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WHO: Kenzi and OPEN free for all at the house
WHERE: Residence #004
WHEN: 2/12 - 2/13; Around midnight or so
WHAT: Kenzi's finally back from her tantrum about being brought back.
WARNINGS: Language, possibly drunken-ness, maybe violence? Also spoilers I guess.

The hour was late when Kenzi finally decided to return home. She'd been gone since the previous morning, a twenty-four hour port out that had actually been two years to her. Two long years fill with all the crazy Fae shit she'd missed and not missed at the same time.

She'd spent the day as secluded as possible, destroying wildlife and screaming her lungs out. A whole day trying to get her rage to subside but it did little good. Nothing could change the fact that she was here instead of back home torturing the man that had taken her future away from her. That she was here at all...

She'd flown back, barefoot, dirty, leaves and twigs still stuck in her hair, and most of all she was starving. The only thing on that list that mattered at that very moment was getting some food into her and then follow it up with alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.

She came in silently, hoping to find everyone had gone to bed. She didn't want to see anyone until she was ready.

((feel free to respond in brackets if that's more comfortable, I don't mind matching))

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A light sleeper, he had always been. He didn't sleep more than five hours if he could help it, his body always awakening when it deemed he had had more than enough time to rest.

He thought he had misheard her the first time and then the almost doleful inflection in her voice. He stopped his shoulders from quaking and slowly, peered over it to get a glimpse of her and something about her appearance struck him as off. The lightning of the room had given her hair a tinge of brown, or so he thought.

"Did you track the mud in?" he asked quietly, no longer angry, but still dismayed by the mess. It was a brand new house as far as they were concerned.

"Yeah, sorry." She didn't look over at Gil as she responded, she was too busy checking the settings on the vacuum.

Judging from his reaction he hadn't even noticed she'd been gone which didn't sit well with her. Back home her friends had left her feeling as if they didn't care about her or what she'd gone through. It'd been like having their friend and her future husband die had been nothing. She'd felt betrayed and unwanted and again she was feeling unwanted.

"I didn't realize I dragged in so much."

He hadn't and if she hadn't returned by morning he would have followed up on her, but as far as he saw it, she could have been out, maybe in downtown or drinking at a bar with the abundance of imPort friendly businesses.

If something was wrong, she would call him.

Wouldn't she?

The silence that hung in the air between them was uncomfortable at best. He no longer had to worry about the lack of clothes and he turned to face her properly.

"Where... what happened?" He wasn't aware there was any place nearby to track the amount of mud she did into the house. But the leaves and twigs... that couldn't have been from the city.

Normally she would call, yes.

But as soon as she'd returned from home she'd dropped her bag and flew with no idea where she was going. She didn't stop until she found somewhere far from anyone else so she could cool off. Such a place happened to be pretty far away, it was a wonder she had the energy to fly back.

She continued to remain silent as she unwound the cord and plugged the vacuum in before standing. The whole time she made no effort to keep the ring on her left hand hidden, a ring that had never been there for as long as she'd been in the City or this world.

The silence that lingered couldn't be taken as a good sign. Gil maneuvered around the carpet to avoid stepping with his bare feet into mud and thus spreading the mess and walked over to where Kenzi was, concern painted on his face and filtering into his voice.

"Kenzi? What happened?" he repeated, a little louder this time in the offchance she somehow didn't hear him.

She'd heard him the first time but she couldn't bring herself to talk about it. Telling him that nothing had happened wouldn't help. It was a lie she couldn't commit to and Gil surely knew her well enough by now to know when something was wrong.

"I went home." Simple, to the point, no details.

She silently prayed that he wouldn't ask for more, that he would be satisfied with that for now. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, trying to pull all the bad out of her mind until she could be alone again.

I went home.

He held himself back, gazing long at her as he processed the information... or lack of it. It was a heavy statement on its own, tension riding up his shoulders as he hung back from her.

"When?" he began, but something occurred to him quickly. "It must have been while Sharon and I..."

There wasn't a point in finishing that sentence. It clicked in his head, and Kenzi's, and that was enough.

It no longer appeared to be a trick of the light, that hair of hers. He hadn't noticed the ring so far, preoccupied with other things to examine her thoroughly.

"How long?" Gil breathed through parted lips, chest swollen with apprehension suddenly.

She had started to open her mouth when he asked when but he answered that question for himself. They hadn't even been around so that's why they hadn't notice, something of a relief to her. While her shoulders remained tense they sagged a bit.

She glanced up at him then quickly adverted her gaze, choosing instead to focus on one of the muddy footprints she'd left behind. "Two years." Plenty of time for a lot of stuff to happen.

Her answer echoed in his ears. Two years was a long time and he judged by her demeanor it had not been a pleasant two years back home. It was unfair, he thought to himself, finally returning home only to face whatever hardships and trouble had waited for her.

But she was back where she belonged. He recounted all the times Kenzi had confided in him she missed home and her friends. He felt disappointed for her, as strange as it was.

"What happened?" he stepped closer once again, canting his head. Something wasn't right. This didn't feel like the Kenzi he was familiar with and he worried now. "I'm sorry about raising my voice before. I can clean up on my own."

There had been pleasant times and remembering those made her happy but then it all just hurt again because the good things never lasted. It was a lesson she'd learned a long time ago and it just kept proving to be true.

She brought her hands up to about stomach height, her right hand going to her left so she could twist her ring one way and then the other. It was an action that was starting to become a bit of a comforting thing for her.

Her jaw tightened a little with Gil's question, prompting her to swallow hard. "A...a lot. A lot happened."

She shook her head as she released her left hand, bringing it up to push some stray hair behind her ears. "N-no, I made the mess. I should clean it up." She still didn't look up at him, she was afraid he'd see something written on her face or in her eyes that she was only barely holding back.

"Wait —"

His arm reached out for her shoulder, but he hesitated as the ring caught the light finally. It sparkled for half a second, enough for bright eyes to direct his attention to the hand. His mouth opened, yet no sound came forth.

Gil had rejected over thirty marriage proposals, but he knew a wedding ring when he saw one. He knew which hand they were slipped onto, which finger, and the vows that came with it.

It was another question piled atop of a mountain of them had for Kenzi. He didn't see how any of it connected to the mess in the house.

"What's going on, Kenzi?" he looked at her face now, desperate and worried. "You're not acting right at all!"

Most would probably see the ring and think Kenzi had just thrown a fit over being taken away from her new husband, or husband to be, but that was only part of it. The truth was much worse and she really didn't want Gil to see that side of her, the malicious side that would do anything to protect those she loved and get revenge for them should they die.

Her jaw clenched so hard it ached, her throat and chest tightened so much so that she felt like she was going to suffocate. Clutching both hands to her chest and took a step back from Gil. She had to stay calm...well, calmer, if she didn't she could make a bigger mess of the house.

She sucked in a shaky breath before looking up at Gil. "What's going on is that I'm here instead of back home making the man that took my happiness and future away from me pay for it all." Spoken through clenched teeth as tears started to well up in her eyes again. She blinked rapidly to get rid of them.

His arm fell back to his side, but they quickly shot up again and he took a step closer when he made out tears in her eyes and he felt his heart miss a beat. Panic set in again and both arms rose in an attempt to temper a situation he still didn't understand with answers that had no context to it.

Only one fact was clear to Gil and came as a shock: Kenzi was a married woman.

Two years is a long time, after all.

He recognized that tone of voice, though. In fact, he knew it all too well, as a young boy who had drawn his gun on a man he loathed and knew was responsible for what had happened to his precious master. There was acidic hatred and a thirst for vengeance laced into it.

"What man?" A lump snagged his throat. "No, you should sit down first. Forget about the mess, I can take care of it. You need to sit."

Only she wasn't married, she would have been in due time because she thought she and Hale had all the time in the world. In hindsight, speaking those words had apparently been a curse. He was never supposed to die, especially not before her. He was Fae, they lived for such a long time, far longer than any human could hope to live.

Nodding slowly Kenzi made her way over to the couch and sat down heavily, hands still clutched at her chest. She breathed deeply a couple times before responding. "Massimo." The name was spoken like a worst curse Kenzi could think of.

"Massi...mo?" he echoed, confusion colouring his tone.

He followed Kenzi to the couch, but maintained some distance so he wouldn't crowd her and waited for her to explain what or who this Massimo was. It wasn't a name she had brought up in previous conversations, although the possibility it slipped his memory in the nearly two years of knowing her was there.

He was a new name, most certainly. She'd only met him about a year and a half ago in her world.

Sucking a breath as she leaned back into the couch, how was she to explain Massimo as anything other than a psychopath only out to make mommy dearest love him, whoever his mother happened to be.

"He called himself the Druid. Some sick human that played around with magic and overcharged for a lot of shit." There was so much disgust in words that she thought she might actually vomit just talking about the asshole.

"He promised to make me Fae." She paused to let that sink in, chewing her bottom lip before continuing. "He didn't have that kind of power though, he could only give me the powers of some Fae for temporary use. Like the idiot I am I agreed."

She paused again, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes.

Gil didn't know what a Druid was and he knew very little about the Fae Kenzi had told him about over the years. He knew there were different kinds of them and each had their own specific powers. Without having met a Fae for himself, he could only understand so much.

The word promise, on the other hand... one he knew too well. He could discern what that had meant: a proposal. A contract.

All contracts had a price.

He swallowed. "... Why were you after something like that?"

Edited (html calm yourself) 2014-02-16 04:03 (UTC)

And a price she would pay, for each application of these powers it had cost something more.

"Because the world had gone to shit and Bo was gone. Being human was too dangerous for me and I needed to take care of myself." Her voice rose a bit as she spoke and looked up at Gil. She'd had little choice if she had wanted to continue living.

"I had to."

Edited 2014-02-16 04:14 (UTC)

Gil's heart pounded so hard, so fast, he could hear it, like drums in his ears and feel it down in the pit of his stomach that churned uncomfortably.

His throat dried as he recalled his own desperate longing and thirst for a power that could protect that what mattered to him. The ten agonizing years he suffered without Oz, Raven denying him a contract and its power that nearly threw him into a madness if he had not been so determined to obtain its power.

"What... happened to Bo?" His voice was quiet.

"Kidnapped by some dude called the Wanderer, Rainer, whatever the hell his name is." Anger made it's way into her voice but it wasn't just about the kidnapping, it was about what came after. How Bo claimed Rainer to be the one and then spent all her time with him before remembering she had other friends.

"Our memories of her were erased for while she was gone, we got them back but still..."

She raised a hand to rub her face as she relaxed a bit. At least Gil was easy to talk to. While she didn't want him to see the worst sides of her he at least didn't seem to judge her for her choices.

Oz had fallen into the Abyss, his own father part of some kind of grand scheme.

Bo was kidnapped, Kenzi's memories of her tampered.

There were differences, but tiny similarities that Gil couldn't help but feel immensely sorry and worried for Kenzi simultaneously. He knew this heartache. He lived it.

"I'm sorry," he started. His gaze had fallen to the floor. "So you had to obtain power to save her."

Bo had been taken to a train that ferried souls to the land of the dead or something like that. Not the best place to be when it came down to it.

"I obtained power to help myself." Selfish as ever but she honestly didn't even remember anyone named Bo, all memories of her had been erased from everyone that knew her. "I just...I wanted to be like them. I didn't want to be the helpless human girl anymore. I wanted to be able to take care of myself." And in the end, yeah, she had used those powers to help Bo.

"I'm sure that's not true," he retorted as his gave lifted to meet hers. His chest felt it had been caught in some vice. This was all too disturbingly familiar and hit close to home. He could hear Break's voice in the back of his head, mentioning Gil's devotion to Oz was "a little odd".

This isn't... He rubbed the side of his neck and forced aside those thoughts. This wasn't about him at all and Kenzi's not like him. She's not selfish or carrying something dark and twisted inside her, no matter what she said.

But she is selfish, she knew that and her desire for power ended up costing her everything she held dear. She envied the Fae and their long lives and their abilities. She wanted to be like them, perhaps to help her friends but also because she didn't like being just the human.

She's always been selfish. She didn't just steal to survive, she stole things she wanted simply because she wanted them. She could claim she's a klepto all she wanted but the truth was that she wasn't, she was just a thief that wanted money and power.

"I am." She said softly as she lowered her head. "I am."

"Kenzi..."

He stood by the side of couch feeling absolutely useless. What did he say? What could he say? He fumbled and tripped over the words in his mind over and over. Providing comfort to others, no matter how much he cared for them, had never been his forte.

"It's..." What? "I'm sure you tried to save Bo with that power."