A Triptych of Kate/Will for myfloralbonnet
Author: Regency
Fandom: Sanctuary
Title: To Vanish, to Go Away; Sucker Punch Sweet; To Have Maybe Loved and Lost
Pairing: Kate/Will
Rating: PG across the board
Spoilers: Up to Vigilante with speculation/AU beyond, but no intentional spoilers for the first. None for the others.
Word count: 1,166/426/496
Summary: Kate/Will and three different ways they might matter to each other.
Disclaimer
Author's Notes: Written for the Team Sidekick (at scifiland ) Secret Santa for myfloralbonnet . Merry Christmas!
~!~
1. To Vanish, to Go Away - Spoilers: Up to Vigilante with speculation/AU beyond, but no intentional spoilers.
It was the dumbest thing. He’d vanished from the face of the Earth in the last few weeks. As soon as Magnus had taken back the reins of Sanctuary, Will had gotten the hell out of dodge and hadn’t been seen since.
He’d gotten permission, of course. Of course, Kate thought, he’s as big a goody two-shoes as they come.
Magnus hadn’t been happy that her protégé was so eager to fly the coop they considered home, but she’d understood. His confidence in his ability to take her place had been shaken. Those days when he’d been in charge had not been good days - not as far as he was concerned, at any rate.
Kate thought he was overreacting. Shit happened. People got hurt sometimes and it wasn’t his negligence that had done the job, just circumstances. As soon as she found him, she intended to make that clear, even if she had to beat it into him. What? Will had a hard head; there were just realities that he refused to comprehend. Like you can’t control everything.
For example, Kate hadn’t had any control over Magnus’ growing concern over Will’s absence. Her uneasiness had started two weeks ago and spread like a virus. Henry had discretely-he thought, anyway-started checking out John Does who showed up in local hospitals and morgues to see if any fit Will’s description. Magnus rarely strayed from her office in the unspoken fear that he might call and she would miss him, regardless of the cell phone she kept on her at all times. And Biggie was just upset and that had pissed Kate off all on its own. He’d had enough to worry about nowadays without Will off playing hooky.
Will had asked for a week off to get his head together; he’d been gone a month. She was still pissed, but she was also secretly scared out of her mind. From what she could tell, losing Ashley had devastated everyone, she couldn’t imagine what losing Will would do. Even Tesla had started making phone calls out of concern for Magnus’ “sonny boy.” So, yeah, things were a little dire.
That’s why Kate was in Mumbai today. She was walking the streets of the market where he’d been a dancing fool for his little arachnid passenger. It was the only place she could think of to go. Magnus had had Druitt drop her off at the Mumbai Sanctuary rather than lose time by flight. The longer he was gone without contact, the greater the chances he’d never return. She was more convinced than ever that this wouldn’t go over well. Not the least because she she’d be one of the ones screaming down the walls.
Enough sulking, William. Come home. It was sickly sweet and sentimental even in her own head, but this was Will and he’d toss a little pride overboard for her if she was the one MIA. So, she put her ego in her back pocket and kicked a few city blocks of bricks in his name. And if, when she failed to meet anyone who even recognized him, she felt a little lightheaded with anxiety, she was sure he’d understand.
Will Zimmerman had vanished like he came into the world, with a lack of noticeable fanfare until it was much too late.
Druitt took her home, too, and Magnus stopped pretending she wasn’t furious anymore. Her boy was in trouble. At Kate’s negative report, she’d retired into her office with her Blackberry, her lapdog, and her once and future boyfriend to make what Kate assumed would be some less polite enquiries into Will’s whereabouts. It had long since become clear to just about everyone that Will hadn’t disappeared under his own power. He may have left that way, but that wasn’t how he’d stayed gone.
Were she anything but pissed, Kate might have felt some pity for the bastards who were about to be treated to the Magnus Special. As it was, she was just annoyed that she couldn’t help. She’d knocked together more than a few heads in her day, so she could have definitely come in handy on this particular road trip. She didn’t want to sit in the library and wait for Will to stumble back into their lives. She wanted to find him and drag him home in whatever state he was in. She wanted to kick some seriously villainous ass, because there was some definite villainy at work here. Hurry up and wait wasn’t her idea of a good time, ever.
He was out there somewhere, maybe suffering and maybe dead, and there was absolutely nothing she could do it about it. It made her nuts, furious, paralyzed with a fear she wouldn’t have put to words if he was standing right in front of her. If he was standing in front of her, out of blue and out of nowhere, she would have decked him. Bastard.
She couldn’t just sit here while time ticked away. Being still was like being poked by an irritating kid constantly, every second morphing into an hour while she stared at the walls that seemed to squeeze in and out all the time. She wondered if he felt this way wherever they were keeping him, claustrophobic and alone. That wasn’t something she’d wish on someone she hated, much less someone she cared for.
Will was an impressive guy, but Magnus he wasn’t; he was only so strong. They’d break him in pieces and send them back in a human-shaped pile. They’d get back a ghost for the wise-cracking über-geek they’d given. But Kate didn’t want a ghost, she wanted Will. She wanted nosy, invasive, intrusive, worry-wart Will. That was the version of the man she held close despite how different they seemed. It was that Will Zimmerman she’d miss if he never came home again.
And he might not; that he might not, was a nasty, cough-medicine-flavored dose of reality. Like she had as a kid, she gulped against the sick feeling it brought and found something better tasting to wash it down. She skipped the tea for the brandy and took exactly one gulp before spitting it out. For once, it didn’t even taste good.
Besides, if Magnus and associates brought Will home sometime tonight, he’d need her and she wanted to be clear-headed or something like it for that, for him. Kate did a lot for him; going to the ends of the Earth was nothing, yet this was hard. Sitting and waiting was not a Freelander specialty. She couldn’t do this forever-and she wouldn’t. She trusted Magnus with her life and she always would, but this was Will and he was a totally different matter.
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Kate had the sudden and uncontrollable urge to go break someone. And this time, she didn’t resist.
~!~
2. Sucker Punch Sweet - No spoilers
He has no finesse, that’s one of the first things Kate figures out about Will Zimmerman. He isn’t smooth and he’s got the worst excuse for game she’s ever seen. But he’s honest in his intentions. When he wants to get to know her better, he says so. Of course, by saying so, she means he asks for her number…which he’s had since she became a part of the team.
Yeah, no game at all, but he’s sweet and he tries to be thoughtful. He remembers her birthday after he forgets his own. He knows what perfume she likes, or he knows who does know.
He Sherlock Holmes his way through their first three dates before he drops down next to her and just asks her what her favorite color is. She doesn’t have one, she has several. She thinks it’s funny that, to him, that’s the most interesting thing he’s heard in years.
They talk a lot about fending for themselves. He fended for himself in the system, though he talks very little about how that all went down. She knows his mom was killed by an abnormal and that Magnus was more than a little involved there, but that’s it. He won’t say more, except to say that it made him the man he is, even if he’d give that up to have back the mother he’s missed.
She talks about her father, her mother, and brother. She talks about how everyday is struggle to make them proud of her, though she isn’t so sure how proud she is of her father anymore. She mentions redemption and it’s something she feels too young to need, despite the fact that she craves it maybe more than Biggie does. Will gets it in a weird, empathetic way that makes her want to change the subject.
But then, Will’s always made her want to change the subject. She’s still not convinced he hasn’t got a little abnormal in him somewhere with the way he goes rifling through her pieces and figuring out all the stuff she doesn’t say. It’s always weirded her out and now that all that mega-perception is focused on her, it really weirds her out.
She still kind of likes it though. Just like she still kind of likes Will, even if he is a crappy shot who worries too much. And hey, maybe secretly, those are the parts she really likes. It’s not often she gets to be the white knight for such a studly damsel.
~!~
3. To Have Maybe Loved and Lost - No spoilers
Nothing good happened today.
Will was pacing down the hall outside the infirmary. He was this close to going inside against Magnus’ orders, this close to saying the hell with it and being there when Kate woke up.
Magnus said it was simple surgery. As if bullet removal was ever simple.
He’d been there when Kate had been hit, had seen the odd, shocked expression on her face right before she crashed into the wall behind her. He’d been so shocked that it was only Tesla’s intervention that stopped Will from becoming a casualty, too.
Magneto has his uses, he nearly sneered, but there wasn’t any fire in it. He owed the man his thanks one day.
The memory of everything after Kate’s fall was hazy, the blood he’d kneeled in to reach her having made it sticky in his mind. He couldn’t even sit now, because he hadn’t taken the time to change clothes yet. Couldn’t take the time, he was afraid she’d be gone if he did. And that was something he couldn’t quite stomach, Kate being gone.
People die every day, he tried to rationalize. The surge of his half-digested dinner at the back of his throat was answer enough. He leaned against the nearest wall with his eyes closed and refused to think about death again. That wasn’t something he’d ever been particularly gifted at anyway, accepting that sometimes it was merely a person’s time to go. As a boy or as a man, it hardly made any difference; he didn’t want to say goodbye to one more part of himself, didn’t want to put another empty, beloved shell in the ground. Every person in his life today was irreplaceable.
In her own way, Kate was more so than anyone. In the months since she’d really started to feel essential here, she’d opened up to him in a way he hadn’t really expected. They flirted, they joked. They got one another in a way that not everybody understood. He taught her how not to feel so much like an outsider and she taught him how not to act like an outsider when, admittedly, he sometimes still did.
They’d brought one another in from the cold, but he was still shivering. It was a little bit of shock and a lot of dread. He wasn’t ready to lose her yet. There was so much that remained unsaid between them and that was not how he wanted to them to end, not when he was sure deep down that they should have just been getting started.
Will wasn’t new to the concept of having loved and lost. Unfortunately, though, he was becoming damned familiar with the reality of never having loved at all.
But he was an idiot lemming who hoped, so he waited in his blood-caked jeans in this lonely hallway and he thought about love and Kate, all at the same time.
Fandom: Sanctuary
Title: To Vanish, to Go Away; Sucker Punch Sweet; To Have Maybe Loved and Lost
Pairing: Kate/Will
Rating: PG across the board
Spoilers: Up to Vigilante with speculation/AU beyond, but no intentional spoilers for the first. None for the others.
Word count: 1,166/426/496
Summary: Kate/Will and three different ways they might matter to each other.
Disclaimer
Author's Notes: Written for the Team Sidekick (at scifiland ) Secret Santa for myfloralbonnet . Merry Christmas!
~!~
1. To Vanish, to Go Away - Spoilers: Up to Vigilante with speculation/AU beyond, but no intentional spoilers.
It was the dumbest thing. He’d vanished from the face of the Earth in the last few weeks. As soon as Magnus had taken back the reins of Sanctuary, Will had gotten the hell out of dodge and hadn’t been seen since.
He’d gotten permission, of course. Of course, Kate thought, he’s as big a goody two-shoes as they come.
Magnus hadn’t been happy that her protégé was so eager to fly the coop they considered home, but she’d understood. His confidence in his ability to take her place had been shaken. Those days when he’d been in charge had not been good days - not as far as he was concerned, at any rate.
Kate thought he was overreacting. Shit happened. People got hurt sometimes and it wasn’t his negligence that had done the job, just circumstances. As soon as she found him, she intended to make that clear, even if she had to beat it into him. What? Will had a hard head; there were just realities that he refused to comprehend. Like you can’t control everything.
For example, Kate hadn’t had any control over Magnus’ growing concern over Will’s absence. Her uneasiness had started two weeks ago and spread like a virus. Henry had discretely-he thought, anyway-started checking out John Does who showed up in local hospitals and morgues to see if any fit Will’s description. Magnus rarely strayed from her office in the unspoken fear that he might call and she would miss him, regardless of the cell phone she kept on her at all times. And Biggie was just upset and that had pissed Kate off all on its own. He’d had enough to worry about nowadays without Will off playing hooky.
Will had asked for a week off to get his head together; he’d been gone a month. She was still pissed, but she was also secretly scared out of her mind. From what she could tell, losing Ashley had devastated everyone, she couldn’t imagine what losing Will would do. Even Tesla had started making phone calls out of concern for Magnus’ “sonny boy.” So, yeah, things were a little dire.
That’s why Kate was in Mumbai today. She was walking the streets of the market where he’d been a dancing fool for his little arachnid passenger. It was the only place she could think of to go. Magnus had had Druitt drop her off at the Mumbai Sanctuary rather than lose time by flight. The longer he was gone without contact, the greater the chances he’d never return. She was more convinced than ever that this wouldn’t go over well. Not the least because she she’d be one of the ones screaming down the walls.
Enough sulking, William. Come home. It was sickly sweet and sentimental even in her own head, but this was Will and he’d toss a little pride overboard for her if she was the one MIA. So, she put her ego in her back pocket and kicked a few city blocks of bricks in his name. And if, when she failed to meet anyone who even recognized him, she felt a little lightheaded with anxiety, she was sure he’d understand.
Will Zimmerman had vanished like he came into the world, with a lack of noticeable fanfare until it was much too late.
Druitt took her home, too, and Magnus stopped pretending she wasn’t furious anymore. Her boy was in trouble. At Kate’s negative report, she’d retired into her office with her Blackberry, her lapdog, and her once and future boyfriend to make what Kate assumed would be some less polite enquiries into Will’s whereabouts. It had long since become clear to just about everyone that Will hadn’t disappeared under his own power. He may have left that way, but that wasn’t how he’d stayed gone.
Were she anything but pissed, Kate might have felt some pity for the bastards who were about to be treated to the Magnus Special. As it was, she was just annoyed that she couldn’t help. She’d knocked together more than a few heads in her day, so she could have definitely come in handy on this particular road trip. She didn’t want to sit in the library and wait for Will to stumble back into their lives. She wanted to find him and drag him home in whatever state he was in. She wanted to kick some seriously villainous ass, because there was some definite villainy at work here. Hurry up and wait wasn’t her idea of a good time, ever.
He was out there somewhere, maybe suffering and maybe dead, and there was absolutely nothing she could do it about it. It made her nuts, furious, paralyzed with a fear she wouldn’t have put to words if he was standing right in front of her. If he was standing in front of her, out of blue and out of nowhere, she would have decked him. Bastard.
She couldn’t just sit here while time ticked away. Being still was like being poked by an irritating kid constantly, every second morphing into an hour while she stared at the walls that seemed to squeeze in and out all the time. She wondered if he felt this way wherever they were keeping him, claustrophobic and alone. That wasn’t something she’d wish on someone she hated, much less someone she cared for.
Will was an impressive guy, but Magnus he wasn’t; he was only so strong. They’d break him in pieces and send them back in a human-shaped pile. They’d get back a ghost for the wise-cracking über-geek they’d given. But Kate didn’t want a ghost, she wanted Will. She wanted nosy, invasive, intrusive, worry-wart Will. That was the version of the man she held close despite how different they seemed. It was that Will Zimmerman she’d miss if he never came home again.
And he might not; that he might not, was a nasty, cough-medicine-flavored dose of reality. Like she had as a kid, she gulped against the sick feeling it brought and found something better tasting to wash it down. She skipped the tea for the brandy and took exactly one gulp before spitting it out. For once, it didn’t even taste good.
Besides, if Magnus and associates brought Will home sometime tonight, he’d need her and she wanted to be clear-headed or something like it for that, for him. Kate did a lot for him; going to the ends of the Earth was nothing, yet this was hard. Sitting and waiting was not a Freelander specialty. She couldn’t do this forever-and she wouldn’t. She trusted Magnus with her life and she always would, but this was Will and he was a totally different matter.
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Kate had the sudden and uncontrollable urge to go break someone. And this time, she didn’t resist.
~!~
2. Sucker Punch Sweet - No spoilers
He has no finesse, that’s one of the first things Kate figures out about Will Zimmerman. He isn’t smooth and he’s got the worst excuse for game she’s ever seen. But he’s honest in his intentions. When he wants to get to know her better, he says so. Of course, by saying so, she means he asks for her number…which he’s had since she became a part of the team.
Yeah, no game at all, but he’s sweet and he tries to be thoughtful. He remembers her birthday after he forgets his own. He knows what perfume she likes, or he knows who does know.
He Sherlock Holmes his way through their first three dates before he drops down next to her and just asks her what her favorite color is. She doesn’t have one, she has several. She thinks it’s funny that, to him, that’s the most interesting thing he’s heard in years.
They talk a lot about fending for themselves. He fended for himself in the system, though he talks very little about how that all went down. She knows his mom was killed by an abnormal and that Magnus was more than a little involved there, but that’s it. He won’t say more, except to say that it made him the man he is, even if he’d give that up to have back the mother he’s missed.
She talks about her father, her mother, and brother. She talks about how everyday is struggle to make them proud of her, though she isn’t so sure how proud she is of her father anymore. She mentions redemption and it’s something she feels too young to need, despite the fact that she craves it maybe more than Biggie does. Will gets it in a weird, empathetic way that makes her want to change the subject.
But then, Will’s always made her want to change the subject. She’s still not convinced he hasn’t got a little abnormal in him somewhere with the way he goes rifling through her pieces and figuring out all the stuff she doesn’t say. It’s always weirded her out and now that all that mega-perception is focused on her, it really weirds her out.
She still kind of likes it though. Just like she still kind of likes Will, even if he is a crappy shot who worries too much. And hey, maybe secretly, those are the parts she really likes. It’s not often she gets to be the white knight for such a studly damsel.
~!~
3. To Have Maybe Loved and Lost - No spoilers
Nothing good happened today.
Will was pacing down the hall outside the infirmary. He was this close to going inside against Magnus’ orders, this close to saying the hell with it and being there when Kate woke up.
Magnus said it was simple surgery. As if bullet removal was ever simple.
He’d been there when Kate had been hit, had seen the odd, shocked expression on her face right before she crashed into the wall behind her. He’d been so shocked that it was only Tesla’s intervention that stopped Will from becoming a casualty, too.
Magneto has his uses, he nearly sneered, but there wasn’t any fire in it. He owed the man his thanks one day.
The memory of everything after Kate’s fall was hazy, the blood he’d kneeled in to reach her having made it sticky in his mind. He couldn’t even sit now, because he hadn’t taken the time to change clothes yet. Couldn’t take the time, he was afraid she’d be gone if he did. And that was something he couldn’t quite stomach, Kate being gone.
People die every day, he tried to rationalize. The surge of his half-digested dinner at the back of his throat was answer enough. He leaned against the nearest wall with his eyes closed and refused to think about death again. That wasn’t something he’d ever been particularly gifted at anyway, accepting that sometimes it was merely a person’s time to go. As a boy or as a man, it hardly made any difference; he didn’t want to say goodbye to one more part of himself, didn’t want to put another empty, beloved shell in the ground. Every person in his life today was irreplaceable.
In her own way, Kate was more so than anyone. In the months since she’d really started to feel essential here, she’d opened up to him in a way he hadn’t really expected. They flirted, they joked. They got one another in a way that not everybody understood. He taught her how not to feel so much like an outsider and she taught him how not to act like an outsider when, admittedly, he sometimes still did.
They’d brought one another in from the cold, but he was still shivering. It was a little bit of shock and a lot of dread. He wasn’t ready to lose her yet. There was so much that remained unsaid between them and that was not how he wanted to them to end, not when he was sure deep down that they should have just been getting started.
Will wasn’t new to the concept of having loved and lost. Unfortunately, though, he was becoming damned familiar with the reality of never having loved at all.
But he was an idiot lemming who hoped, so he waited in his blood-caked jeans in this lonely hallway and he thought about love and Kate, all at the same time.