As fetid ocean waters rise under the Santa Monica pier, the sound of joy and laughter echoes out from the distant festivities. There's a blocked off part of the street, an animal attack tarped over and covered by uniformed officers idly mumbling conversations in flickering lamplight.
Watching from afar, someone with broad shoulders and a large coat pretends not to watch. She has a cigarette between her lips, her eyes are empty and sallow. Large dark circles making them puffy and the red cracks betray months without rest. Her hair is thrown into a tight auburn bun, and the smell of tobacco permeates every part of her being. She ashes it with mis-matched fingernails, covered in chipped emerald nail polish. Her trench coat has stains of something dark, and the very edges are frayed from years of use. Her phone is out, with a professional lens attached to slyly take photos.
The corpse is barely visible under the cover, looking like an industrial accident. It's just one of a dozen distractions that keep everyone's attention tightly wound to the life around them rather than anything more worrying. A diner calls to travelers in the night, Surfside, a place that looks like it should have closed down decades ago, but somehow clings to life.
Click, the near-silent photograph as the officers don't even bother to care to notice is saved, blood spattered pier recorded on the device. A buzz pulses in the background of the sight, like a speaker set to infrasound. Finally, an ambulance arrives, more clicks, more photographs. The body is moved, slipping out from under the tarp to show the vomit-inducing horror of ruined flesh, shattered bone and deep organ-spilling furrows that happened across its frame.
Katherine pulls out her gun, shooting both police officers, and the EMT without thinking, dropping them all within less than thirty seconds. Then in perfect french says, "Éléanora, mon amour, ma brise, il est temps de commencer notre vie ensemble. Tu ne me connais pas encore, mais ton cœur me reconnaît toujours, ma douce." Eleanora my love, my breeze, it is time to start our lives together. You do not know me yet, but your heart always recognizes me my sweet.
"Je suis un éveillé du temps, piégé dans une bulle. Chaque fois que je meurs, je me réveille pour un autre ensemble incroyable de siècles avec une femme que j'aime éternellement." I am a time awakened trapped in a bubble, every time I die I wake up for another amazing set of centuries with a woman I love eternal. A small bit of confidence, "Je deviens meilleur dans l'art de séduire, n'est-ce pas?" I'm getting better at the flirting, no?
"Je pense que oui, mon futur amour." I think you are, my future love. Eleanora smirks at the woman in front of her, a bit of hunger evident in her eyes.
"They are not dead, I shot them in the legs and arms, mostly unconscious from blood loss, my love." With a wink she says, "My luck is getting better too it seems."
Eleanora moves to the dying men, drinking them deeply and letting the black drift from her eyes, significantly less covered in blood and viscera than usual. "How do we usually do this?" She asks, curiously looking at Katherine with a keen interest.
"Je te ramène chez toi, parfois nous nous câlinons, parfois nous faisons l'amour avec une intensité folle. C'est la première fois que tout se passe parfaitement." I drive you home, sometimes we cuddle, sometimes we have insanely violent sex. This is the first time everything has gone perfect. Katherine says, gently reaching out her hand, "The world is your oyster my love, seize the pearl how you wish."
Eleanora grins, grabbing Katherine's hand and tugging her along, "Do you-Oh, qu'est-ce que je fais, tu peux parler français." What am I doing, you can speak French.
"I am Katherine, Katerine, and occasionally, votre soleil." She says smiling, gently letting herself be tugged into an embrace.
"Puis-je vous appeler mon soleil?" Can I call you my sun? Eleanora continues grinning, finding this exchange delightful. "Aves-vous un voiture?" Do you have a car? She adds suddenly, curious.
"Je suis ton soleil, mais je suis aussi ton animal, ta chose, ton épée à manier comme bon te semble, mon amour. Oui, j'ai une voiture." I am your sun, but I am also your pet, your thing, your sword to wield as you please my love. Yes I have a car. Katherine says with a laugh, holding Eleanora's hand and going into a light jog knowing the woman can definitely keep up. "Though I warn you, it's a piece of shit. I was not doing so well at this time. Not until I had seventy thousand nights with you, and then many more after I lost count." She keeps running faster as Eleanora picks up the pace, trying to goad her into a full sprint to the car.
Eleanora follows, and then, with a wry smirk, picks up and bolts with Katherine, barely whispering, "Hold your breath." A quarter second before. A big smile, as Katherine complies, fully trusting, nestling deep into Eleanora's hands. Letting the warmth and love and joy in this moment spill out onto her.
A flickering flash of city passes by as distance is eaten up by a long, experienced and practiced stride, air whistling past in almost-shrieks of speed, its thirty seconds before, in a sudden stop that has no whiplash or force to it, Katherine is looking at Eleanora's home, and Eleanora is gently stroking Katherine's arm, a slow blackening of her eyes, "L'avons-nous fait?" Have we done that? She's smirking past the hunger.
"No, never, the fact that there's always a surprise makes me so happy. You've been humoring me with my shitty car. I appreciate it." She hugs her tight, going for a deep personal kiss before pulling back before they connect, "Pardonne-moi, mon amour, je ne me comporte pas comme une dame respectable." Forgive me my love, I am not acting like a respectable lady.
Eleanora tilts her head, "Ma Katerina. Je ne rejetterai jamais un baiser de toi." My Katherine, I would never reject a kiss from you. "You are much too beautiful." She finishes in English, starting to rise up on her toes.
"Well… I do work out quite a bit," Katherine says with a smile, leaning in close to give her a deep kiss lifting her slightly, pushing to pin her against her own door, but not too hard or aggressive, merely giving the push so she knows it's there if she wishes. The kiss goes on for very long. To the point where Katherine feels light headed and her vision begins to fade. She finally pulls back, "I always forget I need air." Katherine says, gasping with a laugh.
"Ah, I think I'm falling for you." Eleanora grins as she's pinned to the door, reaching down to open the door but it opens before she touches it, as Katherine waves a hand.
With a sly grin Katherine says, "Ah it looks like the door was only half latched, what are the odds." Winking at her as Eleanora wraps her legs around Katherine's waist, light and easy to hold.
"Hmm, take me to my bed?" She asks, tilting her head.
"My apologies, mon amour. A man is in much trouble. I must make a single call to try and help." She very quickly dials a phone number to reach The Union. The phone rings twice, and is picked up by… Fuck she can't remember one of the oil women. "Hi, you don't know me yet, Time Procedural stuff. Agent Belltower is going to be the only person that survives the Washington Fiasco. He kills the priest in…" It's been about ten minutes, and Belltower said on the helicopter… "I think about seven to fifteen minutes. It'll be safe then, please don't leave him dehydrated eating his dead comrades food waiting for you all to get off your sorry asses and save him. Also, hugs and kisses can't wait to start at the office."
She waits to hear confirmation that she was heard. "Agent, did you hear me?"
"I…uh. Did" The woman on the other end is confused, "We'll forward that to the Seattle office, thanks for the help, future employee?"
"Fuck, that's right. Sorry. I work in Los Angeles, we get transferred… Never mind, go save him. We don't actually know each other that well, I'm kind of standoffish and bitchy. I'm working on it." She swears pinching the bridge of her nose.
"O-kay then." The woman on the other extends the noise. "Like I said, we'll handle it. Are you a Katherine Doukas?" They are clicking on something on the other end.
"That's the one actually! Wait, do I have my resources?" She asks suddenly, "Can I just buy a chopper and fly to Washington?"
"We haven't got a usable account on record, but, uhm, we can fly you out, it says here you're part of our QRF?" She asks, curious.
"I think so? Is that… I work personally with the Director to murder people. Well monsters. Monsters who resemble people. I'm a lot better with guns than words." She admits fully. "Belltower gets promoted to Director, I'll buy him a cake. But for the love of god get rid of any hashbrowns."
"I'm gonna get that flight scheduled, Agent Doukas, sounds like…future Director Belltower needs you. He isn't responding on radio." Another rattling tap of keys, harsher and quicker this time.
"No, he's currently on a rampage." She says, quietly, "I'm go— I don't have a car. I'll get there."
Eleanora seems interested, "Is this a love of yours?"
"No, I only love two women, and they both live here, you and your partner Estelle." Then she stops, waiting, "Future… That happens next week sorry. I only like women, everytime I die, Belltower is thrown into hell, he has thirty minutes to kill a priest. His friends die everytime I won't get there in time to save him, but I can at least make sure he's not rotting for multiple days. It takes them nearly a week to find him and get him out."
"Then go, ma Katerina. I will be here when you return." Eleanora is smiling, "It will give me time to freshen up."
Katherine grabs a set of car keys off the hook by the door but then stops, "Oh my god, that's so shitty to do to a new person though…" Wincing, "I know it's not my car, may I?"
"It's just an automobil, mon amour." Eleanora watches for any reaction to the words, curious. "Just don't crash it."
A few tears, "You're always so good to me. I love you so much, I'll be back, and if I'm not you won't even miss me. There's only one timeline." They're streaming down her face. "I'm making the right choice, but I love you so much it hurts. Still put your kindred in concrete for ten years. They're shitheads." Then she runs out of the door, sliding into the car, and peels out with practiced ease to the Helipad.
The helicopter is waiting for her, a different one, more…civilian in character. Katherine quickly gets in, coat shifting and flaring in the rotorwash revealing an IX-5. She cracks her neck and hops in, telling the pilot "We're saving a life, or at least a part of it."
The rush to Washington is still arduous. Though a transfer to a V-TOL on a later leg helps quite a bit as the second pilot speeds to a location she had only heard description of. Missiles creating a small rain of shrapnel as they approach. "If this has speakers, play Unfortunate Son, it'll be so bad ass."
A compound is ablaze, multiple buildings burning down as a carpet of corpses litters it. Blood so thick on the ground that its staining it red. Munitions and rifles and pistols laying around while billowing smoke rises and trees nearby catch ablaze, the damp Washington trees alighting.
She looks out for Agent Belltower as they hover, most of the fight seemingly over. She pulls out her phone, the timing right for… Him to be finished, though she realized he may be languishing with his frustrations, it'll be too dark to see the buttons on the phone though so she can't text.
Its not, however, hard to see him. He's dragging a screaming man behind him, drenched in blood and viscera. The man is in pastor's clothes, being pulled along by the knife in his shoulder. Belltower throws him in front of him.
Katherine takes the shot, a single one in the head. Splattering it in front of Belltower. Before whistling for his attention. "I have your cigarettes!"
Jacob looks up, shading his eyes from the floodlights of the VTOL, before slumping to a knee, exhausted. Katherine rappels down a fast-rope cord . Hitting the ground with a heavy thud, sprinting over with a pack of blue cigarettes, one already lit and placed in his mouth. Then she jams him with a hypo. "Hey, it's Okay," She says quietly, "This time won't be so rough."
"Thanks." He growls, a cut on his cheek streaming blood down, mixing in with the mass of viscera that isn't his, body armour and tac gear ripped, torn and stained alike.
She takes a bit of styptic powder saying, "This might sting, depending on how you feel right now." Before very quickly cleaning and bandaging the wound. Patting him on the shoulder, stepping away so that the VTOL can land, and he is placed on board with herself. She doesn't say anything. Just places the pack of cigarettes in his hand, and takes a deep breath.
"I'm really fucking tired of this, Katherine." Belltower stares at the burning compound as turbine thrust lifts the black airframe from the ground, leaving the incinerated mess behind as a large plane can be seen in the distance, nearing silently.
She nods, just listening, "I'll get better, I got swarmed on the car. I'm sorry." She doesn't touch him, doesn't even get overly close. Just letting him have his cigarettes and his time. "My instinct was to hug you. Sorry. You probably." This was not letting him have his time. Her mouth opens to say more, but her brain finally wins out and shuts it down.
"Yeah." Belltower's non-committal, just staring out at the world, dripping with blood not his own. Smelling of copper and gunsmoke and violence.
Oh, god do not kiss him. She takes a deep breath, I don't even like men. It's the blood. God I love gunpowder and copper and violence. Just be normal. A tingle, an instinct, a real instinct. "So, Disney's Robin Hood, the one with the hot fox started a thing on the internet."
He keeps staring at the forest as Katherine speaks, not ignoring her, but not engaging either.
"Basically a bunch of people's sexual awakening was either this fox." She pulls out her phone, "Or this bat, but she came out later," Showing him a picture of Rouge the bat, not really waiting to see if he was paying attention. "There were these people who believed they were… Well, there were Elfkin, and then when other people started getting really hornt up about animals, they got called otherkin, and kinning is this thing where you believe your favorite cartoon character lives in your head."
She says, "But I digress, so when thinking of the Hunk to Pretty, Smart to Stupid and twink to bear axis, which is basically the vector array for third dimensional attractiveness, there's basically this kind of weird sub space, that exists on the axis but in the extremes of each corner. Where the ideals of that are exemplified in the Cartoon Characters. Which is where Furries come in. Which are not necessarily people who want to fuck anthromorphic animals, but they do pay for about four fifths of all online commissions, and ninety percent of that is porn or people that are themselves as animals." She watches Belltower for a reaction, but her instinct is telling her to keep going. She's distracting him from this and bringing him to better times. Fun helicopter rides, stupid conversations and frozen dinners.
"How do people function." He eventually asks, sighing out as the smell of copper and blood mixes with smoke. His gloves come off, fingers bruised and bloody underneath the soaked kevlar.
"Well there's been a lot of advances in virtual reality and teledildonics." She says, to him smiling, "So these people can get a sexy models of themselves, and a blowjob machine or like… They're like reverse strapons kind of? They hook up over the internet. The whole 'I want to be a sexy animal or anime girl thing' ends up just being a real possibility or close enough I guess." Then pulling her phone out with a small giggle, "Sleepers figured out how to make ears controlled with your mind, subconsciously as if you were the animal. AND this weird predator vision." Showing him two tiktoks she saved on the way over here. That probably wasn't what he meant, but… God she got him. He wasn't fucking… Out there.
"Oh, fuck I almost forgot, I have my trench coat." She says warmly, pulling out a stanley thermos where her long arm would normally be. "I brought you coffee, and chocolate." Two small boxes of chocolate, both boutique but one is very much gourmet American chocolate with the unique vomit flavor that American's adore, and then a gourmet quality chocolate that tastes normal to the rest of the world.
Belltower reaches over, taking a chocolate and popping it into his mouth, briefly showing bloody teeth. Washing it down with a gulp of coffee, he breathes deeply before closing his eyes and leaning back against the interior of the aircraft. "Thanks. Again."
"You're… Important to me." She says, looking at him, "It was the least I could do." There was more, but it felt… Her instincts told her to wrap that up for later. "You know, the good news is, I'm twice as strong as I was when we first faced Christine."
"Christos. He won't be there. He changes route every time, gets feelings too." The longest sentence out of him so far, there's something deeply visceral in his eyes, like he's still angry, still wants to hurt and maim and kill. It's overpowering the numb, giving him something more like life, revenant forged as it is.
"If you're still down for violence, I'm still pretty upset at Jared Ox." She says at the anger, hoping to point it somewhere, "If you're not, there's breakfast at my place, and if you want me to hang out at the office that's a choice too." None of those options were 'Fuck off Katherine,' a very purposeful choice.
"Sure, I'll kill a cop." He growls, voice rumbling out from his chest as a pool of blood's formed from the drips off his uniform, black cloth with no identifying marks save for a velcro tab saying BELLTOWER on his left chest. "Might take awhile. I'm good with a knife." Belltower turns his eyes to Katherine at that, practically glowing orbs drilling through anything they catch.
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"That's fine," Katherine says with a smile, "The man reached into my head for ten years and made my schizophrenia worse for reasons I don't know or understand. He never tells me!" She says, "Fuck it, it's mostly just to christen the new loop at this point. If I don't get to it, he sends cops to blow up my apartment, and kill Estelle."
"No need to justify, coulda named most anyone I'd probably have…agreed." He plays with a knife, moving it between his hands, exercises for dexterity, handling the blade like a butterfly knife.
She nodded with a smile, "I know, but I like to remind myself why I do it."
"Yeah." He looks back out the window, waiting for a chance to unleash something.
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It was easy, Belltower's a rate master at kidnappings. Caught him in a barely isolated locale without anyone looking, put Jared to sleep with an injection, and had him wake up in a plastic lined room in a dock-facing house, taped down naked while he set up knives, guns, shock prods and chemicals.
The process takes several hours, Belltower treats it like an interrogation, asking questions just to give some hope of this having a goal, resuscitating the subject several times before finally sighing, handing a knife to Katherine and going to another room to smoke.
"I'm going to ask you again Jarred, just for old time's sake." Looking at him, seething, "Why do you do it? What do I do? You fucked with my head, ripped out all my memories. Why? Why me? specifically."
As Jared speaks, Katherine says his words right along with him in the same cadence, in harmony, "I don't know, you just… Were there. You didn't have anyone who cared about you. So we just… Used you to do stuff, clean house mostly."
"THAT'S NOT AN ANSWER!" Katherine screams at him, jamming the blade into his leg. "THINK OF SOMETHING BETTER."
Then she speaks along with him in perfect harmony again, "I… I.. don't know. You seemed… gullible? You liked me that made it seem… Stop it you're freaking me out."
"I know." Katherine says sweetly, her throat catching. "You said the exact same thing, last time. No matter how I ask, it's like a fixed fucking point, I can see the time on you. I can see the filth. You never change. You'll never make it out of here."
In harmony again, "Wait wait, I have money, resources, I can pay. I can stop doing that."
"No. I joined the force at twenty one. four years after I graduated early. Got my bachelor's fast." She said, still not cutting him with the knife. "I got in, and I never even got a chance to prove I was worth something. I was a beat cop, and already you were fucking with me, just in a different way wasn't it?"
They harmonize again, "What do you mean? I just wanted drinks that's not a cri—" He however shouts out in pain at the end, as Katherine jams it into the knee cap, the blade splitting it in two.
"You made me think I was getting better. Jared. That my life was finally turning around. The entire time, while you fucked with my head until I was a shattered mess. So obsessed with finding out reality that I literally fuck the time stream so hard that innocent people, people I like go through hell." She takes a deep breath, "I don't blame you for that though, but if I let you go, you panic. My apartment still blows up. You already gave the order, this time my car is in the pier parking lot, so maybe people will think I died or got kidnapped this time." She sniffs, looking at him.
She says in harmony with him, "I'm sorry I just wanted stop that."
"No, I don't think I will." Katherine says, looking at him, "I don't think I will. Everytime I die, I'm going to bring you down somewhere. I'm going to rip you to shreds so that I feel better. Except I don't. It's just… A part of the ritual at this point. You're a vampire. You're a fixed point, time magic acts weird around you."
She takes the blade and looks at him, before jamming it in his abdomen, pushing intestines into his stomach. "You die a few hours later." She says, "I'm thinking next time though I just shoot you, you'll never change what you say."
Then in harmony as she leaves, "No no wait don't please don't please." She closes the door behind her.
Belltower has a drifting tendril of smoke rising from a burning point in the dark, igniting his face in the lightless room, assembled placidly in the image of a house, though it doesn't have an ounce of life in it. His face is once again stony, unreadable, no longer young and fresh.
She lights her own, quietly standing next to him. Taller but feeling far smaller, she forgets he's smaller even when looking him in the eye. He just… Feels more. A huge presence, a huge ripple around him that demands her attention. She hated it, knowing that it was those attentions that caused it in the first place.
"Stop spiraling." Belltower demands, voice gruff still, exhaustion evident in his every motion and word.
And so she does, he doesn't blame her. His way works better, grudges are useless. If he's not going to hold it against than she shouldn't either. A quiet nod. "We're the only ones whose seen each other's little chips now." A small quirk of the lip. Still feeling manic and over emoted, over the top. Intense, everything too much. That too much being very enjoyable and ruinously exhausting with the sleep never quite even wanting to come. Even though the body begs for it. A second cigarette makes that fall away too.
"Do you have a home I can even take you to, or do you actually live at the office." She says finally, after nearly fifteen minutes just watching Jarred slowly bleed out through a window.
"Haven't been in it in…three years. But yeah. It's pretty good." Belltower admits. "Think it still has wifi."
She pulls out her phone, dialing a number, it rings once, "Bonjour?"
"Mon amour, cet ami a besoin de moi. Je serai de retour demain soir, je suis désolée d'être aussi taquine." My love, this friend he needs me. I will be home tomorrow night, I'm sorry to be such a tease. "I would do the same for you." She said quietly, hearing Eleanora say "Ne t'inquiéte pas, mon amour." Do not worry, my love.. Already knowing the answer, and quietly hanging up after soft goodbyes.
The drive over is quick, its three streets down from the office, a third story apartment that, when the door opens, looks like it hasn't been touched in about three years. Bachelor's furniture, but suspiciously clean, without a single dish in the sink or piece of clothing on the floor anywhere. He looks at it almost surprised, "Thought someone woulda robbed it by now."
"You can't feel it?" She says looking at the place around her. "I don't think anything but maybe people change here. Almost scared to touch anything."
Belltower breaks the illusion by sitting down, a puff of dust shifting the feel of the entire place as someone, finally, lives here. "Way ahead of you."
She decides not to bring up that line of delusions again, "Yeah I believe it." Putting her trench coat full of… her life, on a rack threatening to knock the whole thing over with it's weight. Then walks over to another chair with a much more gentle seat, still feeling at odds with the place, but not as much. Just nervous a bit they saw each other in a real way.
"You can go, by the way. I can cope on my own." He tries to offer an out, closing his eyes.
"I'm well aware of my capabilities, Jacob," She says using his first name for the first time since she met him. "I'm where I want to be."
His eyes open at the mention of his name, and slowly he looks down for the roof and at Katherine. Words are slow to assemble, he's been up for three days, the gunshots aren't bleeding, but they've stained his bandages and dress-shirt with what they were emitting hours ago. The claw mark on his cheek is scabbing into a scar, one Katherine's familiar with and nothing gotten the gunsmoke smell off him yet. "Why's that?" He asks curiously.
"The cool answer would be something like, professionalism, or whatever." She said smiling, "Because I lived most of my life alone, and it sucked, I want to be in a room with people. Even better if those people want me there."
"Yeah." Belltower says, looking back down to the floor, a standard hardwood.
"But if you want to bang it out, I'm not going to lie, I think it's gunpowder and blood, not gender. Like a… Smell thing?" She said snorting, knowing he was perceptive enough to know it was very much a real offer, but also very easily played off if he didn't.
Keeping his eyes to the floor, he says, "Haven't actually even thought about having sex in…five real world years before the loop." Belltower sounds tired, "Mind if I just smoke in your company?" It's a fragile request, a vulnerable show he's not used to giving.
"Of course not." She says, wanting to share her own vulnerable moment, "First time Eleanora said she loved me and meant it, I got eaten the next time because I couldn't stop crying about it."
He's lit up another cigarette, christening his old home in a wash of smoke and tobacco scent. "I, uh, relationships don't work well with the job. Last one was fifteen years ago. Mostly flings after that." Another admittance, "Touch's hard, even before the loop it was hard."
"Everyone shows love in different ways," Katherine says with a smile, "All relationships are different, people try to put them in boxes to make them easier to classify, but I've kept a million spreadsheets on a million things. They defy categorization and classification." She hoped her point was getting across, trying to say things she doesn't say, "What we have now, whatever happens in the future, it is what it is. It happens or it doesn't, but it never needs a reason to happen or not."
"I'll meet you wherever you're at, whatever that looks like." She says with a laugh, "I don't even know what a real relationship is." Wait was that megalomania talking, he might not have been talking about you.
"I get a…correct term is a subconscious analytical interpretation." He chuckles dryly, "A dream, the loop starts when I get shot, it skims my spine, shock puts me to sleep, wake up three minutes later. It's my mind warning me of the loop, I think." A drag of the cigarette fills his lungs, let out in a slow pulse from his mouth as he savours the soporific taste.
"I get a dream where you're smirking at me, helping me up. Then I wake up and get back to fighting." He twitches at the admittance, "I probably shouldn't have said that."
"I'm not cruel enough to use that against you." She said quietly, "Unless you mean how I'm going to train a vampire to get from here to Washington in two minutes. Or figure out time travel. I do that, I break the loop. I think."
"Leaving the loop probably breaks it. Has your file been transferred to the central network yet? It had to be if you were still on the records." He takes a break from the conversation, just for a minute doing something familiar.
"The QRF?" She says, looking at him, "The… Oil lady, one of them said something about me being on file but my accounts were set up yet."
"Yeah, that means you've been fully processed. Union knows about you no matter how twisted time gets." He nods, reassured somewhat, "Means I don't have to keep arguing my bosses down."
"OH fuck that was real." She said quietly, letting a breath go. "I was eighty twenty on that one being real, instead of just a way to recruit me to abuse the loop somehow. That makes me feel better. Though, now that I've seen what happens there, it wasn't eighty twenty after that."
He grimaces, taking a quick drag to calm himself down. "Once you're past a point, we run out of mercy. We run out of any sort of…limits too." The words make a smirk slip onto his face, "You wanna hear something funny?" Belltower looks up, eyes gleaming slightly in the dark.
"Yes." Again the delusion was stuffed away deep it's not the time for that, even if it were true. Which it probably is, but that's even more reason not to talk about it.
"One of the people that dies there, former Director. They wanted to just napalm it, turn the whole compound to ash." His hand starts shaking, making him frown at the unintentional motion. "I argued him down, and they die every time because of it. The loops too late to change the game plan, to make anything different. Just…fight, kill, win." Belltower's hand stops shaking, but his eyes start glistening instead of gleaming. "I feel…responsible. And I have to see the consequences of my decisions over and over."
"You did the right thing, it just didn't work out." Katherine said quietly, "Two people trapping themselves in time for polar opposite reasons. It's not your fault, any good man, good person, would have argued the same."
"Those hostages I was trying to save? By the time we get there, the Eddy has them wrapped up. They pick guns up too. Just don't last long, not trained or practiced. I get through them in eight or so minutes. Not hard." He's just short of growling words out, "I made a gut decision based on what felt right and it was dead wrong. And I'm the only one that lives through the mistake. Why do I get to live through it?" A tear slips out, almost nervous in its own right, how long has it been since he's cried?
She doesn't touch him, but she does get close, sitting next to him on the floor, still eye level funnily enough. "You saw it with Jarred, there is no why. Not one that'll ever be sufficient. Even if you knew the exact reason it wouldn't be good enough. You had the abilities to survive, it's a shitty reason."
"You're right. It's not good enough." He chuckles dryly as another tear slips, making him hiss as it lands on the scab.
Not even realizing she did it, that she was doing it, she put a hand on his leg to reassure him. "You're not fine, but you'll get better. You won't be the same, but that's not always worse."
"Feels like it's worse." The touch locked his gaze to Katherine. Leg tensing as she made contact.
"Shit, sorry." She said, pulling her hand back, but without fear, disgust, or aggression. Just respect. "That might change, or it might not as well. It takes time to figure out, which means I need to get better at not dying."
Staring at the hand as it slips away, he says, "You're the first person to do that in…awhile." Looking very tired.
She takes a second, and looking at the Director, actively trying to keep herself separated from her powers when she says this, hoping it exists outside of… Everything. "If you want a hug, but can't ask for one. You can give me a nonverbal signal. A nod, a hand gesture, whatever. It's there, not something that's being forced but available."
He gives a dry chuckle, "If you hug me, I think I'll lose my remaining pride."
"That's ok, I think you'd get a net gain from me." She said, still waiting, observing, looking at the little ripples, waiting for the moment that's appropriate, watching different probabilities.
Belltower sighs again, gathering the grit and drive that makes him who he is, "I'm a big boy. I can use my words." Another breath, another moment of nerves, "Mind…doing that?"
Not overly fast she gets on a knee very easily, and drapes over him. Finding strength as his very skin and muscles feel like they're shattering into square bits of safety glass at the touch. Squeezing him, not with pressure, just enough to know her presence is known, just to give him a little bit of warmth that signified that she was alive and there.
He's lost blood, making him chilly to the touch, and the shiver that goes through him at human contact is nearly full body. Jacob's not sure how to respond, just sort of…drifting in the hold as something warm and human hits Katherine's back. It's not the same but it's not bad either. She knows there's no wrong way to do this, but nothing anyone told her convinced her of that. So she simply let him come to his own conclusions. Letting their warmth intermingle.
"Thanks." Jacob says, breathing out one last time before he returns to something rhythmic and normal. "I'm…probably just going to fall onto my bed." He shifts, letting Katherine get off him if she wants.
She doesn't, of course, her love was just… Like that to a lot of people. A bit too different to be recognizable, still she didn't want to let him go. She wanted to carry him to bed but god knows even Estelle would rarely let her do that. So she stayed, and she hugged.
It's by inches, but, with another minute or two, Belltower slumps forwards, three days catching up with him suddenly. Eyes closed and breath even in Katherine's arms. Scents and feelings and warmth all intermingling as he sleeps. It would be romantic to say it was perfect, and comfortable, and she wished it lasted for hours. It was simply, important, a thing people needed just as much as they needed food, showers, small talk. It was emotional labour. The scents not right, everything just slightly too warm, but that didn't mean it meant less.
She still cared, in the same way he needed touch but it stung, she needed to give it but it wore on her. The first night of the loop was two hours of sleep. Maybe three, fever pitched in a manic episode that made her want to vibrate off the walls the only sensations she wants to experience are tingly, painful, or extremely sweet. She knows the passage of time perfectly, and know when' he'll be in the deepest sleep, about forty five minutes to almost an hour later he's put into bed, shoes removed, but nothing else.
Not tucked in, nothing that'd imply his vulnerability had left him… Vulnerable. She put a note next to him that said she was sleeping on the couch. Before going to sleep, she did a group text to Eleanora and Estelle. Forgetting that Estelle hasn't been looped in yet.
Love you both so much, can't wait for your kisses and Kisses. I miss you, the worst part of dying is realizing that you don't know how much I love and would do for you yet. I hesitate scared of losing you, and I worry that you hesitate scared of how I come off.
Then, swearing to herself.
Estelle I'm a time mage, we're a triad. I'm very hot.
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