Drabble Challenge: (Feardantane) Mark finds out that Kat has secretly been having a relationship with Sparx.

This is slightly PWP. I think… I'm not entirely sure what the rules on context are with PWP's. I'm not mad about utilising Kat in my fic and normally avoid her except where necessary, but I figure since this is a challenge… And they're both probably OOC and…

Yeah, either way, I'm going to go stand in the corner now, out of sniper range, please R & R. Kill me, if you feel you must.

Disclaimer: Ace Lightning and everything related … no doubt Odell and Leggatt will be relieved about that.
Unreal.

Scarab Dynasty.

Not a person. 'Not really, anyway.' That'd what she had said, the first time they ever talked about Them. And even though he'd agreed with her, she'd still got the impression that Mark felt kind of annoyed. But then she could see why he'd gotten confused. So had she, at first. And then of course there came all the fighting (which took place as much on a personal level as it did in the battlefields).

'Yeah. They seem real. They act real. Only real people can do stuff they can't do… and can't do stuff that they can. Like… hitting a ping-pong ball at a hundred miles per hour. Real people don't have… programs or whatever keeping them in order. So that means she's not a person, right?'

Or maybe she is. She sure acts like one. And more besides. But calling her a "real" person is one step further than Kat's prepared to take it.

Besides, she's seen more than Mark has. Or NOT seen more, depending on how you look at it.

'Do you ALWAYS have it up?' she'd asked.

'Huh? What?' she stopped bouncing the ping-pong ball against the wall and looked at her.

'Your hair? Short. Up. Do you always have it like that?'

'I don't know. I never really thought about it.'

'You should change it. Do something new. Redhead's look better when it's long.' The ping-pong call starts bouncing again.

'Yeah, well, so should you.'

'Excuse me?'

'Yeah… I mean yours is like... worms or something.'

'Worms?' she frowned. She didn't look like that right? This took her about half an hour to do every morning. 'There's nothing wrong with it!'

'Not if you're trying to look like one of those siren things from Mount Doom.' There was a snigger, she heard her sitting back in the chair, and leaving the ping-pong ball to bounce away under the table Kat was sitting on.

'Well at least I bother to change it now any then. Look I'll show you.'

She reached over the chair from behind and grabbed the other woman's hair tie. Only when she pulled it didn't budge. In fact it was hard to get a grip of it at all. Like trying to touch something in a dream when it's only sort of there. 'Oh… right…'

'Right what?' her head leaned back over the chair and gazed at her, upside-down.

'Nothing.'

'It's the same for her sleeves and her jeans and everything else,' Kat tries to tell herself. There's no skin. They're just programmed shells that think they're real. So why should she assume there was anything else underneath?

'So what?' she asked, when Kat pointed that out. 'Even if there isn't, we'll work with what we've got.'

'What's there to work with?'

'You tell me.'

Then there's a pause for a second or two before the woman presses her lips against Kat's.

It's kind of what Kat was expecting. It's how it worked in that movie she saw not long before the evacuation started. Only in that, the red head had been a guy. And she figures it probably didn't involve this much static for the people in the movie.

'Ow…'

And it turns out the polo neck isn't like her hair was after all. It's more like material than she expected it to be, and… yeah, there's definitely skin under there. It's still not normal. She didn't expect it to be. She'd expected something unreal but this… this was just…

'Insane? Crazy? BEYOND unreal?

Or maybe too close to real for comfort.

Come on, Kat, this has ALWAYS been crazy. You knew from the start. Don't go getting all weirded out now.'

And there'd always been this… odd link between them, too. She was the first one of Them Kat met. Well, the first one that wasn't trying to kill her, at least. The first of the good guys. She remembers all the questions she'd had to ask…

'You and this Ace guy… are you, like, together?'

…Especially that one.

She'd sounded kind of disappointed when she told Kat no.

It's been what? Ten years since then? And yet she still remembers that look. 'That's just the way she's supposed to look. They were supposed to get together in the sequel right, but he went and fell in love with that… other lady with the green skin and messed everything up. It's a programmed reaction, right?'

So if that's all true, she thinks to herself, how did they end up in this position anyway?

Okay, so she's not your typical human being. And she's not real, and she shouldn't be able to kiss like that. But what they're doing now. That's perfectly normal isn't it? It's something humans do all the time, even these days, with the world falling to bits all around them. Even if she's not real. Who says she has to be? What else had she been expecting? Or wanting?

Well, it wasn't something he was supposed to see, for a start. But then, there's a lot she wishes he hadn't had to see. The end of the old world, for example. And his parents getting blasted, and then his best friend. So this should really have been nothing compared to all that, right?

'…Who am I kidding? He's hates me. Us. And God knows how Ace is going to react.

Not that that matters…'

There's love, Kat thinks, and there's… love love, and she's not even all that sure if the program or whatever it is, is advanced enough to know the difference or if she knows either of them at all. And Kat wasn't sure whether or not this counts as instinct or something like that. But she knows this is something she used to feel for Mark, and now all that's changed. It's kind of hard knowing that the other woman is just a program.

'She doesn't feel anything. She just… thinks she does.'

But Kat feels something. And that's what matters, right?

Okay, so he doesn't exactly see it that way.

He's not as angry as she was expecting. Only thing is, that kind of makes her feel worse. Becauseall he's got left for her issomething worse than anger.But it's not like she can change the past, and she's never been the kind of just cut out of stuff in the present. She's not really a quitter. Neither of them are.

And the static doesn't hurt so much the next time, anyway.

Fin.

Flame at will, people, I can take it.