[For Savannah] I gave it my soul so I could survive

By late afternoon, Kate's done all the crying she can stand. Bonny's whining sounds like a banshee or an abandoned child and Kate just can't fucking take it. She can't take staring at the walls or the sky or this stupid Western town. Maybe she should be glad it's not where she spent most of her life on the island with Declan, but right now it just feels like one more reminder he's gone. One more reminder she fucked up and he's gone and maybe she'll never see him again except on the reels. One more reminder that if he's gone, Will could be gone tomorrow, or Helen or Tesla or Jim or Steve or Bella or Savannah or William or...

It's one more fucking reminder that this place isn't home. She's not safe. No one is.

She decides to walk down to the Compound again. This'll be the third time today, but it might be the first time she's spoken. Might. She glares daggers at anyone she sees on the way. Not even her chicks are stupid enough to try to talk to her with the black cloud over her head and the lightning in her eyes. Jim or Steve or Aidan or Will might be, but she doesn't run into them.

That's good. She can't. She can't do that right now.

What she can do is leave a note for Will to tell Magnus and Tesla and leave notes for Sam and William that she can't sit for William for awhile. Because. Because Sam kept her chin up when her husband and the father of her baby and a man Dr. J says she loved for 12 years disappeared. Because Aidan watched The Three Stooges when Martha and Alfie disappeared. Because she and Declan agreed to leave each other notes once in every twenty-four hours if they hadn't seen each other, even if they were fighting, and she'll never get another note from him.

And because she is still here and the kids in the Children's Office need stability, she can go there. It's a contradiction. Ass-backwards that she can't privately babysit for William who she loves like family but she can't not go do her job. It's the same bullshit seesaw as wanting to strap on guns and water and run out into the desert one minute and wanting to find everyone she cares about, make sure they're okay, and go hug some of them and never let go the next.

She fucking hates this island. There's nowhere to go and no reason to stay and everyone reason to stay and finally miles and miles and miles to run all at once. No, she doesn't hate the island. Not today.

Today, she just hates herself. But she's pasting on her best pokerface (won't fool Will, but it should slide by Savannah) and walking through the door to work. William runs up to give her a high-five and the note she left in the mailbox suddenly seems flat. Wrong. She gives him his high-five, then winks (because he knows he's not supposed to be her favorite at work), and fights off the desperate urge to pick him up and hug him. Hopefully fast enough Savannah won't notice.

[For Rogue] keeping me safe in these chains

Imriel (he's Imriel today, nicknames hurt, especially 'Gorgeous') still hasn't taught her to ride, but she's had stable lessons. Grooming, picking out the stalls and the hooves, and if Savannah won't let her take care of the kids, at least she can fucking take care of Bonny (who chewed through her tie and found Kate again) and England.

Kate attacks England's white (gray, fleabitten, whatever the fuck, it doesn't matter, Archie's gone, so who cares?) coat with the curry comb. The horse makes this low little noise at her that sounds...it's probably supposed to be soothing or friendly or something, because it's not loud or shrill, just a little sound like a horse-purr and then he tosses his nose. She's not hurting him. He's just talking horse talk.

"Sorry, British," she says, and then instantly bursts back into tears. She'd been trying to make a play on his name, trying to fake herself out (nicknames still hurt). On Archie being so British. But it just reminds her that Declan's gone and Archie's gone and...she shouldn't even fucking miss the Chief of the IPD. What kind of fuckery is that? But she does.

Somehow he was important. Or maybe it's just easier to miss him never quite trusting her, always calling her "Miss Freelander", never knowing what to make of her jokes than it is to let go of Declan whose bed she didn't even sleep in the last night he had on the island. Who she's been kind of distant from while she figured out the whole Garris thing. But whose kisses she can still taste, whose hands she can still feel, whose eyes she still sees when she closes her owns.

Somehow it's easier to stand here and cry while she brushes a horse that's not hers in stable that isn't the Sanctuary on an island that isn't even an island than it is to go brave a bar and drown herself. Somehow. Right now. Right now the clean-dirt scent of horseflesh, the dry almost-fur scent of shedding out winter coat and the dusty-musty-gold scent of clean straw and the damp, tangy smell of tears from her face buried in a coarse white mane are better than the tequila she's bound to find at the saloon. Not for long, but for now.