Leaving L.A.
Title: Leaving L.A.
Author: slowmercury
Fandom / Character: Angel / Kate Lockley
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: 48) Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. -- Han Suyin
Summary: After losing her job with the LAPD, Kate needs to rebuild her life.
Notes: You shouldn't need to be familiar with the fandom to understand this fic. Also, my beta amathela is amazing. She seriously tightened this fic up.
Leaving L.A.
There’s no point in lingering in L.A.. Kate contacts a real estate agent to sell her apartment and starts throwing boxes into her battered Ford Focus the moment she puts down the phone. She’s outside the city limits by nightfall, and she traces the winding desert road, adrift in the dark. The moon comes up and her eyes ache from lack of sleep, but she still doesn’t stop.
When the sun rises, it burns through her trancelike state, so Kate pulls over at the first hotel she sees and stumbles into a bed. It’s easier and harder to leave LA than she had thought it would be - she’s anchorless now, away from everything she’s worked so hard to achieve, but at the same time she feels light, almost free. She can’t go back to being what she was, so she must become something new. For the first time Kate finds herself believing she can be something new - if not something better, then maybe just as good.
Kate drives for days, stopping whenever she’s tired. She sidetracks and backtracks whenever she feels like it; since she doesn’t know where she’s going anyway, there’s no point in rushing. Her car breaks down in one of the Midwest’s innumerable Springfields, this one in Kentucky, and she has the option of abandoning her car or staying until it can be fixed. She decides to wait.
The second day she’s stranded there, Kate calls up her old friend Jack at the Los Angeles Police Department to let everyone know she’s still alive. She’s grateful that her message goes straight to voicemail; she has no desire to talk to any of the people who she feels betrayed her. Even if her feelings aren’t entirely logical, Kate isn’t ready to forgive yet. She may never be ready.
She doesn’t call Angel. They’ve said everything there is to say to each other, and somehow she’s confident that he’s doing all right.
Kate wanders around the town for a few days, seeing the sights (what few there are, anyway). Eventually she stops at a restaurant called Mordecai’s, a small step up from a greasy spoon. One of their waiters just left for college, so Kate applies for work and gets it. It’s a nice change of pace, to be doing something as mundane as serving people food; her last job had shown her the nastiest side of humanity first, and by the time she’d left, it’d shown her the nastiest side of the supernatural world, too. Asking people what they want to eat and then bringing it to them seems almost fantastic in comparison.
It’s surprisingly easy for Kate to slip into a routine, walking from work to her rented room to the auto shop and back. Within a few weeks the locals seem to stop expecting her to do something outrageous, and she fades from “the mysterious new blonde woman whose car broke down” to “just another employee at Mordecai’s.” No one suspects that she used to be a big city detective, one of the best, and Kate goes out of her way to keep it that way.
She makes friends with one of the chefs, a tall guy named Joshua who’s starting to show signs of sampling his own cooking a little too often. They develop the habit of sitting on the back stoop after closing, when all the chairs are put up and the kitchen’s been wiped down. Joshua smokes and Kate gazes up at the stars she could never have seen in LA. They don’t talk much.
Halfway through her fifth month in Springfield, Kate begins to have nightmares. She dreams about cops who should have stayed dead walking the streets again, bodies beaten beyond recognition or chopped into pieces or with their throats torn out. Her father is there, sometimes - he whispers to her how disappointed he is and vanishes when she tries to reason with him.
She hadn’t dreamed about any of it when it happened. She hadn’t dreamed at all, back in LA. Not for years.
When she casually mentions this to Joshua one night, he flicks his cigarette and says, “Maybe it’s just time for you to dream again.”
Kate laughs and says, “Bullshit,” but she thinks about it, too, especially when she wakes up abrupt and afraid, staring at the ceiling. She can feel her strictly maintained mental walls crumble a little further every time it happens. Those walls allowed Kate to compartmentalize enough to get up day after day and face the world’s endlessly inventive horrors and betrayals, and now her protection is failing her. She should feel panicked, but instead she feels like a snake shedding its too-small skin. She feels like bits of her soul are unfurling and stretching out like leaf buds.
To her own amazement, Kate finds herself actually wanting to talk about her feelings. Joshua ends up bearing the brunt of it, those nights after work when they sit outdoors and Kate needs to get things off her chest.
Kate’s tentative at first. She doesn’t want to spoil the peace she has with Joshua, so in the beginning she only tells him funny stories. She recounts how she botched giving a simple speeding ticket when she was a rookie; she describes the time she and her partner answered a domestic disturbance call only to realize all the screaming abuse was coming from a scarlet macaw. Joshua laughs and offers sardonic commentary on some of the stupider escapades of Kate and her old Los Angeles companions. Every now and then he’ll share one of his own exploits from his brief stint in culinary school.
Later, once she’s convinced herself that Joshua really doesn’t mind breaking the quiet with stories, Kate starts to tell the more serious ones. He learns without flinching the details of the first homicide she investigated, and how they never caught the killer. She shares her nightmares and how sometimes when she wakes she thinks she’s still back in LA, needing to find the latest killer or catch the next drug dealer, and how it felt like she was fighting against the tide.
Eventually, Kate spills the story of how her father - a respected cop - involved himself in crooked business deals and got himself killed, and how she accused someone who had almost been a friend of causing his death. She doesn’t say how hard she had tried to make her dad proud or how badly she failed, but Joshua hears anyway. He is a very good listener.
Kate is surprised by what she uncovers as she talks. She’s more upset than she had let herself realize; sometimes her grief and anger swell up so strongly she wants to scream. Other times, she feels almost guilty at how relieved she is that it’s over and done, at how free she feels now.
“Sometimes,” she admits to Joshua, “I think I’m going crazy. Unless I’m crazy already, which would explain a lot.”
Joshua shrugs to convey that there are worse things than insanity. “Get a hobby,” he suggests, lighting up a cigarette in demonstration. “Find something to take your mind off things. You don’t have to face all your crazy right now. These things take time. You need to give yourself something else to think about.”
It’s good advice, so sometimes when the nightmares or her wild emotions are too much for her, Kate carves wood. She starts by whittling stakes - an easy project, practical and almost instinctive - but before long she’s attempting to create gardens out of wood blocks. She’s terrible at first, but she goes to the library and borrows a stack of books on the subject, and gradually she improves. The day she finally manages to carve a recognizable flower, she dreams of her mother and wakes up smiling.
She’ll be leaving Springfield soon. She doesn’t know where she’s going yet, but it’s almost time for her to move on. Being a waitress and a second rate artist is wonderful - it’s a life she didn’t know she needed until she had it - but she’s starting to grow restless, and she knows she could be doing more good elsewhere. She’ll go back to school, maybe, get a law degree and become a defense attorney. Or she could start a detective agency, or, hell, she could open a pet shop that sells demonic guard dogs or something. Kate hasn’t decided yet.
In the meantime, she’ll carve wood and spin stories with Joshua.
Author: slowmercury
Fandom / Character: Angel / Kate Lockley
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: 48) Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. -- Han Suyin
Summary: After losing her job with the LAPD, Kate needs to rebuild her life.
Notes: You shouldn't need to be familiar with the fandom to understand this fic. Also, my beta amathela is amazing. She seriously tightened this fic up.
Leaving L.A.
There’s no point in lingering in L.A.. Kate contacts a real estate agent to sell her apartment and starts throwing boxes into her battered Ford Focus the moment she puts down the phone. She’s outside the city limits by nightfall, and she traces the winding desert road, adrift in the dark. The moon comes up and her eyes ache from lack of sleep, but she still doesn’t stop.
When the sun rises, it burns through her trancelike state, so Kate pulls over at the first hotel she sees and stumbles into a bed. It’s easier and harder to leave LA than she had thought it would be - she’s anchorless now, away from everything she’s worked so hard to achieve, but at the same time she feels light, almost free. She can’t go back to being what she was, so she must become something new. For the first time Kate finds herself believing she can be something new - if not something better, then maybe just as good.
Kate drives for days, stopping whenever she’s tired. She sidetracks and backtracks whenever she feels like it; since she doesn’t know where she’s going anyway, there’s no point in rushing. Her car breaks down in one of the Midwest’s innumerable Springfields, this one in Kentucky, and she has the option of abandoning her car or staying until it can be fixed. She decides to wait.
The second day she’s stranded there, Kate calls up her old friend Jack at the Los Angeles Police Department to let everyone know she’s still alive. She’s grateful that her message goes straight to voicemail; she has no desire to talk to any of the people who she feels betrayed her. Even if her feelings aren’t entirely logical, Kate isn’t ready to forgive yet. She may never be ready.
She doesn’t call Angel. They’ve said everything there is to say to each other, and somehow she’s confident that he’s doing all right.
Kate wanders around the town for a few days, seeing the sights (what few there are, anyway). Eventually she stops at a restaurant called Mordecai’s, a small step up from a greasy spoon. One of their waiters just left for college, so Kate applies for work and gets it. It’s a nice change of pace, to be doing something as mundane as serving people food; her last job had shown her the nastiest side of humanity first, and by the time she’d left, it’d shown her the nastiest side of the supernatural world, too. Asking people what they want to eat and then bringing it to them seems almost fantastic in comparison.
It’s surprisingly easy for Kate to slip into a routine, walking from work to her rented room to the auto shop and back. Within a few weeks the locals seem to stop expecting her to do something outrageous, and she fades from “the mysterious new blonde woman whose car broke down” to “just another employee at Mordecai’s.” No one suspects that she used to be a big city detective, one of the best, and Kate goes out of her way to keep it that way.
She makes friends with one of the chefs, a tall guy named Joshua who’s starting to show signs of sampling his own cooking a little too often. They develop the habit of sitting on the back stoop after closing, when all the chairs are put up and the kitchen’s been wiped down. Joshua smokes and Kate gazes up at the stars she could never have seen in LA. They don’t talk much.
Halfway through her fifth month in Springfield, Kate begins to have nightmares. She dreams about cops who should have stayed dead walking the streets again, bodies beaten beyond recognition or chopped into pieces or with their throats torn out. Her father is there, sometimes - he whispers to her how disappointed he is and vanishes when she tries to reason with him.
She hadn’t dreamed about any of it when it happened. She hadn’t dreamed at all, back in LA. Not for years.
When she casually mentions this to Joshua one night, he flicks his cigarette and says, “Maybe it’s just time for you to dream again.”
Kate laughs and says, “Bullshit,” but she thinks about it, too, especially when she wakes up abrupt and afraid, staring at the ceiling. She can feel her strictly maintained mental walls crumble a little further every time it happens. Those walls allowed Kate to compartmentalize enough to get up day after day and face the world’s endlessly inventive horrors and betrayals, and now her protection is failing her. She should feel panicked, but instead she feels like a snake shedding its too-small skin. She feels like bits of her soul are unfurling and stretching out like leaf buds.
To her own amazement, Kate finds herself actually wanting to talk about her feelings. Joshua ends up bearing the brunt of it, those nights after work when they sit outdoors and Kate needs to get things off her chest.
Kate’s tentative at first. She doesn’t want to spoil the peace she has with Joshua, so in the beginning she only tells him funny stories. She recounts how she botched giving a simple speeding ticket when she was a rookie; she describes the time she and her partner answered a domestic disturbance call only to realize all the screaming abuse was coming from a scarlet macaw. Joshua laughs and offers sardonic commentary on some of the stupider escapades of Kate and her old Los Angeles companions. Every now and then he’ll share one of his own exploits from his brief stint in culinary school.
Later, once she’s convinced herself that Joshua really doesn’t mind breaking the quiet with stories, Kate starts to tell the more serious ones. He learns without flinching the details of the first homicide she investigated, and how they never caught the killer. She shares her nightmares and how sometimes when she wakes she thinks she’s still back in LA, needing to find the latest killer or catch the next drug dealer, and how it felt like she was fighting against the tide.
Eventually, Kate spills the story of how her father - a respected cop - involved himself in crooked business deals and got himself killed, and how she accused someone who had almost been a friend of causing his death. She doesn’t say how hard she had tried to make her dad proud or how badly she failed, but Joshua hears anyway. He is a very good listener.
Kate is surprised by what she uncovers as she talks. She’s more upset than she had let herself realize; sometimes her grief and anger swell up so strongly she wants to scream. Other times, she feels almost guilty at how relieved she is that it’s over and done, at how free she feels now.
“Sometimes,” she admits to Joshua, “I think I’m going crazy. Unless I’m crazy already, which would explain a lot.”
Joshua shrugs to convey that there are worse things than insanity. “Get a hobby,” he suggests, lighting up a cigarette in demonstration. “Find something to take your mind off things. You don’t have to face all your crazy right now. These things take time. You need to give yourself something else to think about.”
It’s good advice, so sometimes when the nightmares or her wild emotions are too much for her, Kate carves wood. She starts by whittling stakes - an easy project, practical and almost instinctive - but before long she’s attempting to create gardens out of wood blocks. She’s terrible at first, but she goes to the library and borrows a stack of books on the subject, and gradually she improves. The day she finally manages to carve a recognizable flower, she dreams of her mother and wakes up smiling.
She’ll be leaving Springfield soon. She doesn’t know where she’s going yet, but it’s almost time for her to move on. Being a waitress and a second rate artist is wonderful - it’s a life she didn’t know she needed until she had it - but she’s starting to grow restless, and she knows she could be doing more good elsewhere. She’ll go back to school, maybe, get a law degree and become a defense attorney. Or she could start a detective agency, or, hell, she could open a pet shop that sells demonic guard dogs or something. Kate hasn’t decided yet.
In the meantime, she’ll carve wood and spin stories with Joshua.