One

A sigh escapes Katie’s throat as she rubs her tired eyes, her bifocals temporarily pushed up onto her head like a pair of sunglasses. She tries to look at the alarm clock across the room, but no matter how hard she blinks, the numbers won’t focus. When Katie inherited the alarm clock its display kept her up at night, until she found the knob on the back which controls the display brightness. She considers getting out of bed to turn it back up a smidge—it isn’t like she’s going to sleep tonight anyways—but decides against it. She puts her bifocals on and tries again, squinting. Two-eleven… no, it’s changed to two-twelve.

Katie’s attention returns to the bright screen of her laptop sitting on her chest. With another sigh she chastises herself for being stupid. As the task bar pops up under the prompting of her pointer, she confirms the time. Except her laptop says two-thirteen. She once again considers getting up to fiddle with the alarm clock; she hates for her various devices to have different times, but again she decides it’s not worth the effort.

Note to Self:

Change alarm clock time tomorrow….

And/or buy a satellite clock so I don’t have to mess with that stupid alarm clock anymore.

Look up whether or not there even is such a thing as a satellite clock.

Katie concedes to herself there probably is no such thing. She’s sure she’s substituted “satellite” for “atomic.” Atomic clocks are real. Katie half-smiles to herself because she is becoming incoherent, even to herself. She should really sleep.

Instead, she opens a new browser and logs on to Facebook, annoyed that the website is asking for her password. Katie’s little sister is notorious for messing with Katie’s account, but the knowledge is not enough to deter Katie from saving her password into the browser’s cache. Once she’s logged on, Katie glances at the recent posts. Nothing new. She sighs, half because she’s disappointed, half because she knew better than to expect something new. It’s two in the morning. No one is online, not even her friends who work night shifts.

Katie checks the time on her taskbar, and then the time on the alarm clock. Still a minute off. Katie hates herself for caring about something so stupid. She doesn’t have OCD, but she’s strong type A personality about some things. About stupid things. Like him.

She tries to fight back the urge, but he’s there again in her head. Katie types in the first letter of his name in the search box and waits. His face is first in the drop down tray. She hates that he’s first, because she knows it’s her fault. She’s looked him up so much, stalked him so much, that he’s number one on her search. She clicks on his name and blinks as the page goes from the newsfeed to his profile.

With a frown, Katie inspects his profile. All the statuses, comments, and liked pages she’d seen that morning are gone, replaced by a basic information page. Hot indignation boils in her stomach and she tastes copper in her mouth. She scrolls down to the bottom of his page, but he hasn’t unfriended her, just locked her out of his profile. She glares at the text saying “Unfriend” and considers pushing the button, but she can’t do it and she hates herself for it. She’s too weak to let go of seeing what he’s saying, what he’s doing.

As her fingers hang over the keyboard, paralyzed, her brain freaks out. She can’t see what he’s saying, what he’s doing. He took that away too, leaving Katie to wonder what’s left to take. She thinks all that’s left is for him to unfriend her. In her bitter state, Katie wonders why he hasn’t; he doesn’t think she’s worth having a relationship with anyways. With a jolt she realizes why. He can’t let go of seeing what she’s saying, what she’s doing.

Katie feels stalked in the basest of senses. Like a tiny animal all alone, being circled by a predator in the deep, deep rainforest of the Amazon. She knows the beast, she recognizes its smell and she’s paralyzed. With a sting Katie remembers she’s been stalking too. She hates hypocrites.

I don’t want to be the small animal. I don’t want to be eaten.

Her stomach churns and churns, giving her no peace. She knows her defense can be flipped, that he could say that too, and it only makes Katie want to cry. She is so helpless. And alone. And pathetic. But she can’t help her argument.

I’m trying to catch a glimpse of the predator before he launches himself, sinking his teeth into my furry, little throat. Maybe I could side-step him. Maybe when fight-or-flight kicked in I’d actually be able to fight.

She stares at the profile again. Finally, she clicks on the Facebook logo and it returns to her newsfeed, which is free of him. She hid him months ago. She wanted to be able to hide her eyes if she needed to.

Dread fills her. He’d threatened to make waves today. She hates him for it, because it’s her family too. She knows he wants them on his side, but her side isn’t even the side he’s supposed to be against. Hell, I’m not even supposed to have a side, she thinks. Well, of course she chose a side, that couldn’t be helped after everything they had gone through, but Katie had her own side now, and for the entire world it felt like it was only her.

People on My Side:

Mom (doesn’t count)

Sister (barely counts/has her own side too)

Best Friend (stuck in a cabin in the boondocks somewhere)

Professor (half on her side, half on Jesus’ side)

WHY DOES JESUS NEED A SIDE IN THIS TOO?

Katie sighs. Alone. She rolls over her taskbar again and sees the other browser she has open. With a click, the page appears. It’s Stargate: SG-1 fan fiction, and not just any fan fic, it is slash fic. A quick scan down the list of pairings makes her smile. Jack/Daniel, Jack/Teal’c, Jack/Cameron, Jack/Other Male, Daniel/Teal’c, Daniel/Cameron, on and on down the characters. Katie’s just about read one story for each pairing, and more for the popular parings, curious to see how other people make the characters she knows and love interact in new and strange situations.

Katie’s favorite story by far was a Jack/Daniel pairing. Daniel and Teal’c get stuck in a time loop, reliving the same ten hours for weeks at a time. Daniel has to translate several hundred pages of alien text and memorize his findings before he and Teal’c can break the loop. During this period of arduous labor, Teal’c and Daniel spend time off base, being free of consequences and enjoying every moment. The care with which they treat each other and the understanding they cultivate is palpable to Katie. Eventually the story turns to Daniel wooing Jack every few loops, until they end up together in the last loop, and Katie loved it, but what she loved about the story wasn’t the romance, it was the love. The brotherly, unconditional, undying love of Teal’c and Daniel was unlike anything she’d ever read. They weren’t romantic, but their relationship was filled with a soul-feeding love. To Katie’s great disappointment, all Daniel and Teal’c slash pairings fell short of that level of connection.

Katie’s never been in love. She’ll tell anyone that. Katie’s been in crushes, Katie’s been in lust, but Katie’s never been in love. Well, there was one time, but Katie was too young to judge all these years later whether it was love or infatuation. It could have not been love. She was very hormonal at the time.

Him. He’s back in her mind. Katie swears under her breath, she’d distracted herself as long as possible, but he always slips back into her thoughts. The memories of his words flash before her and she wants to stop them, to break the loop of unhealthy memories, but she cannot. There’s no way to stop the onslaught, so she closes her eyes and tries to breathe through it.

How to Kill Me:

When Katie first tried to talk things out with him and he hugged her at the end. He said he might have never had a real relationship with anyone in his life.

Insert dagger into heart.

Including her.

Twist.

When Katie tried to stand up and protect her loved ones and it went horribly awry. That one earned her a “you've become the enemy.”

Slice.

When Katie decided she could not protect them by herself she turned to someone she should have been able to trust, but it went wrong too. He read what he was never meant to see and did not feel a word she said. She cried herself to sleep for days.

Tear asunder.

Now, his profile is locked up. Katie is blind and terror grips her. She wants to text her cousin, ask if anything happened today, but she doubts he would have said what he tells other people about her in front of her own cousin. But maybe he did. Katie imagines her cousin standing up to him for her, but then gives up the fantasy. She’s alone.

Katie smirks and wonders what side of slash fic Jesus is on, and then abandons the out-of-left-field thought. Katie gets irreverent when she is upset. She feels a little guilty, because she doesn’t mean to mock. People love Jesus and it’s what works for them, it’s the love they need. Who is Katie to make fun of that?

With a final look at his profile, Katie shuts her laptop. Her stomach is still in knots, and her mind is running circles, but it’s not going to get any better tonight. She resigns herself to a nightmare-filled night, prays for a few hours of dream free sleep, and closes her eyes. Sleep will come.