..What If.. -- Club Alien

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What if I'm a weeping willow?

Laughing tears upon my pillow...

What if I'm a socialite

Who wants to be alone?

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Her features visibly softened, the cold and hard fear that had been so stark on her face dissolving into an expression of relief. It was a naked emotion, one not forced or hidden...it was probably the first true side she'd shown him since finding out who he was. She wasn't hiding behind the fire and brimstone of her anger this time...and the pureness of her relief cast her in an almost innocent light. And then he voiced his question, and the spell was broken. Her guard was up and the mask was back in place. She frowned, giving her head a little shake. "I guess I'm just really shaken up over those thugs still. Don't want to take any chances on running into them again." Oh, she was lying through her teeth, but that was something she had become quite accustomed to. Hadn't she spent ten years lying? Oh, that black eye? It's nothing. I just walked into the bathroom door in the middle of the night. Silly me. Or the ever classic, I lost my footing on the stairs, oh, what a klutz I am! Excuses. Lies. She had to be good. Because if anyone was the wiser, she had no doubt Norbert would have made her pay for her failure. Pay for it dearly.

Kat was no more looking forward to spending an evening holed up in the hotel room with Paige than he was with her. She was going to make it a point to keep as much space between them as possible...now that she knew that he still rooted deeply in her soul, that despite what she'd tried to convince herself, she didn't hate him...well, it would just be better if she kept away. She wouldn't be able to resist him, she knew that much. And good god, the last thing she needed was to be fucking the ghost from her past. Such an idea would probably make any therapist in the country scream in protest.

Her fingertips closed on a pill, and she palmed it immediately. She didn't know where the others had rolled off to, but that was alright. Maybe she'd try to kick the habit again after she got through the night. But she would certainly need he sweet help of Percocet to carry away the pain tonight...and not because of the beating she'd taken. No, Kat was used to fists, and in a warped way, had even begun to crave them as the years passed. It was the huge gory and gaping emotional would that she couldn't handle. It had been ripped wide and ugly the second Paige had spoken his name, and the only way to dress that wound was the little white circle of bliss in her hand. She slipped it into the cup of her bra, lacking the necessary pockets in which to conceal it. "I'm sorry. I'm just...I'm shaky. I really... I didn't mean to drop it." Kat didn't realize it, but there was an undertone of fear in her voice. In her old life, such a transgression as dumping her purse in public might have gotten her a slap. Or at the very least, a mental beating. So it was only natural that she immediately begin to ask for forgiveness.

Her fingertips brushed his as she helped to collect the items, and she very nearly gasped. The electric shock she felt from that skin to skin contact was an almost tangible thing, and so unexpected it made her breath hitch. She faltered, glancing up at him in brief wonder. And then, just as quickly, she snatched up the purse and held it open for him to deposit his collection inside. It looked like they had gotten most of the important stuff, save for some spare change and the runaway pills. Maybe a bobby pin or two. "I won't argue with you about that. Can I have the key so I can get started?" She asked, slinging her purse over her shoulder. When he handed it to her, she hurried inside without another word.

The room was small, she realized in dismay. And...oh, god damn the luck....there was one fucking bed. Of course! If there was a god, Kat was mighty sure he hated her, and fiercely. Despite the rundown appearance of the place, it looked clean at least...so that was a plus. With a sigh, she made a beeline for the bathroom. She didn't bother locking the door, a subconscious thing. Norbert had enjoyed interrupting her showers, and if she had denied him that...well, she didn't want to think about what would have happened. So it was habit to leave doors unlocked. Kat dropped her purse on the floor next to th toilet, before draping Paige's jacket over the closed lid. She then fished around in the black lace of her bra until she found the pill she was looking for.

She dry swallowed it, realizing her hands were beginning to shake quite violently. Apparently, the weight of the past hour was hitting her full force now that the adrenaline had worked it's way out of her system. She moved to the shower and turned it on, before slowly getting undressed, the ache of her muscles screaming with each movement. Once nude, Kat looked toward the full length bathroom mirror, aware that she was scared of what she'd see there. She moved slowly, until she caught sight of the monstrosity that served as her being. She wore a bib of cakey, crusted blood around her mouth and nose. A deep crevice lined the corner of her lip where it had been split, and blood was congealed in it's depth. Her face looked puffy, and she quite sure she could detect a bruise blossoming under the skin of her right cheek. Her long red hair hung in matted clumps and dirt and debris peppered those strands.

Kat's stomach twisted as her gaze drifted lower. Three white crescents stood out against the flesh of the side swells of her breasts. If she stared at them long enough, she could still remember the pain of those bites. Norbert had so loved to tear into her with his teeth...and while she bore the same type of scars on the blade of her left shoulder, her breasts had been by far the worst. She couldn't remember just why he had done it...likely it was the bed wasn't fixed just right or she had neglected to press his uniform in such a way...it didn't take much to earn his wrath. But the worst part was that when he did it, he wouldn't let go. If she screamed, he bit harder.

Her gaze drifted lower still, to where the criss cross marks rested on her lower belly, right above her right hip. These she could deal with, because these were her own doing. This was the one area that was hers...an area she could control. And she had. Cutting had become an impulsive thing in the later years of her marriage...a way of bleeding out all of the pain and misery of her every day life. It was only a small miracle that she didn't have the urge now, after all she'd been through. Perhaps she would have, if not for the sudden wave of disgust that captured her in the next moment.

Her body was sickly thin, seemingly every bone jutting out against her skin. Faint yellow bruises kissed at the nip of her waist, the faint reminders of Norbert's last beating (her kidney's had taken the brunt that time...she had seen blood in her urine for three days following). Kat was, for the first time in ten years, fully and completely awake to what she had become. It was like dreaming in reverse...waking up only to fight that your real life was the true nightmare. Her belly roiled and she turned to brace herself against the basin, her stomach trying to reject the one thing she had given it recently. She fought to keep it down, but a mess of bile escaped her...bringing with it the gem that could have delivered her from misery. It slipped down the sink before she had even recovered from the heave, and was gone.

She wasn't even aware she had begun to sob, her whole body shuddering with the silent gasps of her tears. She saw now what others saw. She saw now what Paige saw. A disgusting, cowardly woman who, if anything, deserved everything she had ever gotten from her husband, if only because she was dumb enough to take it. Kat slipped into the stand-up shower, which was quite large for such a swanky hotel. The hot water sluiced around her body as she braced her back against the wall, her tears now camouflaged with the water that beat on her face. She slid down until she was sitting on the shower floor, curling herself into a ball as she let out 10 years worth of misery as silently as she could. She cried for her youth. She cried for lost years. But most of all, she cried for Paige, and for what could have been, if only she had listened to him. Her body tried once more to purge itself, but there was nothing left for her stomach to give. So Kat just sat there in the steam and the wet, oblivious to time as it passed and anything else. So lost as she was in her new found reflection, getting her attention would have been something akin to raising the dead.

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What if I'm a toothless leopard?

What if I'm a sheepless shepherd?

What if I'm an angel

Without wings to take me home?

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