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]

"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.

[tigerundercover]

"I mean. Sort of." She shrugged. "He kept saying you were just blaming yourself for everything. Like that was supposed to make me feel better."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Who else am I supposed to blame?" Kathy said. "I mean, there's Josh, and I do blame him, but he just created the situation. I'm the one who made the choices I did in it."

Which was pretty much Eliot's reasoning why she couldn't feel 100% to blame about Raven and her choices. Dammit, logic!

"I mean, it was those choices that made everybody mad at me in the first place, right?"

[tigerundercover]

"I wasn't mad at you," Raven said softly. "Not till this week. I mean -- I hated everything for awhile, and I was definitely mad at your world. But . . . I don't think it's about blame, really. It's too big for blame."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You were mad at me?" Kathy asked. "Because I left?"

[tigerundercover]

"Yeah, I guess. And because Dante was right, and you were blaming yourself for everything and -- I don't know. It's stupid."

'Funny blue sidekick who kills people' as a phrase that was going to stick to her.

[spin_kick_snap]

She got that. Ten months later and 'Saturday morning cartoon' still lingered.

"Eliot said something similar, I think," Kathy admitted softly. "That when I blamed myself for you being stuck out there, I took away your agency. Made it about me and my choices, not you and yours."

Okay, he hadn't said it quite like that. That was the gist, when put through Kathy's Tumblr filters.

"So you went to talk to Dante and ended up getting mad at me?" she asked, quirking a humorless smile. "Some talent there."

[tigerundercover]

Yeah, but Raven had come up with hers herself.

"I was already pretty mad when I got there. This whole week kinda . . . broke something." She stared down into her spaghetti. "You really freaked me out. The agency thing, like you said, but also. I think I was mad that I let you -- that I was going to let you kick me out. That this whole year has been all about -- you and your family and your world and -- it's not your fault, but --"

Oh hey. Here was more of those tears she'd gotten all over Haridson.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy froze in her chair. A week ago, she would have gotten up and comforted Raven without hesitation, but now she wasn't sure if that would even be wanted. After a few seconds, she pushed a napkin across the table and then just let her hand sort of...linger. There.

"I--I'm sorry," she said, hesitant. And feeling guilty all over again. Like Raven said, this whole year had been about her. "I wasn't--I wasn't gonna kick you out, though. Even if I couldn't live with what you--what happened, I wasn't going to unilaterally...This is our place, not mine. I don't get to make that decision out of hand..."

She wasn't sure if she was actually helping with this. Or if she was even focusing on the right bit at all.

[tigerundercover]

"I wasn't going to let you, anyway," Raven said, trying to get a lighter tone going. "I mean, not by Friday." She reached over to take the napkin, letting her hand brush against Kathy's. "It really isn't you, though. It's me. I . . . latch onto people and just let them decide everything for me. I did it with Charles too."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You were a kid with Charles," Kathy protested. "And you didn't know anything about the kind of life he led. Of course you let him make all the decisions! And then it just became...habit, probably. At least with him."

Kathy gave her a helpless shrug. "I do that with blame, too, I think. Guilt, I mean. If it's all my fault then when I get in trouble, at least I get in trouble for something I did. It's not unfair or arbitrary, it's just...my fault."