Chilly Boulder, Wednesday Afternoon
Well, their Fandom was phasing with a new one and while Kathy couldn't remember how long it would take before theirs overtook this one and destroyed it nor how many times this had already happened in the past (though the flickers were lingering longer now than they'd been this morning, so odds were high the process was a quick one), she knew to
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... which he promptly forgot about as soon as he made it into the door, heart thudding in his throat. He'd spent the last eight months trying to get that face and hair out of his mind, and now --
"No," he said, not realizing he'd even spoken.
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Anders was more confused than ever.
"I -- I'm not upset about ice cream, Kathy."
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She stood up, legs visibly trembling for a moment and then sat back down. And with that reminder, her face hardened again. "Then what is it?"
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he couldn't not say it.
And if he noticed that Kathy looked a bit careworn, or the trembles in her legs, that was easily put down to the rigors of being dead. (Mostly, he didn't notice.)
He slumped into a chair at a table near hers, staying just out of arm's reach.
"You've been dead for months," he said, still frowning hard. "At least -- I thought you were. Did you get better?"
There was sarcasm there, but some childish hope, too.
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But if she did, she knew that someone would put her down. Dante. Eliot. Her Anders--who might not properly be hers any more, but was moreso than this one.
"Why would you think I'd died?" she asked.
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"The last time I talked to you," he said wearily, "you were very, very sick. But I think the island might be playing tricks again. Either that, or you somehow came back to life and forgot the zombies along the way."
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But one of a few things she still remembered, no mattered how often she'd wished to forget.
"It's not the island playing tricks, Anders. My reality is phasing in with yours. Invading yours, really. And most of the people on the island are going to die."
She shrugged. "Sorry."
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"Well. That's just mean, letting us see each other before I probably die horribly. At least we'll have some ice cream to ease the blow."
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She was going to ask.
"When I--in April--when we said goodbye for the last time for you, were we...?" An old pain cut through her. She would have assumed it would be dulled by now, blunted by years of forgetting and the harsh reality they lived with, but it wasn't at all. It felt fresh, cutting through all the scars that had closed up the wounds on her heart and leaving them to bleed anew.
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It still hurt a lot for him. He didn't have as much scar tissue as she did.
"I don't know," he finally said. "You threw your life away. Kind of nipped things in the bud."
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Of course. Of course.
She felt tears threaten and let her lands fall into her lap, not bothering to slow their descent. They landed heavily on her thighs, the pain making her hiss but she welcomed it. The physical pain subsumed the emotional and she was able to steady herself. Pain in her legs was practically an old friend by now.
"I--" She wasn't going to apologize. Not for the actions of some stupid girl she'd never been. "I see."
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"And I'm guessing we never made it work where you're from, either," he said. "Just to twist the knife a little."
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And had come back with another passenger, but she wasn't going to tell him that. Not now anyway. She was already being petty enough.
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She cut herself off and took a big spoonful of ice cream, even though it was mostly soup by this point.
"I'm just saying, you might be more heroic than you think," she said quietly a moment later. The way she said it, it was not a compliment.
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