Kate Freelander

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.

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.