Baltimore, Sunday Night

[spin_kick_snap]

It had been another bad day. The worst part was, there had been nothing that had made it a bad day. It wasn't like there was rhyme or reason for it, but for some reason as the sun went down and the lights came on over the water, Kathy been struck anew by grief, her breath thick in her throat, her eyes burning with tears. Maybe the lights had reminded her of LA. Or maybe they'd reminded her of happier, easier times, when everything was good. More than good. Perfect. She'd known what she was doing and why--everything had made sense. She'd had a plan and every step she'd taken had moved her closer to her goals.

Now she had no plan, no goals other than 'make it through the day.' Some days, she felt good, like she was making progress, uncovering bits and pieces of herself that she'd thought she'd lost, trying to fit them into the person she was now like shards of a broken mirror. Other days, like today, she felt like she was drowning and every breath was a struggle around the thick weight of grief and regret and pain that sat on her chest like a creature out of myth. Most days were somewhere in-between, an odd muted gray as she fumbled her way, uncertain whether she was moving forward or backwards or even off to the side.

Like she did so many nights, she made her way to Baltimore. This time, she found herself on a rooftop somewhere, staring down at the city. She didn't think she'd even stood on this particular building as Banzai before, but still the vantage point and the angles were so familiar that the ache she felt sharpened to the point of true pain. But the tears stayed where they were, locked away, and instead she just sat, staring at the city, at the life, she'd once called hers and waited for it to pass.

It would pass, right?



[For one and up early for SP]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

... Woah. Yelling Kathy. That'd been a while.

(And yes, you could read that exact train of thought on Dante's face. He still wasn't good at poker-facing anything.)

"Okay," he said slowly. "Yeah. I'm not sure how to fix that."

[spin_kick_snap]

And just as quickly, she ran out of steam and flopped back against the wall. "I know. And I don't have any ideas about how to do that. I just don't want you thinking that it's about just sex when it's really, really not."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante sighed.

"Like I said," he said. "I can't trust you."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Can't trust me not to run off and break my neck, sure," Kathy said. "But not trust me to...what? Talk to you?"

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante stared across the roof, at the dark edges of the skyline in the distance.

"Not to lie to me," he said finally. "Not to fuck me over again later when it works out better for you."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Right," she sighed heavily. "I'd forgotten that everything I'd said to you before I'd died, every emotion I ever expressed, every bit of optimism I had about you and your future turned into a lie when an unforeseen circumstance popped up. It's not that I was wrong, or stupid, or anything like that, it's that I was lying to you."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah, 'unforseen circumstance'," Dante said, his mouth twisting. "There's always unforseen fucking circumstances, Kathy, and you showed me where I stood when it came to that."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're going up against an unkillable demon king with the hope that killing an asshole on TV and fucking with his soda distribution is going to make him stupid enough to make himself vulnerable to deal with you himself," Kathy reminded him. "Instead of sending out a legion of demons to do it for him like would be fucking smart. But, let me guess. You feel like you've got a chance. This is something that you have to do."

She gave him a sardonic look. "This might not be as wrapped up in your ego as LA was for mine, but it's not all that much different."

[rebelseekspizza]

"It is different," Dante snapped. "What do you think the alternative is for me, exactly? You think I can go take off for some nice Ivy League school instead and nobody's gonna bother me again?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're not even sure if killing Mundus will stop the demons," Kathy reminded. "I asked you that. And tell me truthfully. No bullshit. If you knew it wouldn't, but Vergil still asked for your help, would you do it anyway?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah," Dante said, without hesitation. "Because I'd be dead anyway and the fucker deserves to die."

He turned his head, looking her right in the eye. "You still don't get it, do you, Kathy? After all this fucking time. You had everything! You could've had a good life if you hadn't chosen to do what you did! Me, this is the first time I have a fucking shot at being more than a dead man walking! Get a life, get a future, the same shit you decided to throw in the dirt because it wasn't fucking good enough for you!"

[spin_kick_snap]

"That wasn't what I--arrrgh!" More of that frustrated hair-pulling. "Never mind. It was a stupid fucking point to try to make and I tried to make badly. Forget it. Sorry."

For once, that wasn't one of the sorries that came as easy as breathing. It was a real apology, one with some weight behind it.

"I just--I just want to understand. I keep trying to get the whys of all of this, but I feel like I keep missing the mark. Like, right now, it sounds like you're resentful that I didn't appreciate the future I had that you didn't, but that doesn't seem right."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante pushed up to his feet, taking a few steps away from her. Towards the edge of the roof.

"I'm not resentful," he snapped. "Can't you just-- stop? Just stop for a second, Kathy. I'm not a fucking puzzle."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm not--" Kathy began to protest. And then she used the sense God gave a lemming to actually think instead of react. "Okay, I am. I'm sorry. I'll try not to."

And then she closed her mouth on all of the other things she wanted to say, to explain, to persuade, and just tried to listen, instead.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante rubbed at his forehead, trying to find words. Trying to figure out if he even wanted to bother with it anymore.

"Things were going fine," he said. "For me. I don't want to find the magic fingersnap that puts us back to last year. Where we were last year left you dead and me fucked over."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy really, really wanted to ask how her death made him the injured party, but...but that kind of thinking had gotten them here, arguing again, with Dante three-quarters out the proverbial door. That kind of thinking hadn't done her much good at all recently.

...Where 'recently' meant the last year or so, really.

"You mean things were going fine for you over the last few weeks?" she asked. "Or did you mean the past few months?"

[rebelseekspizza]

There was a reason he'd lead with your death instead of him getting fucked over, Kathy, jesus.

"Things were going fine with you," Dante specified, turning towards her with his arms spread. "We were talking. Maybe in another few months, more than that, I don't know. I mean, did you think this was gonna be easy? You just find the magic words to convince me I'm being an asshole and you get to go back to having it all?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Well, she wasn't up on this rooftop because she was in a good mental place!

"Nooo..." Kathy said. "Not exactly." Maybe a little bit? "More like...I could find out what I needed to do to make this better. I think--I don't think I ever expected you to forgive me easily...but I did think I'd be able to find the path to forgiveness easier?"

Wait. Has she really considered that she'd be able to find a road map back into his good graces? Oh god, she had. "Oh fuck, I'm an asshole," she mumbled, more to herself than him.

So no, she wasn't in a good mental space right now. But she might be in the best one for hearing hard truths.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante spread his arms once more, making a mild gesture with his hands. "Yeah."

He dropped his arms again. Well. Mostly.

He brought one hand up to his head. "Don't gotta respect me this much to ride," he said, then lowered it to about half height, "But this would be nice."

[spin_kick_snap]

That dragged a laugh out of her, rueful though it was. "You--" deserve at least head-height wasn't going to serve her well right now, not when she was struggling to make it up to about calf-height.

"Not going to be easy," she said, hoping he got that she'd be the problem, not him. "Good thing I like it rough."

And now she was crying. Dammit.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante sighed.

Dropped his hand for real this time, and paced back towards her, sitting back down on the floor.

He didn't reach out to hug her, or anything. But he did sit down next to her. Kinda summed it up right now, didn't it?

[spin_kick_snap]

Pretty well, yeah.

Eventually, it wound down to a few hiccuping sniffles. "I keep thinking at some point I have to run out of fucking tears already," she said, wiping her face dry and mostly succeeding in making it redder and blotchier. She would never be a pretty crier. "But I guess I haven't hit that point yet."

A bit of rambly nonsense, sure, but it kept her from apologizing again. Which, she'd realized in a moment of tearful clarity, added to the emotional burden of Dante's side of the conversation. Fuck.

[rebelseekspizza]

It was a good thing she wasn't a pretty crier. Seeing her looking human took the winds out of Dante's sails a little, like he wasn't railing at some distant picture but a real person.

"Yeah, that'll be a while," he said, sounding halfway to uncomfortable. Not because she was crying, but, well.

Wind. Sails.

"I wanna be friends," he said. "Okay?"

[spin_kick_snap]

She nodded. "Okay," she said. "That means a lot. That you want to, I mean."

[rebelseekspizza]

"I just don't know how far I'm cool with it going," Dante said slowly. "'Cause like I said, right now I don't feel like I can trust you."

He shrugged, his shoulders going into something close to a huddle. "Maybe that'll change if we keep talking. Maybe it won't. I don't know and I got no answers for you. Telling me I'm wrong won't change that."