Kate Freelander

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.

Outside the window of her hut, the world is stained pre-dawn gray, the color of the sky when a concrete building implodes. Kate's eyes feel about as gritty. She rolls away from it, closes her eyes, and tries to count herself into sleep. Her body relaxes, the slow heaviness of exhaustion creeping up her limbs with each deep breath like she is drawing it up through a straw. Her mind starts to drift. Some Wonderland thing of Jim talking to dinosaurs and Garris lifting his shirt to show off as much ink as Adam Levine, Steve, and Shemar Moore. She falls...

Awake - heart hammering, head rushing, body vibrating - and she grabs for situational awareness. She's upright. On her feet. Not in her hut. Wearing her working leather, and armed with Hollow Earth upgrades to Sanctuary weaponry. The gritty, cemetery ash gray is the sky and the ground and the destroyed buildings, and the clothes of the Herusans who pass. She ducks back a step against a fallen building, a space that used to be an alley and looks for landmarks. Like the transport system with its speed-balls and the blue sky and arched spans and finds nothing but new construction, shells of large buildings that look like Cabrini Green tenements instead of steampunk London.

Is she dreaming? Is this like coming to the island? Where is she? Is she alone? Kate turns her head and spots - none of her teammates. Not Will, not Magnus, not Declan, not Henry, not Biggie, not even Abby, but Dunham. Her heart's still speeding when their gazes connect, but her mouth quirks in something like a smile. Somehow, Dunham being here makes sense. Since dreams don't, maybe this isn't one. Whatever it is, Dunham dressed like a Fed and carrying, at least doesn't lessen her chances of getting out of here alive. And because she likes the blonde, it means she's not getting out of here alone.

"Let me guess. Couldn't sleep, took a wrong turn on the way to dreamland and wound up here?"

The game of 'I never' is about to get one item harder for Kate to win. Kate Freelander, ex-thief, ex-smuggler, is about to voluntarily surrender some bling that fell into her lap. Jewelry box. Whatever.

But it's not the novelty of it that has Kate's pulse elevated and her stomach in knots when she steps into the IPD Office. She's not even afraid of cops anymore. Two things about the silver bracelet with its blue stones have her holding it like a venomous snake.

One, just looking at hurts. She thought...god, she'd thought Declan gave it to her. That it had been an I love you, an I'm sorry, a please come home, Katie. But he's never seen it before. He didn't give it to her. Now it's weird. Yeah, they're good, but it's still kind of a huge fucking cosmic joke. The first time anyone gave her something like that, something pretty, just for her, and he didn't.

Two, she doesn't know whether someone lost it or someone put it in her jewelry box or what the hell happened, but it feels like payback on the stunt she pulled back in September. It's not even close to the first time she's been stolen from or had her space busted into or whatever. She just. Now she knows. She gets how it feels with to be messed with like she did. Maybe she gets a little more too why Trixa was pissed about how she did it. It was sloppy.

This bracelet's a mindfuck. One that's already taught her a lesson. All she wants is to get rid of it. But first she has to make sure it doesn't belong to someone so she doesn't end up in lock-up. She closes her fingers over it, lifts her chin and walks over to the pretty blonde she's seen around, walks like a Fed, not a cop.

"I need to report a missing item."

*
Title lyrics from Melissa Etheridge's Precious Pain.

After leaving Sam at breakfast, Kate takes an extra few minutes to pull her shit together before heading in to the Children's Office. William doesn't know yet, and he shouldn't find out from her. That means she can't be weird and hover and hug him too much, because he's damned smart.

She stops in the women's bathroom to wash her face and take a breath. In the mirror, she checks her everything's fine mask. Yeah, that's a lie she can still tell. Except the hints of bruising under her eye and on her jaw, there's nothing to say it's been a hell of a seven days.

Because everything's fine means quick-moving no time for doing it the right way, she lifts her shirt and dries her face on it. Selling a story is about the little details. William won't notice and she doesn't much need to sell Savannah. It'll just be easier if it's not written all over her how much it's fucking with her.

Probably doesn't help she's barely seen Declan since he brought Joan and Emily by on the way to the clinic. Days later, she's cooled down enough to accept that she asked him to do something he just couldn't and she loves him for it. But it's a fucking mess of an impasse because him being like that makes her feel weak and vulnerable when she needs to feel strong.

Whatever. She'll deal with Declan later. Tomorrow. Maybe tonight. If he can just leave like Sam's husband... She bares her teeth at herself in the mirror. Pull it together, Freelander.

A few minutes later, she's walking into the Children's Office. Each kid that looks up gets a smile and she tips her chin to Savannah when she gets near her. "Hey. Sorry I'm a little late. Something important came up. Will the kids be okay if we step into the hall for a few minutes?" She doesn't want to talk about Jack where any of them can overhear.

*
Title lyrics from Kings of Leon, "Frontier City".

Kate's glad when Auggie leaves with Annie. She's blonde. Pretty. Flirty. Civilian. Druitt-bait and her boyfriend's hell-bent on pinning a rap on him. Kate still thinks he did it or he knows something, but the way Druitt's acting... it doesn't track. And Kate's tired. It's pointless and a waste of time.

She's just about to give up and go search the caves when she sees Will. Crap. She really didn't want him to get involved. If there's anyone Druitt wants to hurt on the island, it's got to be Will.

"Come on, Baldy. Stop fucking around." Even from here, she can feel Magnus scowling at her language. "If you didn't do anything, tell me what you know!" He's lying about something.


*

Title lyrics from Thea Gilmore's Heads Will Roll

As soon as Kate ditches Auggie, she stops by the clothes box to swap out shorts for something with more coverage. She gets lucky or maybe the box knows she'll set fire to it or who the fuck knows but it coughs up a pair of cargos.

She thinks about stopping by the Psych Office to ask Will where he thinks Druitt would be right now, first day on the island as an island and all that profiler hoodoo Will's so good at. But it's a waste of time. She's the one who's been tracking him. So she's the one who knows his movements best. Chances are, he'll do like most of the new people. Come here to the Compound, get food, get oriented. If not, she'll get Declan and start a search.

It's amazing how fast she can find someone she's been avoiding since he got to the island when she puts her mind to it. It's not ten minutes before she finds him in the hall by the men's bathroom. Gaze narrowed and eyes flat mean, Kate stalks up to him. "We need to talk." The now is very much implied. So's the, and that's not a request.

Even hiked up in her gloved hands, Kate's dark skirts swish under her full buttoned and belted leather coat. Her boots clack on wet pavement. The curls in her hair are falling from being wet and dry and wet again. She wishes for the fiftieth time today, she'd taken the time yesterday to finish lining the breeches she'd pulled from the box.

It's after midnight when she clomps up the steps to Declan's house. She could just come in, maybe, but it's late and it's not his hut and...and and and. And she wants him to come down and get her and be glad to see her and kiss her hello and let her in because he wants her there. She shouldn't be in this mood. It hasn't been a bad day. She just...

Fuck if she knows. Maybe it's the Children's Office and her other-world son. Maybe she's just been away from her boyfriend too long and she wants him.

Whatever.

She raps on the door with the brass door-knocker and wishes the sting of her gloved knuckles against the door weren't the most honest thing she's felt all day.

*
Title lyric from Adam Lambert's What Do You Want From Me?

( no line of attack has been planned to fight back the tears )

"Oh, fuck you. Seriously, bugger you right up your Victorian ass," Kate snarls into the face of the doorman who promptly slams the door in her (Indian, low class, trashy) face. "And you too." He won't remember. She's already discovered they don't. Which sucks in some cases but at least he won't spend the month of December being rude to Declan because of her. And not like she was going to ask him to kiss her anyway.

Not like she's going to ask anyone to kiss her. Not now. She's been kissed by enough people that aren't him today. And she'll be even more damned than she already is if she's going to kiss someone else at the door to his home. No fucking way.

Sick to her stomach and snarling ferally, Kate slides down the door to sit in the doorway, arms around her knees and curled tight. This day just has to end. It has to. Declan has to get home soon and not be mad at her. He has to. She needs him.

*
Title and lj-cut lyrics from Pat Benatar's Promises in the Dark.

Kate's back to drinking tequila again. That's never a good sign. Tonight it's a sign she's bouncing between sexy check-in notes with Declan that make this island seem all right and people like Coraline screaming and crying over how much it fucking sucks.

The smart thing to do would be find Will or Magnus, talk some of this out. Even finding someone to spar with, that would work. Thing is, Kate's not that kind of smart. When it comes to helping Coraline? Sure. Yeah. She's been listening to Will do his shrink thing for years now. But when it comes to herself?

Fuck that noise. She'd still rather fuck and forget.

Kate leans her back against a post to watch the room, drinks another shot (hot wheels only, no training), and flirts at whatever makes eye contact. Whether she's Go or just Show, she hasn't decided yet. Mostly, she's trying not to look for anyone in particular. She's trying not to wish he'd come in and just...

Take her home.

[OOC: Find her at the Hub or the Winchester (let me know) any evening between now and the 20th. Available for all of your Freelander needs. If you need a specific date, email me, otherwise I'll work them out. For the record, Kate's very bi but a lot less available than she thinks she is.]