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Dite's Decadent Delights, Tuesday

Her tattoos were healing nicely (if more than a little itchily), so Kathy was back at work today. She was avoiding anything that would work her arms a lot, instead focusing on the omnipresent paperwork that came with managing a store.

...There were apparently a lot of patriotic-themed toys out there in the world. Okay then. Looked like she'd have to update her order to include some for the Fourth. Maybe make a display with a fireworks pun?

She was so busy plotting the display that she didn't realize she'd grabbed strawberry-flavored lube to rub onto her shoulder instead of her plain lotion until the smell of fake strawberries hit her nose and her shoulder felt sticky.

"This is a very Monday-feeling Tuesday," she grumbled and got up to wash it off.

[No OCD but open!]

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In her slow, but ongoing, quest to get out more, Anne had managed to get into town for the day despite the weather. She wandered into Dite's without much in the way of real intent. Not that she didn't recognize the type of store that it was, and not that she'd brought much with her when she'd come to Fandom, she just wasn't looking for anything in particular.

Still, it was always interesting to see how even relatively recognizable things were different in this world.

"Oh! Hello!" Kathy said, looking up from wiping at her shoulder. "Welcome to Dite's Decadent Delights. I--I don't think we've met? Hello?"

She didn't mean that to be a question.

"No." Anne shook her head, offering Kathy a smile. "I don't believe we have. But since I'm pretty new, that's hardly your fault."

"I, uhh, also just came back to the island a few months ago," Kathy said with a diffident smile. "And I haven't really gotten out much since."

Because...reasons. Ex-zombie reasons.

"Oh, well, welcome back?" Anne studied Kathy for a moment, but nothing really jumped out at her.

"And, you say 'back', I take it you'd been here before?"

"I was a student here for three years," Kathy explained. "I left right before--" Her voice broke a moment and she coughed. "Right before graduation."

To fight a war. And fail. And die.

"Ah."

"And now you're back." Anne looked around the shop thoughtfully, pretty sure that, since this was Fandom, there was something that was going to be unusual to see.

"I suppose you must like this place, huh?"

Oh there likely was. Because again, Fandom.

"I can't think of anywhere else I could be," Kathy said, because that sounded better than, I can't think of anywhere else I can go. "It's a good place to figure out what to do next."

That drew Anne's attention back to Kathy, eyes showing perhaps a little more intensity than they had.

"Oh?" Anne was silent for a moment. "Do you have any pointers on that?"

Not that Anne was in a place to even begin considering that question, really, but she was hoping it'd come up sooner rather than later.

Kathy's laugh was a short, sharp sound. "I wish I did," she admitted, her gaze dropping to Anne's empty left sleeve. She absently rubbed at her shoulder, where her new tattoo was. "The best I've got is 'get a good support group while you flounder about.'"

That was pretty much where she was at.

"I'm Kathy, by the way." She held out her left hand, so Anne could shake with her right.

"Not bad advice," Anne decided with a little smile. One which broadened slightly as she reached out to shake Kathy's hand.

"And it's nice to meet you, Kathy. I'm Anne."

"You're a teacher up at the school, right?" Kathy asked, returning that smile with one of her own. "I think I've heard your name on the radio once or twice."

"Well, I'm trying to be, at least."

Anne offered a self-deprecating little grin.

"I've never really done anything quite like it, though, so I have no idea if I'm managing to actually teach anyone anything."

She had some experience training soldiers, but this was a totally different thing.

"I'm pretty sure than unless you're teaching people cold, hard facts, you have no idea whether or not they've learned it until years down the line," Kathy said thoughfully. "When you see the people they've become."

Anne chuckled and nodded. "That's probably true, but it does make it a little hard to know if I'm doing a decent job, or what I should be doing differently."

She was tired of making mistakes and not realizing that she had for years.

Well, that was something. Kathy had only had to wait a few weeks before discovering she'd made some disastrous mistakes.

"What are you teaching?" she asked. "I guarantee, it's probably much more educational than what I am."

Err, not that she really could call it teaching.

"Well. I'm attempting to teach a course on non-violent conflict resolution."

Anne shrugged a bit awkwardly. "But I'll admit that it's not a subject I'm especially well versed in in the first place."

"Me neither," Kathy said with a smile that was more rueful than bitter. She caught herself idly rubbing her new tattoo--the one on her wrist this time--and forced her hands down.

She looked at Anne, tilting her head slightly as she took in the full picture she presented. "Soldier?" she guessed.

"For a while," Anne answered with a slow nod.

She considered Kathy for a couple of seconds. "You?" She didn't think 'soldier', but it could be pretty hard to judge that sort of thing.

"Superhero," Kathy said, her lips twisting.

Anne's eyebrows rose in surprise, and she was silent for a moment.

"Tough gig," she eventually said.

A lot of expectation. A lot of responsibility. Hard to bear up under all that weight.

"Yeah," Kathy said, hand absently brushing over the hashmarks on her wrist again. "Didn't really work out. So now I'm here, running the sex toy shop on the island."

That was a heavily edited version of events, sure.

It wasn't that Anne hadn't noticed the tattoos, or recognized that they were relatively new, but she hadn't thought much of them at first. But now she was actually paying attention, studying the ink thoughtfully for a couple of seconds before looking back up at Kathy's face.

"How long?" she asked, sounding too empathetic to just be asking to be polite. Since she found herself here instead of out there?

"That's a pretty broad question," Kathy said, once again forcing her hands down to the counter. It was probably for the best that she didn't play poker. "Do you mean have I been back? Since the end of January."

Anne wasn't that much of a poker player either, to be honest.

Her curiosity was pretty obvious as she continued to study Kathy. Where would Anne be in six months? Would she be in a similar place as Kathy.

"How are you holding up?" she asked, prompted by the wondering.

Kathy readied her public smile, her 'I'm fine thanks' cheer, but paused before delivering either. Anne was clearly also going through some stuff.

"Depends on the day," she admitted. "Some days I'm fine. Some days I'm a mess. I guess I'm doing better than I was, because that used to change hourly, not daily."

"Yeah." That sounded familiar.

Not so much these days. After all, this wasn't the first time Anne had, let's say 'needed a break'. But the first time had been pretty rough.

Anne licked her lips. She wasn't sure she should offer anything. Wasn't sure it was her place. Wasn't even sure that she really had the capacity to help anyone else at the moment.

But she was still who she was, so she ultimately leaned forward slightly. "I know you don't know me or anything, but if you ever want to talk to someone, especially someone who doesn't know anything about you, or about who people think you are..."

She trailed off awkwardly and offered a little smile.

Sometimes it was the expectations that were the hardest part.

Kathy looked startled at that invitation. "What...what happened to you?" she asked. "What was it like for you?"

Anne was silent for a moment. But that question could have a lot of answers, and some of those answers hurt less than others. So Anne reached back into her past rather than talk about anything too recent.

Besides, it had been the first time.

"There was a war. On a planet called Velchees. A terrible one. Billions died. And, of course, there were soldiers everywhere, fighting to stay alive. Fighting to save the civilians under their care." Anne's voice grew soft for a moment. "Millions of heroes that no one remembers."

She sighed. "But I happened to be involved in a very public battle. And I was pretty, and people tended to like me, so all of a sudden I was the hero. Up on a pedestal, trying to bear up under all the weight of that expectation in the face of survivor's guilt. So many died to save just one more life, and I somehow made it out alive, and I was the hero instead of them?"

A slow headshake. "So I retired. I said it was because of all the damage my body had accumulated over the years, but I'm pretty sure people knew the truth." It was just too hard to live under all those expectations. Her own and everyone else's.

"I...it wasn't like that for me," Kathy said softly, shaking her head. "I volunteered. Not that there was anyone to volunteer to. I just...I developed powers and somehow thought that that qualified me to fight crime."

Part of her missed it with a sharpness that bordered on pain. Part of her flinched away from the very idea.

"And then...things got bad back home. I was called back by other superheroes. We thought we could fix it, stop it before it got too bad. Some friends came out to tell me I was wrong, to bring me home, but I didn't listen. And then I died."

She'd save the information about getting reanimated as a corpse until she saw how Anne took the idea of her getting reanimated at all.

Anne blinked slowly, looking Kathy up and down slowly. "You died," she repeated carefully. She didn't sound worried or put off or anything, but she was clearly trying to wrap her head around what exactly Kathy meant by that.

"Dying in an effort to save people, though?" That's what it sounded like Kathy was getting at. "Isn't that one of the ways to define heroism?" So at least it sounded like she'd done her job.

"In a futile effort to save people," Kathy said. "God only knows if I actually did anything worthwhile while I was there, because I don't."

And Kathy was pretty sure she didn't believe in god, either, so there you were.

"But yes, I died. And then..." Kathy thought about the best way to explain it. "And then the enemy took my body and used it as a weapon."

She didn't exactly need to explain how, right? And it was close enough to be true anyway.

"It's often hard to know how much what we do matters. Especially when everything is falling apart. But no effort to save lives can be futile." Anne really couldn't entertain the idea that all the people she'd watched die in desperate last stands had done so futilely. Even if the people they'd been trying to protect had died along with them.

But her words sounded distracted, and her eyes darkened.

"I'm sorry," she murmured after a moment. "That sounds... horrifying." She took a moment to imagine something similar happening to her, and shuddered visibly.

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Dite's Decadent Delights, Tuesday

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