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The initial shock of setting herself on fire so badly had numbed the pain enough for her to clear the woods, and for her to start to feel guilty. Surely the fire would have gone down by now, having burned through all the tinder in the fire pit. In her memory, it seemed big enough to hit some trees, but on retrospect, it couldn't have been. It probably had burned out by now. She would cling to that hope. Kres would have heard her scream; she also had to hope he wasn't too worried about her.

For now, she had to get help. And there was someone who had, once, promised her an assist when she needed it; someone who owed her his life not once or twice but four times over. It meant swallowing her pride, but she couldn't go home--not when Andrews would see the fire, hear Kres's tale of desertion, and then assume the worst. That was what Andrews did, he assumed the worst in his quest to look after the young miss.

So Luke really was the only person to go to. And once she was in the hallway outside his apartment--it was unexpectedly fancy--she kicked the door, once, and then slumped down next to the door as Kaatje van der Weydin. The drag of the wall over her burned shoulder brought a pained gasp. It was good that she was hurting, though. It meant the burn wasn't too deep, and she supposed she had her elemental qualities as a senshi to thank for that.

She really, really hoped that dog had died. That was the only way this whole thing would be worth it.

She was staring at her hand when he opened the door, considering the fact that it hurt like hell and she was pretty sure it was going to be incredibly impossible to explain to anyone. Sunburn?... No, she would have made Kres take care of it. Maybe she could just ignore the problem and it would go away.

The sound of locks being, for lack of a better word, unlocked, brought her gaze up to Luke's chest. Immediately her face was as red as the burned skin on her arm, and she immediately looked away, uninjured hand over her mouth. "Yeah, hi," she said, taking his hand to pull herself to her feet. She seemed unsteady, and certainly unhappy to be there. But then again, she was giving up a four-save lead. Who wouldn't be unhappy?

"Sure," she said, "that sounds better that setting myself on fire trying to fight a giant dog monster. We'll go with the meteorite." Her expression wasn't joking; in fact, she seemed to feel very tiny and young right then, and certainly didn't look like seventeen-going-on-eighteen like she normally did. The plaid button-down she was wearing was untouched, presumably along with any clothes beneath it. That meant the story about the dog monster was probably true. Very quietly, avoiding Luke's gaze, she said, "Could you please help me?"

His apartment, she noticed as she followed him in, was very nice. Very different from what she had been expecting, of course, because she had imagined it as a den of debauchery. It was clean, though; no passed out whores, no clothes scattered over the floor and furniture besides the jacket and bag. In fact, it looked similar to her own living room. Which didn't mean she dropped her guard, it meant she just felt a little... discomfited.

"It's made of ice, maybe, but you have one, I nev~er~ denied that," said Kaatje; she stiffly took a seat on the couch. Out of her pockets came her blackberry--thirteen messages--and keys, and a billfold. These she sat next to her, and patted with her good hand.

Then she was back to looking around the room, but only for a moment. "You are soo infuriating," she said as she pulled off the button-down overshirt with a wince. Underneath was a crew-neck t-shirt; the burns disappeared seamlessly under the sleeve, but her look at him said the only way that was happening was if she absolutely had to.

Which she would, because the burns that disappeared under the hem looked as nasty as the ones covering her hand. But for right then, her arm was a bigger deal. It looked... well, burned, the skin shiny and puckered, blistering in places. "I didn't even know they could do that," she said, sounding befuddled. "Just call monsters out of the ground like that? Belphegor. Is that like, a magical monster-summoning word for them? I, what, I don't know."

She was largely pretending she wasn't there. It worked, too; didn't translate to being comfortable, because it hurt to have someone touching her burns, but she didn't cry more than a little. This she hid by passing a hand over her face, and if her eyes were a little red-rimmed, who could blame her? Her entire arm was a massive burn, which would have sucked enough as a sunburn, but there were indicators of parts of it being second-degree.

She whimpered, shoving at his hands suddenly as they drifted towards her shoulder. Definitely tears in those Carolina-blue eyes now, and she was looking away with a red flush on her face. Next to the angry crimson of the burns, though, it was more of a pink. "W-well," she said, and she gritted her teeth to let him resume whatever it was he was doing. "It sounds familiar, so maybe I'll... I'll look it up when I get home."

If she was chewing on her fingernails, he was kind enough not to notice. And if he did, the bluish tone was rather telling. She was staring over his head, sightless. "You know, you're not that bad when you're quiet. I like you, you're kind of nice to me, but you just make me so mad 'cause it's like you don't think." She brought up her hands to scrub her face. "Everyone dies, you know, and I don't want you to die."

...

"Maybe," she said rebelliously, plucking at the hem of her shirt. "You gotta promise not to look, okay. Promise."

"No, you don't get it," she was saying--and there was no way she was thinking straight now, because she seemed genuinely concerned and this was Kaatje, who insisted every time he so much as thought her name that she didn't care about him and wouldn't ever and she was just protecting an investment of time and effort. "Everyone dies. My parents and their baby and Kreszant might be dead because I don't know if I started a forest fire and--and I think I did wrong, and--"

And then she was looking up, his hands on either side of her face, and that shut her up very effectively, because hell. What was she supposed to say to any of that? No plans to die anytime soon, he said. She halfheartedly returned the thumbs up, wide-eyed, dark-eyed.

"Don't laugh," she sulked, glaring at him now. "It's perfectly reasonable for a young lady in the company of a scoundrel to want to protect her dignity." But he wasn't looking, so she tugged her t-shirt off; she allowed herself one hiss of pain and any number of whimpers, but eventually she was down to just a bandeau. Even that was covered by the towel, and now she was definitely not looking at Luke. She looked at her fingers, at her white-wrapped arm, and paled noticeably before she said, "How long do you think it's going to take before it'll be better."

It wasn't a question. She wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.

She knew, from experience, there would be no scars. Any injury she obtained as Gunn didn't transfer to Kaatje permanently; she was beginning to think that with the transformation she got more than just a special outfit and magical powers involving making fire explode. She was thinking that she gained a certain... impermanent-ness to wounds obtained, a sort of superficial quality maybe. It was a puzzling question.

"He's my cousin," said Kaatje, clenching and then relaxing her free hand. Avoid battling and strenuous activities... so no tennis. If she... they hadn't been too deep in the woods. She could go to her personal doctor tomorrow and explain that she'd gotten burned while camping and had reflexively run off, freaked out or something? She didn't know. "I'll come up with something," after a moment, and she reluctantly touched the white bandages, near her wrist. There was a twinge of pain that shot up her arm, and she bit her lip before glancing away.

(She was not going to cry, okay.)

Sourly, she added, "What future hotties," narrow-eyed and angry.

At the pointing, she stuck out her tongue. Not very mature, but well, he could handle it, couldn't he? If he couldn't, he was probably spending time with the wrong girl. Seriously. She brought up her unbandaged hand to scrub at her face. "Sure, I'm gorgeous," she allowed. Kaatje just hadn't known he thought she was gorgeous. It was something she could consider later. A yawn slipped out of her in answer to Luke's own; ******** yawns, contagious little bitches.

"I was going to go home," she was saying, quietly, but he was already up and she didn't see any point in arguing, since he was right. (This was a symptom of how tired she was. If she had been in her right mind she would have insisted on going home.) "...Okay," she acquiesced, and she stood there looking up at Luke for a moment in silence.

Then she looked down, red curls tumbling in front of her face. That was a stupid idea, she told herself. "'night," she said to him, and flopped down on the bed on her uninjured side to sleep.