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Who: Signless and Artemis
What: A pair of hobos who have done things they regret talk about feelings.
Where: An alley somewhere
When: Now-ish? Around June 20th.
Warnings: none atm, will update if necessary

There was a time when the main reason Artemis would ever hang around in an alleyway was to keep an eye out for criminal activity. Of course, that's not to say she isn't looking out for that now, it just isn't really the main reason anymore.

She makes her way down the street, weaving between pedestrians for a while and then slipping between two now-familiar buildings, dropping into a crouch with her back to a wall and starting to reach toward the external outlet that she's been very grateful for the existence of these past few weeks.

Then she notices she's not alone. She freezes, bright yellow eyes widening with alarm, and pulls her hand away like she totally wasn't about to dismantle a power outlet and siphon electricity from it, because she is absolutely a human and not a robot. Nope. Nothing synthetic going on here.

"Uh- sorry, I didn't notice you were here." What is proper procedure for entering an alleyway and finding someone else already there? She has no idea. Crud.

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"...Oh." Now she's frowning even more. That doesn't sound good. "But you are. I mean, that's got to mean you're supposed to be, in some way, right?"

He falls silence for a while. The only terms he's thought about destiny in have been bad ones, recently. Like him being destined to suffer, or destined to be imprisoned. He hasn't really considered any positive reasons for any of this.

"Do you think a force governs these things?" he asks her, looking up to meet her eyes. His question is sincere.

She hadn't been entirely sure what she meant by that, herself, but now she considers his question for a few seconds. "Maybe. I can't say I've ever put a lot of thought into it. But that's certainly one way of approaching things."

He looks down at his hands, fidgeting between his knees.

"I haven't been able to see any reason that I should be around anymore. I thought I might have had some higher purpose, sweeps ago. But...I don't think that's true."

She looks at him, then down at the ground; something about this is starting to sound kind of familiar. "Then maybe you could make a purpose for yourself. I mean, it's one thing to be given something to do by an outside source, but you can't always depend on that - and it's frustrating to suddenly feel like you're not needed, or even like you were wrong. But all you can really do is... try to keep moving, I guess. Make your own life."

He stares at his knees. A distant part of him feels that her advice makes sense, even if it feels so unapproachable right now.

"There are things I want to fix. But I don't know I can. I wish I could stop being like this."

"...yeah, some things... can't be fixed. Or undone. But if you can't do anything, then... you just can't. Over-thinking it won't help." She had to figure that out pretty quickly, herself.

She fidgets with the zipper on her sweater and stares at her hands, then looks up at him again. "What do you mean, 'like this'?" Worst-case scenario, she's concerned he might just mean being alive at all, but she hopes that's not it.