far from home

He’d always known he’d go back eventually. Kamilla would’ve already moved on from losing her youngest son – unless there was the opportunity to bring it up in an interview to garner more sympathy. He was so young, such a tragedy to have lost a son that way. Especially when it had been your eldest boy holding the knife. Maybe for a year or two more she’d find opportunities to stand up at public discussions on how the country was failing its service men and women and discuss how it had cost her both her boys (as though Kit wasn’t out there on his own, ostracised by the rest of the family), but eventually something else would catch her eye and all of the pain would be forgotten.

Kandace. Their dad. Gage. Ronni. Their faces flickered through Kace’s mind as he eased back in the hard plastic seat to study the board again. Trains to LA took days. It would’ve been practically a blink in comparison to take the plane, but of course, he’d chickened out. There were more opportunities to get off the train, excuses too. Ways to bolt before he got back there to face what he’d been avoiding for the last two years. How did you tell the people you loved that you’d come back to life all that time ago but had chickened out of telling them? Fuck. Gage wasn’t gonna get over it, that disappointment would pinch his face and he’d just walk.

Maybe it was better to put it off again. Finish getting himself set up here and then him and Kit would do something about. If they could finish pulling Kit’s head out of his ass, maybe he’d be in the sort of shape where he could stand up to Kamilla and the tidal wave of grief and blame and all sorts of feigned emotions (not feigned well enough that they wouldn’t be able to see she was acting) that’d come their way.

Had he even told Kit he was going? Kace’s hand twitched towards his pocket, the weight of his phone was just about palpable. If he had mentioned it then there had to have been a fight. He didn’t remember it though and usually the sting of those arguments – feeling like barked knuckles as though he’d actually swung for Kit’s face – remained for days afterwards. There was still time now, the board had just flipped over to show that the train to LA was delayed again. Kit would tell him to come the fuck home and they’d work it out, but maybe he didn’t want to. Kit was still on that slippery slope, they needed something to jolt him out of it and maybe that was family.

Still, even with guilt weighing heavy in his stomach, Kace didn’t move. He’d make the call from LA, from well outside of Kit’s reach. Kace’s gaze dropped slowly away from the board, slipping down to his boots. It was cowardice, but maybe he’d embrace just how much of a yellow belly he had.

The shadow that fell over his boots had Kace swallowing hard, but not looking up at the towering form of his brother that he was sure would be there. Someone’d called his voice, hadn’t they? The echo of it rung through his chest and had him feeling sick. Faceless motherfuckers, what? Kace frowned, his head slowly coming up.

He hadn’t been planning to go, hadn’t even considered doing it any time soon. Not with the Diner and Kit still in such a fragile state. Hell, he’d been heading home probably through the worst of the storm to make sure he could check in on him before he headed out to work. Mikey had been there with him, Dom had left and … ”We were getting’ the fuck out,” he muttered. ”I … I told you to run … but you couldn’t …” Kace stiffened in the seat, his gaze whipping around the place. This wasn’t the Diner, he hadn’t lost his mind. They were in a train station, with dozens of other people who all looked a little out of their gourd. ”Where the fuck are we?” His frown was deepening, the muscles in his legs twitching as he finally started to push himself to his feet, like they were resisting the urge to do just what Mikey had suggested and run.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 730

Could he honestly call it PTSD when he’d seen what that shit really did to you with Kit? He’d spent hours at a time scrolling through everything about he could after Kit had come back, trying to understand without having enough of a fucking clue to prevent triggering him into stabbing him in the chest. Kace felt the panic bite the moment the pieces began to rearrange themselves in his head, taking him from the already anxiety inducing trip back home to LA to somewhere he didn’t recognise. Heart racing, adrenalin coursing through his system hard enough that he could’ve launched himself up out of that chair and halfway across the room in a single bound. Air not seeming to come fast enough as his legs straightened fully and he stood there next to Mikey.

Not in a coffin. Not here on his own. Not dead. The words hammered their way through his brain, his system trying to convince him that this wasn’t like the last time. It didn’t matter how many people he could see scattered around the two of them, he wasn’t where he last remembered being and that was what was triggering him to shit.

Kace dragged his hands over his face before Mikey mentioned the gun and then he was scrabbling at his shirt. Buttons pinged off, skittering away onto the concrete, his hands snatching at the t-shirt beneath the minute he could grab for it. Bare chest, no blood, no wound slowly draining the life out of his body. He sagged with the confirmation, having to brace himself with his hands against his thigh as the fresh rush of adrenalin began to settle in his system. ”Teleported us … you realise how fucked that sounds, right? This isn’t some fucked up sci-fi movie, that shit’s not real.”[/b

The voice in his head that had sprung up the minute the reaper had shrugged and left him to slowly lose his fucking mind started to yap again. Not real? Yet werewolves were, and banshees and psychics and dragons and witches and … what the fuck was crazy about teleporting after that? Kace sucked in a breath, trying not to let it out in a burst of hysterical laughter. "Right ... right," he muttered hoarsely, trying to draw himself together enough to straighten up again.

Get out. Get home. Try and stop another nightmare from invading his brain. Fat chance of that, but as Mikey suggested getting out of there Kace was already trying to shake off the panic. He jogged after him, clattering through the doors behind Mikey and finding himself … right back in the waiting room. ”We got turned around …” Kace muttered, spinning in a circle as he tried to make sense of it again. They’d gone straight through the door though, hadn’t they? In one door, straight back to where they’d been moments before. None of it was logical, but Mikey was trying again and where he went Kace was gonna go too.

Through another door, straight back to where they’d been. Kace stopped dead, his heart slamming in his chest as he stared around them. Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to them, none of them were bothered that they were trapped in what was basically one giant concrete box. ”I don’t know what the fuck’s happened since that guy appeared in the diner,” Kace muttered. He turned back to Mikey, staring at him like the guy had grown another head instead of just the claws he’d grown in the Diner. ”What did happen back there? I told you to run when that guy pulled a gun and you…” Holding his hands up, he curled his fingers like claws. He’d seen Kit turn multiple times but it had never been like that.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 631

Hysterical laughter tried to bubble up in his throat again. Swallowing it down was almost painful, the feeling spiking through his chest like the damn knife was gonna burst out through his ribs. It was panic, the same way it had been when he’d come back to life in his coffin (like he couldn’t have figured out it was gonna happen when the damn thing had been right there in the middle of Frank’s living room. Kace puffed out a breath, trying to stop his heart rate as he shook his head at Mikey. This would’ve been easier if he could’ve gone back to being entirely naïve about the insane shit that was going on out there. Maybe then he’d have stayed zonked out like the people that hadn’t even looked up as he bolted out of his chair and half stripped right in front of them.

”I know, I know some of it.” A tiny bit of reassurance that probably wouldn’t do much to convince Mikey that he wasn’t gonna fall apart here. They were both in agreement on getting the fuck out of this place and away from those crater faced, bow legged, John Wayne wannabe sons of bitches. The original shots hadn’t hurt either one of them, but who was to say that they weren’t gonna come back, and with actual ammunition this time.

Holding himself together internally with the same determination that had kept him sane for years as a ghost, Kace took off after Mikey. He hadn’t dared hope that it’d be as simple as just running straight out the train station door – shit in his life was never that easy – but he hadn’t expected a damn Halloween funhouse either. Panic tried to nibble away at the edges of his confusion. Kace stopped when Mikey did, covering his face with his hands and cursing into his cupped palms. ”Fuck!”

It seemed like the steam was already going out of both of them, taking any hope of this being an easy fix with it. Mikey leaned back against the wall, hands in his hair. Kace carried on moving, turning in a slow circle to take everyone else in. ”Maybe they’re hypnotised. Did you see a flash of light when we left there?” Like a lightning bolt had been the weirdest part of all that shit. As though he was proving his point, Mikey grabbed a newspaper from a guy sitting close to them. Not even a fucking complaint about losing his entertainment.

Kace stopped, his fingertips raking lightly over his beard before they settled at his jaw. His brows rose and he stared at Mikey. He hadn’t just found the only other former prisoner in town, he’d found the one that was all kinds of fucked up from a werewolf bite too? The laugh slipped out before he could hold it back. His hands dropped and he held them out like he was blocking any backlash from it. ”I’m not laughin’ at you, man,” he promised. ”I’m not some horror movie virgin. I ain’t heard of the whole Kanima thing, but werewolves? Yeah. If that shit works in reverse it’s a miracle I don’t know about it.” His death had driven the roots of Kit’s carried trauma centre of the earth deep, destabilising his brother. If Kit hadn’t already been a werewolf by then, maybe the claws and the freaking tail would’ve been in his future too. ”You think those sons of bitches are vulnerable to, you know…” He curled the fingers of one hand like a claw again, gesturing at his ass with the other. They hadn’t exactly got the chance to fight back at the diner, but they might now – if they had to.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 620