Barry's Old Warehouse, Saturday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy hadn't meant to lie to Anders when she said that wouldn't be alone tonight. She'd had every intention of going back to the apartment, letting Raven yell at her for that bullshit note she'd left, and then spend the rest of the evening pass by in a Netflix binge, where she'd watch six episodes of a forgettable anime and only drag herself to bed when the sun came up.

That wasn't what happened. Too filthy and injured for Baltimore, she'd made her way to Barry's old warehouse of all places. But it hadn't been the worst place to hole up while she had a breakdown. There'd been a shower, a clothing replicator, even a prototype for a food fabricator, though Kathy'd had to force herself to eat. It also had a lot of bits of heavy machinery that barely dented when she slammed her batons against them and pillows that made a most satisfied ripping sound when she tore them apart. Best of all, it was in the middle of the warehouse district and no one had come to find out what all the clamor was about, save for one squirrel that had run away after she'd flung a bottle of rum at it and screamed, "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

And there were plenty of places to curl up and crash once she'd worn herself out.

It was afternoon before she finally woke up, stiff and sore and still tired. Her reflection in a piece of shiny sheet metal was a blurry composite of light and dark--dark circles under her eyes, dark bruises elsewhere, pale face, and even bits of white feathers caught in her dark hair from her destructive rampage. She barely recognized herself. Hell, she barely looked human. If this were LA again, she wouldn't blame anyone for mistaking her for an ex. "Look at me, I'm a wreck," she muttered, shaking her head. "Just look at me."

"Look at me and tell me who I am,
Why I am, what I am.
Call me a fool and it's true I am,
I don't know who I am.
It's such a shame,
I'm such a sham.
No one knows who I am."

She was dancing now, Fandom's whimsy moving her feet in slow, sweeping circles. She barely noticed, not with memories from the year before rising up unbidden. Memories of when she'd been happy; filled with wonder and songs and laughter.

"Once there were sweet possibilities,
I could see, just for me.
Now all my dreams are just memories,
Fated never to be.
Time's not a friend, hurrying by.
I wonder who am I?

Am I the face of the future?
Am I the face of the past?
Am I the one who must finish last?"

Her circles slowed, bright memories fading back to grim reality. She came to a stop right back at the metal sheet acting as a mirror. Once again, she looked into it, and her reflection stared back at her with dull eyes. She barely recognized the girl in the makeshift mirror. And wasn't sure she wanted to.

"Look at me and tell me who I am,
Why I am, what I am.
Will I survive?
Who will give a damn,
If no one knows who I am?"

"Nobody knows," she whispered to herself. "Not even you. No one knows who I am...."

[Post is open and musical!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy barked a sharp laugh. "Why? Nothing I'm saying is wrong. Hell, most of what I'm saying is a variation of something you've said to me! Every day, I get up and I see the consequences of the choices I made. So why should I ease up here, even if I knew how."

Which...she wasn't entirely sure she did. So there was that.

[rebelseekspizza]

"You fucked up, I'm not saying you didn't," Dante said.

He sank further against the couch. "Old rivalries are so hard to mend
Were it so easy to choose your friends

You were there by my side
A friend through it all
But you left me beaten and bruised
And falling apart

Though I tear and divide
I won't let you fall
There is blood pumping through
Your machine of a heart."

Not exactly the point he'd been getting at, but okay, Fandom.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was quiet, turning those lyrics over in her mind.

"How real was that?" she asked him some moments later. "How much of that was real, versus just the closest song Fandom could find?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"... I don't know," Dante said, running a borderline self-conscious hand through his hair. "I just... don't wanna see you go to pieces."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy watched his hand, opened her mouth to comment, then closed it again. He was probably well aware of what his hair looked like.

"You're too late for that," she told him instead. "I've been in pieces since I came back. Sometimes they're just in a more functional configuration than others."

Kathy thought she'd said what needed saying perfectly well, but Fandom felt the need to chime in.

"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything..."

"I'm not on drugs," she hastened to clarify.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I would've been."

Had done just that, right after she died, but pointing that out wouldn't help.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I thought about it," Kathy said. "Not brave enough for it, though. Never even abused cough syrup. No wonder you laugh at me."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante looked at her, and the rash, and the state of the room.

"I'm not laughing," he said.

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're right," she agreed. "I should have amended it to laughed."

She looked up at him. "Shouldn't we be singing about you? You're the one who had his life turned upside down yesterday. All my issues are old news."

Glaring upwards into middle distance, she scolded the island. "Really? Really? And that wasn't the perfect opening for the Fresh Prince theme song?"

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante snorted softly. "I'm fine," he started.

The island really needed to stop interrupting him.

"--Praise to my father
Blessed by the water
Black night, dark sky
The devil’s cry

Bless me with the
Leaf off of the tree
On it I see
The freedom reign

We are falling
The light is calling
Tears inside me
Calm me down."

[spin_kick_snap]

Maybe it was the island's way of calling bullshit?

"Did you want to tell me how fine you are again?" Kathy asked, an amused lilt to her voice. "I'm just not sure if this is your usual dodge to get out of talking about you, or if it's specifically to me."

All the time Kathy had spent finding ways past his walls, he'd gone and built them up bigger and stronger against her. Again, though, that was her fault more than his.

[rebelseekspizza]

"And you're trying to use me to stop talking about you," Dante said with mild irritation. "Puts us even, right?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"You're who I learned the gambit from," Kathy reminded. "And we've talked about me. Multiple times. And it's hard for me to keep talking when it's all one-sided. Jesus Christ, Dante, I announced your mother is in Hell and you haven't even commented on that."

[rebelseekspizza]

The silence on the other side of the room made it clear Dante hadn't actually picked up on that detail amidst the chaos of yesterday.

He stared at her.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh fuck," Kathy said, hands flying up to her mouth.

[rebelseekspizza]

"She's where?" Dante asked at last, voice coming out strangled.

[spin_kick_snap]

"In Hell," Kathy said quietly. "I said that to Vergil to try to get him to listen and I just assumed that you'd--"

Oh god, she'd just ruined everything. Again.

[rebelseekspizza]

"No, I was..."

Paying attention to other shit at the time.

"Fuck," Dante said lamely.

[spin_kick_snap]

"How much do you want to know?" Kathy asked in a small voice, wishing very much that Barry's food fabricator made booze.

She was going to answer all of his questions from now on and never try to get him to talk about anything else. Assuming he wanted to continue talking to her after this.

"I heard the words come out
I felt that I would die
It hurt so much to hurt you

Then you look at me
You're not shouting anymore
You're silently broken

I'd give anything now
to kill those words for you"

[rebelseekspizza]

"What was it like?"

Dante kinda hated himself for asking. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I was only in there once," Kathy said, looking at her hands. "She used to sneak into Purgatory to talk to me but she was always worried about her jailer catching her. It had been...some amount of time...since I'd seen her." Time had been weird in Purgatory, fluid and hard to keep track of. "I was worried and I could see it, a bit, when I looked through the barrier. And even though she'd told me not to, I went through to find her. To see if she was all right."

She'd been a tiny, powerless spirit. There was nothing she'd have been able to do if Eva hadn't been all right. But she couldn't just leave Dante's mother to whatever fate she'd been experiencing.

"It is to Limbo what Limbo is to...I don't know, the park in Fandom when everyone's a kid again," she said. It was easier than trying to describe it. "I don't remember a lot of it. I don't think I can and not go crazy." She said that as literal fact. "She kept screaming at me to leave her--we were getting chased by a demon and it was like one of those nightmares where you can't make your body move--I reached for her hand and then...And then I was waking up on the couch in Eliot's house with all of you around me."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Shitting hell."

Dante winced a second later, as he realized just how shittily he'd just accidentally punned.

He tried to think of something else to say, but he had nothing. Fuck. Fuck, that sucked beyond the telling of it for her, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"She deserved better," he said hoarsely, in the end.

[spin_kick_snap]

"She did. Does. I asked her about it. About why she was there when she was an angel," Kathy said, idly tracing circles on the floor with a finger. They stood out amid the dust and other detritus covering it. "But heaven branded her a traitor for loving Sparda and bearing his sons and when she was killed, that's where she ended up."

And Kathy had been glad that she wasn't a Christian then; glad that a heaven that would do that to one of its own had no claim on any part of her.

"I'm sorry, Dante," she said, looking up at him. "I'm sorry, I tried, I really did. You don't have to believe me and I'm not sure what I could have done, but I swear to you, I tried--"

But in the end, she'd come back to life and left his mother in Hell.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shut his eyes. "Kathy," he said, with an evenness he didn't actually feel, "Stop. There's nothing you coulda done for her."

Nothing he could do for her now, either. Not from here.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I know," she said. "That's why I didn't tell you. Telling you accomplishes nothing but making you hurt. I thought it might be enough to rattle Vergil--but no. It's just enough to hurt."