06-10-2015, 04:00 PM
Her head was swimming, so much so that she finally relented to Jacques urging her away. Every muscle clenched tight in an effort to stop the sweeping tide that threatened to wash her inside out, a result of over-expenditure she didn't understand but cursed. The loss of control left her reeling and stiff of gait, expression drawn cold, her jaw tight. In the car she had trouble focussing beyond the blur of passing jungle, which she watched numbly. The ride was uncomfortable and silent, but she ignored the burdened atmosphere in favour of her own demons. The further they sped away, the deeper punctured the cavity in her chest. The wrongness. She clenched her fists in her lap, knifed her nails into the palms of her hands to keep from doing something stupid.
Their return was quiet. To Jacques' dismissal her glance flashed defiance. She was not one of them. But she took the order without quarrel, more concerned with relieving herself of company than inciting a battle, though her acceptance came with no acknowledgement. Every emotion reigned in tight. She only turned and left.
It was only later she found out exactly what had happened; the red trail that had been left in their wake.
She did blame Jacques.
Not for the risk she believed he had taken, but for the ignorance he'd shadowed over her, the choices he had denied her, when it was her people who suffered the consequences of his manoeuvring. He'd made her a pawn, a role she had fled a continent to escape, and worse, he did it after he had coaxed the beginnings of trust from her. They could have visited any refugee camp, but he had chosen hers. And showed no remorse for it.
In the solitude of her room she pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes, forehead against the wall, until the burning subsided. The grief made her feel of glass, both fragile and small. She internalised it in private moments, tightened control of the ghost that flickered whenever Azubuike's name was mentioned. Guilt trailed the grief. Made her long for the numbness of oblivion, if only as a tool to contain the helplessness, but on that front there was little to offer relief.
Outwardly Natalie showed little evidence of grief, but her demeanour nonetheless changed. If she could never have quite been described as personable, she had at least presented a veneer of affability to bridge her natural distance. She had smirked with the men, sat with them, learned names, but now the walls about her thickened with ridges of ice. She spent her time wherever she was most needed, and for as many hours as her body could sustain. It was the way she coped; the way she had always coped. The reason she found herself in the Red Cross to begin with.
Edited by Natalie Grey, Oct 22 2015, 01:16 PM.
Their return was quiet. To Jacques' dismissal her glance flashed defiance. She was not one of them. But she took the order without quarrel, more concerned with relieving herself of company than inciting a battle, though her acceptance came with no acknowledgement. Every emotion reigned in tight. She only turned and left.
It was only later she found out exactly what had happened; the red trail that had been left in their wake.
She did blame Jacques.
Not for the risk she believed he had taken, but for the ignorance he'd shadowed over her, the choices he had denied her, when it was her people who suffered the consequences of his manoeuvring. He'd made her a pawn, a role she had fled a continent to escape, and worse, he did it after he had coaxed the beginnings of trust from her. They could have visited any refugee camp, but he had chosen hers. And showed no remorse for it.
In the solitude of her room she pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes, forehead against the wall, until the burning subsided. The grief made her feel of glass, both fragile and small. She internalised it in private moments, tightened control of the ghost that flickered whenever Azubuike's name was mentioned. Guilt trailed the grief. Made her long for the numbness of oblivion, if only as a tool to contain the helplessness, but on that front there was little to offer relief.
Outwardly Natalie showed little evidence of grief, but her demeanour nonetheless changed. If she could never have quite been described as personable, she had at least presented a veneer of affability to bridge her natural distance. She had smirked with the men, sat with them, learned names, but now the walls about her thickened with ridges of ice. She spent her time wherever she was most needed, and for as many hours as her body could sustain. It was the way she coped; the way she had always coped. The reason she found herself in the Red Cross to begin with.
Edited by Natalie Grey, Oct 22 2015, 01:16 PM.