A/N: This is a short one shot about Liv's thoughts in that final scene of the season one finale. It's somewhat similar to my previous iZombie introspective on her character. While that one was about how Liv considers what other people think of her, this one is more about how she might view herself in that moment. It was written awhile back, but I figured I would finally get around to posting it in honor of the season two premiere this week. Let me know what you think! Enjoy! R&R! Thanks! ~Mac

Disclaimer: I don't own iZombie.

Reflections In A Hospital Hallway

"Can you come with me, Miss Moore?"

"Liv? Did you hear him?"

Has Liv made a good decision since she said to herself, "Why not go to a party in the middle of a Lake?"

Has she made a single good decision?

A decision that didn't come with a lie attached to it?

A decision that wasn't made out of shame? Or guilt?

Or plain old garden variety selfishness?

The answer is questionable.

Liv likes to think that choosing to play psychic and helping to solve murder cases with surprising swiftness and accuracy is a redeeming factor. But is it really? It's just one more way that she's lying to everyone around her. She may provide the victims with justice, but is she really doing it for them? Or is it to make herself feel better about the fact that she has to digest brain matter to keep herself from turning into an extra from a horror movie? Then there's the issue of sometimes liking the effects of a good brain, because it's during those rare moments when the acquired traits or skills take hold that she feels the most human, the most normal. When she thinks about it that way, it makes it harder to see the difference between herself and Blaine's client list. Who's to say that if things were different, she wouldn't want in on a smorgasbord of made-to-order brain gourmet? She tells herself that her personal accountability would have never let her get involved with that operation. She would never give up her integrity for a taste of something she had never experienced before—not that she could afford the price point anyway. But does she really know if that's true? She's not the girl she was before Lake Washington. No one knows who she is now. She doesn't know who she is now.

This thing with Major has really put things in perspective for her. Or rather, they've given her a glimpse at things from another perspective. If she could go back, she would have liked to have Blaine ask her if she would prefer a true death to this half-life he's trapped her in, but that's obviously not a feasible scenario. Yes, she hadn't given Major that choice either and if she had, he probably would have picked death after spending so much time building up hate for the creature she had become. He's right to have called her actions selfish. She couldn't watch him die, not when his blood would be on her hands too, and, she doesn't like to admit it, but the idea that they could have a future together, the one they should have had, did occur to her in that moment of panicked decision making. It isn't fair that she chose to subject him to this lifestyle that she still hates having to live herself. She just didn't want to be alone in it anymore, and that's not a good enough reason.

The problem is that now that her eyes have been opened, she can't stop seeing the selfishness in all of her actions—the good, the bad, the in between, they're all self serving in some way. She knows when it started, but she can't see where it ends.

She was never selfish before, because she already had everything she needed, everything she wanted. Now, she has nothing and that's only partially Blaine's doing.

She has kept everyone she loves at a distance, under the guise of protecting them, but it's really protecting herself from all the reminders of a life that was stolen from her. She has given up her dream career, not only because how is she supposed to perform surgery when she has the urge to crack open skulls, but because confining herself to the role of medical examiner provides her with a food supply. She has hidden what she is, what she's become, because the knowledge of the actual existence of zombies could cause mass panic of apocalyptic, secret lab experimentation, straight out of a movie script, proportions. But also because she's ashamed, she hates herself, she's jealous of her former self with her big dreams and perfect life, and she doesn't want to know what her loved ones would think of her.

She is a liar. She is shameful. She is selfish. And she's a zombie. Maybe these things come with the territory.

Because even her attempts to fix her recent mistakes have a degree of selfishness to them. She injects Major with the cure to give him back what she took from him. She realizes she was wrong to take his choice away, but she cures him because she doesn't want him to hate her for it, she doesn't want him to be angry at her anymore. She wants him to look at her the way he used to. She cures him because Major was the one who never found fault in anything she had ever done, and she felt awful when he placed all that blame on her.

And that choice may have cost humanity the best chance at a cure for all the rest of the zombies like her out there.

This is what she realizes as she stands in a hospital hallway while her brother clings to life and her mother and his doctor plead for her to donate blood. She wants to say yes, she wants to save her brother, she doesn't want to watch him die anymore than she wanted to watch him die anymore than she wanted to watch Major die. But she can't give her blood to them. She can't take that choice away from her brother, she can't. Beyond that, there's also the fact that even if she could choose to take that choice from him, be selfish that way again, she can't risk exposing herself to her mother, her brother, this doctor or the rest of the hospital staff, which is just as selfish. So there's the catch.

Even when she's doing the right thing, she can't escape her selfish motives. This is what Liv learns as she makes the best worst decision of her life, undead or otherwise.

"Liv. Go with the doctor."

"No."