a/n: Always strange writing for a new fandom but this has been playing in my head for days and though it feels like it should be part of a larger fic for right now this is what it is.

Home

She's been back six months. Six months of being that girl again. The one who sat in the front pew at church listening to her father talk about hope and peace and forgiveness. Six months she's been back and by now the looks have faded, the pity in the eyes of her friends and the families of her church have faded now. They haven't gone completely but there's a respect there now, an approval, because she's the girl who lost her mother, the one with the father who couldn't cope, who lost his faith when he lost his love but she's come back and she's still being the good girl. And if there's a certain romance the people of her town are placing on that then she lets them. If it's easier for them to imagine that her daddy lost his way because he loved so fiercely, that God was leading him down a path where he would reunite with that love while helping someone else then so be it.

It was Freddie who provided her with the paperwork – the lies – that said her father had been killed in Mexico, how he'd been helping people and spreading his faith when he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She'd needed a story to tell the people back home and this one painted the picture they expected. There was no chaos in this version, no harsh reality of killing her father to save him from becoming a monster. There was no Scott becoming a monster, instead he was lost too, still down in Mexico, still trying to help because it was what her father would have wanted.

That version of Scott is easier than the truth. It's what they want to hear. They don't want to hear about the monster he's become, the one that bit their father and forced her hand.

The timelines are a little blurry, too. For the people of Bethel, she turned around and came home as soon as it was done, as soon as she could come home where it was safe and she could mourn surrounded by people who loved and cared for her.

There's no mention of the months she spent stealing and running with a man a decade older than her, sharing motels and secrets and truths that would shame the people of her church if they knew.

Six months she's been back and it's easy and it's quiet. She's got herself a job at a café and she's studying at the community college, she goes to church on Sundays and helps with all the functions. She sees the friends who are still in town, the ones (most of them really) who chose not to leave, who will go on to marry young and follow in their parents' footsteps and she's okay with that. Because it's easy and nobody expects more of her than she can give. Because it's a well-practiced role that she easily falls back into.

It's an act, its pretend.

It all comes apart, not with a bang or the drama it rightfully should have, it easy and it's simple, just the tugging of a single thread and everything she's worked for suddenly seems so wrong.

She's having dinner with Jessica, they've both finished with classes for the day and they've picked up take-out and have plans to sit on the couch and watch romantic comedies and just talk. It started as a way for her best friend to cheer her up but it continued because it needed to, she needed it to keep her grounded and in the here and now in Bethel and she knows, in a way, Jessica needs it too, because the reality of finishing high school isn't running off to the big city and a huge university and a new life, it's the same people at church and in town and it's classes at the community college and marrying young.

Jessica is holding the bags of food, Kate has the movies and her keys in hand and they're talking quietly and they're all smiles as Kate slides the key into the lock and the moment she pushes the door open she knows.

She knows.

There's a feeling in the air, like its charged and it's hard to breathe and for a moment she goes completely still. Jessica notices or she doesn't Kate doesn't know but the moment of being frozen on the doorstep is gone and her feet are moving before she knows what she wants to do. Like they know where to go and that she will always end up there. There's an inevitability to her movements, like fate tugging at her and she knows.

She knows.

The suns starting to set up and it lights up the kitchen in pale yellow and orange and shadows and there's no moment where she stands frozen in the door to the kitchen, no moment where indecision plagues her.

Behind her, Jessica says something, it could be angry, it could be scared or swearing or a threat.

But he's there in her kitchen, sitting at the table with the first aid kit from her bathroom spread on the table beside him. He's not wearing a suit, he's in jeans and a t-shirt, though he's still got the black vest, and he's dirty and sweaty and there's a cut across his nose and blood drying on his face from another in his hair line and his beard is reaching toward untidy but his eyes are clear, though he's exhausted and he opens his mouth and breathes her name.

But she's still moving because he's here in her kitchen and it's been six months and he looks tired and broken but he's clean, she knows he's clean, and so she doesn't stop doesn't pause until she's right there and she's melting into him, knees going to either side of his hips, straddling his thighs and her hands are sliding up into his hair and it's her forehead pressing against his and it's her lips whispering his name and she knows there are things that need to be said, apologies and explanations and that she should be angry but his lips start pressing kisses against her skin, her cheek her nose, her neck and his hands slide down her ass, cupping, pulling her closer and that's when the tears start, it's when his head falls forward, forehead resting warm and sticky against her collarbone and she doesn't care.

Because it's been six months and God, she's missed him.

'Really?'

The word comes from her left, the sound of the refrigerator closing and she doesn't even care that they have a witness (witnesses), she doesn't take her eyes off him and the words are easy and familiar as they fall from her lips, mirroring his own.

'Shut up, Richard.'

She should be mad, she should be spitting angry words about being left on the side of the road in Mexico, about all the harsh words that were said and that he obviously went looking for his brother but right there in the kitchen, the words don't matter, because she's been back six months but for the first time she's truly home.