Los Angeles, Sunday Night

[spin_kick_snap]

Banzai flipped over the edge of the rooftop, landing in a graceful crouch with her rainbows fluttering around her. She stood easily, not a single bruise or sore spot remaining from her time in Cyseal. It was good to have a healing mage in her back pocket.

Her pleased smile vanished as she wondered how many times Regenerator's wife had thought the same thing.

Poor Regenerator. She wished she could do more for him; just covering his patrol hardly seemed like enough when he was faced with the loss of his wife. But Banzai was hesitant to call the number in her phone, unwilling to intrude on the private grief of a man whose real name she didn't even know. What was she supposed to say? She'd been lucky enough to never really lose anyone close to her; all she had was a few platitudes about being terribly sorry and that time healed all wounds.

Maybe she could bring him some tea later? She was perched on the rooftop of the small teahouse that Regenerator liked to frequent at the beginning of his patrols. He'd introduced her to it over Christmas break, explaining the proprietors were actually happy to serve the masked set, since it meant criminals tended to give the store a wide berth. They'd sat and talked over a few nice cups of Ceylon and Banzai'd told him all about her plans to become a doctor. He explained he was a medical resident for his day job. They laughed at the idea of one day working together in the wards and the streets. She should have given him her real name then, when he'd joked about commandeering her as an intern when it was time.

Maybe if she had, she'd feel less lost now. What was she supposed to do? Well, other than take his patrol and hope that somehow, he'd know that it was taken care of?

[NFB, NFI. Some text taken from Chapter 24, "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You", from Peter Clines' Ex-Heroes. OOC welcome, warning for oblique suicide mention.]

Comments

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"I know," Regenerator said softly. "I want to talk about Meredith. I don't want to talk about Meredith. God, I probably shouldn't even talk about Meredith--I probably shouldn't even have said her name. Whatever. It's not like she needs to stay anonymous now. I already failed her. And you might figure out who I am. So what? I lost everything I was already trying to protect."

[spin_kick_snap]

Banzai reached up and untied her mask, letting the rainbow fabric fall into her lap. "Kathy," she said quietly. "My name is Kathy Li and I grew up in KTown, not far from here. And I...I'm eighteen, a senior at a private boarding school in Baltimore."

Honestly, telling Regenerator how old she was was even harder than telling him her real name. She hadn't lied to him when they'd talked about school and her future plans, but she'd been careful to skirt around her actual age.

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

And for good reason. Regenerator rocked backwards on his heels, surprised. "Shit, really?" he asked. "I knew you were young, but damn. I thought you were at least an undergrad! Do your parents know what you do?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Obviously not," Banzai replied. "You'll notice how I'm not locked in my room until I'm thirty."

Sighing, she added, "Look. I've been doing this since I was a sophomore in high school, okay? Technically, I think I have more field experience than you do. And you would not believe some of the things I've gone up against, from a high ranking mafia enforcer called The Butcher to stuff that--" She pressed her lips together and shook her head. She wasn't going to explain to a grieving widower that at one time she had literally died. "You can ask Gorgon about some of the crazy stuff I've seen if you want, okay? But we'd met after I spent a night performing emergency surgery in a damn hotel room and that was over a year ago. So don't try to play Responsible Adult at me."

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"Okay, okay," Regenerator said, holding up his hands. "Sorry, sorry. Right. I was just a bit surprised." For a moment, he sounded almost his old self, the surprise in finding out that Banzai was still in high school momentarily pushing his crushing grief away. "And I'm...Josh. Josh Garcetti. Hi."

It would be weird, hearing Banzai--Kathy's--voice calling him Josh, but his own name wasn't the gut punch that 'Regenerator' was right now.

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

Josh was just reaching up to pull off his mask, when the Mighty Dragon flew up to the rooftop again, carrying a cardboard tray with two carryout cups of tea in it. "I didn't know what you wanted, so I asked for what Regenerator always--" He paused, hovering in mid-air as he looked from a bare-faced Banzai to Regenerator and back. "Uhhh, I sense I'm intruding here."

[spin_kick_snap]

"We're just getting a chance to talk a little," Banzai said, making no move to put her mask back on. "Did you want to stay...?"

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"I think I'll let you two keep going," the Mighty Dragon said quickly. "I only got two teas, anyway. I'll start my patrol and check in later."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You know, I think the Mighty Dragon is more comfortable beating up Seventeens than he is with the idea of a little heart-to-heart," Banzai said, watching him fly off into the distance.

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"Maybe he was worried that we'd make him unmask and join special sharing time, too," Josh replied, his mask now being twisted in his hands. "Do you really want to know?" he asked abruptly. "What happened? It's a shitshow, I'm telling you now. It was all so--so pointless."

[spin_kick_snap]

"If you want to tell me, I'm here to listen," she said, eyeing Regener--Josh's mask with a bit of concern. If he kept worrying at it, the fragile fabric could rip.

There was a metaphor in there somewhere, she was sure.

"Here," she said, passing over the tea in an attempt to rescue the mask. "Drink it before it gets cold and figure out what you want to say."

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

Josh looked down at his mask, almost as if he'd missed the part where he'd taken it off, and obediently set it aside and took the drink. He sipped in silence for a few moments, appreciating the chance to try to order his thoughts.

"Meredith was always clumsy," he said, sounding awkward. "I think I mentioned that earlier? But she was. I loved that about her. I loved everything about her. When we met, she was wearing two mismatched earrings, you know? Because she'd lost the mates to either pair and had decided just to wear them as a set. That was who Meredith was. She was clumsy and prone to losing things and yet she always made it work. I was the healer, but she could fix anything. We met at a party as dates for other people and spent the whole night talking to each other. Pissed both our dates off to no end. My date dumped me that night. Hers took another month. He probably knew how special she was and kept fighting. A month after that, we got together."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You were together for two years?" Kathy prompted when he went quiet again, expression soft and distant.

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"I still haven't told the cats yet," Josh said, abruptly. "I mean, I know, that's dumb, they're cats, but they're still waiting for her to come home. We adopted them as kittens after we moved in together. We named them Lewis and Clarke because Meredith was an American history buff. They used to keep her company at night when I was out patrolling. Now they keep meowing for me to bring her home and I can't. I keep promising them that she'll be home soon, but she won't and I'll have to explain to them that she'll never be home again and they're just cats--."

His voice broke; shuddered and cracked and fell like a glass in an earthquake.

"Wednesday. I can't bring her home until Wednesday. The hospital won't release her body until tomorrow and then it has to go to the funeral home to be--" He couldn't say it. "They took my wife and left me with an urn."

[spin_kick_snap]

This was so much worse than Kathy was expecting. She hadn't thought about cats and urns and the way a man could sound so inside out and upside down. She sipped at her tea and tasted nothing, let the warm cup try to thaw her cold fingers.

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"It's not fair," Josh said softly. "It's not fair and it's not right. It was a stupid way to die and it's just not fair. That’s what’s important to remember. It wasn’t fair for her to get taken away from me like that. That’s what you need to understand. What happened wasn’t right. It's an...an affront to the way things are supposed to be. You--none of you--understand just how stupid it was for her to die."

He stared at his cup of tea, then turned and hurled it away into the night. The sweet liquid splashed out, still steaming in the air, and the styrofoam caught the neon. "She died because of a broken finger!" he roared. "Mashed in a car door, broke the skin, heavy bleeding. If I hadn’t been out playing hero I could’ve fixed it in ten seconds! Instead the neighbors called an ambulance and rushed her to the hospital. A broken finger!"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I--I don't understand," Kathy said, trying not to flinch at Josh's sudden burst of temper. It wasn't directed at her, but she still couldn't help realize anew how large Josh was, how much he outmassed her by. She wasn't afraid, exactly, but there was something about facing an angry man in a temper as Kathy rather than Banzai that triggered a familiar bout of nerves. "How could a broken finger lead to someone dying?"

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

To his credit, Josh seemed to notice and visibly calmed himself. He settled back into stillness and when he spoke again, his voice was even. Steady.

"Once she got there, the emergency room staff screwed up a test and gave her the wrong type of blood. She was A-negative and some idiot nurse misread a chart and gave her Rh positive blood. Blood which should’ve been screened out of their blood banks to start with, because it was tainted with hep-B. The mixed symptoms confused them and they spent hours pumping her full of poisons to deal with misdiagnoses, and filling her with more of the wrong blood. The odds of it happening are a million to one. But Meredith was always the luckiest at being unlucky." He blew out a shaky breath. "And I'm blithely running around with the Mighty Dragon when I get two calls. One from our neighbor, Mrs. Halifax. She was the one who had called the ambulance and just wanted me to know that everything was fine and Meredith would be all right. The next one was from the hospital, asking me to get there as soon as possible, that they were losing her and they didn't know why."

[spin_kick_snap]

His voice was hoarse. Kathy passed him her tea, motioning for him to keep it. "I am so, so--sorry's not enough," she said. "There aren't words."

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"The worst is now. So long as we can say This is the worst," Josh quoted. "I'm looking at a huge settlement. The hospital's lawyers have already reached out to me, like I'm supposed to care about their money right now. Like I'm supposed to care about anything. Money won't bring her back. If it could, I'd pay any amount. Any. But it can't. She just lies there, cold and still on a slab, because she hurt herself and I wasn't there."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're not responsible!" Kathy burst out. "Dammit, Josh, this wasn't your fault! Blame the staff that misread her bloodtype and the lab techs who let infected blood get through! But don't blame--"

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"You're right," Josh replied, standing up. "It's not about blame. It was a stupid, unfair mistake. That's all it was. Stupid and unfair. It shouldn't have happened at all."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Exactly," Kathy agreed, also standing. She felt a little uncertain, almost unbalanced by how easily he'd agreed to let go of the blame. "It was wrong and unfair, but it happened and--"

[hollywoodex-tra.livejournal.com]

"I think I will go home tonight," Josh said, reaching for his mask again. "Take some time off. At least until the funeral. It's scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. If you--if you want to--"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'll be there," Kathy promised. "I can bring others, if you're okay with that. For support."

Then, in a rush, she added, "Josh, please, don't do anything stupid, okay? I know you're hurting and you're reeling and everything is just so overwhelming right now, but--"