Young Writers Society

"Yeah." Kazimir smiled a little and pocketed his wallet away, eyes falling to the part of the gun Queenie dropped. She was trying to piece it together with broken fingers, among other broken things.

If he wasn't hooked up to a bag of blood he would've reached down to get it. But he didn't feel like risking ripping it out.

"How old are you, kid?"

She glanced at him. She could just grab it quickly. Like ripping off a bandage.

"Old enough," she grumbled, then leaned down to pick up the piece. Her ribs screamed in protest, but she restrained her reaction to nothing more than a hiss as she sat back up and put the piece in her lap.

Kazimir blinked, watching as the poor kid leaned over to pick it up, clearly concealing her pain.

That was a really weird answer to a simple question.

"I don't really know what that's supposed to mean, but okay," he said. He was only wondering because she looked around Bo's age, but she didn't have to tell him. He was a stranger, and stranger danger was a thing or something.

"So, uh, how do you and Bobby know each other? Are you guys friends?"

Queenie winced as she readjusted herself in the seat. "He's homeless," she gestured around, "I make sure he has a place to sleep if he needs it. That's pretty much it."

Kazimir hummed lowly and nodded, glancing across the room to where Bobby had left to go sleep in another room. He wondered if Bobby was actually sleeping, or lying awake. Bobby didn't look like he slept much at all. Like he'd seen too much.

"That's real decent of you," he said, a little quieter. "Bobby's a good kid. He deserves that much."

"He deserves a lot more than that," she said. Bobby was one of the most knowledgeable people in the city, though not necessarily among the smartest. He deserved a place to stay full time, he deserved to not have the people who knew what he knew constantly on the lookout for him, and he deserved someone there to care for him properly.

All Queenie could give was a part-time place to rest his head.

"Agreed." Kazimir nodded. "Didn't mean to make it sound otherwise. I'm just not good with words sometimes."

He rested his hand over his wound lightly. He felt like he was slowly starting to feel a little less woozy, with blood re-entering his system.

"It looks like you've both got it pretty rough, here in Kroy. Doesn't seem like a very friendly world here in the future."

"Neither of us are examples of what this place is ordinarily like," she said absently, trying again to put the gun back together one-handed. Her frustration with it only increased the more she tried.

Kazimir watched her struggle. He wanted to offer help, but he didn't think she'd take it.

"What's it ordinarily like?"

Queenie shrugged one shoulder, careful not to jostle her bad arm. “I don’t know. Probably not much different than whatever your son does. Kids go to school, see movies on the weekends or whatever. Nothing special.”

Kazimir hummed. He didn’t know if he would be a representation of ordinary life wherever he went either, and even Bo didn’t really fall into that category. The entire Petrov family didn’t.

“So what makes you special?”

She stiffened, though she tried to hide it. “None of your business,” she said tersely.

How could he even ask that? What level of unawareness did it take to not realize that the chick who put a gun to you head wasn’t your average teenager? That the average teenager didn’t know how to take apart and put back together one of the most advanced handguns on the market, that the average teen would be in the hospital right now if they were her.

It wasn’t really the question that frustrated her, though, it was the fact that she’d almost answered it.

Kazimir pursed his lips and huffed through his nose with a shrug.

"Just asking," he said. "I'm not that special, but I guess I'm not the typical example of a person from 1996 either. But you could probably tell that. You seem smart."

"How did you run into Bobby this time around?" she asked suddenly, "He's hard to find, and you didn't even know what city you were in. I highly doubt that kid would have told you anything about how to find him in this place."

"Oh. Well, I woke up behind a dumpster," Kazimir said. "Bobby was in the same alleyway. We ran into some thugs and well-" he gestured lazily at his leg. "That's how I got a shot."