Apartment Above Luke's, Sunday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

The quiet was nice.

Kathy looked around the empty apartment, wandering from room to room. If asked, she'd say she was picturing where all their stuff would go when she and Raven left Eliot's place (okay, Eliot's and Parker's and Hardison's, but it had been Eliot's place in her mind for years and it would take some adjusting to) and moved in here, but really, she was just appreciating the quiet. It was nice, being somewhere that no one else was for a little while. She didn't have to worry about whether her smile was convincing or she appeared happy--and grateful! One mustn't forget grateful!--to be alive again. Not that she wanted to be dead again or anything. But sometimes it was hard to be happy about anything. But around people, she felt like she owed it to them to try. Or at least to put up a decent enough facade that they could convince themselves she was.

Alone, though, she didn't have to pretend. She could just do her own thing, try to distance herself from her recent spate of nightmares and just wander for a bit. She would have thought she'd gotten enough walking in as an ex, but maybe her body'd just gotten used to the repetitive motion. Maybe idly poking around the place really would give her some ideas for what to do with the place. Or maybe it was all just bullshit and she should focus on thinking less altogether.

Yeah, it was probably the latter. But until she found a decent substitute for her previous activities that shut her brain down (besides zombieism, ha ha, she was hilarious), walking and appreciating the lack of people would have to do.

[Post open! Link to Anders' thread]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy shook her head. "I wasn't expecting to entertain," she said wryly. Her fingers twitched; if she'd been closer, she would have brushed her hand against his as she replied, "Not that I'm complaining."

It was hard, yes, but she was still glad he was here.

"I appreciate you giving me a call," she said, and, remembering Dante's advice, added, "I'm leery of contacting you. I don't want to push or overstep, since I think we're both figuring out where the boundaries are. In case you were wondering. Why I hadn't yet."

[not_every_mage]

"I thought you probably needed space," Anders told her. "I didn't blame you for that. It's been a long week for me. Must have been even longer for you."

He leaned back against the wall. "As far as I'm concerned, we're friends. If you want to be."

Nothing more, not yet. But the more time he spent around Kathy -- even with the new sorrow in her eyes and the changes he'd seen over the last nine months -- the harder it was not to want to be her friend.

[spin_kick_snap]

It wasn't enough. It couldn't ever be enough. It was more than she feared she'd get, in the darkest hours of the night.

"Of course," she said immediately, ignoring the bruised feeling in her heart to look in his eyes. She was doing that a lot recently. "When we got together we agreed that no matter what happened between us romantically, we would always, always be friends. I'm not willing to give that up if you're not."

And it wasn't like she didn't have experience being silently in love with her best friend.

[not_every_mage]

"That's good to hear," Anders said, and he was almost surprised by how deeply he meant it. He felt relief in the pit of his stomach. "We can figure out the rest of everything, if we're friends first. Can't we?"

It almost came out like a plea. Like something he needed to believe. (He'd made it through nine months thinking he'd never see Kathy again. Having her alive, but not truly in his life -- that was just a terrible thought.)

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's what we always said," Kathy reminded, nodding at him. "And when we both agree on something, we can't be wrong." Thinking of the bar, she bit her lip and added, "It might be hard to be friends, at least at first. I mean, things are so different now. We're so different now. But I don't give up easily."

[not_every_mage]

"We always had that in common, didn't we?" Anders said, with the slightest thoughtful hint of a smile on his face.

He bit his thumbnail. "I don't know how to ask this, I might be getting the words wrong, but --is there anything I need to do to make being friends easier? I don't want to hurt you."

He remembered the awkward moment at the bar, too

[spin_kick_snap]

She had a request on the tip of her tongue, she really did. But she swallowed it back and shook her head. "No," she said softly. "Anything I asked for would be unfair to you. You're living your life and if I'm going to be a part of it, I need to get used to that, you know?" She stood up and went to the window, ostensibly to look at the view outside of it, even though her focus was entirely inwards. "If you start to partition your life out of courtesy to me, then that's all I'll get. Bits and pieces. It's not your fault I haven't quite caught up with the idea it's not April of 2016 anymore. I'll get there."

[not_every_mage]

"All right," Anders said, uncertain. "But if there ever is anything you need, the offer stands."

He watched her for a long moment before offering something else. "Speaking of it not being April 2016 ... something happened that I should tell you. That is, I think Dante already told you, but I wanted you to hear it from me."

That wasn't at all concerning, was it?

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy turned away from the window to look at him again, head tilted. "About...?" she asked, brow furrowed.

In fairness, she was still thinking about relationship stuff and hadn't quite made the jump yet.

[not_every_mage]

"About what I did after you left," Anders explained, sounding awkward. "I went a little mad for a while."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh," Kathy said lamely. "That."

She sat down again; this didn't seem like the conversation to have while looming over him. On the other hand, her move to the window had her sitting closer to him than before.

"What happened?" She ducked her head and asked, "Should I be apologizing again?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders was surprised by how grateful he felt to have her closer.

"Only if I caught 'making terrible, reckless decisions' from you," he said. "And I can manage that all my myself."

He leaned back against the wall, eyes averted from Kathy. "Anyhow, I tried to do ... about what we just did, but with a lot less success. I had this idea that if I talked to a demon, I could find a way to bring you back. I shouldn't have. I was just so ... lost, really."

Kathy and Dante had both been gone. He'd been sleepwalking, and had stumbled into the worst possible solution.

"Cassandra caught me at it and packed me back home."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy made an angry, growling noise at the mention of Cassandra. She'd never been a fan of the girl before and this certainly didn't endear her anymore.

"You needed grief counseling, not a prison," she said, only just managing not to snap. She wasn't mad at him, after all.

[not_every_mage]

"Maybe," Anders said, sounding more sad about it than angry. "It was a dangerous thing to do, Kathy. I knew that. I was just past caring. I was having dreams about you being trapped somewhere, and I thought --- I thought maybe it was worth taking a chance."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I was...I don't know where I was," Kathy admitted. "I don't remember anything." She shook her head. "Either way, it wouldn't have been worth it. I'd rather have stayed trapped than have you make a deal with something that dangerous."

As opposed to say, Nanika.

[not_every_mage]

Anders snorted. "At least I would have known the risk I was taking. The Nanika thing, that's just ... it's dumb luck it worked."

He was almost sad Kathy didn't remember, but he supposed it was a blessing as well. If she didn't remember, maybe everything would hurt less.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was just fine with not remembering. The less she knew about what had happened after she'd died, the happier she'd be.

"Dumb luck?" she asked, confused. "What makes you think the Nanika thing was dumb luck?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders gave Kathy a how stupid are you really kind of look.

"So, somebody -- and nobody admitted to doing it -- made a wish in front of a girl with some kind of wish-granting spirit in her head," he ticked off on a finger. "And the spirit wouldn't rest until it got to grant that wish -- nothing demony in that, by the way -- so we all fucked off to LA to find your corpse and bring it back. LA is a ruin full of monsters and Raven's the only one who's been there anything like recently, so we had to trust her to navigate. We could have gotten about 17 different kinds of killed just finding the heroes, never mind what happened after then. Getting through the battle was dumb luck; we were outnumbered and half of us don't even have powers. Oh, and then we had to take you through the portal and trust you wouldn't get loose and merrily eat your way through the island.And we had to assume the spirit could do what she was asked to do and not add some kind of horrible price. Because as everyone knows, spirits and demons are perfectly trustworthy and would never enjoy getting one over on some dumb humans."

He paused for a breath. "I'm happy it worked. Of course I'm happy. But it was dumb luck, nothing else."

[spin_kick_snap]

That look had Kathy blushing. He was right; that's just not how she had taken his question. "I thought you meant that it was just dumb luck that had Nanika granting the wish, not everything that went into it," she explained. "I mean, you're right. The idea that you all went to LA and somehow found me, and managed to make it out with no one bitten or hurt is mind-boggling. And terrifying, to think of what you all might have seen. I just--I wasn't thinking of it like that."

She frowned and added, "Wait, Ringo didn't tell you she made the wish? Why not?"

That last question was rhetorical.

[not_every_mage]

Anders answered it anyhow.

"Probably because she knew I would have yelled at her," he said. "I might need to find her and do it now, actually."

But probably not. Dante liked arguing with Ringo, but to Anders it seemed like a fast route to a headache.

"Anyhow, that's what I meant. Having Nanika follow through wasn't even the luckiest part."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Please don't," Kathy said. "It was a stupid and dangerous wish to make, but it's over now. At this point, all she'll learn is that it was better not to tell you in the first place."

Drawing her knees up again, she added, "You know I wouldn't ever have expected this, right? That I would have understood if you hadn't gone along with it? It couldn't have been easy for you, not any of it."

[not_every_mage]

"It wasn't easy," Anders admitted, folding his legs beneath him and still looking past her. "I didn't want to go, at all. But they were going no matter what I said, and if I stayed behind and something happened that a healer would have helped -- I wouldn't have been able to look in the mirror."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I know that feel," she said quietly. She wasn't sure if that was a smart thing to say or if it would lead to another fight, but...yeah. She knew that feel, a lot.

[not_every_mage]

Anders ... had been thinking the same thing, as he'd talked it through. The difference between his most recent trip to LA and Kathy's was one of degree, not of kind. His wince was small.

"You aren't wrong," he said quietly,looking at his hands. "Maybe I sometimes want to play the hero too."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Why is it always playing at being a hero?" Kathy asked, surprising herself with the question. "What would it have taken for you to see me as a hero? A real one, not just a girl playing a game?"