Chapter Text
On the island, everything had been different.
For Leah, Fatin had been like the sun, the light that shone so fiercely to protect her from the darkness of her mind.
For Fatin, Leah had been like the moon, the controller of the tides sending big waves to break down her strong walls that guarded her feelings.
Fatin helped Leah to shut her mind down when needed and in turn, Leah helped Fatin to feel and process her emotions. They kept each other in balance, making sure that the other was okay, constantly hip to hip, hand in hand, head to shoulder.
And with the others, they had worked together in perfect unison, like a galaxy. Eight completely different planets working together to survive.
But after the island, Fatin had fallen out of orbit.
It’s not like they have had a falling out.
It just happened unconsciously. Responding slower to texts, telling them that she’s busy when they want to call, it all proved to be quite easy. Over the course of two months, she went from seeing them every second to only sporadically texting them.
But with Leah it has been a very much conscious decision, coming from this unknown primal fear she can’t ignore. At first, right after the bunker, they were still as close as on the island, but slowly, especially after going back to school, Fatin started removing herself from Leah's Life.
But, she is less easy to avoid than the other six, and Fatin tells herself that it’s because they live closer, but she knows it isn’t true. Leah is harder to avoid because she is the person Fatin cares about most. The girl who had started out as a stranger, became an enemy, and turned out to eventually be the very center of her universe.
Avoiding her at school has been the hardest part, and Fatin is grateful for their mostly different courses. So far, she has been able to slip away from her life without obstacles, thank fuck for Ian constantly being Leah’s lapdog and taking up her time in their breaks together.
But, Leah has been reaching out, like a lot. Calling her, texting her, asking her to hang out. At first, she did respond, just short answers to make sure Leah wouldn’t be concerned, but these past days she hasn’t bothered to respond.
So, Fatin clicks away the caller ID for the second time today. A pang of guilt shoots through her, but she pushes it deep down. Leah only clung to her because she was available, because she was there, because she was the one who believed her.
Leah doesn’t need her anymore, right? She has Ian and the other girls. More stable people, people who she can depend on.
So, without the calming touch of Leah’s hugs, Fatin went back to her usual methods of comfort: hookups and alcohol.
It’s Friday night, and she is in an overfull house, probably owned by the rich parents of some college athlete, with the bass booming in her ears and chest. People are dancing on tables and drinking like there is no tomorrow.
She scans the room, looking for anyone fitting her standards for a good fuck. The boys are all too muscular, too sporty, filled with testosterone. The girls are all too short, none of them have nice eyes, and almost all of them are straight.
So, she wants to leave, go to another party, find someone to fit her demands so she can stop thinking about the ache in her chest.
Then, she hears someone say the name “Rilke.”
Her breath catches in her throat, her heart hammering out of her chest. She looks in the direction of the voice and immediately meets sad blue eyes.
Fuck.
She really can’t talk to her right now, and preferably never. However, the expression on Leah’s face makes her feel the equivalent of being stabbed, a sharp pain in her chest spreading out across her body. She knows that it won't go away unless she addresses the problem, but addressing it means removing the knife. Without the right equipment, without the right person to compress the wound, it would cause her to bleed to death, her suppressed truth spilling all over the floor, no way to stop it.
And she really doesn’t feel like risking metaphorical death.
So, she runs away.
Pushing through the crowd proves to be harder than she thought, but she manages by literally shoving people out of the way. She can hear her name being yelled, the voice raspy and croaky and the memories are fighting their way to the front of her mind.
She doesn’t like how it mirrors Leah looking for her on the island, when this time she genuinely doesn’t want to be found.
The sound of her name being screamed gets closer, but the door is already in sight.
The cold air hits her the moment she steps outside, and she regrets not bringing a jacket. Luckily, her house is only ten minutes away from Marc’s? (Miles’? Maybe Mike’s? God, she’s bad with names), so she walks at a brisk pace, trying to keep herself as warm as she can by wrapping her arms around herself.
She can hear a faint yell and knows it’s Leah, something about the way her voice cracks, or maybe it’s just because it's the only logical option.
But it doesn’t make her stop, quite the opposite actually, she walks faster, while cursing Leah’s long legs. She really regrets choosing to wear heels tonight, else she could have just run, maybe even cut off a part through the park.
“Fatin! For fuck’s sake!”
Leah definitely is way faster, her voice coming closer quickly, and Fatin knows she doesn’t have a chance to avoid this conversation, but she still keeps going forward, hoping that Leah will somehow give up, and realise that Fatin really isn’t in the mood to talk tonight.
“Fatin!”
She feels her shoulder being pulled and suddenly she’s looking right into blue eyes for the second time tonight. At the party, with the lights shining in her face they had looked a lighter blue, like the sky on the island, but now in the dark, with only the moon and the streetlights illuminating them they look a dark blue, like the ocean at night.
This is bringing back way too many memories, and for a moment she forgets why she was walking away, and what her reason for walking away was.
Only for a moment, because when she sees how tired and broken Leah looks, she remembers it crystal clear.
She hurts people, that’s why.
Even when she tries to avoid it, she still leaves a trail of damage behind her.
But, she reminds herself, staying close with Leah would eventually break her even more, because then there would be the illusion of a happy ending for them.
She ruins everything eventually, so leaving early is better, at least, that’s what she tells herself to prepare for what she’s about to do.
“What do you want?”
Leah flinches at the harsh tone and another pang of guilt shoots through Fatin’s body, but her walls are up high, with guards standing at every gate. There is no way that Leah can know that she’s breaking down inside.
“Why are you avoiding me?”
Leah’s voice is so rough and there is so much pain in her voice, Fatin breathes in deeply, trying to remember how to turn off emotions, trying to remember why getting away from Leah is so much better than just hugging her right now.
“Fatin, please just tell me what I did.”
She doesn’t respond and chews the inside of her cheek. She can just hear her mother’s voice, saying: chin up, don’t show weakness .
Fatin always excelled at this, hiding emotions, cutting people off before they get too close. Her mom never allowed her to have close friendships. It wasn’t uncommon for her to tell Fatin to distance herself from someone when she believed that she was getting too attached. She had more memories of people crying at her house, begging for an explanation, than she would like, but it made her good at keeping up her wall.
She knows that it is cruel, but distance keeps her safe.
“Fatin, please, just say something.”
Leah broke down her wall of safety so easily. They may have started out as what would be defined as enemies by most people, but after that Leah got closer than anyone else ever had. It was terrifying, but then they were on an island, fighting to survive, so relatively it wasn’t that scary at all. But, she really thought the attachment she felt on the island would have gone away by now, two months later, but it hasn’t.
But now it is terrifying again, making her fight or flight kick in every time she thinks about Leah getting so close to her again, and if they stay friends, she knows Leah will slip past her defences easily.
She can’t give Leah the promise of them going back to how it was on the island, it would be cruel. The poor girl has been through way too much. She should be surrounded by stable people, not someone who will fuck up eventually.
So, she takes a deep breath. Parts of her wall have crumbled down, but the guards remain ready to protect.
“Leah, I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
Desperation is clear in Leah’s voice, and she looks like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Because,” Fatin looks around, avoiding eye contact, “I just can’t.”
“Because you’re scared.”
Sometimes it feels like Leah can see right through her mask, her wall, like she has X-ray vision. Like she can only see Fatin, not the facade.
She feels so small, like she’s getting reprimanded by the entire world. Fear is a weakness Jadmani’s don't have, at least, that’s what she has been told her entire life, a fact imprinted on her entire personality.
So, she swallows everything she wants to tell Leah and chooses to attack.
“Listen, Leah, I don’t know if you will understand this, but when people avoid you, they don’t want to talk to you.”
“No, you’re scared, because you think you’ll be like your dad.”
She wanted to end this nicely, but Leah’s words hurt way too much, and her guards are immediately activated, ready to cause damage.
“Leah, you’re going to have to accept this: I don’t want to be your friend. End of discussion.”
The words spill out like venom, but she’s used to that. She takes one more look at Leah, who now actually has a tear running down her cheek, and for a split second Fatin wants to apologize and hug her, but she pushes the urge deep down to rot in the dark dungeons of her mind.
She turns around and starts walking away from this absolute disaster of a conversation.
“If you’re not scared, then why are you walking away, Fatin!”
Her voice echoes through the empty street, her voice rougher than Fatin has ever heard it and it twists the knife that is already tucked neatly in her chest, but she keeps walking.
Leah doesn’t follow her.
When she gets home, she runs up the stairs and locks the door behind her, letting herself fall face-first onto the bed, yelling into the blanket to muffle the sound. The screams turn into sobs, and maybe Leah was right; she is scared.
When she wakes up the next morning, her pillow is covered in smeared mascara and she feels physically sick.
She always thought leaving was the hardest part, the thing that hurts the most and then you could start building up the wall again, like ripping off the bandaid quickly, feeling the sting fade.
She was wrong.
Leaving was easy, like ripping off a bandaid, but staying away hurts like the knife planted in her chest. Every time she remembers, it’s like it’s twisted again, the conversation replaying in her head. With the blade in her body, there is no way to heal, no way to build up the wall again.
She knows Leah is the only person who can pull out the knife, but still, she stays away.
Too scared Leah will let her bleed out, refusing to heal her wound. Too scared Leah will twist the knife even deeper in her chest.
So, she’ll take the pain spreading across her body, trying to numb it down with sex and alcohol.
And maybe the company of the pain is comfortable because she knows she deserves it.