Step Ahead

Tracking down a single wolf in this town – even when you knew exactly where he was meant to be sinking into what yawing pit of grief he’d tumbled into after the world had bloomed red and bloody – was nearly impossible. She suspected she could’ve thrown a glass, or the proverbial rock, in here and hit one on chance alone, but there’d been no tall figure swaggering back and forth behind the bar as she’d approached it. Katja hissed out a sigh, the need to burn Bernardo’s voice out of her ears, or just the last ten days out from under her skin burning all the hotter.

In the camps it had been easier. You saw the convoys rumbling out of the gate, dust tossed up behind them. Every single person stationed there knew who was going out – the fact that half the missions were ‘secret’ meant nothing when you were all living on top of one another. You saw them rumbling back. If the one you were looking for wasn’t ‘out there’ then there was only so much real estate to disappear into. It was different here.

Katja tossed that tumble of hair back over her shoulder as the bartender she’d tossed her question at lifted a hand to wave it off and stepped away. Teeth flashed. It would’ve been easier if she could haul that phone out in front of Bernardo and not be pelted with extra questions. She was already carrying enough pellets from the topics she was ignoring. All those failed shots did was make him worse. She had no intention of talking, and knew that if Kit was here he’d be happy enough to put his mouth to other uses. Tangling hands in that fall of hair he wouldn’t have gotten away with, even in SpecOps, drowning the heat that wanted to work its way up and out of her throat.

Now that heat lingered in her palms as she pressed them to the bar and craned forward again. She could’ve burned the face off of the guy who’d abandoned her … and bought herself endless trouble with it. Katja swallowed, trying to get the heat to drop lower but the slap of her hand had a scorch mark appearing that would be a bitch to get out.

Her fingers curled sharply, pale eyes narrowing as the girl called out to her. The one eyed chick. That eye patch standing out in a bar of bland faces bathed in sweat. Katja’s lips curled like her fingers, teeth flashing slightly as her brows rose. ”You know Kit?” she asked. Like that should’ve been a surprise. He probably knew half the women in here, but that was none of her business. Not really. ”You seen him today or is this just … a guess?” Maybe he hadn’t surfaced yet, still sprawled from whatever had saved him from sinking further last night.

As the bartender stalked back to her, his expression souring as he saw the black streaks on the bar, Katja turned that smile on him. ”No faces this time, honey. A mojito … and whatever Kit’s friend here wants. You are drinking?” She tilted her head to study the girl like some argument would tumble out of her. If she was in here then she was likely old enough … if she knew Kit then she definitely was. It had been years since she’d known where he drew the lines but some things didn’t change, even in this town. ”Katja,” she crooned. ”Friend of Kit.” Like that explained everything.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 592

Mystic Falls had a population of just under 7,000 according to the ‘briefing’ Bernardo had given before they’d left Lima. At the height of the trouble in Afghanistan there’d probably been twice that many in the camp she’d spent most of her time in. She probably could’ve recognised a few thousand, named hundreds. They’d been the people who had watched her back as she was taken into situations she wasn’t technically trained for, the people who had saved her life when those situations had turned nasty, or had helped her bleed away the tension in the aftermath. They were the brothers and sisters she’d mourned when they were lost, the ones she had prayed for, along with the Goddess – it still galled her that she’d fallen back on seeing her mother that way - when she’d been in that hole in the ground. When she’d finally been freed she’d mourned them and the familiarity she’d lost. Another family destroyed.

She wasn’t looking to recreate it in Mystic Falls, although like Bernardo, Katja didn’t imagine this place was going to give her the chance. People here wanted to get to know you, wanted to poke into your life and reveal everything in that vulnerable heart of you. Kit and even El Presidente, Frank, were a blessing that way. Accepting her the way she was, not prying until she flared up against all that digging. It seemed as though some had gotten to know Kit though. A glance at the girl had her suspecting why. They all had their coping strategies after all, hmm?

There was no flare of jealousy as she looked aside at her. This one was young, probably from the local college. Wide eyed – in the singular – trusting, maybe untouched by the tragedies the world could throw at you when fate wanted to be a raka. She could’ve shrugged off the girl’s guess but Katja hummed, then clucked her tongue in disappointment. If he showed, he showed, if not … the irritation might be washed away with enough liquor. Katja glanced over her shoulder to where the dance floor heaved with bodies, even this early in the evening. Or with the abrasive power of someone else out there hungry enough not to look for strings to attach themselves. Later. Maybe.

Thank for the Goddess.

The bartender was back for now, scowling over the damage she’d left on the bar in that flare of temper. Katja winged a dark brow as she smiled, the seaglass eyes sharp and oddly cold in contrast to the heat beneath. The offer of a drink was tossed out to the girl, a hum of approval rolling out as she went for rum at least. ”The good stuff,” she ordered the bartender. ”No short measures either.” She’d have ordered him to paste a smile on but she didn’t want any additions to what he was muddling up for her. ”Anything for a friend of Kit’s,” Katja told the girl as she angled her way towards her. The girl had given her the answer she’d wanted to and she believed in that sort of thing being rewarded. Unlike the Goddess she wasn’t all take, take, take.

Kitty, friend of Kit? Katja chuckled over it as she nodded to the girl. She propped an elbow on the bar, fingers tangling in the dark curls that tumbled over her shoulder as she studied the girl. ”School? No. I definitely didn’t grow up where he did.” She let her accent thicken on the words. Kit had been half Texan, half Californian boy from what she’d heard, little facts like that dropping in on bases until you had these incomplete puzzle pieces of each of those you served with. The last pieces usually only clicked into place when they were gone and suddenly everybody was sharing those pieces they had. ”He tell you he was a soldier once?” Katja asked, a thin veil of amusement in her words. ”I was too, a translator. I guess that means I was real good at picking apart all those grunts of his. You get to know him here?” She swirled a finger around them, ready to click a few more of those puzzle pieces of Kit’s jigsaw that had been added since they’d been tent buddies half a world away.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 717

It was still strange to think of the Kitten – Kit – settled, Frank too. Mierda, it was strange to see any of them outside of that isolated world of the camps. You shared little bits of yourself there but outside of your team few got to see all the depths, to know more than just those surface details of who you’d been before – who you were outside – being there. Kit had seen deeper than the rest of his team, she’d become a teacher to him in a way Katja had not imagined herself being to any before, when his first kill in combat had shattered the wall that hid the ugliest part of the world from him. Playing tutor didn’t mean playing house. Not like Kit and Frank were doing here.

Her own presence in town was strange enough, some part of her still wanting to bolt from Bernardo and all the expectations that came with him. Copacati might have saved her from that pit and the eternal misery the men holding her had promised, but she hadn’t agreed to become one of the Order, to be a family. That had never been her relationship with her mother, the family she had truly known had been cut down in the village, all of this … it was life after, but never a settled life again.

Katja shifted uneasily in her seat, a hint of her irritation with Bernardo rising back up for a moment as she leaned in to order for the two of them. That irritation had already scalded the bar, she didn’t want it to scorch what else she had here, that had been the point of finding Kit. A way to blow that heat off with someone who didn’t expect anything more from her, who didn’t want to snare her and force her into some happy ever after bullshit. ”You’re welcome,” Katja crooned back. The girl seemed happy enough with the title she’d given her at least. A piece in the puzzle that was the Kitten’s life outside the wire.

Interrogation had once been a major part of hers inside of that wire. She usually wasn’t the one formulating the questions but she’d asked them time and time again, developing the sort of rapport with the prisoners that had them falling into some false sense of security. Oh, indeed. Katja’s smile turned wry before she chuckled at the girl. ”I guess maybe I should take that as a compliment,” she assured her. Did that mean she could blend here if she wanted to stretch that tether back to Lima when Bernardo eventually wrapped up whatever the Order had actually come here to do? Would she wanted to?

Teeth raked at her lower lip, dragging away as she tossed her question back at Kitty. In the first few weeks after she’d been brought back to Lima it had been all she’d wanted to do but the world she had known with her team had been shattered, just as Kit’s had been by that IED and again by the rattle of shooting from his brother’s TV. Katja hummed lightly, looking up as the bartender sulkily set their drinks down on the bar. She waited for him to leave, pale eyes narrowed and set on his back before they slid back to Kitty. ”He’s not much of a talker,” she said, half in agreement. Not when it came to those wounds still so raw, she suspected. ”I met him in the camps, the bases. You could’ve said I was a teacher of sorts too.” Her mouth pinched faintly at the recollection. She’d guided Kit through those first few changes, tried to impart enough knowledge to him that what he’d become wouldn’t tear him apart.

The girl was too young, too innocent still to understand what that was like. Maybe. Katja’s eyes flickered to the patch that covered her eye, lingering for just a moment. It all depended on what had cost her eye. Violence wasn’t reserved for that older, the well trained. ”He always did like to play hero,” she said with a chuckle. Katja reached for her drink, remembering the night in the tent where he’d eventually leapt from the cot to deal with the lizards sneaking into camp. Humming, Katja picked up her glass, gesturing to Kitty with it before she took a gulp that ignited the fire in her throat for a moment at least. ”In a way, you could call it a visit. I came with friends, I didn’t expect the Kitten to be here. Or El Presidente. Do you know him too?” Frank seemed to have circled the wagons for Kit after he’d been released from prison, helping him to rebuild something here at least.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 789