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

[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?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders looked surprised by the question, and shrugged helplessly. He knew Kathy and her LA friends called themselves heroes, but he hadn't fully processed what that meant.

"I don't think of heroes as real people," he said in the end. "It's somebody in a story. Somebody who beats back a horde of demons and saves a village single-handed. It'd be strange to think of somebody I cared about as one."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Cared?" Kathy repeated, the past tense hitting her hard. "Err, never mind" she added quickly, trying to change the subject. "Look, I just want you to know that, either way, it wouldn't have changed anything. There would always have been someone I would have had to prove myself to. Dante, or my parents. Myself. Someone."

[not_every_mage]

Anders screwed up his face at the repeated word before realizing what Kathy meant and getting an anxious twist in his stomach. "I didn't mean it that way," he protested. "I still care, I promise. I just said cared because we were talking about what would have happened."

That made sense, right? (He hoped it made sense; it was important to him that Kathy knew he still liked her.)

"Anyhow, maybe that's the point," he said slowly. "It doesn't matter who else sets what other standards, if you don't meet your own. So if you feel like a hero, maybe you are one."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy nodded, relaxing just enough to be noticeable, even though she hadn't felt herself tense. She didn't think he cared for her the the way she really wanted him to, not any more, but that was for her to exhaust herself over in private.

It would make for a different reason to lie awake in the dark than her current one. It would also be a significant step up, sadly.

"Don't worry, I don't feel much like one anymore," Kathy said with a laugh that tried not to be bitter and only marginally succeeded. "I don't know if I'll ever be putting on rainbows again. Banzai died in Los Angeles. Probably better to let her stay dead."

She mourned her alter-ego, the persona that had given her the confidence to finally be Kathy, but in light of everything that had happened to her, compounded with Josh's betrayal, and she didn't think she could ever separate those again.

[not_every_mage]

"I can't say that wouldn't be a relief to me," Anders admitted, after a brief moment in which honesty warred with his urge not to make Kathy upset again. "At least take a break. There'll still be people to save once you feel like your head is on straight."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Yeah, pretty much," Kathy agreed. "It's not that the drive to do that isn't there, but it's just--buried. I guess. Under everything else."

[not_every_mage]

"What's 'everything else'?" Anders asked curiously.

[spin_kick_snap]

"The fact that I died already doing this," Kathy said, ticking the items off on her fingers. "The fear I'll die again. Josh's creating the exes and not telling anyone. Trying to figure out who I am now and what I want to do with my life. Guilt. Shame. Anger. Loss. Grief."

Kathy was out of fingers and could still go on. "Heroing gave me so much," she said. "I don't know if I ever would have been brave enough for Dante or Ezra or even you without it. But at the same time, it took everything away from me."

She looked him in eye. "I didn't even save my family. How can I be any kind of hero if I didn't save them?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders' wince at that was not small.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't now the answers to any of that, and I wish I did. I wish I could say something that would help." A pause. "And I wish I had kept my bloody mouth shut about your family the other weekend, so I could say it wasn't your fault and you'd believe me."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy's smile was sad and, for a second, she leaned over to rest her head on his shoulder. That was okay, right? Friends did that?

"I wouldn't though," she said softly. Hearing him say so had hurt because she'd known it was true. "I'd know I was responsible. Remember when I said I'd never forgive you and Dante if you took me away from LA and my family died? That was true. The only thing is, it's not you and Dante who are to blame. It's me."

And she wasn't sure she'd ever really be able to let that go and forgive herself.

[not_every_mage]

Anders reached out, arm snaking around her waist in an attempt to comfort her. It might be only friendship between them now, but he liked having her close.

"Maybe leave that in LA with Banzai and the rainbows," he suggested. "You can't change it. No point dwelling on it."