Chapter Text
Burger King is Catalina’s favorite fast food restaurant. She says it's because they have good food, and that is one of the reasons. But the main reasons are that they give her a cardboard crown and don’t freak out when she and Kitty take over the kids play area. This version of Catalina has a bit of a chaotic streak and she’ll admit that freely. The first time she entered the kids section of their local Burger King she’d gotten a few odd looks, but the people who work there are too tired usually to stop her. Now that Catalina and Kitty are regular patrons the workers there don’t even bat an eye.
All of this to say that the two teens are currently sitting in the top level of a Burger King jungle gym with cardboard crowns and respective kids meals.
“Can I have your honey mustard sauce?”
“You’ve got your own.”
“But it’s not enough!”
“Maybe if you didn’t drown your nuggets…”
Catalina herself has a burger, and doesn’t actually need the honey mustard. She usually just eats it with her fries. Kitty grabs the honey mustard from Catalina’s bag without permission and Catalina just rolls her eyes.
-
Cathy is not usually known as the calm one.
She tends to be pretty anxious, and very stubborn. Normally she’s being calmed down or talked down from a point of fixation. Quite the role reversal from her last life where she was constantly holding everyone else together. She doesn’t need to do that anymore. Anne usually has it covered. If Anne is unavailable Cathy does try to mediate, but that role usually falls to Anna. And Jane has that whole co-parent thing with Anne.
Truthfully Cathy gets treated like one of the youngest in the house. And she is, so that’s quite fair, if not a little annoying at times. Jane and her are both the same age, but Cathy feels younger than her. It’s an odd thing, their ages. It’s just as much mental as it is physical. She tries to embrace it. To not take on too much, to live more freely, to try not to worry as much. She’s an adult, but she’s a young adult . And she’s not the head of the house. It’s her second chance, and she spends it having a bit more fun than last time.
It’s a bit easier for her to be young again than it is for the two youngest queens. Cathy kind of has what she would call a middle child status. She goes unnoticed for most of what she decides to do with her time. Not to say she isn’t responsible, but she can get away with more if she wanted. Catalina and Kitty have everyone’s attention all the time. She sees how the pressure could have gotten to them. She gets why they ran off the way they did.
Honesty, at this point, she kind of wishes they’d taken her with them.
“I can’t believe they’d do something like that! It’s so reckless! What if they crash?” Jane has been pretty much saying the same thing over and over as she paces a hole into the carpet. She’s panicking. Her panic is feeding into Anna’s, and in turn Cathy can feel her own blood pressure rising.
“Jane, I cannot handle the thought of them crashing right now.” Anna is just as panicked, though she is more subdued. At a true loss for what to do right now, she’s just sitting on the couch with her head in her hands.
Anne is the one that’s the most surprising. Cathy has never seen her actually panic before, besides when the girls were initially taken away by Child Protective Services. She’s currently in the kitchen, trying to keep her distress away from everyone. Cathy decides to leave Jane and Anna to their spirals and try to help the person who helps everyone else.
She is leaning her back against the refrigerator with her eyes closed, breathing deliberately slow.
“Anne?”
The woman jumps, and then her eyes settle on Cathy and she relaxes just a fraction.
“We’ll find them. Or they’ll come home. Everything is going to be okay.” Anne says immediately. She probably assumes Cathy is freaking out just as much as everyone else.
“I know, Anne.”
Anne looks at her, “You do?”
Again, Cathy is not usually known as the calm one. But in moments like this? She can be.
“Of course. I was just coming to ask if you have their friends' phone numbers?”
Anne stares at her like the words aren’t processing for a minute; and then she snaps out of her mental state and nods.
“I have Nat’s, because she runs the group they’re in.”
“Great. You should call her.” Cathy suggests.
Anne’s eyes widen in shock, like she can’t believe she hadn’t thought of that before. Cathy can’t blame her for it though, her car just got stolen by two emotionally distressed teenagers.
Anne goes to make the call, and Cathy turns back into the living room to help the other two. They’re still in the positions they were in when she left, which she had expected. She starts with Jane.
“Janey?” She calls out tentatively. Cathy’s not sure how Jane will take to her attempts at calming her down, but she’s been trying to work on her temper. It should be fine. And if it’s not fine, she’ll deal with that. And that’s okay, or so she tells herself.
Jane doesn’t stop moving, but she does make a noise of acknowledgment. Cathy steps in her path after a moment of deliberation, deciding to intervene in the mental spiral so the woman doesn’t lose it. She gently places her hand on Jane’s arm and is met with confused eyes as Cathy guides her to a different part of the room, if only to get her out of the cycle she was previously in. They settle near the stairs.
“They’re going to either come back, or we’re going to find them. Either way everything is going to be fine.”
“How on God’s green earth would you know that?” Jane responds with the same amount of panic she’s had this whole time.
Cathy keeps a level tone when she responds, “Because we’re a family. Families get through things. Even things as rough as what’s been happening recently. It’s going to be okay.” She emphasizes the last part and that's all it takes for the waterworks to start.
She’s startled when Jane practically throws herself at her. Cathy catches her, of course, but still. She’s only been in this position a select few times, and she’s almost never known what to do. All she knows how to do is hug Jane just as tight, so that’s what she does; and they stay like that for a long, long time.
Cathy doesn’t have access to a clock in this situation, she doesn’t know how long Jane actually kept her in an embrace. She has no idea how long it takes for someone’s arms to start to hurt from holding them in that position for too long. But however long it takes for one’s back to start hurting is about the amount of time she hugged Jane. All the while she doesn’t know what to say. What else is there even to say?
What finally makes Jane let her go is when Anne comes back into the room stating that Nat is coming over to take one of them to look for the girls in her car.
“I’ll go!” Jane immediately jumps away from Cathy, eager to help.
“Fine. That’s fine.” Anne says, still clearly shaken up. She sits on the couch next to Anna but makes no move to comfort the other queen like she normally would. Cathy takes Jane’s hand and guides her to a sitting position next to Anne. Then at least Cathy can try to help all of them at once. Helping in this situation is a losing battle, she recognizes. However, that doesn’t mean one of them shouldn’t at least try.
“Good then. Jane will go out and find them. They’ll be home soon and everything will be fine.” She’s relying on optimism here. She really hopes they don’t call her bluff. Obviously Cathy doesn’t know this for a fact. But it’s better than freaking out. Anne looks at her earnestly and moves her hand to Anna’s knee, finally looking a bit more herself.
“Thanks Cath.”
Anna leans into Anne’s side, and Anne looks a lot more up to comforting her suddenly. And so Cathy lets them do that, supposing that by helping Anne she helped Anna by proxy. She’s about to try talking to Jane again, and then there’s a knock on the door. This time it’s Cathy jumping up at the chance of doing something productive. She’s out of her seat and opening it faster than the others even register the sound.
There’s a legitimate teenage girl on the other side.
Now, don’t get her wrong, Catalina had told her about Nat. How she aggressively befriended her against her will, how Nat runs the group her and Kitty are in. Nat even gave Catalina her nickname. But Cathy’s never met Nat in person. And in her mind Catalina is too proud, too stubborn to accept her reincarnate age, to actually befriend another teenager. Cathy knows Nat is a teenager, but she still expected someone who maybe looked older, even. But this is just a normal looking teenage girl. And she looks very worried.
Cathy lets her in immediately.
“What happened? What did you do to them?” She’s directing her questions to Anne, who stands up to respond to the interrogation.
“Nothing! We were having a family discussion and they just walked out!”
The girl growls. She’s clearly very protective of her friends. On par for her character as a person, considering she runs a youth group for traumatized adoptees.
“No crap, they walked out. They don’t trust any of you!”
Jane stands too, “And what makes you any more trustworthy? You’ve been covering for their lies this entire time!”
A look of shock crosses the girl's face. Followed by a look of realization.
“What do you know?” She asks, quieter than before.
“Everything.” Anne says, solemnly.
Now there’s a look of disbelief. Cathy thinks this girl actually is pretty trustworthy, considering she makes no attempt at all to hide her emotions. It’s more than the teens that actually live with them have shown them since… Well, ever, now that Cathy thinks about it.
“No, really,” Anna intervenes. Honestly, Cathy’s just happy Anna is saying anything at all at this point. She was getting worried. “They were fighting and everything just kinda… came out.”
Nat nods. “So I’m assuming that you all wanted to talk about everything right away.”
“We thought that if we did it sooner rather than later it might be easier to deal with.” Cathy speaks up. “We now know that was the wrong move on our part. We just want to find them.”
The girl looks at her with not at all veiled scrutiny. When she’s satisfied, she nods resolutely. “Fine. Let's go.”
Jane gets up but Nat is quick to stop her. “I was talking to her.” She says, pointing at Cathy.
“But…” Jane flounders for words for a moment before settling on, “I need to drive the car back.” Catching on that her feeling guilty is not going to get Nat to let her into her car.
Nat just shrugs and motions at both of them to move it, so they do. Before they get through the door Anna calls Cathy, and she turns around to see Anne and Anna looking at her hopeful.
“Hurry back?”
She smiles gently at them, and suddenly feels much more like herself in her old life. Like she has a responsibility here. To keep her family safe, to hold everyone down. It feels familiar, and she finds she doesn’t quite mind feeling needed as much as she thought she would. As much as she’s been avoiding that responsibility, she welcomes the warmth that comes with it. Cathy had almost forgotten how maternal she actually was, is.
“Of course.”
-
Anne’s room is the second biggest room in the house. The master bedroom, which to Anna’s understanding is usually given to the head of household, went to Kitty and Catalina. Mostly because they’re sharing so they need more room, but also partially because if they didn’t get something from that situation the two would have rioted. It’s bad enough they had to share. To not have the bigger room would only be a further injustice and add insult to injury in their eyes.
But going back to Anne’s room, it’s the second biggest one. It’s decently spacious, what with Anne opting for a twin bed instead of a bigger one. Instead of having a big bed, she has two small armchairs in one corner and a desk against another wall. The chairs have blankets and pillows folded neatly on them. Anna suspects that Anne never actually sits in them herself. The only time she ever sees Anne go near them is when she has someone else in here with her. Even the bed doesn’t look lived in at all. The covers are neat and the pillows aren’t flattened in the slightest.
The desk looks much more used. It has an open laptop in the center with stacks of paper on either side of it. There’s several boxes under it with labels like ‘Adoption’ and ‘ Paid Bills’, among other things. The small trash bin is filled to the brim with more paper, as well as a few candy wrappers that belong to snacks that are definitely on the ‘Don’t eat those they’re not good for you!’ list that Anne herself made.
When they get into the room Anne immediately ushers Anna to the chairs in the corner and places a blanket on her. She sits in the one across from her with a blanket of her own. Anna thanks her in a whisper and Anne just smiles confidently back.
“So,” Anna starts, but trails off. She’s not sure where she was going with that anyway.
“So.” Anne repeats, although when it comes out of her mouth it feels more like a full sentence than a unsure attempt at conversation. It doesn’t feel like she’s pressuring Anna to continue her incomplete thought, nor does it feel like an invitation to speak if she doesn’t feel like she can.
Steady and assured, that’s what it comes across as. Anna takes a moment to wonder how Anne learned to project confidence and assurance like she does.
“Do you think Nat will know where they are?” Is what Anna settles on asking.
“I don’t see why she wouldn’t. She’s Lina’s best friend, Lina tells her everything.”
Again, she sounds confident, comforting, steady. But:
“How do you know that?”
Anne tilts her head slightly, “Know what? That she’ll find them?”
Anna shakes her head, “No, that Lina tells her everything.”
Anne surprises Anna by taking a moment before she answers. Like she’s sorting her thoughts. She doesn’t know when Anne became the one with All Of The Answers, but she’s filled that role dutifully, always having an answer at the ready. It’s almost startling to see her need to think about her words before she speaks.
She watches Anne sit back in her chair, leaning her head back and taking a long, slow breath. Her hands grip the arms of the chair tightly before letting go slowly. Her whole body tightens and then loosens up slowly along with the breath. Then she opens her eyes and settles a comforting gaze back on Anna.
“Well, you heard her in the living room. She certainly seemed to know about everything.”
So, she doesn’t actually know. But she does have a point.
“Yeah,” Anna says, “I guess that makes sense.”
Anne smiles, and Anna thinks she’s probably just as uncertain as the rest of them most of the time. She resolves to try and take a bit of the pressure from being the one everyone relies on most away from her. She might not be as good at keeping it together in front of everyone, but she’ll try for Anne, because Anne tries for everyone else.
Anna smiles back at her confidently and Anne’s smile only wavers a little bit.
-
“How about apologizing?”
“‘I’m sorry we’ve been hiding basically our entire identities from you, and then when we were confronted by it we hijacked the car and took the money inside of it to get Burger King.’ Yeah, sounds good, Kit.”
“We don’t have to mention the money.”
“ ‘Sorry we lied and stole your car.’ Got it.”
“Borrowed!”
“Oh, but that would imply permission, right?”
Catalina gets hit with a flying french fry for that comment.
“Sorry, sorry. I’m nervous. I get smart when I’m nervous.”
It’s bad enough to be hiding out in Burger King for an hour and a half, Catalina doesn’t need to be fighting with Kitty on top of that. How are they even supposed to go home after this? Not only did they just expose all of their lies, they stole the car when confronted about it. Catalina thinks they should just stay out until tomorrow, but when she suggested it Kitty went into an almost murderous rage.
(“We can’t just not come home! They’ll think we died or something!”
“We could just go with that. We died and now the conversation doesn’t need to happen.”
“I’m not faking my second death because you coerced me into stealing Anne’s car. I will not have three deaths. Having two is existential enough.”
“It was a fight or flight reaction! I’m sorry! All I’m saying is we should just stay out tonight. Sure, they’ll be worried, but we won’t have to deal with that until tomorrow.”
Kitty kicks her in the leg in response.
“That was the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. I have half a mind to throw you off of the top of the slide.”
“You won’t.” Kitty kicks her harder, earning a yelp from Catalina.
“I’m going to kill you.”)
Their brainstorming comes to a halt when there’s the sound of someone definitely heavier than a child coming up the play set. The movement comes towards them, and, of all people, Brin’s head pops out of one of the tubes. Their eyes go comically wide when they see her, and their jaws drop when she grins and climbs into their little hideout.
“Hey, idiots.” She says, climbing over Kitty and sitting between them.
They haven’t seen Brin since they spent time in foster care. And that home is across the town. How is she here? Why? Catalina stutters out a greeting, while Kitty just waves.
“Why’re you up here at ten in the morning? Not that I’m judging, but this is a weird place to hang out at at ten in the morning.”
God, is it only ten?
“It’s been a long morning.”
Brin nods, “You in trouble?”
Catalina shrugs as Kitty nods.
“Yes,” Kitty says, “And it’s all her fault.”
“Hey! Wait a minute! You have just as much a part in this as I do!”
“Well, it was your bright idea to take the car.”
“The car you drove. And don’t forget that you caused this mess in the first place by telling them about Eric.”
“Woah, woah. Hang on. You stole a car? And who’s Eric? ” Brin interrupts yet another argument. It seems like all they do is argue anymore. Catalina is tired of it.
“Technically? Kinda.”
“We borrowed Anne’s car.”
Kitty rolls her eyes, “Yeah, borrowed.” She says sarcastically.
“And Eric is my boyfriend.”
“Who is twenty four.”
“And also very sweet and lovely and not a delinquent.”
“Call Lia a delinquent one more time-“
Brin claps her hands once, effectively getting their attention.
“You two,” she says, “seem to have some serious problems. Again. But you’re in luck, because I’m in a problem solving mood. Start from the beginning.”
-
The car is deadly silent as Nat drives. Cathy feels the need to break the silence, but she doesn’t know what to say. She can tell that Jane is losing her sanity in the backseat under the pressure of the anxious silence though, so she needs to say something soon.
Nat drives slowly and deliberately. A good driver, and that makes Cathy feel much better about Catalina going places with her. She’s careful, and she definitely knows where she’s going. Cathy however, has no clue where they’re headed. Not having had the need, nor the want, Cathy doesn't have her license. And she doesn’t leave the house much; she doesn’t know her way around town. And she doesn’t know where the girls would go in a situation like this.
The teenager next to her, on the other hand, is arguably Lina’s best friend. She would know and she clearly has a destination in mind.
“Where are we checking first?” Cathy asks, unwilling to sit in silence any longer.
“Burger King. It’s Lina’s comfort food, and she likes to sit in the jungle gym and eat. They’re probably there.”
Oh. Cathy didn’t know that. She should have known that.
“Are you sure about this?” Jane pipes up from the backseat. Nat shrugs.
“It’s a good bet. If they’re not there they might be at one of Kit and Lia’s places to hang out.”
“Would they be with Lia?” Cathy questions.
“They’re not; I texted her and she said she doesn’t know where Kit is.”
“And you trust her?” Jane asks.
Nat nods, “I have no reason not to.”
Cathy glances at the girl, then at Jane in the rear view. It’s plain as day on Jane’s face that she doesn’t trust either of them anymore, but they have to. And as much of a part Nat and Lia had in Catalina and Kitty’s lies, they’re clearly loyal and fairly decent friends. She gives Jane a reassuring smile when their gazes meet in the mirror.