Disclaimer: Not mine, not mine, not mine. Don't sue me, I have no money.
Spoilers: some for the Hellboy comics. If you haven't read the comics, you may be a bit confused. I recommend reading the Chained Coffin And Others TPB, as well as BPRD: Hollow Earth and that Hellboy arc that had Lobster Johnson and Roger in it...can't remember the name...
Notes: I don't want ANYBODY asking me who the hell Kate Corrigan is. She's a character in the comics, one of Hellboy's best friends, a very loyal, brave and responsible character, who used to work at NYU and is now the field director for the BPRD. Her relationship with the rest of the cast can get rocky, to say the least, because she's the only "normal" person who's highly involved with the team, but she and Hellboy have always had a strong friendship.
And for the record, in the comic book, Hellboy and Liz are NOT a couple. I've seen so much Liz/Hellboy recently as a result of the movie that I HAD to create this, to maintain my sanity.
I Brake For UnicornsHellboy's thoughts take strange turns sometimes.
For the past few years, whenever he looked at a sunset, or a beach, or any other naturally occurring and beautiful landscape, he would think of one person – Anastasia. The one person who ever loved him. The one person who ever could.
But lately he's been thinking about different things. Not Anastasia anymore, not so much. He thinks about his friends, or course – about Abe, his confidant, and Liz, who was always like a sister to him. About Roger, who was a pretty good guy, and about the bomb that was probably still ticking inside him. Bet that freaked Abe out something fierce – Abe had never trusted the Bureau, not as much as Hellboy had. Of course, Abe always was more analytical than Hellboy.
And then he thinks about someone else entirely. The only person he feels really bad about leaving behind.
Hellboy doesn't have a lot of regrets. He doesn't regret what happened with Anastasia, not anymore. He can count on one hand the number of things he's done with the Bureau that he regrets. Most of the time he just doesn't see the point of looking back and wishing that things had been different.
But when he thinks about Kate Corrigan, the ache is so strong that he almost stops breathing.
Kate Corrigan. Katie. Was he the only person who called her that? Probably. As a general rule, he'd never liked the name Kate. It was too short, too hard. It wasn't like Kate at all, at least it wasn't like the Kate Hellboy saw.
Maybe he just saw her differently than other people.
When Hellboy looked at Kate he saw a lot of things – a steadfast, loyal woman, someone who would rise to any challenge and meet it to the best of her abilities. He saw a brave person who often struggled to come to terms with the world around her, but never burdened others with her own personal issues, even when she was really, really scared. And she got scared a lot. He saw a little girl way down deep, a little kid with pigtails who cowered in fear of being abandoned by the people she cared for and would do anything to keep them near. A little girl who still bore the marks of her mother's wrath.
He also saw a very tired person, pulled in a large number of different directions – by Manning and the higher ups at the Bureau who she had to answer to, by Abe and the people she really cared about and the things that they did. By the fact that she had to be responsible to the former and responsible for the latter. And by the fact that nobody save for Hellboy understood how hard that was on her, how it wore her down little by little every day, like the ocean constantly crashing up against a stone wall.
He saw the hat in a gift store somewhere, maybe in England. It was a baseball cap. "I Brake For Unicorns", it read.
He bought it, even though the clerk looked at him strangely. He sent it to Kate, even though he had no return address.
Two weeks later, an envelope arrived at his hotel in Germany.
It contained one thing, and one thing only: A photograph of one person, whose face was mostly obscured by the brim of a baseball cap which read, "I Brake For Unicorns".
The hat, however, did not cover her blond hair or her soft chin. It was, unmistakably, Kate, accepting his offering and supplying her own.
He slept well that night. And Anastasia did not cross his mind at all.