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]

"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."

[spin_kick_snap]

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.

[spin_kick_snap]

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."

[spin_kick_snap]

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."

[spin_kick_snap]

"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?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"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.

[not_every_mage]

"And maybe I'm not," Anders said slowly. "Or at least not as much better as you are."

He ... wasn't sure how he felt about that.

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're a different person than I am," Kathy said, because it would require a great deal of to convince her that her friends weren't all good people. "Different culture, different mores. That's all."

[not_every_mage]

"I'm going to take your word on that," Anders decided, because didn't particularly want to think of himself as a bad person. "So you think it's a cultural difference? That's interesting. I don't know enough people from your world to say either way."

[spin_kick_snap]

Maybe a little self-reflection would be good for him?

And Kathy was kind of a crazy high standard to follow anyway. Not everyone developed superpowers and immediately decided to fight crime in their spare time.

"I can't say your world is more violent than mine, exactly, but I think that the percentage of individuals seeing violence is way higher," Kathy said. "You've got, like, warriors just wandering about. Demons in the Fade. You deal with the possibility of a violent death far more than most people in America do. That changes your outlook on death, I think."

[not_every_mage]

"Inthat we're more aware it's inevitable," Anders confirmed, nodding. "It's still strange to me that your soldiers and police don't wear armor. I know they don't need to, but at home that'd be a good way to get a sword chucked through you."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Your deaths are a lot more personal, too," Kathy agreed, curling up a little closer. Anders was comfortable and comforting. She could use a bit of that comfort right now. "You stab someone--you're right there, looking at them in the eye. Guns make it cheaper. More distant. Easier. I know that's why Eliot hates them so much."

[not_every_mage]

"How does he feel about arrows?" Anders wondered, half-serious. Turning it into an intellectual question helped him distance himself a bit. "Or even what I do?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"He was impressed when I told him what you could do. And I think he's okay with arrows. But both of those require a lot more time and effort than just a gun. And do a lot less damage." She frowned. "Okay, maybe not less than fireballs, but...I've seen what a gunshot wound can do to someone. Even before all this. It's ugly. Arrows can nick arteries or puncture organs. But gunshots just go into someone and mess things up. You have to be skilled to be dangerous with a bow. Little kids have killed with guns because it's just point and shoot."

[not_every_mage]

"That is scary," Anders decided, and frowned. "You talked to Eliot about me? I don't know him."

Not that what he could do was any type of secret, of course.

[spin_kick_snap]

"He asked if I saw a doctor after the fire," Kathy explained, still feeling vaguely guilty, as if she'd been gossiping behind someone's back. "I explained I saw you cause you're better than a real doctor. He mentioned you sounded handy to have around and I had to agree. With, umm, details. Because you're awesome."

[not_every_mage]

Anders frowned even harder. He couldn't help but feel like the praise included in her response was in part because of the guilt he heard in her tone. And while he'd never hidden being a mage on the island, the idea that people he didn't even know knew details about his abilities set off some quiet fear in the part of his brain that had needed to hide for so long.

"Well, I am awesome," he said anyhow. "Don't mind me. I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea someone I've never met knows that much about me. Though I suppose at this point the squirrels have made sure everyone on the island knows."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm sorry," she said, pulling away from him slightly and into herself more. "I know you weren't hiding what you could do, so I didn't think about telling him that you helped me when he asked. And he just said to remind him to thank you, because I told him that you saved my ass when I froze. It--It was bad out there already, but if you hadn't been with me in Limbo City, it would have been a lot worse."

Her praise of him now might have been motivated slightly out of guilt, but her praise to Eliot had been entirely legit.

[not_every_mage]

Anders drew a deep breath. It seemed like Eliot was calm about the mage issue, and Kathy was right that he'd never hidden. No harm had been done.

"Don't worry about it," he said evenly. "Though I should stop by the diner sometime so we aren't complete strangers. And you're welcome. Honestly, I don't know how well I would have done if someone died right on me. And you got yourself together enough to come home."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I think you'd like him," Kathy said. "He's been teaching me to knife-fight and some hand-to-hand on the side. He's also writing me a letter of recommendation for college." She sighed. "And he also went up one side of me and down the other for the stunt with the burning apartment, so..."

They had that in common?