Kat Warbler (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sharkswithguns) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} wariscoming,@ 2013-04-15 23:18:00 |
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What? ...idek.
Where? Her apartment.
When? About an hour before Spain's sunrise. I am too lazy for timezones.
Why? Because reasons. She wouldn't let me not write it?
Warnings: General gore/violent imagery associated with recovering zombies.
Sprawled on the floor on top of a giant unfolded map, Kat was planning her next trip. It took a bit of staring at maps to make sure she knew where she was going, if she'd never been there - pictures worked, sure, but if she had no context for that particular image, it was a bit more likely she'd end up somewhere she didn't expect to be, or wouldn't know her way around, or... whatever. It was just easier, with the maps. So, maps. There were a lot of them in her apartment, now; folded and unfolded, scattered on tables and chairs and the couch, a few books of city-maps here and there, an atlas. A globe, which was great for randomly choosing a destination - spin and point, boom, decision made.
She liked them, and the way they were structured - not an obsessive-compulsive level of ordered, that sort of structure, because some cities looked a little bit like crackheads planned them out, and some were like they were designed by computers, and they were all at least a little bit different. She just liked being able to know that if she looked at a map, she could find whatever she was looking for. If people knew about it, it was there. Even if no one lived there, even if no one ever went there - like the tiny island she’d taken River to, the other day. There was no one else there, no one to see them, no danger at all. Kat liked people, sometimes, but sometimes she just wanted quiet - and that was one of the places she preferred, when she needed that quiet. Didn’t mean she objected to sharing, of course, sometimes. River had seemed to like it, there, and Kat had felt a little bit better about the whole debacle the other day. Her fault or not, she hadn’t made things better at all, and she was still fairly sure that if she’d thought about it, she’d have been able to figure out what Cap was pointedly not-saying, figure that River was upset, that maybe running off with Simon wasn’t the best option right then (even if it had been up there in top five best nights, because he was adorable when he was drunk, painting meticulously neatly and talking about improving the world and, seriously, no one would have been able to blame her for shoving him against the wet paint and kissing him, okay?).
Even more than the maps, though, Kat liked being able to find the little things that weren’t on any maps. Things like the out-of-the-way little ridge in the cliff-side where she’d been sitting, watching the sunrise, while mountain goats climbed around. It had been an accident, spotting it from below - but a happy one, because once she’d teleported up she knew she could easily get back there. A quick shot from her camera phone, for quick-access, and a better shot with her real camera, and she had a place no one else knew about, now. Somewhere quiet, in the middle of nowhere, where she could think.
Maps were a starting point. Once she was there, she dug out the secret places and the weird places and then sometimes stopped off at a well-known monument or attraction just to say she’d been there.
It was easier to focus on these things than pretty much anything else in her life, right now. If she thought about the fact that she hadn’t been able to sleep more than an hour at a time for the past week, or the reason why she couldn’t sleep without grisly images and half-memories, or the fact that she was fairly sure John was getting ready to have another downward spiral, or the really, really overly complicated issue of the very pretty doctor she found herself involved with... if any of those things became the subject of any serious thought, it all got to be a little too overwhelming. She couldn’t deal with any of that right now. She could, however, make a day trip to Spain, take in some tourist sights, venture off and find new little hideaways, maybe abduct some awesome food to see if she could bribe John into eating it (not that she should really talk about eating, it was massively hypocritical of her, but still) while she chugged tea or coffee (she needed the caffeine, travel was tiring and she couldn’t afford to sleep), bring back some shiny things pilfered from whatever little shop caught her eye...
She was doing things. She was functioning. That was good enough, right?
Never mind that every time she wandered into a little restaurant and smelled meat cooking she felt sick. Never mind that those butcher stalls in the little markets left her hands shaking and a weird twst in her stomach. Never mind that every time she closed her eyes, she wasn’t Kat anymore because Kat would never tear out someone’s throat with her teeth, would never strip their flesh off their face...
Kat jolted, shaking herself from the half-asleep state she’d let herself drift into, shoved herself to her feet, and headed into the kitchen for her third coffee in as many hours. A glance at the clock and a quick mental calculation, and she dumped the mug of coffee into a more travel-friendly cup; sunrise in Spain was in just under an hour, and she had some pictures to take.