[August 24th] [The Wild Wild West] A Life-Story of Somethings

[insaneladybug.livejournal.com]

Title: A Life-Story of Somethings
Day/Theme: August 24th - But how could you live, and have no story to tell?
Series: The Wild Wild West (specifically, The Poisonous Posey episode)
Character/Pairing: Snakes Tolliver/Chita McCarthy (she's an OC; he's in my icon)
Rating: K/G

Continued from prior pieces.


By Lucky_Ladybug

Chita was always fascinated by the sheer number of things I'd experienced in my life, especially since I was younger than her. I didn't think much of it was really anything to get excited about. Hardly any of it was good. But she felt it was way better to have experienced even a life of sorrows than to have experienced virtually nothing at all.

"Oh come on," I objected when she told me that. "You can't have really had a completely nothing life before you moved out here."

She just shrugged and traced a pattern on the kitchen table. "Not much happens in a dinky little apartment in Queens."

"You couldn't have spent all those years doing nothing," I pointed out. "Something had to have happened."

She gave a humorless laugh. "Yeah, mostly being told everything I could and could not do by my aunt. And getting punished if I stepped the least little bit out of line."

"That's a lot of somethings," I said. "Not good somethings, but it's sure not like your life was made up of nothings. You and me both had a pretty rough time of it before we came here."

"Yeah." Chita fell silent.

"You never did contact your aunt, did you?" I asked.

"I checked up on her." Chita didn't look happy. "Just the same old grind with her, doing every little thing exactly a certain way because she thinks that's the only way to be a good church-going citizen."

"Sounds like those people in the Bible that got chewed out for worrying more about the little details than the big picture."

Chita dropped her arm to the table and gave me a bemused look. "You sure are a funny guy. I mean, you're not really religious. Probably the exact opposite of it. And yet every now and then you can blurt out stuff that shows you still remember things about the Bible."

"You probably do too, for that matter," I shot back.

"I remember, sure, but I don't talk about it," Chita replied. "I'd just as soon forget it. Anything religious makes me think about my aunt and how I was never happy with her."

"I was never happy at the orphanage," I agreed, "but I did like a couple of the sisters, like you know. On religion, yeah, it's true that I'm the farthest thing from a Bible-thumper. It's not that I don't believe in God or even that I don't want to believe in Him; it's more that I don't believe in a lot of things about the God I was taught to believe in. It doesn't sound right to me, but I can't prove that it's different than what I was taught. I mean, everybody can take the Bible and twist the verses to mean anything they want."

"Ain't it the truth." Chita made a face.

"So that's why I'm not really into the religion bit. Maybe if I found one that sounded more like what I believe in, I'd join up. Then again, maybe I wouldn't, because how would I know that they weren't just people like me wanting to believe in my kind of God rather than that God had actually authorized that church and that set of beliefs?"

"You couldn't," Chita said flatly. "Nobody can know that, I think."

"Eh. There must be a way, if there really is a God. It wouldn't make sense that He wouldn't have a way of letting people know when they're in the right place."

"Maybe. The problem is that everybody thinks they're in the right place," Chita retorted.

"Ain't it the truth," I deliberately echoed her words.

"You're better than I am, though," Chita said suddenly. "I'd just as soon not believe in any God, since They all have rules that would make life a lot less fun."

"Yeah, life's all about fun to you, isn't it, Chita?" I couldn't stop myself from saying.

She didn't care. "Pretty much. I guess I'm making up for lost time. I'm surprised you're not the same way. Instead, you act like you want to be grown-up and take on adult responsibilities."

"It's more that I can't see any other way to be," I replied. "I get a lot of fun out of gambling, but I still try to do it wisely. It's more about survival to me than anything else."

"I wonder if you'll figure on having a second childhood someday because you missed out on having a real one," she remarked.

"Heh. I hope not. I'm just as glad to leave childhood behind." I leaned back, folding my arms. "Most of the kids I knew weren't that great. The ones who were didn't stick around long." I sighed. "Being an adult ain't so great either, but at least I don't have to answer to anybody. I'm my own guardian and boss."

"That makes it great," Chita declared.

I was kind of amused by that. "Of course you'd think so."

"You don't think so?" she shot back.

"It's a good thing, but it still doesn't change that being an adult comes with problems too. Everything comes with problems, Chita. Life is not a free pass."

She swatted me on the shoulder. "It should be! I mean, what good is life if you're just miserable all the time?"

I have to admit, I didn't really have an answer for that one. "I don't know," I said at last. "But even when life was nothing but miserable for me, I still wanted to live."

"Well, I always did too, but that was because I kept thinking there had to be something more out there." Chita smiled and leaned back. "And now I've found it."

Naturally I thought she meant life with me. I smiled too.

I think about that conversation sometimes even now. It was one of the few times Chita opened up to me at all and we got to actually get to know each other a little bit, like friends and spouses should. For years I missed having someone to talk to like that. Having it for a short time only made me long for it more. By the time I finally could have it again, although not in a romantic sense, it was hard to get to where I felt like opening up.

I finally did, though.