Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse. Please let me know if I should add any more.
Notes: I told myself that I had to finish the last chapter of A Melody in a Penny Arcade today, but instead I wrote post-The Quickening fic instead. This story references a line in my fic What Kate Does, which is technically AU now, but never mind. It is not necessary to read that story in order to understand this one, although you're certainly welcome to, if you fancy it.
Disclaimer: All characters and environments belong to Michael MacLennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Global/Shaw Media.
Spoilers: For The Quickening (S02E01).
Kate's father is lying dead in a dingy backstreet in Cabbagetown. She doesn't feel a thing. She knows those two statements are connected, somehow, but she doesn't dwell on it. She takes her bag out of Father's car and starts walking, Betty a few steps behind. Ordinarily, Kate is nowhere near as physically fit as Betty, but right now, Betty is almost jogging in order to keep up with her. Does Kate want to leave her behind? She truly doesn't know. Finally, as they emerge onto a relatively busy street, Betty asks, "Kate, where are you going?"
Kate would have thought it was obvious. "I have to find them. My mother and the boys. I have to start in North Bay, and-"
"It's too late to find your folks," says Betty. She seems to realise how that sounds and adds hastily, "You're exhausted. Come back to the rooming house. It's warm there, and you can get some rest. Come morning, we can figure out what – what you'll do next."
Sleep where? says a little voice inside Kate, the hardest, coldest part of her. Your bed, I suppose? I'm not that naïve any more, Betty.
"They'll have let my old room," Kate points out. "There's nowhere for me to sleep." Kate doesn't tell Betty that that's nothing new. Kate hasn't had a place to lay her head in months. Kate knew something was wrong the moment she left the rooming house, back in December, because the silver trailer the Rowleys lived in since Kate was a girl was gone. Sold, her father said, to pay for Mother's medical treatment. She and her father have been sleeping in his car ever since. He gave her the backseat, slept sitting up in the driver's seat. Presumably, it was out of some pathetic attempt at fatherly concern, at chivalry. Kate thinks Father just didn't want to let her anywhere near the steering wheel, in case she tried to steal the car to find her family, or drive them both into a brick wall at a hundred miles an hour...
"You can take my bed. I'll sleep in the common room." Betty looks terrified but also utterly earnest. Kate has a sudden memory of the way she felt after Leon took out Donald to save her. The moment she found out Leon was the singer she had heard in the darkness, she told him what a wonderful voice he had, even as Leon dragged Donald's unconscious form out of the way. Is that what Betty is doing now? Is she scared that Kate might turn on her? Is she looking for any way at all to make this normal again, to make this safe?
"I..." Kate wraps her gloved hands around the strap of her bag. "All right, Betty." In another life, she would continue by saying, "I haven't a clue where we are!" or "How will we get there?" She doesn't want to be vulnerable, though. If she gives even a little, the night might rush in and drown her. So she just says, "Let's go."
They begin walking to the main road, to try and flag down a taxi, or hitch a lift. As they walk, Betty makes a movement like she's going to take Kate's arm, or place her palm on Kate's back, but seems to think better of it at the last second. Kate is glad of it. She feels like she would scream if anyone were to touch her right now.
A car slows – ten minutes later, Kate can't remember for the life of her whether it was a pickup truck or a taxicab – and Betty opens the door so Kate can climb in first. More attempts at normalcy, though Betty gives a fitful glance over her shoulder before she joins Kate, making absolutely sure that they are not being followed.
The stillness inside Kate starts to ripple, starts to buckle as she takes stock of her situation. She hasn't a cent, hasn't got a job – and for all she knows, she might be an orphan.
She pushes the thought away. Mother can't be dead. It has to be a lie, a twisted, selfish lie, like everything else Father ever told her. And yet … and yet surely, if Mother had left Father sometime between September and December, she would have come to find Kate? She had Kate's address. She was the one who organised for Kate to move into the rooming house, who found her the job at the factory. Why didn't Mother come to visit? Why didn't she write, or even telephone? Didn't she know that Kate thought about her, missed her, worried about her every day?
(Death can't stop me loving you, but it can stop me protecting you. Mother said that to Kate when she was trying to convince her to leave in the first place, a year ago now.)
And what about Richard and Walter? Are they with an aunt, like Father said? Kate barely knows her extended family. She mixes up their names, can't recall their faces, cannot begin to remember their addresses. Kate has only just begun to mentally catalogue the relatives she knows of before she thinks, Oh, please God, don't let them be dead, don't let me be all alone...
Your mother is dead, and I am all that you have. Those words are what made Kate's heart crack open, and all her anger come spilling out. She thinks about Father tumbling over the railing, his scream, the thump, the billowing silence that followed. She doesn't feel anything, remembering her father, so tiny and helpless in death. Kate's heart only starts to beat when she thinks about Father being alive, bellowing into her face, choking her, chasing Betty … chasing Betty up the fire escape, pushing her into the wall, hitting her and hitting her. It was like that moment on the stencil line, the day of the Pearl Harbor attacks, when the live bomb casing slammed into Betty's shoulder. Up on the fire escape, Kate's heart stopped just the same way. Her father's fists were like that bomb, only he struck Betty over and over, not just the once. In the end, Kate was the one who went up in flames.
She never wants to think about him being alive again. Father did all this to her so she would sing for him. So she would inspire people with the sweet, soulful piety of her voice. Every compliment Kate's ever gotten about her singing is racing through her head, and it makes her want to retch. She thinks that she might never sing again. Why hasn't she seen it before? Having something special that only she can do just gives people more reason to take advantage of her. People are always helping themselves to everything Kate has, everything she is: her voice, her mind, her body, her very soul. She pictures a faceless multitude opening her up, picking her bones clean. Closing her eyes to get rid of the mental image, Kate remembers Betty's mouth on hers so vividly that she gives a start.
Betty isn't kissing her, though. It's just Kate's imagination. Just her sick imagination. At least, after what she's seen tonight, Betty will never try to kiss her again. Kate isn't the sweet, innocent girl Betty fell in love with. She doesn't know how she feels about that. All she does know is that no-one is ever touching her, ever using her without her say-so, ever again.
It's like a dream, climbing the two flights of stairs to the third floor of the rooming house. It's incredible to believe that it's only been two months since she was last here. A different Kate lived here. That Kate danced in the hallway, took long late-night soaks in the bath, and woke from nightmares with her mouth tasting of terror. Kate almost expects to find that other version of her still here, frowning and blinking with large blue eyes at the notion that so many Kates can exist.
Betty ushers Kate into her room. She always used to lock the door when they were in there alone together, but now Betty just pulls it to. Kate understands the hundreds of reasons why she won't close the door any more, and feels – not a pang, exactly. A flutter. Something.
"You can wash," says Betty, gesturing at the sink. "And change. I'll leave and – and I'll knock in half an hour. Just tell me if you want more time."
Kate nods mutely. Betty is being so formal, as if they're strangers. Kate supposes they are, now.
Betty hesitates. "I'll be in the common room, if you need me." When Betty leaves the room, she closes the door so quietly it barely makes a sound. Kate is left alone, for the first time in months.
Somehow, it's not frightening to be alone, in Betty's room. She can concentrate on Betty's things. Betty's room is far messier than Kate remembers it, dirty coffee cups perched precariously on the edges of shelves, clothes crumpled on the floor. As Kate peels off her winter coat, her sweater, her woollen stockings, she eyes photos and postcards that Betty has pinned up: beautiful houses in the suburbs, a flier for some dance club called the Jewel Box, even pictures of farming. The farming photographs are all rolling fields and thatched roofs, a romantic ideal of farming Kate is sure that Betty has never experienced.
And then she sees it. Her own photograph, tucked into the frame of the mirror over the sink. One of the ones from the photo shoot with Chet. It's a headshot, only barely hinting at how low-cut Kate's bathing suit is. She's not throwing back her curls or flaunting her curves. She's not even smiling. In the photo, Kate just looks … innocent and trusting.
Seeing her picture in Betty's room, where Betty must look at it every day, Kate doesn't know how to feel. It's not fear or worry, shame or sadness, desolation or explosive rage, so she struggles to identify the emotion. Kate supposes she's strangely … put out, that Betty had a photograph of her, all this time, when Kate had none of Betty, or Gladys, or Leon, or even her mother and brothers. It sounds so funny, feeling such a petty little emotion when the world has changed so, but it is what Kate feels. All Kate has had the past few months is her memories, and her father twisting them all the time, turning every brush of hands into a fevered scrabbling, every hug into frenzied grasping, hers and Betty's kiss into a slavering parody of itself...
Betty comes back, in her winter pyjamas and blue dressing gown, murmuring about rooms to let, about calling the factory to get Kate's job back. They fall silent, Betty smoking on the bed, Kate staring into the mirror, examining the bruises her father left on her neck. The last he'll ever give me, she thinks.
Then Gladys arrives, wandering through Betty's bedroom door and back into Kate's world. She looks more like a film star than ever in her fur-trimmed coat and floor-length dress, yet she has such strength in her arms when she wraps her arms around Kate and hugs the life back into her.
She wants to know what happened, of course. Feeling suddenly overwhelmed, Kate lies down on the bed. Betty immediately scrambles off and goes to stand a few feet away, which Kate tries not to notice. Gladys sits beside her, waiting.
"I left my father," Kate says finally.
When Kate doesn't elaborate, Gladys reaches over to take her hand. Six months working the floor at Vic Mu have made Gladys' hand feel different to the way it was before. It's still soft, but Kate wouldn't think it was softer than her own hands have ever been. They are a little more alike, now. Except how can they be, after tonight? Eyes fixed on empty space, Gladys' hand in hers, Kate says, "I don't much want to talk about it right now, Gladys."
"She's here," comes Betty's voice, out of the air over Kate's head. "That's what matters." Kate wants to take those words and fold them into her heart, like she has with so many things Betty has said before. She can't, though. She knows without seeing her that Betty has that look in her eyes, a look she's never given Kate before. A look like she's afraid Kate might shatter.
Kate feels Gladys' hand pulling away, hears the bedsprings creaking. Gladys is leaving, then. She's going home, or to the common room at least, to leave Kate alone with her thoughts. Go, thinks Kate, without emotion.
Only, she doesn't. She lies beside Kate, rests her head against Kate's shoulder. The feel of her there, the smell of her perfume – it makes something so raw well up inside Kate, surge through her. She finally allows herself to hurt, to admit the ache of her best friends' absence. She doesn't cry, doesn't even tear up, but that sharp, bittersweet surge convinces her that she will let herself weep, one day. That day is not today, though. She doesn't need to worry about sobbing out her dark heart just now. All she needs is to rest.
After a moment, Betty sits down on the edge of the bed. She lights another cigarette. For the longest time, Betty perches just about as far from Kate or even Gladys as the bed will allow. Then, eventually – probably at a look from Gladys – she lowers herself onto the bed, lying on Gladys' other side. Gladys shifts a little, to give Betty more room. Kate, Betty and Gladys lie close together, as though Betty's single bed is an island in a vast sea.
Wordlessly, Betty and Gladys begin to pass the cigarette back and forth. Kate stares at the smoke they send out, the proof that they truly are there with her. Kate and Betty meet each other's eyes at the exact same time. Betty looks scared to death, but she is here. She won't let Kate go through this alone. And Kate … Kate has no idea what she's feeling, or whether any of this is right. She just registers small things, from moment to moment. The crooning from the radio, a Billie song she has never heard. The steady rhythm of all their breathing. The fact that she is here, and need never answer to Marion Rowley again, if she so chooses.
As Kate takes the cigarette from Betty, their fingertips make brief but definite contact. Their bare skin touches, and Kate does not break.