swerved | (no subject)

Her head is spinning, and Kat doesn't think it's from whatever painkillers are in the IV she's been hooked up to, though they probably aren't helping on that front. There's just too much to take in, and she barely knows where to start with any of it. What happened to her mother, the months she's apparently missed, the impossible nature of what she's been told about this place, even if she has no choice but to believe it — that alone would be enough to have anyone thrown. Add to that having shown up in this state, straight from a demon inhabiting her mother's body torturing the rest of her family, now having words like comminuted patellar fracture and unstable, the prospect of surgery hanging overhead and the knowledge that she really will never dance again this time, impossible to get out of her head, and it's no wonder she can barely begin to process any of it.

As if it wasn't enough that her life already got turned so upside down repeatedly over the last few months. Her accident alone — and not an accident after all, she reminds herself — would have been bad enough. This, now, is nothing short of an unpleasant reminder of it, the white hospital walls and the too-clean chemical smell lingering in the air bringing her back to that night. At least the pain in her knee has dulled some, though she doesn't expect that to be the case for long. There's no easy recovery from something like this. She doesn't need a doctor's careful explanation to know that.

And yet, when she thinks back on it, remembers her father's screams and the expression Casey wore, how she'd seemed the night before, reading about the paramedics who were killed, she knows she would do the same thing all over again if she had to. Better her knee than her father's life. Better that she do it herself than give Casey one more burden to bear.

Mostly, there hasn't been much for her to do but wait, as is so often the case in hospitals. On a whim, she reaches for the remote for the TV, starting to flip through channels. Chances are, she won't know any of the programs, being apparently in another fucking world and all, but she might as well have some background noise. She's finally settled on some trashy soap opera when she sees the light change, hears a noise at the doorway, and turns toward it, not expecting to see someone she knows instead of another doctor or nurse.

"Father Marcus," she says, smiling faintly. She owes him one hell of an apology and she knows it, but right now, she'll take whatever familiarity she can get. "I guess you heard the news, huh?"

Threaded | Flat

It's a habit he doubts he'll be able to get her or her mother to quit and Marcus smiles when Kat addresses him and he steps into the room, taking in the sight of her in the hospital bed, the IV they have her hooked up to. Angela has told him most of what he needs to know, all the things that had happened to her family while he was following Brother Simon on his quest to find the Pope and he knows Tomas had saved Angela, had saved them all, but it's still good to see Kat here, whole and alive.

There's guilt, too, of course. He wishes he'd done a better job, that he hadn't been fooled by the demon, but he had been so focused on Casey that he hadn't seen the most obvious thing. By the time he had, it had been too late. Mother Bernadette had been dead and Marcus had needed to go where Simon was leading him, but he wishes he could have done more for Angela. For Kat.

"Katherine," he says, crossing to stand by her bed. "It's good to see you, though I wish the circumstances were better."