[For Nick]

[callofkaren]

It was an inevitable fact about the island; eventually, everyone you love left.

Karen could make all the friends she liked, take part in boutiques and vote for councils and attend parties, but the faces seemed to change every year or so, and the familiar ones, the ones that stuck around, seemed to grow less over time. First it'd been Jim and Pam, then Chuck, Lennox and Gideon not long after, and Karen had done her best to keep herself together. She still had Nick, after all, and she still had Samantha (and Veronica, Rob, a dozen other names).

Brodie was, if she was going to be honest, the last straw. He was a strange friend, sure, but he'd become as close as a brother over the years. The brother you yelled at down the hall and the brother that trash talked your boyfriends, but still. Family.

Now all she was left with was a bunch of comics she had no idea what to do with and one less friend.

She'd spent the day keeping it together, taking Utica on a long walk along the beaches as she avoided seeing anyone. She was doing fine by the time she made it home, choosing to sit out in front of the hut and watch the sunset for a while. Utica fell asleep in the sand next to her, and Karen waited for Nick to come home.

Comments

[formerfratboy.livejournal.com]

"Should just be happy that the joy's being spread around, right?" Nick smiled, then shifted to wrap his arm around Karen's shoulders.

"How are you doing, though?" he asked after a moment. He knew that all of these disappearances hit hard and took their toll. It was easy to make jokes and find the humor in a bad situation, but it was easy to use that to hide how damn miserable you were, too. Not that he'd know anything about that.

[callofkaren]

"Shitty," Karen answered without hesitation. She was good at doing her best to keep a bright look on things, but that got harder and harder every time she lost someone. She leaned into Nick and closed her eyes for a moment. "I keep thinking I'll wake up one morning and everyone will be gone. You, Samantha, everyone."

[formerfratboy.livejournal.com]

"Yeah," he said, holding her a little tighter, as if that could keep either of them from ever disappearing. "Me too." Spend enough time on the island, of course, and you wind up having that lurking dread in the back of your mind, all the time. That didn't make it any easier. "You'd think this would have gotten easier by now, but it hasn't. It gets harder every damn time."

[callofkaren]

Karen was quiet for a moment, in complete agreement with Nick. At least he was still there, for however long she would be allowed to have him. "I hate this place sometimes," she sighed. "I love you, but I hate it."

[formerfratboy.livejournal.com]

"I love you, too," he said, leaning close to her. "I hate how ... powerless this place makes me feel, with shit like this." It was a feeling that was a new one for him; back home, even in the darkest of moments or with the hardest of cases, there was still comfort in the predictability of life. This place stripped all that away.