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Katie waved Ishan goodbye, faking a smile.
Her relationship with Ishan was rocky nowadays. She didn’t know if he was still her boss, because she hadn’t quit the quote-on-quote, right, way.
She sighed as he ran off, getting ready to deal with all the bullshit being messaged to her. Or, she was going to do that, before a hand on her shoulder made her jump.
She spun around, about to berate the person for sneaking up on her, until she realized who it was.
The dark worker.
She let out a gulp, “H-hey dark worker!”
“You’ve been taking a while.” It said, no expression visible on its face, as usual.
“Taking a while for what?” Katie really didn’t want to sacrifice nacho, even if it meant getting her husband back.
I mean, she had already given them her soul! What more could they want from her? Her whole family as well?
While she couldn’t lie and say that the offer of power wasn’t tempting, because it was. After how shit this week was, she really wanted to get back at some people. More specifically the person who blew up her HQ. I mean, who does that?!
“Don’t act stupid with me.” It’s voice was rough and unkind, Katie thought.
She bit her cheek as it grabbed her by her shoulders, shoving her to the ground. Did it need to be so rough with her?
“I’m not! I’m never stupid.” She smiled, pushing herself up from the ground.
It didn’t seem to enjoy her act as his next action was a punch square in the face. She hissed, already feeling the bruise.
“Fuck man! Jeez, warn a girl next time.” Katie rubbed the right side of her face. Damn, it was strong. This wasn’t looking good for her, as it seemed this thing had little to no patience.
“The deal. Are you taking it?” It grabbed her shoulders yet again, shaking her, as well as slamming her body against the pillars.
“Deal? The deal?” Katie asked, trying to swat it away from her. Why was she always in situations like this?
She looked at her comm, her messages were being blown up.
<DonKaaklijin> come regime, Ash is crying.
Okay, so it was one person messaging her. Whatever.
Fuck. She should probably tell multi, shouldn’t she?
“You remember the deal, right.” It stated, knowing the answer.
It continued to slam her into the pillar. She was starting to get lightheaded. Did the world usually spin like this?
“Stop shaking me! Damn!” She yelled. She had to focus on one thing at a time and this slamming into pillars wasn’t helping.
It sorta listened. Katie yelped as she was slammed into the ground.
“Thanks, I guess.” She mumbled.
She looked at her comm, quickly typing a message.
<Saucebxss> I’m getting kidnapped again
And with that, she looked back up at the dark worker.
“You have three days to decide.” It told Katie before kicking her in the ribs and face.
Katie cried out at the hits. Was this really necessary? She couldn’t help but feel it was being a bit excessive.
She had three days to decide whether she betrays her family for tomate. Well, half her family. Tomate is a part of the family, he just isn’t here at the moment.
“Okay, okay!” She shielded her face, she didn’t want to take any more blows there.
“Do not tell anyone else. If you do, I will kill you and take Nacho.” And to prove its point, it unleashed a sword, holding it under her throat.
Katie’s eyes went wide. Holy shit, she thought.
It seemed to back down, slowly moving the sword away. That was before slashing her arm. She screamed in pain, tears appearing in her eyes.
“Do not mess with me.” Were its final words before leaving her.
She allowed her tears to stream down her face for a while before pushing herself up.
The cut didn’t seem to be very deep, just big. And losing a bit of blood. That was fine, right?
Her comm pinged multiple times, going off like crazy. She rolled her eyes, who was messaging her this much?
She looked down, staring blankly as she realized what happened. She had never closed off the chat with Don. She’d messaged Don instead of Multi. She read over the frantic messages from both Don and Ash.
<DonKaaklijin> What
<DonKaaklijin> again??
<DonKaaklijin> Where are you
<DonKaaklijin> Katie
<DonKaaklijin> are you okay
<Ashswag> KATIE WHERE
<Ashswag> answer
<ashswag> Katie where are you being kidnapped
She sighed. Ash had been having a bad day already, this slip up probably made it worse. Not to mention she probably didn’t look the best. I mean, she could literally see the blood left over from where her head was repeatedly slammed into, not to mention her arm.
She moved her hand to the back of her head, gaging at the feeling. She stared in horror as she brought her hand back. It was covered in blood.
She should probably go to the Regime now. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea. She stood up, her legs shaking. She whipped her waystone out, teleporting to the regime.
This proved to not be a good action, as the nausea was immense. She fell to her knees almost immediately, almost missing the yells of her brothers. Oh right, they were here.
“KATIE!” Don ran up to her, eyes widening as he saw the blood soaked fabric around her arm.
“Fuck, what they do to you?” He muttered, kneeling down, going to put his hands on her shoulders.
Before Katie could process it, she flinched. Don’s breath hitched at this and he slowly raised his hands up.
“It’s fine Katie, it’s me, your brother.” It was like Don was trying to calm down a wild animal.
Katie just nodded, not trusting her voice. She looked up at Don, seeing Ash standing behind him, eyes just as wide.
“H-hurts…” she let out, lazily looking at her arm.
“Yeah, I bet it does. You gonna let me look at it?” Don grabbed his backpack, already pulling some supplies out.
Katie nodded, not like it really mattered. She knew he’d do it, and it's not like she didn’t want him too.
“Katie…I-who was it? Was it Aldo?” Ash asked, finally moving next to her side. She could faintly hear Don tell him to roll her sleeve up.
“No..” she grunted as he followed Don's order, “not him.”
“We’ll ask about that later, for now, lemme heal you up, sis.” Don gently moved her body, making him able to focus on her wound.
She just nodded. “I’m sorry Ash.. didn’t mean to make your day wors’” her words began to slur.
She swore she could hear a choked sob come out of Ash before he replied. “Don’t worry about that, Katie. You didn’t do anything.” He comforted, rubbing her back.
She hummed a response. That’s when she remembered to tell Don about the back of her head.
“m’ head was…s-slamed against a wall.” She whispered. Sleep sounded really good right now.
“Shit. Ash, check it out for me, I’m almost done.” Don’s eyebrows furrowed. Katie always thought he looked older whenever he did that.
“And don’t you dare close those eyes missy.” It sounded like he was scolding her. But as always, she just nodded. She didn’t want to mess anything else up.
“It’s bleeding Don. The back of her head, I mean.” Ash gulped, he didn’t know what to do.
Katie looked down at her hand, being a bit shocked to find out Don had already patched her up. She hadn’t even felt a damn thing. Did she mention she was tired?
Don scooched over to face the back of her head.
“I’m gonna remove your bun, okay?” Don didn’t give her a chance to reply as he undid her bun.
“Do you have a water bucket, Ash?” Don asked, setting aside her hair tie. He thanked Ash as he handed the bucket over, slowly pouring it over Katie’s head. She could feel him clean the blood out of her hair, avoiding touching her actual scalp.
“Seems like the bleeding has stopped…” She heard him mutter as he started drying her hair off and pressing something rather soft against her scalp.
Don began wrapping a bandage around her head, talking while doing so. “Okay, we’re gonna keep this in for a day. You should be okay to sleep, but we’ll wake you periodically.”
All Katie needed to hear was ‘sleep’, as she was out like a light.
Don sighed, holding Katie in his arms. “Come on, where’s the closest bed?” Don turned to Ash, grabbing Katie as he stood up.
“Ash coughed awkwardly before standing up. “Uh, right this way.” He walked over to the tall Regime building. The two (three?) took the elevator up to the second floor, Don spotted the bed almost immediately. He made his way over before laying Katie down in it, pulling the covers over her body.
Once that was done, Ash let out a sigh.
“Fuck man…” he put his hands on his face.
Don quickly pulled Ash into a hug, comforting him. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
Ash’s shoulders shook as he cried into Don's shoulder. “Why-why can’t we just be happy? I mean, first Juan, now Katie.”
Ash didn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed. Normally, he wouldn’t show this many signs of weakness, but it seemed to naturally come out when around his siblings. He just continued sobbing into his older brother. He could already feel the headache coming on.
“I don’t know.” Don whispered, feeling close to tears himself. He blinked them away. He had to be strong, for Ash, he couldn’t cry right now. Ash needed his older brother to comfort him right now.
The two remained in the embrace until Ash had finished crying. They eventually pulled away, allowing Ash to wipe the tears and snot off his face.
“We should probably talk about,” Ash pointed at Katie, “before she wakes up.” He walked up to the bed, sitting beside it, Don following behind,
“Probably.. man, the one thing that’s worrying me is the fact she said ‘again’ in her message.” Don pulled his comm out, reading the message over and over again, as if it would give him more clues as to what happened to his baby sister.
“Fuck..So this had happened before? And she didn’t come to either one of us?” Ash didn’t like that. Why hadn’t she come to them the first time? He couldn’t help but feel sad. It was like Katie was pulling away from them. Like all the time she had was taken up by her family. And while he respected that, I mean having a son like Nacho and a co-parent like Multi probably wasn’t easy, but she hadn’t contacted them once this and last week.
A part of him worried that she didn’t trust them anymore. But another part suspected Multi was getting into her head. He’d done it to Haiper, what stopped him from doing it to Katie?
“I don’t think it was like this though. I mean, we saw her at least once a day, and she never looked roughed up. At least I hope it wasn’t like this.” Don muttered the last part out. He didn’t know if he could handle the mental image of Katie alone and hurt.
Ash nodded, not really knowing what to say.
The two of them sat in silence for a while, each looking over at their sister every now and then.
And as Don said, he went over to wake Katie after a good hour or so.
“Katie. Sis, wake up.” He gently shook her shoulders. Smiling when she let out a groan.
“Five more minutes..” she whined.
“No. Now come on. Time to get up.” Don’s hand went to her back as he slowly helped her up.
“Feel better?” Ash asked, standing up.
“Mmh.” Katie nodded. Even if she didn’t rest for long, she did truly feel a bit better.
“Good, good. Now, we’ve got some questions.” Ash walked over to the end of the bed, staring at Katie.
“Damn right we do. First of all, who kidnapped you?” Don grabbed Katie’s hand, rubbing it in hopes of comforting her.
Katie blushed, feeling a bit embarrassed. “Well… they didn’t really kidnap me. I thought they were going too, but they just sorta… you know.” Kidnap was a very strong, and not correct, word to describe what happened to her.
“Okay… Well, who was it?” Ash pushed, he really wanted to beat up whoever thought it was okay to touch Katie.
Katie shifted in the bed. Should she tell them? It did threaten to kill her and Nacho…
“I-I can’t say… they said they’d-“ she cut herself off. Was she allowed to tell them anything? She wasn’t so sure.
“They’d what? They threatened you as well?” Ash’s voice was dangerously low. You could practically see the steam coming out of his ears.
Don just sighed. “Okay. We’ll get back to that question later. We needed to keep you awake for a little, but you can go back to sleep now.” Don carefully patted the top of her head, helping her lay back down. And with that, Katie was back asleep.
“Don.” Ash huffed out, annoyed. He was sure he would’ve gotten an answer out of her if he kept pushing.
“Ash.” Don mocked. “She just woke up, we gotta let her rest more before we fully interrogate her. Plus, it doesn’t sound safe for her to talk in such an open area. You never know who’s listening.”
“But-!” Ash started, before being cut off by Don.
“No but’s. First, I think you also need to get some sleep. Today’s events are messing with you. Please, just, go to bed for now.” Don reached into his backpack, pulling out a sleeping bag. God, what didn’t he carry in that thing?
“Fine. I’ll sleep.” Ash agreed, although reluctantly. He couldn’t help but let out a yawn at the thought of sleep. Maybe he was tired.
Ash took the sleeping bag out of Don's hand, laying it on the ground before shimmying into it.
“G’night, Don.” Ash whispered, his eyes already practically closed.
“Night Ash, sleep tight.” Don sat between the two, leaning his head back, staring at the roof. This was going to be a long night for him. But at least his siblings were safe. That thought alone was enough to calm him down a smidge.