This was originally a one-shot I was fiddling with just to have a fun, world-building side project between rewriting the first MHNY. As it turns out, and to the surprise of no one, I have zero self-control. This is now a 30 page google doc with MUCH more planned.
As currently Re: MHNY is my priority, this story is going to receive some pretty sporadic, inconsistent updates, and there might be some time-jumping. That being said, I really haven't seen many, if any, fics that REALLY explore a world with an all Irken cast. I'm really excited to share my thoughts and develop that world as a fun side-thing while I get Re: MHNY together.
M is for later, saucy chapters, in which I hope to prove that I've improved my smut writing over the course of a full decade. We're not shying away from the censorship. We big boi now. Fic titled inspired by PVRIS - Dead Weight, which I consider to be Gaz's theme song for the entirety of this fic. For Zim, his will have to be Can't Control Myself - Krewella. I hope both are equally enlightening to my characterization, because I cannot imagine two songs that better peg them.
Enjoy!
Dead Weight
Ch. 1
She was several smeet rotations younger than him, although, given the potentially infinite life of an Irken, they may as well have been hatched within the same pod. She'd been born after Horrible Painful Overload Day, a fact for which Zim was infinitely thankful for. While her identity was unknown to him at the time, he couldn't bare the possibility of causing his mate any pain.
Now if she'd just actually agree to his proposition—!
Unfortunately, his beloved hellion seemed to be of the opinion that he was so far beneath her that he didn't even warrant a formal rejection. She cast him aside regularly with all manner of delicious, torturous pain. Most of the time, she seemed largely apathetic about her punishment. But on the best days, Zim would see a glimmer of preening bloodlust in her eyes, the slightest curl of a lip, and he'd find himself mooning for days. No amount of bent bones or broken femurs could tether him back to Irk with the memory of his beloved's smile still on the brain.
If she thought she could get away with killing him, she would've.
Unfortunately, the higher ups seemed fascinated by his existence and continued to allow him to roam freely. His supervision was more a case study than appropriate guidance, not dissimilar to her own treatment.
With the nurseries using more sparring resources every hatching cycle, Elites were becoming more and more rare. Rumors existed of even deformed smeets being kept alive—if out of sight—in the labor regions.
Which made Gaz a miracle. Or more accurately, an asset to the Empire.
She was excellent at everything they handed her. Combat simulations had left her virtual opponents decimated. Weapon blueprints were absorbed and tinkered to deadly perfection. She seemed to have a preference for working on the simulation programs, but even in spite of her height, an Irken with her variety of skills couldn't be wasted on simulation modeling.
And anyways, her sims kept making the smeets cry.
She was shoe-horned into probational Invader training by the end of her 23rd rotational, barely outside of smeethood. Her small stature had garnered the negative attention of many, more so when it became obvious she was a favorite of the Tallers. Gaz didn't mind. She was largely apathetic to it all; a perfectly emotionless Elite. Cold. Unfeeling. Cruel.
Until him.
He was impossible not to notice.
She remembered the percussive noise of his opponents head hitting the floor. She recalled being startled by it, notable because of the fact she had never been startled by anything before. Ever. Surprise was for those caught unawares, or defective enough to feel fear. Gaz may have been a smeetling, but she was hardened. Fearless.
And yet, the wet slap-thump of a head smashing against the floor made her unexpectedly sick.
She looked up from her program—a simulation of her own design she was still perfecting and hoping to submit for the Elite training regimes—and laid eyes on him.
He'd cheated. That much was immediately apparent. Physical combat training wasn't supposed to involve PAK usage, but he was short, and anyone with half a functional brain program could see that there was no way he could've brought his opponent down without help. And his opponent had been beaten to a bloody pulp, teeth bent and missing, eyes swollen.
Furthermore, he was engaged in a showy display of victory unbecoming for an Irken.
"VICTORY!" He screamed, arms flailing wildly. "Victory for ZIM!"
She wrote him off then and there, although there was no shortage of opportunities to do so.
He seemed to crave attention, absorbing it all and interpreting it as positive. Attention was good. Bad attention was good. All attention was his right, and all his rights triumphed all. Though their specialties differed—he being primarily a soldier class, her being primarily an infiltration specialist—she found herself dreading their shared, mandatory combat courses. He was so loud. His voice grated against her antenna. His only saving grace was that he was so absorbed in his own world of self-importance that he never noticed her enough to bother her. He wasn't exactly the tallest Irken in their class, but he wasn't the shortest either. Gaz was a solid two gigas shorter than the next shortest in her class. And she hated it.
She deserved to be taller. That idiot didn't deserve the extra privileges his height afforded him. She hated him, and she hated that he incited such an unbecoming emotional reaction inside of her. Rage was a perfectly natural, Control Brain-approved emotion to feel. It was encouraged, even synthetically implanted, when appropriate. But rage directed at individual creatures, especially a peer, was much less typical.
She made excuses. Zim was uniquely terrible. Everyone noticed (except for him). She looked forward to the day he was inevitably deactivated.
The day they were finally paired together, she thought she had her opportunity. Gaz was measurably clever. Accidents happened all the time. They were far enough along in their training to no longer be required to hold back. She almost killed him.
As fate would have it, things occurred differently than she'd planned.
She was his first match of the day, and when she approached their assigned training section, she had balled her fists, waiting for his laughter. He always laughed. Always. No opponent was above his derision. No opponent was equal enough to be spared his mocking. She waited for it.
But he hadn't.
He'd seemed wary. His eyes had narrowed distrustfully, his hands flexing at his sides. She waited.
He said nothing.
"Begin!" The training drone demanded.
She'd pummeled him. Her beating had been brutal, efficient, and still within the appropriate guidelines for violence. Smashing his face in with the hell of her boot hadn't been as satisfying as she'd hoped. Unable to help herself, she ground her heel a few seconds more, just a little. Not enough for anyone but them to notice. Just until she could feel his teeth moving. Then she let up, stepping back.
The eyes of the entire room hung on their shoulders. She stood at attention, waiting for his surrender.
He spat blood, dragging himself to his feet. Her antenna rose, one eye narrowing. Perhaps she'd overdone it. He might've forgotten to relent. It didn't matter; when he left the mat, the battle would be called in her favor by default. She'd win. She always won.
Instead, he got to his feet. With growing surprise, Gaz watched him put his wavering hands up into a fighting stance.
It took the intervention of a supervisor to separate them. Their second battle had been vicious. Gaz had seen red, refusing to permit the insult, and had resorted to breaking bones before finally someone intervened. The screaming had been horrific. And yet he kept trying to get back up, lunging at her, throwing his every inch into the fight. Refusing to lose. Refusing to lose to someone so short.
The rage that had followed had been a trial in itself. She'd wanted to kill him. She wanted to finish what she'd started and tear his limbs off with her bare hands. She wanted to claw him to shreds for his insolence. Gaz was an Elite. So was he, but she was better. The best. Special. Chosen.
He was a case study with a destructive streak that would burn out. What was a grenade in comparison to a raging inferno?
Two nights later, she'd been in her hibernation chambers when someone had knocked on her door.
She half-expected it to be a Taller, here to reprimand her for her unusual display of erraticism. She would've deserved—and welcomed—the correction. The event had left her shaky, her insides scorched with the force of her own rage. She wanted it to stop.
But there was no supervisor on the other end of the hydraulic release.
He looked good, considering the damage she'd registered with his vitals. Irkens healed fast, she knew, but it was a testament to their race that he could even walk, let alone appear largely unscathed.
She bristled, but kept her mouth shut against insults. Zim was an embarrassment to the Empire, but he was still taller. He could be here if he wanted.
He leant his shoulder against the door frame, eyes narrowed.
Gaz felt it coming back. The rage. It took a frightening amount of effort to shove back down. Regardless, Gaz was an Elite, and nothing would overcome her, least of all anything to do with Zim.
"What do you want?" She asked through her teeth.
She didn't understand the look he was giving her. She expected him to look furious, to have come with some sort of vengeance in mind. But he didn't look angry. He looked . . . very unlike himself, frankly. There was an analytical evaluation behind his eyes that seemed unfitting on his stupid face. She hadn't thought him capable of that level of intelligent thought, frankly.
"You're creeping me out," she said, leaning outside of the proximity bubble he'd seemed to create.
Her comment seemed to pull him from whatever thought process he was stuck inside of.
He flashed her a smug grin, brushing past into her quarters as though he'd been invited.
"I played your simulation," he announced, eyes roaming about her room. She didn't know what he thought he would find; it was standing living quarters, aside from some of her personal projects. Irkens didn't keep much, especially training drones that could be deployed at any time for canon fodder. No need to leave extra work for when the janitorial drones needed to clean out their things for the next potential Invader-to-be.
Gaz frowned. Her simulation? "You can't have," she said slowly. "It hasn't been deployed yet." Idiot.
His PAKtcle shot out, reaching onto her shelf and dragging her assigned simulation developer from its place. Gaz's shoulders stiffened, the urge to reach out and tear it from his hands surprising her. Zim was infamous for breaking things just by being in their vicinity, and Gaz had been developing that simulation for nearly 2 whole rotations. If he broke it, she'd have to start the whole thing over again.
His head tilted at her obvious tension, grin widening just a tad more, "I hacked it."
Her eyes widened, feeling her cheeks flame with rage. Her talons dug into the palms of her hands. This rage. She hated it.
She snorted, dismissing the rage with a mere exhale of breath. "Whatever."
"It was . . . unusual," he hummed. He seemed so pleased with himself, some barely contained self-important glee that he was doing an awful job of disguising. "The Control Brains approved this level of horrible gore?"
Like he'd know anything about the approval of the Control Brains, she sneered.
"No," she grumbled, holding out her hand for the device. Her posture left no room for refusal, or so she hoped. Combat outside of the training ground was strictly forbidden. If Zim, as a Taller, decided he wanted to walk out with her handheld simulator and throw it in the nearest incinerator, he could. He could do so every day for thousands of rotations without ever facing any sort of retribution outside of a small admonishment for wasting supplies.
But he didn't. With a knowing grin she didn't understand the implications of, he deftly handed the simulation over.
To her growing confusion, he swept past her again, seeming even more pleased than when he'd arrived.
She couldn't help it. "Did you want something . . .?"
"I got it already," he replied, chipper as ever. He paused at the door, one eye visible to her. "Did you want something?"
"You came to my room," she pointed out.
He blinked at her, not seeming to have registered the implication of her words. His expression seemed to say 'U-huh, and? What's that got to do with anything?'
Tallest, he was such a moron.
"What could I want from you?" She sneered.
Zim threw his head back and laughed that antennae-grating laugh of his; the wild cackle that expressed just how much his emotional inhibitors must have broken. His synthetic repressant must have been created empty.
"Oh, little Gaz," he cackled, fanning himself. "You sure are a funny one. Anyways, seeya!"
He was leaving. He was going to leave. She wanted him to leave.
Only—.
"You cheated."
"Eh?" He paused, turning to face her.
She ignored the strange sensation in her squeedily-spooch that told her to leave it, the hard twisting sensation that she wasn't familiar with. An instinct that told her to stop. Don't engage. The creature before you is insane, and you want to stay as far away as possible.
"Against Larb," she said. "You cheated."
He seemed to be struggling to recall the battle in question. But after a moment, it was visibly obvious he did. His antennae rose, his smile becoming condescending and cruel.
"He is taller," he said, as though it was an explanation. At her frown, his grin widened to near-manic proportions. "It's not cheating to level the playing field."
Blasphemy. Gaz knew the word, knew the weight such a crime held, but she could never have imagined it playing out before her. Even from Zim. Tallers deserved respect. Tallers deserved unwavering deference.
She was horrified to understand his logic, blasphemous as it was. Taller meant stronger. Taller meant faster. Without the use of his PAK, he would lose without question, just as she'd calculated. She knew that. He knew that. So he did what he had to in order to emerge the victor. It was cheating. It was insane.
It was strategy.
His sadistic giggling echoed towards her down the hallway.
Gaz forwent hibernation that night, staying up and fine-tuning her simulation until her Control Arm notified her it was time to redress.
She didn't see Zim for two days, almost enough time to forget about his strange appearance in her quarters completely.
She entered the training room with her face truly well and buried in her simulation. She was doing a beta test, running through it to evaluate for difficulty. The simulation was designed to evaluate the player, growing steadily in difficulty the further the user got within the level. She was having some difficulties with its evaluation system. It jumped upwards too quickly and too sporadically. It felt unnatural.
She got about a dozen steps in before she realized there was a presence next to her, walking in tandem.
She glanced over and nearly audibly groaned.
Zim was practically skipping beside her, as though it was perfectly normal for him to be following after her. As though she didn't wish the ground would swallow him whole, or that his PAK would combust at her will.
She barely acknowledged him, only offering him a grunt before returning to her sim project. The effort was pointless. Zim had spent so long tailoring every Irken in his vicinity to expect his demand for attention that he now earned it effortlessly. Irkens were (smartly) wary of his volatile presence, shying back to give him room. Gaz refused to be similarly affected. She was Elite. She would not give him the satisfaction of having a Smaller shy away from him like a newborn smeet. In fact, she was going to ignore him completely. Forever.
It became something of a routine. Gaz suddenly found Zim popping up in more and more places, places he very firmly didn't belong, but that few Irkens were willing to deter him from. He showed up in the viewing room during her cybernetic weapons courses. He followed her around in combat classes and pointedly took the mat beside hers, snarling at the few Irkens who protested. He showed up during her routine sim presentations, hiding in the crowd of curious, horrified Irkens with a wicked, impish grin on his face.
He sometimes even managed to show up when she was taking snack breaks in the cafeteria, though she had no idea how he knew her schedule. She purposefully kept it erratic, never arriving at the same time, but she was only half-successful. The other half of the time, Zim would stroll in like he'd meant to be there all along and slot himself beside her.
The most maddening part of it all was he didn't actually say anything. He just . . . hovered. Watched. He followed Gaz around like it was his—.
She froze.
. . . Like it was his assignment.
That night, Gaz did not return to her rooms—her only safe haven from Zim and his constant lurking—immediately after her training. She pointedly kept herself to the hallways of the combat building, feet slow rather than urgent. Given the two recuperation rooms between differently gendered Irkens were separated to entire opposite sides of the building, it wasn't difficult for Gaz to bypass Zim's usual pursuit and hide in her room. He normally gave up for the day at that point.
But tonight, Gaz didn't go directly to her room. She lingered in the hallway, waiting. 'Know thy enemy' was a universally understood concept. Gaz had never considered anything outside of Irken future-conquests an enemy, and if she was honest, she thought of them as less than sentient. They were purely obstacles in the way of the Armada's goal, obstacles she was tasked with disposing of. Enemies were more than that. The title of enemy had to represent something greater.
Sure enough, once the vast majority of Irkens had scattered, she lingered in the observation area.
He was there, as she knew he'd be. Training extra. He was mostly circling one of the practice dummies, a speculative look in his eyes, humming loudly. Always loud. Always.
She waited for him to feel a pair of eyes on him, as she knew he would. Or should. It took an embarrassing amount of time, actually, but eventually he froze, head whipping dramatically to and fro, tense. By then, there was nobody else in the vicinity. His confusion was blatantly apparent until he stiffened.
He rotated on his heels, poised with an inappropriate amount of suspicion.
His eyes zeroed in on her at once. Her body was angled with her shoulder closest to the observation window, as though she'd just been passing by and paused. It would've been inappropriate to demonstrate more blatant about her intentions, and if she was being honest, it would've felt . . . uncomfortable. A nameless feeling she couldn't quite put her talon on.
Besides, she didn't need to be more obvious. Zim's eyes were wide with surprise, antennae perked.
Gaz turned her head away and walked on carelessly.
She fought a bitter battle against the reflexive muscles of his face as her peripheral vision caught him scrambling to catch up with her. He was chaos incarnate; throwing his gloves on all floor, along with his hand bindings. He discarded the shin guards, the overboots, leaving them all in a messy heap on the floor. It was kind of funny. She'd never admit it, and she refused to show it for that matter, keeping her apathetic scowl firmly in place.
He burst out of the door, only a few feet in front of where she'd walked, chest heaving and out of breath.
One of her eyes narrowed, the opposing antennae rising. It was a rude gesture meant to imply an Irken was acting outside of the appropriate boundaries set in place by the Control Brains.
Judging by the fact Zim did absolutely nothing to correct himself, the gesture was lost to him.
He bodily blocked the entirety of the corridor, his arms spread wide, touching the wall and the viewing room window. He just kept staring, breathing heavily from his mouth, fighting to regain his breath. Gaz shifted her weight to one hip, foot tapping impatiently while she waited for him.
Finally, he gulped one last breath of air and shook himself, slicking his sweaty antennae back against his scalp.
Good.
Now it would be fair.
She lunged for him, bursting back into the training room, slamming him up against the wall. Her PAK legs leverage her the few extra inches she needed to tower over him. What she was doing was highly illegal and could get her kicked out of the program, but something told her Zim was no snitch. Considering the amount of trouble he got into on his own, she doubted he'd go looking to share the attention that a reputation as a troublemaker garnered him.
"You're my Evaluator," she hissed.
Zim jerked, clearly caught off guard. She knew it.
An Evaluator was usually a secretive mission of the utmost importance. Irkens weren't meant to know they were being evaluated for demotion or removal of the project.
She'd been so stupid! Of course no Irken would be allowed to live with as many flaws as Zim. His defectiveness was painfully apparent to anyone who so much as shared a room with him. It'd been a test. And she'd been marked for her vulnerabilities. He'd assessed her secreted differences and targeted her. They were looking to fail her.
Slowly, his face began to stretch into a wide grin. It made Gaz's antennae strain with their furious trembling, her 'spooch twisting painfully. She knew it. She just knew it. She'd been right.
He threw back his head, bashing it himself against the wall and howled.
She released him, jerking away as though she'd been scalded. What was this? The charade was up. She'd figured him out. Why was he still pretending to be a moron? Was this another test? A trick?
"FOOLISH SMEETLING," he howled, bending in half with the force of his own laughter. He whipped a tear from his eyes as he watched her, seeming to garner further amusement in her wariness. "Zim is no stinking Evaluator!"
She bristled. She wouldn't be tricked. The insult grated on her nerves, but she couldn't actually attack him. They'd do worse than demote her if she hurt him. "You can stop the act! I already figured it out! Why else would you follow me around?!"
Zim straightened, the humor evaporating from his face. "Are you kidding?"
His hand lashed out—faster than she'd ever seen him, which simply furthered emphasized how unworthy he was. What Irken slacked off in Invader training? Especially combat? What Irken acted with such laziness, if not a Defective?
She was further stunned to realize he was much, much stronger than he let on. She jerked at her wrist hard, and his hand barely moved with the effort. Satisfaction blossomed in his face as he saw her come to the realization that she was trapped. At his mercy. He had the gall to drag her forward, bringing her close enough for his breath to skim across her face.
"You're like me," he purred. "You crave destruction and merciless victory just as much as Zim."
"I don't," she hissed. The notion was absurd. Gaz couldn't imagine feeling half the things little creep expressed in an hour, let alone harboring that inside of her.
"You do," he countered. "And I can prove it."
Gaz felt herself grow cold. Accusations of defectiveness were one thing; they were a regularinsult, rarely taken seriously unless formally brought to the attention of supervising Tallers. But proof? What proof could Zim possibly have?
He reached into his PAK, removing a device that was paralyzingly familiar.
A sim developer.
Not hers. Hers was muted dark purple, while this one was a near-blinding fuschia.
"Your simulations will never be approved," he hissed, wiggling the device. "Do you know why?"
"Because I need to work on them more," she growled. "They're not good enough."
"Oh Little Gaz," he cooed. "They are marvelous."
She jerked backwards, but his grip was unrelenting around her wrist. He was pushing his luck. If he gripped her any harder, she was going to snap his wrist before he snapped hers, Taller or not. She could take the ridicule, the derision, and the assumed inferiority from any number of Tallers. But she would not tolerate anything of the sort from him.
His eyes were burning, a brilliant ruby that glowed with his mania. "They are magnificent," he said. "Zim has never seen such destructive violence, nor experienced a simulation that satiated the need for it! It was riveting."
She finally managed to twist her wrist out of his grasp, pulling away and putting much-needed distance between them. "It requires too much processing power," she recited. "To deploy it across all the smeeteries would be a waste of resources. The—."
"They are lying!" He shrieked.
Gaz felt her spooch squeeze painfully inside her.
There it was again. His blasphemy. The Taller's word was law, and here he was, disregarding it out in the open.
"We aren't like them, little Gaz," he hissed, advancing slowly. "They lack our imagination. They lack creativity."
"Creativity is another word for insubordination," she hissed.
He snarled at her. Out of instinct, Gaz's PAK legs slowly emerged.
It had the desired effect, initially. He paused, watching them flex at her sides, poised and ready to strike.
"You know," he said casually, mirth returning to his eyes. "A completely obedient Smaller would never dare threaten a Taller."
She froze, her PAK legs shooting back into hiding. "Your voice is stupid! I'm done listening to your defective rambling! If you're not an Evaluator, then we have no business together! So stop following me!"
He broke into further peeling laughter, holding his sides. "Oh little Gaz," he snickered, brilliant eyes flashing her way. "You have no idea what I'm going to do to you."
She felt it again. The same feeling she'd had when he'd cornered her in her room. The strange twisting in her squeedily-spooch, the way her temperature deregulated itself. She felt too warm. She felt sweaty. She didn't like it.
Snarling, Gaz shoved her way past him, deliberately bumping into him with her shoulder as hard as she could manage. It sent him into a slight stumble, though it only made him laugh harder.
She offered no parting commentary, unable to process the amount of information. Her PAK wasn't feeding her proper protocol. She doubted there was a proper protocol.
The haunting sound of his laughter chased her to her quarters.
She spent the entirety of the next morning in her supervisory squad's office begging for a division transfer. Anywhere. Anything. She'd go back into chemical bioengineering, if they wanted. Please, for Tallest Miyuki's sake, just get her away from Zim.
Unfortunately, her previous history with trying to stubbornly remain in the simulation division worked against her. She'd requested too many transfers, they said. Their hands were tied. Nothing they could do.
What was worse is that they seemed so smug about it. By now, everyone in the division had noticed Zim tailing her. The shorty and the defect; two best buds. It burned her. She knew if she was even a handful of gigas taller, they never would've denied her. Zim would've been punished for his harassment of a favored Elite, as he should've. But instead, she was left to endure whatever plans he'd devised from her. She was expected to ignore his fixations and continue to perform.
What bothered here was that she felt the order wasn't as unreasonable as she was perceiving it to be. She'd been in the middle of forming a complaint when she'd abruptly realized her own folly.
A true Elite wouldn't have even noticed Zim, aside from a peripheral awareness. A true Elite was cold. Unfeeling. Meticulous. What little emotions they were allotted shouldn't have been affected by Zim's interference in her day-to-day life. He should've been a strange annoyance that she was barely aware of. He should have been nothing.
He shouldn't make her so furious that she was devising suspiciously Zim-shaped enemies within her private simulation to destroy over and over again. She shouldn't be so angry that she'd been driven to her supervising Tallers to get her away from him. She shouldn't even be here.
Sobered by the realization, Gaz had quietly bowed and marched herself out of the office with a hard 'spooch and icy veins.
They aren't like us, Zim's voice echoed in her brain.
He wasn't right. Gaz was nothing like Zim, and he was nothing like her. Her protocols were intact. Her social hierarchy was well understood (with one obvious exception). She worshipped her Tallest, and she lived to serve the Empire. Zim worshipped and lived to serve no one but his own ego. She hated him. She hated hated hated him. They weren't the same. They'd never be the same.
Now if only someone would tell him that.
Irk continued to rotate onwards. Once, Gaz had been ignorant of the passing of time, aside from scheduling feeding and hibernation times. Things had been right. Peaceful.
Now, Zim dogged her every step. It'd been a mistake to acknowledge him. In hindsight, it was obvious he'd been waiting for her to do so. The trigger that finally confirmed his suspicions all along. An Elite wouldn't have noticed, would reply with scorn and dismissal until he inevitably grew bored and wandered off. Gaz had thrown around paranoid accusations and threatened a Taller with her PAK legs.
Things only grew worse. If he wasn't following her, her peers were asking after him. Some idiots though it made her lucky to be mentored by a Taller. Idiots. Morons. Stupid. None of them understood. None of them knew, and none of them cared, and neither did she. Zim was her problem. Her test. Her trial. And she was determined to escape with her rank still intact.
It took everything inside of her, daily, not to tackle him and rip his antennae out by the root. She took her frustrations out on her peers in combat training, only just managing to keep her newly discovered temper in check. She didn't break their bones. She didn't leave them crippled. She didn't take the kill shot. She held back. They'd forfeit, and she'd receive the suitable amount of praise (never, never as much as Zim, but it was enough; she could pretend it was enough).
Yet, every fight would end the same. She'd emerge victorious. She'd receive her praise. She'd look up.
And there would be Zim, smiling at her. Knowing. Cognizant of the effort that it took to keep herself in check. Refusing to let her even pretend that she was anything other than what she was. Flawed. Temperamental.
She wished she'd ground her boot into his teeth harder.
(She wished she'd never done it in the first place. In hindsight, it was obvious he was inciting her. Testing her. She should never have taken the bait. If she hadn't, he never would've started following her.)
(It was all her fault.)
Published 03.31.21