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Zia loves all of them with a fierce, encompassing passion as strong as her thirst for freedom. She guards them with steady hands on the helm of the Bastion, hair streaming in the wind behind her, in tending their wounds, in scoldings and hugs.
She loves all of them, Rucks, the Kid, Zulf, the pets, with a fierce love, student to mentor, sister to brother, caretaker to charges—she loves them and feels no envy at all at the increased exchange of looks between the Kid and Zulf, the unspoken words and growing emotion between them as grief ebbs and time passes, and feels no desire for any member of their little group.
They’re family to her, a new life, starting over—but even now, she can’t shake the paranoia of her life before the Calamity, the betrayal that she’d experienced, how everything had cascaded from her mistake, her ignorance, until the entire world had burned.
She feels nothing for the others, shields herself strong and builds up her own safe walls around the green-garden heart within her; it’s fertile ground for someone, someday.
Just not now. Not while there’s still cracks in her defenses, when she longs to see the world, when the very horizon spreads before them, ripe with possibility.
Maybe someday. But not now.
There’s still too much to love about her new life.