ᴋᴀᴛʜʀʏɴ ᴅᴀʟʟᴇʏ (kathrynd) wrote in commandhq, @ 2018-04-09 17:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | clara theriot, kathryn dalley, p: lindsey, p: mena |
WHO Kathryn Dalley | Clara Theriot
WHAT Reunion
WHEN Backdated to Clara's arrival
WHERE Clara's room
RATING Low
Clara twisted her fingers together as she stared at the door to her room. She had a few potted flowers on the windowsill and had started gathering bits and pieces, bright colours and pretty pictures, to personalise her space in a way that she had never been allowed to before. The rooms at Cheshire had been so clinical and cold, not that she ever really saw them. She found herself standing in her room with her eyes closed at times, navigating in the darkness because she felt that it was only a matter of time before they made her use her powers again. It was only a matter of time before they pushed her into a room and stuck a needle in her arm. Thrust her back into the darkness and the timeline, flashing images and death, death death.
Grey had been called away to attend a meeting with her handler, but having her stay the night had been nice. It meant that no one had come to bother her, that no one had wanted to talk to her and Clara had just sat with her friend and watched films and ate snack food, the sensation so normal that it felt alien.
She lifted a hand, pushing her lower lip between her teeth and twirling the other hand’s fingers into the ratty lengths of her hair, debating leaving. She knew she had to, even if they said she had to wear shoes every time she left the barracks. She needed to get herself something to drink - self care was important, they said, make sure you eat, they said - but she had no idea what time it was or where she could go to get something to drink. She’d ended up in the canteen by accident and didn’t know how to get back there.
Moreover she wasn’t sure she wanted to. People had talked to her on the network, some people like they knew her but she didn’t know if she’d met them yet. She didn’t know if she knew them or she was going to know them and she didn’t understand why so many people had reached out. It wasn’t as busy as some of the posts she had seen but it was too busy. Too busy and too much.
She backed away from the door, her fingers pushing up into her hair, standing now in the middle of the room, looking down at her bare feet and just trying to remember how to breathe. She couldn’t do this.
---
Training was a particularly useless way to spend time for Kathryn. Her powers were in no way combative – couldn’t even be useful in a combat situation – and she couldn’t functionally spar with another teammate without the risk of getting blood and spit all over the place. Needless to say, an hour spent hitting a punching bag just to clock in the hours allotted for her physical conditioning felt like a monumental waste of time.
As if they would ever even send her into the field anyway.
After showering and getting re-dressed (a well-fitted black dress and over-the-knee boots), Kathryn made her way towards Clara’s room. She already knew where she was going (had plotted the course the evening before), and so when she breezed into the suite, she didn’t bother asking anyone in the common room where she ought to go. A few confused gazes were shot in her direction, but Kathryn didn’t break stride or look their way.
When she found Clara’s room, she didn’t bother to knock. Instead, she breezed in, shut the door behind her, and smiled when she saw the familiar blonde-haired girl standing in the middle of the room looking down at her feet. “It’s about time you got here.”
She didn’t immediately approach, providing Clara the room and time to approach on her own terms. Kathryn wore a genuine smile, though; a rare enough sight on her face.
Not that Clara would know that.
---
Jumping a little when the door opened, Clara’s head lifted and she looked at Kat - because she knew her from her voice - wide and clear eyed. The glassy, clouded look from before was gone and instead Clara was seeing Kat for the first time. There was a smile across the other woman’s face and Clara’s hands dropped from her hair, just standing and staring at Kat for a long moment.
Her eyes roamed over Kat’s face, her hair and then over her clothes. She had on a nice dress, she was beautiful. Clara looked down at her feet before she rocked up onto her toes.
“Got lost,” she responded quietly, fingers catching and wringing together nervously. She knew - or hoped - from the smile that Kat wasn’t actually mad at her for being late to the party. She couldn’t control it. She hadn’t even known if she would be reunited with them at all; she had seen someone who she now knew was Danny in a place like this years ago but hadn’t known what it meant. “Sorry.”
She hitched up a shoulder and took half a step closer, lower lip caught between her teeth again, one hand outstretched like she wanted a hug - or to touch Katherine’s face like she did before, when she couldn’t see - but wasn’t quite sure how to ask.
“You’re really beautiful.”
---
It was strange, seeing Clara’s eyes so clear. Whenever Clara had looked at someone, in the past, her gaze had always been somewhat askew; she never looked directly at you, just around you. Having her full, sudden focus was jarring, and Kathryn froze momentarily, taking in this new feature of her friend with barely concealed astonishment.
Kathryn remained statuesque as Clara gave her a look-over. In her own way, Kathryn was doing the same; gazing over Clara’s form to make sure there was nothing else new (no wounds, no scars, nothing that hadn’t been there before or couldn’t be accounted for through understandable blundering without aid).
Her smile widened. “You don’t need to apologize, Clara,” she reminded her. “It’s not your fault they seem so determined to control our comings and goings. I knew we’d all be under the same roof again, eventually.”
Kathryn was patient and waited while Clara took a small step towards her and as the blonde tentatively extended her hand out as though asking for something she couldn’t quite vocalize.
“I know,” Kathryn replied to Clara’s compliment, but not smugly, as she might with someone else. “But thank you.” Kathryn took a step forward herself and opened her arms, signaling that Clara could come forward for an embrace, if that was what she wanted. “I missed you, you know.”
---
“Oh,” Clara mumbled when Kat said she didn’t need to apologise. It was something she was used to hearing, the familiarity making her lips tug up in the corners a little. She ducked her gaze, breathing out a sound that might have been a laugh before she said, again, “okay. Sorry.”
She realised belatedly that Kat had been looking at her a little funny, the expression one that she wasn’t used to seeing and she touched her face self consciously as if trying to work out what it was that Kat was looking out before deciding it was her hair. Kat was so beautiful, and Clara knew that her hair was a mess. She smoothed it down hurriedly though it made no difference, still that half-step towards Kat.
As she opened her arms, Clara was hesitant for less than a second when she rushed forward, a brief spurt of speed that had her effectively throwing herself into Kat’s arms, wrapping them around the taller woman’s shoulders and hiding her face. “Missed you too,” she mumbled tightly, her eyes closed and standing on her toes so as not to over balance herself.
---
Okay. Sorry.
Kathryn rolled her eyes, but there was nothing too malicious about it; the smile on her face bespoke of familiarity and her appreciation of that. If Clara hadn’t apologized for apologizing, Kathryn might have been worried about her.
There was only a moment of hesitation before Clara stepped forward, quickly, and stepped into Kathryn’s open arms. Kathryn wrapped hers carefully around her friend, making sure only her fingertips pressed against the other girl’s shoulders – no nails.
“Of course you missed me,” Kathryn noted. “Especially if you were in Florida. Ugh. One day they’re going to have to build one of these places somewhere better, I swear.”
Kathryn gently shrugged out of the embrace, her gaze focused on Clara’s face. She put a hand – carefully – on Clara’s cheek as she ducked slightly to get a better look at her eyes. “But that’s new. When did this development happen?”
---
“Like where?” Clara asked softly, head tilted slightly into the gentle touch to her cheek. She lifted her own hand, brushing her fingertips over Kat’s face, like she just wanted to make sure that the person standing in front of her was the person she’d known in Cheshire. The voice was the same, the footsteps - that she’d heard, Kat’s unique cadence when she’d walked in - were the same. But it was with the touch of fingers to her face that she confirmed it.
But Kat was touching her, looking into her eyes and Clara blinked a few times, digesting the question. She’d been afraid, in the facility, that she’d never be able to see again. Now she could, she was afraid that her handler would make her use her powers the same way the Facility had, that he would take her sight away from her again.
She worried at her lower lip with her teeth as she tried to work out the answer. It had been a while, but she didn’t know how long. Her relationship with time, as it was, had always been a little wonky but she struggled now even to tell the difference between five minutes and an hour, let alone a week or a month. Time was immaterial, Clara just existed in the moment and struggled to piece together what she thought was her past but could be the future.
“Um,” she started, hands having dropped to twist together again. Kat was taller than her, so she had to look up. “I don’t know- a while back? When we got caught again they stopped me from using my powers.” She remembered that, put in a bed with a bracelet on that turned off her abilities for a while so she could recover, drugs to help her sleep and a man sat beside her bed talking to her about what had happened and asking her to tell him. Then there were others, people who would read to her at night when she couldn’t sleep and missed her friends so much that she felt like there was a hole in her chest that could never be filled.
It was filled now. They were all here. And that was what was important.
“And slowly I could- it came back.” She wrinkled her nose a little. The explanation wasn’t great, but it was all that she had. “Just like before New Orleans.” She thought that was where she’d been last, the last time she’d been able to see properly had been in Mer Rouge. Before her parents had worked out they could make money off her abilities.
---
“Good point,” Kathryn replied, somewhat glumly. “A prison in pretty San Francisco is still going to be a prison.”
She didn’t much move while Clara, in her familiar and tentative little manner, pressed her fingers around Kathryn’s face. It probably felt like a more reliable way to test who she was; even in two years, Kathryn hadn’t changed much, at least not physically. Not mentally or emotionally either, if she was being honest.
When Clara let her hands drop and began twisting her fingers nervously, Kathryn let her own arms rest by her sides as she watched Clara carefully. She didn’t much like the memory of them being caught, and separated, or the image of Clara on her own in the Everglades without anyone there to protect her. Grey and Victor had each other, something that Kathryn was grateful for and envious about.
Just like before New Orleans.
Kathryn nodded. Offered a small smile. “Surprising as it may be, I am glad to see it. Doesn’t change anything though, you realize,” she inclined her head. “We’re still here to protect you.”
---
Clara smiled again, the reassurance rushing through her like a warm balm that calmed an ill that had been plaguing her since she arrived. What if they didn’t like her anymore, what if being away had changed everything? Time changed things, she knew, but she had no idea how long they’d been apart - it had felt like forever, felt like years, but it could have been months, or days. Clara had no real idea.
She stopped wringing her fingers, the tension dropping from her shoulders. She tucked her hair behind her ears and rocked up onto her toes. She still couldn’t get over how beautiful Kat was. Touching someone’s face wasn’t quite the same, Clara’s senses had never fully adapted to her blindness as it wasn’t a permanent or natural state for her so she’d never built up a picture. But now some of the fractured things she had seen made sense: she knew their faces now. Danny, Kat, Grey, Vic… and she knew it was their faces she had seen in the snatches she could remember of all the timelines she had been forced to see.
“As long as no one makes me use my powers,” Clara said softly, “it won’t go away again. I- I don’t want it to.” She had flowers in her room, a yellow flower sat in a pot on the windowsill: she was attempting to grow it some friends. “I like being able to see.” It was accompanied by a little grin.
She tilted her head and touched Kat’s upper arm. “I missed you.”
---
Once it looked as though Clara had relaxed – the tension drained from her shoulders, she ceased fidgeting with her fingers – Kathryn also relaxed. Now, without any anxiety, they could just – be. One of the only things of value that Cheshire had brought into her life was the four people she called her friends; and in the last two years, she had sorely missed the freedom of the web of their bonds. With them, altogether or one-on-one, Kathryn was able to be who she truly was.
And loved for it.
It won’t go away again. I—I don’t want it to.
Kathryn’s face went momentarily hard. “And as long as you don’t want it to, we won’t let it.” They had all done their fair share of destructive things, whether for amusement, necessity, or each other; and if someone tried to force Clara to do something she didn’t want to here, Kathryn would gladly, and cleverly, punish them for it.
That hard expression melted into a grin as she waggled her eyebrows. “Of course you like it. Now you get to look at me.”
She gave a little hair flip as she approached the little pot of yellow flowers sitting on the windowsill. Like Clara, Kathryn enjoyed tending to the growth of flora; if she had it her way, however, Kathryn’s greenhouse would be overgrown with very specific plants and buds to compliment her natural toxicity.
“I missed you too,” she gently stroked her finger over the top of the petal, careful not to touch it, just in case. “So have Victor and Grey. We’ll have to see what all we can do, perhaps, to get onto the same team. I don’t think this whole separate handlers thing works for me.”
---
Honestly, if Clara never used her powers again it would be too soon. She hated how they made her feel, how she got lost in the timestream, how everything came too fast. She hadn’t been allowed to use her cards to channel it in a long time, she didn’t even know if her cards had been given to her handler here or if they’d been left behind at Cheshire. The thought made her sad; those cards had been her companion for years before she’d been taken away from her parents.
She turned, watching Kat and the plant and she smiled a little. Flowers were pretty. She wanted to work in the gardens here and help them grow so that she could always be surrounded by them. She also wanted to be able to grow some for her friends, to give them in little pots for their own rooms so that they could be reminded of how pretty the world was. Cheshire had made them all forget that… that the world could be more than doctors and needles, more than torture and screaming and pain. Clara wanted to remember the good, even if she struggled to remember things most of the time anyway.
“I don’t even know what it means,” she confessed, “being on a team. I heard someone say that it was because we go out to fight.” She wrapped her arms around herself, looking at down at her feet, “I don’t want to do that, either. They won’t make us, will they?”
---
Kathryn shrugged. As far as she was concerned, the whole “team” thing was bullshit. She had barely, if at all, exchanged words with either handler attached to her. It was quite a stark change from Hazel Dagan’s attentiveness, but one she largely appreciated. The less they were concerned with managing her, the more freely she could roam; and with nobody looking over her shoulder to fret about her mental health (or whatever), Kathryn could do as she wanted, unfettered.
It wasn’t quite freedom – not yet – but it felt a little bit closer.
“I don’t know. From what I can see, it seems like bullshit. I wouldn’t worry about it. If your handlers are anything like mine, they’ll mostly ignore you.”
She turned back to face Clara, resting her seat on the sill of the window next to the potted plant. “From my understanding, they have a whole slew of reasons they send us out of here, but not all of them are for the sake of fighting,” she replied. “I don’t imagine we’d be at the top of anyone’s list for a mono-a-mono type situation.” Their powers weren’t exactly combat-appropriate. “If they ever actually get around to trusting me enough to send me out of here, I imagine it will be for something a little more lowkey and deadly.” She shrugged again. The notion didn’t necessarily perturb her.
---
In all honesty, Clara wasn’t entirely sure what was worse; having a handler that fussed and hovered or having one that ignored her. She didn’t know which she would prefer because she hadn’t had an experience of either. In the Everglades, the psychiatrists had checked on her, Noah had come to read to her and when he wasn’t available, sometimes Raph would come - though his buzzing energy had always been pretty intense. When her sight came back, they shuffled her somewhere else so she still didn’t really see anyone aside from the doctors. Coming here was the first time she’d been exposed to so many people and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
But she knew that Kat and Grey would protect her. Danny too. Vic could be pretty flighty but after that one time in Cheshire she knew he’d take things a little too far for her and wanted to protect him from that as much as she could. If she could protect anyone from anything.
“Lucas said hello,” she told Kat after a moment, piecing the last few days together. “I have to see the psychiatrists here.” She curled her arms around herself and perched on the edge of the bed when Kat leaned against the windowsill. “Do you?”
The thought of leaving the base at all was a weird one. It wasn’t that she liked it here but she had nowhere else to go and leaving even temporarily would mean being separated from her family again. And that wasn’t acceptable. Clara’s eyes grew a little dark at the thought. “Non,” she muttered, “I won’t do that. Even if it’s not for fighting.”
---
“So far, no,” Kathryn replied. “I had to see them in South Dakota, but so far here…,” she smiled. “Notta.” It was a good thing, as far as she was concerned. As much as the anger management may have worked (not that she would admit it had been needed), Kathryn didn’t relish the concept of sitting in a room and talking to someone about her past. To her mind, it was a waste of time; what could they possibly tell her that she didn’t already know?
She crinkled her nose as she folded her arms across her chest. “Do you want to see the ones here? If not, we can try to figure out a way around it. Shouldn’t be hard. Doesn’t seem like there’s some big brain trust around in charge of this place.”
The dark-haired woman tilted her head to the side and watched Clara carefully. It wasn’t very often that Clara asserted herself quite that way; and so when she did, Kathryn took notice. “We’re not going to let anyone make you do something you don’t want to, Clara. Places like this… bad things are always prone to happen.”
---
“Non, je ne veux voir personne ici.
,” she said firmly, lapsing into a language she had only spoken when she was truly angry or distressed, that dark look still in her eyes, a slight frown across her forehead. It dissipated following Kat’s reassurance that she wouldn’t be made to do things, though, as did the darkness in her eyes, the slight edge to her face. All her life, choice had been something she had been unable to have; making her own decisions about the things that happened to her had been taken away at a young age, the consequences of defiance severe. Her friends were the only ones that understood her, that knew bits and pieces about her past from what fractured memories she had been able to tell them. She still struggled to piece the timeline together, but she wondered if it was important enough to do so. It would be a mammoth task.
She lifted a shoulder, not quite understanding just what it was that Kat was inferring as her mind did not work in quite the same way. “It is dangerous, non? Being around so many people with such dangerous powers.” She looked at the flower and then twisted her hair between her fingers. “They should just let us stay together.”
It seemed simple enough, why could no one else understand that?
“And not send us away.”