The World Kept Turning
Returning to the place where she'd spent weeks of imposed exile was probably not the best idea in the world, but this time she had Hayden and she had a plan. Just taking the collar off wouldn't be enough to satisfy Kris. She had to give that bitch of a vampire a taste of her own medicine, she deserved it.

She'd used a payphone to call Katherine, to let the vampire know she was "running late" because she was overdue and Kris didn't want her triggering the collar. Kris blamed Bethany. It wasn't like she cared about whatever consequences came to light for that. Bethany wasn't a good person.

Getting in wasn't really a problem considering Kris knew how. Planting the collar took a little bit more thought. She was oh so tempted to break the lock and put it in with the Slayer skull, but something in her made her stop, a leftover sense of... loyalty, or what-the-fuck-ever.

Kris finally found somewhere, a place Katherine would never even think of looking and left it there, waiting for the button to be pressed. God, Kris hoped she pressed the button, she really did.

The Slayer would have lingered had it not been for Hayden reminding her that they had to leave. She was caught up in memories, and the way her gaze traveled to a door and the recesses of it more than suggested she was reliving something unpleasant.

After it was all over and they were a safe distance away Kris immediately lost whatever little she had in her stomach to lose, pressing a hand into the wall as she attempted to steady her weight, a weight that was very rocky.

"It's okay." Hayden twisted her long hair and held it out of the way. He had a hand on her back, too. It was hard, but he kept reminding himself not to grab too tight, not to crowd into her personal space. With no clue what happened to Kris -- when she first went missing or after -- he didn't know how messed up her emotions might be.

He looked up and around. The late afternoon shadows were growing, but it was still too bright for a vampire to come down the street looking. He half-expected to hear an explosion. Either Katherine wasn't onto the fact that her Slayer trophy was missing yet, or she was waiting to make sure before she detonated. Hopefully, she'd blow herself to kingdom come in the process.

A tendril of hair slipped out of his fist. He brushed it off Kris's neck and saw faint puncture marks. Hayden frowned. He told himself not to touch. He had to stuff his hand in his pocket. "Let me know what you need."

Kris finally finished throwing up, but she didn't stop heaving. Fuck, that was the worst, the dry heaving. Every inch of her chest hurt and her stomach wasn't fairing any better.

She lifted a shaky hand and brushed the back of it over her mouth, feeling even more... disgusting now that she'd thrown up in public. Kris gathered a breath and slowly straightened her back, turning her eyes to Hayden, lips thin and pressed together. Clearly she was trying to control some sort of attention.

"I need-" What did she need? Aside from being able to put all of this behind her and move on, but how did she begin to start? It wasn't really a physical issue to get over though, Katherine had roughed her up, bit her and drained her, but she'd kept her fed and everything else. It was more the mental and emotional strain of the last couple of weeks.

Kris reached out and curled her fingers in his shirt, pulling herself a little closer to him until she was surrounded by the smell of him. "I need you to take me home, Hayden. I don't want to be alone right now." A big admission for Kris, but one she wanted and needed to make right now.

"Alright." He let himself loop his arms around her, being careful in case she was bruised under her clothes. He handled her like a paper doll. Every touch was softer than it usually was, mindful that his girlfriend with the tough exterior and spine of steel wasn't herself. "Which home, yours or mine? We'll go where you want." His palms found her shoulder blades. He didn't know if hunger, her posture, or his paranoia made them seem so thin.

Hayden was determined to keep his feelings off his face. Just be about her, he coached himself. Don't think how close you are to getting on your knees and thanking god she's here.

Kris exhaled a breath when Hayden's arms wrapped around her and she wanted nothing more than to just rest into them and forget everything that had happened. Hopefully once she'd gotten some time away from Katherine she might be able to pull herself together, but for the moment she was feeling just this side of fragile.

It was when she thought about the options that she realised Eddy had been left to his own devices. God, she hoped her neighbour had been feeding him like Kris had asked, she'd put that safety clause into place when she got on good enough terms with the older woman. "Can we go to my place for now? I kinda need somewhere that's familiar."

"Yeah. I'll stay." Good luck kicking him out, but he didn't say that out loud. Hayden couldn't guess what kind of post-traumatic shit Kris had coming, or what her neighbors thought, but he wouldn't leave her alone to deal with it. In his opinion, she pushed people off to handle life by herself way too often. A lot of times, she made things out to look like they were nothing, only for him to figure out later she was up to her eyeballs in it. Maybe it was time he started asserting the word 'no'.

"Let's get in the truck." He rubbed her shoulders and steered her to the passenger side. Once she climbed up into the seat, he went around and started the ignition. "I'll call everybody and let 'em know you're okay." He backed out of the alley, cutting the wheel around some empty boxes, and maneuvered into the street. "Toby was really worried. So was Connor. Rhiannon sent a few texts, she had some shit going on, too. Some old guy took her powers. She got it back a few days ago."

Kris reached up to rub at her neck as they wandered back over to the truck, trying not to think about how... weird her neck felt without the collar. She eased into the truck and reached up for the belt, pulling it across her chest. There was a moment where she wasn't really listening to Hayden, more staring at the innocuous facade that had been her hellhole for the last couple of weeks.

The sooner it got blown up the better.

Belatedly she realised that Hayden had said something and turned her head, offering an apologetic smile. "Sorry, I was... totally out of it." She swallowed hard and rubbed at her hair, pulling a face as her fingers snagged on some sort of gunk. "A guy took Rhiannon's powers?"

He nodded and glanced at her. "Yeah, some old man. He was going around," he leaned forward to look both ways and then sped across an intersection, "Shooting people with tranq darts and doing some kind of ritual. He got a couple of girls in Chicago. Anyway, they took care of it." He wasn't going to bog her down with other people's drama.

Hayden squeezed the steering wheel and pulled into the late-day traffic. "If you want to nod off, you can." He looked her way, worried he might've missed an injury. But internally, he knew he was just hoping for an outward wound, something physical he could stitch up and bandage and Kris would be alright. He didn't have the slightest idea how to make this better. Would she want to talk about it? Would she tell him what happened? Was he supposed to act like she wasn't missing for a month, ignore it and let her do that, too? He knew from personal experience that rebuilding on a broken foundation was useless, but when Kris wanted to clam-shell, nothing short of the jaws of life could pry information out of her.

Kris leaned back into her seat and brushed a thumb over a couple cuts still left on a few knuckles, that demon must have had a stronger jaw than she'd thought at the time. "That's pretty messed up," she said after another few moments of silence. She wasn't even aware she was doing it, falling silent and not saying anything, she was just used to it. Not that she'd been super great at conversation as it was. "Did they get it sorted out? And is everybody okay?"

She knew she should sleep and yet she wouldn't, worried that if she closed her eyes then all of this would be a dream and she would be right back in the dark with Katherine and the menacing feel of the collar around her neck.

The Slayer was still for another long moment before she was reaching across to squeeze Hayden's thigh, touch lingering. "Thank you for... saving my ass, again. I was having some seriously morbid thoughts towards the end."

Risking a look down, Hayden saw her hand on his leg. He covered it and squeezed. "Like you haven't saved mine?" He wasn't talking about monsters dangling him over third story balconies by the ankle, or vampires, or anything like that. He was talking about just being with him. Giving him the right to love her.

"Before we got back together, when I was acting like some kind of shut-in, I had some..." He shook his head. "Stupid ideas." Hayden turned onto the major roadway that led to her neighborhood. He was well over the speed limit, but didn't give a shit. He wanted to lock her in the house before anything could take her. It hadn't even set in yet that Kris was with him. He kept thinking he was hallucinating.

Kris felt the twinge along her injured shin and shifted to try and accommodate or ease the ache. "You had reasons, Hayden." She dragged her cut lower lip into her mouth and worried her teeth along it, unwittingly opening the injury. Kris only realised it when she tasted copper and then immediately stopped, catching the stem with the edge of her sleeve. She really needed to stop doing that.

When she was doing that, she caught sight of the dirt that had stained the material and immediately dropped her hand. "I think I could really do with a shower when we get to my place and a change of clothes."

She brushed some of her hair behind her ear and swallowed, simply brushing her thumb over Hayden's knee. Deep breathing, totally the way forward.

"Okay. How about I fix you some food while you get cleaned up? You can eat it whenever your stomach feels alright." Hayden turned onto her street. Since it was before 5pm, there were plenty of places to park. He circled a few times, looking for a spot closest to her door, wanting to give her a short walk and some privacy. A few yards from the walk-up, he cranked the wheel hard to the left and pulled in. "Home sweet home."

He got out and grabbed Izzy's equipment from the truck bed. He transferred it into the cab so he could lock it up. Pushing his hair off his forehead, he watched Kris. He knew it would be weird, getting back to a neighborhood and apartment where nothing much changed, when she'd been trapped in some kind of hell for weeks. It was unsettling, how life kept on going without you.

"That works," Kris answered, obviously distracted as they neared her neighbourhood. God, everything looked so... normal, exactly how she'd left it. With another deep breath she left the safety of the truck and stepped out, shifting her weight restlessly as her eyes swept the surroundings.

For a moment she felt overwhelmed and it showed in the way she instantly lifted her shoulders protectively, hurrying in the direction of her apartment. Keys... she needed keys, did she even have keys? Kris patted herself down as she couldn't remember if she'd had them on her when she'd been grabbed, she must have, she locked her door, she was sure of it.

Finally her fingers snagged on something and Kris pulled a little harder, revealing a set of keys.

Hayden stood at her back, sheltering her from anybody who might look out a window. He put a hand on the base of her spine and stopped himself from taking the keys from Kris. There was a line between helping her and crowding her, being supportive and trying to do too much. Right now, he didn't know where the line was.

"One thing at a time, right?" Just get in the house. Tackle the next part when they got there. He couldn't imagine how it would feel to be a prisoner on threat of death for weeks, then suddenly have keys in your hand, the ability to come and go. Hayden looked over his shoulder. The sidewalk and surrounding yards were empty. He couldn't see any faces in the windows, either. "You good?"

Her hand may or may not have been shaking as she sorted through the keys, hating how the jangling sound seemed to wear on her last nerve. She eventually stilled her hands and slid the key into the lock and turned it, hearing the shuffling of Eddy's paws.

"Pass," she muttered after a moment as she stood on the threshold, eyes sweeping over the apartment itself. It was weird, coming back here, being free, having her dog lick her hand. It was all so normal and Kris was anything but normal.

She brushed her hand over Eddy's ears and stepped into the apartment, placing her keys on the nearby table. It took her longer to pull her hand away from them as it did on any other day, she supposed it could be that she was worrying about them disappearing on her.

Kris ran the tips of her fingers over a couple of things then stopped short as there on the table were remnants of mail she'd opened on the day of her kidnapping, untouched and left the exact same way it had been all those weeks ago.

God, it was... Kris wet her lower lip and inhaled, trying to keep something at bay. Not that it worked too well and her shoulders shook. Kris simply turned on her heel and went right back to hugging Hayden, letting her fingers curl in his shirt. It wasn't like they'd had a whole lot of time to do this and she needed it, needed to know he was actually there and this wasn't another dream that she would be waken from by the smirking face of Katherine.

Give her a bit of time and she'd be fine, but right now she felt like a china doll.

He kicked the door shut and reached back blindly to lock it. "Hey," he whispered, wrapping her up tight, "It's gonna be okay. You're safe." He kissed her forehead and hair, his work-roughened hands cupping the base of her skull. "Come here." The toes of his boots surrounded hers. "I missed you so much."

Hayden pulled Kris in for a full-fledged hug. The dog pranced around, hyper and relieved to see his mistress. After some whining and tail-wagging, he sat down at her feet.

Breathing out through his nose, Hayden zoned out on the floor behind her, trying to squeeze the shakes out of her frame. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry this happened to you."

Kris closed her eyes and leaned into those touches, using them to chase lingering memories of Katherine's hands away. She'd come so close to relying on that vampire for some sort of comfort, it was disturbing.

She tightened her arms around him, just because she could, and also to reassure him that she was there and whilst she might be a little on the fragile side she was still as strong as ever. "You don't have anything to be sorry about," she muttered after a few moments. "You didn't give up on me, that's what matters." Hayden hadn't given up even when Kris had almost given up, she'd seriously been considering triggering the collar someway.

"Only thing that kept me going," Kris admitted quietly. "Was thinking about you and how I wanted to get out of there and back to you." She'd clung to his necklace like a person lost at sea.

"I'd never give up." Hayden rested his chin on her head. "I broke some things," he mused. "The table, the screen door." He also had some of Kris's neighbors convinced he was some kind of criminal, the way he cruised the streets, when he wasn't drinking like a fish. Details he'd leave out. "When Juliet saw you, I was so... fucking relieved, just because you were out walking around somewhere." Another person he needed to call, once Kris got in the shower.

"I thought, there's no way in hell anyone's taking my girl. I just didn't know how to find you. Then you called and thank god for Izzy." He pulled back and held her face. Hayden knew she didn't feel like herself, but he didn't care. He leaned in and kissed her.

Kris had been about to say something about Izzy, but then he kissed her and her brain sort of did this thing where it short circuited. She was still, but only for a moment, before both hands were firmly in his hair and her mouth was opening under his. The kiss lasted mere seconds, that much she was sure of, but it felt like forever. She was even breathing a little harder by the time she pulled away, leaving a mere inch between their mouths.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I didn't know- I just didn't know. If I had I wouldn't..." Kris stopped herself and just pulled Hayden closer, resting her forehead against his as she took in slow measured breaths. "I did a lot of things I'm not really proud of."

"We'll get through it," he said. "The only person you have to square that up with is you. I'm not gonna judge you." Neither was anybody else, he thought fiercely. So far as Hayden knew, none of their friends were ever forced to walk around committing crimes under threat of explosion, so they couldn't relate. "I want you to tell me. You can tell me anything, when you're ready to."

He picked up her hands and squeezed them between their chests. "Start to finish. You couldn't say anything that would make me question you, Kris. If you hadn't done it, she'd have killed you. Maybe I'm selfish, but that means whatever it is, we'll deal with it."

Kris nodded her head. "Yeah, you're right." Of course it was easy to say, but not always to do. She took a breath and looked up at Hayden, a lingering hint of a bruise on her right cheekbone easier to see now they were in a good source of light.

"What I need right now is a shower." She smoothed her thumbs over the edge of Hayden's hands and swallowed. "I feel and look gross." God only knew how many cuts and bruises she'd find under the layers of filth. Katherine's conditioning had been brutal to say the least.

She rose up and caught his mouth in another kiss before she turned and headed towards her bathroom.

Hayden watched her go, a hand on his waist, the other on his nape. Once she was out of sight, he went to her bedroom and started pulling drawers at random. He found some comfortable, soft clothes for her to switch into. He set them out in a folded stack on the corner of her mattress. Then he sat and ran his hands into his hair, just breathing for a few minutes.

He heard the shower turn on. The bedroom smelled like Kris.

He steepled his hands in front of his face and closed his eyes. Relief came over him, so quick and potent that it hurt his chest. It took him a while to get his mental shit together, but he eventually rubbed his eyes, got up, and went into the kitchen to fix her food from the cabinets and freezer. Everything in the fridge was way out of date. He grilled up a piece of chicken and heated vegetables on the stove.

The first steady stream of water was like a sledgehammer, causing Kris' body to bow under it like a badly made bridge in the middle of a tornado. She finally steadied herself by planting both hands on the shower wall and leaning into them, simply letting the water cascade off her back and over the rest of the body.

Eventually she settled against the floor of her shower, knees curled up towards her chest and arms wrapped around them. Her gaze went to the water circling the drain and watched as it turned various interesting shades, the strongest being the pink of her blood and the blue of that demon's blood.

Kris wasn't sure how long she was in the shower, but it felt like a long time, her fingers had even wrinkled. Her body was littered with small cuts, dark bruises and puncture marks, the worst of which was in her neck beneath the shadow of another bruise. The Slayer wrapped a towel around herself and wandered through to her bedroom, smiling slightly at the presence of clean clothes.

She slipped into them and then toweled her hair dry, ignoring the small twinge of pain along her right side from where she must have hit it during that one altercation with an unpleasant demon that owed Katherine money. Eddy made his presence known a couple moments later and Kris took her time in lavishing attention on him, feeling bad for having left him alone so long. She found herself wondering if her family had even noticed.

Kris pulled her hair back and secured it out of the way, knowing she would need to cut it, just to get rid of the lingering feeling of having had cold, undead fingers in her hair. She took a moment to familiarise herself with her apartment again before she followed the noise to the kitchen.

"Smells good."

"Can't make any guarantees on taste," said Hayden. He drained hot vegetables in a spoon and ladled them on a plate beside the chicken. The bread was moldy, so he threw it out, along with a garbage bag of other spoiled food, but he opened a can of sliced pears and put those on her plate, too. It wasn't the best combination of food, but it was available and still fresh.

He put the food and a glass of ice water on the table. He sat down across from it and folded his forearms. After a minute, he remembered something and got out his cell. He thumbed a text about Kris's homecoming and forwarded it around, then turned off the ringer. He didn't want to get interrupted with replies.

"It has been a couple of weeks," Kris said with a shrug of her shoulders. She'd been keeping a mental tally, even if the tally itself had gone a little off the rails when Katherine had thrown her into several days of darkness.

She pulled a chair out and settled into it, feeling very out of place in her home. Eddy was already in the kitchen, bumping Hayden's legs before simply doing that thing all dogs seemed to do, rolling over onto his back, as if to say 'rub my stomach'.

Kris wet her lower lip and picked up a nearby fork, beginning with the vegetables first before working her way through the meal, leaving the pears for last. Thankfully she wasn't starving, Katherine had been pretty good about keeping her fed, Kris figured that it worked more in the vampire's favour for her Slayer-pet to be in good health than not.

Cuts lingered on every knuckle, bruises all the more clear now she'd washed the dirt and blood off of her, a couple telltale traces of where Katherine had snuck a snack now and then. Before Kris' shower there had been evidence of the scuffles that the vampire and the Slayer had engaged in, she hadn't gone easily into the night as it were.

Hayden popped his knuckles and tried not to stare. Every time he looked up, he saw another injury. Scrapes and bruises, he was used to. Bite marks, no. It filled him with a restless anger that he didn't know what to do with. The idea of a vampire fastening onto her periodically, like a parasite, slowly draining the life and will out of her, made him sick. He could stake a vampire or two in a fight, provided they were relatively inexperienced and not armed to the teeth. Somebody like Katherine though, he had no shot in hell. Even through a cloud of fury, he knew he'd get himself killed trying. All he could hope was that the bomb blew her into a hundred pieces.

"Will you do me a favor?" Hayden stopped himself fidgeting. "Will you give it a few days before you go out on patrol? I know... I know you might want to get your feet back under you." What he really meant was, prove she could still tear a swath through a bunch of demons. "You just look like you could use some rest."

Kris was midway through a pear when he asked that and she swallowed it away before answering. "Yeah, I think I can do that." She rubbed at her neck and shrugged. "I could do with catching up on my sleep." Kris hadn't dared sleeping very deep with that vampire around, just in case she decided to attack her at night when she thought Kris was vulnerable.

She worried her lower lip again before looking up at Hayden. "Hey, could you- I mean, could you stay tonight?"

"Are you kidding?" Hayden wasn't trying to make fun. He just found it hard to believe she'd ask him that, like there was anywhere else he'd go. Even if she kicked him out, he'd stand on the doorstep. At the worst, curl up in the cab of his truck outside. "Of course I'm staying. I'm also calling out to work."

Scraping his chair on the linoleum, he got up and rinsed out the pots and pans he used. He waited for Kris to finish what was on her plate and used a sponge to wipe off the counters. He scratched his eyebrow on his sleeve and looked out the window. The shadows were long behind the building. By now, he thought, Katherine knew without a doubt that Kris was gone.

Kris had noticed the change outside and ignored the brief knot of apprehension, settling it with the thought that the bitch might blow herself up soon. She finished what was on her plate before she got up, bringing it over to Hayden.

"Thanks, I needed that." More than she'd realised.

She leaned against the side of the sink and lingered there, reaching up to toy with the necklace around her neck without really thinking about it.

Hayden washed the last dishes and turned off the faucet. After he dried his hands, he reached out and touched her hair. "What do you want to do?" He leaned his back on the counter. "You ready to go to bed or you wanna talk?" It wasn't late, but she looked like she could sleep for days. He just wanted to hold her.

When he pushed her hair back, he saw the bite on her neck. It looked older than the others, faded down into just marks. He'd bet money it was from the first confrontation. It probably took longer than normal to heal because her body wasn't well and the collar rubbed her throat raw. He brushed his knuckle over it. As sick as the idea of turning her into some kind of criminal errand-girl was, Hayden knew he ought to be grateful there was a plan that didn't involve killing her outright. He still wanted to know how Katherine got the upper hand. Kris was fierce in a fight.

Kris turned her head when Hayden's brushed his knuckle over the first of many bites, she was still beating herself up for the way that fight had worked out. She'd have to train, a lot harder, but not even a Slayer could do anything against a gun.

"Sleep," she decided after a moment. "That I could do with." She tipped her head and took a long considering look at Hayden. "And you look like you could do with a night of decent sleep."

He scrubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I probably could." He was too keyed up to feel tired, but if he laid down with her for a while, he'd drift off. "C'mon." Thumb and forefinger gently squeezed the nape of her neck. He caught himself and let go, unsure of how sensitive she might be to touch there. "Sorry."

Heading down the hall to the bedroom, he stepped over Eddy, who stretched out across it like an intentional tripping hazard. Once back there, he kicked off his shoes and shelled out of his shirt and jeans. The bed, which stayed empty for weeks, looked inviting. He peeled the covers down and waited for Kris to climb in, too.

Kris trailed after Hayden and gave Eddy some attention before she rose up and wiggled her toes against the wooden floor. The bed looked inviting on its own, but even more so with Hayden in it. It would be different to sleep in a bed than upright and against a cold wall.

She brushed her hair over one shoulder and wandered over, sliding under the covers beside Hayden. Kris waited for Hayden to settle comfortably before she rested against him, an arm curled loosely around him.

Kris was hoping she managed to sleep through the night.

"I love you." Hayden pulled her onto his chest a little more. He kissed the top of her head. The necklace rested between them, cool and metallic. He dipped his finger underneath the chain and looked at the pendant. It was better on Kris than on him. After he let it go, he wove a hand into her hair while the other drifted on her spine. Tension eased out of his muscles. The act of holding her was simple, but it meant more to him than anything else.

Kris turned into his arms and just tightened her hand against his side, closing her eyes. "I love you too." Had for God only knew how many years. She brought her face up and rested it against the side of his neck, breathing in the scent of him.

It was ultimately Hayden's arms, Hayden's warmth, and the way he felt and smelt that eventually eased Kris to sleep.