24: "The Gilded Cage"

[knitwitfics]

Title: The Gilded Cage
Fandom: 24
Characters: Kim Bauer, Barry Landes
Rating: PG
Summary: She didn't see the bars until it was almost too late.
Spoilers: Season 5
Challenges: written to a prompt chosen by birdseyeview  from a list of prompts from 31_days : "Too proud to be a queen".

Comments

[catch22girl]

AUGH. KAREN. FIC FROM YOU. *FLAILS*

Awesome use of prompt and I can totally see this happening.

LOVE.

Especially love this:
But she didn't know where he was or how to reach him, and it wouldn't be fair to ask him to fix everything for her. She'd had Barry handling everything for her for too long. This was her fault; she had to get herself out of this mess.

[kcountess]

Eeee, thanks. And yeah, I can see Barry having used her depression to control her for so long, only as he "fixes" her, she naturally starts expecting to take more control of her life.

And you know I had to put in a mention of her dad somewhere. :D

[sardonicynic]

Augh, Karen.

I read this last night but was too brain-dead to comment before I dropped into a tiny coma.

So now? Halfway coherent feedback, you can has! *G*

I just -- GAH, I can hear Barry and oh, man, Kim's rationalizations broke me:

It wasn't like he hit her, called her names. Maybe she was overreacting. He was older than her, knew more than she did. What did she know about how to have a healthy relationship?

But I love that she realizes she has to get out, and of course the "gilded cage" metaphor works so perfectly.

(Only one beyond-tiny ding: maybe tack on "card" after "social security" in the first line of the last paragraph?)

And of course this Jack/Teri detail put a lump in my throat:

They'd had their problems, but she knew that they had never seen each other as anything but equals.

Augh. Just, augh. I need more of your fic in my life, like, yesterday.

[kcountess]

Yay halfway coherent feedback!

Yeah I purposely wanted her to have a moment where she was thinking that what he'd done "wasn't really abuse" as it's one of the things I could see someone in that situation thinking--that they have this mental idea of abuse meaning that you end up in the hospital or that it's somehow that obvious, when there's a lot of things that someone can do that are abusive without being obvious.

And yeah, I wanted Kim to have that realization that just because her parents did have big problems in their marriage didn't mean that there wasn't something she could take from it.

And eeee, thanks. :D I need a Kim icon.

[kcountess]

Yay! I was going for subtle but it was difficult finding a balance between making it so obvious that she should have seen it earlier, and so subtle that the reader doesn't buy it. And I didn't want to go the route of Barry beating the crap out of her, as I don't think we really saw that kind of control in S5. But yeah, subtle is definitely more difficult.

Thanks for the prompt and glad you liked it!

Look! You made Teri sad!

[libbi]

Bah, I so want to see Kim call Jack and him comfort her and then go revengeful on his ass.

Re: Look! You made Teri sad!

[kcountess]

LOL. But that doesn't fit with canon! It's lovely to imagine, though. :D

[marinw]

Nice fic. So glad Kim was able to get her shit together and eventually hook up with Stephen. He seems like a nice guy, from what we saw. A real improvement on Barry.

[kcountess]

Yeah, Stephen seems a lot better for her than Barry was. Barry just seemed...creepy.

Thanks!