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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"Jesus, Kathy," Dante said, reaching up to touch her hair. "You know you got trauma, right?"

"But her life was on the line!" Kathy protested. "I let her die."

"Did you tell her to go out there?" Dante said. "Did you shove her into a bunch of zombies?"

"Of course not," Kathy sighed. "I didn't kill her. But I stood there and watched as they dragged her down. I should have done something. You would have."

But then, he was a real hero. And she was - well, they both knew what she was.

"I didn't spend months locked up in this place," Dante said quietly. "I sure as shit never got killed by these things. It's like someone just dropped you out of an airplane right into the fucking center of everything that's fucked with your head these past couple of years, fuck, it's a miracle you're still ticking."

"What else am I supposed to do?" Kathy asked, a little helplessly. "I was out on a tour of the Wall and Rodney got a dozen fucking exes into the Mount. If I hadn't fought them off, they would have eaten Nick and gone on to infect half the population."

Dante stroked his fingers idly along her hair, since she didn't seem to mind.

"You're strong," he said. "Don't beat yourself up 'cause you're not made of fucking stone."

Mind? It was soothing. Kathy could use a bit of soothing. For the next few years, probably.

"Not stone? I'm pretty sure I'm made of glass," she murmured, tucking her head under his chin. "I feel like I'm on the verge of shattering at any minute."

Dante kissed the top of her head.

"Maybe reinforced glass," he said quietly. "But we gotta get you outta here."

"Too bad there's a goddamn demon out there," Kathy grumbled. "Can I just...can I tell you about what it's been like? These past weeks? I mean, beyond the sleeplessness or the boredom or the hyper-vigilance? Just some of the...the...bullshit I've been dealing with?"

She could feel something like bile rising up in her throat. She was hoping that if she made it words, it wouldn't turn to vomit.

"Yes," Dante said, without hesitation. He resolved to shut up for a while.

And Kathy just...talked. Talked and talked and talked, trying to get it all out, like cleaning out a suppurating wound. She told him about Legion's attack with helmets and then his later one with the guns, where he threatened to just bite and turn her, to recruit her once again. She told him about Christian and her creepy followers, and Todd on a mission from his mom, and Tori, sincere in her belief that Rick would know her. She told him about sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling, of her fears of being trapped in her closet with just a few knives, of the constant clicking just outside her window, of the way all the heroes called her Banzai and looked at her like she was just a few more days away from putting rainbows back on and signing back up.

She told him about Josh, about her frustration and her sorrow and, yes, her guilt.

It was a word wall to end all word walls and when she was done, she lay back against his chest, panting a little. "So, how much of that did you actually get?"

"All of it," Dante said quietly.

He tightened his arms around her.

"I kinda figured you always just tuned out after a certain amount of chatter," Kathy mumbled.

Which wasn't really true, but she was feeling vulnerable and covered it up by being prickly.

"I wouldn't tune you out," Dante said. "Especially not on this."

Way to make her feel like an asshole, Dante.

...Probably because she was being an asshole.

"It's a lot, right?" she asked. "Like, not just for me and being here? But just, like, anyone? A normal person?"

"Yeah, it's a lot," Dante said. He touched her arm. "Fuck, it'd be a lot for me."

"And people are always about but they're not the right people. Sometimes I just want to scream at Nick to just go away, or at St. George for wearing his stupid kicked-puppy-concerned face, or Max for just being such a douche all the time. I'm lonely, but I'm rarely ever alone."

Dante kissed the top of her head again. "I get that too," he said. "I mean, Nick and Max are grade-a douchebags."

"Nick is trying..." Kathy said, her defense automatic. But she gave it up halfway through. "I would have loved this attention once."

"I know."

Kathy couldn't quite parse that and buried her face in his shirt, embarrassed.

"Hey, hey," Dante said, fingers smoothing over her hair and down her back. "I just mean, I know you used to have a crush on him."

"I was stupid," she mumbled. "So stupid. And then I got so mad at you and Anders for pointing it out in LA. Because for once, he was treating me like an equal...and I thought it was because he thought I was an equal."

"Feels like there's a but there," Dante murmured.

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