Black Rose

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((Kai Rosado-Prince continued from And When I Bite Down))

After Kitty had been asleep for a while, Kai got up and dragged Ashlyn’s body into a corner. He dug around in the crates scattered about until he found a sheet to throw over her, blocking her from view as much as possible. Kitty was stirring when he returned, and he wrapped his arms around her. She curled up, head on his chest, and he all but rocked her back to sleep.

And Kai was left alone with his thoughts again.

He knew what he was going to do. What he needed to do. What he’d promised to Cali and to Marshall. Maybe it would have been easier if Ash was still alive. Maybe not. Kai certainly hadn’t accounted for her still having enough life left in her to be yet another problem.

If he’d been down there when she started in on Kitty the same way she always had…

Thinking about it in detail wouldn’t help anything, but Kai still thought about it in bits and pieces. He didn’t think he’d have been able to leave Kitty behind if he had been the one to put Ash down.

What did that say about him? That he thought he probably could have killed her sister and then stayed by her side? That he didn’t blame Kitty for killing Ash so much, at least in the personal sense. That if Ash wasn’t the last name on a long list, they might have been able to move forward from it somehow.

He couldn’t make himself feel sorry, no matter how sorry Kitty herself felt. Not for Ashlyn. It felt like the kind of thing that you could only realize about yourself buried down in the cold and dark.

Sorry or not, he couldn’t let it happen again.

He had more the rough outline of a plan than a true plan in his mind. Pick up every weapon he could find, slip out through the tunnels, find Marshall, find Cali. There were already complications to that simple outline.

He wouldn’t be able to take the grenade launcher. He could still feel the impression of its edge digging into his chest when he’d hugged Kitty. She’d been wearing it around her neck since they first met up and had only taken it off to fire it the one time. Trying to slip it off her neck and over her head while she slept wasn’t feasible without waking her up.

Then, the knife. She'd had it the whole time in a sheath that she kept in her boot, and that was where it had gone again after she removed it from Ash's body. The same problem.

If she woke up while he tried to take either weapon, there was no innocent way to explain what he was doing.

If they ended up confronting each other, and he didn’t give in again…

He didn’t know. Ultimately, there were only a few ways that could end, and Kai didn’t like any of them. But he had to consider them.

Kai glanced down at Kitty, sleeping soundly in his arms.

His hand came to rest on her neck without pressure.

He stared at what he could make out of her sleeping face for a long time.

There was an argument to be made that he would have been in the right to kill either Ash or Kitty. He knew that. He knew that it was roaming around outside, toting a gun and ready to mow down anybody who said differently.

He knew that the fact that he could even think of it for a second meant that things had fundamentally, irrevocably changed. That even if he did nothing, a line had been crossed somewhere and he couldn’t un-think the thought.

Maybe he’d said everything out loud to Cali so that he would be held liable by someone, somewhere.

Kai’s hand slid from Kitty’s neck down to her back, and he hugged her as tightly as could without jostling her awake.

Right or wrong, he couldn’t do anything more than think about it. Because even after everything, guilt started eating him alive the second he thought of hurting her. Because he’d wanted so, so badly all along to convince himself that things could still be the same as they’d always been in some way. Because it felt like his heart was breaking.

Because he loved her, the way that Ashlyn was supposed to have loved her.

He focused on keeping his breathing steady as he carefully lowered Kitty to the floor and pulled her emergency blanket over her. Slow and methodical. Run through the mental checklist one by one. That way he only had to think about doing each task as he did it and not the why. Not what might happen next.

The grenade launcher was a wash, but it wasn’t something that Kitty could use carelessly. Its ammo was limited, and the risk to the user was as great as the risk to a target. All told, it was better as a threat than an actual weapon to use. She couldn’t go charging in with that. In most situations with just the grenade launcher on hand, it would be better to cut and run.

The knife…

Theoretically, she couldn't go charging in with the knife either. Theoretically. The possibility of a hair-trigger was still there with the grenade launcher, but not the knife. If Kitty was smart, if she was telling the truth about only killing when she felt she had to fight back…

If.

No matter how Kai tried to think his way around the situation, he couldn't come up with a justification that satisfied him, much less one that would satisfy Cali and Marshall if he tried to explain it. Leaving the knife was a mistake, but if it wanted to get away with everything else without provoking a fight, it was a mistake he had to make.

And maybe the realization would make Kitty reconsider everything that she had said and done and realize her arguments were flawed. That none of this had been necessary the way she'd insisted it was. That Kai wasn't leaving her defenseless, but was leaving her with just that. Defenses only.

Because without him there, without the excuse of protecting him, without the cache of weapons… if Kitty played safe and smart, she would have no reason to kill anyone else. Not unless she started actively seeking people out for that purpose.

If she made that choice, there wouldn't be anything else that Kai could do for her.

He'd gone this far for her. No further.

That much would have to be good enough. That much would never be good enough, but Kai had little choice without making everything even worse.

Slowly and stealthily, he gathered everything else. Meena’s shotgun was already in his bag, and Ren’s gun joined it. Two more guns, one each from Derek and Chiara. The billhook that was crusted with someone’s blood. The spear that hadn’t yet seen any use from them but still had a dark stain on its end. The weird double-ended blade that Ash had apparently been carrying. He couldn’t find the digging bar among their belongings and very belatedly realized that it must have been lost in the fight back in the tunnels.

Careless to not notice that. He’d gotten careless and complacent, even when he thought he was alert.

He ended up having to bundle things together using more of the ratty, discarded bedsheets and furniture shrouds as cushioning to keep everything from rattling. Moving through all of the clutter in the basement with the bundle was going to be painstaking, but eventually, he had everything and was ready to go.

So. He left.

He left Kitty’s space heater where she’d set it. Left the umbrella laying next to it. Her comfort and his shelter. He wouldn’t have been able to balance the umbrella along with everything else, anyway.

He left her food and water and medical supplies. Stealing the basic necessities would have been as good as leaving her for dead without the mercy of doing it quickly.

He left Ashlyn where she lay, draped in the sheet. Didn’t look at her as he passed by.

He found the entrance to the tunnels that he and Kitty had first entered through, and he disappeared into the darkness.

((Kai Rosado-Prince continued in On Guard))