Round 5, Challenge 4, Zoe

[vae]

Title: Can't start over
Author: woodsong_1978
Character: Zoë Alleyne
Rating: PG-13
Question: #4) Do you believe in fresh starts?
Disclaimer: Zoë doesn't belong to me. She belongs to Wash, and then to Joss. Just so you know.
Author's Notes: She really doesn't. No spoilers.
Comments: Craved. Con-crit always welcome.

Ain't no such thing as a fresh start. Anyone tries to tell you there is, they're trying to sell you a dream. Don't work that way. You get one start in life, that's it. Everything else works from there.

Was a time I'd've said yes. Been enough times I've started over, but I don't reckon there's a single one of those times you could call fresh. Can't make a fresh start. No matter what you're thinking at the time, there's always something left over, something you're carrying with you from before. Can't leave everything behind you. Shouldn't want to, neither. Ain't healthy. It's your past makes you you. Can't discard that.

Starting over, that you can do. Pick up the pieces of what's left, take it forward, start over. Ain't fresh. Ain't strictly speaking a start. But there's times in life you stop, and it's when you get moving again folks tend to call a fresh start. Picked up after the war, but that weren't a fresh start. Stinking and rotten, that start, holding hard as I could to every damn thing I could take with me.

Fresh start? Let me tell you something regards fresh, out here in the black. It don't last. Fresh gets used up, or it decays.

Fresh don't last. Starts don't happen. Just gotta keep moving forwards with whatever - and whoever - you're carrying. 'Cause there's times they'll be carrying you.

Comments

[lvs2read.livejournal.com]

Very nice! So perfectly Zoë! I can just hear her saying all of this. Well done!

[vae]

Thank you! Told you she was bothering me regarding this one *g*

[kitsunesan.livejournal.com]

Your Zoe is fantastic. I wibble for her.

[vae]

oh, thank you! She won't wibble for herself. Just ain't made that way.

[razycrandomgirl.livejournal.com]

That was full of pain and hurt. Still bitter about the way her husand was taken from her.

[vae]

Bitter about one hell of a lot of things. Didn't expect it to come out so harsh, to be honest, but there's one thing she's given up, unfortunately. She's given up on hope.

[razycrandomgirl.livejournal.com]

Aww! Poor Zoe! I'd hug her if it wasn't for that whole self preservation thing. :-\

[ceslas.livejournal.com]

Yikes, she sounds just like Mal now! He had better come up with another way to say what he needs to say, cause this is exactly what he told me. Gorram 'verse for making folk like Mal and Zoe give up on hope...

[vae]

Hee! They are very, very similar.

[srichard.livejournal.com]

Wow, I really liked this one. Could hear Zoe in it.

[vae]

Thank you! I've been surprised how easy it's been to write Zoe. It takes a while to work out her response, but once I get past her initial reluctance to talk, the writing just flows.