Yelling has never really been my style. I'm not good at it by any means. Either being yelled at or yelling in turn. I'm just not that sort of person. I hate that tension, that aggression and everything else about it and yet I'll be damned if Kat yelling at me didn't spark my own irritation in that moment. We never fought. Ever. We just weren't that sought of couple. Well, arguments over what to order for dinner or whose turn it was to make the bed aside, we'd never fought over anything. Not like this. I don't know why I got so mad. Maybe because as far as I was concerned she was being a damn fool. Throwing her life away. Determined to either kill or be killed and I saw her point I understood- but not one of those plans she had included me. Her answer to 'us' simply that idea we should break up, again. As if the last few months hadn't been the most difficult of my life. As if I hadn't spent every night awake just hoping she'd come home or managed to survive. I was finally back with her again. I could finally see her and smell her and touch her and she wanted to go back to living like.....like we were barely living at all. I couldn't do it again. I couldn't go back to not knowing if she was alive every day. To having to break into goddamn Council buildings to be able to track her down even despite Azrael having assured me she was fine. I didn't believe Azrael as far as I could throw him. The guy was.....unique to say the least.

I suppose too that I was mad that she was acting as if my life was the only one that mattered here and yet, by that same token, as if my feelings on the manner didn't. As if I just had to give her up and accept that she was going off to, quite possibly, get herself killed. Well fuck that. If she had so many goddamn opinions then she could hear mine as well. When I said maybe we should just die together i hardly meant I actually thought that was a viable plan. I suppose, really, what I meant what that we were in this together. Kat didn't get to decide she was going alone. She didn't get to decide to tell me to just 'forget her'. As if I could forget the years we'd been together, as if she wasn't the only woman i'd ever loved. As if I could walk away into the night here and now and never think about her again. Her leaving was damning me to a life of wondering, forever, what happened to her. Let alone the notion that if she failed I was almost certainly sure this Viktor would come for me next and without Kat to warn me he was coming I was as good as dead anyway. Either we both won or we both lost. As far as I was concerned that was it. I suppose i didn't consider my words as well as I could have done in the midst of the shouting and that insistence she didn't seem to appreciate the things I'd done for her. She jerked back almost like i'd struck her. Even those tears seeming to halt upon her face. I don't think i've ever seen her cry. One hand lifted, rubbing at the back of my neck almost sheepishly really.
"Once I learned how to track you I started doing that. Sometimes....you were followed by Viktors men. I didn't kill anyone but I stopped them following you or sometimes even stopped them getting away from you when you were chasing them down. I was looking out for you. I can explain it all later if you want."

She marched away from me after that, heading toward the windows and the door, keeping her back to me. I suppose she didn't want me to see her cry even if I was damn well sure it was too late for that. Still, her words then, those words she spoke without even looking at me made me very near wince. Did she really, truly think I was just going to walk away and forget her. Did she really not understand what she meant to me after all this time? Maybe she really was worse at relationships then me and really that's saying something. I don't know what emotions I felt then. Some mix of anger and sadness and almost amusement though I don't really know how. As if the hopelessness of the whole situation was just getting to me entirely. I don't know. The idea that she really didn't understand though was as surprising as it was baffling as it was amusing and irritating all at once. Her near bitter retort that this is what happened when you'd only ever had one relationship saw my head shake with that attempt to explain whether leaving really meant- and what it would do to me. Let alone that desire i had to keep her safe in turn. Kat retorting there was nothing I could do. That it had nothing to do with me.

"Kat, it has everything to do with me. You are my business and I can't just walk away. You....don't get to decide that for me."

She could try all she wanted but the truth remained. She didn't get to decide what I did with my life. Even if she wanted to. Even if I knew, deep down, she really did only want to keep me safe. I stepped towards her then, coming to stand beside her, not touching her just yet just in case she really didn't want to be touched. My arm the only part of me brushing agianst her as if i couldn't bare to not touch her at least a little. Truth be told I wanted to touch her a lot. Those thoughts still turning within my mind even as I tried to explain exactly what I felt about her, about us and about why I couldn't just let her go. Maybe what I said was more potent than I anticipated or maybe whatever resolve she'd been trying to muster finally just broke because she suddenly sobbed and all but threw herself into my chest. My arms lifted almost immediately to wrap around her, to hold her, to let her cry into my chest and shirt. Her words were very near mumbled agianst my chest but I hear them all the same.

"I know."

For that moment at least it was all I could offer her as I just let her....cry. I think she needed that moment and I didn't want to let her go. That feel of her in my arms and agianst me was that sensation i'd be craving for months I just held her, because I could, because she needed it and I needed it too. How did it come to this? How did we get pushed to this by that....bastard of a man? How did everything go SO wrong?

"Kat?"

I paused, waiting until she managed to stop her tears at least enough to hear me as I glanced down towards her, my arms remaining around her all the same.

"I'm....more capable than you think I am. I can help you. I've been helping you. We can do this together but you have to let me work with you. You have to trust I can defend myself and believe me, I can even if I dont always like it. Your always going to be the better fighter but Im still more use to you with you then sitting at home waiting for you to come home. We need to work together. Can you let me do that?"


k o h l
so you want to play with magic?