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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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Sharon could understand relationships that changed over time. Her most precious ones, and one in particular, was much like that - not a one way love from the other side, but a change in emotion over time from her side.

These things had a way of slipping in without any set beginning, even when they knew there was no possible way for happy endings.

"You were both involved in all sorts of excitements together?" Bonding experiences of the most intense sort?

She can't help it if her imagination starts to run wild.

Kenzi lowered her head and gave a soft laugh. Exciting times with Hale prior to them becoming an item? There were certainly plenty of those.

"The funny thing about being a sidekick as that even we get to have our own little adventures while the heroes are teamed up. Yeah, we had plenty of intense bonding experiences." The one coming to mind, at that moment, was the time she was stabbed and Hale used his whistle to cauterize the wound before Kenzi bled to death. The look on his face, he'd been so scared of losing her then she'd never wanted to see that look again...but she did.

Kenzi sucked in a shaky breath and pressed her lips together as tightly as possible. But that didn't stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. She ducked her head and tried to dry off her face with one sleeve.

Sharon moved to feed Sir Apple the rest of her sandwich, not in much possession of an appetite at present. From a pocket, she withdrew an embroidered handkerchief. She gently, but matter of factly, pressed it into Kenzi's hand.

"Being a sidekick sounds very much like being one of those who pulls strings from behind the scenes. More exciting," she said, "And important, if not as glorious or in the light of the sun. Or stars, for the more nocturnal among us."

The little dragon happily gobbled it up and seemed satisfied after he was sure he got every last crumb. For the moment he stayed where he was, he could tell Kenzi was upset but she'd been upset a lot lately.

There was another shaky breath sucked in as Kenzi took the handkerchief and wiped her face with it. "I wouldn't...wouldn't say pulling the strings but without us the heroes wouldn't know what to do. Bo...as angry as I am at her for not bringing Hale back, she needs me. She always has." Even if she wasn't part of the prophecy, as far as she knew, Bo had always needed her and in return Kenzi had always needed Bo.

She lifted her head so she could look at Sharon and offered a small smile. "I'm sorry...I haven't even told you that much about my world or my friends. I'm sure a lot of this doesn't even make sense."

"What we sometimes need to say will only make sense to us. I'm sure you'll tell me more about all of them in time. Right now, don't worry if I can follow along. Say what it is you need to say. Tell me about the wonderful things, or the painful things, about these people who mean so much to you."

Sharon offered a small smile in return. "I'm here to listen, Kenzi, for as long as you wish to talk. And if talking doesn't suit you, then I'm not all that bad with sitting in quiet companionship."

She only occasionally had to smack someone around with her fan, but she doubted Kenzi would need quite the same kind of shaking out of a foul mood as Gilbert. She appeared to be far less prone to wallowing.

Kenzi set her plate aside and slipped down form the counter. If Sharon allowed Kenzi would drop down to be more on her level and pull her into a brief but tight hug.

"Thank you. I guess this is all I really needed back home but no one seemed to have the time for it." She smiled and wiped her eyes one more time. "I'm sure what else to say about Hale. He wasn't like other Fae, he didn't look down on humans or just see us as food. He just wanted everyone to get along."

Sharon stayed, returning Kenzi's tight, brief squeeze with one of her own. There's a brief pat of Kenzi's hair, an almost motherly motion. Sharon has it in her from time to time.

"You're welcome."

Grief didn't always have a proper sense of timing. When and how one was allowed to grieve depended on circumstance; if there were more pressing things to address, the grief was held off for longer, felt but not truly digested, and even more rarely spoken on.

She's glad to have been able to help Kenzi in some sense. Losing one you loved is a hurt that never leaves, only cuts less deeply into scarred flesh over time.

"He sounds like he was a good man. He'll be missed," she said, for all it was guessing, "For the good that he does. Do you feel it will be something you can continue forward with? Perhaps with this friend of yours, Bo?"

What did she plan to do with his memory? There was no one way to react, and as such, Sharon felt herself genuinely curious.

Kenzi straighten out her shirt and realized, for the first time, that Sharon was almost as tall as her. Without her heels on it was clear just how short Kenzi was. If Sharon had been any shorter Kenzi might have commented about being reminded of little Tamsin before she shot up; Valkyries and their growth spurts...

"Yeah," she said softly. "I want to see his dream come true. I want to see humans and Fae living side by side and I want to see the Light and Dark working together. I know Bo does too, from the start she's wanted this divide between the Fae to come to an end. And since she was raised by humans she doesn't like how the Fae treat us. But it's a bit hard to make those things happen when Fate has other plans." Like the end of world.

Sharon, in the stasis brought on by a decision made as a young girl, was not so different than Kenzi in age as well as height. Had things progressed according to the whims of nature, she very likely would have grown, but that dream had faded in favor of the practicality, and acceptance.

A young woman who listened to the way Kenzi spoke, hearing an emphasis that spoke of proper nouns instead of broader reaching concepts.

"You say Fate as if it has a will of its own." Which it very likely did; ideas could be presences and intelligences of their own, should stories out of the Abyss be believed. The very mystery the people of Pandora raced toward, or that her household did, entangled with the Baskervilles, aimed to address questions just like those.

Worlds were trying to end all the time. She empathized with Gilbert, living through one horrible thwarted ending to come to a world that held an absolute ending in the mouth of one inconceivably large. She wouldn't tell him how things were at home, or how she'd ached and raged to know what had happened.

Fate, she believed, could very well be an individual. And an individual could be fought, much like an idea. At what cost...

Well. Perhaps too high a cost, but that was neither here nor there. It was Kenzi's story. It was from Kenzi that Sharon wanted to hear whatever it was she desired to say.

"A bit hard is a reasonable challenge in the face of something worth winning. When you look to change the foundation of a world, a bit hard is the least you can expect to oppose you, Fate willing or not. You have you, and you have your Bo. I don't believe you will be so alone in seeing your love's wish through to fruition."

"I wouldn't say it has a will of it's own but it's certainly a thing that dictates our lives. There's no fighting it, trust me, I tried once. I tried so hard and yet the guy died anyway." He'd probably been her first Fae crush even though she'd only known him for a few hours.

"It'd just be nice if we could get a break for once to do other things. Ever since Bo found out she's Fae there's been an end of the world crisis nearly every year. It gets tiring after a while." First it was Bo's mother trying to start a war between the Light and the Dark that could have ended in the death of pretty much everyone. Then it was the Garuda, awakened because Trick used his powers. The year after that wasn't so much world ending as shit hitting the fan but now, just as she'd left, it was Bo's father trying to come into the world from Hell to claim his daughter.

Kenzi offered a little smile to Sharon, "Thanks."

She refrained from saying anything about it being just the once. Persistence wasn't a trait everyone found admirable.

"How many years has that been? One does find it surprising, since the world must have gotten on all right before Bo ever knew of her own ancestry." She allowed herself to sound lightly amused, brushing hair back behind one ear. In response to Kenzi's thank you, she inclined her head forward.

"You're welcome."

Kenzi was pretty persistent, or stubborn depending on how one looked at it, herself. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't mind it.

"Four. Four years and the world goes to hell on a regular basis because Bo found out she was Fae." She didn't really get it herself, how could one woman finding out what she was turn the world on it's head? Prophesies explained some of it but, still, it was weird.

"Precisely how much of the world notices the degeneration?"

It's actually something of a relevant interest of hers. Were the Fae protecting the world from knowing how close it was to chaos, or was that cat well and thoroughly out of the bag? Besides, it's another question, and a continuation of letting Kenzi talk as she would... though perhaps turning it back to her love may be wiser, if not kinder.

Kenzi shrugged. "There are some humans that know about the Fae but that's because they're claimed, just as I was by Bo. The general population doesn't know that there's a bunch of super-powered freaks around them, feeding on them, manipulating them." The Light were just as guilty of this as the Dark, only they didn't kill those they fed on if it could be helped.

Talking about Hale was painful, focusing on something else was making her feel better for the moment. She'd gladly ramble on about the Fae to someone willing to listen. Back home she couldn't share what she knew, otherwise she'd likely end up dead, but here there were no Fae to police her.

Surprising how many similarities to the Abyss and the Chains could be drawn across so many worlds. There is always something lurking in the shadows, manipulating the scene the world played out on, like so many ignorant pawns so certain of their own agency.

Not that Pandora had aimed to do anything less, for their own aims; the Rainsworth house was as guilty as the rest.

"Would you mind telling me more about these Fae, and their divides? There are some stories from my childhood concerning faeries, considered a diminutive, if particularly wicked, lot of folk. What are they like in your own home?"

Just wait until Kenzi brought up Alice in Wonderland again. She freaked Gil out with that one.

Kenzi took a drink before nodding. "That's the legends humans know back home but in truth the Fae can look as normal as any human. Most view themselves better than humans so they come off pretty wicked. Really they're just an evolutionary branch that predates modern humans." To quote Doctor Lauren Lewis, she could ramble on about the scientific part of the Fae at times and Kenzi often ended up having to listen to it.

"Fae refers to any being that isn't human, so, like, vampires, succubi, valkyries, shifters, sirens; they're all Fae. Even the gods of human mythology were nothing more than Fae that decided they'd rather be worshiped by humans than hide away from them." The mythology side of the Fae was what interested Kenzi most. What was human myth was actual Fae history although some of those stories were still considered myth by some Fae due to the stories being so old.

"I haven't the faintest clue what most of those things you mention are, aside from their overarching category of being. Vampires are creatures who survive on human blood? Sirens one would know from the Greeks, luring men to watery graves miles away from their homes. I can't help thinking I'm only getting a small portion of the larger picture."

Kenzi nodded, "Vampires in legend are undead beings that survive on blood and shapeshift into animals and stuff like that. It depends on the legend, but the vampires of my world are alive, I guess. They still feed on blood though. As for sirens, in those legends they were often seemingly beautiful women but they can be male as well in my world, although I guess it's pretty rare. Hale's mother was a siren and he took after her." Much to his father's displeasure, he always thought of Hale as weak for being the type of Fae that were generally female. She frowned before continuing, glad to move on from the subject and Hale and to talk about all these different types of Fae.

"Succubi are beings that feed on sexual energy, the incubus is the male equivalent. That's what Bo is. Shifters, on the other hand, just kind of refers to any being that shifts into an animal. Like werewolves but not the man-beast variation, just full animal."

She paused to take a drink and let Sharon digest the information.

Information Sharon took in with avid curiosity. Really, these were the sorts of demons straight out of the wildest sort of gothic novel. It's fascinating, and a whole different realm of deadly than the supernatural element one might strongly, and not incorrectly, argue of those creatures and people from the Abyss.

Or is it just people, significantly warped? Souls kept out of the reincarnation cycle.

"They all sound so dangerous! How does your friend Bo manage, with such a specific dietary need?"

Kenzi, you too are from a crazy world. Sharon can respect that. Even more so, while you're grieving for the love of a man enmeshed in the dangers passing by the public eye.

"Naw, they aren't so tough." They really are but Kenzi was friends with a lot of them so she rarely had to worry about anything.

"Honestly, I dunno. When we first met she couldn't control her hunger but now days she does pretty good. She had someone steady for a while but she usually just picks up whatever human or Fae she can." Bo's life was probably worthy of some romance novel.

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