(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

[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."