Kate Bishop (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} hawkeve) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} valloic,@ 2024-02-24 17:17:00 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kate & Violet
WHAT: Mourning Daud's loss
WHERE: Their room in their pod
WHEN: Today, after the shipwide announcement
WARNINGS: Sadness, talk of death and loss
STATUS: Complete
“He wasn’t supposed to die. He’s… a god.”
WHERE: Their room in their pod
WHEN: Today, after the shipwide announcement
WARNINGS: Sadness, talk of death and loss
STATUS: Complete
“He wasn’t supposed to die. He’s… a god.”
What the hell was Kate’s luck lately?
The moment the announcement was made, her heart dropped into her stomach, and she stopped what she was doing; at that moment, it was kicking (or attempting to kick) Laurence’s butt at foosball. The voice over comms was quiet but professionally clipped, and somehow, that made it all the worse. Her hands had tightened around the table’s handles so hard that they ached when she pulled them away, and it took everything in her to hold herself together long enough to flee.
First, Natasha. Now, Daud.
Except this was worse. And it wasn’t because she loved Daud any more than Natasha – if anything, it was probably the other way around. She absolutely adored him and considered him a newfound Dad, but very little could ever surpass her worship of her sister. But Natasha had returned home. Yeah, it was most likely death and the sacrifice she’d made for the good of their world, but disappearing left the options open. There was always a chance that she’d gone off to some other world and been spared that fate, even if it was a small chance.
Daud hadn’t disappeared. He was dead here and now, on board. Death wasn’t uncommon, but Daud hadn’t died of illness or age or something that was known and acceptable. He was killed; command was asking them to come forward with details if they had any, and there was only one conclusion to draw from that: they didn’t know. That made everything worse.
As soon as she’d made her way back to the barracks, she locked herself in the room she shared with Violet. It was only then she lashed out, pulling back to kick the wall beneath their little porthole with all her might. If she’d been barefooted, it would have hurt a hell of a lot more, but even with her boots on, the force reverberated. Dorian squawked and swore at her indignantly from his cage, but she couldn’t even feel sorry for disturbing him.
Her family was dying out one by one. Natasha was gone. Daud was gone. Yelena was here, but she’d leave eventually, after completing whatever mission these foreign Outlanders had come here to accomplish. Who was to say Kamala wouldn’t be next? Carol? And Violet – God fucking forbid this place did something to Violet, Kate was sure she’d never recover.
Violet had, for once, been in the garden. It wasn’t especially hard work, but it was duty, and she would have preferred to have been working on what she considered her real work: figuring out how to entertain a ship full of people from all different worlds and times. It was easier than she would have thought if you’d asked her to do it four years ago; it turned out that people, at the heart of it, changed very little.
She’d been trying out one of her new songs on the vegetables when the announcement came over the intercom, and for a moment, Violet was sure that she’d misunderstood. It didn’t take her long to realize she hadn’t.
She didn’t wait; didn’t say anything to her supervisor. She just took off, with stained knees and dirty hands, and took off running through the corridors of the ship. Where was Kate now, she wondered? In the rec room?
No, she wasn’t there, but Laurence, looking distressed, didn’t even wait for her to ask the question before he informed her that she’d taken off only a few minutes ago. She took a moment to stop and think: there were two places she could think of Kate going. To their bunk, or to the hangar, just to confirm.
Violet would check the hangar. Not because she was sure that that was the most likely place – if she had to lay money on it, she would actually think their bunk was the more likely place. But also because Violet needed to be certain. Violet needed to see his empty office, the untouched checkers board. She took a moment, leaning against his doorframe, to catch her breath and to gather herself, and then she made her way, less urgently, to their bunk.
There was no mystery over whether or not Kate was inside; she could hear her through the door. She knocked softly. “Kate? I’m coming in,” she said, pushing the door open.
By the time Violet arrived, Kate was sitting on the edge of her side of their bed – they had pushed the two smaller cots together when they’d put in the request to share, a couple years ago now – with her face buried in her hands. There was no attempt whatsoever to hide what she was feeling; she was wracked with sobs, her body trembling. That brokenness inside her that she’d thought was on the mend had come back with a vengeance. She felt like she’d been cracked open and flooded with so much grief that she could drown.
Still, she did her best to get a hold of herself and turn toward her girlfriend as she entered. She was sure she looked like a complete mess, but it was nothing Violet hadn’t seen before, and pretty damn recently, at that. She opened her mouth to say something – Hi. I love you. Don’t leave me next. – but she crumbled before a single word could come out.
Some part of Violet registered that their bunk looked like a tornado had run through it, but she didn’t spare it a second thought. Every bit of her attention was on her girlfriend, and her heart broke looking at her.
“Oh baby,” Violet said, dropping onto the bed next to her. She wrapped her arms around her and pulled her against her, gently rubbing her arm. “I’m so sorry.”
Kate let herself be pulled without a single bit of protest, verbal or otherwise. Her head dropped into Violet’s neck and one hand fisted into the front of her uniform, so tightly that her hand ached again after just a few seconds. But she didn’t care. She needed Violet close to her, needed the reassurance that she was alive and breathing and here.
Slowly, she managed to contain herself, forcing out breaths that became more even. Her face and Violet’s neck and shoulder were at least equally damp when she lifted her head and pressed their foreheads together, inhaling that familiar scent that was all her Violet – mixed, maybe, with a little bit more dirt from her workday.
“He…” She swallowed hard, blue eyes still blurred with tears as she met her girlfriend’s gaze. “He wasn’t supposed to die. He’s… a god.” Not that any of that mattered here. She’d seen people she knew had unbelievable powers come here and be stripped of them simply from existing in a universe that didn’t allow them. It was silly to cling to the notion that any of that meant a person was safe forever.
Violet’s own face had become damp. Not just seeing Kate cry, though she thought that seeing her girlfriend so heartbroken over anything would have broken her own heart, but because it was hard to believe that Daud was really gone. She hadn’t been as close to him as Kate had been, but she’d still come to think of him as, if not a father figure, then a father-in-law figure. He’d always been there. They’d understood one another, and they’d both cared fiercely for Kate.
She cupped Kate’s cheeks, and pulled away just far enough so that she could kiss her brow before bringing their foreheads again. For the first time in a long time, she wished Maud was here. Maud, the medium, who could speak to ghosts. But then, her abilities probably would work about as well as anyone else’s abilities here: they wouldn’t. “It’s not fair,” Violet said. “Death rarely is. I’m sorry. I wish… I don’t know. I wish I could make it better.”
Kate blew a low, quiet breath and slipped her hands up to hold Violet’s shoulders. “You’re here,” she said softly, and her lips curled into a smile – small and quivering but genuine. “I’ll be okay as long as you’re here. This was just the last thing I expected. Especially… God, so soon after Nat.”
Losing Natasha had taken up so much of her focus for the past two months, and she had finally taken steps toward moving forward as best as she could only to lose again. She didn’t know why she’d been forced to live through two metaphorical daggers to the heart, but she knew for damn sure she couldn’t live through a third. But she knew, too, regardless of how broken she would be if the worst happened, that it was completely out of control.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Violet promised. She knew it was an impossible promise to keep, but that wouldn’t stop her from making it. She’d make a deal with the devil if it meant staying here at Kate’s side. “I love you, Kate Bishop, and if I have to find a black hole to fling us in so we’ll always be together, then you’d better believe that that’s what I’ll do.”
“Please no,” Kate chuckled, lifting an arm to wipe more falling tears away on the back of her uniform’s sleeve. “Black holes, not a good idea. Certain death, I’m pretty sure, and I’ve had enough of that.” She loved the sentiment, more than she could express, but she didn’t particularly want to get crushed in a black hole – or thrown into the vast, empty, unbreathable space – if she could help it.
“I don’t know, I’ve watched enough movies on ship to know that black holes take you to other parts of the universe, or parallel dimensions, or…” She waved her hand. “Whatever. It all seemed very scientific.” She smoothed Kate’s hair, letting her nails run very lightly over Kate’s scalp. “I’m sure it would be very exciting, so long as we went together. But if you’d rather not risk being crushed in a black hole, I suppose I understand. It doesn’t change that wherever you go, I plan on going with you.”
Kate couldn’t help but laugh and concede Violet’s point. “You make a good point. Pretty sure Carol’s talked about a hospital getting sucked into a black hole and surviving, so maybe crushing isn’t inevitable. But if I could choose…” Her smile softened into something more nostalgic. “I miss Earth,” she admitted. “I miss New York and all its insanity. I’d take you there and keep you there in my time. And if I can’t do that, maybe someday we’ll at least get to pick one of these fancy planets and stay there forever.”
Would that make the two of them permanent in this world? It was hard to say. But part of her wanted to try, to escape this place that kept taking her family and find a way to start something fresh and new.
“I miss Earth too.” She missed Earth, and she missed her magic. Having these new arrivals showing up, some of them with magical abilities, had made her miss it all over again. “But I’m with you Kate. If you ever want to leave this ship,” and Violet couldn’t blame her. Not after Natasha, and certainly not after Daud. Violet had left home for less reason than that, “then I’ll go with you. We can find a nice planet to settle on, and we can make a life.” And maybe that would be a life they could live until the end.