The World Walkers: Iliria: Kalena: Returning (part 2)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

“Yes, because it’s that simple.” Quentin stared at Kalena and she wished that she hadn’t left without warning him in advance, but she knew that he would try to talk her into staying. “Why did you leave?”

“I had to.” It wasn’t enough of an explanation, not for him, yet it was the only one she had. “Being here…” She looked around, wishing that she’d had another choice, but she should have realised she would never find a home out there. “Had there been another option I wouldn’t be here, Quentin, but there wasn’t one. The whole time I was out there I went from one place to another, searching for a home, when all I ended up finding was hatred once they realised what I was – and in the end I had nowhere left to go. I had to come back.”

“Lena…” Kalena looked at Julian. “You always had a home here. Always.”

She shook her head. “No, here I’m trapped. It’s like… when they found me I was so excited to have finally found somewhere I could call home, but I had no idea what it meant to be what I am, and the longer I was here the more I felt like I could never leave, only I had no understanding then why. Now I know why we have this place, why we need somewhere like this that they can’t find…” A tear trickled down her cheek, the first since she had left. “Unfortunately that doesn’t change the way I feel when I’m here. I want to be like them.”

A hand took hold of hers and she found herself staring at Julian as he added to what little strength she had left. “That’s not going to happen. You are one of us, sweetheart, no matter how much you wish otherwise.” He squeezed her hand. “No matter how much we wish things were different for you.”

“Why should we wish things were different for her?” The anger in Quentin’s voice wasn’t a surprise and neither was the sentiment, because he’d never understood why she felt the way she did. “We’re the lucky ones.”

“Really?” Julian squeezed Kalena’s hand again. “After everything you’ve been through we should be finding you somewhere to rest. This is an argument you can have another time, Quentin, because Kalena ran here this morning and I’m surprised she’d still standing.”

If she was being honest she was surprised that she was still standing, but when she looked at Quentin she knew he didn’t want to let her walk away with Julian. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking back to when she had been close to Julian, long before Quentin’s arrival, and half wishing she could go back, so she’d make different choices. Losing Julian hadn’t been something she wanted to do, yet the longer she’d spend with Quentin the easier it was to believe that the person she thought existed was nothing more than a construct. Julian had wanted to be friends with her and in order to make that happen he’d created a persona that she was happy to get close to. She sighed. Or maybe it was nothing more than Quentin’s jealousy…
Being back was putting her back in a place she hated, stuck between two people she had cared about in the past, although Quentin was someone she thought she still cared about. Leaving him behind had been hard, but she’d believed then that she was making the right decision. It turned out that she hadn’t been and coming back was probably just as big a mistake. Her other, even less sensible option, had been to find a door, if possible, so she could travel to another world, even though there was a chance that world might be just as dangerous. At least there she knew what to expect, mostly. Glancing at Julian she accepted that she might have made a mistake in the past when she walked away from him, although she wasn’t happy with the choices he’d made after that.

“You’ll let her talk to me?”

“Of course I will. You’re her best friend, Quentin. I might hate you, but she doesn’t, and the last thing I want to do is make her hate me more than she already does.”

“I don’t hate you,” Kalena murmured, trying not to look at Quentin.

“Could have fooled me.”

“I’m not saying I like you, Julian, but I never hated you. I just thought you made the wrong choices.” She shrugged. “This morning is an example of one of them.”

“Like I said, Lena, I had to make you give me a chance somehow and that really was the only way I could think of doing it. Had you come across Quentin first you would have been ensconced within his room, unwilling to talk to me at all.”

Kalena wanted to argue, but he was right. “Okay, maybe it was your only option. I wouldn’t have given you a chance if you hadn’t done this, that I will admit, but, Julian, whatever relationship we had died a long time ago, and I don’t think we can rekindle it.”

“Honestly I have no idea. I just wanted a chance, because once Quentin turned up…”

“All I did was tell her the truth.”

“The truth as you saw it. I wasn’t happy when you turned up, no, and I probably never would have been friends with you, but that didn’t give you the right to turn my best friend against me.”

“You wanted to get rid of me.”

“So? There were a lot of people I wanted to get rid of at the time, because I was…” Julian shook his head. “I don’t need to explain myself to you, Quentin. You never gave me the benefit of the doubt, never realised that the way I was feeling might have something to do with how long I’d been here and how hard it could be to cope with all of the new arrivals, never even thought about why I was saying the things I was.”

“Neither did I,” Kalena admitted. “As much as I hate to admit it, Jules, I had trouble looking past what you were saying to the person I’d once called my friend. I should have found it easier, but there were days when I felt like you hated me for being here, and it was so much simpler to spend time with Quentin, because he didn’t make me feel like that.”

“Was I the reason you left?”

Just as she started shaking her head she realised that the way he was acting might have had something to do with the choice she’d made. “You were a part of it, but, mostly, I left because I couldn’t be here any longer.”

“So what happens now? It’s obvious that you still don’t want to be here, but you believe you don’t have any other options.” Julian sighed. “How long is it going to be before you leave again?”

“There’s no reason for me to leave. I tried being out there and it didn’t work out. Going to another world is likely to be a mistake. My only option is to stay here, even though it still feels like a prison.”

“It’s meant to be a sanctuary, Lena.”

“No matter how many times I get told that it doesn’t change anything.”

“We need to try to make it feel like your home again, the way it did once. I know you were happy here.”

“A long time ago, yes, but that faded away and now…” Kalena looked around again. “After all I went through I’m trapped here again, only this time I have no way out.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.