girlsolo: (hit me with your best shot)
Hollow Earth used to be incredible. Even the outlands were beautiful in that weird, movie-set way. None of the colors worked right, and everything was rusty browns and golds that should have been depressing, but they were impressive instead. Maybe Kate just remembers them that way. She doesn't think so. It's not like she has fond memories of a place that executed her and the rest of her team.

Now, everything's covered by a thin film of gray, it seems like. Ash and dust and grief are the dominant shades. The city she remembers, rising in the distance with it's clean, well-oiled gunmetal stone and blue glass and arched skydome are gone. Fallen. Months later, some mounds of rubble still steam. That's unnatural but so is being god only knows how many miles underground. The two are probably related. Which makes her wonder about Kanan, the lava-whale thing, Magnus saved the last time, but she can't exactly ask if he's alive. She bites her lip and tries to look headachey, but mostly she's trying not to enjoy Garris's attention while she figures out how to find out what they need to know (and get out of here).

While they walk, Garris explains that he'd been on his way to meet the leaders of some of the more truculent clans (truculent, seriously, her fiance uses this word in real sentences? her totally hot, multi-tattooed fiance?) in the outlands when he caught word of the explosion. He'd been surprised, he tells Kate to hear over short-wave rather from her that she'd returned from the surface as she's not due back for a week at least (handy, suspiciously handy, but seamless, gotta love dream-logic, this is a dream right?), and even more surprised to hear she'd gotten caught in the blast.

"Of course, trecor, I couldn't do anything until I'd seen for myself that you're all right," he says and lifts her hand as far as it will go, then bends down to brush his mouth across her knuckles.

She shudders. And not from being kissed and handled by a stranger. Well, not because he's a stranger anyway. Damn. At least she's starting to understand why the hell she accepted the promise band. While Garris is busy with a call to the clan chieftains to tell them he'll be a few hours late, Kate glances over at Olivia, eyebrows raised high and shrugging. She mouths, good thing he's hot at her hoping to make the blonde grin. Understandably, she's tense, and Kate should be, but right now, she's just going with it.
girlsolo: (searchlight)
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?"

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Kate Freelander

July 2022

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