Some Life This Is - Kate the Chaser X Hoodie

10

It doesn't take long for Kate to be done bartering, her pockets a few hundred dollars heavier, poignantly ignoring the lovestruck gaze of the boy at the cash register and the sharp, paranoid glares of the other workers around.

"I'm thinking that we both need haircuts, then we can get just us some food or  we could take a little drive and go somewhere." Heather says, smiling.

"Why do we need haircuts, I do my own and I'm pretty sure you do too. And it's expensive."

"Because, Kate," she says, driving away from the forest into the actual town, where Kate is least comfortable. "It feels good and we are on a feel-good girls' day."
Kate rebuts, "I have literally never felt like a human girl."
"Alright, so I'm doing all the talking today got it."

Kate ignores the endlessly staring, bloody-faced woman they drive past, nobody else acknowledging her. The hallucinations are back again. She sighs and slumps down in her seat, playing with the strings from her hood. She wants to protest the haircut idea but she can't find the words to do so.

"Alright now that we're all the way out of the woods, why'd you go and disappear on us? We were all real worried." She asks, pulling off to the side of the road and stopping. In response, Kate looks at her, confused. "I walk off all the time, it's not a big deal and we're all adults."

"We were worried is the big deal, you should've guessed that much. The boys never bring out their radios unless it's an emergency, the forest service can pick up the signals. You were gone for like 18 hours." She says, not giving any room for Kate to protest.

"...It's stupid." "It's not." "You wouldn't like the answer." "You don't know that." "...Don't tell Tim." "I won't."

Heather drives up to the diner as Kate recounts her fight with Skully, why it started, everything up to falling asleep next to Hoodie- a detail she pointedly leaves out. In return she stays quiet and listens, even as they walk into the diner and sit down.

"That's why I was gone until the morning, and probably also why Skully dipped so fast after it happened. I don't want you to tell Tim about any of this because I know he still loves enough of Skully to protect him to the end- and-and we both know about the pathetic 'novels' he gets really into every few months. It's probably better for him to be caught up on Skully than lost in some Chuck Tingle shit." Rogue gives a laugh at that, smiling and falling into some anecdotal story while she peruses the menu as Kate smiles and thinks about the tuft of honey colored hair she saw after Hoodie fell over, laughing to herself thinking of another incident that may or may not have involved the words "How far do you think I can throw you?"

"Hi I'm Natasha I'll be your server today, what can I get you two to drink?" Heather orders for both of them, Kate doesn't hear what's ordered for her, caught up in watching some people outside. Normal people. Simple people. Boring people, something else in her mind says. She sighs, turning away from the window and digging around in her pocket for her notebook and a crayon. Vague groping about quickly turns to frantic patting when she can't feel the spiral binding at the top.

"Give me your keys." She quickly orders Heather, slamming the halved purple crayon she had found onto the table.
"You're not allowed to drive, Tim's orders." "I don't give a shit and I wasn't planning on it. I think something fell out of my pocket in the car." Heather sighs and hands over the keys, "Five minutes." She says as Kate gets up and swiftly walks to the exit.

She runs over to the car, jamming the key into the driver-side door to unlock and open it before climbing in and rooting around the floor of the passenger side.

"Come ON you FUCK-" she grunts, jamming her hand down between the chair and the door to feel around for it, before then also leaning down and jamming her hand under the seat. Upon not finding it in the five minutes, and tearing the car apart as much as she could without getting in trouble with Tim and Heather, she leaves the car and punches a telephone pole. She shakes out her hand and grunts, holding her wrist as the bones set themselves back into place before going back inside, ignoring Heather as she digs through her bag.

Suddenly, sharply, upon not finding it, she sits up and puts her hands together on the table, a scary calm to the turmoil in her head. "We need to go home." She says, looking around sharply, seeing his faceless form at the end of the table behind Heather. The lack of the nausea and static tells her that it isn't real, but the sight effects her all the same.

Heather sharpens up, looking around without moving, unable to see Kate's hallucinations. "Why? Is something wrong?" "My notebook's fucking missing is what's wrong!" Kate sharply whispers back, brows furrowed  and face dark. Heather, naturally, just sighs and relaxes in a 'Oh, that's all?' kind of way. "We can look for it," she says, "when we get home later. If it makes you feel better we can go back to the shop and ask them if it fell out there, but we both need to get away from the boys for a bit, so we aren't going all the way back home yet." Kate grunts in response, tapping her foot and lowering her head. Heather watches her, and the moment the food is brought over she asks to just pay now and take it to go.

"You are acting incredibly juvenile right now." Heather says as they leave the diner. Kate feels ready to bite her as the words leave her mouth, but resigns to biting the inside of her cheek as they enter the car and drive back to the park shop.