The Apartment Above Luke's, Saturday

[spin_kick_snap]

After a big day outside - playgrounds! puppies! snow! - Katherine had come back to the place where she'd woken up and had promptly fallen asleep, all tuckered out by her adventures. Now she was awake again and hungry. The only cereal in the house was a sugar cereal, which she wasn't supposed to have and she wasn't allowed to use the stove without adult supervision.

But there didn't seem to be an adult in the whole house! Just her. That was funny. Who had a house with nobody in it?

She took a shower in the pretty bathroom and got dressed, figuring maybe she could find somewhere to eat. And another funny thing - she found a twenty dollar bill tucked away in the exact place she hid money back home: hidden in a pencil box in the top drawer of the desk. She painstakingly wrote out an IOU and put it there, and then sat down to plan her day.

First, breakfast. Then...puppies again, maybe?

[Open! Dante's thread chronologically last]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

Kathy'd been supposed to show up to Limbo City last night, and... she hadn't. So Dante had waited. Texted her. Waited some more.

And... nothing.

It'd only been a little over a month since Kathy had gotten kidnapped on them. He wasn't leaving anything up to chances. And... so he found himself back by her apartment, knocking. "Kathy?"

[spin_kick_snap]

An older Kathy would probably have let him keep knocking, at least until he remembered that she'd given him a key.

But Katherine didn't know about that. All she knew was that someone was knocking and she wasn't sure if she was supposed to answer it. She wasn't really supposed to answer the door at home, unless Daddy didn't want to be bothered, but there wasn't a grownup here to do it instead. Maybe it was a postman! Maybe there was an important package to deliver!

But what if it was a stranger?

Katherine compromised, opening the door a tiny crack, just enough to peek through. If it was a postman, she could open it more. If it was someone scary, she could shut it and run away.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante knew he had a key. It was in his hand. But if she hadn't reacted to any of his texts or done anything else... well, fuck, maybe she had a reason for that? Knocking first just felt like it made sense.

"Kath--" he started as the door opened.

Then stopped, blinking comically at thin air, and then at a little girl's face. "..y."

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine gaped up at him. Not a postman! Definitely not a postman! He had white hair like Mrs. Park, but he wasn't old and his clothes were all the kind of things that her mommy would sniff and call 'hoodlum wear.'

So Katherine did the smart thing. She shut the door.

[rebelseekspizza]

Fuck. Fuuuck.

Dante nearly knocked again, but thought better about it. Fuck, was she in there by herself? He fumbled in his pocket for the key, found it, and unlocked the door. "Kathy, it's okay, I'm-- the babysitter."

Ow.

[spin_kick_snap]

When he let himself in, Katherine was nowhere in sight. There was an oddly-shaped lump on the couch under a blanket, but that could be anything, right?

Though it did shift to reveal one dark eye at the word 'baby-sitter.'

That did make sense. A little bit. More sense than her being left by herself.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Kathy, are you in here?" Dante asked plaintatively. He shut the door behind himself. "You're not supposed to be here by yourself, I was gonna, uh, look after you for the weekend while your parents are out."

Excellent lying, Son of Sparda.

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine sat up, keeping the blanket tucked around her like a little ghost. "Kathy?" she asked, confused.

Her voice was very small. Much like her.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Sorry," Dante said, holding his hands up. "Katherine Hana, right? I just thought you looked like more of a Kathy."

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine considered that. "...Nobody's ever called me Kathy before," she said.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Katherine's kinda formal, don't you think?" Dante said, tilting his head. "Like, a Katherine is like 80 years old with long grey hair looking sad all the time. Doesn't sound like you."

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine thought about it a little more, expression solemn as she wrestled with that question. "I...I think I like it," she said. "Kathy."

Beat.

"Sorry for closing the door in your face, Mr. Babysitter. Are you gonna tell?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"'Course not," Dante said, grinning easily. "Last thing I want is for you to get in trouble."

He held out a hand. "C'mon."

[vdistinctive]

So it was apparently one of those weekends again. Eliot wasn't sure if he was relieved or disappointed to manage to still be a grown-up for this one. Considering what happened the last time he got de-aged, he was leaning towards "relieved".

Either way, he figured it was a good weekend to check in with Kathy. He seemed to recall she had a tendency to have to play babysitter during these sorts of events, and he figured she could probably use some company.

And yeah, part of him was maybe hoping to get to meet wee!Kathy. He'd missed out on that part of her life, after all.

He knocked on the door, leaning in to see if he could get some hint about which it'd be. "Kathy? You in there, darlin'?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Much like would happen again later when Dante knocked, Katherine did a lot of mental calculus before deciding whether or not to answer. The door opened very slowly, revealing a dark eye staring up at him, caught between apprehension and suspicion. "Hello?" she asked softly. "Are you the postman?"

[vdistinctive]

Oh noooo.

Eliot crouched down to be on a level with that eye, offering her a little smile.

"No ma'am," he said. "I'm the diner guy. Name's Eliot."

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine gave him a shy wave, not opening the door any further, but not trying to close it, either.

"Hello, sir," she said, looking at him with big, solemn eyes. "The diner? The one downstairs?"

[vdistinctive]

"That's the one," Eliot said with a nod. "I own and manage the restaurant and the whole rest of the building."

Which would hopefully put him in a position of authority for her without being too intimidating. Kathy had told him about being painfully shy as a kid, but it was still a trip and a half getting to see any of it in person.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh," Katherine said, relaxing a bit as she was able to slot him into a mental hierarchy she understood, "you're the landlord."

She opened the door a bit and stepped aside. "Do you need to come in and fix something?"

[vdistinctive]

"Nah, just checkin' in to make sure everything's okay." Eliot tilted his head. "You notice anything needed fixing?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy shook her head. "Nossir," she said. "I didn't break anything, either. I've been very careful, since there aren't any grownups around to keep an eye on me."

Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that no adults meant no breakfast either.

[vdistinctive]

"No grown-ups at all?" Eliot asked, being sure to look concerned but not overly so -- he didn't want her thinking she was in trouble, but she wouldn't buy it if he was a grown up who wasn't worried about an unsupervised child in one of his buildings. "But there's all sorts of things only grown ups are supposed to do."

Like make sure kids get fed. However this worked out, he'd be making sure she got a kimchi omelette. Preferably they'd have breakfast together, but he'd be just fine leaving it for her at the door and going away, if she didn't feel safe.

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine nodded. "You're the first grownup I've seen," she said, stomach grumbling louder. "I was gonna go see if I could get breakfast somewhere."

There were shops! She had seen them. Which meant that there was someone around who knew how to work a stove.

[vdistinctive]

"Well now. I can definitely do breakfast, if you want," Eliot said. "We can go on down to the diner, and set you up with anything you want. Or if you'd rather stay up here, I can bring something up for you."

He wasn't going to jump straight to "let me come in and cook in here". He'd spent far too much of his life as the Bad Man to want any small child to trust him that much after just meeting him.

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine thought about it. Eating downstairs meant that she didn't have to do the dishes, right? She hated doing the dishes.

Besides, it was lonely up here all by herself. She wasn't used to having nobody around.

"Downstairs?" she asked, like she needed to make sure it was still okay. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble."