spin_kick_snap | The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

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The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

The last time anyone from Fandom had been in Kathy's LA, the heroes had been living inside the walls that surrounded Paramount Studios, with the exes and the South Seventeens laying claim to everything else. Since then, they'd expanded; the Big Wall pushing the borders out almost a mile in all four directions. In some spots, it was hard to tell that there had ever been a zombocalypse; the streets were clean, the buildings repaired, the blood all scrubbed away. There was a proper school, lots of farms and gardens, several churches, and even a small library. The studio was still the heart of the community, but people had started to spread out and settle. It was still a tight fit, several thousand people into one square mile, but honestly not much worse than Los Angeles used to be, back before the world died and reanimated again.

Life had fallen back into a rhythm again. People got up, got ready for the day. Kids were sent off to school, adults took themselves to various jobs, though there were fewer sales people, baristas, and aspiring actors and a lot more guards, scavengers, and farmers these days. There was a brewery down on Larchmont and a still over on Monroe. Burns Park let people enjoy a bit of nature where the kids could run around and burn off steam and a Gold's Gym practically against the Big Wall. That was where the Unbreakables spent most of their free time, with curious gawkers watching them put more and more weight onto the machines.

It was a bustling little community of survivors, as safe as a place could be, surrounded on all sides by millions of undead waiting to find a way inside to devour them all.

[For them that are there! NFB, and ~~please wait for the~~ OCD is up! Previous entry Next Entry]

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It was late by the time Dante got back to the apartment. He'd found Kathy and Anders on the boxspring and he'd settled there, just wanting to be closer to them right now.

Something in that conversation with Ezra twisted in his insides. Guilt. Maybe other stuff. He wasn't sure.

He managed to doze for what felt like just a few minutes, before errant thoughts and feelings dragged him back from the brink of actual rest.

By that time, Kathy had moved back to the closet. It wasn't that she didn't love being curled up between the guys, hadn't missed it with every fiber of her being...but she couldn't sleep out there. Not where she was so exposed. Even having other people in the house didn't stop her blood from chanting UNSAFE UNSAFE UNSAFE UNSAFE in her veins. Once Dante had started dozing, she'd slipped off the box spring and made her way to her nest.

She hadn't yet put out the tiny light when Dante woke back up. "Hey." she said, voice pitched to not carry far, a skill she'd learned the last time she was alive in LA. "Can't sleep?"

For a moment, Dante felt incredibly disoriented. Where was the voice coming fro--

Oh.

He laid his eyes on the light. Right-- she'd said she was sleeping in the closet.

"Kathy?" he asked, rolling off the bed so he wouldn't wake Anders.

It was almost funny. The straightest person in the house, sleeping in the closet. Ha ha, so funny she forgot to laugh.

"Hey," she said, scootching over a bit. "Wanna join me? It's cramped, but..."

But so long as whatever was bothering him didn't make him averse to cuddling, they'd fit. Though she might have to set the three gallons of water at the other end outside to make room for his longer legs.

"Yeah," Dante said, casting a quick look back at the bed over his shoulder before he slid into the closet, squeezing into the opposite corner from her.

"I'm surprised you're not asleep yet," Kathy said, sliding the door shut so they could talk without waking anyone up. "It's been a hell of a day."

"I just got a lot on my mind," Dante said quietly.

"I'm here if you wanna talk," Kathy said. "I mean, I unloaded on you pretty hard earlier. It's only fair."

Not to mention that she really and truly cared about what he was thinking and feeling, but she didn't want to pressure.

"Just had a talk with Ezra," Dante said, glancing down at her feet. "Y'know, as much as you can have a talk with Ez."

He didn't know where Ez was now. He kept his voice low anyway.

Kathy blinked at him. She and Ezra had been doing pretty well with talking recently. "Talk about what?"

Then apparently she had some kind of magical superpowers Dante lacked.

"What happened back in Limbo City," he said. "I... called him, not long after. Felt like he was lying to me back then. Turns out he was."

Had he tried cookies? Kathy mostly had luck with cookies and head-scritches.

"Lying about what?" she asked, shifting a little closer to him. "I saw him not long after that and he was...well, not okay, but physically fine, at least."

"About being pissed at me over what happened," Dante said quietly. A pause. "I mean, fuck. It's his right, I totally fucked up."

"Fucked up how?" Kathy asked softly. That didn't sound right, didn't match up with what - little - she knew about what had happened before she and Anders had crashed the party. But maybe she didn't have all the facts.

And even if it was as much bullshit as she thought, she owed him the chance to let him talk it through.

"My brother kidnapped him to get to me," Dante said. "That's on me."

"So...is it my fault you all are here, too?" Kathy asked slowly. "My old teammate kidnapped me and now you all showed up, right?"

"...No. We chose to be here," Dante said slowly.

"I'm still just not sure how Vergil deciding to steal the playbook from some, like, video game supervillain is your fault," Kathy said, brow furrowed. "It's not even tangentially your fault, like you taunted him to come after you and he decided to do that by snatching up Ez. He just showed up out of nowhere because he decided that being more powerful than any human on the planet wasn't enough for him."

"But it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't known me," Dante pointed out.

He'd felt guilty about it before, had known Ez had been stonewalling him during the call. But it'd been a little easier to ignore the guilt after that.

Now it was back in full force.

"If Max had managed to snatch you off the street than me, would you blame me?" Kathy asked, just giving up and leaning into him. His chest was warm and strong and she needed both. "Honestly. I mean...shit. I love blaming myself for things, but even I think the bar of 'well, he knows me' is a little low here."

Dante sighed, wrapping his arms around her. He was more relieved to have her warm body against his than he was likely to admit, under the current circumstances.

"I don't know," he said. "Guess I feel responsible. Guess Ez agrees."

"I get that," Kathy said, because she did. She was queen of taking responsibility for other people's actions. It was tempting to remind him of their blame conversation earlier, but that felt too much like lecturing. "It's hard not to see all the places where you could have done something else, something better, when you look back on stuff."

Welcome to her constant brain-crawl, Dante.

"But I disagree. Just so you know."

"Thanks," Dante said, so softly it would've been hard to hear if the apartment hadn't been this quiet.

"You do this for me all the time," Kathy said, leaning up to press a kiss as soft as his voice to his cheek. "I'm glad I have the chance to offer you the same."

Another kiss, this one on the other side. "I'm sorry you're hurting. And I'm extra sorry that Ez is hurting you, too."

"I don't know how to talk to him, Kat," Dante said, shutting his eyes at the touch of her lips. "He won't tell me shit."

At least not until the moment it would hurt the most.

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