(no subject)

[everyone_takes]

Time doesn't heal all wounds.

Kate's pretty much determined that old cliché to be total bullshit, because here she is, months after Marshall disappeared and she still feels like crap almost every day. Some days are better than others and sometimes she can pretend she's happy long enough to fool some people, but it never sticks. At the end of the day she still goes home and thinks about all her family members who aren't there with her and feels like she's been left behind.

She doesn't tell anyone, but all she wants lately is just to go home.

But she does all the stuff people expect of her, even though she doesn't want to. She trains with Danny and pays attention to what he's saying. She spends time with her friends, with her boyfriend, she acts like herself, but she never feels like herself. No matter what she does, she feels like some kind of imposter who's just floating through her life.

The worst part is that there's nothing she can do that makes it go away. For the past few days, she's been thinking about going off on her own, doing something that's probably sort of stupid, but nothing seems to appeal to her. The dinosaurs still don't hold that much interest for her and she doesn't care about camping or looking for weird animals or bugs. That sort of leaves her with Rapture, even though she isn't sure about going down there. They probably wouldn't let her go down alone, anyway, but she can hardly ask Danny to go along with her.

Standing in front of the caves, she frowns and stares down into the dark. She has a flashlight, but no idea where to do or what she'll do when she gets there.

Comments

[everyone_takes]

"Gross. Please don't barf on me," she said, but she was smiling, teasing. But a second later, she had no idea what she'd even been talking about, her eyes widening as she took in the area that surrounded them. It was really like nothing she'd ever seen before and if she thought the entrance was spectacular, this is something else entirely.

"Holy shit," she murmured, staring at the signs, the advertisements. "I don't know what I thought we'd find down here, but this is... so weird."

[girlsolo]

Kate's about to tell her not to worry because she's got great aim in puking as in everything else. But the look on other-Kate's face is enough to stop her cold. Kate just takes a step back and leans against the wall, arms crossed around her waist and watching other-Kate while she lets her stomach settle. It's not too bad, but it's worth giving her friend the time.

"Right?" Kate's own gaze scans the bright signs and neon, but also the path ahead and she maps it against previous visits to see if anything obvious has shifted. Changes in terrain were always danger signs down here. "It's like going from Bizarro Gilligan's Island to Bizarro Las Vegas by way of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

No, she's not going to talk about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, why she knows it, and why it's one of the only exceptions to her hating rides. Period. Not for anyone.

[everyone_takes]

"How is this even possible?" Kate asked, although she didn't honestly expect an answer. There was something about this that no one could really explain, she figured, and that didn't surprise her. It was the sort of thing that was beyond explanation, kind of like how half the people here were fictional or had come from worlds with magic or spacemen.

"I mean, how it is possible that it's here? That it all just appeared? That's totally insane." And yet here they were, in this totally insane place, walking around, looking at the signs.

[girlsolo]

"I heard the second island sort of showed up the same way. Some kind of death star or space station kind of thing, too," Kate supplies, but it's not an answer to the question. Other-Kate's not expecting one.

"I like it down here." She finally steps away from the wall and takes the lead toward the nearest shop. "I'm really not a small town chick. So, it's cool. Even with Rapture all creepy and deserted, it feels a lot more like home. Tall buildings, deep shadows, weird noises, machines..."

[everyone_takes]

"I grew up in a shitty small town," Kate answered, following toward the shop. "I mean, we weren't that far from Kansas City, but it was still pretty small. I don't know. I liked it and kinda hated it at the same time."

She missed it now, although compared to the island, it was pretty much of a bustling centre of action.

"I guess most people are like that without home, huh?"

[girlsolo]

Most of the entrances to things in Fort Frolic are closed or destroyed. In some cases, that legit means they can't get into them. But in others, it just means they have to be a little creative. It's mostly why she picked it and why she'll let Kate try the doors. She wants adventure and treasure-hunting, so the little surprise moments when a door's actually open or there's something worth keeping in a pile of crap are better for it.

She's actually feeling kind of smug about the choice. Enough so that she sort of loses the thread of what Kate's saying. "Huh?" Her gaze narrows, brows drawing together. "Oh, loving and hating home? I guess. I never really had one until the Sanctuary."

...yeah, she really didn't mean to spit those words out. Sometimes cruising around in dark and dangerous places with people leads to gum flapping. It's a thing.

[everyone_takes]

Heading for one of the shops, Kate tried the door, twisting the knob back and forth before it finally caught and swung open. It was pretty dark inside and she paused at the edge of the frame, looking into the room before she remembered that she had her flashlight with her and lifted it, turning it on.

"So did you live in a bunch of different places?" she asked, scanning the room, running her light over weird shelves and pieces of art that look like they're crumbling. There wasn't anything in particular she wanted out of this place, but it looked creepy and so she headed inside, pausing to let Kate follow her.

[girlsolo]

"Yeah. Flopped where I could, usually not more a month or two." Kate leaves out the part where she didn't really have a choice, 'cuz staying was an invitation to getting jammed up with the cops. It's not like she doesn't figure Kate knows it. She just doesn't like talking about it.

She follows Kate in, but hangs back. There's not much in here. It's creepy and besides, she's already pawed the shelves pretty thoroughly. "What was it like, you know, your house, with your mom and everything?"

[everyone_takes]

"Well, everyone was pretty much insane," she answered, although the more she said it, the more she realized she missed it. Even now, Kate believed her mom would have gotten better eventually, that all their lives would have evened out and if they hadn't, they still would have been her family.

"I mean, unexpected shit happening was pretty much the norm," she said, pushing things on the shelves around. "If a week went by without my mom turning into someone else, that was unusual."

[girlsolo]

"Believe it or not, if we went a week without someone turning into something else, that was pretty unusual too." It's probably FUBARed that she misses it. Not just Hank and Biggie, but the crazy shit that happened and Magnus being insane-brilliant and Will working his profiler mojo and her having something to do she was good at.

Kate sweeps her flashlight over the shelves for other-Kate to get a good look. "Not much in here. Closest places to the bathysphere are always pretty well picked clean."

[everyone_takes]

"So we have to go in deeper, then," Kate said, turning around to give her a grin. "I'm cool with that." Maybe she shouldn't have been so prepared to go deeper into this world, maybe she should have been thinking about the people who'd be worried about her above ground, but she wasn't.

"Then let's do it," she said, heading for the door again, sweeping her flashlight over the floor. "There's nothing down here that we need to be worried about, right? No leftover monsters from weird experiments gone wrong?"

[girlsolo]

"Not that I've ever seen." Kate's not all that worried about monsters. Monsters she can fight and kill. "Doesn't meant there aren't any. Anything pops up, you duck and cover and don't come out until I say it's clear." Kate gives her a look, the kind she used to give Will when he got stupid about trying to protect her.

Then she shrugs and gestures back the way they came. "More likely to fall in a hole or something, though."

[everyone_takes]

Kate snorted with laughter, but there was no sense denying that. Especially given her tendency to end up in totally stupid situations, though those usually had more to do with useless dudes than with underground cities. "How big is it down here?" she asked, sweeping her flashlight from side to side as she walked back into the dark. "If I fall in a hole am I gonna end up coming out on the other side of the world or something?"

Just in case, she swept her flashlight along the ground before she spotted another door off in the distance. "That looks cool," she said, although she couldn't quite tell what it was from where they were standing. "Like a weird ass art gallery or something."

[girlsolo]

"Don't fall in a hole," Kate suggests in an entirely serious tone that manages to be both ominous and mocking at once. Instead of answering her about the holes (mostly because she's never fallen in one so she wouldn't know, but also because she'll be more careful if Kate doesn't), she joins the beam of her flashlight to Kate's.

"That? Is one of the creepiest things in Looking Glass world." Since Kate seemed to be looking at Cohen's Collection. "Hope you don't get nightmares."

[everyone_takes]

"What the fuck..." She wasn't prone to nightmares and wasn't particularly worried about that, but there was a lot of weird shit going on here. Definitely nothing she was going to want to take back to Effy, even if they could be moved. Which probably wasn't going to happen. The sculptures looked huge.

"This shit is so weird," she said, stepping closer to one, looking at the weird mutations the guy had designed. There was plaster peeling off one of the arms and Kate wrinkled her nose, looking at it closer before she abruptly took a few steps away. "These aren't sculptures."

[girlsolo]

"Give the girl a gold star." Kate's tone's sharp and smirky, but it's a smokescreen for the snakes coiling in her belly. She freaking hates this shit. For one, a lot of the 'mutations' remind her of Abnormals. And then that reminds her that she used to sell them, and people like Sander Cohen could've happened to them.

She swallows the urge to retch, and steadies other-Kate with a hand at her mid-back that's a lot more gentle than people give her credit for. "This? Is one of the things that went badwrong down here."

[everyone_takes]

"See? I was totally right about absolute freedom. People are fucked up and will take advantage of that shit," she said, grateful for the hand on her back even if she didn't say so. Whatever had happened to these people -- because she was pretty sure they'd been people once -- wasn't even the worst of it. They were different, not quite like people anymore, but then they'd been killed and covered in plaster.

It was gross. And it made her sort of sad. It wasn't even real art, not the way her mom created things.

"Shit," she said. "That sucks."

[girlsolo]

"Yeah. That's a polite word for it." She's stealthy about it, but she kind of rubs her hand up and down Kate's back in case she's feeling as freaked out as it sounds like she is.

"We're here, though, and...I figure Danny'd say you ought to see the rest of it. So you know how bad people can get." Invoking Danny as an authority figure isn't something she needs to do, but Kate respects him and he makes her feel safe. So it's probably not a bad call. She adds anyway with a sweep of her flashlight, "And if you're gonna be carrying a gun with a license to shoot people, I want you to know why if someone draws down on you or your partner with intent, you don't hesitate."

[everyone_takes]

"Because you might get turned into a creepy art piece," Kate muttered, although she knew that wasn't what was meant. Still, it bothered her and she stepped away again, wanting to get out of the gallery. "Is there somewhere down here that's less creepy and more... cool stuff I can take home with me?" The last thing she wanted in her hut was something like that, something that had once been alive.

"'Cause I'm pretty sure Effy might protest if I brought one of these home," she said, even though it was obvious she had no intention of doing anything like that.

[girlsolo]

"Depends on what you're looking for." Kate's thinking through what she's seen, what she's got hidden away, and where. "I know Effy's a little...she's had a lot of bad stuff happening to her. What kind of thing would she like?"

For some reason, Kate's got in her head that maybe a plant would be a good thing. She thinks there might be some seedlings left at the tree farm. But she hasn't been to that level in awhile.

[everyone_takes]

It was a good question, one Kate had to pause to consider for a few moments, walking along in silence. It was creepy, how quiet it was down in Rapture, like the noisy, busy island above just wasn't there at all. "Something not dead," she said finally, then laughs. "I guess that sort of limits my choices unless there's like, a cute, snuggly little experiment living down here?"

Even then, she wasn't sure she'd want to bring a pet into their hut. That wasn't quite right.

"I'm the worst at gifts, apparently," she said. "What else is there down here? Are there weird flowers or anything?"

[girlsolo]

"Pretty sure Rapture took a wrong turn from cute and snuggly and left it drinking hot chocolate with warm and cozy at a bed and breakfast about a thousand miles back on the road," Kate says, grinning, and then cocks her head toward the exit to this place.

"Might be some seedlings or seeds or something up at the tree farm, though. We can check and maybe try out growing them before you go giving them to Effy, you know...just in case." Because how fucked up would that be, if they found something that looked harmless and it turned out to be an actual man-eating Venus flytrap?

[everyone_takes]

"That's a really good idea, actually," she said, heading happily for the exit. This wasn't the type of place she felt particularly comfortable hanging out, although she didn't think much of this place was focused on comfort.

"She'd probably like something like that," she continued. "But, yeah, just in case. It would totally suck for me to bring home some kind of plant that got all creepy and crawly and smothered us in our sleep or something."