75 Godiva Street, Way Too Early Friday Morning

[spin_kick_snap]

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]

"Had to learn it?" Parker folded her legs under herself, and cocked her head. "Did someone throw you off a building? Or something like that?"

[tigerundercover]

"What?" Raven shook her head. "No. Zombies can't fly."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Ohh. Duh." Parker nodded, thinking, then lay back on the roof tiles. "How long did you spend as a bird?" Not long enough to fly the whole way, from what Raven had said. But long enough to get the hang of it. She held out the bag again. "Can you turn into a tiger?"

[tigerundercover]

"Don't know. A couple hours at a time. I tried to only do it when I had to, so I didn't exhaust myself. I spent way more time as a dog."

Way, way more time. Probably more time than she'd spend in any non-human form to date.

"I can turn into anything. Whether I know how to use the shape well . . . that's a different question."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"I guess that would take a lot of practice," Parker said, meditative. The sun was cresting the horizon now, and she smiled as the sky started to get lighter. "Which one is your favorite? For fun, nothing else."

[tigerundercover]

"Right now?" Raven smiled faintly and shifted.

Into Eliot.

"It makes Kathy smile."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker's laugh was a squeaky cackle of surprise, and she sat up to poke at Raven's face. Forgive her, it was instinct by now. "Eliot! You can look like Eliot! Can you say 'damnit, Hardison'?"

[tigerundercover]

"Dammit, Hardison!"

Her inflection was all wrong, not just because she was holding back her own giggles at Parker's reaction. So she shifted again, this time into Hardison, and gave Parker her best giant innocent eyed expression.

Or rather, Hardison's best giant innocent eyed expression.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Awwwwwwwwwww." Parker beamed at her, and patted Raven's face, now that it was her First Favorite Face. "You got him perfectly! That's just how he looks when he did something really sneaky and doesn't want you to ask about it, except how he wants to tell you all about it!" This was the best trick ever, Raven. "...if you were a grifter, you would make a gazillion dollars like this."

[tigerundercover]

"I used to be," Raven admitted, shifting back to her natural shape. "Or, you know, I used to steal from people by looking like them. It took a telepath to catch me, so I must've been pretty good at it."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Really? That's amazing." Sophie would love to meet Raven, Parker was sure. "I only started grifting about five or so years ago, really. It took a long while to get the hang of it." She frowned suddenly and asked, "What did the telepath do when they caught you?"

[tigerundercover]

"Adopted me." Raven shrugged. "I was, like, seven."

Look, Parker, your first boyfriend managed to pick another former feral child for his favorite student.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

It was just another indication of how awesome Hardison was, and what good taste he had!

"Oh, cool." Parker smiled over at Raven, then sobered a little. "It's just your brother who's left now, right? I think I remember you saying that."

[tigerundercover]

"He's all I ever really had, actually. I think he kind of . . . 'whammied' his parents into letting me live with them. They were kind of only sometimes aware they had a daughter."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Parker frowned at that, because she wasn't sure if that made Raven lucky or unlucky. She shook her head. "But yeah. You should invite him here, sometime." She was quiet a minute, then offered, "Eliot has a sister, who has kids. Hardison has his nana, who is awesome. And we all have Nate and Sophie."

[tigerundercover]

"Who do you have?" Raven asked. "That's just -- yours?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker bit her lip, rummaging in the bag of fortune cookies. She was going to say 'no one', but... "Archie. He taught me how to be the best thief. He got me off the streets, when I was thirteen." She smiled a little. "He has another family. But he told them about me, a little while ago. He said I was his daughter."

And it was true and real, even if it wasn't the same kind of real that other people would expect.

"And the guys."

[tigerundercover]

Hey, Raven's brother had adopted her at seven without asking his parents first. And Raven was totally all set to declare Kathy her sister, once she found out whether Kathy was going to hate her for killing her parents and burning their apartment down.

Families were what you made them to be.

"That's good," Raven said. "You and Hardison and Eliot are all really lucky to have each other. It's weird -- you're all so different. But you guys . . . fit."

That was what Raven wanted. What she thought she'd briefly found with Misfit. Someone who fit.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"We do!" Parker beamed at her. Then she added, "It took a while, though. A longish while. We were all crew before we were family. And I thought they were weird, and they thought I was weird. But we got used to each other. And then it was a while longer before Hardison and me started being me-and-Hardison." She tapped her heels on the roof, smiling at the memory. "And now Eliot's with us, which took longer than we thought it would but still." She tilted her head at Raven. "Did you have a somebody, before you went to L.A.?"

[tigerundercover]

"Not really," Raven said. "There were people I flirted with a lot, and I went on some dates. And I thought maybe something might be happening with this one girl. But . . . then I went away. And now I'm all . . . weird."

Weird was a good word. She was going to lean pretty heavily on weird.

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Weird isn't bad," Parker said. She studied Raven's expression, her own sober. "I mean, it doesn't have to be." She frowned. "Does it? I mean, is it? Is the girl still here?"

[tigerundercover]

"Yeah. She graduates in May, though. I don't know what her plans are." Raven shrugged. "I guess she's probably still interested. She said she was trying to get a way to Kathy's world too, like Hardison was. But -- I think I'm too different now. From who I was before I left." She looked over at Parker. "Does that make sense?"

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." Parker squinted, her expression thoughtful. "Except, maybe, don't make any assumptions? That's the only thing I know for sure. People can surprise you." She smiled sideways at Raven, and said, "We all like who you are now. For what it's worth."

[tigerundercover]

"You barely know who I am now," Raven pointed out. "I barely know who I am now. I got really good at Kathy's world."

[whoisalicewhite.livejournal.com]

Parker nodded. And was pretty sure she didn't get it. She frowned, then her face did the equivalent of 'shrug.' "There are worse things. I don't know this girl though-- wait, do I? No, wait, you don't have to say." Privacy: so hard to remember. "But. I'm sorry if it doesn't work out. I hope it does, though."