The Luckiest Girl In The World

Dante wondered if he should even be here. He'd come here to drag Kathy to safety, and now he wasn't so sure he was safe. He could still feel something crawling around in his chest; it took effort not to keep poking at his pendant.

"Whatever is fine," he agreed. "I'm just going to get some water."

He slid silently into the bathroom.

Maybe that'd help.

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Kathy looked at Anders, concerned. This was disquieting, to say the least. Whatever Nick had done--whatever had happened to Dante wasn't nearly as worrisome as how Dante was behaving now. He was so subdued. Even after Limbo City, he hadn't been like that.

"Do you have any idea what happened to him?" she asked quietly.

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"I saw red," Anders answered with a shrug. "Like it was coming out of him or around him. Couldn't turn my head to get a good look, for some reason."

He was still more angry about the situation than worried about Dante.

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Yeah, nobody needed to deal with this right now. Fuck, Dante didn't want to deal with this right now. Snagged a glass of water in the bathroom, took a few drinks, and reminded himself that his shit was his shit, and they had more important things to deal with.

He was pretty sure he wasn't going to explode or see red again, anyway. Everything else could wait.

He left the bathroom as soon as he'd managed to shovel a couple dozen pounds of 'deal with it later, by myself'-style repression on top of him. He wasn't more relaxed, but he looked it, leaning against the doorway and eyeing Kathy.

"This is still stupid," he said, "And you better start with Meat Lovers here."

There. Pissed, pizza, fine.

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Kathy held up her phone, where she was busy inputting their order into a restaurant app. One Meat Lovers (extra meat, extra cheese) was already added, as well as two others. "On it," she said. "And agreed. This whole thing is stupid."

She just felt that the stupid had started when they'd swaggered in, convinced that she was going to immediately do what they said. It had then been compounded by roughly infinity when Nick decided to bring his powers into play.

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"Do you actually like those guys you were with?" Anders asked, making a face. "Nick is awful, one of them seemed like a pervert and the other one -- all right, Josh didn't seem too terrible, but I'm sure he would if we gave him time."

He thought the stupid started when Kathy started hanging out with them. Couldn't she be a hero quietly, on her own, someplace safe?

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Nah, that wasn't the way it worked. Heroes ran into trouble, thinking they could change anything, that was the problem.

"They were assholes," Dante agreed, since his ignorance to Anders' narrative meant he couldn't go off on a tangent about it. "They're the people who're going to be having your back?"

Half of 'em seemed more likely to be sizing up her ass while they were back there.

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"Not a huge fan of Max, but Nick was fine before you came in," Kathy said, finishing the order and folding her arms across her chest. "And Josh is a great guy. I mean, he's still grieving and he's out with us, doing what he can to protect LA because he knows how important this is."

Which, you know, was more than what these two seemed to get.

"And there are more of us than just them. Stealth, Zzzap, MidKnight, Blockbuster--every hero in LA knows that this is important to contain and fix. It's way more important than some petty, interpersonal grievances." Like Max being a creeper and Nick--she was really going to have to tear into him for this. "Why can't you two get that? We're talking the lives of ten million people here!"

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"Of course you think Nick was fine," Anders snapped. "He wants you."

He drew a breath, tried to organize his
less petty thoughts. "Look, I don't know about zombie movies, but in Thedas we
have blights. Demons rise and take over anything they can get their claws and teeth on. We have entire armies turned out to fight them, but people die. A lot of people die. Cities get wiped out. The last one was 400 years ago and people still tell the story. So the idea ten of you are going to save ten million -- it's ludicrous. It's a fairy story. The only thing anyone can do for it is get out."

Edited Date: 2016-04-09 06:53 pm (UTC)

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Dante shrugged, shoulder scraping lightly along the wall. "I don't know zombies where I come from, but we've got demons," he said. "Bad stuff like this takes off, it's going to get worse. Always does. And I've met you. You're not gonna stop if it gets too dangerous for you."

Edited Date: 2016-04-09 06:57 pm (UTC)

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Kathy was grinding her teeth now, glaring at Anders. "All right, let's table the zombie thing for a second. The hell is with you today? You've decided that Nick suddenly has a thing for me based on--what? Thirty seconds of interaction?"

And being less oblivious to this kind of thing than Katherine "I'm just Kathy!" Li.

"And because he supposedly wants me, I think he can do no wrong? I'm that vapid and petty and shallow?"

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"I decided it because I'm not blind, deaf or stupid," Anders retorted, with a glare of his own. "It's in everything he does around you. I don't know why you're falling for it, other than that you had a thing for him for ages. And are we really going to 'table the zombie thing'" -- that came out in his imitation of Kathy's voice -- "to argue about some idiot who turned his powers on us in the middle of a restaurant?"

Edited Date: 2016-04-09 07:40 pm (UTC)

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Dante rolled his eyes. At Kathy, not at Anders, with whom he thoroughly agreed. "Calm your tits," he supplied, helpfully. "Who or what wants in your pants is not the fucking problem here."

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She wasn't going to murder them. She wasn't. Because they were her friends and she loved them, no matter how much she wanted to throttle them right now.

"I'm not falling for anything," she said, managing not yell by sheer force of will. She also successfully refrained from flipping Dante off, so good on Kathy all around. "I'm furious at him for that shit he pulled. But he wouldn't have been able to do that if you two hadn't decided to high-handedly come and tell me what I can and cannot do! We're tabling the zombie thing because there's nothing to talk about! I'm going to help save my city while it's still possible to be saved! You can either help or you can go home, but what you don't get to do is tell me what I'm allowed to do!"

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Anders, meanwhile, felt utterly defeated. Reasoning hadn't worked. Shouting hadn't worked. Bringing up her sister hadn't worked. There was utterly no point in any of this, and for a heated moment he almost felt that getting eaten by a zombie would only serve Kathy right.

"That was a lot of words for 'la la la la, I'm not listening,'" Anders commented, and turned to the door. "Dante, let's go. Maybe if we leave now we can get a cheaper portal home."

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"I can just take her," Dante said mildly. From the doorway.

He hadn't moved just yet.

"Maybe if I hold her upside down for long enough, all the bullshit is gonna pour right out."

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Dante's threat forestalled Kathy from just throwing her wallet at Anders and telling him to use what frequent portal miles she'd racked up, so that was...something? Maybe?

Of course, that was only so she could turn to Dante, mouth agape in disbelief. "You wou--" She stopped herself, because the easiest way to ensure that Dante did to something was to tell him he wouldn't. "Don't."

Yeah, that wasn't much better.

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"Give him a reason not to," Anders said, folding his arms. "Kathy, you've known me forever. I'm not the type to just decide I know better than someone and tell her what to do. Usually I hate that. Dante's not exactly a dictator either. So if we're out here doing everything but begging on our knees, could you at least take us seriously?"

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"You gonna say 'don't' to the zombies when they get you in a tight spot?" Dante said. His voice went dipping low. It wasn't with threat, exactly. But that thing he didn't know or understand, that'd happened just now-- there were still dregs of demonic energy spooking through his veins, cooling his nerves and stoking the flames of worry turned anger.

He pulled away from the doorway. "'Cause I could. Right here, right now, I pick you right up, throw you over my shoulder, take you to Portalocity, we'll be home by morning. Nothing you and your bouncy superpowers can do about it." His eyes narrowed. "You think you're some kind of badass zombie fighter now? You're rainbows and taglines and leaving the bad guys tied up for the police. You're a fucking Saturday morning cartoon."

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Kathy opened her mouth, but no words came out. None. In just six words, Dante had managed to shred so much of her hard-won confidence. Her belief in herself and her abilities. She glanced down, both to hide the tears that sprang up in her eyes and to check and make sure that she hadn't gotten cut somewhere. Yeah, she knew her hurts were purely metaphorical, but in that moment, she almost couldn't be sure.

"I--I--" She pushed past Anders, towards to the door, blurring up to full speed. "I have to go."

Fuck them, they didn't get to see her cry.

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Anders instinctively grabbed for Kathy's blurry form, trying to get her shoulder or elbow or wrist -- anything, really, as long as it would keep her in the room. His words, too, were aimed only at that goal.

"Hey. Hey. He didn't mean it."

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"Don't touch me!" she snarled, yanking her arm out of his grasp and fleeing through the door, slamming it shut behind her. That door led directly to the parking lot and beyond; in the open, there was no way either of them could catch her.

At least the pizzas had been paid for?

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That could've gone better. Probably. The bottom had kind of dropped out of Dante's ability to care for a moment, here.

He crossed his arms and eyed Anders.

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Anders folded his arms and eyed Dante right back. It was that kind of a moment.

"What?" he asked. "I'm not the one who made her cry."

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