Explorean Resort, Cozumel, Mexico, Saturday Night

[spin_kick_snap]

She probably should have expected the nightmares. Raven's text had upended her sense of safety; even thought she wasn't on the island now, knowing that her home was gone and all of her supplies were inaccessible had messed with her pretty hard. Sleep had been long in coming, even as exhausted as she'd been, and when it came, it had brought old friends along with it.

She was back in the basement again. It's where she was kept, when Rodney wasn't using her body, staring at a wall. In the dream, those were the best times, even though she stood silent and unmoving, staring at a crumbling brink, cloudy gray eyes unblinking. Because when she wasn't staring at the wall, it meant Rodney was puppeting her body around, his mind overriding hers, his will dominating her body. She could feel him, like cold oil spreading over her brain and down her nervous system, stealing control away from her. She tried to fight him off, tried to keep him out, but it was no good. Rodney wanted control of her body and he could take it.

"No, no..." she whimpered in the real world, starting to thrash. "Leave me...don't make me...no..."

No matter what she dreamed, Kathy felt like a prisoner in her own mind. When she dreamed of being a free ex, she still had to watch as her body moved of its own volition, attacking anything that moved. Sometimes she killed and ate people. Other times, she remembered the pet store and the mess that had been left when she was done. But those were still better than the Rodney dreams, when she was literally enslaved to his will and he could make her do anything he wanted.

Like now, when he presented her with the bound forms of her friends. Anders. Dante. Eliot. Raven, , stuck in her vulnerable human form. Ringo. Alluka. "You think there's nothing worse than being controlled my me, puta?" Rodney asked, voice coming from her own throat. "Tell you what. Here, I'll let you go. See how you like that."

To her horror, Kathy felt the cold ooze steal back up and out of her body, leaving only the ex behind. And the ex looked at her friends and saw only meat--warm flesh and hot blood. She lunged at the closest of them--Ringo, no, please!--and bit and bit and bit while Rodney's mad laughter rang in her ears and her head.

"It's always in you, girlie. Always. Just waitin' to get out. This is what you are..."

The taste of blood filled her mouth as she struggled up towards consciousness, hitting and kicking and trying to scream but blood, so much blood she was going to choke.

[For the guy with her. Violence and such under the cut.]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

"Neither of us did," Kathy said, giving him an understanding smile. "I thought it was the end for me, too. Hell, I thought I was in a grave somewhere, with a bunch of other people who hadn't made it. I didn't think they'd..."

Let her keep walking.

"And I really am sorry, because what I'm doing isn't fair, exactly. You don't deserve to have the burden of knowing that I'm using every off-hand comment and emotional outburst to try to put everything together." As Dante had learned, to their mutual chagrin. "I just don't know any other way to do it. I don't trust what I'm thinking or feeling as accurate, because I was just so damn wrong before. A lot of my confidence in myself was stripped away and it's slow to come back."

[not_every_mage]

"See, but now I'm worried," Anders said, leaning back in his elbows. "I don't always think all that much before I talk. What if I said something dumb that's hurting you, and I don't even know it?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, thinking before you speak isn't a terrible habit to cultivate," Kathy said, giving him a good-natured poke. "But it's hard as hell, I know. And, honestly, that's where I have to be better about speaking up. I need...I need to trust you guys more. I've been so afraid of making you mad and reverting to, like, the early days that I've just stayed quiet a lot. And that's not fair to any of us. Not to me, but not to you, either."

[not_every_mage]

"No, but I understand why you're doing it," Anders said slowly. "I don't suppose telling you to worry less will help at all, even if that is what I'd like to say. But I do want to know what's scaring you, even if you think it'd be hard for me to hear."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh god, so many things," Kathy said with a self-conscious little laugh. "That you haven't entirely forgiven me and as soon as I make you mad, it'll all come boiling back to the surface is one. That you'll get fed up with my little sad girl bullshit and bail is another one."

Those were the easy ones. There were others that left her feeling a lot more vulnerable.

[not_every_mage]

"Not bailing, love," Anders promised. "I'm in way too deep."

He was more thoughtful as he answered her other point. "I can't say I've completely forgiven. But I do feel like there's too much water under the bridge to keep holding your worst decisions over your head, even if I'm angry."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Water under the bridge how?" Kathy asked. It was a tough question to ask, but she needed to know the answer. If Anders hadn't yet fully forgiven her, she'd feel more comfortable knowing exactly the constraints she existed under, rather than trying to guess.

[not_every_mage]

"Mainly in the sense of time," Anders shrugged. "It's been almost half a year. I graduated. We figured out how to do this with Dante. And knowing how tormented you still are about it, it seems -- cruel, almost, to drag up Los Angeles if we have a disagreement."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I agree, but then, I would," Kathy said, turning his words over in her mind. "But I guess I'm wondering--do you still get mad about it? Or upset, maybe? Is there anything I can do to help you get...past it, I guess...that I'm not doing?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders thought about it, but shook his head. "It'd be easier if I could tell you something, I know, but -- no. Of course I get upset if I think about you leaving, but the whole thing is upsetting. It's not something you can change now."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Don't worry," she said with an understanding smile, "I know all about wishing you had concrete information to give and coming up empty. A lot of the answer is just 'give more time' which is both true but tiring." She sighed and shook her head, thinking about all the times she'd had to give that unsatisfying answer. "Do you think about it a lot?"

[not_every_mage]

"Not most of the time," Anders said honestly. "Sometimes, if something reminds me of it, but I wouldn't say I'm preoccupied."

He glanced to her. "I'd ask you the same, but I feel like that'd be a stupid question. It's with you every second."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Kinda," Kathy said. "Sometimes I can go for awhile without thinking about it. But it's always just kinda there, waiting for me to trip over it again." She shook her head. "I trip over it most when I'm with the people I was closest to," she continued. "Which is the worst, because you're all the people I want to remind the least about what happened. But, like, talking to you, I can't help but think about what I gave up, what would be different if I had stayed, everything I did wrong. And it's not your fault I do that," she added quickly, giving his hand a squeeze. "I just...you deserved so much better and I let you down. I can't but feel that keenly."

[not_every_mage]

"It worked in the end, didn't it?" Anders said, squeezing her hand in return. "Maybe I did deserve more. Maybe I didn't. It took me a while, but now I know you didn't set out to hurt me, anyhow."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy shook her head. "Never," she said. "Never once. I regretted hurting you, I just thought that it was too important to quit. That we'd be able to fix it and you'd forgive me." Her gaze went distant and inward, memories rising up again. "That I could prove to you both I was more than you thought I was. Better. Not a cartoon."

[not_every_mage]

Anders shifted against her, thoughtful in the dark.

"That thing Dante said stuck with you, didn't it?" he asked. "Why is that, do you think? You know he was just angry."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Even being angry doesn't really give you an excuse to deliberately hurt someone you care about," Kathy said quietly. "You can be mad, without trying to tear someone down."

She got up, needing to pace. "The thing is, I don't know if he was just mad. I think he was saying how he truly saw me. You say I know like I should know it, but I really, really don't." They'd never talked about that night, so Kathy had no idea how Dante felt about it. It was one of the few things that still niggled at her when she thought about LA. "Regardless of whether or not he meant it, it reinforced every nasty thing I ever worried about--that I was stupid, that I was just fooling myself, that I was nothing. And maybe it wouldn't have lingered so long if it didn't prove to be true."

[not_every_mage]

"I'm not going to argue with you about it," Anders muttered drawing a pillow over his face in resignation. His voice was muffled for the rest of what he said: "I'm going to lie here and be quietly furious at Dante for having lodged it into your head so firmly."

He didn't know whether Dante had meant it or not -- at the time, it had felt to him more like anger and frustration than like a well-reasoned criticism. But there was no point in trying to convince Kathy of that.

[spin_kick_snap]

At the time, Kathy hadn't really been thinking too clearly about Dante's state of mind. She'd been running off in tears and then dwelling on it, which had only cemented it further in her mind.

"No, don't," she said, coming back to lie down next to Anders. "I don't want to cause trouble between you. And...I mean...he wasn't wrong. He might have said it to be hurtful, but I was a bouncing girl in rainbows who fought with fancy sticks. He was just calling it like it was."

[not_every_mage]

Anders sighed again, lifting the pillow off his face to give Kathy a wan smile. "You were also stupidly brave," he pointed out. "And deadly with those sticks. I never thought you were a cartoon. Foolish, but not a cartoon."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy leaned down to kiss him, a small crack in her heart healing over with his words. She didn't want to admit even to herself she'd been worried they'd both thought of her that way, but the relief she felt was too palpable to be ignored.

"I love you," she told him when she pulled away. "And I promise to be a lot less foolish in the future. I'm giving this new 'listening' thing a try. Hear tell it helps in relationships."