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"Because if we had a baby right now, it'd be older than you, not younger," Anders explained, once he was past the immediate urge to bury his head in his hands and pretend none of this was happening. "So we can't help you with a baby brother or sister, can we?"

He was already fumbling for his bag. The lazy morning he'd wanted clearly wasn't going to happen.

"Oh," Carys said, mulling that logic over in her mind. It seemed sound; she'd have to think about how much fun it would be to have a big sibling compared to a little one.

Maybe she should just ask for the mabari.

"Do you and Mommy love each other now?" she asked. "You didn't last year and I had two brothers. Now I don't have any."

Kathy was taking the low road. She was doing what Anders had not and buried her head back under the pillow. Maybe she could suffocate before Carys asked any more questions.

Anders looked at Kathy, panic in his eyes. They weren't exactly at the declaration-of-love-to-the-world stage yet. But if their five-year-old was asking...

"We, um ... yes. We do."

It felt like the safest answer -- and besides, it happened to be true.

"But it's a secret, okay? Don't tell anybody else."

KATHY WAS HIDING, SHE COULDN'T SEE YOUR PANIC!EYES, ANDERS!

...Okay, no, she was coming out from under the pillow to twine her fingers with his. For, umm, moral support. And because Kathy fully believed that when your five-year-old wanted to know if you loved each other, you said yes.

"We do," she agreed. "Saranghae forever, isn't that right?"

"Yay!" Carys cheered. She hadn't really understood what they'd meant last year (love was love, wasn't it? And they were her parents!) but they were saying yes this year, so it all worked out. "How come it's a secret? Is that why Uncle Dante's being so mean about Mommy?"

And back under the pillow Kathy went, groaning.

"Has anyone ever told you that you ask too many questions?" Anders returned. Because that was easier than trying to figure out how to explain 'no, Uncle Dante is mad because Mommy won't leave a zombie apocalypse' to a child.

He'd found his trousers and was yanking them on.

"Yes," Carys said. Because it was true. "But you say it's a sign that I'm a smart little girl. And Mommy says that you probably asked a millionty questions all the time when you were little like me."

So clearly this was your fault, Anders.

"Okay, Carys," Kathy said, finally setting the pillow aside for good and joining Anders on a hunt for clothing. "Your Daddy and I have to get situated here. Can you be good for, umm, Uncle Dante for a little while longer?"

"Yes!" Carys cheered. "We're having strawberry sundaes for breakfast!"

Kathy winced. Though, as far as breakfasts went, there were probably worse options. "You'll be having a lunch with lots of vegetables, then," she warned.

"Okay, Mommy," Carys said, giggling. The important thing was strawberry sundaes now.

"We'll be with you just as soon as we can," Anders said -- slightly muffled by the way he was yanking his shirt over his head. (Thankfully, he'd thought to pack something besides his tux.) "And leave some ice cream for the other kids, all right?"

She promised she would -- not sounding entirely as though she meant it -- and they said their "I love yous" and goodbyes, after which Anders flopped back down on the hotel bed. His socks and shoes weren't on yet, and his hair was a wreck.

"I guess we're going back to Fandom," he said, sounding resigned. "Little girl counting on us, all of that."

Edited 2016-04-17 18:02 (UTC)

"This was not at all how I was planning on spending the day," Kathy said, leaning over him to comb out the tangles in his hair with her fingers. "I'm not sure how we didn't think about it, though. It is the weekend after prom."

She wasn't addressing that 'we' yet. She had a lot to consider.

"I didn't know it could hit if we were off the island," Anders admitted. "... not that I was thinking about it."

Maker, he hoped Leo wasn't on the island and fatherless too.

"And it wasn't my plan either. We can't just leave her with Dante, though."

"No, no we can't," Kathy said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "He wouldn't be my first choice of baby-sitters even if he didn't hate me."

All she had here was her gi; the rest of her clothes were stashed close to her parents' apartment so she could change quickly before and after leaving. But that always happened at night; she wasn't prepared to have to run about in rainbows in the daylight.

"He doesn't hate you, he just can't stand the thought of losing you," Anders said more sharply. "Any more than I can."

Not that starting up that fight again was going to help. He sighed and held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"Anyhow. You're coming home now, right? So it doesn't matter."

"Anders..." Kathy pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself. "What are the odds that if I go home, I'll be able to come back?"

There were any number of people on the island willing to tie her down and throw her into a closet to keep her safe on the island.

"I'm not sure how much will be left for me to come back to."

Something shut off in Anders' face when he heard that. If a daughter, a man who she said she loved who loved her too, and the knowledge that this was a losing fight weren't enough to convince her to come back to safety, nothing would be.

In that moment, some part of Anders said goodbye to her.

"Fine," he said, and resumed the business of pulling on socks and pinning back hair. "I'm done fighting about it."

Edited 2016-04-17 20:30 (UTC)

Kathy would have liked to argue that Carys wasn't real; she was a future possibility brought to the present because the island had a weird sense of humor. But that wasn't an argument that carried much weight--for the weekend, she was real enough.

Looking at Anders' shuttered expression, she asked herself if this was all worth it. If being a hero was worth the damage--possibly irreparable--she was doing to the relationships that mattered most.

She didn't have time to figure out her answer. Someone was screaming in the hallway outside of their room and Kathy was dashing out to offer assistance before she a chance to think.

Or maybe that was the answer.

It seemed like a clear enough answer to Anders, yes. And as an answer, it made him furious. (And even if Carys was only a projection, she was still a little girl who wanted her mother.)

But the person who was screaming in the hall hadn't done anything wrong. He picked up his staff and followed her into the hall, uncertain he'd be able to catch up.

Turned out that Anders didn't need to worry about catching up, Kathy was bounding back, half-dragging a hysterical woman in a maid uniform with her. Of course, considering the amount of blood liberally soaking the woman, she probably had cause to be screaming. Kathy was trying very hard to ignore that the woman kept screaming a single name; she had a pretty decent idea where all the blood had come from.

"She's not bitten!" she called to Anders, "but we're about to have company!"

From the direction Kathy had come from, they could hear the dull clack-clack-clack of jaws being snapped shut over and over again. "I counted at least twelve--looks like they made their way here from somewhere else as a group and spotted the day shift arriving. Most of them are in the lobby right now." The clacking noise continued. "Or coming this way," she amended. "But that means any other staff or guests trying to get out are going to run smack into the bulk of them."

From now on, Kathy was only staying in hotel rooms above ground level.

Anders bit his lip. He might be angry, but it didn't have to matter when they had something bigger to fight. "If I go to the lobby and take down as many zombies as I can, can you protect the people trying to leave?"

The clacking kept getting louder.

Kathy bit her lip. If Anders was going out to fight, she wanted to be there by his side and at his back. But they had a job to do and she knew she could trust him. She knew she had to trust him. Because otherwise how could she ask that he do the same, however grudgingly he might be doing it.

"Yes," she said, swallowing any hint of protest. "Let's clean out this hallway together, then you head to the lobby and I'll check for survivors and clear a route to safety."

Anders didn't like letting Kathy go, but as he saw it he didn't have much choice in the matter. She was going no matter what he said or did: The best he could do right then was help other people by taking down as many zombies as he could. He nodded firmly and stepped a few paces back from Kathy, staff at the ready to cover her.

A lone zombie turned a corner, shambling toward them. From the clacking, he wouldn't be alone for long.

"Well," he said tone still cool, "at least we aren't having a boring prom."

"I vastly preferred the events of last night, truth be told," Kathy said, trying to ignore that tone. It hurt to hear it, but it's not like she could blame him. Fewer zombies, still not bored."

Her foot lashed out, slamming into the zombie's head. It staggered backwards, off=balance, and Kathy advanced, bokken out. The zombie clacked and reached for her and she literally writhed out of its grasp, swinging her weapon directly into its skull. She turned away to avoid getting a facefull of blood and brain, and slammed her hand into the face of a second zombie, breaking its nose and shoving it up into the brain.

From the way her face felt, she was grinning.

Well, someone had certainly gotten over her reservations about killing. Under other circumstances Anders might have found the grin on her face weirdly charming.

Under the current circumstances, he was mainly happy to have an excuse not to talk about the night before. The thought of leaving Kathy again so soon added a sour tang to what should have been a sweet memory.

"So that's them," he said, and aimed a fireball over Kathy's head at an angle that sent it crashing into a cluster of three approaching zombies. He wasn't sure whether burning zombies would do much good, but he considered it his scientific duty to find out.

It wasn't killing if they were already dead. 'Genny couldn't bring them back to life, there were no signs of higher thought processes (or general life functions), and Stealth said they showed no evidence of feeling pain, which she had discovered in ways Kathy was happier not knowing. That put them at the same level as the skeletons at Cyseal--lower, actually, because the skeletons had at least been smart enough to use weapons and basic tactics.

No, all these thngs did was shamble, kill, and eat, endangering people that were still alive and keeping her in LA when she'd really rather be back home on the island. Also, they were ruining her last few minutes of prom, dammit. (She still couldn't bring herself to kill the few child zombies she'd seen. That was still just a step too far.)

The zombies' clothing and hair caught fire readily, save for the one in the middle whose shirt was still sodden with blood. The flames themselves didn't seem to deter the zombies, though; it wasn't hot enough to start melting skin and they lacked the pain receptors to care. "Try electricity!" Kathy called. "It won't hurt them but it might disrupt the body's signals!"

If Anders could read her narration, he would have agreed that zombies were already dead but argued that Kathy wouldn't rather be home on the island. If she would, she could have been there a week and a half ago.

It was perhaps for the best that they weren't reading each other's narration.

"Good idea," he called instead, and sent out a cracking blow of lightning. His staff twirled and his face distorted with focus.

Edited 2016-04-18 17:41 (UTC)

He would be right, up to a point. But she wasn't just here because she liked fighting zombies. She was staying because she felt responsible. That she could make a real and present difference in the survival of the city. That abandoning LA before she absolutely had to reflected on her not just as a hero, but as a person. That her value was inextricably bound with saving as many lives as possible.

It was complicated. And hard for Kathy to articulate, since they were vague feelings at best. Maybe they would have swayed Anders if she could explain them.

Maybe not. In the end, the maybes didn't matter. She couldn't explain, so he had no way to fully understand.

The zombies he hit with the lightning went down, twitching, as the lightning caused muscles to seize. They didn't register pain the way a living human would after getting zapped that way, but they couldn't control their bodies, either. Kathy danced into their midst and finished them off before the effects could wear off. "...That's pretty damn effective," she said, blinking at how quickly the zombies had ceased to be a thread. "You spark, I stab?"

They still made a hell of a team.

Whether Anders understood, or could understand, or not, was ultimately beside the point to him. He wouldn't have even thought of staying, and Kathy couldn't imagine not. There was no more to say.

"I'll spark, you stab," he agreed. "We'll have this place cleared out in no time."

And then he let out a battle cry as he unleashed his anger and confusion at the next zombie to lumber into view.

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