spin_kick_snap | Boston Mariott, Thursday Night

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Boston Mariott, Thursday Night

Kathy...Kathy wasn't doing so well. She had a whole slew of reasons why she wasn't doing well, from her realization she remembered everything about being dead, to finding out Raven had killed her family, to her run-in with Ezra at the Coterie-run bar when she'd just wanted to drown her sorrows the old-fashioned way, it had been one thing after another after a-fucking-nother.

Which was why the phone call at ten pm found her putting the last touches on her makeup and hair for an evening out on the town. Her outfit left very little to the imagination and even less as protection to the elements, but she didn't care. Hell, that was the whole point. This was the third night she was in Boston and the third night of making questionable choices in the pursuit of getting her brain to shut down so she wouldn't have to think about any of the things she didn't want to think about. Sure, it was a weeknight in the dead of winter, but Boston was a college town. There were always people willing to party.

Though that didn't explain how Eliot knew what was going on. She listened to his message with a frown and immediately called him back. The only person who knew she was here was Ezra, so who'd gone to Eliot, carrying tales?

[Eliot's thread is chronologically first, but open to phone calls or that guy in Boston if he'd like! NFB for off-island shenanigans. Content warning for alcohol as a coping mechanism in the comments.]

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"You have had it hard. Everyone else havin' it hard doesn't change that." Eliot really wished she were in front of him instead of just over the phone. Sophie might be able to talk her down from this far away, but he wasn't sure he could. "What would you have done different? To keep your family safe."

"Gotten them out," Kathy snarled, frustrated. "Gotten them to the island while there were still portals. Kidnapped my dad if that's what it took. You're a retrieval specialist! I would have had you go retrieve them! LA was lost long before I went home. I should have just gotten them out and left the city to die."

"You really think you coulda done that? Left the rest of your city behind? Your friends from school before you came here. Your neighbors. All those people you saved from the Seventeens before everything went down."

"Didn't have any friends before I came to Fandom," Kathy muttered, quibbling because he was more right than she wanted him to be.

"I don't believe that for a second. And I don't believe you woulda been able to leave all those folks behind if you thought you had even half a chance of savin' 'em." Eliot sighed. "You made your choices, darlin'. You made them because you can't know the future. Because you can't control everything that's gonna happen. And your friends, your family, they made theirs. Take the blame that's yours, darlin', that you can maybe learn somethin' from. But don't try takin' anyone else's. All that's gonna do is hurt."

"I really didn't!" Kathy protested. "Just Sarah! I was too quiet in school, only spoke up when I was answering questions. No one got to know me. Same on my gymnastics team."

Again, quibbling. Because if she could focus on what was wrong, she could ignore what was right. Guilt was easier than blame. Guilt meant she'd had control and failed. Blame meant it was all out of her hands.

"Then what blame is mine?" she asked. "If it's not all of it..."

"What happened after you got bit?" Eliot asked softly.

"We went to 'Genny's infirmary," Kathy said. "It took us awhile to get there. We kept fighting. I kept fighting. There were always people to save. We got there and 'Genny checked me out. I told him I'd gotten bit less than an hour before. I was a little dizzy, but the bite had stopped bleeding and gone kinda numb. He said that people took about twelve hours to turn and that I'd be okay for a few hours while he took care of some of the more time-sensitive patients. I told him that was fair, they brought me to a room and that was the last time I saw him till just before..."

"You knew you had a lethal wound," Eliot summarized. "Somethin' that was guaranteed to kill you unless you sought treatment. And insteada goin' right away and insisting on getting that treatment, you dallied and put everyone else above yourself."

"But I had twelve hours," Kathy protested. "Or, at least, I thought I did. Even 'Genny--" she stumbled over his name. "Even Josh thought so. And the people we saved--their lifespans were being counted in minutes."

Or less.

"We got to the clinic in less than an hour. And then I sat and waited for seven more."

"So you don't wanna blame yourself for makin' that choice, but you're fine blamin' yourself for the whole goddamn apocalypse?"

"...Yes?"

Look, it was complicated! And confusing. Even for Kathy.

"Even if I'd gotten to Josh sooner, he would have made me wait, because we thought we had more time. That's a clear and direct line of causality," she said slowly, trying to make sense of it in her own mind. "But I didn't even try to convince my family to leave. It's like asingk, 'What would have changed if.' What would have changed if I'd gotten to Josh in three minutes instead of forty? Nothing, other than more people would have died. But what would have changed if I got my family out in time? They would have lived and so would I. What would have changed if I'd just stayed on the island? I never would have died, Raven never would have been trapped. See?"

"And you woulda been depressed and upset over 'letting' your whole world die without even trying to stop it, and you'd probably still be drunk off your ass and hurting in a hotel in Boston right now. And for fucksake, Kathy, you did not make Raven go after you. And I'm guessin' it was probably pretty damn clear to your family that stayin' in LA was a fucking terrible idea. Other people make their own choices. You rather everyone you know just obey your whims like they're robots?"

"If it meant that they were all alive and not traumatized after a year of walking through hell, then maybe," Kathy said defensively.

She didn't mean it and he knew it.

"Think about that for just a few seconds longer."

With an annoyed huff, Kathy reluctantly admitted, "Fine. No, all right? No, I don't want people obeying my every whim without will of their own. Happy?"

"Depends. Let's talk about your choices, now. Not how they mighta led to your friends makin' their choices. Just the ones you actually made."

"I decided to go to LA," Kathy said tonelessly. "I decided to stay and fight, even though I'm a Satur--" Her breath caught. Even now, it still hurt. "A Saturday morning cartoon. I decided not to get my family out when they had the chance. I decided not to get myself out when I had the chance. I decided to keep fighting after I was bit."

"Hey," Eliot said. "You think I woulda spent the last coupla years training up a 'Saturday morning cartoon'?" Really now. "You're perfectly capable. So were plenty of the others I saw out there who got themselves bit, too. Other'n that, yeah. That's a decent list. That stuff, you can learn from."

She already had. She'd learned to never be a hero. But she didn't say that one out loud. Because it would sound petulant and childish and this one, she meant.

"What would you have learned from them?" she asked instead, hoping for some mentorly insight.

"Not every battle can be won," Eliot said. "Now, you got a better idea of where that line lays. And you need to know what your body can do and take. Not how it works for everyone else. No other body's gonna react like yours. And lastly, that there ain't no such thing as a 'safe' delay when it comes to fatal wounds. You get it treated ASAP, or you're gamblin' with your life."

All of which could cheerfully be avoided by keeping her idiotic instincts under control and not trying to be a hero. See? Easy-peasy.

Ugh. There was a saying she was going to have to scrub from her brain. Thanks, ex-memories.

"Any advice for how I'm supposed to figure out what to do about Raven?" she asked, voice small.

"What do you want to do about Raven?"

"I don't know," Kathy admitted. "I'm mad at her, but I don't have the right to be. It's what I would have done. It's what I would have wanted to be done. But I can't stop thinking that my parents are dead and it's her fault. Except it isn't. My dad was dead before she ever got home."

And that was her fault. Hers and Josh's.

Or, you know, her father's.

"Mad ain't usually got anything to do with right," Eliot said. "You're gonna feel how you feel. Beatin' yourself up for it ain't gonna fix it. Hell, I was mad at everyone after my mom died, and ain't none of them had anything even to do with it."

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