Kate Gregson

Living in her swanky condo is amazing and having paid off most of her students loans is even better, because it takes a huge chunk of payments off Kate's plate every month, which means she has a little bit more spending money than before. She still has to pay her utilities and there's the mortgage on the condo, which isn't exactly small, even with the down payment her lottery winnings were able to cover, but it's not really any more than their rent was either.

So Kate's been saving. Usually she blows it on something awesome for herself, some insanely gorgeous jacket or a pair of boots or high heels that are patterned in bright pink and purple, but right now she's saving and she feels kind of great about the ability to take her friends out now if she wants to. She's not rich, not by any means, but she has a little bit more spending money now and she plans on using it on things that make her feel good.

Somewhere along the way, things that make her feel good is making her friends feel good and so she'd called Marius up and asked him to go to a fancy dinner with her.

I mean fucking fancy, she had told him. You gotta dress up and shit.

It's like the sparkliest friend-date she can manage and she's pretty damn excited, dressed in a short, sparkling gold dress that had caused Newt's eyes to more or less bug out of his head, which is how she knows it's good. She's waiting for Marius now, stroking Jeff's head to say goodbye and telling Newt she'll bring him home some fancy leftovers.

It's still sort of hard to believe.

There are only a few people Kate has gone out of her way to tell about the fact that she and Newt are actually, seriously, for real engaged and it's not because she doesn't want to tell people, but just that she sort of wants to hold onto it on her own for a little while. She wants it just to be hers. She'd never really imagined herself getting married, but then, she'd never really imagined there was someone like Newt out there for her, so she knows plans change.

She knows things about her life, her family, she knows about the things she's done since coming to the island. The same sort of thing has happened to other people, too, and she's always been a little nervous, but it had turned out to be a good thing. She feels better for it. It's proof that her family, while irrevocably fucked up, is also still hers, no matter what happens to them. And even if she's not there with them, they love her, and she's okay. She's not as terrible at being an adult as she thinks.

So she's going to marry him even though her family isn't here to be with her, because she has other family now. People she loves, people she needs, people who are just as important and people she needs to tell about this whole thing.

So she sends a text asking them to meet her that evening at the really awesome diner not far from her apartment building. And she's nervous when she gets there, but she smiles in greeting and waves, and the ring flashes on her hand in a way she's still not used to.

She's basically a superhero.

That's what Kate has come to accept over the past few days. It's kind of a weird superhero thing she's got going on, pretty much like Spider-Man, only she's been way too lazy to make herself a costume or those cool shooting things he uses, but it's almost the same. (And, okay, it's not entirely that she's lazy, she also has no idea how to go about making something like that.)

Besides sticking to things, though, which had pretty much sucked that first day, she's super strong and she can jump like, really high, and it turns out that being able to stick to walls is actually kind of cool. She's gotten a little better at figuring it out, at sticking only to the things she wants to stick to and she's maybe experimenting with climbing a particularly tall building that evening. This is the part she hasn't exactly shared with Newt, because these powers had come on so suddenly and she thinks he might worry about her if she tells him she's been climbing buildings. If the powers disappear just as suddenly, she's pretty much doomed, but she doesn't think they'll just fail her while she's halfway up a wall.

As she heaves herself onto the rooftop and looks down at the street below, she finds herself feeling kind of exceptionally free. Her life is amazing and she's happy, but this is something like she's never had before and she doesn't know how long it might last, if she'll be like this forever, but for the moment, it's kind of nice to just sit above the city like this, having climbed up here all on her own.

Looking down, she spots Marius, small and far below her and she grins, wondering if she should jump down and scare him.