Apartment Above Luke's, Tuesday

[spin_kick_snap]

It was Tuesday. Kathy knew she was supposed to be getting to work sometime this afternoon, doing stock or cleaning or trying to find people to come work for her or any number of countless, pointless projects. She had a routine and routines were important, at least according to what little poking around she'd done on the computer for Helpful tips when you're a basket case. But she couldn't summon the energy to get up off the couch today. Hell, getting out of bed had been a titanic struggle and the only reason she'd managed a shower at all was because she'd sat on the floor of the tub and just let the water run over her for most of it.

It sucked. She'd really thought she was doing better. She'd been okay for a few days there, genuinely happy and smiling and laughing. The kids had been great distractions while they'd been there, but they were gone now, leaving a hole in Kathy's heart and the promise of a future that seemed further away than ever, today. From 'okay' to 'utter distaster' in just twelve hours, only this time she didn't even have the outlet of fighting in Baltimore to try to channel some of this bullshit into. All she had was Hulu and about a million seasons of Hades' Kitchen to get through while she tried very hard not to think about what Saturday had been or her alternate reality daughter with her dead sister's name.

"You're never going to impress him with that mess," she informed the TV from inside her comfy cocoon of blanket. "It looks like you threw up on a plate. Way to just hand the victory to the blue team, ladies, jeez."

[Open, though I'll be off to bed soon.]

Comments

[not_every_mage]

Anders shrugged as he kept petting her hair. "I'm all right. I don't think I'm made to have four girls all at once, at least not yet. But even if they're a massive headache, it's always a little sad when they leave."

[spin_kick_snap]

"On Monday, I sent three of them down to bug their grandpa while I took a nap," she admitted, leaning into that petting like she were Lachlan or Blondie. It felt so nice. "Kids are exhausting, even the twins who are old enough to look out for themselves."

[not_every_mage]

"I think that made them more exhausting," Anders said, shaking his head. "They ganged up on us like -- wait. Grandpa?"

Anders knew Kathy was close to Eliot, sure, but he'd missed the unofficial adoption.

[spin_kick_snap]

Right. Which meant he'd missed everything. Kathy had some catching him up to do.

"Oh, uhhh, yeah," she said, looking up at him. "Eliot and I talked about a lot of stuff when I...I should start from the beginning." And not just jump to the 'I got taken into custody but don't worry, I wasn't arrested' part of the story. "So, umm, I'm not part of that fighting ring anymore. It got shut down by the cops the week after we got back from Limbo City. It sucks that I've lost that outlet, but I decided not to go looking for another one."

[not_every_mage]

Anders, who had visibly tensed as soon as Kathy mentioned the fighting group, relaxed at the end of the story.

"Good," he said firmly. "I talked to Dante and now I understand why it helped you a little better, but you know how much I hate the idea. Glad it's over."

He nudged her with an elbow. "So, Eliot cheered you up after you got kicked out by the cops, something like that? And now he's dad?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"It's more that he came to get me after I was picked up by the cops," she said. "They arrested most of the people there, but thought I was underage, because I had a fake and couldn't remember if I was eighteen or nineteen."

Consequence of missing your birthday and most of your eighteenth year.

"So they looked at me and figured I was some young idiot kid in need of guidance and told me to call an adult. I called Eliot, he picked me up, we had a fight and I said, 'You're not my dad!' or something equally trite..." She flushed, embarrassed to have practically followed the script for an after school special. "And he told me that he kind of felt like it. That he grieved for me like I was his own when I died. He's not Dad, I can't call him that...but he's more than just Eliot. It's weird. But good weird."

Her relationship with Eliot (and to a lesser extent, Parker and Hardison) were probably the one thing completely positive thing in her life right now.

[not_every_mage]

"I'd definitely agree with weird," Anders said, studying her. He was annoyed she hadn't told him sooner, but that seemed a bit beside the point -- and anyhow, they hadn't seen each other much lately and it wasn't the kind of news to spoil prom night with. "If you're happy about it, I'm happy. Though he's a little intimidating as a father-in-law."

[spin_kick_snap]

Or a great topic to bring up in front of the kids. 'So, I know what the inside of a precinct looks like...'

"Father-in-law, huh?" Kathy asked, a small smile on her face. "Now who's got expectations for the future." She gently headbutted his shoulder to show that she was just teasing. "Still, I'm definitely feeling the lack," she continued quietly. "There's all this tension growing and no release. So I get days like today when everything is just one big I can't."

[not_every_mage]

"'Girlfriend's dad' seemed awkward!," Anders protested, with a grin, and then rubbed the spot she'd head butted thoughtfully. "Hmm. If you need a release, I'm not sure whether I should drag you off to bed, or tell you to take up running."

[spin_kick_snap]

"It's me," she reminded him. "I run. Believe me, I run. But running doesn't take my brain away. Not for awhile anyway."

She licked her lips, trying to find a way to word it. "Until I'm exhausted and aching, there's nothing about running that requires the totality of my concentration the way fighting did." Or sex did, but she didn't want him to feel obligated about having sex with her. "I can't outrun my brain, sadly."

[not_every_mage]

Anders frowned a bit and said what had been in the back of his mind since she told him about fight club.

"It's strange to me that you get that kind of comfort out of hurting other people," he said. "It's you, like you said."

[spin_kick_snap]

"A lot of it is more about getting hit than hitting someone else," Kathy said, drawing her knees up and tucking her chin on top of them. "But...yeah. Some of it is hitting. Hurting. Taking all the stupid shit that's inside of me and pushing it out. But that's what we were all there for, so it was okay. I always liked taking people down more than I should, even as Banzai. Not the hurting but the winning."

[not_every_mage]

Anders looked at her for a minute, spark of recognition in his eyes.

"I always thought you were a little better than the rest of us that way," he admitted. "I knew you liked the helping people. I didn't realize you liked the winning, too."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy shook her head. "You don't know how people would laugh," she said. "They'd see some skinny girl in rainbows, some--" some Saturday morning cartoon, she almost said, but didn't "--someone they didn't have to take seriously. Someone they didn't take seriously. And then I would run them down, even in their fancy cars, or I would drop down off a rooftop and corner them--and at the end, it would be me who was laughing," she said fiercely. "Me. They could have guns or knives or bats, but I'd still be the one standing in the end. And they wouldn't laugh at me anymore. And it felt good."

[not_every_mage]

"I know what you mean," Anders said, bobbing his head rapidly. "I heard it so often -- mages are bad, mages are cursed, mages are a danger. Even people who liked me didn't seem like they really liked me. And then to use this horrible thing, my magic, to help make things better -- it feels pretty great, doesn't it?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Yes," Kathy said. "I mean, even as Banzai, I knew I was pretty much nothing. I was fast and bouncy. I couldn't drain energy like Gorgon or heal like Regenerator or fly and blow fire like the Mighty Dragon. I didn't have your magic or Dante's anything. At best, someone like me is supposed to be a distraction for the real heroes when they show up and save the day. The side kick. But I wasn't. I was..."

Her mouth twisted and her longing turned to bitterness. "...Still a fool in the end."

[not_every_mage]

"Hush," Anders said, patting her on the shoulder. "You've been yelled at about that plenty. You can't keep yelling at yourself about it every time it comes up. You ... overreached, is all."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Is there ever really an enough?" Kathy asked. She wasn't sure the answer was yes. She wasn't sure Dante would agree with that, either. "Getting yelled at doesn't undo the pain I caused. Or bring the dead back to life. Or put things back the way they were."

Not that yelling did any of those things, either. But she deserved yelling. She wasn't sure she'd earned forgiveness yet.

[not_every_mage]

"There's nothing you or anyone else could do that would put things back the way they were," Anders told her. "All yelling does is keep the wound fresh. Doesn't seem like much of a way to live a life to me."

Anders didn't think it was about forgiveness; his own forgiveness was conditional, and still a work in progress. But acceptance? That was just necessary.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm not really good at living one right now," Kathy admitted. "I'm trying but then there are days like today when it's just...a lot harder. Stuff presses close."

She brushed her hand over her right shoulder, an invisible scar of toothprints erased by Alluka's magic but not forgotten. "I'm getting another tattoo. Another two probably," she said, abruptly.

[not_every_mage]

"What of?" Anders asked, since he gathered from the abrupt subject change that yelling at her more about why yelling at herself was bad wouldn't be helpful.

[spin_kick_snap]

More like the two were related in her head, as he's see when she explained.

"You're probably going to think it's macabre," she said. "Dwelling. Names in a circle, here," she said, gesturing to the shoulder she'd touched a moment ago. "In Hangul. Mom. Dad. Sarah. Hell, maybe even Midknight, Blockbuster, and Murrain's. People I don't want to forget."

Even Max, who was an asshole, had still been a friend. Or, at least, a teammate. And he hadn't deserved to die like that. Or worse, be turned into a weapon against his friends.

"And a series of hashmarks on my wrist," she said, holding up her left hand. "Seven."

[not_every_mage]

"Why seven?" Anders wanted to know. "And I don't think memorial tattoos are macabre, by the way. If they are, there are a lot of macabre people walking around."

He didn't think Kathy's teammates deserved to be memorialized on her flesh, but he recognized that his grudge wasn't very helpful.

[spin_kick_snap]

"A reminder of consequences," Kathy said wryly. "That even having the best of intentions doesn't prevent you from doing harm."

Which made it sound a lot nicer than it really was.

"It's the number of people I killed while I was an ex."

[not_every_mage]

Anders gave her a funny look.

"That's all?"

From how long Kathy had been an "ex," he would have believed a dozen times that. More.