, but a working man - no. Especially not a gunslinger." Roland's face and his voice are distant. Not that dangerous distance, not the look of a man whose thoughts are being drawn to those dark and locked up corners of his mind from which he can not escape; only distant, remembering, and the remembering comes easily because a large part of Roland is eager to think on those days, those good days, on anything but this place.

"Even without his more exciting duties, a man like my father would make his rounds to the ranches, the orchards, the mines, his lands and those who work them. And if he wasn't there, back in the time of his father, or his, a gunslinger saw to the outer lands and those people, too, might ride even the lands out past Mejis before coming home for a couple months or so. In my own time and that of my friends things were different, of course. No long rides for any of us then, save myself, much later. But a soldier needs to see to his own clothes just as much as a lord does, if for different reasons."

"Here..." Roland sighs, coming back to the here and now and seeing what it is that's in front of him, and the sound looks like it deflates him a little. "Suppose it's good practice. These machines of mine give this hand a rougher touch than the other."

"Would you learn, Firo?" Roland does not quite manage to keep the hint of hope from him when he asks that. It's subtle but there, his hope, his thought of doing something in this place which is useful, even in so small a way as this. Teaching a young friend a skill. Teaching anything. "It'll make you more self sufficient than your fellows, at least where you're from. I've got a feeling it's a skill most everyone here knows, too."

Firo wrinkles his nose at the mention of servants—that’s not a reality for anyone he knows, and he doesn't want to come off as coddled. Indeed, much of what Roland’s saying just sounds bizarre to him. “It’s just… not normal where I’m from. Most men wouldn’t have time for stuff like that, either.”

From what Firo’d witnessed as a child, the life of a grown man was simple: drag yourself to work at an ungodly hour, work all day, drag yourself to the bar, collapse into bed. And repeat. The thought of taking time to sew or ride or horse is foreign. Either they’d get their wives or mothers to repair their clothes, or they’d wear the rags. Usually the latter.

Of course, it was different for gangsters, who tended to have enough time on their hands for leisure. There the rules of machismo were likely the only thing keeping any of them from learning. Firo supposed that that wasn’t as much of an excuse, now that Roland called it into question.

“More ‘sufficient’ or not, I couldn’t ever let any of my ‘fellows’ know.” He says it with a wry smile to cover up the fact that it’s the honest truth. He’d be terrified if any of his friends found out that he’d even considered learning how to sew.

There’s a pouty part of him that wants to protest that he doesn’t want a skill that a lot of people here probably have. Keeping both that fact and his fear in mind, it’s tempting to refuse. But Roland almost sounds like he wants to do it, and Firo supposes he can go along with it if it’s for Roland. He smiles again and holds his palms up. “…But sure. As long as we can talk while we do it. Teach me.”

Roland smiles. It isn't that sunny smile he's worn perhaps once in the past couple years, the one which looks on his face like dawn breaking over some bare and jagged cliff, but something related to it. A distant cousin, maybe, something smaller and older and always, always tired but still pleased, still happy.

"Of course we can talk." He moves over to make room for Firo, expecting him to sit close, and looks down at the 'work' in front of him again, deciding where to begin with it. Might be good for Firo, actually. There isn't anything complex to do, not with this. "What would you talk of? Your world's customs, which seem so pointless to me, or mine, which seem so..."

He thinks over what Firo's said, makes a guess. "...unmanning, to you? I never was the best of us at it even when I had all the fingers I came out from my mother with, but my stitches were always straight. That was enough."

Firo slides over and leans in to really get a good view, sitting as near to Roland as he can without their sleeves touching. He supposes, if he looks closely enough at each individual stitch, it doesn't look too hard...

"I didn't mean that you're not..." Not manly. But he trails off, realizing that Roland's words didn't exactly seem like a complaint or protest. He's smiling, even, which is always welcome.

He sighs out a breathy laugh. "How about neither?" They might just wind up arguing (or maybe it'll really only be Firo trying to argue), and Firo'd like to avoid seeing Roland's disappointed face if he can. At least for a little while longer.

There's not much else to talk about, though. He could ask about what Roland's been up to lately, but he figures he's looking right at it. "Well, maybe..." He hesitates, then just decides to go for it. If it offends Roland, he's not the type to immediately poke Firo's eye out with the needle. He'd probably lecture first. "Did all your friends learn with you? If you weren't the best, then who was?"

Roland thinks on it, tying his current thread off, cutting it with his teeth, then handing the needle and thread over. No instructions come with the needle; presumably, Firo's first sewing rule is that there are no rules. Or maybe Roland's only thinking on other things. "Jamie, as I recall. Jamie Red-Hand. And aye, we all learned. Was it not so for you? Every student all in one place? The girls learned it too, and some of them were quicker, but when the tutor started them on weaving and Cort started us on skin, it was Jamie. I think I've some of his work, actually..."

Roland trails off as he twists around, pulling his shirt out from his pants and holding its edge up to point at a spot on his back. The movement brushes their arms together and Roland notes that, lets himself lean enough to press their shoulders together but knows that Firo tends not to like to touch overmuch. Much like Karkat didn't. Roland pushes at the thought, focuses on Firo's face instead, not even trying to look over his shoulder at what it is he's pointing out. He can't see it right anyway, that's why Jamie had done it. "Here. His work. Might be hard to see, his stitching always came out well. Your men don't do this either, hm? They'd rather bleed a while?"

Firo shrugs, tilting his head as he considers Roland’s question. “Maybe that’s how it was. I wouldn’t know--me and my friends, we didn’t really go to school.” There’s not shame, exactly, but there is a touch of self-consciousness when he says it. Roland, like a few of his friends, seems to know so much, and it reminds Firo of how little he himself knows.

At first, he balks at Roland liberating his shirt, then it hits him that Roland wasn’t kidding when he talked about them working on skin. Firo nearly moves away from the man’s shoulder to give him room, but reconsiders at that look.

He twists to inspect the stitching on Roland’s back and laughs at the question. “They probably would.”

He’s relieved, though. Sure, Roland already outlined the usefulness of the art, but there’s something to Firo that feels a bit reassuring at seeing it can be applied to things related to fighting and conflict. It validates the art somewhat to him—foolish, considering this art hardly needs to be proved any more important.

Loathe to take a shot at embroidering or sewing or whatever on his own clothes, Firo starts at the cloth Roland was previously using. He makes sure the needle’s threaded, but neglects to knot it so that it holds. The thread slides right through the fabric on his first attempt at a stitch, and he scowls at the needle in consternation.

"Mhm, fewer children in the outer baronies were called to lessons so often as us, too." Roland tucks his shirt back in and leans forward, setting his arms on the table and watching Firo's efforts. "Strange tales, to us, that there should be boys and girls who had it so easy. Cuthbert could turn Vannay on some other thought sometimes, for a while, but children of Gilead seldom skipped a lesson. And children in The Training, never. What do you think went wrong there, Firo? What does the needle need to keep the thread close?"

Firo smiles, feigning offense. "Easy? Hey, don't call runnin' from the truant officers easy if you haven't had to do it yourself." Of course, that was the easy part; those men wouldn't even bother with street urchins from Hell's Kitchen. It was picking pockets to stay alive and dodging angry cops and thugs that was hard. But Firo tries not to dwell on that stuff; he'd rather joke.

Back home, he's sure his failure would've gotten some mockery and maybe a cuff over the head, but it would've been followed by the right answer. "You're the expert. You tell me." But he expects different from Roland, so he's trying things out even as he talks. Tangle the string so it gets blocked, maybe--or, better yet, a knot. He carefully tries to land a couple knots, one over the other to make it bulky, in the strong.

When the thread stays in place at his next attempt, he blinks in surprise.

"Exactly so." Roland is not smiling. Almost wants to be. His voice is warm, though, and he doesn't stop leaning into Firo's space. Of course he doesn't have to be so close to watch, but it does not occur to him to move. "Why do you still ask me to give you every answer? That's not what you need. Repairing a tear, now, that may take a little longer to figure, if you'd like to do it right. Your 'truant officers' tell me about them. Which office do they serve?"

It's strange to Firo that, for all their knowledge and lessons and White, gunslingers don't seem to have learned about personal space. Or maybe that's just Roland. He supposes he doesn't mind it as much as he normally minds these things--it's almost reassuring to be reminded of his friend's looming presence--though he tells himself that he's only putting up with it for Roland's sake.

"I only asked you once." Never mind that it was at the first and only opportunity so far. At the mention of tears, "Is that what we're gonna do next?" He's not sure he's ready for 'next', as he makes uneven, clumsy stitches in the fabric. It's what is usually known as a running stitch, but Firo has no idea what to call it--it's simply a way to move the thread forward.

"I guess they just work for the school--they try to hunt down kids who don't show up. Not sure why they go through all that trouble just for that. It's wastin' everybody's time." He has a feeling Roland will disagree, but he says it anyway. Firo knows he's right this time.

"You've only asked me once today. And aye, I suppose you're right - though the ways of another people aren't mine to judge, of course." Roland says this blandly, and it's anyone's guess whether he's being ironic or really doesn't realize how many times - in front of Firo even, if perhaps not in so many words - he has done just that.

Firo pauses his sewing to wave one hand dismissively. “Yeah, and those other times were all a while ago.” Surely he doesn’t ask that much. And while he’s learning to think on his own, or trying to, it just makes sense to ask when Roland has all the answers. If only he weren’t so tightfisted with them.

He considers those words and frowns. “But you judge me all the time.”

Already a little bored of the basic stitch, even if he’s not close to mastering it, Firo tries to move on. He brings the edges of the cloth together to simulate a rip and starts sewing them together with simple loops.

“Can you tell me what you got into when your friend had to sew you together?” It must’ve been an adventure, and that’s more interesting than judgment or truancy officers.

"Do I?" Roland watches the movement of Firo's needle. In his own lessons a boy who decided to move on to something else so soon would have regretted it, but Roland does not think on that except vaguely. He lets Firo do what he will, waiting for the boy to make a mistake before he interferes.

"Ah, sure." Roland sits back from Firo a little, tilting his head back and scratching at his chin, looking into the distance while he thinks. "Let's see. Yes, it was, ah, after we lost Gilead. Quite soon. We were doing the attacking - didn't need to, the battle didn't win us anything except a chance to use up our bullets. But I don't think we could have stopped ourselves even if we'd wanted to. There were many of us then. The thirteen of us who won our guns, the soldiers who escaped - not all of them soldiers, then. Not yet. Not even the gods know how we didn't all die right there, myself even more than the rest. Thought I was being reasonable, of course, as young men will. My father died in Gilead, you see. When we lost it."

Roland goes silent for a few seconds, seeing memories which he does not feel the need to detail. Then he keeps going.

"To be honest, I don't remember when I got it. I remember the way Jamie stitched me up while Bert stood there yelling. I remember how steady his hand was, as if he didn't even hear Cuthbert right there giving me one hell of an earfull." To someone who looks closely enough, for a few seconds, Roland smiles. "His other hand was on my side. That's how I knew he was angry with me. Acting like I needed to be held still, like a child who hadn't yet been trained out of squirming."

"In terms of strategy, the battle was - how is that phrase said here? It was nothing to write home about. But it was one of the first. The first fought by us, anyway, by the last that place would ever see of gunslingers."

He looks down, remembering Firo's stitching. If he does see a mistake he'll interrupt himself here to tap it and instruct Firo to undo all the stitches after, go back and fix it. Either way, though, he'll study the work and share his thoughts on it. "Needs a lot of practice. Could be straighter. Not bad at all for a first try, and on your own."

Firo probably should have known better than to go asking about old scars, he reflects. He looks up, cautious, at Roland’s mention of losing both his city and his father. Being fatherless is the norm in his circle, but that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant. And a home is quite a thing to lose too.

Firo doesn’t often apologize when he’s stepped on a conversational landmine. Only for a select few people—those whose feelings he can be bothered to care about. Roland would be one of those, but Firo also imagines that an apology wouldn’t be useful at all anyway. It’s not going to bring anyone back.

There is at least some small comfort in seeing him smile—that and the fact that he still seems levelheaded, not nearly panicked as he was the last time Firo saw him ruffled by memories.

“He sounds like a good friend, if he really stuck it out through all that.” What else could a friend do? But Firo knows plenty of people out there would cut and run. Or not go into battle with you in the first place.

As for the sewing, there are mistakes and then mistakes on top of mistakes, of course. He nods and sets about poking around to double back the needle and do it over. Here, at least, eyes sharp from about a decade in the casino are helpful, and he figures out how to loop back and undo the stitches.

Ordinarily, the bare compliment and assistance would still have him puffing up with a bit of pride, but not now. How could he, after that? The corrections are just something to keep his hands moving as he chews on this unsavory hunk of history.

"Of course they 'stuck it out'. Of course they did. Not a one of us ever considered otherwise. Tried to convince me to turn aside a couple times, but that was another matter entirely." The comment's called Roland back from the land of memory, though, and he goes silent a couple long seconds, eyes moving over Firo's face. "Does something bother you, Firo? Something I said?"

He shakes his head. "I should be askin' you that. You don't mind talkin' about it?"

He wants to know more, of course. It's hard not to be curious about what his friends got up to back in their worlds. But things like loss and the like--those are easier simply not to talk about when they're your own. At least, that's how he thinks of it.

He shakes his head. "Why would I? It all happened, Firo. The bad, and the good. Sometimes both at once. Just because a thing wasn't pleasant at the time doesn't mean it didn't happen. Is that why you're concerned for me? Because I might remember something unpleasant? If I tried not to remember every unpleasant thing that's ever happened to me, I'd not have a memory at all."

Roland's looking a little amused, there. It does not occur to him that those words, said by anyone else, could have been sad or self pitying - it does not occur to him that there might be anything at all unusual in what he's said. The only people who have purely untroubled minds, after all, are either babes or those who've built their own easy lives off the backs of others. Such a thing is rare, and not particularly desirable in any case, and so Firo's concern doesn't really make sense to him.

Near as Firo can tell, he doesn't seem upset, which is good. With that established, he wonders if he should drop it right there, but he's not sure he'd be allowed to. "Just because it happened doesn't mean you have to talk about it. If you don't want me askin' about that stuff, just say so and I won't."

Though he doesn't want to admit it to himself, Firo's discovered the sad truth that you can't forget everything bad that's happened to you. But you can try, and you can put on a good show of it.

He is concerned for Roland, that he'll get stuck lingering on something painful just because Firo was stupid enough to ask without thinking. And then it comes back to reputation, too--if you pretend you've forgotten these things, it makes you look less vulnerable, doesn't it?

"If I didn't want to talk, I wouldn't." Duh is not in Roland Deschain's vocabulary, but with his tone doing what it's doing now, it doesn't need to be. That particular tone doesn't last once he goes on, but he does sound very stern - he is not angry, not remotely, but what he's about to say is an elementary truth, and shouldn't have to be said. Shouldn't, but does. "Finish off that row of stitching, Firo, and ask your questions. My friends lived well and died bravely, I won't waste any more time than I have already in closing myself off from that simply because it hurt."

The tone hurts more than Firo'd like to admit; the idea that's supposed to be so natural is bizarre to him. He's used to being treated like an idiot, but not necessarily by Roland.

He reads both parts as an order, so finish he does. These stitches are no more hasty than the ones before--he finds he's not so eager to move on--but none the straighter or neater for it. He doesn't want to ask. He wanted to know generally about the old days and the battles, but he doesn't want to ask now. Even after Roland's words, it doesn't feel right to pick at that wound.

But he said to. So he has to? Well, it's not like he hasn't obeyed orders that made him feel like shit before--he accepts it without stopping to realize that he doesn't have to obey this one. Firo steels himself, lets the sewing drop into his lap, and forces himself to look into Roland's face.

"In battles after that one? Same war?" Referring to the deaths--he figures that's plain enough.

He nods. "Battle. All of them died in the same one. Not that we hadn't had deaths before that, but none of them were-" He thinks on how to say ka-tet without saying it, how to say what he means without that damned machinery inside him forcing something clumsy and wrong out instead. "None of those deaths were of mine, if you understand me. That battle I won't speak on. Is that enough to reassure you, Firo? To see that I wasn't lying when I said I'd stop you if I needed to?"

It doesn't occur to Roland that Firo has not actually accused him of lying about that. What does occur to him is that even a drop of reluctance is too much and that if he pushes the boy into forgetting about that weakness he's seen in Roland's mind maybe it'll push that reluctance out, keep Firo from treating Roland like glass. His voice is harder than it maybe ought to be, it has a little more of an edge to it than it should and he thinks nothing of it.

Firo nods, understanding exactly. Plenty of other picciotti died over the years—whether from knife fights, gunshots, or “disappearing” into the Hudson—but it didn’t rankle him too much even if they were technically Family. They didn’t fit into the place that’s both Family and family, and so they didn’t have such a close place in his heart or such a keystone position in his little world. Just as Roland says, they weren’t his.

As for the next question, “Yes,” he answers, testily. He’s angry at himself for getting annoyed by that tone—Roland does have a right to be mad at him, and especially on a topic like this. And he’s a little angry, too, because he doesn’t know what to do here. This is another area where it’d be easier to interact with someone he didn’t care about—then he’d just jab at that sore spot.

Part of him wants to throw the sewing on the table now and ask how he did, what he did wrong with it. Then they could talk about that stupid thing instead of this. But, although Firo doesn’t personally think of it that way, he’s nearly certain Roland would call that cowardice. Maiza would’ve gone along with it; he’d just smile and switch gears as if nothing had happened.

“And then it was just you after all that.” He does mean it as a question, but it comes out flatly, more like a statement. He knows what that is, too, to suddenly be cast out on your own.

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