Chapter Text
Katie doesn’t know where she comes from.
Not in the way people sometimes say when they want to sound interesting, or tragic, or like they're carrying something too heavy to explain properly.
Katie means it in the simplest, most literal sense possible, and that is what makes it worse.
She remembers the island in full clarity: the ocean, the cold, the choking panic of waking up with salt in her lungs and strangers all around her doing the same. She remembers sand under her palms and salt burning her throat and the way her body refused to understand what had just happened to it. She remembers names being shouted, hands pulling her up, voices overlapping in confusion as everyone tried to assemble a shared beginning out of nothing. But anything before that moment refuses to stay in place. It doesn't fade like a normal memory. It doesnt soften or blur with time.
It simply doesn't exist in a way she can access.
Everyone else seems to have something. Even the ones who don't talk about it carry the weight of it anyway, in the way they hesitate sometimes when certain places are mentioned, or how they use words that suggest familiarity with things Katie has never seen. Countries, languages, people they used to know, routines they are trying to rebuild in a place that doesn't care what came before it.
Familiarity settles into everyone naturally. Mike remembers recipes from places Katie has never heard of. Don references old songs under his breath sometimes without realizing he’s doing it. Ash swears in languages Katie cannot identify but somehow understands anyway. Fariis tells stories with missing context that everyone else still seems capable of following. Even silence, for most of them, feels intentional.
But Katie's silence is not like that. It doesn't feel like she’s withholding anything. It feels like there is nothing to hold in the first place, or worse, like something was taken out so cleanly that there is no evidence of it ever being there...
They all arrived on the island fractured.
But they arrived as people already shaped.
Katie didn’t.
That is the difference.
The others speak about the past like something stolen from them. Katie speaks about it like something that may never have existed at all.
Because when Don laughs and tells stories about things they did together weeks ago, Katie can follow those memories easily. She can remember the island perfectly. The people. The conversations. The way Ash rolls his eyes before pretending to be annoyed. The sound of Mike laughing too loudly at his own jokes. The warmth of crowded spaces and overlapping voices.
But nothing exists before the island.
Nothing.
And the longer time passes, the stranger that begins to feel.
Sometimes Katie watches the others interact and realizes they are unconsciously rebuilding versions of themselves that existed long before any of this happened. Old habits surviving memory. Old mannerisms resurfacing naturally.
Katie has started doing the opposite.
She builds herself entirely from what other people seem willing to hand back to her. She gathers what people give her and keeps it.
You’re funny. You’re charismatic. You’re dramatic. You’re difficult. You’re lovable.
You’re Katie.
It is not something she argues with. It is not something she confirms either. It simply becomes easier to exist when there are enough versions of her to stand on.
Still, there are moments where she cannot tell whether she is choosing who she is, or just repeating it well enough to pass it as real.
And in those moments, something feels slightly out of reach. Like her thoughts are continuing in a place she cannot fully access anymore.
Not often.
But enough that she starts to notice when it happens.
And sometimes, that feeling doesn’t end when she wakes up... it follows her into sleep instead.
It follows her into her dreams.
They do not come every night, but they come often enough that she notices their pattern the way you notice weather changes you cannot explain. They don't begin like normal sleep. There is no sense of drifting or falling. It feels more like a cut in continuity, like the moment she stops being awake is also the moment she stops being fully inside herself.
In the dream, there is always sound before anything else. Not words at first, but rhythm. Repetition. Something spoken in a steady, controlled way that feels too structured to be random and too familiar to be foreign.
A prayer.
Always a prayer.
She never sees the person speaking it clearly. Only fragments of space around them: stone that feels cold even through absence of touch, light that does not behave naturally, an atmosphere so still it feels intentional. The voice itself is something she cannot grasp. It feels so familiar yet so distant all at once. It repeats itself in a way that is not frantic, not pleading, but certain. Like it is not asking for anything to happen, but insisting that something already is happening and that it must continue.
Sometimes Katie wakes up before it ends. Sometimes it fades as she wakes, like it refuses to fully translate into waking reality. But sometimes, the strangest part is that it doesn't stop...
Because even after she opens her eyes, there are moments, small, disorienting moments, where she can still feel it continuing somewhere just outside her awareness. Not as sound, not clearly, but as presence. Like a thought that is not hers but is using her mind anyway because it has nowhere else to go.
And she never tells anyone about that part.
Because she is not sure what it would mean if she did.
Katie exhales softly and pushes the thought away, as she always does. There is no point holding onto things that cannot be explained, and even less point in trying to make sense of something she cannot change. Some questions do not lead anywhere useful. Some questions only loop back into themselves.
So instead, she smiles.
She has been told before that her smile is captivating. She keeps that information somewhere near the front of her mind like a tool she can reach for whenever necessary. If nothing else about her makes sense, at least that does. Something simple. Something usable. Something she can shape into whatever version of herself people seem most willing to believe in.
Memories that do not exist cannot do much for her.
But charm can.
Holland is loud by the time she reaches it.
Not unpleasantly loud. Alive loud. The kind of noise that only exists in places constantly being rebuilt by people too stubborn to let things stay unfinished. Conversations overlap across wooden pathways, footsteps echo unevenly against planks and stone, somebody (that was definitely Juan) somewhere arguing loud enough to become part of the atmosphere rather than an interruption to it.
Katie likes that.
Noise fills space before thoughts can.
The small card shop beside the Dutch Café is warm when she enters, light spilling softly across crowded shelves lined with paper, ribbons, envelopes, and decorations that feel a little too intentional to be purely decorative. The smell of coffee drifts in from next door, blending into the quiet shuffle of movement inside.
Katie tells herself she is only here for a card.
Something simple. Something appropriate. Something for Tomate, probably.
That is what she says in her head, at least.
It is what she will say out loud if anyone asks.
But even as she steps further inside, her attention keeps slipping in ways it shouldn’t.
Not toward the loud things. Not toward the overly sentimental designs Jeremy always complains about. Not even toward the ones that try too hard to turn emotion into decoration.
Instead, it lingers on the quieter shelves.
The simpler cards. The ones with nothing excessive on the front. Blank-inside ones that don’t force anything onto the page before you’ve even decided what to feel.
Some of them are fully empty inside, meant to be written on. Or drawn on...
Katie’s gaze pauses there for half a second longer than necessary.
Someone she knows would prefer them that way.
She doesn’t finish that thought.
Jeremy looks up first from behind the counter.
"Katie," he says, like he already regrets it. "You look like you’re here to ruin someone’s life."
Katie blinks at him. "I literally just walked in."
"That’s what makes it worse," he replies, eyes narrowing slightly. "You don’t usually come in here unless you’re thinking too hard about something."
From deeper inside the shop, Don lets out a short laugh without looking up from the shelf he’s rearranging.
"She does that no matter where she is," he says. "This is just where she buys materials for it."
"I don’t buy materials for anything," Katie says, offended on principle. "I’m a normal person buying cards."
Duncun hums from beside the display rack, leaning back like he has no intention of being helpful. "Normal people don’t stand in front of greeting cards like they’re about to start a war."
Katie turns slightly toward him. "I could start a war if I wanted to. I just choose not to."
That earns a quiet exhale of amusement from Don, not quite a laugh but close enough.
Jeremy slides a small stack of blank cards onto the counter, watching her carefully now instead of teasing.
"You’re looking for something specific, aren’t you."
It isn’t really a question.
Katie pauses for a second too long before answering. "Nothing specific," she says. Then, after a beat, softer, "Just something for Tomate. Just… something that feels right."
Nobody pushes after that.
The shop settles back into its quiet rhythm, paper shifting, distant café noise bleeding through the wall.
And Katie lets herself drift through the aisles again, fingers brushing the edges of envelopes she doesn’t really need.
Because that is the thing about her.
She doesn’t struggle to belong in rooms.
She just starts acting like she already does.
Even now, with the dreams lingering like unfinished thoughts at the back of her skull and the strange ache of memorylessness sitting permanently beneath her ribs, she still knows exactly how to slip into conversation like she was always meant to exist there. It comes naturally in a way very little else does. Timing. Expression. Performance. She understands instinctively how to make people laugh, how to make herself feel bright enough that nobody notices the parts of her that feel strangely unfinished underneath.
Sometimes she wonders if that is all she really is.
A performance convincing enough to survive scrutiny.
Her fingers trail idly along the card display.
Most of them are unbearably sincere. Large declarations of devotion pressed into folded paper with enough conviction to make her instinctively suspicious of all of them. Some are overly decorative. Others painfully plain. One has a cartoon heart holding flowers and Katie physically recoils from it.
"Oh that one’s definitely for you," Jeremy says immediately.
"Jeremy, if you hand me that card I’m reporting your business to the Federation."
"That feels excessive."
"You underestimate how ugly that font is."
Don laughs louder this time while Duncun nearly chokes trying to hold his own back.
And for a little while, things feel easy.
Not perfect.
Not whole.
But easy enough that Katie almost forgets about the dreams entirely.
Almost.
Katie pauses over another card.
It is one of the blank kinds. The ones meant to be finished by whoever holds them: written in, drawn on, turned into something else entirely. A card that gives someone the responsibility of completing the emotion instead of pre-packaging it.
No glitter. No ridiculous pop-up hearts exploding out of the center when opened. No aggressively romantic declarations printed in giant cursive across the front like the paper itself is trying too hard to convince someone it means what it says.
Just a pale cream cover with small pressed pink and red flowers painted delicately along the corners.
Simple. Careful.
The front only reads:
You are heard.
The words are printed slightly off-center, like they were placed after the design was finished.
Katie stares at it slightly longer than necessary.
Around it, the rest of the display feels almost embarrassingly loud in comparison. Bright reds. Gold lettering. Cartoons holding bouquets larger than their own bodies. One card literally sings when Jeremy accidentally brushes against the shelf beside it.
Katie physically recoils.
"Absolutely not," she says immediately.
Jeremy looks offended. "That one’s romantic."
"That one’s a threat."
Don laughs from somewhere behind her while Duncun nearly chokes trying to suppress his own.
But Katie’s attention drifts back toward the quieter card almost immediately.
Her thumb brushes lightly against the edge of it.
Ewron would like this.
The thought arrives before she can stop it.
Not because it makes sense, but because it does. He would probably take it without a second thought, already treating it like something that is meant to be altered in his hands. Something about it feels like him in a way she cannot properly explain. Not because of what it says, but because of what it allows. The space it leaves open. The fact that it isn’t finished yet.
She exhales softly through her nose.
Of course that’s what she thinks about.
Ewron always ends up making things feel louder even when he isn’t there.
And somehow, that makes the card feel less neutral than it did a moment ago.
Like it has been marked by the idea of him just by being noticed.
Katie’s fingers hover at the edge of the display.
It irritates her, how quickly that happens.
How easily something ordinary becomes… not ordinary just because her thoughts decide to attach his presence to it. Not even properly. Not even in a way she can fully justify. Just an instinct that refuses to be ignored and equally refuses to be understood.
He does that.
Ewron does that.
It isn’t even something she can clearly explain in one sentence, or reduce into something simple enough to dismiss. It’s not deliberate, not structured, not anything she can point to and fully name. It’s just the way things shift when he’s involved in them, like the edges of conversations never quite settle the same way twice.
Ewron’s entire personality seems specifically engineered to become unbearable after prolonged exposure. He argues like it’s a competitive sport. He talks too much while somehow revealing absolutely nothing meaningful about himself at all. Half the time Katie wants to shove him directly into the ocean and the other half...
Well...
The other half usually ends with both of them laughing before either remembers they were supposed to still be irritated.
And lately… just nothing.
No interruptions.
No sarcastic remarks slipping into conversations like they were always meant to be there.
No casually wandering near the KFC just to annoy her before pretending he had another reason for being there.
He has been gone for what feels like months now, and the island hasn’t adjusted in any way she can properly point to. Nothing stops, nothing changes. But something in it feels slightly misaligned whenever she’s the one paying attention.
The island just feels quieter without him in it.
Katie hates that she notices.
Her grip tightens faintly against the edge of the card before she quickly places it back onto the shelf.
Whatever.
Maybe Zapka finally consumed him whole.
Honestly deserved.
Still, something unsettled shifts beneath her ribs anyway. Not concern exactly. Just absence. Like a room missing one very specific kind of noise.
Her fingers finally pull away from the shelf.
She exhales slowly, like she is trying to reset something that never properly broke in the first place.
This is stupid.
It should be simple.
People leave. People come back. People don’t.
She stops that thought before it finishes.
Instead, she lets something else take its place.
Tomate would not make her feel like this.
The thought is quieter. Safer. Familiar in a way that doesn’t ask for interpretation.
Tomate does not ask questions she cannot answer. He does not force meaning into things simply because silence exists around them. He looks at her like she is already understandable exactly as she is, even when she feels anything but.
Tomate is steady in a way the island rarely is. He doesn’t vanish and leave gaps behind. He doesn’t turn absence into something noticeable. He just exists, consistently, like something that doesn’t need to be questioned in order to remain real.
That should be enough.
It is enough.
It has to be enough.
Katie lets her shoulders loosen slightly, forcing her attention back into the physical space of the shop. The shelves. The paper. The familiar noise of Don and Duncun somewhere behind her.
Her hand moves before she fully decides on it again.
The card is still there.
Blank. Pressed flowers along the edges. Quiet in a way everything else in the shop is not.
Simple. Careful.
She picks it up.
No hesitation this time.
When she reaches the counter, she sets it down like it is already decided rather than chosen.
"Just this," she says.
Jeremy glances at it, then at her. "That one?"
Katie nods once. "Yeah."
He studies her for a second too long, like he is expecting a follow-up explanation that never comes. Then he shrugs and processes it anyway.
The sound of paper shifting, a bag being folded, coins or receipt or something she doesn’t fully register.
"Katarzyna."
She looks up immediately.
"—Oh my god, Graf!"
It slips out before she can stop it.
For a second, she just stares. It takes her a moment to properly register him standing there.
Graf.
It has been a while since she’s seen him clearly like this. Not just passing glimpses in movement, not distant figures in the periphery of something happening elsewhere, but actually there, fully present in front of her.
The Polish people have always been like that for the past few months. Half-seen, half-missed. Existing in spaces just slightly out of reach, like they belonged to a part of the island that didn’t always align with hers. Katie sometimes finds herself visiting the Polish cave only to find silence in its wake.
So seeing him now feels… misplaced.
Katie blinks once. "Uhhh you look weirdly formal right now."
Behind the counter, Jeremy snorts. "That’s just his face."
Graf ignores that entirely.
Instead, his gaze briefly flicks toward the cards scattered across the shelves before returning to her again.
Then, simply: "Come with me."
No explanation.
No elaboration.
Just certainty.
And strangely, that is enough.
Because Graf has always been like that. Steady in ways the rest of them rarely are. And even if Katie hasn’t really seen much of them lately, only fragments, passing shapes of people she used to recognize more clearly, it doesn’t change that he still feels familiar in a way the island rarely allows anything to be anymore.
So instead, she exhales softly through her nose and steps away from the shelves.
Don immediately narrows his eyes. "Oh, so when he says mysterious things you just go along with it?"
"Yes," Katie replies easily.
"That’s favoritism."
"You’ll survive."
Duncun laughs quietly somewhere behind her while Jeremy shakes his head.
Katie takes the bag from the counter when it is handed to her, fingers closing around it before finally walking toward the door.
The Dutch Café fades behind them as they step back into the island’s noise.
Everything resumes its shape around them.
Footsteps. Distance. Movement.
Katie adjusts her grip on the bag as they walk, like she is reminding herself it is there.
The island continues as it always does.
Nothing stops.
Nothing changes.
And then... somewhere far beyond...
A church bell rings once.
Soft. Distant.
Her steps falter almost imperceptibly.
The sound disappears as quickly as it came, swallowed back into the island before anyone else seems to notice it properly.
But for half a second...
Katie feels a strange ache in her chest.
Like something is waiting for her somewhere.