Chapter 63 – Anxiety
AN:blushes uploaded too fast and forgot to give cred to 'The Blackeyed Peas for the song Anxiety, which is theirs and can be seen on the awesome movie 'You got Served' but I knew about it before I saw that movie, LOL.
Everyone filed into Connor's house, which doubled as the home of the Tigers of L.A.
It was an unassuming grey house on the outside. It was surrounded by a chain link fence, had a walkway up from the gate to the front door and a larger then average driveway. The driveway was filled with highly modded and tricked out domestic cars, mustangs and Trans Am's, Chevy II's and Chargers. There were also a fair number of sport bikes, or crotch rockets as so many called them. Inside, the house was very different from what most expected based on the look of the outside.
It was set up with all the latest in entertainment gear in the living room and when Kat and the crowd with her arrived the big screen TV was blasting out the latest Hollywood blockbuster by the state of the art DVD home theater system connected to it.
It was promptly silenced when the men who were watching it saw who had arrived and the look on her face.
Kat's countance could only be described as grim. She looked resigned and upset. A lot of the current Tigers only knew Kat as the girl who lived with Sean, Kale and Stacy; they didn't know Kat the way she had been when she'd lived at Connor's house.
Many of the guys in the Tigers knew Kat from before she and her guys moved out of the very house she was once again standing in. They knew, in vague detail what went down, and what was going to be expected of them to put it right. All of the Tigers were ready for whatever they had to do to get Connor's brother and Kat's mother back.
Kat stood in the middle of the living room and looked around. Nothing about the room had changed, but yet everything felt different. It wasn't home, and it didn't feel like home and that was disconcerting. It had always been home before, even after she'd moved out. But now the house in Echo Park was home, and Connor's was the place that didn't mesh, the place where she felt like she was just visiting. But, while it wasn't home, it still felt familiar at a time when everything felt foreign and everything was spiraling out of her control.
Stacy walked up behind Kat, cutting off Leon, or 'the punk' as Stacy thought of him, who'd looked like he was on his way over to talk to her. Stacy wrapped his arms around her waist and she tipped her head back into his shoulder. Stacy shot Leon a dirty look over Kat's head. Leon retreated to the corner of the room where the rest of his team had congregated.
"Stace, what are we gonna do?"
"What we came to do Kitten, get Sean and your mom back."
"I can't." Kat whispered. "I could have before but I can't now. I've changed too much. I'm not that girl anymore."
"You can Kitten. You can do it. But if you really don't think you can, we can do it without you. We'll find a way."
"I don't want to be that girl anymore. I'm not that girl."
"There was nothin wrong with her." Stacy only told the truth in his mind.
"She was bad news Stace. That Kat was bad news. She was pure evil and I don't want to be like her ever again."
"When she had to be. She wasn't pure evil. Not unless times got really bad. And this is one of those times Kitten. We need you." Stacy rested his chin on Kat's shoulder. Kat seemed to wrestle with some internal struggle. She seemed to reach a decision.
"Aiight. Connor!" Kat called, standing up and away from Stacy, decision made. And once that decision was made it had to be put into effect right away or she knew she'd lose the courage she'd screwed up and chicken out.
"What baby girl?" Connor asked as he walked up to Kat.
"Get me my guns." Kat ordered in a tone that no one had heard her use in a very long time, or in the case of the Toretto's not ever.
"Baby girl, you don't mean that. Besides, you told me to sell them. Remember?" Connor was remembering how lethal Kat was with the particular guns she was talking about. She'd used lots of them in the past, but there was no doubt in Connor's mind which guns she was ordering him to fetch for her now.
"Yeah, I did. But you told me you wouldn't because you knew someday I'd want them back. So Connor, get me my guns." Kat growled the last part.
Connor sighed. "They're in your room, everything is still up in your room like you left it. I always figured you'd all move home again. I never figured you'd make it on your own and then when I realized you were going to I never got around to emptying your room."
"Good." Kat started to stalk off toward the stairs.
"Kitten?" Connor's question stopped her.
"Yeah?"
"You sure you wanna go there?"
"Got no choice." Kat answered firmly and headed up to her old room.
Connor looked at Kale and Stacy. "This can't be good."
"She needs to do this." Stacy replied. "She can't handle it any other way and we need her."
"I don't know that we do. There's lots of help here, she could stay here and help with the scanners and phones and stuff." Connor had missed Kat but he was pretty sure she was better off in her new life then in her old one.
"It's her choice." Kale tossed in and, seeing the logic in that statement the other two let it drop.
"What's the big deal anyway?" Vince asked.
"With what?" Connor replied.
"Kat and her old life."
"You'll see." Connor sighed. He was both dreading and anticipating the moment when 'the old Kat' returned. "How is this gonna go down? These two have some idea what we need to do?" Connor gestured toward Josef and Ivan.
"Yeah, and we have an inside connection. The FBI has had an agent undercover with Kat's stepfather for a few years and they're sending him over to give us all the info and help he can." Brian informed Connor and the other Tigers.
"Ah hell no! You want me to let an FBI agent into my crib. Hell no!" Connor began to freak out. He didn't see how he could have an FBI agent in his home filled with stolen goods, drugs, paraphernalia, criminals, and illegal firearms, not to mention two of the people from the mob that the FBI was no doubt after.
"He's not coming here looking to get you for what will amount to some petty low rent charges compared to what he has on Kat's step dad. He's coming to put a big dent in organized crime and Mob activity by getting Sergei Kalmanovitch off the streets and out of the scene. He's not going to care about what you're up to. He won't even go beyond whatever area you set up as the HQ for communication and organization." Brian tried to reassure Connor. "Besides, we need this guy."
"Why? We have these two fools." Connor answered, pointing at Kat's brothers.
"Yeah, but they've been out of the loop for the last few days. The agent is sneaking off as we speak. He knows where Kat's mom is and her brothers aren't totally sure. Don't you want the best chance at bringing Sean back?" Brian questioned, concern for the three missing persons evident on his face.
"Fine." Connor conceded, obviously not pleased even still with the whole situation.
"When's he getting here?" Dom asked Brian, anxious to get Jesse home.
"Soon." Brian answered.
Leon wasn't sure what he thought about the situation he had found himself in.
He wanted to get Jesse home safe and he was trying to make that his focus, but at the same time he was hurting for Kat too. Both for what she was going through and what he'd done to her. But he didn't know how to make it right or what to say.
Plus he figured her anger might be helping her make it through the whole situation so he didn't even know if he should try to explain himself to her. He figured he'd let her hold her anger till after things went down, and then he'd insist they talked about everything.
He knew he'd messed up a lot but he hoped that by telling Kat how he really felt, and why he'd acted how he had she'd be able to forgive him. And he admitted to himself the was hoping her joy at having her mom and Sean back safe would put her in a benevolent mood.
Upstairs Kat was dealing with her own internal struggles.
She hit play on her CD player after inserting her favorite CD. She didn't want to listen to her own thoughts any longer. She wanted to drown them out and just shut her thought process off while she did what she had to do to prepare herself. The first song filled the air in a crescendo.
'I feel like I wanna smack somebody! Turn around and just bitch slap somebody! But I ain't goin' out bro, I ain't givin' into it. Anxieties bash my mind in.'
Try as she might, she couldn't shut down her thoughts. They kept going like a run away train and she couldn't make them stop.
Here she was, back in the middle of things she had told herself she'd never be in the middle of again. Here she was putting on the outfit she swore she'd never wear again, picking up weapons she swore she'd never wield again.
Here she was ready to do things she swore she'd never do again.
'Shackle and chained, my soul feels stained.'
Her hands were already so bloodstained in her mind she didn't know how she'd live with herself to see more blood on them but she knew it was one experience she was going to have to go through first to know if she could endure it. And she knew just as surely that she was going to have to spill more blood; that more deaths would be on her hands if she went along and helped actively in the rescue of her friends.
'Lately my whole aim is to maintain and regain control of my mainframe.'
She'd worked so hard to let go of what she had been and become what she was, she didn't want to let the new her go. But she didn't see how she could just sit home and do nothing. Not when her best friend's life was at stake. The loss of Sean from her life had effected her deeper then she ever would have thought it could. He'd been her rock, her touchstone for so long she'd gotten use to looking to him for guidance and help. Now she felt like she had no one to look to for those things. And the old Kat had been far more adept at handling it then the girl she'd forced herself to become to stay sane when she'd abandoned the life she was about to take back up.
'My train of thoughts more like a runaway train. I'm in a fast car drivin' in a fast lane in the rain and I might just hydroplane.'
Her life and her thoughts were out of control and there was nothing she could do. She hit her knees in the middle of her room.
"Lord, I know I haven't been the best person in the world, I really do. I know I made some promises to you about what I would do and what I would never do again if you'd just help me and the guys get out of the life we were living and into a safer one. But the thing is Lord a lot of people are depending on me to help them get Sean home. And they need me to be strong and be the way I was to get it done."
Kat looked skyward.
"But it's gonna mean doing some things God. Things I told you and myself I'd never do again. And it has to be done. So if I'm going to hell over it then I guess I was never sure I wasn't going there anyway. But I just wanted you to know that I know you kept your end of the deal, and I'm sorry I couldn't keep mine."
'I'm filled up with pain, tryin' to gain my sanity. Everywhere I turn it's a dead end in front of me. With nowhere to go gotta shake this anxiety. Got me feelin' strange paranoia took over me, Aad its weighin' me down. And I can't run any longer!'
"So God, if you could see your way into doing me this one last favor, if you could help me get through this by making me back into the old me I'd be really appreciative."
With that she stood up and looked around. She didn't feel much different but she thought maybe she would when she finished getting ready. She walked into the bathroom attached to her old room and found it just as unchanged as the rest of her space in Connor's house. She began to do her hair and makeup. Then she got dressed in the outfit she found still hung in the closet where she'd left it. And when she did up the last zipper she felt somehow different.
'I don't fear none of my enemies, and I don't fear bullets from oozies. I've been dealing with something that's worse than these, that'll make you fall to your knees and that's the anxiety. The sane and the insane rivalry.
Paranoia's brought me to my knees. Lord please please please take away my anxiety. The sane and the insane rivalry. Paranoia's brought me to my knees Lord, please please please. Take away my anxiety.'
She knew why she felt different. The fear was gone. The indecision was missing. The anxiety had disappeared. She knew what she had to do, and what her purpose was.
"Thank you."
She left her room.
AN:blushes uploaded too fast and forgot to give cred to 'The Blackeyed Peas for the song Anxiety, which is theirs and can be seen on the awesome movie 'You got Served' but I knew about it before I saw that movie, LOL.
Everyone filed into Connor's house, which doubled as the home of the Tigers of L.A.
It was an unassuming grey house on the outside. It was surrounded by a chain link fence, had a walkway up from the gate to the front door and a larger then average driveway. The driveway was filled with highly modded and tricked out domestic cars, mustangs and Trans Am's, Chevy II's and Chargers. There were also a fair number of sport bikes, or crotch rockets as so many called them. Inside, the house was very different from what most expected based on the look of the outside.
It was set up with all the latest in entertainment gear in the living room and when Kat and the crowd with her arrived the big screen TV was blasting out the latest Hollywood blockbuster by the state of the art DVD home theater system connected to it.
It was promptly silenced when the men who were watching it saw who had arrived and the look on her face.
Kat's countance could only be described as grim. She looked resigned and upset. A lot of the current Tigers only knew Kat as the girl who lived with Sean, Kale and Stacy; they didn't know Kat the way she had been when she'd lived at Connor's house.
Many of the guys in the Tigers knew Kat from before she and her guys moved out of the very house she was once again standing in. They knew, in vague detail what went down, and what was going to be expected of them to put it right. All of the Tigers were ready for whatever they had to do to get Connor's brother and Kat's mother back.
Kat stood in the middle of the living room and looked around. Nothing about the room had changed, but yet everything felt different. It wasn't home, and it didn't feel like home and that was disconcerting. It had always been home before, even after she'd moved out. But now the house in Echo Park was home, and Connor's was the place that didn't mesh, the place where she felt like she was just visiting. But, while it wasn't home, it still felt familiar at a time when everything felt foreign and everything was spiraling out of her control.
Stacy walked up behind Kat, cutting off Leon, or 'the punk' as Stacy thought of him, who'd looked like he was on his way over to talk to her. Stacy wrapped his arms around her waist and she tipped her head back into his shoulder. Stacy shot Leon a dirty look over Kat's head. Leon retreated to the corner of the room where the rest of his team had congregated.
"Stace, what are we gonna do?"
"What we came to do Kitten, get Sean and your mom back."
"I can't." Kat whispered. "I could have before but I can't now. I've changed too much. I'm not that girl anymore."
"You can Kitten. You can do it. But if you really don't think you can, we can do it without you. We'll find a way."
"I don't want to be that girl anymore. I'm not that girl."
"There was nothin wrong with her." Stacy only told the truth in his mind.
"She was bad news Stace. That Kat was bad news. She was pure evil and I don't want to be like her ever again."
"When she had to be. She wasn't pure evil. Not unless times got really bad. And this is one of those times Kitten. We need you." Stacy rested his chin on Kat's shoulder. Kat seemed to wrestle with some internal struggle. She seemed to reach a decision.
"Aiight. Connor!" Kat called, standing up and away from Stacy, decision made. And once that decision was made it had to be put into effect right away or she knew she'd lose the courage she'd screwed up and chicken out.
"What baby girl?" Connor asked as he walked up to Kat.
"Get me my guns." Kat ordered in a tone that no one had heard her use in a very long time, or in the case of the Toretto's not ever.
"Baby girl, you don't mean that. Besides, you told me to sell them. Remember?" Connor was remembering how lethal Kat was with the particular guns she was talking about. She'd used lots of them in the past, but there was no doubt in Connor's mind which guns she was ordering him to fetch for her now.
"Yeah, I did. But you told me you wouldn't because you knew someday I'd want them back. So Connor, get me my guns." Kat growled the last part.
Connor sighed. "They're in your room, everything is still up in your room like you left it. I always figured you'd all move home again. I never figured you'd make it on your own and then when I realized you were going to I never got around to emptying your room."
"Good." Kat started to stalk off toward the stairs.
"Kitten?" Connor's question stopped her.
"Yeah?"
"You sure you wanna go there?"
"Got no choice." Kat answered firmly and headed up to her old room.
Connor looked at Kale and Stacy. "This can't be good."
"She needs to do this." Stacy replied. "She can't handle it any other way and we need her."
"I don't know that we do. There's lots of help here, she could stay here and help with the scanners and phones and stuff." Connor had missed Kat but he was pretty sure she was better off in her new life then in her old one.
"It's her choice." Kale tossed in and, seeing the logic in that statement the other two let it drop.
"What's the big deal anyway?" Vince asked.
"With what?" Connor replied.
"Kat and her old life."
"You'll see." Connor sighed. He was both dreading and anticipating the moment when 'the old Kat' returned. "How is this gonna go down? These two have some idea what we need to do?" Connor gestured toward Josef and Ivan.
"Yeah, and we have an inside connection. The FBI has had an agent undercover with Kat's stepfather for a few years and they're sending him over to give us all the info and help he can." Brian informed Connor and the other Tigers.
"Ah hell no! You want me to let an FBI agent into my crib. Hell no!" Connor began to freak out. He didn't see how he could have an FBI agent in his home filled with stolen goods, drugs, paraphernalia, criminals, and illegal firearms, not to mention two of the people from the mob that the FBI was no doubt after.
"He's not coming here looking to get you for what will amount to some petty low rent charges compared to what he has on Kat's step dad. He's coming to put a big dent in organized crime and Mob activity by getting Sergei Kalmanovitch off the streets and out of the scene. He's not going to care about what you're up to. He won't even go beyond whatever area you set up as the HQ for communication and organization." Brian tried to reassure Connor. "Besides, we need this guy."
"Why? We have these two fools." Connor answered, pointing at Kat's brothers.
"Yeah, but they've been out of the loop for the last few days. The agent is sneaking off as we speak. He knows where Kat's mom is and her brothers aren't totally sure. Don't you want the best chance at bringing Sean back?" Brian questioned, concern for the three missing persons evident on his face.
"Fine." Connor conceded, obviously not pleased even still with the whole situation.
"When's he getting here?" Dom asked Brian, anxious to get Jesse home.
"Soon." Brian answered.
Leon wasn't sure what he thought about the situation he had found himself in.
He wanted to get Jesse home safe and he was trying to make that his focus, but at the same time he was hurting for Kat too. Both for what she was going through and what he'd done to her. But he didn't know how to make it right or what to say.
Plus he figured her anger might be helping her make it through the whole situation so he didn't even know if he should try to explain himself to her. He figured he'd let her hold her anger till after things went down, and then he'd insist they talked about everything.
He knew he'd messed up a lot but he hoped that by telling Kat how he really felt, and why he'd acted how he had she'd be able to forgive him. And he admitted to himself the was hoping her joy at having her mom and Sean back safe would put her in a benevolent mood.
Upstairs Kat was dealing with her own internal struggles.
She hit play on her CD player after inserting her favorite CD. She didn't want to listen to her own thoughts any longer. She wanted to drown them out and just shut her thought process off while she did what she had to do to prepare herself. The first song filled the air in a crescendo.
'I feel like I wanna smack somebody! Turn around and just bitch slap somebody! But I ain't goin' out bro, I ain't givin' into it. Anxieties bash my mind in.'
Try as she might, she couldn't shut down her thoughts. They kept going like a run away train and she couldn't make them stop.
Here she was, back in the middle of things she had told herself she'd never be in the middle of again. Here she was putting on the outfit she swore she'd never wear again, picking up weapons she swore she'd never wield again.
Here she was ready to do things she swore she'd never do again.
'Shackle and chained, my soul feels stained.'
Her hands were already so bloodstained in her mind she didn't know how she'd live with herself to see more blood on them but she knew it was one experience she was going to have to go through first to know if she could endure it. And she knew just as surely that she was going to have to spill more blood; that more deaths would be on her hands if she went along and helped actively in the rescue of her friends.
'Lately my whole aim is to maintain and regain control of my mainframe.'
She'd worked so hard to let go of what she had been and become what she was, she didn't want to let the new her go. But she didn't see how she could just sit home and do nothing. Not when her best friend's life was at stake. The loss of Sean from her life had effected her deeper then she ever would have thought it could. He'd been her rock, her touchstone for so long she'd gotten use to looking to him for guidance and help. Now she felt like she had no one to look to for those things. And the old Kat had been far more adept at handling it then the girl she'd forced herself to become to stay sane when she'd abandoned the life she was about to take back up.
'My train of thoughts more like a runaway train. I'm in a fast car drivin' in a fast lane in the rain and I might just hydroplane.'
Her life and her thoughts were out of control and there was nothing she could do. She hit her knees in the middle of her room.
"Lord, I know I haven't been the best person in the world, I really do. I know I made some promises to you about what I would do and what I would never do again if you'd just help me and the guys get out of the life we were living and into a safer one. But the thing is Lord a lot of people are depending on me to help them get Sean home. And they need me to be strong and be the way I was to get it done."
Kat looked skyward.
"But it's gonna mean doing some things God. Things I told you and myself I'd never do again. And it has to be done. So if I'm going to hell over it then I guess I was never sure I wasn't going there anyway. But I just wanted you to know that I know you kept your end of the deal, and I'm sorry I couldn't keep mine."
'I'm filled up with pain, tryin' to gain my sanity. Everywhere I turn it's a dead end in front of me. With nowhere to go gotta shake this anxiety. Got me feelin' strange paranoia took over me, Aad its weighin' me down. And I can't run any longer!'
"So God, if you could see your way into doing me this one last favor, if you could help me get through this by making me back into the old me I'd be really appreciative."
With that she stood up and looked around. She didn't feel much different but she thought maybe she would when she finished getting ready. She walked into the bathroom attached to her old room and found it just as unchanged as the rest of her space in Connor's house. She began to do her hair and makeup. Then she got dressed in the outfit she found still hung in the closet where she'd left it. And when she did up the last zipper she felt somehow different.
'I don't fear none of my enemies, and I don't fear bullets from oozies. I've been dealing with something that's worse than these, that'll make you fall to your knees and that's the anxiety. The sane and the insane rivalry.
Paranoia's brought me to my knees. Lord please please please take away my anxiety. The sane and the insane rivalry. Paranoia's brought me to my knees Lord, please please please. Take away my anxiety.'
She knew why she felt different. The fear was gone. The indecision was missing. The anxiety had disappeared. She knew what she had to do, and what her purpose was.
"Thank you."
She left her room.