Asleep Or Awake, I Will Never Part With My Dream

[Zetsu]

((Irene Djezari continued from Erewhon))

It'd been a long day.

Irene had set off in the direction KK had gone. Like that was gonna yield any fruit, but it wasn't like she had anything better to do. She'd picked a direction and she'd walked, and when she'd gotten tired of walking in that direction she'd changed directions on a whim--hey, not like KK was gonna walk in a straight line either, right?--and walked in that direction, and now here she was, staring at a chain link fence, imagining something dark and deep and endless stretching out somewhere below.

So no, Irene hadn't expected to find KK. She couldn't really be all that disappointed. She could admit that. She could admit that she wasn't up to deceiving herself, wasn't up to tricking herself into being happy. She'd only pretend to be deceived, anyways. No point in that. There'd be more realistic chances of deluding herself tomorrow, when she ran into people again, people who could distract Irene from the fact that she was deluding herself and her knowledge of the fact that she was deluding herself and was she deluded or not? Was she gonna die happy or not? Of course she wasn't. That ship had sailed.

Bad idiom to use when you're looking out over the ocean and ships are your only realistic chance of getting out of here okay. But fuck it. Irene deserved a break. She deserved to let herself be unhappy.

But maybe tomorrow, for just a little while, a moment here, a minute there, she could forget that. She could forget about the necessity of suspending her disbelief because she actually believed, believed that everything was gonna be okay. Yeah. A girl could dream. And even if she didn't get a chance to forget, even if she had to delude herself and then delude herself into believing that her deception had actually worked and she wasn't actually deluding herself--well, then, she could at least make things a little fun, right? Right?

Irene walked up to the fence, looked up. Not too high to climb, probably, but she didn't want to risk losing her grip and losing her life. That, and she just didn't feel like it. Mainly she didn't feel like it.

Okay, so the odds of it happening if she actually tried to climb over were probably scarily high, but that's part of why she didn't feel like trying.

Instead she grabbed the chain-link mesh and pulled, ignoring the feeling of metal digging into her skin. It wasn't easy. Old and rusted it may be, but it was still big and Irene was still tired and it was still made of metal. But it gave way, little by little, until finally the whole section popped off and Irene landed on her butt. There we go.

Irene pushed the mesh off of herself, dusted herself off even though she hadn't really gotten herself dirty or dusty, and stepped through the hole she had made. She sat down, swung her legs over the edge of the cliff, and kicked them back and forth, almost rhythmically. She gazed out at the--what?--at the stars, at the endless darkness, listened to the roar of the invisible waves below. She cried, and she screamed wordlessly into the void.

Yeah. This wasn't bad.

((Irene Djezari continued in waste of words))