#char kat

Kat blinked down at the question scratched into her journal, done with some pen she found under the dining room table. Tucked under her bed while Helen was away, afraid of punishment enough still, she kicked her feet up, accidentally hitting the underside of the rusted metal bed frame and wincing before etching her response. Four days after she had arrived, her behavior was already proving to be challenging to many of the other lambs and oracles.

To go back to my apartment.

No. She scratched that out. They'd see that.

To get obscenely drunk.

Again, too druggy and personal. Another ink blot's sheen flashed in the light where the words once were.

To saw a pervert's head off poorly and rip it out with its spinal cord attached after taking his money.

Nope. Loud scribbling bounced off the tight space under the bed. Get better, Kat. This is your life now.

Somebody.

A slight pause. She was on a, fortunately, better track, but still, she gingerly scratched out the word. Maybe one-word responses were better. Less content for whoever would read it to scrutinize.

Loyalty.

Kat stared down at the word on the page. It could mean a lot of things without context. Hopefully, whenever someone else read it, they would believe she meant it in the religious connotation. Not in the actual one she thought about.

She signed the entry off for the day, shut it after blowing on the ink, and wrapped the beaded clasp she found in her pocket when she arrived around the burnished leather. The clasp was from her night bag when she got dragged into this hellhole, a leather-and-seaglass design that she bought as a keychain probably months ago from now. She must've had enough sense before getting chosen to guard it. Since it was like, twenty bucks at the Christmas market.

Kat hoped that maybe writing that thought down would dull it through catharsis, maybe. Oh well. ---

Several days later, mistakes were made. Multiple, recurring ones. Before she knew of anyone gossiping about her, she put in more effort with her jobs: scrubbing vigorously when assigned chores, training her sharpshooting abilities, and falling in line, conforming.

It was a threat. Enough that Kat sincerely believed she'd be bled out to death if she were found out. And she knew that whoever else was involved wouldn't be as harshly punished. Hierarchy and all that. She'd just be herself again, Katya Soroka, that girl that everyone knows about who breaks rules. Who was once brilliant, and probably still is, but was careless. And impulsive. And dumb. And mildly insecure about all these things, in the most lukewarm way. She didn't care at all about what people thought about her, but she felt bad for how she demeaned herself.

Coming back from hunting one day, alongside the brunette girl—taller than her, somehow, and absurdly gorgeous compared to her (in Kat's perspective), while Kat's straightened hair and heavy makeup were still adapting to the lackluster conditions of the flock, who she now remembered as Danny—she noticed a few odd glances. Enough to set her off while she was dragging in a crushed raccoon found in the woods, while Danny was hauling the actual catch of the day: a baby elk that Kat shot straight between the eyes, in an arc perfectly curved that she could probably calculate the torque and air resistance behind it. A glare on faces harsh enough that other lambs only reluctantly dipped their heads with a hushed "Sister Katya," leaving their closed lips.

Once Katya was done pulling in the poor excuse of a meal, she stepped back into a side hall, joining the kill room and the kitchen, being confronted immediately by a broad man a bit taller than her. If she thought the look the other lambs were giving her was bad, this one was terrifying.

"I know what you did."

Maybe it was just instinct settling in, but the fact that the corridor reminded Kat of a darkened alley made her a bit ballsy. Too comfortable for the clear, degrading voice Tim was using.

"Really? That's funny." She laughed sarcastically before knowing what she said aloud. Oh, bad mistake. She tried to brush it off by pulling her arms behind her back, peering up at him with an unreadable expression and widened eyes.

"Don't look at me like that. Address me correctly."

"Oh." Her voice dulled in brightness, like a sharpened knife smoothed in instants by an electric sander. Kat still stared at him with the same look, panicking without any weapons or knowledge of how to escape this place.

Before she could even continue speaking, a sudden smack hit her face without her recognizing it.

"You whore. Talk to me like a person, not another fool."

The slap made her head snap back with the impact, her gaze fuzzing and echoing pounding shapes of stones in the jointed-arched hall. Kat immediately felt blood rush down her throat from her teeth digging into her cheek, from bracing for the unexpected blow the moment before it resounded.

"Ow, fuck—goddamnit—"

Another slap.

"You thought you'd get away with what I've heard? No blood on your hands?"

Kat almost collapsed with the second swing, stabilizing her slouched form on the side of the wall. She spat out the traces of coppery sanguine from her mouth before feeling her mind haze, blacking out for a second. Straightening with the intent to stand again, she barely put one foot in front of the other before being dragged from behind to be bled. ---

The rest of the day was foggy. Mainly from the pain when she was taken to the altar in front of all the other lambs and bled through both arms as punishment, while she was held back by her limbs. Her head was tilted back, eyes glassy and devoid of much emotion beyond intense agony, in some cruel mockery of Pieta as dark, oxidized blood pooled on the bone-colored fabric of her shirt and the untainted, polished floor. A biblical contrast.

Oh, how she pretends she doesn't know of the other's sins. To be the brunt of it, like a battering ram, until the other is ready to confess.

Sour.

That is the only descriptor that fits how Kat felt when she was hauling herself to the infirmary for a snake bite on her calf. It's stupid that she worried about it, but she just wanted to be on the safer side. She couldn't care less about being left to succumb like a lame horse; if it were actually venomous, it would free her from this cult. But she also didn't want to shrivel and waste away at twenty-four. And she has a lot to do in her life yet, she thinks (…she hopes).

Kat left her sidearm repeater at the entrance of the infirmary once she cracked open the rickety door, peeking inside without a greeting; the hinge squealed with the caking of rust on it from the hall's humidity. She couldn't make out who was inside from the entrance, only vague smatterings of figures' shadows in the dim ward-like room.

"Hellllooo?" She dragged out, still leaning against the yellowed pine doorway. A lingering splatter of smudged sanguine stained her right cheek to the bridge of her nose; the spray was barely visible to anyone inside the infirmary.

A reserved, hushed reply saturated the quiet inside the room.

"Katya? Do you need help?" Juniper's voice.

"Yeah, it's Kat," she paused, noticing that the younger girl was still deep inside the room. "I got, ugh, a snake bite while hunting. It doesn't hurt too badly; I just can't see it well. Just worried about it."

Juniper suddenly peered out from a walled partition, eyes widened visibly. Kat was way more oblivious about how many more venomous snakes were in the cult's radius than in her previous home, even though she didn't want to be told that.

"Sit down, let me check."

The shorter girl scraped a rugged oak chair from the back of the infirmary over to Kat; the stain of the wood faded at the edges from use. Kat lowered onto the seat, crossing her arms over her lap politely and raising her injured leg for Juniper to look at.

Before Juniper could pull down her ivory, faintly dirt-stained sock to examine the wound, Kat interrupted, "Where is Jack and everyone in here, anyway? Swear there's way more of you. A lot more. Like a loootttt more."

Juniper glanced up at her silently from kneeling at her side, thinking for a few moments, "Jack's helping the cooks right now. Needles and the other apprentices are getting supplies to change the sheets and prepare more medicines."

"They just left you to fend for yourself? Damn—I mean, no, that sucks. Sucks bad. Badly." Kat floundered a bit, watching Juniper's reaction intently, waiting for the younger to be offended. No apparent hatred. That was good.

Juniper nodded blankly, her head dipping again to inspect the bite as she dragged Kat's stocking down. She immediately noticed the array of scars down her right leg, signs of where Kat must've been bled from for her sins, growing quiet. It was almost nauseating how many marks were left as reminders of the Divine's rules. Even with all her medical knowledge, it seemed absurd for the older girl to have enough blood to survive all of them.

"Don't look at me like that. Judging me," Kat hummed under her breath, more of an insecure sound than she wanted it to be when replaying it in her mind.

The shorter paused, her braids falling loosely at her shoulders when she glanced up at the other, "I'm not judging you. Just worried."

"Worry about the bite first. Everything else is in the past."

Juniper's focus returned to the pin pricks of teeth on Kat's lower knee, delicately smoothing the reddened area of pale skin with gloved hands to search for swelling. Not horrible, just irritated. She noted no signs of a venomous bite based on Kat's demeanor and consciousness.

"I can't find any reason why the bite would be venomous. You'll be alright, okay?"

"Thanks," Kat nodded quickly, an actual, genuine smile growing on her lips from Juniper's slipped-in assurance. It was clearly just an added note out of habit, but it made her feel a little bit cared for. A teeny bit. She'd take it.

The dots of blood lining the wound faded with a wipe of Juniper's fabric-covered palm. Kat watched skeptically, waiting for her to put some antiseptic on it.

Silence.

"Aren't you gonna…clean it out?"

Looking up again, Juniper's eyes held Kat's for a few moments, trying to discern if the older girl was being serious. She knew Kat had some actual intellect behind her borderline satirical personality, something that was definitely coating more than just cynicism behind the façade, from word-of-mouth around the flock, but she thought the girl understood how supplies were used in fractions and slivers in the infirmary.

"It's barely piercing your skin, Katya. We can't waste outside resources on something like this. Just wash it out well in a basin with the hard soap when you get back to your dorm. The sterile stuff."

The coal-haired girl watched the younger, with an expression of mild disappointment apparent on her face, mixed with the not-yet-faded lightness in her irises.

"Oh."

"Sorry, Katya."

Kat nodded, following Juniper's apology, more to show respect than to convey her active understanding.

"I understand. Just…I just like medical stuff; I like knowing how every step should be followed; I like remembering the stuff that I was good at before all this."

Juniper tilted her head, pulling a strip of fabric bandage from a roll on a roughened-up antique set of drawers behind her, before lacing it around the less-angry-looking bite.

"And what was that?"

"I was going to be a doctor, and uh, I was good at it. I was good at making money, and I was good at being a thorn in people's sides sometimes. But I was really good at being a future doctor."

Kat paused at the end of her third sentence, not wanting to say what made her think that. Or who she was reminded of, thinking of the winter before. Or how she lived to make money. It was all in the past. And being a lamb, scrubbed of it. Except really not. She was still the person before being brought to the flock, evident in the amount of bleedings she bore on her skin.

Juniper's brow shaded with softened confusion, "So, why didn't you get taken in as a healer's apprentice?"

A sharp laugh left Kat's lips, their usual stain of pink blotted on with pigment from the lack of cosmetics in the flock to prevent vanity.

"You think I would get that authority? In here? Do you need to see the sins again, dug into my legs and arms?"

"No, but you seem smart. Smarter than some of the other lambs. And you have no role beyond being a hunter."

Kat's face relaxed with the compliment, brightened slightly as if she knew the sun was peeking through the dense clouds at that exact time.

"Really? I mean it, really? I'm someone that you don't wanna associate with here. I did bad things. And you just think I'm smart?"

Juniper had to genuinely reflect on her opinion of Kat. Kat was either causing or having rumors spread about her on most days, but still did her job efficiently. Complaints and attitude aside, she worked like a well-oiled machine. Which was a tad scary, especially not knowing what the 'bad things' in her past were.

"Yeah."