PENNY ADIYODI + KADY ORLOFF-DIAZ
TALKING/FREAKING OUT AFTER MEETING THEIR DAUGHTER
OVERDOSE & DEPRESSION DISCUSSION | COMPLETE
Kady sat in silence, drink in hand, a bewildered look in her eye. Sam had split eventually to go see Astrid, which meant she and Penny had been left alone for a while. Long enough for reality to assert itself, and that wasn’t necessarily good. Just because Sam was a wonderful, beautiful, well-adjusted and helpful woman didn’t mean Kady could easily accept she would eventually be a mother (a good one, of all things), have a family, have Penny alive and well. It also didn’t mean she felt she deserved it.
This was, even to someone like her who had seen what she’d seen, too damn weird. And there were too many fucking feelings. It made her down her drink in one, and stand up to get another. She hadn’t drank much in front of Sam, but boy had she wanted to. Looking over at Penny she seemed to shrink into herself and look away almost immediately. Maybe if she drank enough she would eventually come up with something to say.
The tension was giving Penny a headache. He knew damn well, right now, he did not have what it took to raise a kid. But that didn’t mean he’d never have it, right? He rarely let himself feel hopeful about things, but Kady had broken that seal ages ago. Half of him was in a tailspin, sure. But half of him was, fuck. Excited? And really, what kind of crazy shit was that.
Unlike Kady, he’d been nursing the same drink for awhile. He spun it slowly between his hands before he glanced sideways at Kady just as she shrunk away. It made him frown and turn towards her.
“Hey. I know this is a lot,” he frowned. “But this is still me, okay?”
“Yeahhh that’s- like this is still me and yet like a couple years from now we’re supposed to not be.” Kady pointed out. She turned to Penny and sighed. “Look, I know what Sam said, and I wanna believe it, but there’s a reason why my first thought was that you’d split and she’s yours but not mine.”
And yet, on the other hand, all those things she had said coupled with the snippets of proof that she couldn’t be anyone’s but theirs had made her happy, hopeful, even excited for the future, which was all entirely new. And halfway impossible. It meant, for one, that she kept sober. “It’s so… I can’t imagine. Even right now, and we’re not in deep shit as we usually are, the only thing keeping my head on straight is you.” She looked down. “And fuck if that isn’t another thing I failed at...”
Penny blinked a few times at all of that spilling out of her and scooted a little closer while he tried to figure out what to say. He was glad they’d left the restaurant and come back to his place. No one else was around.
“I don’t...I’m not any better at any of this. And I have no fucking clue how we pull this off. I just know when we stick together, things usually work out. Even when they don’t--” Thoughts of the weeks leading up to his death danced annoyingly through his mind. He’d have to rein in his recklessness if he was going to be a dad. “--they’re still better than when we’re not together.”
Kady snickered, nodding. He had no idea how much what he had said was true. But maybe he should, if there was going to be another person in the mix. It never crossed her mind to be anything but with him as long as she could, and honesty needed to be part of that. She sat closer to him, legs underneath her body as she took his hands.
“Penny… You’re not in any way on the same level of fucked up as I am. There’s things you don’t know, stuff I asked everyone to keep their mouths shut about.”
Kady proceeded to explain everything; the ritual she, Julia and a demon carried out which had killed Penny while astral projecting, her overdose that Julia saved her from by the skin of her teeth, her stint in rehab, how Penny sacrificed himself over again for one of the Keys, how he wasn’t heard from again and then Penny from Timeline 23 showed up.
“...When I heard everyone in my head again because of the other Key, you’d been gone for a while and I thought that was it, but I heard you. So I jumped up and I told you I love you… and it wasn’t you. It was him. The Key replaced you in our quest for him and…” She shook her head. “...you were gone. So when you showed up here, and Syd saved you, that shit was a miracle. I was alone out there, I had the quest to keep me from trying again. That doesn’t just go away. And I didn’t want you to know because you deserve better and I wanted us to move on.”
She sniffled. “But if this is going to happen, I’m not hiding shit from you. And you need to stop sacrificing yourself. ‘Cause yeah this is weird, and I’m scared shitless and I still think Sam’s lying because she doesn’t wanna hurt us. But you were straight up dead for me at one point. I had to burn your fucking remains, then I could only see you with a Key and then not at all. It was like digging a knife into my chest little by little.”
Though she had been tearing up, because this wasn't going to not hurt for a good while yet, Kady finally smiled. “Sam, though? She means you’ll still be here twenty years from now, with me, we’ll be family and that shit’s the most magical thing I’ve heard all my life.”
Penny generally knew when to shut up and listen, but it was hard not to cut in during all the information she’d dumped in his lap. He didn’t know what to even make of the Timeline 23 stuff, other than it made something jealous and insecure well up in his chest. Being replaced didn’t surprise him, but it did sting. He supposed he couldn’t really blame anyone if he’d thrown himself to the wolves along the way.
“Okay, fuck. Okay,” Penny held up one hand to just hopefully stop the flow of information at this point and catch his breath. “I’m...I’m gonna ignore the burning my remains shit for now because there’s only so much I can process at once.” Blowing out a breath, he rubbed a hand over his face and then took her hand back again to squeeze.
“You know you don’t have to keep that kind of shit from me, right? The overdose? I gave myself a heart attack, Kady. You gotta stop acting like you’re the screwed up one in this relationship and I’m some kinda saint.”
He dropped his gaze to their hands, some of the tension bleeding out of him as he smiled a little. “I’m with you on the magical thing, though. Scary and unbelievable, but I definitely thought this world or our own would screw us over eventually. It’s nice to have some proof that we can do this, you and me. I can help you keep away from the drugs and you can help me stop being a reckless dipshit. Or I don’t know, at least keep talking to each other when shit gets scary.”
Everything had tumbled out of Kady like a torrent and she couldn’t stop after a certain point until she was done. But when she finally was, Kady breathed a sigh of relief and the tension could be seen flowing out of her body. “I was… I was ashamed. Okay? I couldn’t deal at all. It wasn’t so much an emergency dose as it was drifting off and hoping I wouldn’t wake up.” She protested. “I didn’t need you to know how weak I’ve been, again.”
Seeing him smile made her smile too, however. “I thought so too. Now that I know, though, I can’t think of anything else. You stick around and I don’t lose you again. We’re family. I haven’t wanted anything this much in my life. Whatever I have to do to curb my own bullshit, I fucking will, Penny.”
“I get that. Shame is an asshole,” Penny murmured, scooting closer so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. He didn’t know what the right thing to say was, so he just hoped he didn’t say the wrong thing. Speaking from the heart was the best he knew how to do. “You’ve been through so much shit. Nobody’s strong all the time. I’m just glad Julia was there and now we’re here and we’ve got something really good to work for.”
He ducked to the side and kissed her up under her jawline and then her cheek. “I want it too. It scares the shit out of me, but I’m in.”
Kady leaned entirely into Penny’s hug, pushing her head against his shoulder. She hadn’t told him about the rant she had gone on when Alice had given her the key and Penny had shown up, peppy and happy and willing to help while she had gone through hell. No point in digging that up too. Of course Kady knew she was too dependant on him, and it might eventually bite her in the ass again but not for the next twenty-plus years or so, and so she had a hard time giving a fuck. And she could always work on it in the meantime... maybe.
“Yeah. You and me. And then the three of us.” She closed her eyes, smiling at Penny’s affection, then turned to lean her forehead against his and let out a nervous chuckle. “We’re doing this. My heart’s fucking racing. I love you, Penny.”
With one hand in her wild hair, Penny cradled her face with the other. “I love you too, sap,” he teased, although with the eye contact and the soft little smirk, it came across sounding just as mushy. There’d been a lot of these moments in the last few days and his chest felt heavy with them. But it was freeing too. At least, with just her. Okay, maybe soon it would just be just her and Sam. For now, he was still focused on her, and a pretty strong need to be close to her.
“Do you really want to finish that--” Penny nodded his chin at her drink. “--Or can we take this into the bedroom? I really think this moment needs some nakedness. And orgasms.”
Kady, ,of course, responded to the name-calling with a a skeptical expression that seemed to say “Look who’s talking!”, but she was smiling a moment later, a lot lighter than she had been in months (years maybe, at least sober) even though there were a lot of new and scary things to process at the same time. Penny believed so hard that they could deal with all of this together that Kady, despite her natural negativity, couldn’t not to believe it too.
She didn’t even look at her drink when Penny asked. For the first time in a long time, drinking didn’t seem all that important or fun. Their relationship had taken on a whole new dimension and Kady needed to feel that change. She shook her head, smile turning saucy, and pulled off her sweater on the spot, throwing it at the arm of the couch. Then, she got up off and took Penny’s hand to pull him along towards his bedroom. No verbal response needed. Just like no actual mind reading was necessary.