I always feel like, somebody's watching me [Kate]

[tricksthetreat]

[Dated October 12th]Trixa's Mama had told her a lot of things over the thousands of years she'd been alive. One of which was pick your battles and second to that, pick your battlegrounds. Tonight, Trixa was doing both. By now, she knew just about the whole story - Kate got bored and angry, Kate went on a little thieving jaunt. Trixa could respect

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[girlsolo]

Trixa's very very good, better than she is, but not so much better that Kate hasn't felt this coming. Oncoming confrontations have an energy like a gathering storm. Glares, lack of welcome, Kate can read the obvious signs like a champ and the less obvious ones - like shadows on her path - better even than that.

She's a little surprised. Trixa scans like someone who should've been amused or vaguely annoyed rather than pissed, but Kate's judgment wasn't the best last month. Either way, Kate's got this coming to her, and while she's not going to take a beating or a punishment in good Christian fashion, she's also not planning to start a fight if she's not being offered one.

Her eyes flick down and then up again, a small shrug to go with the brief roll of her shoulders and the deliberate opening of her hands at her sides. "More like howling at the moon--" She waits a beat then her lips quirk with a small, self-aware, self-deprecating smile. "Or pissing in the wind." It's not like she doesn't know she's a fuck-up.

[tricksthetreat]

"You were stupid."

Trixa's tone remained flat. She had pride in what she was, the things she could do and to see someone do it badly was just plain annoying. It was unprofessional and half-assed and in the end, what did anyone get out of it?

"Did you have fun?"

[girlsolo]

"Well there's a newsflash for you. Kate Freelander, being stupid." Kate's tone is sharp enough to flay skin from bone and more bitter than three day old rebrewed coffee. She'd know. She's drunk enough of it in her life.

"And I've had more fun doing ITF laundry."

[tricksthetreat]

"Do the crime, do the time."

Not that she thought that the council's idea of 'the time' was anything resembling appropriate. The whole law and order thing wasn't very defined, if one was to ask Trixa. Not that anyone did.

Trixa came up onto the boardwalk, keeping her distance but looking Kate up and down, like she was trying to figure something out. Maybe she was. "Seriously, though, what was the point? What did you get out of all that?"

[girlsolo]

"No complaints about the time," Kate agrees about her punishment. It's a lot lighter than she expected and at least it's something to do.

She can't really get a bead on Trixa, can't figure out her angle. It's frustrating but not unexpected. Finally she cocks her head and sucks in her cheeks, lifting her shoulders in yet another one shrug. Kate's got an entire vocabulary of them. "I don't know that there was a point. Not really." It's the truest thing she's said about it, in some ways, the truest lie in others. "No clubs, no raves, nothing to blow up, no one to save, and everything else that made me me pretty much gone." Except to Declan. "Maybe the point was to remind me I don't like being that girl anymore. It worked, if it was."

What's weird is her telling Trixa the truth. But somehow she figures the other woman earned it.

[tricksthetreat]

"What it was, was sloppy. For someone who seemed to be... capable, you really slacked off there."

Their first meeting had been interesting. Trixa had taken to Kate a little, she saw a lot of herself, once upon a time, in the other woman and that probably made this little betrayal feel worse.

Maybe Trixa had just expected too much from her.

"Didn't seem to do your homework, on your targets or your loot, and you got caught. But then, you're saying that was the point, wasn't it? Get caught, get punished?"

[girlsolo]

That, finally, pricks something in Kate. Her pride, maybe. She's a good thief. A good con. A great smuggler. And there's a whole hell of a lot of people who turn pale just from hearing her name. Her chin comes up and her eyes flash...

And just as fast as they do, she lets out a breath and stops the bullshit again. She's gotten better at that, not running her mouth off for no reason, and right now she wants to defend herself about as much as she wants to have this conversation. Not at all.

"Sorry it wasn't up to your standards," she says, but it's mild, considering. "I'd promise to do better next time, but there isn't going to be one. I'd explain, but if you care, you probably wouldn't believe me."

[tricksthetreat]

It's in there, that spark, that ire. She did have some pride in her work and she knew she'd blown it. So why the sloppy work to begin with? Why the half-assed little game.

"Try me. I've been around kid, I know the cons, I know the tricksters and you struck me as the type. Why stop now?"

[girlsolo]

"It's not exactly 'into the woods' conversation," Kate finally says when she decides she's going to say anything at all. Fuck, Will's always on her ass to talk to people when her brain's in a knot, and if Trixa thinks she gives a fuck, why not her? She told Steve with a lot less reason. Sort of.

"Grab a drink or at least cop a squat? Not really feeling the autobiography-on-the-hoof vibe."

[tricksthetreat]

Not feeling like she wanted other people around, Trixa simply sat down on the edge of the boardwalk, Stretching her legs out and patting the space next to her.

"Have a seat, tell Auntie Trixa all about it."

[girlsolo]

Kate snorts and takes the few steps over to the edge of the boardwalk, then drops to the edge, one knee up on the walk to turn her toward Trixa and the other foot edging through a pile of sand

[tricksthetreat]

"So you're working out your insecurities with a few amateur felonies?"

Granted, it was far from the dumbest idea she'd heard, hell, when she was a kid, really a kid, she'd done her share, but never like this. There was a difference between getting caught when you were really trying and getting caught because you didn't care. She knew that she was wired different, she was a trickster born, maybe she was projecting her own sense of duty and pride on a simple human woman who was having a rough time of it.

[girlsolo]

Kate laughs at that, sharp and bitter. It's not the stupidest explanation of it she's heard and not that far off the point. "Probably oversimplifying a bit, but not far off the mark."

She plucks at the fringe on her thigh again and rolls the idea around in her head some. "It all started with Will and me stealing something of his that meant something to both of us. Something that should have meant something to both of us. When it didn't and he didn't call me on it, I got pissed off and made him call me on it." Kate's not at all proud of that. "It was stupid as fuck but we got right because of it. And, it wasn't the plan, but it fixed something else too. Now I don't have a blank slate so much. I hurt people here too, and I owe them something. Putting it right's kind of helping me get my head on straight."

The effed up thing about that is, it's 100% percent honest. For a girl who lives on lies, when she decides to tell the truth, she tells it without flinching.

[tricksthetreat]

"And the rest of us fit in... where exactly?"

Because if she'd been trying to get her friend's attention, stealing from Trixa wasn't going to cut it. Not when she was the type to not advertise when she'd been wronged, the type that just took matters into her own hands. Truth be told, if it weren't for not wanting to put Ishiah in an awkward position, this conversation wouldn't be happening - Trixa would just be raiding Kate's space for her own souvenirs... and leaving her own little surprises.

[girlsolo]

"It was different for everyone." But she gets a little where Trixa's coming from, asking the questions she's asking. "Most of it was opportunity or connections that amused me. You were the only one I picked out on purpose. I honestly wasn't thinking to take anything from you when I went in. I just thought if anyone knew a damned thing about this island that they weren't telling, it'd be you. But then there wasn't anything."

Kate lifts her head to meet Trixa's eyes because she owes her that much, too. "If you broke into my place, I'd expect you to take something that mattered. And I'd expect you to keep it safe so I could steal or barter it back. So I took your feather. Courtesy. Twisted, I guess. But I kind of figured you'd get it."

[tricksthetreat]

Trixa had to repress the urge to laugh. Really? That was what she had thought? Maybe it was time she set a few things straight for the record. "First, if I broke into your place, you'd never find out it was me. Second, I might take something that mattered, but what I take, I don't give back." She had to pause and reconsider that one - it wasn't entirely truthful. "Unless I'm ramming it down your throat or up your ass."

Trixa fixed a half-glare towards Kate. She was serious about this and she wanted Kate to understand it. "The con, the tricks, it's not a game, not for me, it's what I am. I get that you were trying to be nice and in your way this was a gesture of respect. I can forgive that as a rookie mistake. But I wasn't amused. And I'm a little insulted that you thought I'd be impressed."