Chapter 32

AN: I'm sorry for taking so long to update!

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Reid's eyes were closed, more obstinately than tiredly. The cop pestering him would not shut up. It had been two hours since he made that damn phone call, and nothing. Nothing. What had he expected? Thanks a bunch, Mom.

"I know you're awake." Reid ignored him. There were more important things to think about. Such as the fact that he did not remember what had happened to Mary Harcortte. He didn't remember coming here. He didn't… And there was something else, something far more subtle and far more worrying.

He felt… different. He'd ascended, of course, but Caleb had told him that it felt no different, save for when you used, because you had far more power. But he wasn't using now, and he could feel it in his bones. Something. Something in him, something that hadn't been there before. Reid shivered minutely. What had happened to him in that house? He had a vague memory of Kat's face, a blurry mixture of scared and relieved, staring down at him after the explosion. Why had she been so scared? Obviously he wasn't hurt all that badly. Just a few broken ribs and a bump on the head, actually. Why had she been so goddamned terrified-looking? Was it fear for him? Or… Reid swallowed. Had it been fear of him?

"Ma'am, you're not-"

"I'm no such thing. Get out before I have you thrown in jail, you ugly little man." That voice… Every molecule of Reid's body seemed to freeze all at once. Slowly, disbelievingly, he opened his eyes.

Veronica Garwin, dressed in full-tilt upper-class finery, stood regally and soberly in the doorway. The cop was staring at her, half-impressed, half-angry. Reid just gaped, shocked. Not shocked entirely that she'd come, but shocked at the way she looked: clean, in control, proud… normal.

"How dare you question my son without a lawyer present? Have you even read him his rights? I don't suppose you have. Get out of here, and maybe I won't press charges." The contempt in her voice was a familiar sound to her son, who had heard it directed at him many a time. So he wasn't surprised to see the officer slink out of the room like a kicked dog. When they were alone, Mrs. Garwin strode to the seat the cop had been using and sat down with all the grace of Scarlett O'Hara.

"What happened," she asked simply. Reid stared at her, trying to read her expression or her eyes or… But there was nothing. The haughty belle was gone, having performed marvelously, replaced with… the statue. But she was here, and that was what was important, right? She was here.

"Some bitch wanted to steal my power," he said quietly. "So she kidnapped Kat because she's a werewolf, and then tricked me into getting trapped as well. She was gonna kill us both. I got Kat out, but I was still inside. She and the others started trying to rescue me. I blew up the house in the end, and I might have… I don't know. Somehow, Mary – that's the one who set the whole thing up – ended up dead."

"So you're under arrest for blowing up the house, and killing this woman?"

"That's what I hear." There was a long silence, mother and son watching each other warily. Reid eyed Veronica's face, taking it in. It wasn't often he got to see her without the influence of anything but real emotions. Now, it was a face he almost didn't recognize.

Then, quite suddenly, she began to laugh.

"You stupid boy," she chuckled, "you're just… just like your father." With those last words, her laughter trailed off, leaving a wake that Reid missed despite himself. He frowned at her.

"What?"

"He…" She stopped, awkwardly, and cleared her throat. "Never mind."

"Why are you here," Reid asked, suddenly unsure of himself and her. "What are you doing?"

"Why, I'm getting you out," she responded coolly.

"And… why are you doing that?" He wanted to hear it. Greedily, his heart clamored for her words, her acceptance of him into her own. He hated the wanting, hated the weakness, but wanted it nonetheless.

"I have no idea," his mother answered, just as coolly, and he understood that that was true. She really did not know. But that was a step, he supposed. Better than 'because you'd be a disgrace to the family name if I didn't' or something of the like.

"Oh. Well, cool."

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"Let's face it," Kat said holding out her hands. She was sitting up in the bed, cross-legged. "You really have no grounds to keep me here. You have no proof, no witnesses, no nothing. You have no grounds to arrest me at all."

"Officer Waters-"

"What? Are you still saying I knocked him out? Me? A seventeen-year-old girl? Yeah, that's rich. You honestly think I could punch out a full-grown officer of the law with a single hit?" She shook her head as if astounded at the stupidity of it all. "As for the explosion, I had nothing to do with that. You have no way of proving I did. You won't let me see my father, or my lawyer, and you didn't even read me my freaking rights before doping me and locking me up in here! I'll sue you! I'll sue your goddamn pants off if you try and keep me here!"

Half an hour later, Kat sniffed and folded her arms across her bloody-clothed chest as she stalked out of the hospital. She would have called her father, but it was only a few blocks from the hospital to the suburb where she lived, so she decided instead on scaring the living daylights out of anyone she came across. Stupid hospital. Didn't even give me clean clothes.

She smirked, thinking of the hospital, and then thinking of the cops. More to the point, thinking of the look on the cops' faces when she'd thrown down her little gauntlet. They so had not seen that coming. And, after a couple death glares and a strict 'do NOT leave town', they'd let her go. She had no doubts that she would be watched, but Kat was happy enough to be out of the goddamn bed. Alive. Physically fine. Mentally? Well, she preferred not to think about that. Kat swiftly shoved away the mental image of Mary's broken body. Right now, she was going to go home, hug her father for about an hour, and take a shower. Then, she would see what was going on with the others.

Much to Kat's disappointment, there were no small children playing in the yards of the suburban houses she passed on her way home. No mothers to freak out with her bloodstained clothes and bandaged hands.

When she reached her own house, Kat found that she could not open the door. Couldn't even reach for the knob. She felt a rush of blood to her head, and swayed a little. It seemed so… wrong, somehow, like she wasn't supposed to actually be safe. Gritting her teeth, Kat shook her head.

"You made it, girl, now open the damn door!" With that bit of self-encouragement, Kat stretched out one cleanly-wrapped hand and grasped the doorknob. It turned easily, and she pushed the door open. "Hello? Dad?"

Nothing.

Kat stepped inside. It was late-afternoon, so it was possible he wasn't home yet. Inhaling, Kat smelled the heady scent of familiarity, and nearly cried with it. She jogged upstairs to the bathroom with the shower in it, and stripped in what felt like milliseconds. Carefully unwrapping the bandages on her injured hands, she laid them on the sink and turned on the shower. Stepping inside, she did cry… or maybe not. Maybe it was just the hot water, trailing down her cheeks.

Blood, dirt, despair, fatigue, all of it washed away and swirled down the drain at her feet. Kat ran her hands through her hair, careful to avoid direct contact with her palms. The cuts were closed, and she'd only had stitches in one of them, but they still hurt. Now, though, she felt… reborn. And in a way, she was. She'd died, and been brought back. She had been given, if she chose to see it so melodramatically, a second chance at life itself.

When Kat stepped out of the shower and pulled on her bathrobe, which still hung on the back of the door from the last time she'd used it, there was the sound of a door opening and closing downstairs. She slipped the bandages back on her hands and opened the bathroom door, not even bothering to try and dry her hair.

For the first time in her life, Kat understood what it was to fly.

Down the stairs like a bird, an angel, an honest-to-god Superwoman, she hurtled into her father with all the force of a small child desperate for touch. Her arms wrapped around him like a lifeline, and her face buried in his shoulder.

"Daddy," she cried, "Daddy, I'm back. I'm back."

"Oh god," he murmured, haltingly, choked. "My baby."

They stood there in the foyer, clinging to each other, for a long, long time.