Zurich had known that her self-exaltion wouldn't go by as a smooth, easy task; she knew that she would have been persued by some, those desperate for her to be safe. There always were those people--she was most often grateful for the support, but this was a situation she truly felt that she needed to dispell others from. If she didn't...And if he caught a single miss-step...
It was the fear of seeing her friends strewn about in gruesome death that led each of her actions. If she did not care for anyone, then he would have no one to hurt--if he had no one to hurt, he may becoem frustrated enough to finally grant her death.
Zurich was sure that she would've been able to handle just about anyones advances, though there was only one she feared; only one who may have the right of mind to try and drag her face-first out of the mud-buried hell she had allowed herself to sink into.
Blince Kolten.
And so when he did appear, looming over her, an angry dancing flickering through his single eye, Zurich knew that escape was not as simple as harsh words as it had been with the others. And so, it was not--he would dispell of her drink, dragging her by the arm out of the extent of the Bree walls.
His voice was a piercing roar, his glare shattering her delusion of adaption, of running away. With each word, he did not break her down--rather, build her up, place her out of the broken hole she had curled up into, casting films about the gaping despair and keeping her from toiling back into it. His words struck every bit of Zurich's few remaining nerves, and though he could not whisk about the want to die...He gave her enough reason to keep alive.
He gave her enough gaze into the future, seeking a lull in the battle that she felt her life was, and sowed hope once more. Perhaps she would never be the woman everyone wished her to be...Perhaps she would not be the hero she once dreampt of being...But perhaps she could keep finding that hopeful reason to continue, if not for herself, but others.
She was not as broken as everyone thought she was--as she thought she was. She was not as cowardly as she had been brought to believe she was. She was not as weak, not as meek, not as beaten as she had come to believe herself.
She was Zurich Kolten, cursed by the fates to suffer, and just as cursed to be able to endure through it.
