Fic: Epistolary
Title:Epistolary
Characters: Kate Freelander, others
Pairing: Pre-Kate/Will
Word Count: 1002
Summary/Prompt: Pavor Nocturnus!Verse, "Write a letter you'll never send."
They camp out for a week in an old school.
St. John's High School, just outside of the place that used to be Seattle. But the City's been gutted, hollowed out by death and fire and loss. Caving in on itself like a Jack o lantern left out through November, moldering eye sockets sinking into a sinister parody of what their expression had been intended to be.
But there's one hell of a storm sweeping up from San Francisco, loaded with ash and acid rain, so they stay put. Lock themselves up in the building with the thickest walls and wait it out. Kate had always found it bitterly ironic how much most public schools tended to look like prisons. Built to keep students in, like cattle. This one's purpose now was more to keep things out.
Kate had hated high school. Hated the classes she couldn't find any worth in, hated the catty pettiness of her peers. Hated the fluorescent lights, and the smell of the halls after the janitors had been through. Bleach and Lysol. Sterile.
She didn't make it to her junior year. Before her seventeenth birthday she was on the road to Montreal. She was running half a smuggling ring while most of her former classmates were getting ready for Prom. She didn't have too many happy memories of places like this.
They hadn't even cleared out the lockers. Some were hanging open, paper and books and lost hoodies and school supplies strewn across the floor. She wondered how quickly they'd evacuated. Whether they'd stayed in session long enough for some horrified kid to look on as their teacher or coach or friend transformed before their eyes.
The storm hits the night they buckle down. Three days later it's still coming down.
She finds an old notebook, and a pen in the hallway. It's almost empty, except for a curly scrawl on the inside front cover. Carly Whikkers, fourth period French. She'd dotted her i with a little heart. Kate tore the cover off, and felt a little sick.
She writes.
It's something like a letter, somewhat like a diary entry, and a little more like a confession.
She writes to her father, dead twenty-one years last month. She tells him she hopes he could understand, how in so many little ways she tried to follow in his footsteps. She writes to her mother, who never made it out of Mumbai. Kate tells her she's sorry she ran. Sorry she never looked back, sorry she never called. Sorry she didn't look out for Thad when he was young and alone and needed her and sorry she couldn't do a better job protecting him later.
She fills up a page and a half with apologies alone, until tear smeared ink marked as punctuation, the end of the sheet.
She tells Thad she loved him, the idiot. That he grew up alright, in the end, and that she wished she'd known Laura better.
She writes to her baby niece, who never saw her first birthday, and Kate tells her all the things she wanted to teach her. Like how to pick locks and climb fire escapes and all the ways to annoy her Daddy.
She writes to Ashley Magnus, whom she never knew. She tells her that her Mom's pretty sweet, and if she'd been around Kate would have wiped the floor with her at Guitar Hero.
She adds a few lines for the Big Guy, half a page of thanks for the backroom booze, the movie nights, and the hairy shoulder to cry on.
She writes to Henry...weird to think he'd only been gone a few months, it felt like years. She addresses it to Hank, and talks about the good old days. She teases him with paper and ink and sits silent, the humor hollow without anyone to joke back. He'd been under government watch, some deep dark bunker somewhere. And he'd died because no one had noticed that one of the guards was looking a little pale.
She writes to Magnus, half a continent away, still desperately trying to find a solution to this hell. She starts at the beginning, with a chair and a gun and a chocolate bar, and works her way through. Three pages later she gets around to thanking Helen for saving her from herself.
Kate writes to Will, sitting two rooms away with the others in what used to be the cafeteria.
She doesn't know what to say.
So she starts with thank you. For giving her a second chance once upon a time. For keeping her from breaking every bone in her hand when she got the call about Thad. For staying with her when she needed to be weak, and calling it 'client patient confidentiality' when she begs him not to tell.
She tells him she's proud of him, then stares at the sentence, in all its strangeness for a time. But it's written in ink, unmovable. Like all things in this brave new world, it was fixed and unchanging. Final and absolute.
Kate writes to her dead, and her living, and to people who were never hers at all. She fills the pages with words and thoughts and moments of lives lived and ended and ongoing where two years ago some sixteen year old should have been scribbling down notes for class.
She doesn't know what to do with it when it's done. The captain calls her to dinner, and it occurs to her that she's been writing in the empty hallways for over six hours. She looks down at her handwriting, cramped and uneven sprawling across the pages, outside the lines, stained with tears in places.
And she leaves it there, on the floor, amid the rubbish and debris of scattered teenage hopes and dreams.
They move out the next day, and when they abandon the place, the door they leave open welcomes in a western wind that spreads the pages out like dead leaves along the hall. EE
Characters: Kate Freelander, others
Pairing: Pre-Kate/Will
Word Count: 1002
Summary/Prompt: Pavor Nocturnus!Verse, "Write a letter you'll never send."
They camp out for a week in an old school.
St. John's High School, just outside of the place that used to be Seattle. But the City's been gutted, hollowed out by death and fire and loss. Caving in on itself like a Jack o lantern left out through November, moldering eye sockets sinking into a sinister parody of what their expression had been intended to be.
But there's one hell of a storm sweeping up from San Francisco, loaded with ash and acid rain, so they stay put. Lock themselves up in the building with the thickest walls and wait it out. Kate had always found it bitterly ironic how much most public schools tended to look like prisons. Built to keep students in, like cattle. This one's purpose now was more to keep things out.
Kate had hated high school. Hated the classes she couldn't find any worth in, hated the catty pettiness of her peers. Hated the fluorescent lights, and the smell of the halls after the janitors had been through. Bleach and Lysol. Sterile.
She didn't make it to her junior year. Before her seventeenth birthday she was on the road to Montreal. She was running half a smuggling ring while most of her former classmates were getting ready for Prom. She didn't have too many happy memories of places like this.
They hadn't even cleared out the lockers. Some were hanging open, paper and books and lost hoodies and school supplies strewn across the floor. She wondered how quickly they'd evacuated. Whether they'd stayed in session long enough for some horrified kid to look on as their teacher or coach or friend transformed before their eyes.
The storm hits the night they buckle down. Three days later it's still coming down.
She finds an old notebook, and a pen in the hallway. It's almost empty, except for a curly scrawl on the inside front cover. Carly Whikkers, fourth period French. She'd dotted her i with a little heart. Kate tore the cover off, and felt a little sick.
She writes.
It's something like a letter, somewhat like a diary entry, and a little more like a confession.
She writes to her father, dead twenty-one years last month. She tells him she hopes he could understand, how in so many little ways she tried to follow in his footsteps. She writes to her mother, who never made it out of Mumbai. Kate tells her she's sorry she ran. Sorry she never looked back, sorry she never called. Sorry she didn't look out for Thad when he was young and alone and needed her and sorry she couldn't do a better job protecting him later.
She fills up a page and a half with apologies alone, until tear smeared ink marked as punctuation, the end of the sheet.
She tells Thad she loved him, the idiot. That he grew up alright, in the end, and that she wished she'd known Laura better.
She writes to her baby niece, who never saw her first birthday, and Kate tells her all the things she wanted to teach her. Like how to pick locks and climb fire escapes and all the ways to annoy her Daddy.
She writes to Ashley Magnus, whom she never knew. She tells her that her Mom's pretty sweet, and if she'd been around Kate would have wiped the floor with her at Guitar Hero.
She adds a few lines for the Big Guy, half a page of thanks for the backroom booze, the movie nights, and the hairy shoulder to cry on.
She writes to Henry...weird to think he'd only been gone a few months, it felt like years. She addresses it to Hank, and talks about the good old days. She teases him with paper and ink and sits silent, the humor hollow without anyone to joke back. He'd been under government watch, some deep dark bunker somewhere. And he'd died because no one had noticed that one of the guards was looking a little pale.
She writes to Magnus, half a continent away, still desperately trying to find a solution to this hell. She starts at the beginning, with a chair and a gun and a chocolate bar, and works her way through. Three pages later she gets around to thanking Helen for saving her from herself.
Kate writes to Will, sitting two rooms away with the others in what used to be the cafeteria.
She doesn't know what to say.
So she starts with thank you. For giving her a second chance once upon a time. For keeping her from breaking every bone in her hand when she got the call about Thad. For staying with her when she needed to be weak, and calling it 'client patient confidentiality' when she begs him not to tell.
She tells him she's proud of him, then stares at the sentence, in all its strangeness for a time. But it's written in ink, unmovable. Like all things in this brave new world, it was fixed and unchanging. Final and absolute.
Kate writes to her dead, and her living, and to people who were never hers at all. She fills the pages with words and thoughts and moments of lives lived and ended and ongoing where two years ago some sixteen year old should have been scribbling down notes for class.
She doesn't know what to do with it when it's done. The captain calls her to dinner, and it occurs to her that she's been writing in the empty hallways for over six hours. She looks down at her handwriting, cramped and uneven sprawling across the pages, outside the lines, stained with tears in places.
And she leaves it there, on the floor, amid the rubbish and debris of scattered teenage hopes and dreams.
They move out the next day, and when they abandon the place, the door they leave open welcomes in a western wind that spreads the pages out like dead leaves along the hall. EE