a revelation

Group Hang // Many People

#para: gh #c: morgan #c: kara #c: cristina #c: zach

persistenceofmendez‌:

thelastlansing‌:

mortech-ceo‌:

Morgan shrugged at Lauren. Marcus and her were relatively well-known because of their tech that helped the Paladins find all the hunter bases around the world, but the way this man spoke to her wasn’t as a fan, but as someone who knew her personally. She couldn’t explain why. “I have no idea. I’ve never seen this guy in my life.” And she had no explanation for the sense of familiarity the man gave off. Maybe she was just overthinking it like she normally did. She decided not to focus too much on it right now. She was still trying to process that Kara was really here right now.

She turned to Kara. Her hand reached up and resting lightly on the girl’s back. “First of all, if you were actually a ghost that would be pretty cool and I’d definitely want to be around that,” she smiled. “Second of all, the last thing any of us would want after we thought you were dead for months is to have you by yourself in some random hotel room. Lauren’s right, you’re safe here with her and Zach. And if not, I’m just a portal away in Tokyo. It’s the safest penthouse on that side of the Pacific. Not to brag,” she joked. Her hand dropped to her side. “Give yourself a little time to settle in. As far as your pal Andrew is concerned, you’re still six feet under. And when you feel like you’re ready, we’ll go together to the Paladins to tell them what happened.”

Unfortunately for the group, Kara wasn’t ready or prepared for what came next. When she could see things coming, or initiate contact herself, it was fine. While Morgan talked it was fine. She flinched when a hand pressed against her back but she ignored it. Or at least, as long as she could. But the second Morgan finished her thought and let her hand drift away to rest back on her side, Kara reacted wrong. The touch was too similar of Andrew’s last few touches to her face as he shot her and that was what sent her over the edge. Instantaneously she turned around, hand gripping tightly to Morgan’s throat with her other finger turning sharp circles. Her eyes were wide and crazed, fear plaguing her face as she gripped Morgan tighter by the throat. It wasn’t until she heard everyone’s screams and saw Morgan’s eyes bulging slightly that she realized what was even happening. Zach quickly slammed her against the wall, holding her wrists down at either side.

“Kara. Kara!”

That was enough to get her out of her stupor, looking down at her now shaking hands. It wasn’t safe for them to be around her, that much was clear. She looked at Morgan helplessly and wanted to say that she was sorry but the words just weren’t coming out. All she could do was look on helplessly like some sort of caged animal. Something felt different but she couldn’t quite put a pin in it. She just felt… Off. Maybe that was what came with dying. Or maybe the people that had rescued hadn’t just rescued her. Either way, she knew that she needed to get away from these people before she hurt them again. “I… I can’t… You shouldn’t be near me.”

Being a witch was worthless if you could not figure out how to help the people that made life better. Instead of doing something, Cristina just felt something threaten to come up the back of her throat. It was too surreal and terrifying to watch Morgan being hurt- by Kara, no less. Consciously, she was sure it hurt Morgan more, but there seemed to be a very clear solution to stop being choked. She felt worse once the violence stopped. When had she started trying to hug a wall for security, anyway?

“I need to go home, but Kara has to stay here,” Cristina said in a small voice. She could not exactly talk now, but she could do things. And she could do things fast. So fast. If it got her out of this nightmarish situation faster, then she would go so fucking fast that her thoughts would be so occupied with speed to consider much else. Get your things together, she told herself. Gather them up. Get the dog. Go home, and take the off-brand nighttime cold medicine that’s about to expire so you don’t have to think too hard for too long.

Cristina feared that she would make things worse by sticking around. Lauren and Morgan were so good with words, and even they could not talk their ways out of this… all of this. If she had the willpower to give better advice, then she would. “Thanks for… night…” She had no idea if that actually meant anything, but she hoped that it might be interpreted as a semblance of common courtesy after visiting and then skittering around the house like it was on fire, and then out the door.

Lauren was trying to remember everything that the people on the computer had said in order to write it all down. She was already stuck on the names when she heard the gasping and looked up only to see Kara choking Morgan and she physically could not move herself from the spot. She yelled her sister’s name as a fleeting moment of something near exhaustion overwhelmed her -- if life ever needed a pause button, it was right now. The grief and relief and fear and confusion were too much to handle, and if Zach hadn’t stopped Kara then Lauren didn't know what would’ve happened.

She rushed over as soon as Morgan was released in order to wrap an arm around the older woman and support her. “Are you okay? Come on, come sit back down...” Lauren led Morgan to the chair where Kara had been, and muttered something about getting water when Cristina said she was leaving. “Cris, please, you don’t--” The other girl was already gathering her things in a rush, and Lauren couldn’t keep them all there and take care of them all individually at once, so she had to let Cristina go. “Let me know when you get home -- I’ll call you tomorrow.” She didn’t know if Cristina heard her.

She turned back to the scene in front of her. To her hand on Morgan’s shoulder and catching her breath, and her fiancé pinning her sister to a wall. Her sister. What the hell had happened to her? “Kara,” she began slowly. “We love you. You’ll stay here, and we’ll keep you as safe and as warm and as okay as possible. Please. It’s us -- it’s me...” Her eyes pleaded with Kara’s. “We’ll figure this out together.”

marloweandme‌:

Zach grinned as Lauren kissed his cheek holding her close to him before picking her up and spinning her around. It seemed to be a signature move of his, one that he didn’t plan on stopping, even when he was old and grey. At the question of guesswork, Zach cocked his head to the side. The Cheetah Girls. He’d watched it with his little siblings, not at all of his own accord but that still didn’t mean he wouldn’t let his siblings down. His brain wracked with multiple directions, finally deciding on an answer. “Barcelona!” He said in an all too well done accent that perfectly mimicked David Tennant’s 10th Doctor. “If I’m wrong though, you can’t hate me for quoting Doctor Who.”

Lauren held onto Zach tightly as he spun her around, letting out a laugh despite a desperate need to be back on the ground after flying through the air for several hours. She grinned as he considered her hint, though she knew he’d get it since he’d dated her for this long and with the amount of younger siblings he had. She laughed at the accent and nodded her head. “You got it! You get to quote Doctor Who, I get to fulfill a childhood dream of being a Cheetah Girl-- what more could we ask for? Also, babe...so many tacos.”

#c: zach

Group Hang // Many People

#c: morgan #c: cristina #c: kara #c: zach #para: gh

persistenceofmendez‌:

thelastlansing‌:

mortech-ceo‌:

Kara was understandably distant. Morgan could understand that. After all, she’d been dead for months. But she was worried what exactly happened to her. If she had changed so much that the old Kara wasn’t there anymore. She watched as Kara walked over to Zach’s laptop with a USB. She turned to Zach. “Viruses are nothing, I could take it out with my eyes closed,” she assured him. She didn’t own her own magitech company for nothing, after all. She stood there, arms crossed as the older Lansing played the video. At first, she watched with curiosity as a strange man appeared on the screen. But that curiosity shifted into an uneasy feeling of familiarity. She’d never seen this man before in her life. She didn’t know any Lucas Andersons. But then he referred to her directly, subconsciously mirroring him by tapping her sternum. It can’t happen again. She felt like she knew him. He acted as if he knew them. The wife was a bit more explanatory. She shared some resemblance to Lauren. It has to be her. These two strangers were so emotionally invested in someone they didn’t even seem to know.

She stood there in silence while Cristina and Lauren asked the same questions she wanted the answers to as well. There were a million things about this situation that didn’t add up. She was most of all happy that Kara was actually here, alive and, hopefully, safe. But they all needed to know what happened in the past few months. “Lucas Anderson and Ronnie Anderson. I’ll look them up, see if I find anything about them.” She made a small gesture with her hand to rewind the video and paused to the last bit where Lucas had his hand on Kara’s temple. “Looks like he’s a psionic,” she said mainly to herself. For a brief moment she felt Tess’s hand on her own face, but it was gone just as fast. She turned to Kara. “We’ll figure this out.”

Her stomach was in knots. She’d been in a coma? And those people were acting as if they knew her when clearly they didn’t. Kara had been trained with things like this, where psionics used memories of the people they tapped into to either get information out of them or to have others trust them. Maybe this was the latter. Maybe they were just good people just trying to get her back home safe. Or maybe they were… No… It couldn’t be. They were dead. Clearing her throat, Kara took the rag away from her nose, not remembering when Zach had handed it to her but shrugging that thought off. “So I’ve been gone for… Months. I’ve been gone and you all thought I was… I mean I… I was. I was dead.” Her brow furrowed, stomach churning as she resisted the desire to vomit.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Kara got up from the chair. “I’m going to guess that you all don’t really know what to do and I don’t either. This is just… Confusing. And I need to think about how I’m going to talk to to… To talk to someone about Andrew. I’m living proof that he’s a lying sack of shit.” Sighing, Kara moved away to stand over the kitchen sink, back to her family. Resting her hands on either side of the sink, she let her head fall forward, eyes closing. “I’ll rent a hotel room. I don’t… I don’t really feel like… I don’t think any of you are ready to be around a ghost.”

“Perhaps the woman is related to you?” Cristina suggested in response to Lauren, but did not propose anything further. There were too many mysteries that she was not exactly excited about delving into.

Cristina made a mental note to text Morgan with some potentially alternative spellings of these Anderson peoples’ names. She was so sure that these cryptic psionic people were going to be called Lukasz and Veronique Anderssen just to make everything more difficult. For that matter, she hoped that there were no new and special ways of spelling ‘Andrew.’ Oh… Shoot, these all could be aliases. Cristina did not have the emotional bandwidth to take more worrying.

“No. Please do not stay in a hotel. If you are you- and you seem to be- then you can take care of yourself, but that is much less safe than our place which will be covered in slightly less experimental runes than previous attempts.” The goal was not to damage the home, but to confuse any intruders that were used to dealing with illusions and run-of-the-mill alarm systems. Development of a personal home security system that was not at all viable for the consumer marketplace was one of Cristina’s hobbies that she took up when under duress. “Or stay here. If Lauren and Zachary do not mind. I just- I do not want to think about losing track of you again.”

Lauren began to shake her head in response to Cristina, but stopped herself. Would it really be so shocking for her parents to have kept relatives a secret from them? Definitely not, but that wasn’t a road she needed to go down right now. “How could the guy know you?” she asked Morgan. “Or at least know how close you are to us?”

She began fiddling around the room. She and Zach had a shelf dedicated to the month they’d spent traveling, and Lauren found her notebook of their plans behind a photo of the two from Barcelona. She picked up the notebook and flipped to some back pages, because of course she couldn’t fill an entire notebook with notes. She grabbed a pen laying around and wrote the two strangers’ names down. “Let’s just try and gather everything we know about all of this so we can keep track...”

She looked up when Kara suggested a hotel, and assumed by the immediate response that Cristina would tell her to come home. But she didn’t. And Lauren could understand that -- she could practically feel Cristina’s overwhelming need to get away from all this for the moment. Lauren knew that feeling well. “You’ll stay here,” she offered softly, knowing that Kara would probably be more upset by Cristina’s indirect rejection than grateful for any other hospitality at the moment. But her sister was not disappearing for months just to stay in a hotel. “You’re safe here. We’re going to figure this out and we’ll help you bring this Andrew guy to justice. Okay?”

Group Hang // Many People

#para: gh #c: cristina #c: kara #c: morgan #c: zach

persistenceofmendez‌:

thelastlansing‌:

mortech-ceo‌:

Morgan thought it was just going to be another day of dropping in the Lansing-Marlowe household, freeing herself for a bit from burying her head in work like she always did. Work only distracted her from so much. So did spending time with Lauren, Cristina, and Zach, but it helped. Today she was going to drop by with some pizza. Because who didn’t love pizza? And eating pizza and talking about anything other than the obvious loss in the room was exactly what she was expecting when she walked through the door. She hadn’t yet received a warning text from Lauren as she walked through the front door. “Hey guys! I have pizza!” she called out. “The funniest thing happened at the shop – I was talking to the guy at the register and apparently the owner was a former porn star which explains why the place is called Eat My Pie…”

She walked into the living room, and when she saw a ghost sitting there, she froze and immediately dropped the pizza. At first, she thought she was hallucinating. But the hallucination just stayed there, staring back at her. This couldn’t be. No one in her life who died just… showed up like this, unless she was dreaming. She had a limited amount of sleep a night that her dreaming was a huge possibility. But as she looked around at the serious looks of everyone else in the room. It didn’t seem like this was a dream. “Kara?” she finally spoke, and as soon as she did her eyes began to water. This was a moment she dreamed would happen with every single person in her life she had lost. The moment where they weren’t dead after all. She didn’t even bother to ask how it was possible – she was a mixture of disbelief and bliss and all she could do was rush to the younger woman and wrap her arms around her tightly, sobbing. As soon as they touched she began to accept Kara was really here. She could feel her. She was here. “Oh my God. What… what the fuck.” She pulled back to look at Kara. “You should’ve told me you were going to come back from the dead, I would’ve gotten another pie of porn pizza,” she joked, smiling briefly while still crying. She glanced around at everyone else before returning her green eyes to Kara. “I can’t believe you’re really here… What happened? What did I miss?”

Cristina took the USB from between her fingers before she could say anything, feeling familiar skin for the briefest of moments before she walked away. As soon as Cris had left, Lauren had taken her place. Her sister’s presence filled her vision and she was being reminded through verbal pleasantries that she was safe. Nothing about this felt safe. Nothing about this felt /okay. Swallowing thickly, she accepted the blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes shot up when Morgan was mentioned, not having heard that name in what felt like forever. “Morgan… She’s…” Before she could say another word the front door was opening. Her hand immediately went up at the ready, unsure of who was coming inside. Without even another thought, she manipulated the air to slam the front door shut. Almost immediately, however, she recognized Morgan’s voice and her lower lip quivered. The woman entered the living room and Kara could see two people standing there. Tess with a ghostly smile as she nodded at her before Morgan was crushing her into a hug, the image of Tess disappearing. Her brow furrowed as Morgan mentioned porn pizza, not really sure of how to process that. As she held Morgan in her arms, she almost wanted to say who she thought she’d seen when she’d… Died. But soon enough Morgan was pulling away and her mind drifted to the USB that had been in her pocket. “I came back as soon as I can… I don’t remember…”

Kara got up from the chair, moving over to Cristina and taking the USB from her. Without another word, she shoved past Zach despite her limp and plugged the USB into the computer. Only one file came up, reading ‘WATCH ME’. When Zach was about to protest, Kara held up a hand, anger flaring in her. “If its infected, I’ll buy you a new damn computer.” And with that, she clicked on it. A figure appeared in the screen, the exact same person that Kara had managed to look like. He adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Hi. My name is Lucas Anderson. My wife and I, we found your–Whatever she is to you. We found her in our field. She had no pulse, no heartbeat. I used some magic though, I couldn’t lose her a–” The image cut out before reappearing with him adjusting his glasses once more. “Look, Kara was attacked. I know it was by hunters but something doesn’t seem to add up. Her whole team looked like they were slaughtered, I don’t know if there were any survivors. But she’s… She’s in…” The camera panned to a very still Kara on a bed. “She hasn’t woken up from.. I don’t know if she’ll ever wake up.

“The camera turned back to Lucas. “Morgan if you’re watching this you have to make sure she hasn’t lost anything else. It can’t happen again.” Lucas tapped at his sternum twice, hand coming up as if to hold onto something. The image cut out once more before another person came into the screen. Someone that looked a lot like Lauren but… Not. “Hello, I’m Ronnie. Kara woke up a couple weeks after we found her. She doesn’t remember what happened. Just keeps muttering a name over and over. Andrew. We assume its whoever did this. Its been three months since we found her and what we’ve learned is that someone she worked with instigated this attack on her team. Kara’s dead where you are. I promise you that she’s being taken care of. As soon as she is able we will get her back to you. It has to be her.” The image went to black once more before Kara herself came onto the screen. “My name is Kara Lansing.” Her eyes were completely shut, Lucas standing behind her with a hand on her temple. “I was attacked by Andrew. His brother was a hunter. I… Killed him at RIAP. He murdered my team and then… Murdered me. How am I… How am I still alive…” Her face looked full of anguish before a sense of calm appeared. “I’m coming home.” The camera cut to black.

Being the least emotionally available person in the room did not feel particularly good, but Cristina did not have the capacity to be as warm and useful as Lauren. All she could do was watch as Lauren (and to a lesser extent Zachary) competently made attempts to comfort Kara. She felt so… useless.

Cristina could not think that this situation could get any more chaotic until Morgan showed up and started… tossing pizzas? No. Dropping pizzas. Somehow that was worse, even though it made much more sense than weaponized Italian-ish food. Not that a lot made sense right now. She wondered if porn stars kept up clean kitchens. She suspected so, as health inspectors would likely not permit such a visibly suspicious space to remain open otherwise. She put a lot of faith in the health inspection system.

She was a cautious person, and entirely baffled by what she had just watch. What with a file labeled ‘WATCH ME,” she had an abundance of suspicions. Perhaps her good ideas had all faded away, but not her worry over everything that could have gone wrong. “I- Okay, so Kara is somehow, someway back, but has extreme temporal disorientation.” She explained this in part for Morgan’s benefit because the video was not a very good teacher. “There are just so many odd things in this video, though, that I don’t really know where to start,” Cristina said, wondering what it would be like to have a quiet life without unanswered questions. When nobody else was around, she looked through the text messages on her old phone and tried to pick apart some of the old mysteries. “Why is it cut like this? Why isn’t it in one take? Why use magic to revive someone that you don’t know?”

Morgan entered before Lauren sent the text, and she let out a breath of relief when she heard the older woman’s voice. She moved away from Morgan and Kara to give them some space, gently placing a hand on Morgan’s shoulder and saying, “We’ve got a lot to catch you up on,” before picking up the fallen pizza boxes and placing them on the coffee table. She found her way to Zach’s side as the video began to play. At the man and woman’s faces, a lot of emotions began to stir up in Lauren. Something about this felt off. Felt odd. It wasn’t right. She had to look away at the pan to Kara on the bed -- who the hell would film that -- and anger seemed to be the predominant emotion once it ended.

She nodded at Cristina’s questions, because she was totally spot on and was asking the questions Lauren had more intelligently than she was going to. “Cris is right. What the hell was that?” she demanded. “Who the hell are these people that think they know you this well?” The woman had made Lauren consider a hair cut, but she was too annoyed to register that at the moment. “Why would they send you away completely on your own with just a USB that had a cryptic video with barely any information?” She felt Zach squeeze her arm and she tried to take a deep breath, but ultimately let out an aggravated sigh. “Like, they couldn’t leave an address? A phone number? How the hell did they know we thought she was dead? And why did that man say he couldn’t lose you? Why’d she promise you were being taken care of when clearly we weren’t going to see this until you came back?” She ran her hands through her hair, shaking her head in disbelief. “Who the hell are these people?”

marloweandme‌:

“Hey, hey no. Don’t do that thing.” Zach cupped her cheeks with his hands, thumbs tenderly tracing the skin. “Don’t do that thing where you look like you’re going to puke because you just had feelings. Like, out loud feelings.” He chuckled, pressing their foreheads together, letting his eyes flutter closed. “Laur, I’m in love with you more than I can even begin to express. When you walk into a room, I immediately feel at peace. Like I can achieve anything I have aspirations about. You’re best part of me and you always will be. ” He pulled back, grabbing her hand and gingerly giving it a tug. “And today? Today I plan on showing you just how much I love you.” He waggled his eyebrows, not being able to help the ill-timed humor that was very much a Zach thing from coming out. Interlacing their fingers together, he pulled her close to him with another tug, his other arm wrapping around her torso after he’d spun her in a soft and slow circle. “I want my first time to be with you. And…” He took a deep breath before finishing his sentence. “I want all the rest of my times to be yours.”

"I don’t do a thing,” Lauren replied almost instinctively, but once he continued, she knew she in fact did. “Yeah, tell that to my stomach.” She had no idea why serious feelings made her so panicked. But of all people...Zach? She was really this panicked about loving Zach? When he made it so easy? He rested his forehead against hers and she sighed. She brought her hands up to hold his wrists and she squeezed them as he continued. Here he was, pouring his heart out so easily, and it’d probably take her weeks to say those words without nearly passing out. She gave a small smile as he tugged and spun her, picturing how much of a bewildered mess he’d be soon enough. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “God, how do you do that? Just say it all like it’s the simplest thing in the world.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry I’m not good at this. But I’m trying.” He loved to drop fairly serious statements within very nice and charming ones, which was as overwhelming as it was heartwarming. And terrifying. She stretched up on her toes and kissed him, threading her fingers through his hair as she pulled him as close as she could. “Come on,” she said with a grin as she pressed kisses to his cheek, then to his neck, before settling on her feet and pulling away. “Get me out of here before I have more serious feelings all over the place.”

#c: zach #flashback

marloweandme‌:

“The plane has landed, the plane has landed!” Zach waved his arms around in excitement. He loved flying and traveling and for the next month, that was just what he was going to be doing. With the love of his life, of course. It was a gift for her graduation and he was stoked. He had no goddamned idea where they were going, he was leaving Lauren in charge but his family’s pilot, Eric, was going to be the one taking them to their start line over in the UK. He turned to face Lauren, grin wide before it slipped off his face. “I packed enough underwear right?”

Lauren had never prepared for something so extensively than she had for this vacation. She had notebooks, she’d done research, she did the amount of work she should’ve done while in school but hadn’t and was now accomplishing it for her dream vacation. She’d wanted to travel for so long, and it was all happening now thanks to Zach. She looked up from her notebook and beamed at her boyfriend. “Yes you did,” she assured him. Despite telling him that this was way too much for a gift and she’d never be able to repay him, she’d agreed, and she was going to really hurt her face from smiling so much for this whole month. She wrapped her arms around Zach’s neck and kissed him on the cheek. “Guess where we’re going first. I’ll give you one hint: The Cheetah Girls.”

#c: zach

Group Hang // Many People

#para: gh #c: cristina #c: zach #c: kara #c: morgan

persistenceofmendez‌:

thelastlansing‌:

Before Kara could even register what was happening, Cristina was pulling away from her. She suddenly felt very, very nauseated. Her gaze turned to look at her sister, who seemed to be looking back and forth from her girlfriend and her. What was even happening right now? She was back, she’d come back and they were acting like she’d gone and dropped off the face of the earth. Like she’d been dead for Christ’s sake. She…

Blood began to trickle out of her nose even more as flashes of before went through her mind. It was snowing and everyone was dead. Bodies were everywhere and they were in a field. Her stomach… She’d been shot. So much darkness. But then two faces had been there and then it wasn’t dark anymore. They’d helped her. Lucas and… What was her name…Ronnie. Yeah, that was it. They’d nursed her back to health and it had been a few weeks but she’d left as soon as she was able. She’d come back as soon as she was able..

An arm wrapped around her waist and soon enough Lauren was leading her to sit down in a chair. She didn’t register the way she cleaned her face or the way Cristina wouldn’t even fucking look at her. As Lauren tried to explain it to her, her head felt heavy and a dull-throbbing started at the base of her skull until it was pounding all the way into her ears. “I don’t… I don’t remember being gone that long. I just know that I was in a field…It was an ambush. From the wrong side.” She saw his face then, saw how he stood over with the gun, told her his plan. “Andrew. He… He betrayed us. Betrayed me. All because I killed his brother. He was a Hunter and I hadn’t known and I murdered him…At RIAP.” Her gaze fell to her wrist as she traced her hand over the bare skin there. “And then he… He killed me.” Her hand dropped to her jeans, rubbing them over the tops of her thighs for a moment before she felt something in her right pocket. Blinking in confusion, Kara pulled out a USB from her pocket. “I… I don’t know what this is.”

If everything checked out, Cristina made a mental note to try to persuade Kara to pick a slightly less dangerous career path. She did not think her heart could take this kind of pain again. That she could muse on this at all did mean that she was starting to become more convinced of the reality of the situation, but it seemed too soon to say something out loud. She wanted to be sure- needed to be sure that her mind was not torturing itself.

“Killed you,” Cristina echoed, feeling sick to her stomach for a second. While she was starting to believe in the reality of the moment, she began to doubt that everything was right in the world when she heard that particular news. She had to know exactly what had happened further than this testimony. What had actually happened along the way clearly did not match apparent experience. If the situation did not cause her to be so anxious and there were not so many people around, she probably would have come up with a dozen hypotheses by now. It pained her that she did not have good ideas.

Cristina immediately honed in on the USB stick that Kara had pulled out. “While I am not a tech overlord, I know what to do with a flash drive.” She grabbed the USB from Kara, but could not help but allow her hand to linger for a second just to feel if she was real. (She also replaced the USB stick with another tissue, hoping it would help with the nosebleed problem as back-up to the cloth Zachary had provided) The theoretical was wonderful to appreciate, but Cristina preferred to deal with what could give her results that she could rationalize. Files came with built-in dates and history that she could understand for herself. Unearthing her laptop from her bag and working quickly, Cristina did her best to make her mental process clearer. “Need to scan this to see if it has any obvious viruses. If it has that or is encrypted, we will need Morgan… And does anyone have more information on this Andrew person?”

Clearly, Kara was not handling any of this very well. Nor were any of them, probably, but it was Lauren’s house and Lauren’s sister so she had to be the responsible one. Those were the rules of adulthood. She felt like maybe she should be writing down Kara’s story, but she wasn’t thinking quickly enough for that and also, who could forget a moment like this? Andrew. She’d remember that name. And dammit, of course RIAP was coming back to bite them in the ass. That school never failed to remind them of how shitty it was.

Cristina took the USB, and Lauren crouched down beside Kara and placed her hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to remember everything right now,” she told her. “Just breathe for me. You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re always safe here.” She reached to grab the blanket laying across the back of the chair and wrapped it around her sister’s shoulders. “You’re alive. You’re okay,” she repeated. Nothing made any sense. Kara just needed to be safe, warm, and protected. Lauren was completely stunned when Cristina spoke again. “Oh my god, Morgan! She’ll be here any minute! Okay, well, we can just wait for her, I guess.” She pulled out her phone to text Morgan and give her a warning for what she was going to witness when she entered Lauren and Zach’s home.

Group Hang // Many People

persistenceofmendez‌:

thelastlansing‌:

Kara could barely keep everything that Cristina was saying make sense. She honestly thought she was dreaming and that it had been six months. The blonde looked down at the tissue that was being offered up to her and stared at it in confusion. Slowly but surely she felt the wet trickle meeting her upper lip and realized she must have been crying. Taking a sleeve, she wiped at her nose, not caring to look down because all that mattered was getting Cristina to understand. But how could she do that when Lauren was now clutching to her again, trying to get her to go into a kitchen. “Laurie, please just… Hang on.” She gave her sister’s hand a quick squeeze before letting go.

She watched as Zach shut the door and quickly went to the kitchen and started to open cupboards and do something. Not even a quip came to her mind as she moved away from Lauren to Cristina. Taking the several steps towards Cristina, Kara was now in her space. That familiar way she used to hold her–an arm wrapped around the small of her back and a hand placed gently on her cheek–was something that almost broke her. “I’m here. I’m real. I’m not dead.” She took Cristina’s hand, which seemed to be shaking gently before placing it against her chest, to feel her strong heartbeat. Another tear slipped down her cheek. “Cris… Please believe that I’m here.”

Cristina stifled a laugh in spite of herself, remembering her confusion when Kara had first done the hand to heart gesture. “I am unable believe what fails to make sense,” she said, slipping away from the embrace. The dream certainly felt real enough on a physical level. “But I do agree with Lauren. Let us sit down, and attend to our physical needs. My head is figuratively spinning. Perhaps with some explanation, this can all be rationalized.”

Having Kara back was wonderful on one level, but harrowing on another. With temporal unawareness and new physical attributes, Cristina remained hesitant to believe that her problems were over. That maybe everything would go back to normal and she would stop feeling stuck in a career that did not make her want to progress. That maybe she had allocated her time and emotional capacity poorly enough to ruin her ability to be happy for good.

She knew that she was overthinking everything, but that was better than feeling bettered when she woke up or a deception revealed. It was all she could do but to make her way to the couch. “Lauren, are you wary as well? That I’m not the only one for which this doesn’t all add up.”

Hearing Kara call her Laurie was like a punch in the gut, and she was so torn because she could tell Cristina was on the edge of a nervous breakdown or an anxiety attack or something where she was about to cease functioning, and Kara couldn’t seem to tell how much of a shock to their systems her return was. Lauren’s jaw nearly dropped when Cristina actually started laughing out loud, but then just nodded at what she said. “Yeah, good. Sit. We’ll sit.” Cristina walked away from them, clearly needing space to process, and Lauren’s arm wrapped around Kara once again. “I’ll help you walk over. Come on, your nose is bleeding. Just lean on me.”

Luckily, Zach turned into a mind reader and already had waters in the living room where the near-hysterical Cristina had led the party. She mouthed a thank-you as he handed her a wet cloth to help clean up Kara’s nose bleed, and she led her sister down to a chair across from Cristina. Lauren wiped her sister’s face clean, almost like second-nature and not at all like this was one of her favorite faces that she hadn’t seen in months and thought she’d never see again. She’d cry if she thought of that. She placed a box of tissues close to Kara in case the bleeding continued or got worse.

Lauren and Cristina had been closer than ever these past few months, and it made sense why she was the safety blanket Cristina was hiding behind now. Lauren was happy to be that, but she wasn’t exactly sure where to be between these two at the moment. “Yeah, Cris, I’m wary,” she replied, standing up and placing a glass of water in front of both of them, then stood in the middle of the room between them. “This...this really makes no sense.” She looked at her sister. She wanted to crack a joke about how they definitely promised they’d warn each other if they tried to go blonde, but she just couldn’t wrap her mind around any of this. “We--okay. Kara, it’s March. It’s the March after you left. We were told you were missing in September, and in December, they--” She shook her head, tears coming again even though she was trying to be good and rational. “We’ve spent three months thinking you were dead. Why would they tell us that? Who were you with that wouldn’t know the paladins, or let them know you were alive?”

Group Hang // Many People

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Kara didn’t know how to fully handle whatever the hell Cristina was doing. Why wasn’t she excited to see her? Why wasn’t she running to her to give her a kiss? Why was Zach of all fucking people crying? Lauren pulled away from the hug but still kept direct contact as she was looked over, causing Kara to go even further into the hole of confusion. “I thought I was dead too. But these nice people found me that night. They nursed me back to health. At least… To this point. And then I finally felt strong enough to come back and…” She trailed off the second that Lauren said that it had been months.

Shaking her head, she took a staggering step backwards. “N-no. That’s not… I’ve been gone a month. It’s almost…” Kara rubbed her head, it hurt a lot. What she didn’t know was that her nose had started to slightly bleed. “I’ve been gone a month. It’s… It’s… November. It’s.. Been a month.” Her gaze turned to Cristina then, trying to take a step towards her. “Why do you think this is a dream? I’m here. I found you. I told you I’d always find you. I’m here, I’m not dead. I came back.”

“I know so many things about dreams. How time doesn’t make sense, details change without everyone in the dream noticing or caring,” Cristina said, standing up to meet Kara in the middle. Even if this was a dream, she could not stand to see the bleeding like that. “Lauren’s right. It’s been six months. We didn’t send the thank you notes to your funeral, and things have only just started to improve.” She produced a tissue from her pocket, and offered it up. What was the point of having imaginary tissues if not to use them up?

Everything that she heard was too difficult to believe. Trying to smile, Cristina just started to cry harder. “I know you tried your best, but I gave up hope a long time ago. Before they even came to my door to tell me you were gone.” Most days weren’t this bad. She usually got through these large social gatherings by feeling more awkward than devastated. The dream was probably this elaborate and depressing because it could affect her this much. “I apologize, but if this is my brain’s way of telling me to let go, it is not working. I can behave better for Lauren’s sake when I wake up, but that is about all I can do.”

Lauren’s hands clutched at the air where Kara had been standing as the older girl staggered back. For a moment, all she could do was watch what was happening. Cristina was completely lost, Zach was stunned speechless, and her dead sister was here. And Lauren of all people was the one making the most sense, or so it seemed. She also knew how much Cristina would definitely not be pouring her heart out this much if she knew it was real life. As the two girls met in the middle, Lauren pinched herself just to assure her it wasn’t a dream. She definitely felt the pinch, just like she definitely felt the panic that still filled her despite having some answers.

But a part of her knew they had to be careful, and they were standing with the door wide open, all crying, with her dead sister limping and bleeding before them. Lauren knew Cristina might just keep narrating the dream, so Lauren would have to be the one to take some action. “Why don’t we all go in the kitchen?” she said, walking towards the pair and wrapping her arm around her sister’s waist to support her. “Babe, shut the door and lock it, please,” she called over her shoulder. She turned back to Cristina and Kara. “Come on, I think we all need to sit down. Do you want some water? Are you hungry?” She definitely had stopped trying to process what was happening, and just needed to make sure everybody else could be okay so things started making sense again.

Group Hang // Many People

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She had only been expecting to see Lauren and Zach but when she saw her enter the room, well, everything in Kara froze. Unbeknownst to her, it had been six long months since she’d seen the people she loved. Her mind had just told her to get home, to her sister, to Cristina. She just never thought she could, that she’d be able to make it back. But here she was, standing in a room full of people that didn’t believe she was actually here. It hurt to think about what had happened. She was still healing from everything that had happened. None of that mattered, at least not right now. What mattered was that the love of her life and her best friend of a sister were in the same room. And Zach. Taking a step forward, Kara grimaced as the limp presented itself again. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to run forward, or at the very least, hobble. Lauren looked like she was nauseated, Zach looked like he was about to have a heart attack and Cristina just looked sad and distrusting. “I know I’ve been gone a month longer then I was supposed to. But we..” She took another small step forward.

“We got attacked. I thought I had.. I thought I was dead. And then this lovely man and his wife were there when I woke up. They helped me get better. I came here as soon as I could. I had a charm to disguise myself and he let me look like him.” Kara took more steps forward till she was standing in front of Lauren. Her right hand raised up to softly cup her sister’s cheek, tears streaming down her cheeks as she felt the warm skin. “It could have been my imagination or my wishful thinking but his wife actually looked like you. She kept me going through the worst of it.” Kara swallowed thickly, looking over at Cristina. “I know I’ve been gone for a bit but you… You can breathe now. I’m back.” She turned back to look at her sister, choosing now as good a time as any to pull her sister into a tight embrace. Her voice came out in choked whispers, lips pressing into Lauren’s hair. “I’m here. I found you both again.”

Cristina was absolutely sure that she had fallen into a dream. That this dream was so vivid and lengthy made her feel more relieved than anything since it indicated that she had slept deeper than she had in months. Even if this dream was extremely disturbing, Cristina would take getting Kara back over imagining how she had died over and over again.

What made her start to cry was that Kara looked different. “I can hardly even remember you properly anymore,” Cristina mumbled to herself, feeling like all was lost if the details did not match her memory. She had expected a difference in weight or some new scars, but she had thought that hair color would be easy enough to remember.

“This is a nice dream, Lauren. I shall let you enjoy it,” Cristina said, leaning against a wall and sliding back down it. “It is a pity that you can’t share in my dreams like this. Or perhaps not; this is the only one worth remembering in ages, so… so you should just be happy even if it’s just dream Lauren who gets to be happy.” The trouble was that Lauren did not exactly look happy based on first glances herself. What she could give to be the only one crying in the room. If she could sacrifice her own happiness for everyone else here, then she very well might consider what it would take.

She watched her puppy (who was so big now) try to tackle his long-lost dream-mom’s legs, and laughed mirthlessly. Even if this was a dream, she had trouble allowing herself to get lost in it for herself. “Would you like for me and Zachary to give you both some privacy? If he listens, at least. This isn’t a lucid dream, so I don’t have much in the way of control.”

Lauren felt like she might pass out at any moment now. Her sister that was dead three seconds ago was limping toward her, Cristina was narrating what she apparently thought was her dream out loud, and she couldn’t breathe. But Lauren knew this was real. She could feel it in her gut, just like she could when Kara’s vitals disappeared from her necklace. She hadn’t been gone. As soon as Kara’s hand reached out to Lauren’s face, the tears fell faster than she could control them. “It’s not a dream, Cris...” Lauren shook her head again in disbelief, but then Kara was pulling her in and Lauren couldn’t fight the sobs that escaped her as she wrapped her arms around her big sister once again.

“Oh my god,” she managed, holding onto Kara tightly but gently so she wouldn’t hurt her any further, but so she wouldn’t slip away. “Oh my god, you were dead! The necklace, the paladins....” She pulled away to look at Kara, her hands now reaching up toward her sister’s face, needing more proof that she was real. That she was here. “How-- how are you here?” She was crying, she almost wanted to laugh, and she wanted to never let her sister go again. “Kara, it’s been months. It’s been six months since we’ve seen you.”

Group Hang // Many People

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Zach was already out on his way to the door when Lauren called for him. Had the doorbell rang? He hadn’t heard anything. Granted, he had been singing ‘La Cucaracha’ in his head so maybe he just wasn’t observant today. As he opened the door, he looked out a man who couldn’t be older than he was. He had brown hair, seemed to be around 6 feet tall, with brown eyes that gleamed from the porch-light. “Hey man, can I help you?” It was then that the person in front of him nodded, clearing his throat before he started to speak. “Hey, I’m uh.. I’m sorry to be a bother but my car broke down about a half a mile up the road and I was hoping I could borrow a phone to be able to call my parents. They live not too far from here. I’m Lucas by the way.” The man extended his hand. “Lucas Anderson.”

Zach nodded and opened the door wider, letting the man come in with a grin. “Sure dude. Sorry about your car. We have a landline in my study, you can follow me and I’ll show you.” Lucas nodded and stepped into the house, a visible limp causing his steps to be heavy. He looked around the room, as if searching for something but Zach didn’t seem to notice. After Lucas was led to the study, Zach was about to turn around and let Lauren know they had a guest when he felt his arm being grabbed. Looking down in confusion, he was about to ask what the hell the dude was doing when he watched as purple powder was sprayed in his face.

With a few hazy steps back, Zach rubbed his eyes. Lucas looked at him closely, patting his cheek for a moment before whispering to him. “You’re going to leave this room. You’re going to check every single room in this house and make sure no one is here. Then you’re going to make sure that the backyard and front area of the property is safe. That I wasn’t followed. When everything is all clear, I want you to call out this word…” Lucas leaned forward and whispered something into Zach’s ear before pulling back. “Don’t say it aloud until you’ve confirmed that the premise is safe.”

And with that, Zach began to check every single room as if on auto-pilot. Once the house was clear, he headed out back, checking the backyard as thoroughly as he could before doing the same with the front. As soon as he made it back into the front door, he called out the one word he was told. “Hercules.” It was as if his world and his true thoughts came rushing back to him in that instant. He looked around the foyer, confused. When did Lauren get here? Where was the strange guy he’d let into the house?

None of that mattered, however. Upon hearing the words, the shadow of Lucas’s form shifted on the wall to that of a shorter person, dirty blonde hair growing long, as green eyes blinked open. The same heavy limp was there as none other than Kara Lansing started to make their way out of the study. With baited breath, she stepped around the corner, seeing Lauren’s back to her as she stared in Zach’s direction. Zach, who was looking at his girlfriend looked up at her and then went back to Lauren before doing a horrified looking double take. Her soft-spoken words broke the air, shattering whatever silence had taken over it.

“I made a pinky promise.”

“Okay, I won’t get anything,” Cristina said, not really to Lauren because her attention was focused on getting the front door. She wanted an excuse to not have to be present for much longer, and mumbled something about the bathroom. Scooping up Oscar so the puppy would not get into anything without her knowledge, she roamed in the general direction of the bathroom. She noticed Zachary also moving around the house, but she did not feel like calling out to find out what his deal was.

She felt bad for leaving Lauren alone, and started back toward to shere she had started. Finding excuses to feel sorry for herself might have been Cristina’s new brand, but she felt worse for how she treated other people- not everyone, but those that had done nothing to harm her. For those that had been awful to her in the past, Cristina still harbored enough resentment to fill a community center gymnasium.

Ignoring the obvious ghost behind Lauren, Cristina tried to engage her younger friend in conversation again. Or, well, she tried, but the corgi in her arms was fighting to get loose from her arms. Shaking her head, she let Oscar down. “I’m sorry… I thought it would be nice to spend some time with you here and try to help one another feel better, but I think I’m regressing.” Cristina discounted the supernatural, and assumed that this was all a weird, sad hallucination. Albeit, her puppy seemed to want to attack the hallucination, but Cristina had experienced much more harrowing explorations of the possibilities in her own mind’s eye since everything had failed. “I’m seeing things, and you should just have a nice night with your friends, Lauren.”

Lauren smiled and nodded at Cristina when she mumbled something about the bathroom, and sighed when she left. She loved Cris, but it seemed her standard comforting ways did nothing for the older girl. Lauren figured just being a presence in Cristina’s life would help her, or at least allow her not to feel alone. So that’s what she tried to do.

She didn’t think much of the knock at the door again until she realized she didn’t hear voices -- Isaac and Zach would’ve been chatting up a storm, and Morgan would’ve already come into the living room. Instead, she heard footsteps walking all around the house and she tensed. That was not normal. When she heard the front door open again, she was on her feet and began to carefully make her way to the foyer.

She looked around as she walked carefully and quietly, and noticed the door was left open. She turned around, peeking down the halls leading from the foyer. She whipped around when she heard approaching footsteps and calmed significantly when she saw it was Zach, but the dazed, almost hypnotized look on his face just made her heart race again. “Zach, what’s going on?” He didn’t seem to hear her. Then he said it: Hercules. He seemed to have snapped out of whatever daze he’d been in, and Lauren's breath caught in her throat. Something was definitely up. “Why did you say that?” she said, taking a few steps closer to him. Zach seemed confused, but Lauren was completely on edge. She hadn’t felt this close to attack-mode since they were at school. “Zach--”

He looked past her and did some type of double take, as if he’d seen a ghost. She figured there was a hunter or something, her hands balled into fists, and almost turned around to punch whoever it was when she heard the voice. She froze. She might throw up. Was it real? The look on Zach’s face made her feel like it was. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. She heard Cristina say something about seeing things. Lauren looked over at her, tears welling in her eyes and she shook her head. “You’re not...”

She turned slowly, not wanting to let this hope that welled inside her break through quickly. But when she saw the green eyes, she knew. Her hand rose to cover her mouth, and she took a stunned step back. She was shaking her head again, the room might have been spinning, Zach might have grabbed onto her but she couldn’t tell. She was just staring at a face she thought she’d never see again.

“Kara?”

Group Hang // Many People