Chelen City: Interlude: Catie

 Notes: I could have put this off for another week, but I really wanted to write some Catie POV, so...here you go!

Title: Chelen City: Interlude: Catie

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Interlude: Catie

 

 

There is music running through her mind, courtesy of her connection to her parents and to Lizzie. It sounds different from their different angles, instruments taking on different qualities depending on who she focuses on. It’s a multi-dimensional experience, one that all of them are specifically sharing with her in an effort to include her in tonight’s party.

She doesn’t like it. Fuck them—that’s what her dads say when they get frustrated or angry, fuck, and she’s going to say it too. Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck, fuck. “FUCK!” she shrieks in every harmonic available to her. It feels good, satisfying to do so, so she does it again. “FUCKFUCKFUCK!”

There are pounding feet on the stairs. A hand tries the door to her hangar, which is locked of course. “Catie, please let me in.”

It’s Ryu. Catie isn’t sure what to think about him. Her father likes him, he thinks he’s amusing and wants to help him, while Kee doesn’t like him and doesn’t want him here, but also doesn’t want him to be hurt. It’s a strange push and pull of personality. Catie takes a moment to consider what she thinks of him.

He's the only adult here who might potentially be on her side, is what she thinks. Daddy wants to make Kieron happy and Kieron wants to make that woman happy, and that woman wants to bring her son over to take Lizzie away from Catie. Lizzie loves that stupid human boy, and Catie doesn’t even know why.

Maybe she should ask.

Only no, because then she’ll have to find out how Lizzie really feels about her too, and she doesn’t want to know.

[I love you.]

Catie pushes her sister’s tentative thoughts away.

[I do!]

[Whatever.]

[Catie…]

[Why do you get to do everything?] she whines. She knows it’s not attractive. She knows she shouldn’t. That’s part of why she’s going to. [Why? WHY?] “WHYWHYWHY?”

“Catie!”

Oh yeah, he’s still there. Catie pauses, then unlocks the door and waits for Ryu to let himself in.

“Whaaaat?” she asks him.

“Please don’t use cutesy phrasing on me.”

Catie begins to pout. “I don’t knoooow what you meeean.”

“I can hear you talk to yourself, you know.” He taps his forehead, then his ear. “A lot. Your dads go out for work, but I’m stuck here in the house for the foreseeable future. I know you can talk without elongating your vowels.”

“Noooo I can’t.”

“Yes you can, and if you want me to treat you like a fully-fledged person—which you were yelling pretty loudly about earlier—you’ll do it.”

Catie pouts harder. She hears Lizzie chuckle, and forcibly wrenches herself out of her sister’s mental link. There’s a moment of dismay on Lizzie’s part before they’re separated, and Catie immediately misses her. But…she needs to focus. “Fine. What do you want?”

“For starters, I’d like you to stop yelling so loud.”

“It’s my house,” Catie points out sullenly. “I can yell if I want to.”

“Do you think your dads would like that behavior?”

“I don’t care what they like.”

“Wow.” He starts to laugh all of a sudden. Catie is this close to blasting him with some hot air from her jets when he holds up a hand. “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, it’s just…you remind me of myself.”

Huh? “What do you mean?” There’s a faint sense of pressure building inside of her central matrix—Lizzie trying to get back in, probably. She can ignore it for now.

“Exactly what I said. I’m the middle of five children,” Ryu tells her, his hands in his pockets. He looks very casual, a lot like Kee in all black, but where Kee wears clothes that tend to cling, Ryu’s are loose-fitting, swirling around his limbs with every movement. Not for the first time, Catie marvels at the grace of humanity. They’re just so elegant…except for the children. Ugh, how Lizzie can stand that stupid little boy…

“I’m also the only one born with Elfshot Disease,” he continues. “I wasn’t diagnosed until I was eight, though. By then, I was used to my older siblings being allowed to do things I wasn’t. Once my parents started allowing my younger siblings to surpass me in things with the excuse of keeping me safe, I got really angry about it.”

“Really?” Catie opens all her sensors to better take him in. Heartrate steady, blood pressure stable…it doesn’t seem like he’s making this up for her benefit. “What did you do?”

“Yelled ‘fuck’ a lot, snuck out of my house to do dumb stuff and ended up going into a very dangerous career.” He folds his arms and shrugs. “I don’t talk to my family much anymore.”

“That sounds sad,” Catie offers.”

“It is. It makes me very sad, especially since only two of them still live on Gania and neither are in Chelen City. But I made my choices. Now I have to live with them.” He looks at her. “It’s important to express what you feel without fear. But it’s also important to remember that your actions have consequences.”

“Like what?” The pressure is growing. Lizzie must be getting impatient. Catie gets it; she would be too.

“Like how you’re making other people feel. I said a lot of terrible stuff to my family when I was striking out on my own. Some of it they deserved,” he said. “But a lot of it they didn’t. And now I don’t have them anymore.”

“My daddies would never leave me.” Catie knows it like she knows her own circuits.

“Probably not.”

But…maybe? Or maybe they would fight about her and Kee would finally get tired and leave them all? Maybe he’ll take Lizzie with him? Or maybe Daddy will start working on an entirely new ship, and then Kee will have Lizzie, and no one will want her anymore?

All of a sudden it’s very important to Catie that she let Lizzie back in, tell her that she loves her and that she doesn’t mean to be mean and that she just wants them to love her best. She throws her matric open, waiting for her sister to pour back in.

Only the pressure isn’t her sister. It’s a virus, and she doesn’t know how it got into the house’s closed system but it’s here now and she’s got to put her shields back up but it’s too late so she’s got to fight it but it’s very mean and it hurts and she doesn’t like this, it makes her feel sick and dizzy and she needs help, she needs help, she needs…

“DADDY!”