The Luckiest Girl In The World

"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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Dante knew about the minibar fees. But 'conflicted' was a woefully inadequate word for how he was feeling about just about anything right now.

Ada was going to kill him for volunteering. He should probably be back on Fandom, not giving a shit about this to begin with, shooting the shit with her, or Alana, or Isabela.

Fuck, even Ezra.

"What Anders said," he said. "Seems fair."

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"Yeah, fair," Kathy said with a laugh that help more than a little sob in it. "That's exactly what this is."

She let her forehead fall forward onto her knees. "You know that if I can't convince my family to go--if this gets out of hand--if they die, that's it right? That's just it? I will never forgive you if my family dies."

She'd wanted to say she'd hate them forever. But she just wasn't wired that way. Especially now, when she was more hurt than mad. She couldn't imagine herself hating anyone for forever. But she could just be done.

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"Oh, fuck you," Anders said. "We could knock your parents and sister out and have them safe in Fandom in a matter of hours if you wanted. If they die here, it's on you, not us."

It was easily the most vicious thing he'd ever said. And in that moment, it felt utterly deserved.

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Whatever viciousness there had been in Dante earlier, it had largely dissipated. That didn't mean he could come up with anything to soften that one that didn't feel cheap or untrue. Fuck, if Anders hadn't lashed out, Dante might've anyway.

He shrugged.

It felt like the most appropriate reaction.

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"Because literally kidnapping my family is going to solve all my problems," Kathy said, looking at him, incredulous. "But, right, that's apparently your go-to solution for everything right now."

Did they think they could just traipse through Portalocity with three unconscious bodies and no one would care? That her dad wouldn't get plane tickets back to LA first thing?

Well, second thing. The first thing he'd do would be to go up one side of her and down the other.

"I'd have to keep them unconscious for however long it takes for LA to fall to the zombies. That's not feasible."

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"Why can't you just tell them the truth?" Anders wondered. "Bounce around the living room, show off a movie of zombies, and if they won't trust that at least you'll know you did your best."

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