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]

But it would have been one more time that he asked her for something and she'd denied him.

"I'm already fucked up," she reminded him. "If I weren't, yesterday wouldn't have been so bad. 'Cause I'm broken when I'm open. And I don't feel like I am strong enough."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Just... don't fuck yourself up on my behalf, all right?"

Dante turned his head to look at her. Maybe for something else, too-- though Fandom got in the way. "Well I'm not
The kind to insist
You couldn't have missed
We must co exist
So please listen to me
There is no such thing as human debris."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy's eyes flicked downwards for a moment but skipped back up to his eyes when he started singing. "I'm still feeling my way through, figuring out what I can handle and what I can't," she said. "But I can promise that I'm never going die for you. Any and all martyr complexes have been firmly put down. "

[rebelseekspizza]

"Good," Dante said, sagging back against the couch. "Because that's the absolute last thing I want. You should get to live your life already."

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's on the to-do list," Kathy said, still sitting where she'd been. "Right after get my shit together and figure out what I want to do with my life."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Making any headway on that?" Dante asked.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I don't know what to do with my life
Should I give it up and make a new start
I don't know what to do with my life
'cause the one I've got just tears me apart."

Thank you, Fandom. "By which I mean, not really," Kathy said when her voice was her own again. "Pretty sure going to medical school isn't it, though."

Honestly, if she'd just agreed to become a pantsless hobo in room 322, maybe all of this heartache could have been avoided.

[rebelseekspizza]

"You could always just turn Dite's into a franchise, I guess," Dante suggested.

It wasn't like Kathy didn't have enough experience with the subject matter.

[spin_kick_snap]

She turned a little rosy at that, thoughts trending in a similar direction. "You know if I make it into a franchise, I'll end up teaming up with Planned Parenthood to make it into a safe-sex, consent-celebrating, crunchy-hippy sex-Tumblr paradise that exists to, like, convince teen girls to respect themselves while having great sex."

...Which, yeah, sounded pretty awesome.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante squinted at her. "Just don't forget about dicks," he said finally.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm way too mostly-straight not to," Kathy informed him, nose in the air.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Mostly straight, huh?" Dante said, nudging her with an arm.

[spin_kick_snap]

And there were her hands right up to hide her face. And squeaking noises.

"So...remember when we swapped genders?" she asked, hoping that could be explanation enough?

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante blinked.

Then he burst out laughing. "You fucked Anders like that?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Her nod was answer enough. Except Fandom obviously didn't think so.

"Don't you tell me to deny it
I've done wrong and I want to suffer for my sins
I've come to you 'cause I need guidance to be true
And I just don't know where I can begin"

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante laughed. He had to. "Oh, man," he said. "I shouldn't ask for details, right?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy peeked out at him from between her fingers and shrugged. "I don't know," she said with more honesty than amusement. "Is that something we don't talk about anymore?"

Sex. Sex with Anders. Sex with her. Sex with her and Anders.

Not once in the past few months had Dante given any indication that he was thinking about her in that way and she wasn't going to force the issue. Sure, they'd dodged around it, that genitalia-swapped afternoon in her apartment, but much of that had been in the abstract and the rest centered around her temporary equipment. The exception to the rule, one might say.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante'd meant it... well, not jokily. He was just naturally curious about this stuff - it didn't so much have to do with Kathy's nether regions as with the novelty of that happening at all.

So he blinked. "I don't know?" he echoed. "I mean, it's just weird fucking."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'll have you know, it was very good fucking," Kathy told him. Because she was proud of herself, dammit. "For someone bad at getting her own self off without help from toys at the very least, I was decently competent at getting him."

There, she'd started and he could just decide for himself how much was too much.

[rebelseekspizza]

"You do kinda have experience with that," Dante pointed out. "Same reason I had no complaints about Isabela, either."

[spin_kick_snap]

Well, except for the spanking.

"Getting eaten out repeatedly does not mean that I'd be very good at returning the attentions," Kathy said, skipping over the part where most of that experience had been a year ago anyway. "I wasn't entirely sure I'd like the activity anyway."

She was blushing again.

[rebelseekspizza]

Yeah, but the spanking was unconnected to the larger genderswap sex thing at hand.

"Buuuut you did?" Dante said, tilting his head. "Holy shit."

[spin_kick_snap]

"He made such lovely noises," Kathy said, like that would explain everything. "And it's not like I don't know what I taste like, so it wasn't as entirely a foreign concept. And, well, he was so very pretty...I still like sucking cock more--" Still blushing. Very good. "But it wasn't--err, well, by which I mean it was--I'd do it again, if the opportunity arose."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Right, well, this one's for the history books," Dante said, looking up at the ceiling for reasons that had nothing to do with feeling shitty, for once. Instead, he spelled out fake words in the sky. "The Day Kathy Li Learned To Love the Beaver."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Nobody likes smugness," Kathy informed him, sticking out her tongue. "And it's not like I'm going to go trawling Baltimore for girls to pick up. I just..."

If such an opportunity presented itself, it was no longer the hard and immediate no it had once been. Very different.