Title: Anyone
Fandom: The Zeta Project
Author: Antje Farries
Language: UK English
Date Started/Finished: 9 April 2007
Length: About 4200 words, 12 pages, 3 wee chapters
Rating: K+
Note: Takes place immediately after the destruction of Knossos, because we can’t seem to stop writing about it. And by immediately I mean “the same day”. This story starts my attempts at making a Zeta Project Ficlet Marathon.
Disclaimer: The Zeta Project is under the license of DC Comics/Time Warner. The author acknowledges the rights of the parent company and its subsidiaries. This is only fan fiction. If you want me to write to put money in your pocket, e-mail me.

For the Best Fandom On Earth, Made with the Best People On Earth.

O – O

1)

Hotel lightning never did flatter her face much. It was always a little too green. A little too yellow. Maybe she did look gaunt and jaundiced. Maybe she did. But did the hotel room have to remind her? Particularly today. Particularly that hour.

Ro took off the red hat in a flurry of anger and frustration. She knew exactly where it should go: straight into the garbage can. It lay in the plastic refuse bag like a sick little reminder. Hurriedly, Ro spindled feet and feet off the toilet paper roll. The wad was unceremoniously poured over the red hat. At least then she wouldn’t have to look at it, not really, every time she walked into the bathroom. Until, of course, they moved on.

Back to the full-length mirror behind the door, Ro analyzed the remaining pieces of attire. Grey vest, a little out of style in the American South. She hadn’t seen one person in all of South Carolina wearing one. Funny, it had been so popular in Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit. . . . Then again, the winds were chillier there. Her pants were a little on the boyish side, baggy and roomy and too long for her rather short legs. She had the longest torso of anyone she’d ever met, but that meant her legs were almost too short for her frame of five-six. The boots were nice, hardy work boots she’d picked up just before they infiltrated Seabrook, Maryland, and a particular building there that brought them to the end of it all, to Selig and Knossos and the clear, bright open Atlantic.

She’d hate these clothes forever.

She’d at the image of her in these clothes forever.

‘Ro?’

Her throat tightened in anxiety at the purr of her name. On the other side of the door Zee put his hand against the wood and an ear to the surface.

‘Are you all right?’

Being startled spurred on quick, jabbing movements. She tore the vest off, hearing it rip at a lower seam, and threw it to the ground by her feet.

‘I’m fine.’

Zee pulled his head away and stared at the faux wooden grain. If she was indeed fine, why did he feel she wasn’t? The day had prompted caustic emotional outbursts, not level, mellow feelings of indifference. Should he try to find out the way of her feelings? Or should he leave her alone?

He went back to the door. Inside, her heard only breathing. His hand rested on the brass handle. For a moment, he resisted temptation of checking to see if it was locked. Having accidentally walked in on Ro in the bathroom more than a handful of times over the last twenty months had made locked doors friendly. But not today. Today they were mean, unwanted, accusatory.

Then the water came. A shushing, harmonious sound from the faucet. Cold water, Zee expected. To wash away the brine and soot.

‘Are you going to take a bath?’ he finally asked.

‘I thought we were leaving.’

Zee tightened his fingers around the handle. Do not open the door, Zeta. Do not.

‘No.’ He tried to keep his voice soothing, light. ‘I think we’ll just stay here for the night. It’s already getting late. You have time.’

Ro shut off the water. The burning marks of tears were removed from her cheeks, but her eyes were left red, bloodshot, exhausted.

Time. You have time.

Somehow the reflection in the mirror recanted this. Repeatedly. She heard it wavering through her mind like a noose about to be tightened.

‘Yeah.’ Ro snarled at the reflection. ‘And what good will that do me?’

Zee deduced mumbled words within. ‘Did you say something?’

‘I’m talking to myself. I can do that, you know.’

‘Oh.’ Involuntarily, his fingers slipped from the handle.

Ro stooped to gather the vest from the floor. It joined the hat at the bottom of the rubbish bin, with a fluffy layer of wadded toilet paper over it. She popped her head above the counter and met the stranger’s gaze in the mirror. That was her face, but it was as though she’d just lost the last five years of her life in a matter of eight incomparable hours. Eight hours of her life she wanted back. Eight hours she wanted to redo.

To go from sixteen to twenty-one in a matter of hours was unbearable. No fairy of time would ever be so cruel.

Another tear appeared, and she brushed it away. The sickest idea was having to live with the images of it, forever, for the rest of her life. To be sixteen and have to remember something like that forever—the perfect definition of cruelty.

In the absence of hatred and the rising of love, she flicked the lock. Zee heard a snap from the handle. He took it as a gentle gesture. In the blink of an eye, Ro pressed herself against Zee, he with his arms around her. The soft warmth changed the tears on her cheeks to ice.

Zee kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m sorry, Ro.’

‘What for? It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Not for Knossos. I know it wasn’t my fault.’

‘Then what?’

‘For not being able to erase your pain as easily as I can erase a memory.’

‘Don’t.’ She spoke it fiercely, gripping his forearms. ‘Don’t erase any memory of today. You’ll need it. For motivation.’

Ro moved away and opened the room’s heavy door. Zee waited, figuring how today would motivate tomorrow’s ambitions. At conclusion, he pivoted towards Ro.

‘Where are the rest of your clothes?’

‘I’ll explain on the way.’

‘The way to where?’

‘Nowhere important. But you’re going to buy me some new duds.’

She patted the right pocket of the pants to make sure she had the room key. Satisfied, Ro let the door close behind her. Zee’s hand wrapped naturally around hers. In the wake of the day’s events, so much death and sadness, they desired closing the space between them, bettering affection and alleviating insecurity.