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abvjTitle: A Hundred Storms
Summary: A guide to understanding Kalinda Sharma in five parts (as if it were really that simple). Part one: Kalinda never makes the same mistake twice.
Rating: pg-13.
Author's Notes: 2,256 words. Spoilers for everything to date. Definite Kalinda/Alicia and Cary/Kalinda undertones. The biggest thank-you ever to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sweetjamielee for the encouragement and beta. For kitmerlot1213 who is both generous and patient and bid on me over at Help the South. Sorry this took so long! I hope it is worth the wait. First time with this character, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. All remaining mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not.
I braved a hundred storms to leave you,
As hard as you try, no,
I will never be knocked down
(Adele)
[0]
Leela is a child of summer. She is born to immigrants – an entrepreneur and homemaker – who do the best they can for as long as they can, but never quite adjust to the way of life America has to offer.
“You are going to do great things,” her mother constantly says. It’s a promise, a vow – she wants her daughter to have the life she never will. Her English is broken, hidden under the layers of a thick accent that will never fade with time, but Leela always stares up at her mother with an amount of admiration and love only a daughter can truly have for their mother.
Leela’s hair is dark, long and winding as her mother runs her fingers through it. Her curves are soft and slight, her colors bright, blinding. She is the perfect mixture of her parents.
She is a happy child.
(Nobody can ever quite pinpoint the exact moment when this changes.)
[1]
Kalinda’s skin is stiff and strong, constructed out of iron and steel. Her edges are angular, jagged; her colors are dark and muted. She is born in an office in downtown Chicago late at night and in the dead of winter. Outside, on the streets below, sirens blare and snow blankets the ground. Kalinda stares down and watches from a window far above, her fingers perfectly still as they tighten around the smooth glass tumbler in her hand.
Across the room Peter talks quietly on the phone. He says goodnight into the mouthpiece, apologizes softly, and tells his wife not to wait up for him. Kalinda’s eyes flicker to the family portrait that sits proudly in the center of his desk, roam over his children’s toothy grins and his wife’s perfect smile. She thinks his wife has a nice smile - a little too proud, maybe, but nice all the same. She wonders, idly, if Peter’s wife knows that his late nights aren’t spent in his office alone, aren’t used to put the bad guys in prison and bring justice to the innocent. She wonders if Mrs. Florrick can smell the expensive perfume, the tawdry stench of cheap sex on him when he crawls into her bed late at night.
(I love my wife, Peter tells her. Kalinda never doubts this.
She also never acts as though that statement, that seemingly heartfelt declaration changes anything about who they are to one another.)
The phone clicks into the receiver and the sound echoes in the distance between them. Kalinda finishes her drink in a solitary swig, sets the tumbler on the edge of the windowsill and decides she doesn’t much care – about him, about the wife and kids at home, about any of it.
The leather of her new boots pinches at the knees when she places a thigh on either side of Peter’s. His mouth is firm, his jaw square as he looks up at her. He says nothing when she palms him through his expensive slacks, when she slips her nimble fingers inside and grips the hardness of him firmly and without remorse. Peter sighs and Kalinda breathes. There is no exchange of pleasantries, no touches that linger. Peter closes his eyes, mumbles incoherent and monosyllabic nonsense. He eventually comes with a whimper, with a name that is most surely not hers on his lips, and Kalinda still says nothing as she stands, as she wipes her fingers on a tissue and runs her hands over the wrinkles in her skirt.
This is how she says thank-you. Peter knows this. Kalinda doesn’t deal out pleasantries or trite, but gracious overtures. She fucks men and women because she wants to, because they serve a greater purpose, always a means to an end. It’s just easier this way and Kalinda breathes and yearns for convenience.
After, her eyes flicker to the gold of his wedding band. She feels nothing.
Tomorrow, they will both forget this even happened.
(She likes it better this way.)
[2]
Alicia is nothing like Kalinda expects her to be. The woman's edges are not unlike Kalinda's. They are jagged, worn with age, cautious. Whispers and sideways glances surround Alicia wherever she goes and Kalinda - who never cares to think twice about anyone, never lends a helping hand unless something is in it for her - takes to her right away.
Why haven't you left him yet? She thinks constantly during those first few days, but does not say for she already knows the answer. After having only just met her, Kalinda knows that Alicia's core is built with concrete and steel, her fortitude unwavering. The woman doesn't know how to take the easy way out of anything, is not at all quick to admit failure, and Kalinda can appreciate that, even respects her for it.
There are drinks after work that first month. It quickly becomes a weekly thing. A friendship is cultivated, strengthened, and maintained. Weeks turn into months, months into years, and Kalinda finds a confidant, a friend, a certain amount of reciprocated loyalty in Alicia. It’s a strange feeling, nothing like anything she's ever really known, and Kalinda spends most of her time fumbling around, trying to maintain the relationship while still keeping her distance, believing she is perfecting the art of caring without physically feeling the accompanying emotions.
(This is where it probably all goes awry, she muses. Kalinda's number one rule has been and always will be about self-preservation.
The moment you lose sight of that, when you start thinking of people as someone other than a means to an end, everything just seems to have a way of imploding in the most spectacular, horrifying way.)
[2.5]
There are times when Kalinda allows her mind to entertain the gentle, plausible maybe.
At the bar, that very first time, she imagines herself running her fingers over the curve of Alicia's collarbone. Imagines the way Alicia's skin would feel as she brushes her fingers against the long column of her throat. Kalinda wonders, idly, what her name would sound like, all breathy and sated, as it passed Alicia's lips in the heat of the moment as her mouth teased skin and her fingers settled between the other woman’s legs.
It's fantasy, not reality, and Kalinda knows this. Knows better than to wish and want for things that will never come to be. Instead she becomes a supporter, a cheerleader of sorts for Alicia, for Alicia and Will, for whatever it is that Alicia feels will make her happy. She wants nothing more than Alicia to be happy.
Kalinda doesn't know what love is, doesn't want to know what love is, so she will adamantly deny that this is anything of the sort with just as much conviction she applies to everything else in her life.
It is just something born out of a mutual respect, out of the kinship the two have found in each other.
(This is almost the truth.)
[3]
"So, how often do you visit my husband in prison?" Alicia asks, anger seething under her skin and accusation lacing her tone. It’s jarring, the moment, the anger, because Kalinda’s first concrete thought about Alicia was she is too damn nice. Kalinda likes this version better. She can admire the fight more than the kindness.
Kalinda rebuffs, shrugs off the question. It's not a lie, exactly. That night with Peter is such a benign event in Kalinda's whole expansive history that she had honestly forgotten it had even happened.
(This customary line of thinking will come back to haunt her. Kalinda just doesn't know yet. From now and until that point she will have ample opportunities to come clean, to tell the truth.
She doesn't, of course. Kalinda has never believed that honesty is the best policy.)
[4]
After Alicia draws that bold, angry line between them, there is one of those cases that can make or break your career and Alicia requests Kalinda's assistance personally.
In the elevator on the way down to the parking garage Kalinda watches as Alicia's hands tighten around the handle of her briefcase, as she shifts her weight from left to right and squares her shoulders.
"This does not mean we're friends," Alicia says curtly and does not look at her.
Kalinda feels the laughter burning in the back of her throat. She does not let it fall past her lips, only allows her mouth to quirk upwards just slightly. "Of course not," she says quietly and really, she never suspected otherwise.
The anger, Kalinda understands. The embarrassment and the betrayal, all of it she can understand and empathize with. Kalinda can even appreciate the fact that it probably isn't even the sex that Alicia has the problem with. It is the lying, the various opportunities Kalinda had to give Alicia the respect she had earned and tell her the truth that was almost always tainting the tip of her tongue. That the omission of one, single fact managed to break all of those scars that had just begun to heal wide open. Kalinda recognizes the fact that she hurt Alicia and feels more badly about it than she ever has about anything.
What Kalinda doesn't understand, what Kalinda would even go so far as to say she is angry about, is that this is who she is. Kalinda has never hidden who she is from Alicia, never tried to pretend she was anything but Kalinda Sharma – the woman who did what she wanted, when she wanted, and never quite cared about the aftermath.
Kalinda meant it when she said this is what I do. Alicia should know this. After all this time, Alicia should know her.
It turns out she doesn't and that knowledge, that truth – well, that hurt Kalinda more than she ever thought it could.
(The thing about Kalinda that anyone could probably guess is that she never makes the same mistake twice.
This time is no different.)
[4.5]
Kalinda goes to see Cary sometime after her and Alicia fall apart. It’s after Peter claims victory in the battle for State’s Attorney, but before he starts moving into the offices. Cary is anxious, constantly worried about still having a job once they reach the other side of this transition, and Kalinda finds him in his office late at night, burning the midnight oil in an effort to prove he is worthy.
His smile is tired and worn when he catches sight of her, his greeting low as she passes through the doorway to his office. Kalinda says nothing as she leans against the door jamb freely, her weight carried by the steel, her hip cocked and her left hand resting atop of it.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. His eyes are narrowed in suspicion, but his lips quirk playfully. Kalinda has always liked this about Cary – the way he gives just as much as she takes and pushes just as much as she pulls. He enjoys the game just as much as she does.
She shrugs carelessly. “I thought we could go grab a drink. Would you like that, Cary?”
Cary raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t quite believe her and she supposes there is a bit of truth in that. She watches as he mulls it over internally, gauges the emotions that flicker across his face as he does, and feels a tiny bit of victory when he finally just smiles broadly, teeth in all, in a way that tells her she’s won.
They go to the very same bar she took Alicia that first week. He buys her cheap beer and they laugh and talk like they are the friends Kalinda will never allow them to become.
Later, on the way home, she lets him walk her inside the door of her building and pauses at the elevator. She reaches for him, curls her fingers around the silk of his wrinkled tie and draws him closer. He obliges easily, shuffles his feet until he has invaded as much space as Kalinda will allow.
“This was nice,” she tells him. She leans up, brushes her lips against the curve of his jaw softly and slowly.
“Oh, yeah?” Cary laughs low, like it’s just for her. She feels the vaguest hint of something familiar pool somewhere deep inside of her. Her fingers are still fisted in silk. She tugs ever-so-slightly, waits for him to lean in to, to make the move he thinks she wants.
The moment happens like clockwork – Cary leaning in, his laughter stumbling past his lips and she smells beer and pretzels as she allows him to linger there for just a moment before pulling away.
Her smile is lovely and almost kind as she says, “Goodnight, Cary.”
(It’s so much better, she muses, to finally be the one drawing these lines of separation again.)
[5]
“At some point, Kalinda, you’re going to have to confide in someone,” Will tells her.
Kalinda pauses at the door and smiles, baring her teeth like a huntress does right before she pounces on her unsuspecting prey.
“No I don’t,” she breathes, her smile dangerous and worn. “You know what I’ve discovered? I never have to confide in anyone.”
(This is not a lie.
Somehow, for just a little while, she had managed to forget the vital truth that has embedded itself deep under her skin, into the very core of her.
It will never happen again.)
Summary: A guide to understanding Kalinda Sharma in five parts (as if it were really that simple). Part one: Kalinda never makes the same mistake twice.
Rating: pg-13.
Author's Notes: 2,256 words. Spoilers for everything to date. Definite Kalinda/Alicia and Cary/Kalinda undertones. The biggest thank-you ever to
sweetjamielee for the encouragement and beta. For kitmerlot1213 who is both generous and patient and bid on me over at Help the South. Sorry this took so long! I hope it is worth the wait. First time with this character, so con-crit is both welcome and appreciated. All remaining mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. I braved a hundred storms to leave you,
As hard as you try, no,
I will never be knocked down
(Adele)
[0]
Leela is a child of summer. She is born to immigrants – an entrepreneur and homemaker – who do the best they can for as long as they can, but never quite adjust to the way of life America has to offer.
“You are going to do great things,” her mother constantly says. It’s a promise, a vow – she wants her daughter to have the life she never will. Her English is broken, hidden under the layers of a thick accent that will never fade with time, but Leela always stares up at her mother with an amount of admiration and love only a daughter can truly have for their mother.
Leela’s hair is dark, long and winding as her mother runs her fingers through it. Her curves are soft and slight, her colors bright, blinding. She is the perfect mixture of her parents.
She is a happy child.
(Nobody can ever quite pinpoint the exact moment when this changes.)
[1]
Kalinda’s skin is stiff and strong, constructed out of iron and steel. Her edges are angular, jagged; her colors are dark and muted. She is born in an office in downtown Chicago late at night and in the dead of winter. Outside, on the streets below, sirens blare and snow blankets the ground. Kalinda stares down and watches from a window far above, her fingers perfectly still as they tighten around the smooth glass tumbler in her hand.
Across the room Peter talks quietly on the phone. He says goodnight into the mouthpiece, apologizes softly, and tells his wife not to wait up for him. Kalinda’s eyes flicker to the family portrait that sits proudly in the center of his desk, roam over his children’s toothy grins and his wife’s perfect smile. She thinks his wife has a nice smile - a little too proud, maybe, but nice all the same. She wonders, idly, if Peter’s wife knows that his late nights aren’t spent in his office alone, aren’t used to put the bad guys in prison and bring justice to the innocent. She wonders if Mrs. Florrick can smell the expensive perfume, the tawdry stench of cheap sex on him when he crawls into her bed late at night.
(I love my wife, Peter tells her. Kalinda never doubts this.
She also never acts as though that statement, that seemingly heartfelt declaration changes anything about who they are to one another.)
The phone clicks into the receiver and the sound echoes in the distance between them. Kalinda finishes her drink in a solitary swig, sets the tumbler on the edge of the windowsill and decides she doesn’t much care – about him, about the wife and kids at home, about any of it.
The leather of her new boots pinches at the knees when she places a thigh on either side of Peter’s. His mouth is firm, his jaw square as he looks up at her. He says nothing when she palms him through his expensive slacks, when she slips her nimble fingers inside and grips the hardness of him firmly and without remorse. Peter sighs and Kalinda breathes. There is no exchange of pleasantries, no touches that linger. Peter closes his eyes, mumbles incoherent and monosyllabic nonsense. He eventually comes with a whimper, with a name that is most surely not hers on his lips, and Kalinda still says nothing as she stands, as she wipes her fingers on a tissue and runs her hands over the wrinkles in her skirt.
This is how she says thank-you. Peter knows this. Kalinda doesn’t deal out pleasantries or trite, but gracious overtures. She fucks men and women because she wants to, because they serve a greater purpose, always a means to an end. It’s just easier this way and Kalinda breathes and yearns for convenience.
After, her eyes flicker to the gold of his wedding band. She feels nothing.
Tomorrow, they will both forget this even happened.
(She likes it better this way.)
[2]
Alicia is nothing like Kalinda expects her to be. The woman's edges are not unlike Kalinda's. They are jagged, worn with age, cautious. Whispers and sideways glances surround Alicia wherever she goes and Kalinda - who never cares to think twice about anyone, never lends a helping hand unless something is in it for her - takes to her right away.
Why haven't you left him yet? She thinks constantly during those first few days, but does not say for she already knows the answer. After having only just met her, Kalinda knows that Alicia's core is built with concrete and steel, her fortitude unwavering. The woman doesn't know how to take the easy way out of anything, is not at all quick to admit failure, and Kalinda can appreciate that, even respects her for it.
There are drinks after work that first month. It quickly becomes a weekly thing. A friendship is cultivated, strengthened, and maintained. Weeks turn into months, months into years, and Kalinda finds a confidant, a friend, a certain amount of reciprocated loyalty in Alicia. It’s a strange feeling, nothing like anything she's ever really known, and Kalinda spends most of her time fumbling around, trying to maintain the relationship while still keeping her distance, believing she is perfecting the art of caring without physically feeling the accompanying emotions.
(This is where it probably all goes awry, she muses. Kalinda's number one rule has been and always will be about self-preservation.
The moment you lose sight of that, when you start thinking of people as someone other than a means to an end, everything just seems to have a way of imploding in the most spectacular, horrifying way.)
[2.5]
There are times when Kalinda allows her mind to entertain the gentle, plausible maybe.
At the bar, that very first time, she imagines herself running her fingers over the curve of Alicia's collarbone. Imagines the way Alicia's skin would feel as she brushes her fingers against the long column of her throat. Kalinda wonders, idly, what her name would sound like, all breathy and sated, as it passed Alicia's lips in the heat of the moment as her mouth teased skin and her fingers settled between the other woman’s legs.
It's fantasy, not reality, and Kalinda knows this. Knows better than to wish and want for things that will never come to be. Instead she becomes a supporter, a cheerleader of sorts for Alicia, for Alicia and Will, for whatever it is that Alicia feels will make her happy. She wants nothing more than Alicia to be happy.
Kalinda doesn't know what love is, doesn't want to know what love is, so she will adamantly deny that this is anything of the sort with just as much conviction she applies to everything else in her life.
It is just something born out of a mutual respect, out of the kinship the two have found in each other.
(This is almost the truth.)
[3]
"So, how often do you visit my husband in prison?" Alicia asks, anger seething under her skin and accusation lacing her tone. It’s jarring, the moment, the anger, because Kalinda’s first concrete thought about Alicia was she is too damn nice. Kalinda likes this version better. She can admire the fight more than the kindness.
Kalinda rebuffs, shrugs off the question. It's not a lie, exactly. That night with Peter is such a benign event in Kalinda's whole expansive history that she had honestly forgotten it had even happened.
(This customary line of thinking will come back to haunt her. Kalinda just doesn't know yet. From now and until that point she will have ample opportunities to come clean, to tell the truth.
She doesn't, of course. Kalinda has never believed that honesty is the best policy.)
[4]
After Alicia draws that bold, angry line between them, there is one of those cases that can make or break your career and Alicia requests Kalinda's assistance personally.
In the elevator on the way down to the parking garage Kalinda watches as Alicia's hands tighten around the handle of her briefcase, as she shifts her weight from left to right and squares her shoulders.
"This does not mean we're friends," Alicia says curtly and does not look at her.
Kalinda feels the laughter burning in the back of her throat. She does not let it fall past her lips, only allows her mouth to quirk upwards just slightly. "Of course not," she says quietly and really, she never suspected otherwise.
The anger, Kalinda understands. The embarrassment and the betrayal, all of it she can understand and empathize with. Kalinda can even appreciate the fact that it probably isn't even the sex that Alicia has the problem with. It is the lying, the various opportunities Kalinda had to give Alicia the respect she had earned and tell her the truth that was almost always tainting the tip of her tongue. That the omission of one, single fact managed to break all of those scars that had just begun to heal wide open. Kalinda recognizes the fact that she hurt Alicia and feels more badly about it than she ever has about anything.
What Kalinda doesn't understand, what Kalinda would even go so far as to say she is angry about, is that this is who she is. Kalinda has never hidden who she is from Alicia, never tried to pretend she was anything but Kalinda Sharma – the woman who did what she wanted, when she wanted, and never quite cared about the aftermath.
Kalinda meant it when she said this is what I do. Alicia should know this. After all this time, Alicia should know her.
It turns out she doesn't and that knowledge, that truth – well, that hurt Kalinda more than she ever thought it could.
(The thing about Kalinda that anyone could probably guess is that she never makes the same mistake twice.
This time is no different.)
[4.5]
Kalinda goes to see Cary sometime after her and Alicia fall apart. It’s after Peter claims victory in the battle for State’s Attorney, but before he starts moving into the offices. Cary is anxious, constantly worried about still having a job once they reach the other side of this transition, and Kalinda finds him in his office late at night, burning the midnight oil in an effort to prove he is worthy.
His smile is tired and worn when he catches sight of her, his greeting low as she passes through the doorway to his office. Kalinda says nothing as she leans against the door jamb freely, her weight carried by the steel, her hip cocked and her left hand resting atop of it.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. His eyes are narrowed in suspicion, but his lips quirk playfully. Kalinda has always liked this about Cary – the way he gives just as much as she takes and pushes just as much as she pulls. He enjoys the game just as much as she does.
She shrugs carelessly. “I thought we could go grab a drink. Would you like that, Cary?”
Cary raises his eyebrows like he doesn’t quite believe her and she supposes there is a bit of truth in that. She watches as he mulls it over internally, gauges the emotions that flicker across his face as he does, and feels a tiny bit of victory when he finally just smiles broadly, teeth in all, in a way that tells her she’s won.
They go to the very same bar she took Alicia that first week. He buys her cheap beer and they laugh and talk like they are the friends Kalinda will never allow them to become.
Later, on the way home, she lets him walk her inside the door of her building and pauses at the elevator. She reaches for him, curls her fingers around the silk of his wrinkled tie and draws him closer. He obliges easily, shuffles his feet until he has invaded as much space as Kalinda will allow.
“This was nice,” she tells him. She leans up, brushes her lips against the curve of his jaw softly and slowly.
“Oh, yeah?” Cary laughs low, like it’s just for her. She feels the vaguest hint of something familiar pool somewhere deep inside of her. Her fingers are still fisted in silk. She tugs ever-so-slightly, waits for him to lean in to, to make the move he thinks she wants.
The moment happens like clockwork – Cary leaning in, his laughter stumbling past his lips and she smells beer and pretzels as she allows him to linger there for just a moment before pulling away.
Her smile is lovely and almost kind as she says, “Goodnight, Cary.”
(It’s so much better, she muses, to finally be the one drawing these lines of separation again.)
[5]
“At some point, Kalinda, you’re going to have to confide in someone,” Will tells her.
Kalinda pauses at the door and smiles, baring her teeth like a huntress does right before she pounces on her unsuspecting prey.
“No I don’t,” she breathes, her smile dangerous and worn. “You know what I’ve discovered? I never have to confide in anyone.”
(This is not a lie.
Somehow, for just a little while, she had managed to forget the vital truth that has embedded itself deep under her skin, into the very core of her.
It will never happen again.)
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Date: 2011-06-29 11:04 pm (UTC)