75 Godiva Street, Way Too Early Friday Morning

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Kathy could hear the noise all around her. Worse, her jaw ached from all the clacking she was doing herself. She wanted to stop, to push her way through the endless mob of dead people, to get somewhere she could be alone and not HURT anyone, but her body wouldn't do what she wanted. It just dragged itself forward, gliding through the other exes with a grace that seemed wrong for a corpse to have. She was faster than the rest, able to sprint while they only staggered, and somehow that speed translated into an ability to slide through crowds like mist.

Because of that, the dead girl that had once been Katherine Hana Li made it to the center of the mob, where all the exes in this location had turned their unblinking attention. Only one thing could cause this kind of focus in the dead: fresh meat. Where the living Kathy now realized that she was looking at the remains of a stocky man in a green bandanna and pair of sweats, the dead Kathy only saw food. She knelt on the hard pavement and did as her undead brethren were doing; she reached out and grabbed her own portion of that fresh meat and hot blood, bringing a handful of something wet and slippery to her mouth--

Kathy managed to wrench herself out of the dream, stifling the gasp that would surely wake Raven if her thrashing hadn't already done so. She lay still for a moment, frantically swallowing--not bile, which would have been nice, but saliva. If she really wanted to, she could remember the taste and the smell of that dead Seventeen. Most of her recognized it had smelled awful, that nothing smelled good with its insides on the outsides.

A small part of her, the part that came to the forefront whenever she remembered dreamed about the past eight months, thought it smelled delicious. She was afraid it always would.

Silently, she slipped out of the guest bed and made her way to the bathroom where she could rinse her mouth out and brush her teeth again. It was the only way to get the imagined taste of salt and pennies out of her mouth. And then to the living room, where she snagged the laptop Hardison had given her and called up a queue of cute animal videos. She'd stay up till dawn before sneaking back into the guest room to catch another hour or so of sleep. Or, at least, to pretend to so nobody asked questions about why she was up so early.

[Open for housemates!, text under the cut NFB, warning for zombie-typical violence]

Comments

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker was up early a while later, already showered and dressed. Sometimes she got up super-early, sometimes super-late. Routine was the enemy.

"Did you want some fortune cookies for breakfast?" she offered.

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How had Kathy thought she was going to get away with sneaking around all night? It was a miracle she'd managed it the three nights previous.

"Uhh, no thanks?" Kathy said, both surprised and not that Parker would eat cookies for breakfast. "I'm not really hungry."

She'd been 'not really hungry' for several days now, eating only occasionally. But even normally, she'd probably pass fortune cookies for breakfast.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"They're good cookies," Parker told her, then frowned, hopping up onto her usual space on the counter. "You need to eat more. I think. I'm not really good at knowing that stuff." Witness the cookies. And a licorice binge she went on last week. But she was pretty sure most people ate more than Kathy was eating lately. "Are you feeling okay? ... physically, I mean."

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"I'm pretty sure Nanika healed everything that was wrong with me when she brought me back," Kathy said, answering and not answering at the same time. "I don't even have a scar where I got bit."

She should know. She'd spent several hours, staring at the spot on her shoulder, almost willing a scar to appear. It felt like there should be something to mark her departure from the living.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Weird," Parker said, crunching down on a fortune cookie. "Maybe she had to do that to make it work, though." She studied Kathy carefully, looking for jitters or pain, or any kind of illness, and nodded to herself, satisfied that Kathy was just shaky. Not physically wounded. "We might. Maybe. Go somewhere in a couple weeks. You think you and Raven would be okay about not having us around for a few days, then?"

A good way to check on how Kathy was doing, especially if she lied.

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Not an if. A when.

"Of course!" Kathy said, trying to sound perky and totally just fine. "You guys deserve a break after all these months of stress and worry. Where you gonna go? Somewhere warm and sunny, I hope."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker gave her a completely unimpressed look. Really, Kathy?

"You don't have to lie." She grimaced. "Okay, maybe you feel like you do." Who was she to judge? "We won't go 'til you're cool with it. Florida Keys, maybe. We had fun on a boat down there last year."

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"What? I just think you three deserve some alone time without having to worry about us!" Kathy protested. Totally convincingly.

...She clearly needed to spend more time with Sophie.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"I know," Parker said patiently. "So we'll wait 'til you can say it and sound like you mean it."

Because if you couldn't even fake it, Kathy, no way were they going anywhere.

"Do you know how to cook?" Parker asked, seemingly veering off-topic. But not really.

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"I--yes?" Kathy had learned years ago that she couldn't always follow Parker's conversational non-sequiturs, but even so, sometimes they were dizzying. "Mostly Korean stuff, but the basics aren't too hard."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Cool." Parker beamed at her. "We should make Eliot breakfast. 'Cause he usually does it."

And if you happen to eat some of it while preparing it, that's not a bad thing, right?

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"I can make French toast?" Kathy offered. "Or eggs?"

Please don't make her cook bacon, Parker. She couldn't. Not right now.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Bacon was awesome, but Parker thought that the guys could make that better. She nodded hard. "French toast and eggs. Scrambled? Or sunny-side up?"

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"Sunny side up," Kathy replied promptly. "They look more egg-y that way."

Kathy really appreciated it when her food looked exactly like it was supposed to.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker slipped off the counter, humming. "You get the eggs, I'll get the bread. I like the kind with raisins in it. And cinnamon."

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"My mom always had us add nutmeg and vanilla to the mixture," Kathy offered, not able to hide the pang she felt when she mentioned her mom. "I'll get the syrup from the fridge, too."

Because she knew that Eliot would only have real syrup in his house, the kind that needed to be refrigerated to stay good.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Mysterious as it was, Eliot knew all the food things.

"Did you guys make French toast a lot?" Anything you want to talk about, Kathy, Parker would listen.

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"Not really," Kathy said. "It's too American. But sometimes, for our Thanksgiving and Christmas and the first day of school, she'd make it for us. Not our birthdays, though. That's for Miyeok Guk, a seaweed soup. That's a Korean tradition." She pulled out the eggs and syrup and then started replacing all of Hardison's displaced sodas. "For breakfast, we had gaeran tost-u. Egg toast."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"We should make that sometime too." Parker had many slices of raisin bread out now. And she was stuck. "Do I put these in a pan?... We should have that soup. Since we missed your birthday."

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"Oh noooo," Kathy said, going to rescue to the bread. Err, Parker. Sure, that one. "We need to make the batter, first. Or whatever it is. Oh! I forgot the milk!"

She hopped back over to the fridge for the milk and then proceeded to get a bowl to mix everything in.

"It's a bowl of soup in the mornings, noodles in the afternoon, and rice cakes at night," she said quietly, looking into space while her hands put together the ingredients. "I don't even like Miyeok Guk much and not waking up to it these past few years has been hard. They say that so long as someone loves you, you'll wake up to seaweed soup on your birthday."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, Kathy. Parker now knew what to arrange for your next birthday. Or maybe Re-Birth-Day? Heh.

"Batter. Right. With that nutmeg and cinnamon you were talking about." Parker knew where those were! Look, she was helping! "That's nice. To have a tradition. Even if it means drinking soup you don't like."

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"The butter goes in the pan," Kathy said quickly, making sure that Parker didn't try to drop some into the bowl while she was whisking together the milk and eggs. "The vanilla and nutmeg can come in here, though."

Usually cinnamon, too, but she figured the cinnamon in the bread would be enough.

"Careful with the vanilla," she cautioned. "It's real so it's potent."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"There's unreal vanilla?" Parker gave the vanilla a mistrustful look. She dropped the butter in the pan, an entire stick. "Is that enough?" That was only a little disingenuous. Hey, they could always make extra, right?

[spin_kick_snap]

Sneaky mastermind.

"There's artificial vanilla extraa--ack! Parker! You don't need anywhere near that much!" Kathy set the bowl down to rescue the stick of butter, dropping it back down on the paper. "Only a pat or two is needed, just to keep the bread from sticking to the pan. Too much butter and the bread will just soak it all up."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"And that's bad," Parker checked, then nodded soberly. "Got it. And there would never be an artificial anything in Eliot's kitchen. Except for Hardison's soda, 'cause that's all artificial flavors and colors."

Heh. Kathy was looking more like herself, given something to do. Noted!