::Rusty Iron Pipes on a Chalkboard – Delicious Cheesy Goop::

Dee spent the majority of the walk back to her house texting her mother, explaining why they were late. At first it seemed like she might have been in trouble, but the phrase I had to help save my friend from an attempted kidnapping really was the fast lane to the moral high ground in any argument. Exonerated from any possible punishment for being an hour late for dinner, a few more messages were fired back and forth before her phone was tucked away and she could simply enjoy the walk through town.

"What's the word?" Kenny asked, investigating whether he'd have to hoof it home despite his sore legs.

Dee didn't speak; they were returning to the residential side of town, where people were more likely to be since it was still early in the evening. She'd taken her hand back a few blocks ago, as much as she didn't want to. Between the rising wind and her heart rate finally dropping back down from the mad sprint she'd undertaken, her big black coat had been pulled back up around her and zipped up, fluffy hood flipped over her head to protect her head from the chill. She had to turn her head all the way to him before her face came into full view behind the soft fake fur, but when she did she flashed him a smile. Her mother had told her it was alright.

"Sweet."

She nodded in agreement, but her movement felt sluggish and clumsy. Even expressing herself was an action that had taken on a certain amount of sludge in the way that nothing felt like she had exact control over it. Not so much the stiffness of muscles or the fatigue of her body, but something that existed within her brain as well, slowing things down as the pair of them proceeded down the block towards her house. Was she worried? Was all of this stress over the events of today? Or were the revelations about her possibly doing damage to Cartman's fragile and utterly insane mind wearing on her more than she expected? Even as she tried to unravel these things, she couldn't even find a thread to begin pulling on. Thoughts fell apart as she attempted to construct them, and she found herself almost painfully chewing on the inside of her cheeks all the while.

Very near to her home, Kenny gave her a nudge. "Hey, you okay in there? I think I see smoke coming outta your ears."

Dee drew a sharp inhale; the closest she came to an audible gasp, while jerking her head to look at him and blink. Huh? Was all that was painted on her face, complex thoughts beyond her.

"Dude, you're exhausted. Give it a rest." He advised, the two of them turning up the walk to Dee's home- where the outside light was on, but the inside lights appeared to be off. Had her parents already gone to bed? That was a little early for them. Then again, she really didn't want to deal with her mom doting or worrying about her right now, so maybe it was for the best. With a sigh of recognition, that Kenny was probably right and she just needed to fucking relax, she took the lead and opened the front door, holding it for him and motioning him inside.

Upon arrival, it appeared that her mother had already made up the couch; a red sheet had been tucked over the cushions, and a pair of fluffy white pillows had been piled atop a blue folded up comforter, the whole stack sitting in the middle and awaiting use. The lights were off, the house was quiet, and the smell of creamy white sauce and herbed chicken still hung in the air from a meal that wasn't too terribly long past. Dee took the time to heel-toe out of her shoes, proceeding to the kitchen with full intent of digging into some leftovers before anything else became a concern, and Kenny was right behind her.

Lights were flicked on in the kitchen, and Dee found that her father had already portioned out the leftovers to individual screw-top containers in the fridge. Two were pulled out, unscrewed, and sent to the microwave as rote action; sheets of pasta swimming in cream sauce and cheese with chunks of chicken sounding about as good as it got right now. There was green stuff in there too- had he added spinach? Good call, Dad, gotta get the veggies in there somewhere.

Once that was going, Dee finally reached to take off her big black coat, hands fumbling with her hood and unzipping the thing, but her fingers appeared to be bum when it came to actually getting the thing off. A brief difficulty in slipping her shoulders out turned into a flash of extreme frustration, the same motion attempted again with an equal amount of success. All at once, it was as if her body had forgotten how to do something as simple as take off her fucking coat, and the feeling of rage that resulted was irrational and sudden as she audibly growled in the back of her throat, jerking and ripping the thing off of herself as she finally got a grip and escaped the heavy garment. Success was expressed in vengeance, throwing her beloved jacket as violently as she could through the open portal that led back to the living room.

"... you need to sit your ass down, man." Was Kenny's observation, standing next to her throughout the display. He might have even been moving in to help her, but she hadn't noticed over the hostile takeover that was her own inability to accomplish something so simple and menial. What the fuck was wrong with her? It was the sort of feeling that would have left a less reserved person to scream aloud and possibly punch a wall- but even as that impulse stampeded through her brain, she had to curtail it, swallow it back, hold the enraged and raw sensation within her own ribcage and refuse to indulge it, clenching her jaw tight to contain it.

The beeping of the microwave finishing its job made her start, some overly raw instinct demanding she throw something at it to make it be quiet.

She don't know how he did it- how he just knew what was on her mind and preempted her, but Kenny was between her and the appliance in a heartbeat to pop the door and make it stop it's electronic noise. Then, just as quickly, he turned back to her and took her by the shoulders. "Hey, hey... easy. It's okay."

It's okay? She silently questioned him, lips tugged down and nose crinkled up in a sneer that lacked the energy to be disdainful, only managing disheartened at best. How can you say it's okay? I don't even know what's wrong. She tried to look him in the eye, be direct in her confusion, go running back to that strange place she'd been with him just the night before- but meeting those pretty blue hues did something else to her. She saw the concern in his half-hidden face, and it made her face turn warm in the worst way.

Not for the first time this evening, she had to swallow over a lump in her throat, and she quickly dropped her chin to her chest to hide behind wild curls of candy-red hair.

Cock-sucking whore with a mouth full of hepatitis, am I tearing up again? This is stupid! Everything is okay, Wendy is okay, Cartman is down for the count, so why the hell do I feel like I'm on the edge of oblivion, here?!

"It's not your fault. You didn't know what was going to happen."

That's no goddamned excuse. Not when it effects everyone I give a damn about.

The it's not your fault excuse didn't hold water for her- she should have known better than to give in and yell at Cartman just because she was mad at him. She didn't have the right to take that kind of risk.

I'm supposed to be fucking responsible, damnit!

She couldn't make it stop. Tears welled up in her eyes, and escaped as she screwed her eyes shut and attempted to force it all back by the sheer power of her will. She shook as her fists clenched at her sides, shoulders tense and her head tucked down as tight as she could manage, as if all these things would some how bottle up the maelstrom that was already leaking out through her eyes.

Ribs shivered as she held her breath, but finally she was forced to give way to the reflexive action of gasping in, a wet sob produced in the process.

She felt herself getting tugged upon; shaking shoulders reminded that they were held by someone else, and said someone else pulling her forward until her forehead made contact with the cheap fabric of a bright orange coat... and, perchance more importantly, the warm mass of the person wearing it. Eyes blinked open, tears shaking free of her lashes and plopping down to the tile floor. Her perception was limited to the pressure on her forehead and the blurry vision of their socked feet nearly touching at the toes- his, all ratty and gray, a hole in one that let his big toe show through. Hers? That bright electric blue; her favorite color.

"It's not easy." He noted, quietly.

They both knew that. Having powers wasn't a perk, and it didn't come for free. They were still human, and they had to live with the things they did and didn't do. Dee knew that, of course.

But this was probably the first time she didn't get to be the hero. The majority of her life, when things were happening around her, it was her actions that fixed them, and she always had that at the end of the day. Whatever she did, whatever choices she made, she had her own victory as the justification for it.

That wasn't true when she screamed at Cartman- Kenny and Kevin had saved the day with extra evidence. If she'd just sat on her hands and let things happen, things would have played out exactly the same. Worse, she'd caused this chain of events... and didn't even get the chance to clean up her own mess. Stan, Wendy, and Kyle were the heroes today, they had the victory that she so desperately craved, because it would make her feel like she'd still gone vaguely in the correct direction.

That was the raw truth of it all- she fucked up, and she didn't have any justification for it. Nothing good had come of it. No silver lining, nothing that suggested the fuck-up would somehow lead to something new or good in the future.

She blinked, sniffing hard as droplets continued to rain down off of her face; some falling directly form her eyes, others clinging to her cheeks before the dripped off of her chin, leaving stinging trails along the way.

"I did it wrong." She whispered.


Kenny really didn't talk that much- it wasn't so much a general rule as it was just the way things tended to work out. Sure, he spoke up when he knew the answer to a question, or had something witty to share, but beyond that? He tended to be pretty fucking quiet; maybe that was why his friends were so good at forgetting about him.

Now? He felt as if that trait were working against him. The fact that his girlfriend – pretty sure he was safe calling her his girlfriend at this point – was crying against his chest left him with an uncertainty on exactly what to say. He knew the kind of hell his abilities put him through, but hers was of a different sort. She had the ability not just to influence others, but to monkey with time itself. In years previous, she occasionally ripped time for utterly petty mistakes, un-doing and re-doing things until they went correctly in her perception.

Irresponsible was the word for it. He had been among those who had lectured her on it- that it was fully possible that people working against her were collecting data every time she hopped about on the timeline, and were developing a way to nullify that ability so that she could be more easily captured. A paranoid consideration, maybe, but safety required a touch of paranoia every now and then... and to her credit, she had been making an effort to change her habits, to not be so frivolous.

She wasn't used to making mistakes she couldn't fix. It was a perfectly human experience, to mess up and have to just accept it and move on- but that wasn't her experience. This was new, unpleasant, outside of her control.

"Fucking up is part of life." He informed her, oddly blunt considering her state- didn't matter. Dee wasn't the sort for pussyfooting, and he wasn't going to start now just because they were involved. "You can either work with it, ignore it, or obsess over it. Pick one."

He felt the jolt that went through her, more a sensation than a physical motion. Nothing seemed to change, though; she kept crying, her head remained down, and she wasn't saying anything.

Maybe she just needs to cry. Karen gets like that, sometimes- where she knows what she has to do, but she just needs to cry for a while.

His hands shifted with that thought in mind; from holding her shoulders to rubbing over her upper back; something to remind her that he was there that was silent and soothing. A quiet comfort as she contended with her own internal mess.

He found, more often than not, just being there was worth more than all the pretty words in the world. She'd done that for him, not to terribly long ago. She'd held him, let him be vulnerable for a second, and said something that had hit him harder than any speech about life being hard and the need to just buck up and deal with it.

"I'm here." He told her, just as she'd told him.

Her own hands reached out, slipping their way around the narrow span of his ribs before coming to rest on his back, a sort of loose hug being shared between them with her head in the middle of the protective shell it formed. It may have been a minute or so more after that, but the shaking began to abate and the sniffling faded away. Slowly, her head lifted up, and he was able to see the tear-streaked mess she'd become.

"Better?" He quested.

"... sorta." She answered softly. "Hey, sorry, but... I wanna clean my face..."

The unspoken part of that was that she didn't want him to think she was running away from the affection he'd decided to express, and he let her go without argument. She bustled towards the kitchen counter where there was a standing dowel of paper towels; she pulled a few off and used them to wipe away tears and snot, blowing her nose vigorously before the whole mess got deposited into a trash can under the sink. As she worked at not looking like she'd just been bawling her eyes out, he turned his attention back to something he was mostly certain would help- food. Retrieving the containers from the microwave and finding which drawer had spoons in it took him about as long as she took to return to a mostly human state.

He figured they'd take their microwaved meal up to her room, but she led him out to go sit on the couch instead, taking her container of creamy goo, cheese, and pasta and a spoon from him upon arrival and flopping down with a long and deeply felt sigh- one he mimicked as he took the spot next to her, shoving the pile of bedding off to the side to make room.

Holy fucking hell it had been a long-ass day.

"... I guess all of this means backing out of the contest." She mused, it seemed more to herself than to him- then again, she'd said it aloud. "It's... the responsible thing to do. I donno how it'll effect the people listening."

"You didn't wanna do the contest anyway, though." He pointed out, tugging his hood down and pulling down the scarf he wore under it before wolfing into... whatever it was Dee's dad had made. He called it an Alfredo lasagna? It was creamy and cheesy with chunks of chicken and spinach in-between thick bits of noodle- read also, fucking delicious. He wasn't going to argue with it. Two monstrous bites later, he was actually thankful that it got to sit in the microwave for a while- it would have been volcanically hot if they'd tried to eat it right after reheating. Swallowing hard, he added, "Guess it feels different when you've got a choice, huh?"

"Yeah." She agreed, nodding a bit. She hadn't even started on her food. She was leaned back into the couch, spoon in one hand, container of goopy goodness in the other- but green eyes were staring off into space from their puffy sockets. "And... well, some people were excited about it. I heard plenty of kids talking about it in the halls."

Oh yeah, he'd heard plenty of the chatter. Some kids were downright giddy to hear Dee sing- though it was mostly the girls who were making a big deal about it. "Wanna do it together?" He suggested. "We can split the prize if we win."

She scoffed. "I think the whole damn school will be disappointed if I step up there and don't open my mouth."

"Fucking sucks to be them." He smirked. "You're already known as a massive troll. You could walk right onto stage, even stop in front of the mic for a sec, then go pick up a set of drums or some shit- I don't fucking know, play the fucking bugle with your asshole or something."

He saw it- a smile sparked across her face, and she had to turn her lips inwards to clamp down and resist laughing aloud for a moment. "Hey, hey, that takes talent my good sir- don't you dis my skills on the horn."

"Hey, I wasn't there, I had to hear about it second-hand from the other guys." He scootched a foot her way, giving her a nudge. "Are you going to fucking eat? Your dad's shit is gonna get cold."

She sputtered, all the old habits in the world being the only thing that stood in the way of her indulging in a full on belly laugh. Still, a face that had been red with tears not long ago was now crimson as she had to drop her spoon and cover her mouth, a sort of hiccuping giggle coming from the back of her throat. "My dad's shit? Is that what we're eating?"

"I didn't say it wasn't delicious shit." He batted back with a smirk- it was funny to see her try so hard not to express... and much like when Karen cried, it was a personal victory for him to get her to smile.

"Oh my... oh jeez... heh... I'm gonna tell him you called it that." She promised while trying to sober up, picking her spoon back out of her lap to finally dig in.


::The Author's Corner::

I swear to god, this scene wasn't supposed to take up the whole chapter. I wanted to have some cooldown time with Dee and Kenny, talk about the singing contest, and then pagebreak into the next morning... and then Dee had an anxiety attack and a whole bunch of feels, and here we are.

Yay?

ONWARDS!

-Buttlord