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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"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.

Kathy cuddled in close to him, fingers trailing over his shoulders and neck. She didn't think he'd appreciate a full massage, but a gentle brushing over skin could be relaxing in its own way. "Ez has always had a hundred different layers of shields and bullshit up," she said quietly. "And now that he's made himself kinda vulnerable, I don't think he entirely knows how to handle it. So it's more layers of shields and bullshit and a tendency to snap."

Or...something?

"I could just be speaking outta my ass," she added. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Maybe," Dante said quietly. "Or maybe he's sick of me in general."

"I don't believe that," Kathy said firmly. "He may still be all fucked up from Limbo City, but I can't imagine him being sick of you."

Maybe she was just biased and couldn't imagine anybody being tired of Dante, but it just didn't seem to fit.

"I think there are two classes of people to him," she said quietly. "Lock and Ava, and everybody else. And then there's you and me, who don't fit into either class and that makes things...harder. Because we don't get him the way Lock and Ava do and he can't just bullshit us the way he does to everyone else."

Dante let her touch him for a while, saying nothing as he digested it. Right now, two feelings dominated the subject of Ezra: guilt, and a sense of rejection.

They had... a complicated relationship to each other, those feelings.

"I think maybe it's just you in there," he said finally.

Kathy wasn't to deny that but...she wasn't sure. Not really. And she didn't want to tell Dante he was wrong, only to have him be right.

"Then he's making a really big mistake," she told him. "I can't picture my life without you. I don't want to. You make everything better by virtue of being in it."

Now more than ever, she wished she were Anders, who had the knack of knowing just what to say to Dante to set his mind at ease.

Anders wouldn't have been a great person to go to about Ezra. Ever.

Dante's mouth curved a little. He drew patterns on Kathy's arm.

"Yeah, but that's you," he said softly. "And I love you for saying it, don't get me wrong. But Ez... I reach out, he brushes me off."

Okay, fair. This was, perhaps, the one instance where she got him better than Anders would.

"Then you don't have to keep reaching out," Kathy said, angling his face down to look at her so he'd know she was completely serious. "I love Ez, I do. And I want him to be part of our family. But that doesn't mean you have to keep getting hurt over it. My want isn't worth your pain."

It might just be Ez flailing about trying to find some semblance of normal. That's what she hoped it was. But Dante didn't have to keep throwing himself against the same wall until Ez figured his shit out.

Funny. The image of Ezra as part of their family had been something he'd actively fought for nearly a year ago. Now, the notion that Kathy still wanted that did funny things to his insides, and not in a good way.

"Thanks," he said quietly. "Maybe it's better for him too if I stop trying to go where I'm not wanted. He'll stop getting splashback from my shit."

Things had always been less fraught between Kathy and Ezra than Dante and Ezra. Maybe because he and Ez had gotten each other on a level Kathy hadn't had access to.

"I think assuming you know what Ezra wants is just setting yourself up for headaches," Kathy said with a flash of wry humor. "But how close tabs is Vergil keeping on you anyway? Would he even know that you were staying away? Or is he just going by the playbook of who showed up for you in Limbo City?"

The shift in Dante's demeanour was immediately noticable, though he said nothing.

He went quiet. And still.

"...Dante?" Kathy asked, leaning back to look at him.

Dante tried to force himself to relax. It wasn't quite working.

"Verg's not coming back, Kat," he said. "Thought you knew that."

"I know you told me he fell into Hell," Kathy said. "I'm not entirely sure how permanent that is."

Not if you weren't an angel with your own private jailer.

"One way ticket."

That had been the choice laid before Vergil: live in the human world with his brother, without power, or go to Hell forever.

Dante ran his thumb over the inside of his palm, then closed his fist.

"I'm sorry," she said, leaning back in to give him a hug. "I wish...I wish he could see there was another way. And I wish he didn't hurt you every time with his choices."

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