System check.
No, you are not having a stroke.
No record of hallucination.
"You don't deserve to have morons watching you out of hate. Or have them focus on the things you're missing. Because you're not missing anything. Kate you are so beautiful. I don't know what I'm missing about you but I can see it, and I think all of us can see it. It's like you're genetically engineered to be the hottest girl in the world only to undermine yourself by putting on the most alarming fat suit I've ever seen. And that's why I don't want to see you up there. They're going to shove you into a meat grinder and throw you away. Not because they're evil. Don't misunderstand. That's not Sakura. Not Tiffany either, as full of shit as she is..." Gen said rolling her eyes.
Kate was stuck with a pile of information stacked on her arms like a barbel. The pile high enough to rise over her head and block her vision. It felt like her programming had been turned off. Like her systems were stuttering. There'd been both compliments and brutal insults, brutal because those were the exact words that'd been said directly to her, by her.
It was monstrous for it to be said by others, to her face. She'd annihilated people for less!
"What do you want?" Kate asked.
Genevieve blinked and then let go as if remembering that everything she was doing was the type of thing crazy people did. And that wasn't meant to be her. Maybe she'd read someone else's script. She turned away then turned back.
"I… I want you to run away. Because what's going to happen to you will be brutal."
"Why?"
"Because, one, you're not ready, and two you don't strike me as the type to say no."
"I don't get it." Kate said.
Genevieve sat next to her and took a deep pull. The white smoke that poured from her lips was a fog. Her eyes unfocused as she took repeated long and heavy pulls, after a moment it became clear that she was lost in thought, was it from the drug?
Kate couldn't know.
"You're not getting through to me." Kate said, weirdly apologetic.
"I'm not aren't I?" Genevieve conceded and she blew a long thin sheet of smoke that dissipated like a dream.
They sat in the stew of their combined failure, mixed with the smoky haze.
Kate sat up.
"You're good at that."
"You pick up hobbies you can do from a hospital bed."
"I do understand death." Kate said.
Gen snorted.
Kate didn't even get angry at that, her hand just snapped to Gen's chin, turning her head to stare into Kate's hard eyes.
"I have been scared for my life before. I have had to fight through the impossible to be alive. I've looked death in the eye without blinking. Do you believe me?"
Gen gaped, wide eyed and stunned by what she was seeing before she blew smoke into Kate's face. It was an endlessly dense stream, enough to make Kate let go and cover her face awkwardly, blinking unsure of herself because Gen was gone.
No, Gen was actually behind her.