She set everything down, considering his flushed and sweating face, even if he looked marginally better than the first hours. It was a sour and sick thing to say or even think the joke, he looked like death. Common words enough and common taunt, and Jo was nothing if not made of her own sass, but instead of turning it on him, she turns it on herself.
"In one piece, and with nothing to show for it." Jo shrugged, without a hand movement toward her body, face, knuckles. There's the normal crook of a common enough expression for every bar and every day. "If anything I'm doing better than anyone else around here, and even those who are giving the whole place a wide berth after last night, in the hospital and the jail cells and sick beds."
It's a lot of details for a question she actually doesn't answer. He doesn't want that answer and she doesn't want to give it. It's not what he's asking anyway, and she knows it, but the question he asked only has one answer. It's only ever had one answer. The answer that keeps her moving forward no matter how bad, or horrifying, or terrible anything out here throws at her.
There is no other answer to those four words. She lost the right to them a very long time ago, at her own hands.
And dissembling from the truth, and that too deep truth, has always been just this side of far too easy for her.
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Date: 2016-12-09 01:15 pm (UTC)"In one piece, and with nothing to show for it." Jo shrugged, without a hand movement toward her body, face, knuckles. There's the normal crook of a common enough expression for every bar and every day. "If anything I'm doing better than anyone else around here, and even those who are giving the whole place a wide berth after last night, in the hospital and the jail cells and sick beds."
It's a lot of details for a question she actually doesn't answer. He doesn't want that answer and she doesn't want to give it. It's not what he's asking anyway, and she knows it, but the question he asked only has one answer. It's only ever had one answer. The answer that keeps her moving forward no matter how bad, or horrifying, or terrible anything out here throws at her.
There is no other answer to those four words. She lost the right to them a very long time ago, at her own hands.
And dissembling from the truth, and that too deep truth, has always been just this side of far too easy for her.