Apartment Above Luke's, Sunday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

By Sunday morning, Kathy was ready to leave Boston. It was colder in Boston than in Baltimore and her attempts to forget herself in bars and clubs had had sub-optimal results. She was going to chalk it up to residual concern over Ezra's warnings about the Coterie, even if the truth was likely far more complicated.

With far more clothing, makeup, and accessories than she'd left with (look, they called it retail therapy for a reason!), Kathy quietly let herself into the apartment. Trading her shoes for her indoor slippers, she realized just how much she'd missed the place; it had only been theirs for a few days, but she'd already gotten into the mindset of thinking of it as home. And if this were home, she had to start acting like it. No more running away. She might not know what she was doing or anything like that, but at least she had somewhere she could feel safe to not know from.

She put her bags in her room, promising herself she'd put everything away later along with the rest of the unpacking she still had to do, and went looking for her roommate. Everything between them was still up in the air, including Kathy's own feelings, but avoiding Raven wasn't going to do much good for either of them.

[For the roomie if she's around, but open to visitors and phone calls!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy frowned at the stain where she'd dropped the vase on Valentine's Day. Raven must have cleaned it up, as all the glass shards and the flowers were gone. A glance in the trash showed both the remains of both the dead flowers and the vase.

Staring at them, she came to a decision. She made a quick phone call and was in the process of making dinner when there was a knock on the door. She settled up, then went back to cooking.

Half an hour later, there was a soft knock on Raven's door. "Raven?" she called, sounding tentative. "I made dinner."

[tigerundercover]

That was not what Raven expected.

She cracked her door open, saw the look on Kathy's face, then opened it enough to lean through. "Really?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I mean it's just spaghetti," Kathy said, hands twisting around themselves. "Uhh, no meatballs. But I put a lot of veggies and some balsamic vinegar in the sauce, so it doesn't quite taste like it came from a jar?"

...That probably wasn't what Raven meant. Right.

"Really," she continued. "I thought we could maybe talk over dinner?"

[tigerundercover]

All of that sounded really promising. None of it had been factored into Raven's numerous rehearsed conversations in her head for when Kathy finally came home.

Still, she had to check.

"You're not gonna try to kick me out, are you?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy shook her head. "Are you planning on leaving?" she asked.

She wouldn't deny that she'd thought about it. But if she hadn't even been able to tell Raven to leave five seconds after Raven confessed to killing her family, there was no way she'd be able to do it now.

[tigerundercover]

"I thought about it," Raven admitted. "But . . . I don't really have anywhere else to go." She finally opened the door all the way and came out into the hallway. "So. Alright. Dinner."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I set the table," Kathy said, turning to head back to the kitchen. "Hope you're hungry. I'm bad at cooking for just two."

On the dining room table was a vase of flowers, a recreation of the bouquet Raven had given her and that had died on the floor.

[tigerundercover]

Raven stopped when she saw them, for a moment not sure how they could be there. It'd taken her forever to end up cleaning them up. There'd been a lot of crying involved.

"Kathy. When did you. . . ?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"They just arrived," Kathy explained. "I felt bad about what happened to the first ones."

She was almost tempted to joke that she now had the ability to bring dead things back to life, like that show about the baker, but she wasn't feeling particularly jokey right now.

Kathy sat, starting to spoon spaghetti onto her plate with more concentration than was actually warranted. "If you're looking for a definitive answer about what this all means or how I feel, I'm afraid I can't give you one," she said quietly. "But I don't hate you."

[tigerundercover]

Raven let out a soft breath through her nose, and sat down across from Kathy. "That's about the best I can ask for." That, and Kathy not looking at her like she was a monster. "Where did you go?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Boston," Kathy said. "First portal available that went somewhere I've never been. Turned out to be Ezra's Boston, which was a little...weird. Got to have the 'Hi, I'm alive again' talk at his work."

[tigerundercover]

"Wow," Raven said. "Um, yeah. A little awkward." She shook her head. "I talked to some people here, by the way. Not about you -- remembering. Just the stuff I did."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Is it helping?" Kathy asked. And then she was giving Raven a 'wtf?' look. "Also, you told someone I was pregnant? Because Eliot called me, thinking I was knocked up. It was a very weird conversation."

[tigerundercover]

And there went Raven's head into her hands. "Oh god. No. That was -- Hardison misunderstood when -- okay, so never try to hedge around a topic by starting with 'Did Parker tell you about the baby'."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Baby?" Kathy asked, now utterly at sea.

[tigerundercover]

Raven shook her head. "You really don't want to know about the baby."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'll take your word for it," Kathy said with a nod. And she was also very much not going to wonder about it, because there was only a few things it could be and she really had no interest in thinking about any of them.

Instead, she was just going to go back to her original question. "Is it helping? Talking to people, I mean."

[tigerundercover]

"Yeah," Raven admitted. "Talking to Hardison got me out of 'run away' mode. And -- Dante made me realize that I wanted to stay here, even if you --" She cut herself off and spent a moment concentrating on dishing out her own pasta. "And Jono just kind of . . . put it all in context."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Good," Kathy said. "I don't know what I would have done if I'd come home and you weren't here." Other than felt horrendously guilty for it.

She poked at a chunk of squash with her fork. "Sorry I ran away," she said. "I wasn't trying to, like, hurt you or anything. I just couldn't--it was all too much here. It felt like I couldn't breathe. I just needed to get away. Not from you." She paused and then amended it. "Not just from you. From everything."

[tigerundercover]

"I get it," Raven told her. "I kind of ran away from it too, right after. I just . . . kept going."

Her running had had more direction. But not a lot less desperation.

"So you talked to Mr. Spencer?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I did," she said. "Once we both realized what we were talking about. I kinda threw everything at him. From remembering to you to even the guys. Just...everything. It was a long talk. He says I need to keep talking, because that's the only way I'm going to get through all of this."

Tearing off a hunk of bread from downstairs, she dipped it into the sauce and resolutely refused to think of what else resembled chunky tomato sauce. She'd already given up meat for the time being. She wasn't going to let a bunch of stupid memories take away her love of Italian.

"So you talked to Dante? I didn't think you really knew one another."

[tigerundercover]

"We don't, really. But he was at the music shop when I went looking for Jono, and I guess he heard about our fight on the radio or something. He told me to knock off the self-pity."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Self-pity?" Kathy asked, putting her her fork down hard enough that it clanged against her plate. She looked across the table with a scowl. "You know, Raven. If you'd turned into turned into a bear and mauled him a little, he would've healed."

[tigerundercover]

Raven blinked. ". . . Actually I didn't know that. I just told him off for not being nicer to you."

Well. Sort of.

[spin_kick_snap]

It was a good thing her fork was already down. Otherwise it would have falled smack into her spaghetti. "You did?" she asked, blinking in surprise.