hadriel_logs | ( log eight | open and closed | your voice, so much i miss you )

( log eight | open and closed | your voice, so much i miss you )

Who: Kate & Anyone but a few people specifically ( Faith, Glacius, Sam )
What: Post-revival / Catchall log for the rest of Oct!
Where: Hope's Temple | The City | The Bar | The Clinic etc.
When: from the 15th onwards!
Warnings: Angst. Death mentions. Lots of yelling. Probably other things.

( starters in the comments! if you wanna wildcard, just start a top level )

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Dying, oddly enough, isn't as painful as Kate expects. It's over too quickly to make any real judgement. One minute she's there, charging a dragon to distract it from getting its claws into her friend, and the next-

she's awake, here, in the temple.

It's the revival that hurts, that brings up all the pain and aches of what happened, leaves her bolting upright on Hope's altar and gasping for breath, clutching her chest, the ghosts of injuries that left her on the ground, heart stopped.

She has to blink, get her bearings-

see Faith, immediately.

For a second, Kate isn't sure that she's real.

"Faith?" Her voice is a croak, five days of non-existence worn and throat dry from gasping, from lack of fluid.

She seeks out Glacius, rather than message him. Finds him in the early morning in the way you find any friend whose patterns you can pick out. They both rise early, do their duties at the crack of dawn.

So, it should be no surprise that she finds him on the way to the clinic, drops down from her rooftop run to catch up to him.

"Hey."

It takes a few hours - sleep, recuperation - for Kate to eventually check her phone. That the network is alight doesn't surprise her

that there are messages for her specifically, however, is something she doesn't expect. Not really, if she thinks about it, when the place has been infested with dragons and probable newbies (it's that time of month, isn't it?) She expects people to be busy, too busy to notice.

But she finds a photo, hears the words - the sounds, perhaps is more accurate - on her phone. There's the sting, the ache of guilt that shoots from chest to skull, the realisation that she didn't even think about anything-

anything but keeping Faith alive.

Her feet lead her there before anything else, before bothering to call or message or even ask where he is.

Sam?

There's a knock on your door, at like 2am.

Better hope no one gets to it before you.

( of course she's at the clinic the day after.

of course.

and she's back at work, first thing in the morning, the day after.

of course.

rifling through the office, or in the examination rooms (or what passes for them), checking things. making sure everything is still in order (it probably is, let's be honest here) after her disappearance for days.

it's easy to find her, just look for the shock of pink. )

[He pushes open the door to the office, kind of quietly.]

Hey. Uh--sorry I didn't come by sooner. There was that whole thing where Confusion made us forget where everything was, and then after that it seemed kinda late, so...

He's been going back and forth, between her place and the temple for the last few days - both in an attempt to keep his mind off of the things that he shouldn't think about and in hopes of actually finding her - and two in the morning is as good a time as any for him to be just as restless, fitful and exhausted if only in body. His mind, for all intents and purposes, has been given a double shot of something that won't let him catch a moment's reprieve.

Not that he would have known what to do with it, anyway.

He'd left her that message in what could have possibly been the lowest moment since it had happened - and while he wouldn't have taken it back even given the chance, he almost wishes he could have said more than what he had. Come back, he'd said. Like there was any real thing she could have done about it. It was a foolish thing, a childish thing, to ask for something that neither of them had any control over.

( Then again ... hadn't he done the very same for Dean? Old habits die hard, don't they? )

The apartment is quiet, the sounds of the city outside fading to little more than background noise when he hears the knock on the door. He's awake, because of course he is, and though he can't deny the way his heart stumbles over itself and lodges in the back of his throat he doesn't want to hope for the best, because it has never gotten him anywhere.

Except for the opposite of where he really wants to be.

His breath is caught when he opens the door, when he sees her on the other side of it, and to say that he's at a loss for words would be like stating the obvious. The sky is blue. Grass is green.

I missed you.

He'll think of something to say. Eventually. Just.

Give him a second.

Her hair's loose, for once, because it's 2am, because she's not really slept even though she's been exhausted since she came back. Because-

because of a million reasons, but most importantly because she couldn't just leave that message unanswered, could she?

(and they're not really telepathically joined, that was just Confusion, messing with her powers.

... That doesn't mean Kate didn't try, at least for a second, before remembering how her power works.) Her hands are laced together, behind her back because what else can she do other than fiddle endlessly with loose bits of fabric and the ends of undone hair

(We mentioned that it was loose, right? curtaining around her face and ghosting across the top of her hips - because it's been six months - right?)

She's silent, for a moment, because she came here without really planning what she should say.

So, Kate settles for a simple;

"Hi."

Edited 2016-10-13 23:59 (UTC)

( she's mid-checking a stack of inventory papers when Ichigo enters, and looks up, eyebrows slightly raised-

had it been that long? people come and go with stuff every so often, sometimes she doesn't keep track, other times she doesn't see them, someone else does; )

-- What's up?

Edited 2016-10-14 20:49 (UTC)

By the fifth day, Faith has stopped crying, mostly. It's just a persistent sniffling now, and a dull stinging in the back of her eyes that reminds her she's not okay. She's at the usual place, though, sitting on the floor, next to the altar, hugging her legs to her chest and resting her chin on her knees. Staring at the altar does nothing to speed up Kate's revival, but she does it anyway, though now her stare is unfocused. She just-- keeps thinking back to what Hope told her on the network. A few days. It's been longer than that. Why isn't Kate back?

And then--

When did Kate appear? Was it when Faith was blinking? Oh, god, it doesn't matter, she's here. Faith's eyes fill with tears as she gets up, frowning. She all but stomps over, breathing deep as if to yell at Kate, lifting her hands as if she's going to shove her--

But all she does is wrap her arms around her friend in a fierce hug.

"What took you so long!"

There have been so few times that he's seen her with her hair down that it, if only briefly, catches him off-guard. There's a stretched moment of silence, of him standing stock-still there in the doorway as he takes in the sight of her, from the top of her head to the floor beneath her feet and back up again, eyes widening in the tiniest if increments.

Like it's been more than five days since he'd last seen her.

Like it's been a lifetime, and she's finally come home.

That they had been linked before, it might have been weird for her to have been able to see the thoughts in his head - well, maybe more embarrassing than anything else - but it had been simple enough to acclimate to, even for the small space of time it had been in effect. He wouldn't have put it past this place to mess around with someone's powers, and even if he hadn't been able to reach back out to her when she'd tried -

Seeing her here, face-to-face, is far better than anything any sort of telepathic link could have given him.

He finally lets go of the breath he'd been holding, swallowing around his heart still thumping wildly in the back of his throat. "H-Hey." Eloquence is difficult, it's impossible when there's not a damned thing in your head that could even touch on what you want to say -

So. It's all he can do to reach for her, the tips of his fingers sliding through the loose ends of her hair as a hand slips from the dip of her waist around to the small of her back, expression cracking from something fragile to something broken, hidden in the way he leans to press his face into the side of her neck.

It'd been, in Rose's mind, a practical inevitability that people would lose their lives in the fight against the dragons. The people here were powerful but they were outnumbered in taking down such mighty creatures. Considering that dragons were akin to gods and world destroyers in Rose's home universe, she hadn't actually expected the people of this place to take them down.

But they did, even if it cost them. It doesn't take long for her to learn that someone died. The community was small so she'd expected it to be someone she was, at the very least, acquainted with. And it was. Kate, she hears. Kate was the fatality. What Rose wasn't expecting was the empathetic pang in her heart at the knowledge.

Dying is, as one might imagine, one of the most unpleasant experiences to go through. At least when you're resurrected. Just dying would be easier since, well, one moment you're there and the next you're not and it's all said and done. You can't feel anything once you're dead so it's kind of taken care of for you. When you come back, however, that's a whole 'nother can of emotional worms to deal with.

Rose is no stranger to those feelings but maybe Kate is and that's what drives her to find the woman - at the bar, which she can't be blamed for at all - and wander on up. Rose is casual and friendly as she just about always is. The blond takes a seat next to Kate at the bar and opens with something easy.

"What are you having?" Small talk is safe. It's a good gauge of how to proceed, if she even should. She wants to, of course, but that's not always up to her.

Technically, five qualifies as a few, although maybe several is more accurate. And Kate really isn't sure whether she expected Faith to be waiting or not - in one way, it's Faith, but in another...

well, things were busy. There were dragons.

Her hands stay pressed into the altar, keeping her propped up as she takes the sudden shock of a firebird pressed against her, slowly shifting, uncertain half movements because Kate never, very rarely anyway, knows what to do when people start hugging her.

(They'll get there, eventually. Eventually they find their way to Faith's back, a light touch.)

"Ask-" oh god, her throat. She swallows. "Ask Hope." It's a weak, weary joke, one that's quickly replaced by something much more pertinent.

"It dead?" And, without waiting for the answer; "It hurt anyone?" Did it hurt you, Faith?

Weird is one way of putting it, despite the fact that she spent most of her life able to do that on a whim, to peer into Marc's mind and tell him anything. It shouldn't have- not so easily, but the whims of the Gods, their ability to change things so far from what they should be-

well, should doesn't matter much here. So many things shouldn't happen. (She shouldn't be standing here, for example, not after dying). All that can be done is to accept it and move on, let the questions and confusion go. And it doesn't matter at all, not right now. It all seems so insignificant, melted away into nothing when she hears the waver in his voice and finds herself wrapped in his arms; her hands unwinding themselves, hesitating and stuttering-

"I miss much?" The question's half-breathed into his shoulder as her hands finally stop their awkward dance and find their place against his spine. "You-" weren't hurt, right? but the words are caught in her throat and all she can do instead is let her hands grab at him, check for the ghosts of any injuries sustained.

Edited 2016-10-15 14:48 (UTC)

Her grip on Kate is tight as she shakes with unsuppressed sobs. Faith has never seen the point in hiding how she feels, always prefers to show it, even if it means she's easy to read, easy to dupe. (She's not, but people like to think that, and aren't they surprised when she proves them wrong on how stupid they think she is.)

"Course it's dead." She pauses, sniffles, tangles her fingers in Kate's hair. The more secure her hold on Kate, the less likely she'll disappear again, right? "Dunno if it hurt people. Probably did."

When Kate had died, Faith had allowed her powers to consume her, to turn her into the legend people believe her to be. From that point on, things are a blur in her memory, but she knows for a fact she blacked out when she hit the point of exhaustion.

"Don't you ever die again!"

Nothing should ever be as simple - or, sometimes, difficult - as this place has a tendency to make it, but that's the thing, in and of itself. It's this place that makes certain things possible, and things like telepathy just happen to be among them.

It isn't strange, when one puts into consideration the other sorts of things that have gone on since his arrival. It just ... might border on the sort of thing that he wouldn't have expected otherwise.

There are so many things he could say here, so many things that could roll off of the back of his tongue and hang in the air between them, but they would all fall short of the reassurance he gets from just holding her against him, the physicality of such a simple action burrowing down to the base of his spine and settling there, warm and solid and present.

Just as she is.

And he doesn't answer her right away - not when it takes everything in him to keep what little composure he has left intact, breathing out the shape of her name against the curve of her shoulder, barely a whisper and something that sounds almost like a prayer, something that he has no right to reach for.

But he tries, because he has to - for her - and the shape of his next words sound a bit like a smile, strained, but genuine. "It's been pretty boring, actually." His voice is muffled, still having not moved far enough away to allow for proper speech, and he doesn't care enough to remedy that just yet.

A hand slips up to the back of her neck, but he doesn't move much beyond that. "... Come inside?"

She's right to try to find him en route to the clinic: he's visited there nearly every morning, even after he'd noticed her disappearance. While at first there had been a bit of hope in the ice alien's hearts that he may stop by and see her again, recovered from whatever kept her away and back at work, vibrant and vigorous as he had come to know her... now he was merely dreading the visit. Because there had been a nagging voice in the back of his mind, one that had gone stronger with each day that passed and he didn't see a trace of his friend, didn't so much as even hear from her. This prison-cave was a dangerous place, and it had been even more so lately with the appearance of those massive, winged beasts.

What if something had happened? Something terrible--worse than a sickness or an injury, which would not have kept her away from her work for this long, would not have kept her from even reaching out to him. Even in the worst case scenario, he'd heard that death was not permanent here... but it wasn't something he'd had to ever consider up until now. He was worried--worried sick, even, because operating solo prior to his arrival in this cave meant that he hadn't had to worry about anyone save for in abstract ways, and he wasn't sure what to do with these unfamiliar and very focused feelings.

So when Kate spots him from the rooftop, she'll see that he's dragging his feet much more than his even, measured paces usually allow. She'll see the uncharacteristic slump to his broad shoulders and the way his head is bowed, like he's afraid to look up towards the clinic and see it devoid of his friend's presence once more. That changes when she calls out to him--the alien stops-mid stride and goes completely still, his head snapping up, mandibles flared widely apart and his eyes large as he scans the immediate area.

"Kate," he breathes the recognition of the voice, then it seems to click that she's actually here. "Kate!" He echoes himself more soundly, the relief to his voice audible. He turns to face her and immediately his steps quicken. "Y-you're--you're actually here. Thank the Makers, I was... beginning to become worried that something had happened..!"

Really, what this place does with powers is nothing in comparison to what it does with people, who it makes them become. That Kate even stands here, heart pounding in her chest and fingers curled into Sam's shirt, is enough proof of that. But it happened, became possible in a place where - by all logic, all Kate knew and accepted about herself - she should have had more walls up than she has in years.

Losing people is all but guaranteed, and not just in the temporary hiccup that is death here. One day, they will return home, either because The Door feels like it or because Hope finally fulfilled his promise to do so. She shouldn't be letting him, nor any of the people here, crawl under her skin like this, but they do-

He does, especially. Burrows himself deep inside and takes root, becomes some beacon of hope she doesn't want to admit to (wants to lose even less), someone who makes her want to be better than she is. To let certain things go and remember what taking a chance is like, a chance with something other than death and destruction anyway.

It's why, when he invites her in but doesn't let go, she manages to bubble up a short laugh. "Have to let me loose first."

This is a chance, that by all logic she knows she shouldn't have. Death should be death, the end. It always has been before, back home. This is the kind of chance he makes her want to take a hold of, use properly rather than waste in fear.

Kate catches that, the I don't know hidden between the sobs, wants to question it but doesn't because her head still spins from the resurrection, because her chest is still tight and her body still doesn't know what to do with Faith other than be glad she was okay - because I don't know has to mean I was alright, at least, right?

"Can't promise that," she answers, half-laughing because it sounds ridiculous when you think about it. People shouldn't be able to die multiple times, it shouldn't be possible that she's sitting here, solid and breathing, after what happened. "Gotta die sometime, right?" She's trying to lighten the mood, trying to pull Faith out of her sobs which leave Kate's spine too straight and shoulders too tight, trying to make it a joke but the words fall flat as soon as they leave her mouth.

Some of them have died far too soon. Some of them are still here when they probably shouldn't be.

Whether her lack of presence was noticed by her housemates, or merely dismissed as "Kate's doing something weird again" (probably working too much), Kate doesn't know. All that she does is resume her routine as normal - makes the tea she scored from Hope and has been rationing ever since, stands in the kitchen in the early morning or late at night.

The noise of someone in the upstairs bedroom starts again, hoodies find themselves left thrown artlessly over the living room furniture.

In short, she's back, and easy to catch if you know her routines.

There are certain routines Kate has added to her life, like the one that requires the strapping of weapons to her thigh and the ability to ignore the itch and tension across her body.

Ever since she realised where Sharon's started calling home, Kate's taken to occasionally dropping by the part of Hadriel they created. Sometimes she finds the girl, talks to her, but often she just makes sure nothing seems out of the ordinary. She hops rooftop to rooftop in the zone, navigating it more slowly than she does the rooftops of Hadriel, taking care not to lose her balance in the fog.

She's about halfway into the zone when she drops down, takes the streets instead, glancing through pea soup to see if there's anything out of the ordinary, beyond the monsters and debris.

Dying, itself, was alright. Too quick to really contemplate the pain, to think about what it would be like to disappear into nothing. Reviving sucked, when all the pain of the death she'd avoided by the near-instantaneous nature of it hit her full force.

The fallout, the emotions that Faith poured upon her, the messages on her phone - she's spoken to all of these people, but dealing with them drains the energy from her more than the revival. So she goes back to the one place that's arguably the best in Hadriel:

the bar.

She's halfway through a beer when Rose appears next to her, offers a shrug of her shoulder and a look that's just shy of a smile. (Weird side effect of dying: despite the emotional drainage of everyone else's feelings, Kate herself feels... positive. Like dying shook loose some of the walls, the desire to remain static that fear brought on.)

"Just a beer. You?" small talk is good. God only knows she had enough of the rest for the moment.

She can't miss that gait, the way it lumbers rather than glides even and confident. Her jaw tightens, her throat feels the weight of a lump especially when he begins to speak, lets her figure out that no one told him about her death.

(Why would they? How many people really, truly know how much they mean to each other? It's odd, really, although suited to them. Never really needing things to be public knowledge. There's Emily, but Kate doubts she even knows what happened when the dragons attacked.)

She offers a lazy salute of her hand, a greeting wave, and her lips quirk to one side. A half-smile. She's glad he's okay, too. Everyone seemed to be alive and well, and that-

well, it makes what she did worth it. It must do.

But she can't just let him stay out of the loop. It wouldn't be right to everything that encompasses their friendship so far. So she inhales, squares her shoulders and looks him in those startlingly green eyes. "Dragons were a bit more aggressive than we expected," she begins, "I needed to make sure my friend wasn't hurt. Just got revived yesterday."

I wanted to say thanks for looking after me during the zombie thing last month. I know I left kind of a mess.

[Gross infected blood, straight from the aorta. Ew.]

Sorry for the trouble.

Edited 2016-10-17 22:03 (UTC)

Glacius comes to an abrupt halt; the way she squares her shoulders and that look that she gives him has that sinking feeling tugging at his guts again in full-force. He takes a breath that has his own shoulders pulling back and his head lifting up as he returns her gaze intently, flared mandibles clicking once like a human might set their jaw.

"What are you telling me," he rumbles--the only reason there's not a quiver to his voice is because of his naturally cool demeanor, the discipline he holds. It does not in any way mean that he isn't affected by her unstated demise... in fact it's quite the opposite. He can't seem to come to grips with the knowledge. "Why?" the alien asks, despite the fact that she just told him and it's a cause he both knows and understands very well. "Why would you do something like that? Why would you pit yourself against a creature so massive, so powerful? Why would you not at least... call me for assistance, or..."

Glacius' tone starts out as if he's berating her, but only because he doesn't know what to do with his grief or his own self-directed anger over the fact that he was somewhere else entirely while his friend was fighting and... dying. Makers. It's that thought that finally causes his voice to waver as he carries on, and the otherworldly warrior finally curses and looks away.

There's not enough self-control in the world to stop her flinching at Glacius' tone, not enough logic nor self-righteousness at her decision to stop the guilt that blossoms painfully in her chest. Her arms wrap tight around her chest, fingers clawing into her upper arms and the muscle there.

It takes conscious effort - deep inhales and exhales, and the ingrained reminder of taking things slow. Don't make it personal, Kate.

"Didn't have time." Which is the truth. Faith saw them and it was all Kate could do to talk her into going to the armory beforehand. "Couldn't let my friend go in alone." Of all things, Glacius should know this about her. She couldn't even abandon him in a dream, when they barely knew each other. "I'm not gonna lose the one person I've got from home." And especially not when it's her.

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( log eight | open and closed | your voice, so much i miss you )

| yesterday and today, so much i miss you. faith. hope's temple.

| when i look at the evening sunset, so much i miss you. glacius. the city.

| when i watch a good movie i think of you. sam. casa winchester.

| on days where the wind feels good. open. the clinic.

sometime during the week of the 16th!

I. HATE YOU. SO MUCH.

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wildcard. the bar.

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| but i only have you. oc house.

| when i hear a good song. sharon. silent hill zone.

ayyyy o/

wow rude ;;

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i'M SORRY!? ;n;

i'm not okay i'm not.