Chapter Text
It is when Ben is knocked unconscious and she can’t tell if the blast claimed her entire solar system or just her sun that Theresa’s resolve shatters to shrapnel. Kate grabs her hand when she screams and does not so much as flinch when her vicelike grip turns slack or when she loses her will to scream and sobs instead, heaving silent, violent earthquakes as Kate’s arms enfold her.
“Theresa,” she whispers. “Theresa. Shh. Let it out. Ben is fine. Let it out.”
The blood smeared across Kate’s face is flaking off onto her cheeks and hair and it’s only the gravity of this memory of bloodshed and loss that impresses her into silence. She shudders as she pulls back from Kate’s embrace and looks her in the eye, really takes in the defeated slackness of her expression and the hopelessness in her eyes. The profundity of the loneliness in Kate’s face is haunting; Theresa realizes that she has lost everyone now, her allegiance to the present in Harold, her anchor to the past in–oh God–Ethan. She reaches up to touch her cheek gently, and Kate blinks, staring back like Theresa just shook her awake.
“Hey,” Theresa says, and she has no idea where the confidence in her voice comes from. “Hey. Don’t do that. Don’t you dare go blank on me.”
Nothing moves in Kate’s eyes. She looks so . . . tentative, so out of place, and Theresa knows instinctively that she looks exactly the same, that the deadness in Kate’s eyes is mirrored in her own and in those of everyone else around her, the silent crowd who see everything and nothing, who embrace and release and feel no comfort because they aren’t holding each other for comfort anymore. They touch to remind themselves that there is still life.
“We can’t give up,” Kate says suddenly, and her chin wobbles just slightly, but enough for Theresa to know that she’s starting to believe it. “H–Harold wouldn’t want that. Ethan wouldn’t want that.” She chokes out their names and Theresa reflexively grabs her hand and squeezes it. “We can’t waste his sacrifice.”
The First Generation comes rushing in as a unit and stops dead at the sight of the armed guards that swarm to block their path. A young man, hunched and bloodstained, staggers to the forefront; when he straightens his back and winces, Theresa realizes that the blood is his own and that he is badly wounded.
Kate steps forward. “Jason,” she says, and her face is drawn taut. “What a . . . pleasant surprise.” She’s got a pistol pointed straight at his heart; there is an audible click as she flips up the safety.
“Where’s David Pilcher?” he demands. “How did you get here?”
Kate flashes the bright, vacuous, disingenuous Wayward Pines smile, the one that says I’m innocent and I’m guileless and I’m terrified and You know the answer and also I’m trapped like a wild animal but not like prey like a wounded predator and I’m a panther dripping blood from my ribs I’m a lioness with a flesh wound I’m a stuck bull and an angry bear and I will rend you bone from bone and limb from limb if you let your misplaced confidence take you one step closer because I know your type and all you will ever be is prey, and once you lose the weapon you are fucked, you are gutted and hamstringed and I’ll feed your marrow to my pack and stake your head out for the world to see. Her voice is saccharine when she speaks, but Theresa can see the violent pitch of her chest and feel the electric throbbing of adrenaline.
“Give me one good reason you shouldn’t be put into hibernation right now. All of you.”
“We know how to survive,” Jason says, and he manages a proud toss of his head. “We know the truth of Wayward Pines. David Pilcher chose us to lead the next generation through the flood and into the future.”
Kate snorts derisively and her grip on the pistol is two-handed and steady. “What the hell do you think we’ve been doing? The flood is over. Your ark is sunk. David Pilcher is dead.”
The First Generation surges forward like riptide and their gasps and murmurs–punctuated by one yelp from somewhere in the midst–sough like the sea. The guards push back and level their guns at the group, stilling them.
“You’re lying,” he says breathlessly. “I’m not going to save you–not any of you! Not even you, Ben, or you, Amy; you’ve chosen your side. You’ll sink with the rest of them. You’re all going to die like your traitor sheriff,” he gestures unsteadily to Kate, “like your coward husband.”
Theresa braces herself for the shot and is startled by the silence.
“Fine,” Kate says and relaxes slightly. She shifts the pistol to her right hand. “I’ll take you to Pilcher.”
Behind them, Pam lets out a startled, strangled giggle. Jason rounds on her. “What’s so funny?”
“He was going to let you drown,” Pam says. “You don’t get it, do you? The First Generation was the vanguard because you were the oldest ones in Wayward Pines that knew the whole truth. What’s the point of you when everyone knows?”
“I want to see David Pilcher,” Jason says, trembling. He glistens in the dim light, sweaty and pale from bloodloss. “I demand–”
“He’s dead,” Kate says.
“Dead,” Theresa echoes. Kate glances at her out of the corner of her eye in an almost imperceptible flicker of movement; Jason gawks openly.
“I shot him,” Pam says wearily. “The bullet shattered his sternum and the bone shrapnel pierced his heart. He’s dead. Why else would we all be here?”
Jason stares at her blankly. In the split second of stillness Theresa can see the points of fracture behind his wild, glassy eyes and the pulse of a muscle in Kate’s cheek as she grits her teeth. She’s got two hands on the gun again, braced for the kickback; this time, she’s aiming for right between his eyes.
He lunges toward Kate, closing the gap between them, and Theresa cannot tell for the life of her whether or not he is intentionally propelling himself face-first into the barrel of the gun. There is a burst of sound and Kate’s face is splattered with blood again.
The First Generation offers up a wail.
The power has been back for three days before they finally begin to venture out. The few Abbies that did not hightail it out before the walls were re-electrified are being strategically decimated by groups of guards–and, to Theresa’s consternation, Kate.
“You literally don’t need to go with them,” she says as Kate slings the strap of the heavy semi-automatic across her torso, adjusting its weight so it hangs across her back. “You get that, right?” When Kate says nothing she grabs her arm, feels her (considerable) bicep swell under the turtleneck’s cable knit as she tenses, notes the dark, insomniac circles under her eyes.
“We need to rebuild,” Kate says brusquely, but she doesn’t shrug off Theresa’s grip. “We can’t live in the side of a mountain forever.”
“Yes,” Theresa says slowly, affecting the tone she’d used when Ben was a toddler to explain that he’d done something wrong. “But you do realize that you don’t have to go with them, right? You don’t have to put your life on the line every day because the guards can kill the Abbies without your help.”
“I–” Kate sighs and shrugs off Theresa’s grasp. “I’ve spent the last twelve, nearly thirteen years here doing nothing. I co-ran a toy shop and hosted block parties and nearly lost my mind out of boredom. I need to do something. I need to have a real value to these people. You know, I got married because I had to and you know what’s just so–so heinous about all of it? It took a bullet in his head for me to realize just how hard I’d fallen for him along the way. I spent so much time doing nothing that I forgot what it was like to do anything or be anything. I used to be a Secret Service agent, and all I’ve done in Wayward Pines is carve little wooden ducks and throw parties and–you know what, Theresa? I spent a decade telling myself that I was still the same Kate I was back in Seattle, Kate Hewson not Kate Ballinger, and that sooner or later I’d get out and there would still be a place for me–” Kate chokes down a sob and drops to sit on her cot with her face in her hands. “It took me so long to realize that I loved him so much, that’s what gets me. It’s like some goddamn sick joke. He was about to get shot in the head and he wasn’t even thinking about himself, just stared at me and mouthed ‘I love you’–”
Theresa suddenly realizes that her vision is blurry because she’s crying too. Kate looks up at her with stricken red-rimmed eyes and swears quietly. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I’m so sorry, Theresa, I didn’t mean–”
“It’s fine,” Theresa says, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. “I think the worst thing we could do is pretend that we haven’t both lost so much.”
Kate tries to lie back but finds herself encumbered by the gun; she swears again and slips it up over her body. The strap pulls her hair over her face and she doesn’t bother to brush it away, not even after she’s placed the whole apparatus next to her bed. When Theresa sees that Kate’s shoulders are shaking from barely suppressed sobs she sits next to her and holds her until she feels her own tears flowing.
The guards finish off the last of the Abbies that day, and Kate falls asleep with her head in Theresa’s lap.
Pam refuses point-blank to assume her brother’s place as leader of Wayward Pines and won’t budge for anyone. “I think we don’t need another Pilcher at the reins,” she tells Theresa when she asks, and Kate gets the exact same response verbatim. It is becoming apparent, however, that there is a general consensus as to where the power ought to lie now that Pilcher’s throne and Ethan’s office are empty; Kate and Theresa, either by association or because of the responsibilities they have shouldered in the past week, have earned a surprising amount of respect, to the point that they are both consulted for almost every big decision.
“I don’t think we should have just one leader,” Theresa tells Arlene and Brad when they ask who will fill Pilcher’s position.
“Maybe a council? It certainly shouldn’t be unilateral,” Kate adds. “I mean, look where that got us. We can’t have just one person pulling the strings.”
When they have to choose a new head teacher for the newly revamped school, it is Kate and Theresa who nominate Pam; when they have to choose its name, it is Kate and Theresa who say a very polite and firm thanks-but-no-thanks to the suggestion of “Ethan Burke Memorial School”. And so it stands to reason, then, that when the newly appointed council convenes to discuss leadership, Kate Ballinger is named as the new Sheriff and Theresa Burke is appointed to the new position of ‘City Organizer’.
“What does a City Organizer even do?” Theresa asks as they lug a box of Pilcher’s surveillance equipment to the Sheriff’s office.
“Um,” Kate grunts as she shoulders the full weight of the box, hefting it onto her desk. “I have no idea at all.”
“I sound like some kind of glorified janitor.” Theresa leans against a cabinet and watches as Kate unpacks the box, organizing a complex system of keyboards and screens on her desk. Sans Pilcher, the Sheriff’s role is essentially to monitor the Abbies and maintain the integrity of the wall that protects them. A generator has already been set up in one of the empty cells as a backup system, and all that’s left for Kate is getting acquainted with the computer system. It’s harder than either of them expected, as the technology Pilcher used was developed decades after the two women were put into hibernation (not to mention that the most sophisticated form of technology Kate has regularly used over the last twelve years is a cash register).
“If you are, can you clean up this mess?” Kate asks with a smirk, pointing to the scattered packing material that litters the floor of her office.
“Not in your wildest dreams,” Theresa replies, and they share a small smile. “Will you be alright, by the way? Using his office?”
Kate raises her eyebrows and shrugs, looking for all the world like she hasn’t been staring off into space at the exact spot where Harold–
“Yes,” she says, and looks Theresa in the eye now. “Everyone who lives here has suffered some loss or trauma from the attack. If we want to move on, we’re going to have to confront our fears and losses. It’s 4028. Can’t live in the past forever.”
Theresa laughs and holds out her hand to squeeze Kate’s. “I’d suggest a toast if we had glasses. To the future of Wayward Pines or something.”
Kate lifts their entwined hands in a motion that mimics a toast. “To us?”
“To us,” Theresa replies.
Despite their insistence on openness and shared power, it becomes apparent that the mountain bunker will have to remain their command center and Wayward Pines their home.
“I think it’s like a Venn diagram,” Ben says to Kate as they clatter up the stairs (the lift still hasn’t been fixed, but it goes without saying that they would not take it even if it had been). “We’ve got to make sure there’s some overlap, because when there isn’t any then everything gets crazy. But I think people would feel safer if we could all stay here.”
“You know we can’t,” Theresa says. “There isn’t enough space for us and all of the people who were already here, not to mention all the people who are still–” She fumbles with words for a moment before finally settling on: “–down below.”
“What are we going to do about them, anyway?”
“I’ve been speaking to Pam,” Kate says. “She says we can’t wake them up now, and frankly I agree with her; we have way too much to rebuild. We’re going to discuss it with the council tomorrow so that we can come up with a long-term plan for waking them up and acclimating them to the massive sh–uh, mess–that’s out there.”
They stop talking, breathless, as they continue up the seemingly endless stairs, flight upon flight, until they finally reach the top floor and stop to pant and clutch at the stitches in their sides.
“I–think I–get why–no one knew–about these stairs,” Theresa puffs as she catches her breath, pressing her flushed cheek to the cold metal wall. She glares at Kate and Ben, who have recovered much faster than she, although they both are tinged pink from effort as well. “How on earth did you–two recover so–ridiculously fast?” she demands, straightening to stand with arms akimbo in mock outrage.
“I run every day in P.E.,” Ben says. “Pam says I’m in really good shape.”
“Me too–not for P.E. though, obviously. I jog the border of the fence every morning,” Kate says.
Theresa sheds her bulky sweater as they head through the halls to their makeshift control room; the sign on the door reads “SITUATION ROOM,” but its effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that it’s written in felt-tipped pen on a piece of notebook paper and held up with two pieces of scotch tape.
“Amy did that,” Ben says with a grin. “She came here with Pam yesterday and they brought a bunch of computers back with them.”
The internet is a millennia-old daydream now but that hasn’t stopped them; some of Pilcher’s old team put together a series of databases of all available human knowledge, supported by a series of servers that occupy a whole floor of their bunker. Theresa has seen it and is perfectly happy not understanding any of it, from the blinking, quietly whirring servers and their nest of wires to the new system of cloud computing that, she is told, was invented specifically by and for Pilcher’s team. All she knows is that Ben comes home and tells her the most outlandish things about life after they were taken, like how in 2018 scientists learned how to prevent the cellular mutations that cause cancer with a vaccination from–of all things!–a chemical compound found in raspberries, but it wasn’t sponsored or funded for decades because good ol’ Big Pharma couldn’t find a way to patent a raspberry, or how, just before everything went off the deep end in a big, mutanty way, NASA began construction of an experimental colony on Mars designed to support human life and growth, or how radiation and overfishing had rendered the oceans unlivable but they had spend millennia restoring themselves and were probably fine now.
How wide and wonderful the world is, but for one genetic aberration!
Kate hands her a tablet and stylus before she sits down. “I got a call yesterday about you doing inventory on food and water supply,” she says. “And someone wanted to talk to you about, um, I think there’s a service lift that they’re trying to revamp for use by everyone. It’s accessible from the first floor.”
Ben stiffens. “They won’t fix the main one, will they?”
“I think the, um,” Theresa says uncomfortably, “the blast destroyed most of its mechanism and a lot of the doors so it wouldn’t be feasible.”
“Maybe we could just leave it?” Ben asks hopefully.
“Maybe,” Kate says; she takes a seat at the circular conference table in the center of the room and picks up a tablet of her own. “We’re certainly going to leave it for now. And if something like this ever happens again, it might be a good decoy entrance because the Abbies know where it is.”
Ben nods his assent. “That’s a really good idea, actually.”
“Thank you,” Kate says.
Theresa skims the list and sighs. Their most plentiful food source is grain, specifically wheat; 3,000 units of it, with one unit being the average amount of grain eaten by one household (averaging 2.13 members) in one year. She looks up and Kate has her boots on the table and her tablet propped up on her legs; she looks defiantly out of place among the luxurious furnishings that Pilcher was clearly so fond of, with her dirty boots scuffing the mahogany and her SMG hung by its strap across the back of the plush, ergonomic taupe leather chair, like some kind of guerilla war queen or dystopian heroine come to claim the spoils of her victory.
Anyway. “We’re not exactly health food central, are we?” she asks with some frustration as she notes the caveats of FROZEN, DRIED, and FREEZE-DRIED next to almost everything in the fruit and vegetable categories. “A few of the First Generation kids mentioned that they wanted to take up farming, and I’m inclined to agree. We could zone a couple of the lots and convert them into farmland–”
“I’m not giving any members of the First Generation the chance to be the sole proprietors of any important knowledge about our survival ever again,” Kate says coldly.
Theresa glances at Ben, then looks pointedly at the door; he nods and leaves, stopping only to pick up a box labeled TABLETS - SCHOOL before he shuts the door behind him.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little bit harsh?” she asks Kate once he is gone.
“Actually, I think I’m being so generous that someone ought to nominate me for a Nobel prize,” Kate snaps, swinging her feet off the table to plant them firmly on the plush carpet, almost as if to ground herself. “I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say that I completely refuse to trust them. You know they’ve been taught since they arrived that we’re stupid and expendable, right? And that they’re more important than us because they know more than us? We can’t give those–those proto-fascists power like that, at least not until we know exactly where their loyalties lie.”
“Okay,” Theresa says slowly, not totally disagreeing. She remembers the hate in Jason’s words and the disdain in his eyes and knows that there is truth to what Kate says. “But what are we going to do about them? We can’t cut them out of society until you’re satisfied, and we’re not putting them into hibernation.”
There’s a look in Kate’s eyes that tells Theresa in no uncertain terms that she would take no small pleasure out of doing just that. The real problem, though, isn’t that the First Generation was totally and shamelessly poised to stand by and save themselves as everyone else died horrible, gruesome deaths, but the trigger being pulled, the bullet shattering skull, the stinging splatter of blood and gray matter across Kate’s face as Jason executed Harold right in front of her. The problem is that Pilcher created for himself a standing army in his guards and then a second army of nationalistic, fiercely loyal sleeper cells. The problem is that Theresa spent less than a month under Pilcher’s rule while Kate spent twelve years, twelve long and frightened years dreaming of the outside world and plotting an escape (that would surely in its success have ended in her death) while almost literally under her nose children were taught the truth of the world and guaranteed safety and peace of mind.
“I don’t know,” Kate says finally. “We’ll have to talk about that with the council.”
Their council, elected democratically on improvised, write-in ballots that first night in the bunker, has five members: Sheriff Kate Ballinger, City Organizer Theresa Burke, Mayor Brad Fisher, Head Teacher/Head Nurse Pam Pilcher, and Youth Representative Ben Burke. There is no official power structure but it feels like there is a tacit agreement that Kate is the one calling the shots, mostly because of how clearly Ethan delegated authority to her in his final hours. And because she knows that she could call the shots if she chose but nevertheless refuses. Theresa, too, gets a certain reverence because she is Ethan’s widow and because Kate so clearly relies on her and trusts her as well. She ought to be resentful that her position has nothing to do with her own merit, but she can’t be bothered to be. Not now, and especially not when she’s being given the chance to do so much good.
The worst part of her job is relocating the “displaced citizens,” the people who live alone because the Abbies claimed their spouses or children or parents or, in the worst cases, a combination thereof; she spends hours looking widows and orphans and childless fathers in the eye and when she leaves, she comes home to two more sets of eyes that have the exact same look behind them, like their hope has a heart murmur. Yes, two sets: Kate refuses any special privileges as the Sheriff and gratefully accepts Theresa’s offer to relocate to the Burke household.
Ben likens Kate to a steamroller, and her public persona is just that; like Ethan, her years in the Secret Service taught her to detach and compartmentalize, to set a goal in her crosshairs and carry it out to the best of her ability. She is very good, so good in fact that Theresa thinks she might be the only one who sees the other side of Kate, the side that is heavy with loss and haunted by nightmares.
As per regulation, the queen bed she and Ethan shared (as “Partners”) in the master bedroom was replaced by two smaller beds for herself and Kate (as “Cohabitants”), which means that when Kate thrashes and groans in her sleep Theresa is there to shake her awake and rub her back as she shakes with impotent, vulnerable fury and embarrassment. It means that when Theresa is sitting awake at 3 A.M. because she can’t fall back asleep after waking from a nightmare about the Abbies, Kate is just a few feet away and probably in a similar state. It means that they whisper to each other in the night about everything and nothing.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Did you love him?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Theresa, it was more than a decade ago. It’s not like I was going to rekindle anything with Ethan.”
“You know that’s not why I’m asking.”
“That’s true.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. I think I liked him, maybe could have loved him.”
“Hm.”
“If it makes you feel better, I think he just liked me too. But that’s the problem, I think. Like is more dangerous than love because you know it’s not going to last so you do a bunch of stupid and insensitive things to make it mean something even though you know it won’t. That’s what happened. We flared up then burned out.”
“I have to admit, I was so worried when I saw you here. I get it, you know, how close you get with your partner and how he couldn't tell me half of what he did and it all just laid itself out really, long hours with his hot partner and then boom, there you were again. I thought it was, like, fate or something.”
“Ha!”
“What?”
“I’m serious, what?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that I looked suspiciously old.”
“You don’t look old.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re not old. You know that, right?”
“Theresa, you have got to learn to interpret silences.”
“I’m not going to let you clam up on me.”
“Has it occurred to you that I’m trying to sleep?”
“I am too. I can’t. I know you can’t either.”
“Theresa?”
“Kate?”
“Why did you get over hating me?”
“Because I had to. And because I needed to.”
“Charming.”
“I should have been angrier with Ethan, but it was easier to be mad at you because I didn’t have to look at you every day.”
“Kate?”
“Hm?”
“Does it ever get easier?”
“No. You just learn to live with it. You become someone new and it’s like you’ve just grown a new skin outside your old one and it might protect you but it doesn’t change who you are or what you’ve lost.”
“Kate?”
“Yes?”
“I feel like I can sleep now.”
“Good. Me too.”
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad I’m here, too. I’m glad we’re here.”
“We can be your family, okay? If you want us to be. If it would help.”
“I’d like that very much.”
“You can be Kate Burke. Kate Ballinger-Burke?”
“Ha.”
“Theresa? Are you asleep?”
“I lost everything that day, you know. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done. I think I would have died if you hadn’t been there. I think I would have wandered out into those woods . . . I don’t think I’ve ever owed anyone as much as I owe you. I hope someday I’ll be able to tell you–when you’re conscious–that you gave me a future and a belief in tomorrow.”