Fic: Scar Tissue That I Wish You Saw
Title: Scar Tissue That I Wish You Saw (Sarcastic Mister Know it All)
Character/Pairing: Mildly Kate/Jimmy if you squint.
Prompt: Sanctuary, Red Hot Chili Peppers
[OOC: Little fic I did ages ago and meant to make into something bigger, that never happened, so enjoy now!]
Kate recovers.
Well, Magnus stitches up the hole in her shoulder, slaps her in a sling and chides her for letting someone dig a bullet out of her with a knife. She could almost laugh, laugh at the absurdity of it all. At the painful amusement that Helen Magnus didn't know what had transpired between Kate and Jimmy in that room. She'd pointed a gun at his head, she'd pulled the trigger and the only thing keeping her from making the biggest mistake of her life had been an empty clip.
It was the longest moment of her life too. That airless room, feeling the blood drip down her chest, legs shaking from shock or bloodloss or just the urge to curl up and cry. The seconds ticking on, one, two, three, click. Death falls to the floor with a clatter. And things get more complicated. She'd almost killed him, in cold blood. For the sake of revenge or justice or just striking back against everything she'd become.
And now he was penned up in their infirmary and Kate was avoiding the wing like the plague. Magnus seemed to keep finding reasons to keep him penned up. First it was to remove all the shrapnal from the explosion, then it was monitering for additional bleeding, and so on. It had been over a week now, and Kate was running out of excuses to dodge checkups for her shoulder. She'd only gotten up the courage to look in on him once, he'd been sleeping at the time. And she remembered standing next to bed, one half of her thinking, 'you could do it now, right now, in the dark and never have to look into his eyes when you do. You can end this right here.'
'But I don't want to.' The other half whispered, and that was that.
After a week and a half Magnus starts letting her latest patient out and about in the Sanctuary, and Kate began her stint as a hermit. She couldn't hide out in her room forever, but she only had to long enough for a certain someone to be medically cleared and leave, anyway. She kept telling herself that if she never had to look him in the face again then she could pretend that nothing ever happened. And pretending nothing had happened was the only way she could justify not following through with the vengeance she'd been planning for nearly twenty years.
In the end, Jimmy finds her.
There's a knock on her door, it's open, she says without checking. He takes one step in, and she freezes.
"I'm leaving." He says. She doesn't say anything at all.
"How's the shoulder doing?" He asks.
"Better", she says. He smiles, or tries to, but it's grim and stiff and it makes her sick that she's tempted to smile back. Kate looks at the floor, picking lint off her sleeve when her mouth acts without permission.
"You got in that car, with that bomb." She states the fact like the question it is. If she hadn't called him out, called him back...
"Yes, yes I did", he sighed, leaning against her doorframe.
"Why?" She asks, even when the answer's obvious to the both of them. She knows it because she knows the same sting of guilt, understands how there can seem tobe only one kind of redemption. She's had plenty of time in the past week if there's some kid out there right now whose father she's killed.
"You." He says, and she understands perfectly.
Character/Pairing: Mildly Kate/Jimmy if you squint.
Prompt: Sanctuary, Red Hot Chili Peppers
[OOC: Little fic I did ages ago and meant to make into something bigger, that never happened, so enjoy now!]
Kate recovers.
Well, Magnus stitches up the hole in her shoulder, slaps her in a sling and chides her for letting someone dig a bullet out of her with a knife. She could almost laugh, laugh at the absurdity of it all. At the painful amusement that Helen Magnus didn't know what had transpired between Kate and Jimmy in that room. She'd pointed a gun at his head, she'd pulled the trigger and the only thing keeping her from making the biggest mistake of her life had been an empty clip.
It was the longest moment of her life too. That airless room, feeling the blood drip down her chest, legs shaking from shock or bloodloss or just the urge to curl up and cry. The seconds ticking on, one, two, three, click. Death falls to the floor with a clatter. And things get more complicated. She'd almost killed him, in cold blood. For the sake of revenge or justice or just striking back against everything she'd become.
And now he was penned up in their infirmary and Kate was avoiding the wing like the plague. Magnus seemed to keep finding reasons to keep him penned up. First it was to remove all the shrapnal from the explosion, then it was monitering for additional bleeding, and so on. It had been over a week now, and Kate was running out of excuses to dodge checkups for her shoulder. She'd only gotten up the courage to look in on him once, he'd been sleeping at the time. And she remembered standing next to bed, one half of her thinking, 'you could do it now, right now, in the dark and never have to look into his eyes when you do. You can end this right here.'
'But I don't want to.' The other half whispered, and that was that.
After a week and a half Magnus starts letting her latest patient out and about in the Sanctuary, and Kate began her stint as a hermit. She couldn't hide out in her room forever, but she only had to long enough for a certain someone to be medically cleared and leave, anyway. She kept telling herself that if she never had to look him in the face again then she could pretend that nothing ever happened. And pretending nothing had happened was the only way she could justify not following through with the vengeance she'd been planning for nearly twenty years.
In the end, Jimmy finds her.
There's a knock on her door, it's open, she says without checking. He takes one step in, and she freezes.
"I'm leaving." He says. She doesn't say anything at all.
"How's the shoulder doing?" He asks.
"Better", she says. He smiles, or tries to, but it's grim and stiff and it makes her sick that she's tempted to smile back. Kate looks at the floor, picking lint off her sleeve when her mouth acts without permission.
"You got in that car, with that bomb." She states the fact like the question it is. If she hadn't called him out, called him back...
"Yes, yes I did", he sighed, leaning against her doorframe.
"Why?" She asks, even when the answer's obvious to the both of them. She knows it because she knows the same sting of guilt, understands how there can seem tobe only one kind of redemption. She's had plenty of time in the past week if there's some kid out there right now whose father she's killed.
"You." He says, and she understands perfectly.