Room 508, Thursday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

If anyone asked Kathy how she was dealing with the events of Monday's little destination adventure, she'd tell them she was doing just fine, thank you. She'd had her crying, she'd had a good talk, she'd drowned her brain out with purely physical pleasure for a bit, and now she was much better. The only lasting consequence of Monday was her new inability to walk past a certain empty room on the fifth floor without blushing a little bit. Everything was fine.

Granted, she hadn't gone out and patrolled as Banzai even once yet this week. And she was spending hours at the gym and in the salle, weight-training and working on the moves Eliot had been drilling into her for several months now. Oh, and she wasn't sleeping well at all, even with how exhausted she was. But those weren't related, either to one another or to Monday. They just...were. She was just adjusting after a week away. Or the change in seasons and the darkening days were messing with her natural rhythms. Or it was stress over college applications. Kathy had a hundred different excuses she could apply to the situation--or would if there were a situation.

Which there wasn't.

Because she was fine.

Take today for instance. She had dubstep blaring wile she did set after set after set of pushups. Beneath her on the floor was her Italian textbook; she was memorizing verb conjugation with every rep. On her bed were several dresses so she could figure out what to wear for the dance this weekend in between sets. In all, a completely normal day with nothing at all amiss.

See? Kathy was fine.

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy had barely heard Anders; it was more movement where none was expected that had her turning towards the doorway, jerking into a defensive posture without even thinking about it.

...She was fine, shut up.

"Oh! Anders!" she yelled, muscles slowly relaxing as her mind registered no threat present. "Hang on, lemme turn the music down!"

Waving him in, she hit the button on her ipod, pausing mid-exhortation to shout to all the lost boys. The silence after that seemed very loud. "Hey," she said, giving him a sheepish smile. "Sorry about all that. I was just..." She shrugged and gestured to the room. "Doing some stuff."

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"I see," Anders said, hazel eyes darting over the room. "Exercising, studying, listening to music, and picking out clothes. I think you might win an award for multitasking."

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"Well, you know me," Kathy said, looking surprisingly awkward for a girl as graceful as she was. "I like to stay busy. Homecoming's this weekend and it's not like I'll get much studying done then, so..."

[not_every_mage]

"So you need to make the most of your time now," Anders finished, nodding as if it made perfect sense. "Of course. Besides, no point wasting time."

He ... wasn't even sure what he was saying, let alone why. 'Remember the time that guy died on you' was not a good conversation-starter.

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"Exactly!" Kathy said with a frenetic nod. "So I figured I'd just combine a couple of things together to get them all done at once. No point in wasting--you just said that, yeah."

[not_every_mage]

"I did, but it -- never hurts to say things more than once, does it?" Anders asked, his smile also a bit frenetic. "But that's good. It's good that you're keeping busy, it really is. How, er, are you in general?"

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"You know, I think I'm okay. Adjusting. To everything. I mean, I know I kinda fell apart on you and Dante there and I'm sorry. But it won't--it won't happen again. If it does ever happen again. I mean, I won't fall apart if we ever do go back there, which I'm happy to never ever do."

Ever. Extra ever. Eleventy-ever.

"But I'm sorry. For being kind of the weak link. You had to take those last two out by yourself because I--"

the sharp crack of a gunshot the sudden limp weight in her arms hot wet salt across her face on her lips in her mouth crimson flooding down her shirt

"--I wasn't prepared for all that."

[not_every_mage]

"Who would be?" Anders asked, shrugging. He stepped a bit further in, closed the door. "Besides, somebody died in your arms. Something would be wrong with you if that didn't wreck you."

He smiled weakly. "Also, I'd second that vote on never ever ever going back there."

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"You seemed so much more together than I was," Kathy said quietly. "I just...shut down for a few seconds. You didn't."

And suddenly she was rushing forward, arms out to hug him tightly.

[not_every_mage]

Anders returned the hug, pleased but bewildered.

"I did my best," he said. "And I don't blame you for your best being different from mine. I fell apart plenty after we got home."

[OOC: Sorry for vanishing - date night.]

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Don't try to understand, Anders. Kathy was emotional right now. As he could see from what she'd been up to, thinking clearly wasn't really a thing she had going for her right now.

"You did? I--oh." she asked, surreptitiously wiping at her eyes. "At least you waited until you got home." She shook her head. "I'm sorry I bailed on you and Dante after we got home. I needed to--I just couldn't--you know. I needed some time. Some space."

[No worries, bb!]

[not_every_mage]

"I know," Anders said. "I must have too, or else I would have come looking for you. I -- honestly, I see what happened every time I close my eyes."

He hadn't been sleeping much.

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They could have a club? It would be the saddest club in the world, though.

"Me too," she said softly. "It's not even so much seeing as feeling. The sudden weight in my arms. The spray across my face. The smile the other cop wore as he called it in. I just don't understand. It makes no sense! We're just two random kids."

[not_every_mage]

Anders was nodding along until he stopped, expression on his face transitioning from grim to confused. He hadn't been watching Kathy when the officer died, but the way she was talking about it sounded ... a bit different from what he would have expected.

"So you didn't kill him?" he asked hesitantly. "Not that I wouldn't have thought you had every reason, if you did."

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"What? No!" She didn't mean to yell, just...it was still kind of raw. "No, I'd picked him up as a bluff. I didn't even have the gun I'd grabbed anymore. But I thought--with the nightstick--they could maybe just let us go? Or something? It was the other cop, the one that got...fireballed...that shot him. He shot him and then reported that I did it and he was looked at me the entire time, like he was daring me to so something."

[not_every_mage]

"Andraste's arse, I had it all mixed up in my head," Anders said. He needed to sit down: Hopefully Kathy wouldn't mind if he let go of her and claimed the bed.

"I -- I wasn't really watching," he said hoarsely. "I saw you holding him and I saw he was dead and I just assumed -- I'm so sorry, Kathy. Those people are even more evil than I realized."

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She'd only mind if he objected to her clambering onto it next to him. "It's not your fault," she assured him. "You were healing people and fighting off the other one and it all happened so fast. Hell, I wasn't sure that I had seen it accurately. Because I just don't understand. Why--why would they do this?"

[not_every_mage]

"I don't know," Anders admitted. "I'd say to make us look even worse, but they already had us 'attacking' them. Maybe it was just his idea of fun."

He leaned back against her. "Anyhow, I should have asked. I should have known that wasn't like you. I haven't forgotten how hard you took what I told you about Rapture."

They'd been killing actual monsters there, and Kathy still hadn't liked it much.

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Nooo. Not at all. Kathy just didn't like death or killing, it turned out.

"That...that was my first time dealing with someone dying," she said. "I mean, up close and personal. I know people who have died, but never like that. Near me. I was never involved. Never watched someone die. It's--it's pretty big, you know?"

[not_every_mage]

Ferelden wasn't as bad as Limbo City, but it was still violent enough that Anders couldn't remember having that particular brand of innocence. He nodded anyhow.

"I know," he said. "I'm not sorry he's dead, at all, but it's not fair he went on top of you that way."

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Whereas LA, unless you wandered right into the middle of a gang battle, was relatively safe and sanitized.

"I wish he weren't," Kathy admitted. "I know it's dumb and I would never trade his life for mine or anything like that, but I wish that he was still alive and having dinner with his equally horrible wife or whatever. Death is too final. No one can change after they're dead. No one can learn or grow or become a better person. It feels like everything I'm fighting against, either as Banzai or a future doctor."

[not_every_mage]

"I feel like if we were waiting for him to become a better person, we'd be waiting until all of us dropped dead from old age," Anders told her with a shrug. "I don't want to make light of the way you feel, but if somebody's started a fight and decided my life isn't worth anything, I'm not going to act like his is."

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"I know, I sound...stupid or naive or whatever," Kathy said. She was pretty much in the minority of her views and was coming to accept that. "I don't have a problem with stopping people from trying to hurt us, but that's all. Just stop."

Would she risk her life trying to save someone who'd been trying to kill her...actually, probably yes.

[not_every_mage]

"You don't sound stupid," Anders assured her. "Idealistic, maybe. And the difference between knocking someone down and killing them -- it's too narrow to worry about if you're fighting for your life."

He gave her a sidelong look. "You know the people you're fighting aren't thinking that way. Do you think those police would have given one single shit if we died?"

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"Not at all," Kathy said. "Wouldn't have lost a minute's sleep over it. But I'm a better person than they are."

When all the chips were down, maybe she'd do something else. Maybe she would strike out and kill if she had to. But right now, the very idea horrified her.