Left Behind to Pick up the Pieces

What did that have to do... did she not get it? Or had he been wrong? His face scrunched up, distracted and confused, and he was silent for a moment.

"Are you not then?" He said after a moment. "If you were..." If she was...

He shook his head after a moment.

"Then there's no reason to hide it. I already see it. I already imagine it. I've already spent every hour since I found out going through the options. I'm not - I'm not some teenager who doesn't know what death is like. I've killed people. I've seen people I care about die. I've had plenty of brushes with death, and my father would agree. I can take it."

The idea that his father might be bothered by Angelo seeing someone die was almost laughable. Basilio simply wasn't that kind of parent.

It took Angelo a long moment to compose himself. To fight the warring feelings. He had a million different clashing ideas. The revulsion at her description. The horror and fear. But also the anger. The indignation, that she thought he couldn't understand it. That he'd never seen it.

In the end, it was the anger that won out as she pushed in her chair.

Angelo looked up, fighting it down. Fighting to keep himself composed, and normal, and his tone even.

"Will you sit and let me say my piece?" Or was she literally going to walk away from him?

Angelo was more composed than he thought he was when he finally started to speak. He'd put it together in his head. Snapped the pieces together. He thought about Erione, and what Erione would want him to do. He'd want him to be kind. To remember that Zora was hurting.

But Angelo wasn't strong enough to handle it. He wasn't strong enough to be comforting or supporting. He wasn't strong enough to be kind as he said what he needed to say. The anger was too present there. It felt like he was burning him.

There were so many layers. So many levels of wrong. He could have taken a shovel and just went to town, digging a deeper and deeper hole into it. But he didn't have that kind of energy. He was exhausted. And underneath the anger--which would only last so long--there was sadness.

Broen was still gone. Nothing he said was going to bring him back.

But he wasn't going to just sit there. He was going to say his piece. So once she'd said she would let him speak, he took a deep breath, steeled his nerve, and said his piece.

"You need help, Zora. You probably are going to say yes, of course I do, but I don't mean because of this. I mean even before this. You are a fundamentally broken person. Even before all this with Broen. You always have been since the moment I met you, but you're so functional in day to day life that no one notices it. But you're either unwilling or incapable of empathizing with anyone else. Every time I've ever brought an issue up with you, you've patronized me and made it about how you had it so much worse. You have been through some stuff. I'm not saying you haven't. You have been through so much. You have spent your whole life as a victim, and when something happens that requires you to not think about yourself, and to instead think about someone else, you can't. You shut down. Your brain makes it about you. I don't know what happened with Broen. I wasn't there. But any time I opened up to you in the year I've known you, any time I've shown a shred of vulnerability, you've told me I don't understand and talked about your own pain.

"And don't get me wrong, your pain is valid, but you haven't dealt with it at all. Your brother did horrible, terrible things. But so did your father, and have you ever, ever dealt with that? Because you're still friendly with him. Still social. And I can't imagine being friendly with a parent who put me through all that."

He took only a brief moment, a brief breath, and then brought the conversation around to the original point.

"You're a fully grown adult woman who runs a massive business empire. You date teenagers. Your friends are teenagers. You put yourself constantly on their level, and when they open up to you--try and reach out to you--you talk down to them and make it about your pain. You make it about you. You suffered, and I'm sorry for that, but you're fucked up."

No, he wasn't mincing words. And if she tried to speak up? He was going to just talk over her. He was saying his piece.

"I don't think you killed Broen. I think Broen had a lifetime of abuse and awful circumstances that led to this. But I think you contributed. I think the things you said to him, and the way you reacted to him when he opened up? I think those things pushed him. And I want you to think about that. Really think about it. Because I already know what you're going to say. You're going to say that you're suffering. You're going to say I don't understand what it's like to watch someone you love die in front of you. You're going to be outraged. You're going to say I don't know you.

"But Zora, you're fucked up. You need help. So get some before you hurt someone else."

His piece was done, and Angelo pushed himself to his feet. Did he have things to say now? Yeah, probably. He should have brought up the funeral. Things like that. But it was too late for that. He'd burned the bridge, and then he'd called in an orbital strike. There wasn't any going back to that.

In the end, he shouldn't have bothered. Zora was not in a state where she would understand what he was trying to say. She was stressed, mourning, and nothing he said or didn't say was going to sink in.

Because in the end, she'd done exactly what he'd expected. He'd made a desperate plea for her to recognize her own issues and seek help, and in the end she'd turned it around and made it about how much she'd suffered. About how he didn't get it.

Apparently her issues were magically resolved the moment her father was out of her life. Apparently she was unclear on what a 'teenager' was. Apparently--even though she'd met him and befriended him before she even knew they knew each other--she'd only been friendly with him on Broen's behalf.

He supposed it made it easier. He was free of her. He was never going to have to deal with her again, never have to acknowledge her existence. They didn't share a social circle. They didn't share friends any more. So he was free.

He'd thought about the funeral, but it was easy enough to strike her off the list. He would keep it small. Himself, Travis, Blade, Janelle. Who else? Armourer knew him. They'd been - maybe not friends, but friendly. Finch too. His father.

It was a small group. Broen hadn't made many friends. But that was how he was.

So it would be small.

He stayed even after she teleported away. He dug into his wallet and left a tip on the table for having taken up the time and the seat, even if the place was almost empty. Then he second guessed himself, and he put down some money to cover Zora's coffee. He didn't want to stiff the server, and it was probably better to pay more than to leave them short.

With that handled, he finally got up, pulling out his phone and texting his dad he was on his way home.

He was going to need to sleep after this. For a long, long time.