Who: Caitlin Burns, Kai Polivander When: Spring 2003 Where: Toronto. A park just down the block from the Burns household, actually. What: Nothing ever happens in the right order. Ever. Kai happens by pre-reincarnate Caitlin, who's having a bit of a problem convincing her father to let her leave the country for school. Rating: Oh. Probably PGish.
Caitlin Burns wasn't a negative person. She didn't like to mope or wallow in the bad, and she didn't much care for the company of people who over-dramatized the trivial. However, there were times when she gave in to frustration, just as any teenager might. The year was 2003. She was in her last year of secondary school, eighteen, and in possession of a very thick envelope bearing the burnt orange logo of the University of Texas at Austin. Texas, her father had said. Why in the bloody hell had she picked Texas? It was a country away. She'd be alone. It was dangerous. It was expensive. Caitlin's rebuttals had done little good.
It's dangerous. I know judo. You'll be alone. I'll make friends. It's a country away. And we've lived in how many new places? I'll be fine.
Every argument gave way to a new one, a new reason why she ought to reconsider and choose a local university. Eventually she'd turned to shouting to get her way, which was not her favorite tactic but still on-the-table in terms of options. Everything was on the table. She wanted to do something new, and naively she'd thought that sticking to the continent would keep her father happy.
She did not realize that the true problem was empty nest syndrome. She'd be fine. Her father wouldn't.
So, after shouting and still failing to have her way, Caitlin stomped off to sulk in the park down from her house. She was young, just eighteen, with a reincarnate still years in her future. It showed; the Doctor's sulking would have been slightly less petulant, slightly more cranky, and quite a bit more productive. Caitlin? She flopped on a swing and began to push herself back and forth, her feet never really leaving the ground.