❛ you can’t save everyone. ❜
hit 'em where it hurts. || maybe accepting.
"Hey, I'm not a fuckin' idiot, lady."
Back at the campfire, where the brutalised huddle around the warmth and play normal for a while, Amanda experienced a nuance of Carlos very different from the one biting back at her now. The delicateness of not only his words, but his hands. Searching for hidden wounds on all the survivors, otherwise offering squeezes to a shoulder or a touch to the wrist. In those hours ( hours? minutes? days? time moved capriciously in the Realm ) of ignorance, Carlos treated her as someone trusted and deserving of his care.
Since learning her identity, that nuance had never made a reappearance. Her pessimism reminds him of the trials, he can practically taste the rust of her traps and, oh, does that access the anger in him.
"I'm not takin' advice from any sick fuck that hides behind a mask and hurts people." How many people had Carlos hurt, in pursuit of rights that he and his people had been so denied? But not like that. Not hunting them down like dogs. Not to those that had never wronged him or his. "So if this is you trying to convince me to stop helping everyone? You're gonna be real disappointed. I know I can't save everyone," he lives with that guilt, affording a moment of silence to it in deference.
"But that's not gonna to stop me from trying."












