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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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.

"You ever deal with someone you thought respected you but maybe only wanted to fuck you?" Kathy asked. "It's shitty."

"I haven't," Dante said, after a short pause. "But close enough I can guess how fucked up it feels."

"I tried to prove my value to the heroes for so long," Kathy murmured. "I was always the youngest, the bounciest, the brightest. I wanted to prove I was just as much a hero as the Mighty Dragon was, or Regenerator, or Midknight. And then Nick started treating me like one and I thought that I'd finally did it. I'd gotten someone to see what I could do. And then you two showed up to drag me home like I broke curfew and told me that the one person who seemed like he believed in me was only doing it because that was the fastest way into my rainbow-colored pants."

Dante winced. "Sorry."

"Yeah," Kathy said with a sigh. "It was a shitty day all the way around. You guys walked in spoiling for a fight and we gave you one."

And then they'd gone back to the hotel and had an even worse one.

"I didn't mean to wreck your self-esteem or shit with that thing about Nick," Dante said. "I'm-- seriously, I'm sorry."

"It's not like you were wrong though," Kathy sighed. "Besides, that wasn't the comment that wrecked my self-esteem. Those just pissed me off. It wasn't till later that I realized that they were true and that's on Nick, not on you."

"Then I'm sorry you got stuck here with a bunch of assholes," Dante sighed. "Can't believe fucking Max is alive."

"They brought him back to life!" Kathy said, exasperated. "Deliberately! Like, that was a choice they decided to make!"

...

...

"Why?"

"Because he asked."

"But he's a fucking shit-stain, shifty motherfucking perv," Dante snapped.

Kathy raised her eyebrows at him. "Okay, so I know he didn't make the best impression at the diner," she said slowly, "but that's a pretty specific way to describe him."

And, you know, accurate.

Long pause.

"The diner wasn't the only place I talked to him back then."

"Whut."

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