It's been a while

Arms wrapped around her waist, though it wasn't the arms she wanted. She wanted Frodo's arms around her waist, but she only had her own. She was leaning against the wall, knowing she should be standing up straight, preparing herself to see her friends again. She didn't want to look weak, but she had a reason she guessed.

She then frowned, she hadn't thought a lot of what to say. Doing what helped her a lot through her six months of living hell, she pulled out a picture that Frodo drew for her. She took a long look at it, and drew it to her heart. She felt energy course through her viens, and stood up straight.

She hoped that the future looked brighter than what has happened recently.

The Uchitel was reading Animal Farm again. Using her wand light for guidance, she managed to make her way through the Clock Tower - as if she didn't memorize the nooks and crannies of the place already - without bumping into anything. After all, it was not in her usual nature to be clumsy.

Lena saw a silhouette out of the corner of her book, and she looked up. Her eyes widened. Her jaw dropped. Her heart pounded. Was this her imagination? Was this an illusion that she had accidentally conjured up? (She had momentarily forgotten she outgrew that phase at the age of ten.) Or was this real, sitting right in front of her?

"Kait?" she gasped, running towards her, "is it really you?"

(ooc: OHMYGOD I LOVE THE NEW AVATAR!)

She turned around, not surprised really. Lena and her had walked around a lot in the middle of the night, in Durmstrang. She knew she might run into Lena tonight.

"Hey," She whispered. "I knew I will probably run into you. You walk around at night a lot," She paused, and looked at her, smiling. "I just got here when you guys were in lessons. Iris and I escaped eight days ago.... we were in St. Mungo's, getting healthy again. I guess if you are kidnapped for six months, and go to healers, they become your grannys or something because they are constantly fussing over you," She babbled, while trying to make a bit of a conversation. Her hand traced a scar on her left hand, and took a deep breath.

Lena burst into tears when she heard Kait's voice in the dark. She skidded past everything in her mind and in her view and leaped up to embrace her friend. Merlin, she was just so glad.

"Y-You were kidnapped?" she whispered, trying to say a comprehensible sentence past those tears she were shedding, "Merlin! Who kidnapped you? Do I have permission to kill them or something?" She sighed, trying to calm herself down. She breathed in deeply and slowly, letting time surround her like a blanket. "I would too if I were your grandmother, which I am proudly not!" she announced, holing Kait tight. "Merlin, I just miss you. You're not suffering from any disease, now are you?"

(ooc: dankeschon!)

"Yeah," She told her, shocked that Lena is crying. "Father's old sidekick. Turns out he killed my father, because he was tired of being the sidekick. Then he decided to capture Iris and I, the daughters of his ex-best friend, to do his bidding," She said, with venom.

"Just the lack of alchohol. By the way, have any on you?" She asked, curiously. She was glad Lora or Frodo wasn't here, they would have prevented her from drinking.

"Stupid, stupid man!" shrieked the young blonde, shaking her head fiercely. She wiped the tears from her face. "Who the hell does he think he is? Getting away with kidnapping two of my friends! I hope he dies in a hole and is sent to the worst place in the universe!" She paused. "Are people hunting after him yet? If not I'll get my own search party."

Lena parted her lips, letting the cold wind bite her teeth, before pressing them shut again. "Umm..." she began, rather hesitantly. Merlin knew how she was going to explain her predicament to her friend who is just recovering from a kidnap, "I... I gave up on the alcohol, Kait. Just before Christmas."

"Uh, I'm not sure," She told her, hesitating. "I have been more concerned about my sister, healing, and talking to you guys again." Revenge hasn't crossed her mind, unlike her old self. Her old self would have thought of revenge, right away. Too many things has been changed about her.

She was quiet for a few moments. "Frodo told me nothing happened while I was gone," She whispered. "What happened Lena. I mean, it's wonderful that you stopped drinking. But... what happened. Something, something!, had to happen!" She felt like crying, exploding, whatever. She only wrapped her arms tighter around herslef.

Lena raised an eyebrow. Maybe it was just her or this experience or something... but everyone seemed to be, in one way or another, growing up. Here Kait was - talking normally about her kidnapper as if it was nothing. She tried to take it all in. "No revenge?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow, "no plans of breaking into his house and stealing his pleasures or anything?"

Pursing her lips and thinking about possible scenarios, the Uchitel shook her head. "Nothing in particular happened," she lied, showing no change of emotion. Soon enough, she broke. Her lip started to tremble. "I mean... I don't know," she added, "it's just the effects of growing up, Kait, I suppose. You outgrow those things you once used to love..."

"Why Lena? We shouldn't live our lives focused on revenge, He did that and look who he is now," She told her quietly. "I know I have change, it scares me. But... I can't help it." She nervously pushed back a strand of hair.

She gripped a railway. "Lena, don't lie. I want answers, now. I swear, if I have to go to Dylan, Lora, or Anya, I will. I hate being left in the dark, and I think I am mature enough to handle it," She continued, anger slowly starting to appear in her voice.

"I lived my life focused on revenge and I turned out quite right, don't you think?" Lena snapped, crossing her arms. She managed - a disadvantage on her part, really, if she had said it out loud - to omit the part that after her vengeance was completed she grew into a much better person.

"Nobody knows, Kait, so even if you can't interrogate the answers out of me chances are that you won't find out," the Uchitel remarked, swatting a fly out of her face. The only hope Lena had of Kait never finding out about her condition was that if she managed not to ask Frodo what was wrong with her.

Lena's lips continued to quiver.

"Lena, you turned out as a good person, I admit that," She hesitated. "And how did that revenge end? Or is it still going on?" She asked, a bit coldly. She knew she was beLeing a bit unfair, she hardly knew Le's past, but Revenge....

"Lena!," She groaned. "Why is everything about you is a secret?!" She asked. "I don't mind respecting your privacy, but when everything is a secret I don't know how to help you!"

"The revenge?" Lena echoed, and a smirk tugged on her lips. Her mind replayed back to the night Leon was killed, but instead of maniacally laughing like she half-expected herself to, she cringed. She had forgotten he was - for the past seven years - the cause of her heinous nightmares. "It was wonderful."

The Uchitel tried not to yell at her friend. "I'm complicated, Kait," she replied calmly, though some restrain in her voice deceived the calm tone she was trying to convey, "I don't want to tell you because you need help too. Don't deny it."

"Geesh, and let me guess, it was something illegal," She muttered. She wondered about Lena sometimes. She also wasn't sure if Lena would even tell her what happened. She glanced warily at that smirk, Lena scared her sometimes too.

"I am complicated too!," She yelled. Why was she getting so angry quickly? "I am perfectly fine managing it, I know how to handle my mom, live with the fact my dad was a freakin Dark Wizard, survived six months of torture, and keep my sanity. So tell me what I need help on! I will feel much better Lena, if I could help!" When she was done, her anger vanished, at least most of it, and she leaned against a stone wall.

"Sorry," She simply said. She walked towards the balcony, and stared at the dark sky.

Lena's smirk faded, and it quickly turned into an expression of nonchalance, as if it was what she had for breakfast they were talking about. (Then again, for the girl, breakfast wasn't quite ordinary anymore, now was it?) "You can say that," she replied.

Blue eyes watched her friend rant and muttered no objection. The younger Uchitel understood full well how Kait felt. The last time she had ranted that badly was during a break-up, which was ages ago. She wanted to rant like that, but for her sanity, she thought it wasn't the best idea to start ranting too. Plus, she was in no mood to reveal Kait anything about her condition; it was grim, and the more people that worried over her, the more annoyed she was bound to become.

"You shouldn't feel sorry for... having an angry tirade about your worriment," Lena replied calmly, walking towards the balcony with the redhead.

She didn't reply to that, she wasn't surprised really. "Whatever, if you get caught, I will help you try get out of it," She told her, looking sharply at her. "No matter how freaking annoyed I am with you, you are still my best friend."

She placed her elbows on the steel bar, and placed her head on her hands. "Lena, will things ever get better? We are all growing up too fast. Lora had her sister murdered in front of her, Frodo's mom is dead, you had some revenge and finished it off illegally, we both drink mostly because of our past, I have a freaking Drug addict as a mother..." She trailed off.

"I am just getting so angry over the little things, things I would usually not get annoyed over before I was kidnapped. I am scared, Lena. I am scared the old Kait would vanish completely from remembering what he did to me.... I want to be the old me, just more mature. I look at what I used to do... I can't believe that people was actually talking to me. I was so immature! So silly!

"It's hard. I don't know what to do anymore. The Healers said it will come with time, acceptance. I am trying to put on a facade right now, to act like it never happened and nothing is wrong." She felt like a ton has been lifted off her shoulders, and sighed.

"I don't know what to do."

A smile played onto the Uchitel's face, but it never came fully formed. It ended up with her lips crooked in a lopsided smile. "Best friends, huh?" she joked, her lips deciding on a smirk instead, "I thought that title belonged to Lora." Of course, Lena had only meant this in good humour, and Merlin hoped that it didn't backfire on her like she feared it would.

Lena knew that everything Kait said was right. Practically every one of her close friends had suffered something tragic, is recovering from something tragic, or suffering from a tragic condition. (Wasn't that thought tragic?) They were forced to grow up quicker than they should for people their age. Last year, most of them were goofing around like they were supposed to, but break-ups, summers of abuse, kidnappings, deaths and other events had thrown that out the window.

"I know how it feels, Kait," Lena whispered, standing next to her friend, "I don't know what to do either. I've been dealing with too much crap lately, and I haven't had enough sleep." She yawned, just to prove her point, and she learned from an earlier conversation with Anya how contagious that was.

She decided to take the remark as a playful thing. "Well, she may be number one, but I can have more than one best friend." Kaitlen smirked back, wondering when Lena will learn how to let go of the past.

"I've been having nightmares," She whispered, barely heard. "About him. Torturing Iris, killing her. Killing me after. And then my mom appears, laughing over my dead body... and my dad appears too when I am dead, abusing Iris and I corpses," She paused. "What do you do, to get rid of nightmares?" She yawned too.

Lena laughed, "Truespoken." She vaguely wondered why she used that word, though she wasn't going to verbally ask at that moment. "I have more than one best friend too, girl," she swiftly added, extending her hand, "let's highfive to that."

Perhaps it was just her research from Divination or perhaps Enya's dream was guiding her just a little bit, but the Uchitel felt confident about that subject, "The root of all nightmares comes from one place, and that is your mind. If you can truly control your mind to dream certain dreams, then you can stop the nightmare." She would suggest building a mindwall between her and the nightmare, but she doubted Kait would understand her.

She raised her hand to met Lena's and high fived back. Relief flooded through her; she could tell everything is going to be alright between her and Lena. Just like every other friends, they will always argue. But they will bounce back, just as normal.

She wrinkled her nose when she heard of all those complicated words. "Lena, I can't control my drinking problems, what makes you think I can control my mind?" She asked, astonished.

Lena opened her mouth, before pressing it shut for a while. She wanted to say she could plant an Illusion in Kait's mind that could help soothe her to sleep, but only powerful Illusionist could complete such a difficult task. Then again... Lena was pretty powerful, or so Enya had acclaimed.

"I wish I can help you..." she began, and sighed, "I gave up y drinking because whenever I drank, I puked. Same with pretty much any substance that goes in my mouth."

She froze, and stared at Lena hard, concerend. "Tell me, what is wrong right now Lena Vorstenbach!" She demanded, her hands on her hips. Kait had a suspicion, but she wanted to hear it out of the Blonde's mouth first.

It also will explain why Lena was so skinny.

"Nothing's wrong, okay?" Lena snapped, shaking her head. She stomped her foot and made her way towards the exit of the Tower. "I... I can't talk, okay?" she sighed, "I... I can't. I'm sorry!" She stormed out of the Tower, not looking back.

Kaitlen watched her leave, frustrated. Why was the world so freaking complicated? Pulling out a mini bottle of Vodka, she drank a little bit of it at a time, while she sat on the cold ground, staring at the night sky.

"I hope things get better," She spoke to the empty area around her, wishing she was some where else, where the red head could forget about everything.