Allison had seen people break before. You didn't live their kind of lives and not see people break. Girls, women, boys, men, everyone. Even the strongest. Even John. Everyone had a breaking point. Usually it was the older ones, the ones who remember life more clearly before Judgment Day, the ones who knew what they lost as more than fleeting memories in the night. She could see them, drinking themselves numb every night of the week, crying in their bunks when they were sure everyone else was asleep and wouldn't hear, freezing during battle, unable to move and just staring as the machines advanced.
She knew what breaking looked like. And she knew in that moment she herself was broken.
Where are you from Allison?
She watched as the blonde girl moved to floor a foot or so away from her. Allison reached up to pull paper towel from the dispenser behind her to wrap her arm and curled her hurt hand under her good one, trying to hide the metal.
"I'm fine," she answered, "I slipped," sure that could work, and she offered the girl a smile as though to prove she had just had an accident and she wasn't the kind of freak who punched their hands through a mirror. And drywall.