Fic: The Survivalist
Title: The Survivalist
Fandom: 28 Days Later
Rating: G
Characters: Selena; Jim/Selena
Word Count: 1400
Summary: " If they ever did get up the courage to talk about Before, it would take years and a bottle of scotch before Selena would talk about her childhood."
Notes: Written for redcandle17
The Survivalist
Jim liked to think The Outbreak made her like this, cold and pragmatic to a fault. Selena allowed him to keep his illusions. She'd stopped thinking of Jim as useless and soft-it was hard to keep that line of thinking after everything-but sometimes he needed to be coddled. Jim needed to be right about her, needed the world to make sense on his own terms. They all coped in their own way.
They didn't talk much about Before, but Selena knew he imagined her then like every other London twenty-something: working in an office or shop, making a shitty wage. Going to the pub with her girlfriends after work and out to the clubs on the weekends, sipping brightly coloured drinks while crap house music blared in the background. Once in a while she'd take someone home, foolishly hoping he'd be the one she'd marry and buy a country cottage with.
Selena had spent the better part of her early twenties like that, but that time of her life was negligible. It hadn't defined her the way it had her peers.
If they ever did get up the courage to talk about Before, it would take years and a bottle of scotch before Selena would talk about her childhood. She hadn't been abused by her parents or molested by a neighbour. She'd grown up poor, a tragedy according to her middle and upper-class friends.
Her parents had been immigrants, believing London's streets were paved with opportunity. Harsh reality set in when their degrees were not recognized and they were forced to move into a council flat. It was an indignity to her father to have to work nights stocking shelves at Tesco. Selena's mother, a domestic worker, frequently complained to him about her white employers. They alternated between pretending she was not there and watching her for signs of thievery and dissipation.
Often, Selena's father would tell her she was godsend, a shot of light in the dark. Born in the heart of London town, Selena proved they had a stake in the country, that they belonged.
While her parents worked long hours and spent their free time taking classes, Selena roamed the maze of council flats and neighbouring tower blocks. She got to know the Bakers, a clan of dark haired, ruddy-faced people who spent their time and money rebuilding cars. Franny Baker, her age-mate, often invited her to go joyriding in stolen cars with her older brothers. Fred Baker, three years older than her, was her first kiss and the first boy she allowed inside her. It wasn't exactly that she'd allowed him, it was more like she didn't fight him when he slipped his fingers under the waistband of her underpants.
Franny had her back and front when the girls from rival flats came to tussle. They'd all learned to fight watching their older brothers and fathers and didn't bother with slaps and hair-pulling. They punched, kicked and bit, winning each other's respect and hatred.
Fighting became a metaphor for Selena's life. No one respected you if you curled in a ball, taking the hits and waiting for the aggressor to tire and move on. It was the weak who preferred to run instead of stand their ground. Running was the wisest option in some situations, but once safe it was time to plan.
Fight or flight was the natural response to danger, one of her parent's textbooks said. Those who ran sometimes hid, using their skin to protect them. Chameleons, lizards, and some fishes. Selena could run, but she could never hide. Her skin wouldn't allow her to blend in. She had no choice but to fight.
When Selena was fourteen her parents finally finished their classes, took positions in glass buildings in the city centre and moved the family to a three bedroom house in South Bank. Selena was enrolled in a small Christian private school, her parents hoping the strict, devout staff and etiquette training would smooth away the rough edges she'd acquired as the years in the council flats went by.
Selena learned how to write in flawless cursive, how to curtsey, how to set a table and what a salad fork looked like when she wasn't reading Shakespeare and debating globalization and the weakness of Alexander the Great's campaigns. Her parents were proud of her high marks and fading lower class accent.
The fight was still under her skin. There was no need to throw punches anymore, but Selena wasn't afraid of confronting or slagging off the staff or students everyone had put on a pedestal due to beauty, wealth, or both. She might not have been well-liked by all, but she was respected.
Those who Selena told about her childhood couldn't relate to it, couldn't imagine the joy in spending an afternoon riding around in a stolen car, or the amusement in watching neighbours brawl after a night at the pub. Sometimes they found romance in the stories, even when Selena used a matter of fact tone. When there was none to be found and they couldn't imagine her or the people she spoke of as characters in a Guy Ritchie movie, they fell back on pity.
Selena wanted no one's pity. She'd encountered it enough to know its difference from empathy. To feel pity you had to believe you were better than the person being pitied. Selena's friends were always grateful for their dolls and weekly pocket money after talking to her. They were proud of their fathers' steady jobs and that their mothers only had to clean up after their own families. They relished in their superiority.
They tried to hide it, but Selena also felt their disgust. She reminded them that not everyone had grown up with good enough parents and a good enough home. In their coded replies they accused Selena of trying to make them feel guilty about their privilege. "I just want you to understand," Selena had told a friend once. She didn't; they never did.
Jim wouldn't understand either.
Selena never stayed long in the company of the friends who pitied her. She grew to hate them as much as they grew to need her to remind them to be appreciative of their lives. She ended the friendships before either party could become seriously attached. The friends she kept only knew she grew up near a council flat. The stories of her childhood became the stories of children she went to school with. She shared the intimacies of her life without the consequences of really doing so.
Once in a while she'd tell Jim one of the stories. In the dark of the night when Hannah was snoring softly in the other bedroom in the cottage, she told him about the time Bobby Baker chased his brother around the flats with a wrench because he thought he'd slept with his girlfriend. Jim laughed, chest shuddering at her descriptions.
"I'd never want to grow up that way," he said, suddenly frowning. "How many of them were there in that one house?"
At one point there'd been about ten Bakers unofficially living in the three bedroom flat. There were always cousins and other distant relatives who needed a place to stay having been thrown out of their homes due to finances or a cruel husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend.
The candlelight cast dark shadows on Jim's features but Selena didn't have to see his face to know what he was feeling.
She wanted to lash out at him, tell him The Bakers, probably dead, their bodies rotting somewhere on the council estate, didn't need his pity. Though not a moral family, they'd been proud and hardworking. They'd probably fought with their last breath when the Outbreak came to the flats. That was more than she could say for Jim's parents who'd sat down in front of the tele and took the easy way out. They'd been uselessly comfortable in life and were the same in death.
"No one should have to grow up like that," Jim said, putting an arm around her.
"No, they shouldn't," Selena agreed.
She didn't feel guilty about lying, not when the stakes were so high. Until the little white plane landed, they needed each other. She needed Jim to have his illusions. She wouldn't have been able to stand him without them. She wouldn't have been able to survive.
end
Fandom: 28 Days Later
Rating: G
Characters: Selena; Jim/Selena
Word Count: 1400
Summary: " If they ever did get up the courage to talk about Before, it would take years and a bottle of scotch before Selena would talk about her childhood."
Notes: Written for redcandle17
The Survivalist
Jim liked to think The Outbreak made her like this, cold and pragmatic to a fault. Selena allowed him to keep his illusions. She'd stopped thinking of Jim as useless and soft-it was hard to keep that line of thinking after everything-but sometimes he needed to be coddled. Jim needed to be right about her, needed the world to make sense on his own terms. They all coped in their own way.
They didn't talk much about Before, but Selena knew he imagined her then like every other London twenty-something: working in an office or shop, making a shitty wage. Going to the pub with her girlfriends after work and out to the clubs on the weekends, sipping brightly coloured drinks while crap house music blared in the background. Once in a while she'd take someone home, foolishly hoping he'd be the one she'd marry and buy a country cottage with.
Selena had spent the better part of her early twenties like that, but that time of her life was negligible. It hadn't defined her the way it had her peers.
If they ever did get up the courage to talk about Before, it would take years and a bottle of scotch before Selena would talk about her childhood. She hadn't been abused by her parents or molested by a neighbour. She'd grown up poor, a tragedy according to her middle and upper-class friends.
Her parents had been immigrants, believing London's streets were paved with opportunity. Harsh reality set in when their degrees were not recognized and they were forced to move into a council flat. It was an indignity to her father to have to work nights stocking shelves at Tesco. Selena's mother, a domestic worker, frequently complained to him about her white employers. They alternated between pretending she was not there and watching her for signs of thievery and dissipation.
Often, Selena's father would tell her she was godsend, a shot of light in the dark. Born in the heart of London town, Selena proved they had a stake in the country, that they belonged.
While her parents worked long hours and spent their free time taking classes, Selena roamed the maze of council flats and neighbouring tower blocks. She got to know the Bakers, a clan of dark haired, ruddy-faced people who spent their time and money rebuilding cars. Franny Baker, her age-mate, often invited her to go joyriding in stolen cars with her older brothers. Fred Baker, three years older than her, was her first kiss and the first boy she allowed inside her. It wasn't exactly that she'd allowed him, it was more like she didn't fight him when he slipped his fingers under the waistband of her underpants.
Franny had her back and front when the girls from rival flats came to tussle. They'd all learned to fight watching their older brothers and fathers and didn't bother with slaps and hair-pulling. They punched, kicked and bit, winning each other's respect and hatred.
Fighting became a metaphor for Selena's life. No one respected you if you curled in a ball, taking the hits and waiting for the aggressor to tire and move on. It was the weak who preferred to run instead of stand their ground. Running was the wisest option in some situations, but once safe it was time to plan.
Fight or flight was the natural response to danger, one of her parent's textbooks said. Those who ran sometimes hid, using their skin to protect them. Chameleons, lizards, and some fishes. Selena could run, but she could never hide. Her skin wouldn't allow her to blend in. She had no choice but to fight.
When Selena was fourteen her parents finally finished their classes, took positions in glass buildings in the city centre and moved the family to a three bedroom house in South Bank. Selena was enrolled in a small Christian private school, her parents hoping the strict, devout staff and etiquette training would smooth away the rough edges she'd acquired as the years in the council flats went by.
Selena learned how to write in flawless cursive, how to curtsey, how to set a table and what a salad fork looked like when she wasn't reading Shakespeare and debating globalization and the weakness of Alexander the Great's campaigns. Her parents were proud of her high marks and fading lower class accent.
The fight was still under her skin. There was no need to throw punches anymore, but Selena wasn't afraid of confronting or slagging off the staff or students everyone had put on a pedestal due to beauty, wealth, or both. She might not have been well-liked by all, but she was respected.
Those who Selena told about her childhood couldn't relate to it, couldn't imagine the joy in spending an afternoon riding around in a stolen car, or the amusement in watching neighbours brawl after a night at the pub. Sometimes they found romance in the stories, even when Selena used a matter of fact tone. When there was none to be found and they couldn't imagine her or the people she spoke of as characters in a Guy Ritchie movie, they fell back on pity.
Selena wanted no one's pity. She'd encountered it enough to know its difference from empathy. To feel pity you had to believe you were better than the person being pitied. Selena's friends were always grateful for their dolls and weekly pocket money after talking to her. They were proud of their fathers' steady jobs and that their mothers only had to clean up after their own families. They relished in their superiority.
They tried to hide it, but Selena also felt their disgust. She reminded them that not everyone had grown up with good enough parents and a good enough home. In their coded replies they accused Selena of trying to make them feel guilty about their privilege. "I just want you to understand," Selena had told a friend once. She didn't; they never did.
Jim wouldn't understand either.
Selena never stayed long in the company of the friends who pitied her. She grew to hate them as much as they grew to need her to remind them to be appreciative of their lives. She ended the friendships before either party could become seriously attached. The friends she kept only knew she grew up near a council flat. The stories of her childhood became the stories of children she went to school with. She shared the intimacies of her life without the consequences of really doing so.
Once in a while she'd tell Jim one of the stories. In the dark of the night when Hannah was snoring softly in the other bedroom in the cottage, she told him about the time Bobby Baker chased his brother around the flats with a wrench because he thought he'd slept with his girlfriend. Jim laughed, chest shuddering at her descriptions.
"I'd never want to grow up that way," he said, suddenly frowning. "How many of them were there in that one house?"
At one point there'd been about ten Bakers unofficially living in the three bedroom flat. There were always cousins and other distant relatives who needed a place to stay having been thrown out of their homes due to finances or a cruel husband, wife, girlfriend or boyfriend.
The candlelight cast dark shadows on Jim's features but Selena didn't have to see his face to know what he was feeling.
She wanted to lash out at him, tell him The Bakers, probably dead, their bodies rotting somewhere on the council estate, didn't need his pity. Though not a moral family, they'd been proud and hardworking. They'd probably fought with their last breath when the Outbreak came to the flats. That was more than she could say for Jim's parents who'd sat down in front of the tele and took the easy way out. They'd been uselessly comfortable in life and were the same in death.
"No one should have to grow up like that," Jim said, putting an arm around her.
"No, they shouldn't," Selena agreed.
She didn't feel guilty about lying, not when the stakes were so high. Until the little white plane landed, they needed each other. She needed Jim to have his illusions. She wouldn't have been able to stand him without them. She wouldn't have been able to survive.
end