John B is the only one who goes into Shoupe's office to give him the tape. Kathryn considered going in too, but the last time she tried to turn in a Cameron, she was left more traumatised than relieved. Not to mention the time previous that... She had been covered in blood. And from what she's heard about herself on that tape, she fears she might be again if she walks in. Blood sticks to you.

She's not particularly begging to see Shoupe either. The only interaction they had that day was her boring holes into his skull, watching him listen to the tape incriminating Ward and Rafe, his moustache twitching when he heard the man talk about Kathryn, knowing he contributed to that. Knowing he made similar remarks when he first saw her back.

When he was done, he nodded at her. Kathryn is tired of holding grudges when she should be falling in love. She nodded back.

Now, sitting in the Château courtyard with Sarah, she isn't sure why everyone is celebrating. Well, okay, she knows why. It just feels like double-standards, and that irks her.

When her mom was sent to jail, there wasn't enough time to rejoice, at all. They were literally on the run. John B wasn't even there. Even after, they didn't celebrate it; they solemnly attended her very short trial, and then she was just gone. Not dead, but gone. If Kathryn had a nickel...

Back then, they seemed to realise that yeah, Caroline was a bitch. Yeah, she mistreated Kat for years, she's one of the reasons behind what happened with Rafe, she killed her dad, yes, she deserves to be put in jail. But Kathryn didn't deserve to live through that. And Kathryn always had and always will have some kind of love for her mother.

They are wretched mirrors of each other. Caroline was once Kathryn. Kathryn only hopes she can escape that fate.

The thing is, now, besides Kie who keeps sneaking glances at her, Sarah isn't supported by her friends. At all. They can't seem to separate the man from the father, even if that's what Sarah needs. John B himself is screaming and howling in laughter at whatever JJ said. Billy blinks at them, confused but grinning. Pope is chuckling to himself.

Sitting outside, Kathryn stays with her, looking through the window with sour looks on their faces.

The latter looks at the former in slight worry, the kind she hides well. Sarah tries a smile, and fails miserably.

"I know you don't regret it," Kathryn prefaces.

She nods. "Yeah. He deserves all of it, and I know that."

"But he's still your dad," she completes, because the blonde won't. "I get it. Getting stuck in the middle is no fun."

Sarah stares at her, and the distant look on her face. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when your mom went to jail." That isn't what she meant, at all.

Kathryn shrugs. "It's no problem. I just wish they'd behave the same way they did back then."

Sarah looks back at the small, celebrating group inside the house. "I don't blame them. After everything we've been through, it's normal they'd consider it a win."

A particularly loud scream – JJ – makes her scowl. "Yeah, well, they could be more tactful about it."

The blonde nods, mostly to herself, curling up and putting her chin on her knees. "How did you do it?" she asks. "Putting your mom in jail."

One thing she liked about Sarah was that she always asked the questions she wanted the answers to. Never took some backway to them. It was admirable. Even if Kathryn visibly flinches at the recollection.

When Caroline was sent into jail, she kept claiming she was innocent, that it was all a misunderstanding. A sentence does that to a person, she guesses. Kathryn was there to hear her. Sometimes, in the dead of the night, she still does. Her room feels more like a graveyard these days.

"I dunno," she confesses, scratching her knee. "I just kind of went through the motions. You guys had died, she wasn't the most traumatising thing that happened to me at the time. The fact that she probably helped Ward and caused all of this to happen in the first place helped. I was always reminded of how much of a bad person she was." She smiles, sourly. "Not of the woman that helped me do my homeworks."

Sarah frowns. "Caroline helped you do your homeworks? I can only picture on the verge of an aneurysm."

"She had her good days." They're the worst to remember.

They remain silent for a moment, Sarah's eyes in the vague, probably trying to remind herself of her father's bad deeds, which is easy, because she might as well be sitting in them.

But Kathryn was right. The good days are the worst to remember, because that meant Ward Cameron was more than an asshole. He was her dad, and he wasn't even a bad one at that, not to her. She misses that. She hates to admit it, but she misses him.

Sarah bites her lip. "Can you um... Do you mind hugging me?"

Kathryn is wearing a yellow bracelet, but she isn't sure Sarah knows the meaning of them – though JJ probably told her. She appreciates her asking all the more, especially given the context. Sarah knows Kathryn is spreading herself too thin, running around everywhere, not processing anything, not even thinking about the fact that someone broke into her studio. She knows that when that happens, like two months ago when she was doing research papers she didn't even have to do, cleaning the Palace from top to bottom to keep herself busy and not think, she tends to reject everyone and everything. Which meant physical contact.

Except another blonde had tried his damndest to break down those defences, and when she finds herself nodding, she figures that it wasn't for nothing.

"No, yeah, c'mere."

Maybe Kathryn changed.

Sarah latches onto her without even meaning to. Kathryn huffs out a breath from how hard she grabbed her.

She doesn't cry, but the tears held at bay are begging to get out. Kathryn holds her, awkwardly at first, before petting her hair soothingly, chin tucked on her shoulder. Sarah's face is facing outward in case she does start crying – she'd hate to put snot all over Kathryn's pretty dress.

"It's okay," the brunette promises. "It'll get better."

If anyone else had told her that, Sarah would have been dubious at best. But considering Kathryn and everything she's been through, all the pain her own family caused her, Sarah believes her.

She figures that they aren't so different, at the end of the day. Maybe not wretched mirrors of each other – but two sides of the same coin. Kook turned Pogue. Teenage dreams turned nightmares.

Her phone rings, and she reluctantly parts from Kathryn. Topper's face pops up on the screen. Way to kill the moment.

"Sorry," she says.

Kathryn narrows her eyes at the call, clearly less trusting of Topper than she is of Sarah, but only nods as she walks away. She looks down at her own phone, unlocking it, hiding the picture of JJ and her away from the window – if he sees it, she'll never hear the end of it – and going straight to her messages.

lesser darcy seems frantic in the messages he's sending his niece.

Why does Jesse James have my number and why do you hate me?
Shoupe called Max.
Rafe is in jail?? Ward joining him soon? Insane.
God is real and he is good.
Where are u?
Are we celebrating or wallowing?

Kathryn snorts to herself at her uncle's messages, shaking her head. That is the question. Celebrating or wallowing? Kathryn isn't too compassionate to forget about everything Ward has done to her, said to her. If she was poison, he's the one choking on it. If she was on fire, he's turning to ashes.

But she isn't too stupid to know that when something good happens, that means the other shoe is going to drop.

undecided, Henry receives from Gremlin Kid. will keep you posted
girl i know you didn't just call god a 'he' 👹

The answer comes in seconds.

'Girl' take it up with Max, he's the one who believes that shit, IDK.

??? you're the one marrying him, do it yourself

ROTFL.

you're so old

Die.

She barely has the time to put her phone down that Billy is next to her, smiling softly. "This is good news, right?"

Kathryn looks up at her. "We'll see."

🐝

When Kathryn said that she was on fire and that Ward would turn to ashes, she didn't mean it like that. It needs saying, considering everything that happened after they left the Château.

Sarah wanted to see her father one last time before he was taken away. A look from Kathryn, menacingly standing behind her, was enough to silence anyone who would try to disagree with her. They were going, end of story.

They're back in the cramped Twinkie, Kathryn daydreaming about buying John B another van, one that doesn't have busted up windows and more room to fit the seven of them.

Cop cars zoom past them. Kathryn can almost physically see panic seize Sarah as she urges them to go faster, to at least be there for Wheezie, who's about to see her father being taken away by cops.

John B only answered that he wouldn't miss this.

When they get to the Cameron's house, Henry got home early for work and is standing at the entrance, arms crossed, staring in the distance. Ward is the man who ruined his niece's life. Who most definitely helped put his little brother in his salian grave. He doesn't want to watch, but he has to be here.

He sees seven teenagers, further down, on their tiptoes, trying to see what's going on behind the fence around the Cameron's house. John B jumps over, JJ boosts Kathryn up, and the others follow suit, even a frazzled Billy and a terrified Sarah.

He, too, follows them, telling himself that if something happens, he has to be there for them, or to stop them from doing anything stupid. Considering who he's talking about, it isn't that far-fetched.

There are sirens and cops shouting when they reach the shore. Ward is on the Druthers, his boat, taunting them with a glass of whiskey. Sarah lunges for Wheezie, hugging her tightly against them. She forces her back inside, with Rose.

Kathryn jumps ten feet high when she feels her uncle's hand on her shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" he fires back. "This isn't the place for you kids."

"I don't..."

"All due respect mister H, this is exactly where I need to be," John B says, and Henry can't recognise the kid talking to him.

When he starts running to the docks, Kathryn sends Henry a look telling him that she's aware her best friend is behaving strangely. Billy hangs back with him, heart hammering in her chest.

"Henry?" she asks.

"Yeah?"

"I don't think he's going to go in quietly."

"Neither do I, kid."

Ward catches a glimpse of blonde hair and a voice calling out to her father, and his face falls when he sees Sarah running to him with her friends. The cops are tentative in letting them through, but she takes the lead, forcing them to make way. If anyone should talk to her dad right now, it's her.

"Dad! What are you doing?" she cries out.

Her father doesn't answer her, instead directly addressing Shoupe. "Vic, you gotta get her out of here! She can't be here right now!"

"Just come on in," Shoupe screams at him. "And you... you can talk to her!"

Kathryn side eyes her friends, as they stand in a line, facing the Druthers.

She swallows around the lump in her throat. "Is no one asking why Ward's saying that?"

It's not out of shame. It's out of fear. Out of guilt.

But Kathryn doesn't get any answer, if only an equally as concerned look from Pope.

Ward mumbles something, and fidgets with the settings on the boat – the anchor starts to go up. He's setting sail. He's going away.

Where? He's surrounded by cops, he won't make it past the other side of the Island.

Sarah screams at her dad to stop, Shoupe yells at Ward that this won't end the way he wants it too, boats are closing in on him. He's done.

Panicking, he climbs down to the lower deck, his daughter crying out to him to stay put, to just surrender. He goes inside.

Ward tells Sarah he loves her.

The Druthers goes up in flames.

Kathryn feels her back collide with JJ's front as she staggers back, heat blowing her hair away, fire making her eyes squint.

She feels a hand curl around her bicep for support, and her own flies to her mouth, completely going slack against JJ, who holds her.

Ward blew himself up.

Kie and Kathryn turn, mouth agape in horror, to Sarah, who crumbles to the ground, wailing after her father.

If Kathryn could move, if she could fight the panic coiling in her veins, the knee-jerk reaction to freeze as someone dies in front of her, she would hug her.

But she can't.

The hand around her arm squeezes softly in comfort, and she reaches for JJ's hand to hold, swallowing thickly.

Kathryn barely registers Henry rushing to the kids, checking if they're fine, his hand on her cheek, the thankful look to JJ, before kneeling next to Sarah and holding her against him, soothing her.

Billy is still on the grass, holding her stomach, fighting the urge to vomit.

Kathryn definitely doesn't see Topper running up to them, taking Sarah against him.

Henry steps back.

Maybe it's the shock, maybe it's a protective urge to keep the teenage girl safe, but his hand falls on John B's shoulder.

"What are you doing? Hey!" he cries out at him. "John, she needs you right now." He doesn't get any answer. "Don't be an idiot!"

He doesn't get an answer, or a reaction.

Sarah looks up at John B, hopeful.

John B won't look away from the burning boat.

When Kathryn said that she was on fire and that Ward would turn to ashes, she didn't mean it like that.

Author's Note: Was watching the Eras Tour as I reread this and tolerate it came on for that last bit and had me CHOKED UPPPPPPPPPPPP