Who? Kat. Dream-appearance by River and corpse(s). What? Traumatic nightmare nonsense. Where? Kat's apartment. When? Later; around 2am, Lawrence time, 3/20/13 Why? Because I actually had this dream and Kat was like YEAH IT SUCKS DOESN'T IT? and yeah. it does. Warnings: Blood and associated imagery. Implied/theoretical character dream!death. Blood. Lots of blood. vomiting? I'm not a fan of vomiting so I'm warning for that. Also Kat swears sometimes. Status: Complete, narrative! Notes: Following this post (aka around 2am) Kat will be showing up in people's apartments randomly. her friends, not just random people. So, basically this means John, Simon & River, Piffy, and Lois all get visitations from a teleporty Kat, who just sorta looks around to make sure they're not dead and then leaves. Juuuust makin' sure you're not dead, dudes.
Kat wasn't sure why she was awake, for a moment, couldn't remember what had awakened her, wasn't sure if there was a sound or a dream or-
-and then she felt the cooling liquid on her hands, all over her, drying and becoming sticky. It was on her face and her hands, smeared across the bed and she practically threw herself out of bed and towards the bathroom. She tripped over something on her way, something that didn't belong on the floor (something large and solid, she didn't want to know-), stumbled and almost fell, but she caught herself and kept on, because she needed to get clean. The lightswitch was painted with red streaks from filthy fingers as she hurriedly flipped it on; the faucet met a similar fate, and the bowl of the sink didn't fare much better.
It was worse in there, with the lights on because now she could see her reflection in the mirror; she was covered in blood. Some of it was drier, some still wet, some of it somewhere in-between. Hands to elbows, smears all down the front of her, her mouth and chin and neck, parts of her hair, all bloodied.
It was then she noticed the taste in her mouth, and it was like someone had flipped a switch on her stomach and turned it all upside-down, because everything was coming back up. She barely made it the three steps across the small bathroom to the toilet before she lost it, eyes squeezed shut so she didn't have to see, she didn't want to see what was coming back up, she already knew-
-she was trying to wipe her mouth clean, trrying to breathe, trying not to panic and more than she already was, eyes closed and just, no, this wasn't what it looked like there had to be some explanation, she was awake when she was awake this was all supposed to go away-
-she'd tripped, coming in here. Who had that been? She didn't know what to do, how could she even go back out there, what if it was-
-and how many people had she-
-and there was a sharp sound from behind her. She turned, only to find herself staring down the barrel of a shotgun, the end grazing across her cheekbone as she turned, jamming into the side of her face more solidly. At the other end, River stared at her coldly, eyes blank. There was blood on her hands, and on her white dress, at the knees and the hem, like she'd been kneeling beside someone, like-
And there was a wound on her arm. A bite wound.
The blast of the shotgun turned out to be a car backfiring across the street (or that's what Kat was telling herself, sitting up and trying to breathe, hands searching out any blood, trying not to fucking cry because she'd been so sure she was awake, that all of that had been real). Lamplight revealed no blood, no bodies, just her empty apartment, her shaking hands completely unstained. It was just a dream. This was real. She didn't want to try to think otherwise, refused to even let that thought linger (tried not to, anyway, it was still there somewhere, in the back of her mind, but she wasn't letting it gain any ground, not right now, because there was no way this was the dream, zombies didn't fucking dream, okay?). It was fine. She was fine. Everyone else was fine-
-weren't they? If she didn't hurt them, then they must be, right? Unless this wasn't awake, maybe this was just later, maybe she'd just cleaned up better and River hadn't really killed her, and-