April 17

[everyone_takes]

For the most part, Kate doesn't believe people when they say they just know that someone is gone. Every time someone has disappeared, she's noticed things that are strange, but she's never had this feeling, this intense knowledge that they're just gone, not like others have claimed. Sometimes she wonders if they're just telling themselves they knew to make themselves feel better when it takes them several days to notice.

That's sort of how she feels when she finds herself standing in the middle of the hut Harry used to live in, a box of jewellery in her hands. It's been two days since she last saw him, but sometimes that happens. Sometimes they both get busy and they miss each other instead of connecting, that's just life and she's taken it for granted. So a little part of her wants to tell herself that she's known all along, but the truth is that she's only just realized it now and she feels stupid. Lost. She feels like a child playing at being grown up and suddenly all the things she's been doing over the last few months don't matter.

Clutching the box against her stomach, she makes her way home and she sits in the front yard, letting Chang crawl into her lap even though he's far too big to do it. He crushes the box, but she doesn't bother moving it. She isn't even sure why she took it. Harry never gave any of it to her and now he never will.

So many people have disappeared and she hasn't cried. She isn't going to start now, but when Chang whines and licks her chin, she wraps both her arms around him and presses her face into his fur.

Comments

[refusedtocall]

"You know, I'm pretty sure I've said the same thing before," Carla Jean says, giving a slight shake of her head, though there's no disagreement in it. It's just the way the world works, or seems to, and it sucks, but there's nothing to be done about it, either. If there were, she would have a long time ago. As it is, she's got more here than she thought she would, which says a lot on its own. The way she sees it, there's just no sense in being held back by all that, but then, she's had a long while to come to terms with what she's lost, inasmuch as she ever could. "In the meantime, I might be able to help with the gettin' drunk and ice cream."

[everyone_takes]

Kate laughs a little, even though she doesn't feel like laughing, then nods. "Hopefully there are normal ice cream flavours floating around right now. I know the chick who makes it has a tendency to make like, beet ice cream and weird shit like that."

Maybe it's all delicious, but she could do with some regular old chocolate right about now.

[refusedtocall]

Carla Jean pulls a face, nodding in agreement. She's long since found herself incapable of understanding what any of that is supposed to be about, and if ever there were a time to hope for something like normalcy, at least in ice cream flavors, it's now. Something beet or seaweed flavored isn't likely to do a whole lot of good.

"Here's hopin'," she says, huffing out a laugh. "If not, I'd say that calls for an extra drink."

[everyone_takes]

"I say it calls for an extra drink either way," Kate says, but what makes it worse is that she kind of thinks it wouldn't have worked out anyway. In the long run. She fidgets for a second, before figuring she can tell Carla Jean, even if she can't tell anyone else. "It's probably better. It, uh... saves us both from having to figure out what we want. I'm pretty sure Harry wanted the whole happily ever after, marriage and babies kind of thing and I just don't want any of that."