Continued from the Band thread for anyone wishing to join Zoey.
Her world, for a time, was quiet.
There was the soft bubbling noise of air being pulled through water in the hookah, before she exhaled and leaned back into the couch that doubled as her bed. Her eyes were closed. Her chest hurt. She’d pack… once she’d finished this. There was no reason to let the shisha go to waste.
She dealt with people because she knew she had to, not out of any real desire to. It wasn’t that she wanted to avoid people, though, either, it was simply easier this way. She wasn’t very good with people. She studied dead civilizations for a reason – dead civilizations didn’t argue back about stupid stuff when you’d finally gotten close to them.
Maybe that was just what she got for getting close to them. She didn’t even manage to partake in the celebratory cake herself. She didn’t feel much like celebrating, anymore. Quite in fact, she felt quite as though the little Arrow had threatened her – which, to be fair, was something to take seriously given the girl’s work at the Field Day. Threatened her for what, anyway? Disagreeing with her? Stating the truth? It did sound like just the sort of idea that Asp and Star would concoct. The sort of idea that people who liked people would concoct.
A long inhalation led to the slow exhalation of a stream of raspberry scented smoke as she tried to wrap her head around what the best course of action was. If she wasn’t welcome here, then maybe leaving really was the best option. If they were looking for sugar-coating and niceties, they should’ve recruited some Ladder to talk pretty to them. People who liked to play pretend so they could make friends.
It wasn’t worth having friends if they couldn’t accept her as she was. Those weren’t friends. Those were fakes. She didn’t need any of those in her life – she didn’t have the time or patience for them. So there it was. She wasn’t welcome. They didn’t want her honesty. They wanted petty niceties and condolences. They could call a hotline if they wanted that. They could do a lot of other things if they wanted that. She’d been of the impression that they’d kept her around expecting her blunt honesty, and the notion that she wouldn’t pull punches.
She didn’t do it for her own sake. She wouldn’t waste her breath on it if it was meant for her.
When her cushion seemed to move a little, she was ready to ignore it – but what she couldn’t ignore was the sudden presence of a creature on her chest. Her eyes opened to see big yellow eyes staring at her, a nose quite suddenly in her face, sniffing as whiskers tickled her skin. And then the kneading. And the purring.
A cat. How had a cat gotten into her room? How had a cat gotten in here at all? She set aside the pipe, and the disgruntled expression the cat gave her as she moved warned her not to do it again, and despite herself she couldn’t help but chuckle. “Alright, kitty, alright.”
As the kneading continued, she slowly reached to pet the invasive creature, a wry expression settling on her face as paws pressed at her chest. “You know, I generally like to know names before I let people go about groping my chest…” The cat paid her comment no mind. “I guess you’re not a person so it doesn’t matter, huh?” she inquired, scratching at the intruder’s ear and feeling the furball lean into her fingers pretty hard.
After a moment, Zoey’s hand moved away and the creature seemed to lurch a little, losing its balance before giving her another disgruntled look. There was the warning of a claw going through her shirt that she probably ought not do that again. She smiled a little bit as her hands both moved to pet the creature, chuckling a little to herself.
“… hi kitty,” she finally sighed. “Why aren’t people as easy to deal with as you? All you want is a little love and attention. You don’t hate people for teaching you how to use a litterbox, do you? You just learn. You get in trouble, and you learn. And then you get love.”
Her eyes closed again as she leaned her head against a cushion beside her, sighing deeply, and the kitten mewed in response to her deflation rather pointedly, before curling up on her chest, the purring resonating in her chest in a soothing manner. Her fingers continued to work through the animal’s fur for a few moments before she simply wrapped her arms around the kitten as though it was a stuffed bear, taking some solace from its presence.
No matter what she said or to whom, she hated being alone. She’d always hated being alone. But being alone was so much easier than being rejected – it hurt less. At least if she chose to be alone it was a choice. Her own choice. She glanced to the kitten again as she moved to pet it again, sighing softly to herself. “I’m sure you’re being missed right now,” Zoey murmured to the cat, wondering again at where it had come from.
The cat hardly seemed to mind either way, its face burying itself in against her chest as whiskers tickled her neck lightly. As her fingers moved over the fur more pointedly, she heard a little jingle, and sought through fur to find the collar that had made the noise. And there it was…
“Felix, huh?” she inquired, raising a brow at the purring ball of fur. “You would be a Felix, wouldn’t you?” she laughed softly, especially so as a rough tongue found a spot on her collarbone that apparently needed cleaning.
A leg stretched out, and the cat effectively took her torso over, shifting and burying its face as though ready to sleep. Zoey could only shake her head. “You can’t stay there, fuzzball,” she informed the creature whose ears simply twitched in response. “I mean it.” She didn’t make any effort to move the cat, however, and the cat seemed perfectly comfortable.
Checking the collar further for some form of address or return to marking, Zoey tilted her head at the familiarity of the number written on the back of the tag. Why did she know it? Flipping her phone on, she started to dial the number, before staring blankly at the name attached to the number in her phonebook.
That just figured.
Of course little miss perfect would have an adorable little kitten, too, wouldn’t she? As she started to give the cat a dark look, the critter yawned widely, and Zoey sighed with a resigned chuckle. A text went to the cat’s owner before the brunette dropped her phone to the side again and busied her hands in the cat’s fur, looking entirely too endeared to care.
Maybe a pet was what she needed. A familiar, maybe. Something that could keep her company… animals had a good sense of peoples’ emotions, and of the nature of people in general. If she was really such a horrible person as people seemed to think, the cat wouldn’t have made itself so comfortable where it was, would it?
The cat knew. The cat didn’t expect anything of her other than for her to just be herself. The cat didn’t care about manners, propriety, good behaviour, who said what… the cat cared about some affection, some scratches, some pets and some food. On occasion, maybe some catnip, too. “You’d like catnip, wouldn’t you?” she asked quietly of the furball, before pressing a light kiss to its head. “Come on, now, your momma probably isn’t going to much appreciate finding you like this, you little player, you…”
But she just didn’t have the heart to move him. He wasn’t moving. He was purring. His paw was twitching. He seemed so very comfortable. And she couldn’t deny being comfortable herself.
Animal companionship was so much easier to deal with than human companionship. “Fine. You can stay there until she comes to get you. But if you get in heck, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
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