“Oh, fuck off, you know what I’m talking about.” That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? You know. Alice knows her, and maybe that’s why even this feels like the easiest conversation she’s had all day. Yeah, the bar is on the fucking ground, and there’s still all that turmoil boiling under her skin, but it’s different to sitting on a couch listening to people talk about putting things away and bedroom arrangements and fucking Elaine and Zev.
She glances into the room Alice indicates, then raises her eyebrows at her - somewhere between surprised and annoyed. She releases Alice’s shirt slowly, as if worried she’ll bolt the second she gets a chance.
Alice knows her - she must know her - but to Zahra… Alice is entirely the same and completely different. There’s hesitation, distrust, where there never would’ve been before. There’s an understanding of the old Alice (her Alice, that part of her that can’t let go says, hers) that’s been fractured by the new one. She’s a stranger, except for all the ways she’s not. Who knows what she’s gonna want to talk about? Who knows how she could hurt Zahra, if she really wanted to?
Zahra steps into the room anyway, pulling Alice with her by the arm and shutting the door behind them. She feels childish and nostalgic and vulnerable for it, but she doesn’t turn back. One step after the other, Jackson. “Well?”
Half of herself still laid bare, exposing itself to Zahra. How could it not? What goes away in the end? What stays? Nothing really changes. Two years now, give or take, of hating each other so that they never had to leave each other’s orbit. It was so much easier that way -- so much easier to hate and stay than allow and leave. In the end, Lux did not exist without Zahra. That hole did not exist without Zahra. That vitriol did not exist without Zahra. That love did not exist without Zahra.
And who could ever risk denying that love?
There were so many things Alice would come to regret -- ironically, a statement she knew. It made sense now, the puzzle pieces were put together now, being Candy’s little helper made sense now (what was in the envelopes? who cared? -- apparently they’d get one step closer). But when there was no mother’s little helper left? So funny. So funny to know, and to execute, and to think: premature amends, or there may be none left to give.
Inside the room, pleased that Zahra had reluctantly agreed, she had to shake off every damn piece of herself that wanted to bite back. What the hell was there to bite back at? Zahra had asked ‘well?’ -- a simple question about what her actions had indicated, ignore the tone and it was to be expected.
She could launch into a spiel about the lack of proof! No way to prove it! But that wasn’t the goal. Others, perhaps, but the one person she would have everything to lose or gain from? Funny, right? That she was the one who had to see her laid bare? -- Because she could already see half of it.
She could launch into a spiel about how it came to be. She could ignore the elephant in the room entirely. She could play off of that awful truth or dare game. But none of that would fly the same way, would it? None of that would fly the way the real question would -- what sat at the heart of it all: “If you could see her one more time, would you?”
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