Chapter Text
[Nov 18TH, 2037]
[PM 11:09]
The night refused to let up.
True to her prediction, the crime scene had been a game of survival against Gavin’s thinly veiled digs. And Kate had failed. Miserably. It was like she hadn’t been in the same room–not even on the same plane of existence–with him unless he wanted to make a passing slight to or about her.
His words had so easily wormed their way under her skin that soon she could hardly focus on the surroundings or Donnelly or–as Gavin had been quicker to point out–the similar pattern of slanted throat slashing that linked this homicide to another victim from months ago.
From the start, she’d rathered wholeheartedly that he yelled and started round two of their fight instead of the indifferent yet subtly hurtful treatment he’d been giving her.
Because she’d rathered it wasn’t subtle at all.
She was angry–angry at the way her day had been going, angry at Gavin for riling her up and angry at him for not committing to it all the way, for not giving her an outlet. Because that was all that was: shallow, cursory anger, and it paled, every second her mind wasn’t grappling with that distraction, in comparison to the resentment she remembered she felt toward herself.
Inside, she could feel the guilt like a flood at bay, brewing for the chance to overflow and extinguish the fragile kindling of that madness. On its surface rippled a feasible image she didn’t want to think about–had told herself she didn’t care about.
She didn’t care, Kate repeated to herself. She had her arms crossed, absently staring down the open window of the first-floor classroom–gauging the distance the killer could’ve jumped or needing the fresh air or both, she wasn’t sure. Above the crescendo of ringing in her ears, she could hear the echo of a single gunshot, the splattering of brain on a kitchen wall, a dog’s howling. Her fingers tightened around her biceps. But she didn’t care.
She didn’t care.
She wasn’t to blame for any of that. It wasn’t her fault. Plus, this was only a hunch. At least, she hoped she’d actually believe those thoughts, among everything else, if she repeated them enough times.
He’d be mourned, someone would be found to care even if Kate didn’t, and then they’d move on too. People died every day–good people lost their lives, while other less deserving ones continued to live. Kate should know, she continued to, and she struggled with the toll of four losses in her life.
But a fifth one?
That rippling image seeped from the back of her mind onto her vision, stable and stagnant as a pond, and the classroom started to narrow and whirl around her. Her head drooped and she cupped her forehead in one gloved hand, leaning the other on the windowsill.
It’s not my fault, she demanded, but found herself more so begging and pleading internally. This is not my fault!
When Kate removed her palm from her face, she felt the faint tug of a memory and a distressed impulse had her glancing down. For a split second, her hands weren’t the clean blue of rubber but bare and coated in red. Maybe it was the growing headache or the turmoil of that lingering flood or the weariness of the day that closed in around her heart, but she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
Kate fiercely blinked them back, ignoring a gaze she sensed on her from across the room. She didn’t think she could handle or be fit to stay for the scene to be fully wrapped up. Today had been enough already. She was going hom–back to her house.
Peeling off her rubber gloves and shoving them into her pocket, Kate marched out of the room past officers and then Chris without explaining herself or paying attention to whatever question he seemed to be asking her. His voice was so dull to her ears that she didn’t bother listening, but she thought his tone sounded concerned.
She walked as fast as she could without outright running, leaving without a backward glance at anyone or anything, but no matter how hurried her steps, she couldn’t outpace that haunting image and ringing, and once she’d slammed the car door shut, she’d trapped herself inside with all of them.
She slumped in her seat like a wave had pushed her into it. That familiar flood was engulfing her. She was frustrated and overwhelmed.
She was drowning.
Stranded in the middle of the tempestuous ocean that was her mind, the sky was a churning tapestry of dark, ominous clouds, split by jagged bolts of lightning. Waves tossed Kate around, threatening to swallow her whole. Saltwater sprayed into her face, mixing with the rain, making it hard to breathe or see.
One tide caught her, lifting her to a dizzying height before suddenly plunging her into the deep, watery valleys, crushing her under its weight.
She never gained the chance to resurface. She screamed, but the sound was forever stifled in her water-filled lungs. Her body sank further and further, her outstretched arm to the surface gone unanswered.
Her hands didn’t stop shaking even when she gripped the steering wheel to the point of her knuckles turning white. She blew out a long, unsteady breath to keep herself from breaking down. A suppressed scream clogged her throat painfully.
She clamped her mouth shut and slammed her fist on the steering wheel. And did it again, and again, and again and again and again and again, pouring the wrath of that sea and its frustration and guilt outward. She went until she was gasping, until the only accomplishment was the aching on the side of her hand.
She rested her forehead against the wheel, panting.
Fucking Anderson. If you wanted to kill yourself why did you have to tell me? Why did you let me see the fucking gun?
—–— ✧ —–—
The mild throb in Kate’s head had turned into a sharp pounding. An invisible force was gripping her brain, squashing it relentlessly, and every single matter inside her skull weighed heavily, protesting against that pressure. Her brain actively banged on the walls, seeking to burst outward, that pulse violent and relentless across her face, especially on her eyes and temples.
She could almost cry. She wanted to cry. It usually relieved some of the tension set to implode inside her, and it was all she could do most nights. She was so hollow even her legs were prone to giving out, it was a miracle she could stand still in front of Anderson's house.
The interior was still lit past the blinds, and Kate wondered at what point in his schedule Anderson was. As long as she wasn’t too late, it didn’t matter, but even then she didn’t know what her plan was. What then if she found him alive and well but in the midst of his one-man Russian Roulette? Obviously he’d just go back to it once he’d disregarded her and kicked her out–if he’d even let her in.
Sighing heavily enough that her head stooped, Kate lifted a hand and knocked on the door, deciding that she would cross that bridge when she got to it.
“Lieutenant Anderson? It’s–It’s Kate Walker.” Awkwardly, she wrapped her arms around herself and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Listen, I know it’s late. I’m not here for work, I just… I just wanted to check on you.”
Silence. Her stomach sank a little.
Too jittery to wait, Kate walked over to the front window. On the right border, through the smallest sliver uncovered by the curtain, she saw a part of Anderson’s gray hoodie on the far end of the house. He was seated behind the kitchen table where she’d last seen him, and dead people didn’t sit upright so her worries were mitigated.
But neither did asleep people. She frowned, feeling irritated. Not only was Anderson alive, he was awake as well and yet he was actively ignoring her, not opening the door and refusing to at least speak to her. After the late ordeal at the crime scene, she found herself sensitive to not being properly acknowledged.
“Lieutenant, can I just talk to you for a moment?” Kate said, annoyed, banging on the glass. Anderson–or at least the side of his arm that she could discern–didn’t make any significant movements.
She heard his dog bark inside as she straightened up, but he himself still didn’t bother to answer her.
Her face got warm, rich humiliation crawling up her neck. Her sense of guilt and responsibility dissipated, replaced by an indignation that charged the more she’d stood alone in that embarrassing silence. It seemed he was ignoring her until she fucked off on her own.
As Kate moved back to the front door, she felt absolutely fucking moronic for worrying about someone like Hank Anderson.
“FINE!” Kate yelled, kicking the door in a fit of frustration that made it rattle. She whirled around to leave. “Sorry I bothered you!”
Something shattered inside the house. Immediately a louder thud followed and the dog barked loudly, making Kate stop dead in her tracks. Startled, she debated whether that was her fault or something was actually wrong and she should check. She didn’t want to, she wasn’t sure if she even had it in her to do so. She just wanted to get back to her place but the night seemed to want to stretch on indefinitely.
Kate made to step away again when the dog’s next bark sounded, for which she hesitated a moment, and slowly reconsidered, to her own dismay.
Skeptically, she turned to the door once more. “Lieutenant? Are you okay?” she asked. At the silence–this one more concerning than discomfiting–she tried the handle. It was locked.
Kate looked around, searching for a possible spare key’s hiding place and finding none. She wondered if she should break the door open, but dropped the idea knowing that in this state she would dislocate her shoulder or ankle before the door would budge. She considered calling Gavin for help–and swatted the thought away almost instantly; it was useless and she didn’t want to start missing the two of them being on good terms.
She reflected, suddenly recalling the window she’d spotted in the kitchen. She remembered thinking, as she’d stood near the entrance, the house interior feeling almost as cold as the outside because of that window being left open. Maybe it still was.
She began circling the house, thinking tiredly that at the end of a nearly 16 hour shift running on 4 hours of nightmare-fueled sleep, she should be at her place passing out, not neck-deep in bullshit as she was. She wished she at least had aspirin right now. She’d kill for some aspirin.
Nearing the window, Kate told herself that she’d just glance inside and hoped that Anderson was okay enough so she could leave sooner. If he wasn’t… She prayed it wouldn’t come to that, that this specific bridge remained a far off myth never to be crossed.
But if her prayer reached the heavens, it was left unanswered.
Kate froze, her heart leaping to her throat. Her mouth was open but she struggled to draw a breath, gawking at Anderson’s body sprawled on a floor no longer white as she remembered, but red. Horrible, bright red.
He was lying in a pool of his own blood.
The world warped around her, and Kate began hyperventilating, her vision uncontrollably turning blurry.
Stop… she begged of her mind, of the orchestra of disembodied voices that condemned her vociferously. Please stop!
She blinked and the blood was gone. Again and it was back. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take her eyes off the corpse man sight in front of her. It became impossible to unweave nightmares from reality now, to differentiate from the repressed memory that rushed back and hit her with such force that she felt the world being pulled out from under her feet.
He wasn’t dead, he simply couldn’t be. He’d be breathing, he’d have a pulse. She had to check, had to prove that. She slid the window open all the way and climbed through with floppy limbs, not at all careful of what she was doing. Her foot got stuck on the frame, and she stumbled and fell on her hands.
For a moment her gaze dropped on something other than the body, and she noticed through the heavy blur that the floor was shining, separate fragments and flakes that sparkled with reflected light. Glass–the floor was full of shattered glass.
A loud bark close had Kate’s head snapping up. She looked at the big Saint Bernard that was about to make its way to her.
It was only a matter of instinct that Kate’s hand shot up, ordering the dog not to step on the glass. “Stop!” The Saint Bernard didn’t listen, making her panic. “I SAID STOP! Bad dog!” This time, the dog paused, and Kate felt the tears gathered in her eyes finally flowing down. She continued weakly, her voice trembling, “I’m sorry, please don’t come here. I’m not here to rob or hurt you, I just wanna check on him, okay?”
She gestured to the man on the other side of the table, away from the glass, and the dog barked, heading toward him. Letting out a strangled gasp, she managed to her shaky feet and dragged herself to the body.
He wasn’t dead, Kate repeated, swallowing and slowly kneeling down beside him. She couldn’t determine if his chest was moving naturally or because virtually everything in the room was wavering a little. Tensely, she raised a hand that shook to her bones and hovered in the air, scared to move it further.
Kate continued staring down. He’s not dead. The dog barked next to her, making her wince. He’s fine. She wiped the stream of tears and reached to find a pulse on his wrist. He’s alive. The red in her vision was waning a little. He’s–
Cold.
An all too familiar, deathlike cold.
Fear suddenly punctured Kate’s chest, making her recoil.
He was cold like a corpse.
Fear spread in her veins like poison, infesting her heart, stopping it dead.
He was cold like Tom.
The walls of the room pushed in. Kate’s head began swirling and spinning, the room with it. Blood was splashed in front of her. It was coating her hand, disgustingly slick.
Her mouth went dangerously dry. Her stomach churned, a torrent of sickening nausea surging through her.
Kate covered her mouth and scrambled to her feet, rushing away from that shrinking room and the body whose identity was so distorted the only undeniable thing about it was its reek of death.
She ran to the corridor, throwing herself inside the room she had narrowly discerned as the bathroom from the crack in its open door and dropped to her knees in front of the toilet. She clung to its sides desperately, hurling, her throat burning as if she was throwing up magma. The contents of her stomach forced out reflexively until there was nothing left, and then it was her uncontrolled tears that fell instead and her retching had subsided to be replaced by the choked sobs that tore from the bottom of her soul.
Crying, she slumped to the floor, and couldn’t fend off the vivid, red-tinted picture of Tom’s lifeless body. The image that was the only memory she’d had of him. She couldn’t remember his voice or his smile or the shape and color of his eyes anymore. Just a cold, forever quiet corpse.
She’d lost him. She’d lost her second family, the only person who’d made the abrupt loss of her first one endurable. He was gone and it was her fault. The one who had become her anchor in life, and now his loss had made everything come crashing down. She missed him. She missed them all. Her heart clenched and she pined to just once, once hold her mom and dad again or see their smiles outside misty memories or repetitive pictures. To have one more conversation with Tom and apologize for everything. She never got to say goodbye to any of them.
God, she missed them.
She missed them so much…
It wasn’t fair–It wasn’t fair how they were gone and she was still there. She wasn’t even living, she was just alive, wasting her existence. She was floating with no means of keeping herself grounded anymore.
She was drowning.
Something wrenched Kate’s mind back inside her cramped head.
She sobbed and found out, once she flinched and lifted her head, that it was the sensation of getting licked on the face.
“Stop,” she said hoarsely, drawing her face back and weakly pushing the Saint Bernard that didn’t budge. “Go away.”
Her mind grew a bit clearer, the gloomy trance ebbing enough to let her rediscover her surroundings, but the pounding in her head had aggravated to the point she could cry from the physical pain alone. She raised herself from the floor to sit on her heels, hands slack between her knees, her body deflated and hunched.
The Saint Bernard made to move closer to her, taking away from Kate the chance to salvage her pieces as she had to focus to push the dog away again.
“You’re not my dog, and you have enough to worry about with your own owner,” she said sullenly, and tried to stand up.
Her knees wobbled, making her almost lose balance. Wearily, she braced against the wall, sniffing and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, ignoring the dog at her feet.
She flushed the toilet without distinctly looking back and plodded to the sink, clutching it with both hands and sagging.
Kate squinted at the reflection in the mirror, straining to see clearly, but even then she could distinguish that her ill-defined figure looked utterly miserable: her glossy eyes were puffy and bloodshot, her face wan and glistening from mixed tears and dog saliva. Her throbbing lips were swollen, her hair tousled, strands of it tucked out of her ruined ponytail and sticking to her skin.
Her ill-defined figure. Perhaps the person beyond the mirror was less a stranger now. Perhaps misery suited her.
Kate opened the tap and began washing her hands–and a slosh of red began sullying the water and flowing into the drain with it. Kate paused. Slowly, she turned over her left hand and stared at the cut across her palm, only just feeling the sting there. She looked down at the sink then over her shoulder at the toilet, spotting the smear of blood left on both their edges.
She’d fallen on a shard of glass coming in, she realized disappointedly.
Kate finished washing her hands and face, rinsing her mouth and cleaning up the blood smears–and realized at the end that the dog at some point had left. She bunched a few toilet papers in her hand to block the mild bleeding, and sluggishly returned to the kitchen, leaning back against the nearest wall for support.
Her eyes prickled more than before but they no longer mistook Anderson for anything other than the passed-out drunk that he was, or the white tiles beneath for any other shade than they were. She spotted the revolver on the floor just out of his grasp and the empty bottle of whiskey on the table–near a turned down picture frame that couldn’t even pique her curiosity–but there was no sign of the glass he’d been holding hours ago, and her gaze traveled to the shining fragments on the ground, forming the story in her mind as she went.
Apparently, Anderson had drunk himself to a stupor and was indeed in the middle of playing Russian Roulette when Kate had arrived, and once she’d kicked the door he must’ve recoiled and finally collapsed. He wasn’t dead. He was just outright unconscious, and his body was cold because of the window he’d forgotten to close.
Out of a cursory sense of obligation but more so to assure herself, she decided to verify his condition once and for all. Proven correct from the dull but nonetheless existing pulse on his wrist, she uncrouched and became disoriented from the pain shooting through her. She hissed and barely avoided falling by clutching the kitchen table. In dire need of aspirin, she carried herself to the cabinets, promising to pay Anderson back for whatever she took.
As good a representation of how much Anderson gave a shit about his own well-being, the medicine drawer was virtually empty, disheartening Kate when she couldn’t find anything useful there, not even anything she could use to wrap around her wound. Why did she expect Anderson to be in any way, shape or form helpful toward her?
And looking back, she couldn’t believe Tom ever saw anything good enough in this man that warranted seeking him out for conversations over basketball or inviting him to his birthday get-together. Maybe she was finally starting to think like Gavin, but then again maybe Gavin hadn’t been entirely wrong about his contempt for Anderson.
She closed the drawer with a crash and turned to get out; there was no compulsion to stay there a second longer. She shouldn’t have come in the first place and saved herself… a lot. From the panic and physical injury and tears to the terrible remembrance and through it the glaring reminder of how pathetic her life was. But right now, most of all, she rued the added headache.
Kate was almost out the door but she halted, her hand still on the knob. A voice inside her still nagged, softer than the others but somehow more potent.
Kate scrunched her face, unhappy with how intimate she was with this one. It felt natural to listen to it, like it was simply her own voice echoing back to her, tugging at some part of her buried so deep she thought had died out.
Slowly, she looked over her shoulder, viewing the mess she was leaving behind: the house that would be glacial by morning from the wide open window; an unaware, hungover Anderson or his dog could cut themselves stepping on the broken glass; and Anderson himself wasn’t safe lying flat on his back, he could choke on his own vomit.
Uncontrollably, her grip on the knob tightened. She pursed her lips, urging herself to step into the dark street and leave, fighting to keep that resurfaced part of her shrouded, at least for tonight, at least for now.
But, in the end, she couldn’t. She was tired. She sighed and released her grip, letting go of the knob and of this uphill battle with that voice. With herself.
She stepped back inside the lighted house, closing the door behind her. This time, she stayed not out of a selfish need to quell some personal guilt, but because deep down, she did care, even for someone like Hank Anderson.
She sealed the kitchen window and collected a small broom and dustpan from the under-sink cabinet to sweep the glass shards, taking several breaks in between to recuperate from the worst pangs of her headache. Anderson was pushed into a recovery position next and she picked up the revolver from next to him, not wanting him to wake up and decide in the haze to finish his game.
But there was something about the gun–this gun. Maybe because it wasn’t hers, it wasn’t a responsibility nor a reminder. She felt the reliable weight of it in her hand, the coolness of steel that she had long stopped appreciating, ever since she’d abandoned the pride of her sharpshooting skills and even her target practice hobby.
In a way, Kate understood the appeal of the game that she doubted Anderson had just begun playing tonight.
She snapped her eyes shut, instantly stopping the hand she realized had lifted an inch. She heaved a sigh and concentrated before thrusting the revolver to the side, pushing the cylinder out. She hit the only bullet out of the chamber, not looking at how close Anderson was to meeting his end if he had pulled the trigger. (But she did wonder about the round she’d interrupted by kicking the door. What would have been its outcome if she hadn’t stopped by…)
Kate kept the bullet and set down the gun in its original spot; she didn’t need Anderson finding out that she’d invaded his house and giving her endless shit for it or possibly suing her, so she maintained everything in a plausible state and the traces of her presence hidden–or at least to a bare minimum, enough for Anderson to consider the alterations the result of a few leaps in his own alcohol-clouded memories.
She hissed at another pang of pain, and was about to stand up again when the Saint Bernard she’d been neglecting returned from the other room in the corridor, holding a blanket in its mouth, dragging the fabric on the floor. She watched curiously as the dog released the cover beside Anderson on his stretched arm, and snuggled near him.
Kate paused, contemplating, before she picked the blanket and actually pulled it over Anderson, a gesture that was too reminiscent of the times she found Tom asleep on the couch or behind the desk in his bedroom. Something inside her chest was both soothed and hurt.
The Saint Bernard had closed its eyes, starting to slumber like its owner. Another missing part of Kate strayed back to her, driving her to gently pet the dog’s head in silent praise and in apology. Then, she rose to her feet.
Maybe one day, she thought, she’d ask Anderson the dog’s name. Maybe one day he’d tell her.
Kate deposited the single bullet inside the coat hanging near the entrance, then closed the door and put her hands in her pockets.
She gave the house one last glance, and trudged toward the street to her car, finally able to walk away.
—–— ✧ —–—
Kate wouldn’t have lasted enough to make it to her house. She’d let her car drive autonomously to the nearest 24-hour pharmacy while she’d lied down in the backseat, and now she’d swallowed three aspirins with half a bottle of water the instant she was done with the checkout. She then lazily rolled a piece of gauze around her injured hand before exiting the store.
Her attention was fixated on her phone as she walked back to her car, plastic bag in hand. She read the messages from Joel (her neighbor), updating her that Sunny and his two girls have already fallen asleep, so Kate shouldn’t worry about rushing home to pick up her dog if there was trouble keeping her at work again.
Whether Joel was a life-saver or an unwitting enabler, the jury was still out. Kate had offered to compensate for the dogsitting, but Joel had refused every time and claimed Ellie and Sarah just loved hanging out with Sunny. Well, he had no idea how nice it was that she could busy herself with work these days and sometimes sleep in the precinct without having to worry about Sunny.
Mostly, it was the fact that Kate dreaded returning to that empty, quiet place that had long stopped feeling like a home, so she avoided it as much as possible. Maybe that wasn’t fair to Sunny or Joel or even herself, but she didn’t think she could ever get used to the silence of that house, or any house at all, that was why she didn’t bother with moving.
Kate didn’t plan on explaining to Joel any of that or the incidents of her night. She was only about to type back her thanks when something rock-hard collided with her shoulder, making her grunt and half turn on the spot.
The man who’d bumped into her didn’t even break stride, just muttered what sounded like a rude comment and advanced on to his destination. Kate watched the back of his fleeing silhouette for a few seconds before she loosed a deep breath and looked away.
And the man, the pain in her shoulder, the entire accident was wiped from her mind in an instant. She remained rooted to the ground, her lips parted, her tear tracks glittering in the soft purple light cast on her up-tilted face, because in glancing up, she’d realized just the kind of shop she had stopped in front of.
In particular, the kind of android that stood behind its display window.
Noticing Kate’s stare on her, the android smiled and waved at her. The gesture seemed genuine but was too generic to be, like Kate was just another possible customer that android was supposed to charm. Exactly the way her programming–and CyberLife–would have wanted her; human enough to be appealing, not human enough to want to live. To want anything.
And she appeared so... spotless. So joyful.
So opposite of how Kate remembered that face. And for a moment, her version reappeared.
Suddenly, the android’s blonde hair was rumpled, her outfit splattered with red blood, white patches of trauma all over her skin. Suddenly, blue blood was coursing from the gunshot in her forehead, the absence of light had left her eternally tearful and scared eyes bleak, and Rachel’s vacant stare was boring a hole directly into Kate.
Her body must be in pieces now, getting analyzed by CyberLife to find out what had gone wrong with her programming, if it wasn’t destroyed along with any traces of her existence already. Desecrated alive and dead.
Though it was a small gesture that rectified nothing, Kate still couldn’t have helped but wonder, every time she’d placed Tom’s sunflowers over his grave in the past two months, would Rachel have liked flowers, too? What would her favorite flower have been?
And how could Kate leave flowers for someone who didn’t even have a grave? Someone who never was anymore.
The shop android was back in the next breath, and the juxtaposition was like a knife to Kate’s heart. The android was the same model as her, the perfect picture of what she was supposed to look like.
But this android just wasn’t Rachel.
And nobody alive was ever perfect.
—–— ✧ —–—
In spite of its flaws, Kate loved Detroit, which made it entirely foreign and wrong, this very real sentiment that the city was suffocating her.
Ever since a kid she enjoyed the vibrant lights, the dramatic noises, and above all, the commotion of all the different and unique people who gathered and chatted and laughed and went on with their day for how lively they made the city.
But for a long while now she had stopped loving them for the beauty they brought and instead for the diversion they created. Yet tonight she couldn’t even love it for that. Every light was blinding, every noise too loud, every person like another criticizing voice in her head personified.
Kate needed a break. And didn’t know where she was.
After the encounter by the shop, Kate had retreated to her car and heedlessly tapped a spot outside the city on the installed tablet’s map. Just to get out and away from there, from everything, as quickly as possible.
Eventually, when she’d felt the vehicle stop moving–or finally registered it some time after the fact–she’d slowly lifted herself, blinking and squinting out the backseat window. Short of breath, she’d wiped at her wet eyes and face and exited with caution.
The first thing she did when fully outside was to be mesmerized.
In the distance, across miles of free water, Detroit was beautiful. The buildings and skyscrapers sparkled like a mass of polished and uncut gems, and now that she wasn’t passing inside or between their towering structures, she could actually see the gorgeous contrast the cluster of their brilliant, blue-tinted surfaces made against the black, cloudy sky. She could see the lights reflecting off the river’s surface. She could hear the gentle flow of the water, the soothing lapping of the waves.
And, with a start, Kate realized that was the only thing she could hear.
She didn’t know when she’d sauntered closer.
She looked down at the playful, harmless motions of the river. And from below the water, through a secretive, rippling point of view, as if privy to another person’s eyes, she could see herself standing up there by the riverwalk’s railing, her shape gradually growing smaller and out of reach, then she could see the sky above, distantly thunderous, and feel that person becoming lost to some calm, perpetual ocean, drifting slowly.
Falling… falling… falling…
Kate didn’t know how to save that person.
So she let her drown.
Kate sighed, and walked to sit on a nearby bench, grasping the edge with both hands. A breeze whispered through her hair, lifting strands from her ruffled ponytail. Her tear lines seemed to freeze against the wind. The tender flaps continued to lull her mind, and she looked onward at the city. She just… looked.
She liked it here. It was peaceful.
It was easy to at last breathe outside Detroit, like a dazzling rose of blue crystal that she had finally relinquished her hold on, allowing her hands to loosen around its thorn-filled stem. Strange how the flower had changed, it was never this poisonous from what she remembered. As if ten fresh thorns had bloomed in lieu of each new loss that had tarnished Kate’s life.
It didn’t matter that she had let go. Nothing mattered because nothing had changed. The flower still had thorns and Kate’s hands were still punctured and saturated in red.
Her grip on the edge of the bench tightened thoughtlessly, cold wood biting into her palms. Her cut began to hurt. She planted her elbows on her thighs and cradled her face in her hands instead. She just wanted this to be over, for things to go back to how they were. She knew that was impossible, that she didn’t deserve it, but a relative sense of normalcy wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
She was aware that the responsibility was in great deal, if not completely, her cross to bear. Compared to how her life was changed, everyone else’s had been significantly less affected by Tom’s and especially Rachel’s death. So it was Kate who was impacting everyone around her, her gloominess bringing out the worst in them and then reflecting back on herself like a serpent eating its own tail. All because she kept pushing them. She was hurting them by not getting better. Most people would’ve moved on or at least made progress by now, so why couldn’t she. Maybe she had something in common with Anderson after all…
She couldn’t. She really couldn’t. It was just too great of an absence in her life to let go, too drastic of a hole in the soul to heal from.
The blood on her hands was too permanent of a stain to wash away that easily.
But she could pretend that it wasn’t. She could pretend that she was managing, if only for the sake of everyone around her. Life would be easier for them, and with time, it might become easier for her, too. She could fall into a routine: fake smiles, pretty lies, a mimicry of who she once was, because though she doubted she could ever forgive herself for the irreversible pain she had caused on the dead, she was absolutely certain that she wouldn’t forgive herself for the distress she was inflicting on the living right now.
She’d been a bad friend, a bad girlfriend, a bad partner. She felt like an awful human being. Too wrapped in her own desolation, she’d selfishly put herself first.
Kate winced, recalling how heartless and uncaring she’d been just tonight, toward Chris and especially Anderson. And Gavin… She knew it was his concerned gaze she’d sensed at the crime scene. He must’ve thought he’d pushed her too far. But that wasn’t the truth, and she couldn’t let him keep thinking that. Altogether he hadn’t been nearly as unkind and brutal as she had during their argument.
God, who had she turned into..?
Kate noticed something small drop on her shoe, something white and pure. She blinked, then turned her gaze skyward. There was a soft flurry of snow falling from the clouds.
Drawn by their gentle dance, she extended an arm, letting one drift into her palm. She observed it linger, then slowly melt and soak into her bloodied bandage, as if making an effort to wash the stain.
To fade for something. To die trying… Kate closed her hand and withdrew her arm, watching the snowfall land on her and the world for a while. She didn’t want to return to the city just yet, but when she did, she had a lot of apologies to make.
Tomorrow, then.
Tomorrow she would try to be better.