going for a run

Khaat found herself so full of frustration she didn't know what to do with herself. She had an endless list of things that she was furious about, and she knew better than to even open her mouth about it because there would be no stopping the endless list of things that had been happening that made no sense to her. Today she was wondering if she might have been better if she had not moved back to Hogsmeade in the first place. Maybe that had been the first big mistake.

She changed into her running clothes and put her sneakers on and grabbed her housekeys. She left her wand behind. That just never happened these days. She was never unarmed, but today, she jsut simply hadn't cared. And besides, there was no place to put it in her running clothes. She left the house, taking Archangel with her and decided to just run until she either had shed the anger or until she just couldn't run anymore.

It was an overcast morning and it was cloudy and cold, but the narrow Hogsmeade streets were dry, and it was early enough that it was daylight but not sunrise yet. Very few people in this sleepy little wizarding village had any reason to be awake at this hour. They wouldn't notice one lone woman taking a morning run, and the more she came in touch with her anger, the faster and farther she ran.

Khaat found herself on the ground before she knew what hit her. It stunned her for a second. She wasn't sure how she ended up on her behind on the ground. Then she saw Jack, and it began to register with her that they had collided. "Oh, Jack! I am so sorry!" she said, "Are you alright? I was really preoccupied. Forgive me."

"I run a lot," Khaat said, "but I purposely left early because I had some energy to burn off. I..I guess I've been really angry about a lot of things for a long time, and I'd rather quit drinking Jess Potter's firewhiskey and run it off instead. I havent' felt like I had any place else to go with it all. So--I guess I really did have a lot on my mind. I just am not comfortable having so many things that I'm so angry at. I thought if I just wore myself out with a good long run, I might feel better."

"Oh, he's going through a struggle of his own right now," Khaat sighed sadly. "He's promised to stay with me, alright. But I'm not sure its what he really wants. I think he's too much of a pub-patronizing bachelor to want to really be a father. He likes getting drunk on the weekends, and he likes dating a lot of women. Jack, I refuse to hold him to me if he really doesn't want to be with me. I'm early enough into this that I can still make choices. If he thinks he has to stay because of the baby, I can either abort this child, or somehow get him to understand I can do this on my own.

"But that's just the first thing. I really am so hopeless with feeling that I can be a good mother to Miseria. She feels suicidal continuously, and she doesn't do much to help herself get out of it. And you know what, I didn't even know she was sexually active, much less pregnant. A fine mother I turned out to be.

"Oh, and then I got myself sacked at Hogwarts. That's an ego booster. And in the process of it, I managed to end up feeling sorry for Vincent Majere, and I havent' the slightest idea why. It's not like he treated me well.

"And Jess Potter is making a very serious miscalculation, as far as I'm concerned by allowing James Wilson to continue in the order. The man attacked Shacklebolt and was the sole reason Shacklebolt and I didn't defeat Majere when Shacklebolt was falsely arrested. Wilson turned from being an Order follower to being Majere's muscle man. Wilson had the nerve to strike me with a cruciatus curse after Majere had caused me a huge gaping bleeding wound with a sectumsempra that nearly caused me to bleed to death. What the heck kind of an Order member does that and then refuses weeks and weeks later to explain himself? So why then, does Jess think we're just all supposed to get along? Wilson is an evil traitor with absolutely no defense.

"Well, that's a start of it anyway. I have no answer to any of it. There's nothing I can do with any of it. And so I run. And I plan to just keep running."

She smiled. "Got it. Thanks, Jack. I think right now I'm feeling a lot of hurt towards Rob. He says he wants to marry me, but he's only around on his terms. And he got so angry with me when I destroyed that evil amulet. Not that he didn't have his rights about that, but he just doesn't hear me when I tell him I had Vincent on my heels trying to get it. I didn't exactly have time to run home to ask him if it was okay if I ran away from Vincent Majere to go destroy that thing. And it was far too evil to bring it into a houseful of children. It had already killed a child. So, yes, it was my own fault entirely that I almost got myself killed, but at that time I didn't see any other choice. That's something else that's made him distant. I'm glad he came there that night. If he hadn't, I'd have died. But as many times as I ask him to forgive me, and he says he's not angry, he still keeps a distance between us. It seems like its still a wedge between us. You don't know how many times I thought about just moving back to where my parents are, and trying to get out of all things I've gotten into."