When Kathryn stops crying, she never starts again. Her face takes on that same stone mask it did before she opened the door, and it never leaves. No one says anything, because they know that it's just the way it goes. Kathryn will shove what happened deep down until she explodes again. But they had time until then.

Billy flops on the armchair in front of the sofa, once they're done cleaning up the studio. "Am I really the only one thinking that JJ's weird?"

Cleo smacks her lips. "For breaking up with Kat? No, you're not."

"No, for the reasons why. I mean..." She sighs, shakes her head. "I just never pictured you guys breaking up."

"JJ goes haywire sometimes," Kie says, sitting on the couch, next to Sarah. "I genuinely think a brain cell kind of bursts up there. He'll come round."

"Don't think so," Kathryn says, joining her. Her voice is flat. "He wasn't... erratic. He just kept on saying he was sorry, that we were different, and that was it." She swallows thickly. "Whatever. Can we drop the subject?"

Sarah wrings her hands, leaning against the sofa. "Well um... I got something. I didn't want to say because obviously it wasn't the right time, but I went back home to grab clothes and my phone and you're not gonna believe this... Rafe is back."

Kathryn inhales sharply, running a hand down her face. "Of course he is."

JJ breaks up with her, and now Rafe's back on the island. That's just her luck in a sentence.

"Yeah. I saw him at the house. I don't think he saw me, but I think the Cross is coming back. To Wilmington, tomorrow night."

"What?" Kie lets out.

The Darcy rubs her forehead. "Yeah, figures, seeing as his deal with Singh fell through, he'll probably try to sell it again."

There are a few minutes of silence.

"Uh... How do you know that?" Billy asks.

It comes to Kathryn a little late, that she may have not spoken about Rafe being at Singh's. "Well, to make a long story short, Singh tricked Rafe with his deal, locked me up with him, then he told me he loved me, then I told him to eat shit, then we got out, then he told me I was a Kook, then I told him to eat shit, and then I pushed him in the water to get his boat."

There's silence again.

"He told you what?" Kie cries out.

"Ha!" Cleo lets out. "Pushed him. Attagirl."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Sarah asks.

Kathryn just sighs again. "What, between getting kidnapped, John B running away, my dad coming back from the dead, my boyfriend breaking up with me? I was busy. Look, whatever, does Pope know that the Cross is coming back here?"

The blonde hesitates before answering. "No. I was gonna tell him at the Château."

"He can't," Cleo says. "Heyward won't let him out. I'll tell him."

"I'll come with you," Sarah says. "He'll want details. Kat, you'll tell John B?"

A split second, and something heavy overcomes her pretty features. "No. No, knowing JJ, that's the first place he'll go. I can't see him. I'm sorry. Kie, could you...?"

"My parents have me on lockdown," she says, clearly unhappy about the fact. "I would if I could."

"I'll go."

Kathryn turns to Billy. "You don't have to."

Billy shrugs. "No, it's okay. I don't mind." She has some things she wants to say to him anyway.

"Billy." Her voice is plaintive, as if fighting her own instincts. "Billy, be nice to him. All of you, please. And tell that to Pope and John B. Because... Because I won't be. I know I won't. So please, you have to be nice, because I'm going to be mean."

If Kathryn knows she's going to be mean, surely, the next step would be to prevent it, right? Kathryn's anger was never like that. She just sounded the alarm for a natural catastrophe and asked everyone to be safe.

There was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, in becoming the Kook queen that JJ told her she was.

🍓

Billy has been sitting outside the Château for about thirty minutes. No sign of John B, but he left a note saying he got the Twinkie and he and his dad were off. No sign of JJ, but one of them is bound to show up at any moment, right? Or Kathryn would have taken the risk to visit her best friend.

She's proven right when she hears a motorcycle engine revving.

Now, it needs saying that Billy isn't a confrontational girl. Kathryn also asked them not to be too hard on JJ, because she knows herself, and knows that she will be enough for the whole group. She also knows that Kathryn doesn't want to see their friend group explode because of it.

So a lot of what Billy thinks won't be said here.

JJ must know that he's in a lot of trouble, because after calling out for John B, receiving no answer, he turns around to find Billy laid back on the chair, arms crossed. She quietly observes him, taking a careful step back. His eyes are very red. Puffy. His hair's a mess which has more to do with the red cap he just tugged off.

His fingers keep nervously searching for a ring on his thumb. A ring that Kathryn hasn't taken off. Yet.

"Hey, JJ," she says, tone even.

He quickly wipes at his eyes. "John B not here?"

"No. Just me."

He leans against the outer wall of the shed, looking everywhere but her. "...Is Kat okay?"

Billy sighs loudly, clearly annoyed by his whole laid back demeanour when she just held Kathryn as she was crying. At least he asked if she was okay. Which meant he cared. Which meant she was even more confused by the whole ordeal.

"What do you think?" she asks, before shaking her head. "Look, I'm not here to talk about Kat. I'm here about Rafe."

If JJ seemed hurt by her previous comment, the feeling clearly passes quickly as he finally meets her gaze, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"He's back on the island." He immediately lowers his arm, and looks around at an invisible camera. "Sarah saw him."

Playing with his cap, he walks in the shed, anger radiating off of him. "Spectacular."

"Yeah, wait until you hear the rest," she breathes out. "Apparently Pope's Cross will be at Wilmington tomorrow night. Kitty thinks he's trying to sell it again."

He rolls his eyes. "Great. Does Pope know?"

"By now, I'd say so. We wanted to warn John B too, but... He's with his dad, I guess?" She hands JJ the note. "I don't know where they are."

"Yeah, of course," he lets out. "Just when we need them." He slams the paper down.

Billy is no idiot. She may be all pinkish and romance and hearts and star stickers, but she wasn't an idiot. Kathryn had said that JJ wasn't erratic when he broke up with her, but he was now. He was freaking out. Maybe overcompensating for the lack of her. She didn't know, but she wanted to know.

She'd always been some kind of fixer-upper.

"JJ, I was wondering–"

"Hold on, though." She shuts her mouth, tilting her head to the side. "We know where the Cross is gonna be. That means it's still on the field. Okay, all right. So we can come in and swoop. We're still in this, Billy. We gotta get everybody together, then we'll come up with a plan."

Oh. Oh, now Billy gets it. The whole brain cell bursting thing. Kathryn troubleshoots and ends up hurting herself. JJ makes sure he stays busy so that nothing can get to him again.

"And how are you going to get Kitty in on that?"

He stops so abruptly she fears he might fall, for a second, turning back to look at Billy. He clenches his jaw, throat bobbing. If heartbreak had a face, it'd be split between him and Kathryn.

"I, um... I don't know." He clears his throat. "I'd get it, if she doesn't want to see me."

"She doesn't."

He exhales sharply, sticking his tongue in his cheek. "That's okay."

"Is it?"

Billy isn't sure how to get her point across. She isn't friends with the guy, not by any means. They talked once, and she found him funny, and he made Kitty happy. But now, he made her cry. So even if Billy thinks something's up, she's not sure how to ask him.

She heaves out a sigh. "Look, she'll be here for Pope, I'm sure. And she knows stuff about Rafe we don't, clearly, since she was locked up with him for a day."

JJ stares at her, a muscle fluttering in his jaw. "She was what?"

Billy feels like she made a mistake. "She, uh... well, Rafe had a deal with Singh... She didn't tell you?"

"No. She didn't," he pronounces with difficulty. Billy can see the next words forming in his mind, even if he doesn't say them. And now, she won't. "Did he do something to her?"

Seeing as JJ and Kathryn were 'friends' with the hugest quotation marks known to man before they were lovers, Billy can understand and admire the worry on his face. Really, she does. And maybe, she wants to test the limits of this abrupt break up.

"No. I mean, he told her he loved her, which is, eugh, but that's it."

She sees JJ go through the five stages of grief two times before he adds two more stages, settling on shutting his eyes tightly, and humming once to tell Billy that he heard her.

She crosses her arms on her chest, about as menacing as a new-born cow. "Look, JJ, I'm not a Pogue, or a Kook."

He looks back at her. "Okay?"

"And Kat asked us to be nice to you, which, we both know, means she's going to be the absolute worst to you." He nods, grimacing. "And she doesn't want your friends to hold anything against you. So, since none of them are allowed to ask: what the absolute heck happened?"

JJ stares at her, before looking away, shaking his head. She could swear she sees tears shine in his eyes. "Look, no offence, Billy, but I really don't want to talk about it."

"But I do," she goes on, softly. "Because even Kitty finds it strange. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anyone knows you as best as she does. Except, well, we both know that nothing's as easy for her as blaming herself, so she thinks it's her fault, but I think it's weird."

When he doesn't answer, stubbornly staring at the ground, Billy goes on.

"I'm not saying that your issues aren't valid. I'm saying that I don't think anything would have been worth letting Kat Darcy go, not for you. So something big happened, I'm sure."

JJ kicks a rock, suddenly annoyed at the way Billy was able to read him so easily, not knowing that the only reason she could was because Kathryn told her so much about him. Billy may not be a friend, but she was quite the people-reader.

Which, in his case, was a very, very bad thing.

"Billy, listen," he says, words hashed out. "There are things that Kat doesn't know, things that will hurt her more than anything I could have done. And I can't let her get hurt like that. That's all you need to know."

She wants to ask what things he's referring to. What could be worse, on Kathryn, than JJ breaking up with her? Honestly, Billy can't even make anything up. Not after seeing the state she was in when she came home earlier.

Of course, there were things Billy didn't know, either. Things that had been stuffed in a closet at Edward's house, for example.

Billy's lips flatten together, and she moves to leave, shaking her head. At least she has confirmation that JJ had something biting his ass, forcing him to break up. Or at least, that's what he convinced himself of.

"I'll get her over here, you get the others," Billy tells him. "But if you think that whatever you're running away from could have hurt her even just slightly more, you're wrong, JJ."

He looks away, wiping something from the corner of his eyes.

Billy sighs. "You're just wrong."

🍓

Kathryn looks as good as she can, considering how bad she feels. She quite literally painted herself over. And used ice cubes for her swollen eyes. At least a night has passed. That's about the only thing she got going for her. That, and her skin tight beige bodysuit, cinched at the waist with a belt.

And her dad comforted her. Of all the things he missed, he didn't miss that. There was some irony here, but Kathryn was just glad her father was here to tell her that everything would be okay, that JJ made a mistake, and that she wasn't a Kook by any means.

But now that she was sitting in the shed in front of the Château, her back to JJ, who she didn't even turn around to greet, she felt the whole thing was a bit pointless. He had seen her begging. There was no coming back from that.

Troubleshooting. JJ broke up with her because she was a Kook. Maybe Kathryn wanted to show him just how Kook she could be.

Billy nudges her with her foot, and smiles, all stars. Kathryn's lip tugs up half-heartedly. It seems that when she told JJ he could take everything, he settled on her smiles, and her heart, and the rose-tinted glasses she used to wear.

She found some of her old prescription ones. It was all so pointless. They were here for Pope, anyway, for his Cross, not to dwell on what was lost.

"When I went back to Tannyhill, Rafe was on the phone with Ward, and he just kept saying 'My thing, this is my thing,'" Sarah explains. "He had to be talking about the Cross."

"Absolutely," Pope scoffs, nearly stealing Kathryn's line.

"And he's coming into Wilmington tonight at eight o'clock. It's being shipped by train to Raleigh from there, but this is our chance to get it back."

Kathryn hums. "Depending on the plan we come up with, yeah. D'you get anything else?" She's aware that JJ must be looking at her, but she forces herself not to care. A Kook wouldn't care.

Kie uncrosses her ankles and sits forward, showing her a piece of paper. "Uh, Sarah got the cargo number."

"Now all we have to do is stop the right train," she concludes, sarcastic. "Oh, joy. I missed easy plans."

"They're definitely fencing that shit off as we speak," JJ says behind her. She ticks, but sits back nonchalantly. "So we should probably get a move on."

Pope looks about as reassured by the look on Kathryn's face as someone would with a bomb in their hands. "Sarah, you hear from John B?"

"No," she sighs. "I mean, he's probably off somewhere with his dad."

"Not fair," Kathryn says. "My dad came back from the dead and I'm here. And I'm not taking the Twinkie from us, which is the only van we have."

Pope makes a face. "I could ask Heyward for the truck."

"Uh, what?" JJ lets out. "Yeah, that's gonna go well."

"I know, but we have no other options."

"I mean, I could ask Henry for his truck, but..."

"We'd all die in sixty seconds?"

It was so natural, to talk to Kathryn, that JJ doesn't realise what he did before everyone falls silent, and stares at the pair of them.

He doesn't realise, that over the past hours, Kathryn had been carefully crafting herself a new shell to protect herself, a new armour to put on when she sees him. Kook queen. She used to be one. She could be one again.

Kook queens didn't get their hearts broken by some Pogue. That's all Kathryn needed, right now. She'll take the venom that comes with it, the fire that burns with it. It was all she had left, anyway.

Besides, didn't Edward say that her anger was Darcy?

Not turning around, she hums, arms crossed. "I like the idea of you lying dead in a ditch. How 'bout Pope asks his dad, and you ask Henry, uh, tough guy? Since you've got such a big mouth today."

JJ fumbles a little behind her. Cleo, directly in front of them, looks left and right, at the rest of the Pogues. The blonde boy is positive that Henry will kill him if he shows up on his doorstep.

Kathryn stands up, sighing. "Not so talkative now, are we? Shame." She turns to the rest of the group. "Kie, Sarah, hit up the Carreras for their truck. Pope, Cleo, hit up Heyward. Billy's coming with me. And you." She turns to face JJ, ignores the way he falters, the way she falters and he's the only one to see it. "You're gonna talk to my uncle," she says with a carnivorous smile. "And my dad. How does that sound?"

JJ stares at her. He had dealt with her Kook persona before, a long, long time ago, when she came back home. But he had been full of spite, full of resentment. Now he was just full of regrets, so he'll take each blow if it meant Kathryn wouldn't have to suffer his betrayal.

She would, of course, suffer for hurting him on her own terms. Alone at night, she'll keep herself awake with all the hatred she has against herself. And if only that prospect could stop her.

He opens his mouth.

She makes a face. "Nah, actually, I don't care. Get your ass in the car."

Billy stands up, holds her arm as the others scamper away quickly. "Kitty, what are you doing?"

Kathryn's eyes bore holes in JJ's skull when she answers her. "What do you mean? I'm a Kook, aren't I? I boss people around, that's my thing. Besides, it's not like JJ craves paternal validation or anything, is it?"

JJ shuts his eyes tightly. "Kat, look–"

"No, I'm not looking. And I'm not listening either. I've done my fair share of both. Now either you listen to me, or I'm cutting you out of the thing altogether. Then we'll see how much of a Kook I am."

The only thing he can do is stare as she stalks off, Billy remaining next to him, looking about as shocked as he is. JJ, because he made the worst mistake calling her a Kook. Even if it was just to mean that she had it easy, and he didn't. The words should have never left his mouth, they should have rotted there.

Billy, though, is looking at him. Her eyebrows are scrunched up together, pained. "You called her a Kook?" she easily gathers. "You told her you were breaking up with her because she was a Kook?"

He swallows thickly. "Yeah," he admits. "I flipped... That's how I be."

"JJ..." Billy looks so disappointed, it disheartens him. "JJ, that's what Rafe called her before she escaped."

Figures. It seems like JJ really does hate anyone who would call Kathryn that, with every fibre of his being.

Author's Note: The way we all accepted that JJ would just BREAK UP with Kat over what he told her it was, but, like; Sarah Cameron-Fumbler is funny . Kat Darcy-Fumbler has got to be illegal in 6 countries