The Luckiest Girl In The World

"So much better," Anders agreed,though with a worried look on his face. He'd been planning to follow Kathy after his graduation, but now ...

Well, now that didn't look like such a safe plan.

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Dante had kind of expected there to be more after that so much better, so when there wasn't, and the tone was off, he turned his head and looked over. "Anders?"

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"Nothing, just thinking," Anders frowned. "I had a whole idea about following Kathy out here in a year, but if this world's going to shit, there goes that plan."

He tried to say it lightly, but it always hurt to lose a dream -- even one you hadn't had for long.

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"Yeah, she mentioned."

Dante'd been encouraging the idea, even.

He looked back up at the ceiling. "Maybe you can... stay on the island? There's people who've done that, right?"

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Anders frowned again -- not because it was a terrible idea, exactly, but because it had never been his plan.

"I don't think I want to," he said finally. "It's so small and so strange. "

Another frown.

"Would you want to?"

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"Doesn't matter where I go," Dante said, a shrug audible in his voice. "Just seems better than you being on the run or stuck in some tower."

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"Maybe," Anders said, but slowly. He didn't want a whole life on the island, but there wasn't a good reason for it besides a vague sense of wanting more.

But then, maybe he'd want more no matter where he ended up.

He put that aside to raise an eyebrow at Dante. "Why doesn't it matter?"

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Funny, how that question suddenly made Dante remember he still had a third of whiskey in a tiny bottle in his hand. "If the demons can track me down to the island, they can find me anywhere," he said. "So it doesn't matter where I go."

He dodged talking about the serious stuff. He didn't lie straight to people's faces. (Most of the time.)

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"But you do lots of things where the demons aren't bothering you," Anders said, brow crinkled. "Don't you?"

He worried that it meant things were worse for Dante than he'd realized, and felt a tiny pang of guilt for not noticing.

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Dante put in actual work to make sure people didn't notice. People didn't need to get drawn into his shit; it was shit nobody had a chance in hell in changing.

"Sure," he said. "But they always come back." There went the last of his whiskey. Had the minibar held more? But that'd mean moving. Dilemma. "It's fine. I'm used to this shit."

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There was a knock at the door; not Kathy but pizza. Fortunately, it had already been paid for and the delivery girl didn't give a damn whether anyone in the room looked like a 'Katherine Li' so long as someone was willing to sign the slip and add a tip.

An hour passed after the pizza arrived and still no Kathy. Her phone lay on the bed, where she'd left it after ordering the pizza, so that was no help, unless they wanted to call the heroes she had numbers for. It was getting close to the two hour mark before they finally heard the click of the key card in the door and the buzzing of the internal electronic mechanism within.

She came in, face pale and drawn, except the faint redness around her eyes that she'd appreciate them ignoring. Her arms were crossed over her chest, hands clutching her upper arms. "Hey," she said, voice low. "Any pizza left."

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"Lots," Anders said, pulling away from Dante to stand up almost by instinct. "I -- are you all right?"

He'd eaten most of one piece of pizza, and picked the pepperoni off another. The situation wasn't great for his appetite.

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Dante'd made it through two before he stopped. He was in a weird mood, but his body needed a ridiculous amount of energy. "One or two," he said, but he didn't bother to stand up. "Maybe three."

He was watching Kathy pretty close.

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Kathy ignored Anders' question, closing the door behind her and grabbing three slices of pizza from whatever box was closest. Then she retreated to the bed and started eating, getting maybe four bites in before she set it back down and pushed it away. She drew her knees up to her chest and locked her arms around them.

"Okay," she said quietly. "I'll go."

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"You just got back," Anders said slowly, confused. "Go where?"

He stood there awkwardly, watching Kathy not-eat.

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"Okay," Dante said.

He sat up. He was still watching her.

Anders was apparently the only one of them who had more than two or three words to expend at a time.

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"Back to the island," Kathy said, drawing on what was normally a fount of words that felt all dried up. "That's what you want, right? Fine. You win. I'll go."

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"All right," Anders said, but sounded suspicious. He didn't know what had changed Kathy's mind, and he wasn't sure he could trust her not to throw in a catch. "Fantastic. We can leave as soon as you're packed."

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"Good."

Look, Dante wasn't the word-fountain of this group under the best of circumstances. You couldn't expect much more of him now.

But he did slide off the bed, if only so he could walk up behind Anders and provided some kind of implied support.

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"Tomorrow," she said. "I have a mission from Stealth I need to finish first. And I should talk to my family. Convince them to leave. Somehow." She snorted. "Fucked if I know how I'm going to do that. They don't know what I am." Her mouth twisted as she glanced at Dante, then looked away again. "My dad pretty much hates all superheroes. And the odds of them believing in zombies is pretty low."

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"And there's the catch," Anders sighed. "Fine. If that's what you need to do, do it. We can wait a day."

He intentionally didn't comment about how she might convince her parents. His conversations with Kathy about her family had a history of going pear-shaped, and the last thing he wanted to do was add to that.

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"You want backup on that mission?"

Dante's voice was cool. Wasn't anger, though. He was trying to hold back every other scrap of judgment - or other related emotions - that he had in his body.

It was successful as long as you didn't look at his face.

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Fortunately, Kathy wasn't looking at him! She wasn't looking at either of them! She was pressing her lips together at the implication she needed hand-holding, but hey. What else should she expect from someone who thought of her as a Saturday morning cartoon?

"If you want to," she said, spotting the empty liquor bottles on the floor. The lines around her mouth deepened as she calculated how much more that would add to her bill. She was going to have to transfer money from her savings account to cover everything without worrying about an overdraft on her debit card.

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"You told us to help or leave," Anders answered, voice as even as he could make it. "We'll help, then we'll leave."

He would have offered to pay for the liquor if Kathy had asked. Minibar fees weren't exactly a major problem in Thedas, and he still half-assumed the drinks were free.

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