Newcomer || thedauntless:
kallie had never ‘given up’. she’d just learned to deal with the truth of that betrayal.
she’d learned to survive. learned to exist. then learned how to thrive.
of course - it hadn’t been without incident. five years wandering among different groups - all with varying ideas on how to treat a fresh faced newcomer. one spectacularly glorious incident with a small sect of cannibals still stands out like a neon streak in her mind. trials, tribulations, hardships. and while she doesn’t doubt that she’s not the only one who had to fight - those hardships are hers to own. not anyone elses - and certainly not zens. she doesn’t owe her a window to a past that was survived without her - despite her.
she doesn’t owe her a goddamn thing.
she certainly doesn’t owe her a deep and meaningful monologue of all of those emotions that - had been. she won’t pander to any kind of need zen has for emotional fucking validation.
so while all of those words flood out - she offers zen the single thing she herself had feared the most. – s i l e n c e.
no more rebuttals - no more explanations - nothing.
and –
if there’d been a flicker of doubt - it’s not visible.
if she’s going to believe a single word - and she’s not feeling that
way inclined right now - then here and now isn’t the place to begin
that intricate dissection.
if she’s going to dismantle the last half decade of belief - then it isn’t going to happen in an instant - and certainly not when there’s a persistent push of a point she does not believe. regardless of how many times zen tells her to think what she wants, she’s still talking, still beating and belabouring the same damn thing ( she tells kallie to think what she wants and then tells her not to? oh, the irony ) and right now she doesn’t know what to believe…
[ try having your entire psychological construct shattered
and those ragged shards slammed in your face - then have
someone demand you reconstruct it into the shape that they
want in less than ten fucking seconds.
NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. ]
so she does the only thing she can in this moment. what she’s been doing for the last five years. she digs, deep, steels herself and latches on to something that isn’t about ‘them’.
“astute observation… i just walked in. and as soon as i’ve traded up for supplies, i’ll be walking out again.”
there’s a hike of brow - an unspoken question.
unaired, unvoiced, but it probably didn’t need to be.
– what’s your excuse?
“don’t worry - i won’t fracture your charade. you can keep playing your cosy little games with the people here. couple of days. week at the most - i’ll be out of your hair and you can pretend i was never here at all.”
and i might pity them if i could bring myself to fucking care.
“oh, i sleep like the dead.”
– which, is exactly how you left me.
The last five years of constant hoping and praying she’d see Kallie again had all been for nothing. There was no happy ending here for them and as a result, Zen was rapidly approaching the conclusion she had been an utter fool for dedicating her life to the memory of their relationship, rather than the reality of it. This was nearly enough for her to start to question if they had ever been happy together, that she had imagined the whole fucking thing.
Any further attempt to reason with Kallie was going to be futile, a waste of time and energy. Any argument Zen may try to put forward to her would be discarded without any consideration so what was the point? Besides, Zen’s mind was too jumbled to form any kind of coherent sentences. All she had was a stream of consciousness that would no doubt contradict itself as she ran through all of the emotions she was experiencing in this moment. That would only give Kallie even more reason to reject her surely.
So Zen was going to have to rebuild her existence without the hope of Kallie in it. She didn’t want to do such a thing but it wasn’t like she was being given much a choice here. She thought of her room here at the hospital, the same room she went to great pains to decorate in the style of the apartment she used to share with Kallie. There were the handful of photos she had managed to save. A collection of old, scratched and broken vinyl records she had managed to salvage. A scarf of Kallie’s hung up to give the room a dash of colour. All of that would have to change now. Zen was going to have to redefine herself and who she was without Kallie, just as Kallie had already done without her. It wasn’t going to be easy.
She flinched at Kallie’s last words, unable to stop herself from reacting. The message that Kallie truly wanted nothing more of or from Zen was finally hitting home. Zen’s heart was shredded as a result and she didn’t have a clue how to put it back together again. At least there was the promise of Kallie not hanging around here for long. They wouldn’t have to share the hospital for more than a few days and with careful planning, Zen might even be able to minimise the chances of them running into one another.
Was this what Zen wanted? Hell no. Did she want to fight to keep Kallie in her life? Hell yes. But if Kallie wasn’t going to listen, there was no point.
“Fine,” Zen said. Her voice was quiet and heavy with the heartbreak she was experiencing. Tears continued to roll down her cheeks and she made no effort to wipe them away. “Fine, whatever. Enjoy your stay.”
annaxmalina
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