Kate Gregson

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.

The snow was gone and with it all the crazy, puffy dresses in Kate's closet had disappeared as well, which wasn't something she was particularly sad about. The apartment that she and Marshall had been living in was pretty sweet, but if living in a hut was what she had to deal with to be able to wear a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, then Kate was totally okay with that. The hut wasn't so bad, after all, and she'd actually gotten used to the heat after all this time. (Although she'd been told about some German dude who made air conditioners and she was definitely going to track him down as soon as possible.)

Plus, with January came presents. Some people had already gotten theirs -- Kate had seen Jeff's puppy plenty of times now -- and she woke up nearly every morning and checked the hut for something that might be new and all hers. So far there had been nothing, not even that morning when she'd woken up, so, as usual, she'd walked to the Compound for a shower and breakfast.

What she hadn't expected at all was to find a brightly wrapped box waiting for her when she returned home. Just sitting there on their front step, a big bow on top and her name written on a tag. With a grin, Kate dropped down onto the step and began to rip into the box. There was a book, which she barely glanced at before dropping it on the step beside her, a weird leather looking thing and then a sleek, black box. A box with a gun inside.

"Uh..." Kate looked up and glanced around, half expecting someone to pop out of the jungle and tell her it was all just a joke. She didn't get guns as gifts. No one in their right mind would give Kate a firearm.

But there it was, lying in its box. The weird leather thing was a holster, she realized, and there was a box of ammunition. The book looked like it was mostly safety guidelines, but Kate couldn't quite get her brain to make sense of that yet. She was still too stunned by the fact that she was holding a gun in her lap. A real gun.

A real gun.