A/N: It's been far longer than I was expecting since the last update. I started this chapter as soon as I finished the last, but meanwhile Real Life(TM) hasn't been giving me a lot of time to breathe and so I only managed to finish it now. It ended up speeding up events that were going to happen later and delaying others that were supposed to happen on this chapter, and I feel that my frustration kind of leaked through in certain parts. Here's to hoping you guys enjoy it though, and thank you so much for the reviews! They're really what keep me going, and I can't thank you guys enough for them.

Katie muffles a groan into her pillow, mentally cursing Keith and his stupid cursed peanut butter energy bar. Not only is it keeping her awake at night, but her stomach is cramping from it, hard enough that she's curled in a painfully tight ball beneath the military-issued sheets, hoping beyond hope that Shiro doesn't wake up to witness her like this.

And it's when she gives up on sleep once more and reaches for the bag to find some pills to ease the pain that she's struck with a chilly realization. Katie hopes she's wrong. Katie desperately hopes she's wrong as she makes the mental math and reaches for an entirely different section of her bag, into the part that holds folded socks and underwear and all kinds of stuff packed within the undergarments, and rushes for the bathroom as silently as she can, blanket trailing behind her like a cloak.

Oh, boy.

She grimaces towards the brightly lit ceiling, eyes bleary against the fluorescent light. There's no mistaking it. Both underwear and sleep pants have a spot soaked through with red, big enough that she knows the sheets will mirror it.

Katie has just started her period, and her role as Matt has just become one step harder.

Usually, mornings go like this: both Katie and Shiro wake up, take turns in the bathroom, and then pair up to make the beds military-style. Each takes two corners of the blankets and sheets for each bed and pull in quick movements, stretching them flat and creaseless back down in the mattress, ready for inspection.

Today, this is not the case.

Katie has smuggled the sheets back and forth between the room and the bathroom, wondering at how her roommate can sleep so deeply. Then she remembers how Matt is much the same, falling asleep in the single moment it takes him to turn on his back and not waking up until Gunther - and oh, how she misses that dog - goes to lick at his face with the slobberiest of kisses.

Must be nice to sleep so deeply, Katie always thinks - usually with a small undertone of bitterness as she rubs at weary eyes - but today, it works in her favour. The blood takes time to wash off, using both running water and spit and scrubbing until she's pretty sure her fingers are going to bleed and ruin all her work, and even then there's still a darker kind of stain in the midst of the wet sheet. She's not the religious type, but she thanks the heavens for the warmth of desert mornings as she lays the sheets back down and makes the bed while covering up the stain to the best of her ability. This time, with no friendly roommate to help.

Shiro furrows his brow at her bed when he wakes up. His hair is sticking out towards the left side of his head, probably due to his sleeping position, but she doesn't feel like laughing at him today. "You made the bed already?"

She shrugs as nonchalantly as she can manage. "Woke up with a stomach ache. I thought it'd be best to go ahead and do it in case it got worse later."

"That's fair," Shiro says, but Katie can tell he's still processing it. His hand reaches up to rub at his eyes sleepily. "Have you taken something for it?"

"Yeah," Katie says, smiling at him like nothing's wrong. "Don't worry about it."

As it turns out, there's plenty of things that are wrong. She manages to miss breakfast even though she's been awake since the early hours of the morning, discovers that she somehow disconnected her computer's charger during the night, loses the report she'd been working on for the past few days, and then nearly locks herself in the bathroom when she tries to sneakily check on her downstairs situation.

Katie nearly gives up and stays in the bathroom even after the latch unlocks.

It's not going to be a pleasant day, she grimly thinks. I can already tell.

The pulsing, red-hot pain on her abdominal area doesn't help, either. She's short with anyone who directs her more than a few words, the words sharpened by pain and an even more severe lack of tolerance than usual. Even Shiro isn't spared, but she tried to justify to herself that he's been hovering - hovering and staring worriedly and hovering some more ever since he woke up, and honestly enough, Katie can't wait until class so she doesn't have to deal with it. He's only dared ask if she's alright a couple of times before retreating into his hovering-mode, not saying a word - thankfully so - but also not letting up on his concern.

It's just a stomach ache, she's repeated more than once. A good night's sleep and I'll be fine.

And yeah, okay, she's kind of touched that there's someone that worries this much about her - about Matt, she has to keep reminding herself - when they barely know each other, but Katie is a private kind of person. She doesn't do hovering, and if Matt or Mom or Dad had ever attempted it she'd already have barked at them to leave her alone. Holts don't do hovering. Holts do quiet.

Quiet. She needs peace, and quiet - and maybe a hot water bottle and a couple more pain pills - and her computer, and she'll be fine.

She'll be fine.

Harrison doesn't seem to agree, ripping her advanced physics textbook from her hands when she's contemplating the best way to get back to the dorms without anymore hovering from the part of her roommate.

"Heard you've caused some more trouble, Mattie-boy," he says almost amiably. "Why don't we fix that?"

And heavens, she knows what is coming, she knows, but she doesn't find the strength in herself to avoid the punch to the gut she receives. And she also knows that it only makes her mad, the pain on the pain on the pain that is already there, pulsing and quiet-like until it rears its head in powerful surges, but Katie has always been good at pushing back the pain in favour of her anger.

She lets herself forget Matt for one moment, and her fist flies - square in the throat, leaving Harrison gasping and heaving out bile and saliva on the floor, but she isn't done. "I'm tired of you," she spits out, fingers tingling with adrenaline and fury, urging her to punch some more. "I'm done."

"You're done?" Harrison gasps out. "Like fuck you are."

She can't help the sneer that paints her face. "Yeah?"

Katie lets him get up. Lets him get on one knee, and then the other, knowing that she put him there, that she can do it again. Lets him rise up to his full height, towering above her small frame, hand still grasped tight to the place where she punched him. Her limbs feel light, loosening into proper placement for a fight out of instinct and years of practice.

"Try that again, you bitch," he says. "And you'll-"

She never learns what exactly she'll do - at least not according to him - because she delivers a swift knee to his stomach before he can finish that sentence. "I'll what?" she challenges. "Get a fucking grip, man. I didn't do anything to you, and I'm tired of putting up with your shit. So either grow an actual backbone or leave me the fuck alone."

"Holt?" It's Keith's voice coming from somewhere down the corridor, and she can feel him frowning even if she isn't looking at him right now. Her eyes never leave her opponent, steady like she hasn't felt since she's started wearing her brother's skin.

Harrison's hand darts out to grasp her arm, gripping so tightly her skin feels burned. "You-"

"Shut up," she hisses at him, not caring if spittle flies out, not caring if Keith sees this side of her pretence, of this charade she has been putting up with for too long. "Shut up. You come at me again, and I won't hesitate. Leave. Me. Alone."

Matt wouldn't fight. Matt wouldn't have gotten into this situation in the first place, too friendly and too good to even roll his eyes at the stupid answer that started all this.

Katie knows that she isn't Matt, and the knowledge of it weights heavy and bitter in her stomach as she turns away, tearing her arm from Harrison's grasp.

She's suddenly conscious of how this changes things for Matt, how she either fixed a bad situation or ruined it further, but right now she doesn't want to let her mind drown itself in these thoughts. Katie shoves them down, a practised kind of mental motion, letting herself feel only the pain in her knuckles, the pain in her stomach, the pain in her heart.

Katie walks past Keith, not sparing him a glance. "You coming or what?"

It's not a question. She doesn't want an answer.

Keith seems to understand, because he does not reply. His footsteps join hers.

She dry-swallows the pain pills, feeling the silence of the room stretch itself to a level that is almost uncomfortable. They're not friends, Keith and her. They get along because they're extensions of Shiro - she, his roommate; he, his... childhood friend? Surrogate brother? Katie realizes she's never bothered to ask, and they've never bothered to tell her. It makes guilt curl up further in her stomach, next to the place she's reserved for all guilt relating to Matt. The strands of guilt coil together, snakes on snakes of feelings and thoughts, making her stomach roll with nausea until she can't even bear the thought of food even though she hasn't had a bite to eat since lunch.

As if reading her thoughts, Keith offers her another peanut butter bar. Katie shakes her head at it.

"I'm not hungry," she says, but it comes out more like an angry whisper, like her throat is too dry for the intensity of her voice. "I'm not hungry," she repeats, more steadily.

Keith shrugs. "Suit yourself, Holt," he says, opening the protein bar for himself. He pauses to take a bite, chewing thoughtfully before saying, "Glad you fixed that up, though."

"Cheering for me in the sidelines, were you?" she asks flatly.

He shrugs again, not looking too bothered by her stingy look. "I don't really care."

She knows what he's implying. They've talked about this, before. When there was also blood on the ground and pain on her fists. "As long as Shiro's kept out of it?"

"As long as Shiro's kept out of it," Keith agrees.

Katie sighs. "Yeah," she says, the remnants of her anger draining out of her. All that remains is exhaustion, the kind that even rest won't cure. "I know what you mean."

She also has someone she wants to keep out of trouble, to keep protected.

She can't help but regret that she's the one causing them all the trouble.

That night, Matt calls just as scheduled.

I'm not alright, she wants to say. I'm ruining things for you.

There's people here I'd like to be friends with, she wants to say. But I can't, because they're supposed to be your friends instead.

There's so many things I want to do and say, she wants to say. But I can't, because I'm supposed to be you.

I want to go home, she wants to say. And be Katie again.

I want to stay, she wants to say. But not as Matt.

Her finger hovers over the End Call button. There is a fragile sigh, soft like she doesn't dare let too much weight on it, and the fluorescent light shining on the military-issued mirror only makes her feel more detached. Like she's the same Katie from weeks ago, standing in front of her own bathroom's mirror with scissors in hand and snakes of guilt eating at her insides.

It's tempting, not to answer. To give herself time to compartmentalize her thoughts and feelings, to fix herself in a single, determinate track she won't allow herself to deviate from. To not let bitterness cloud the thoughts of her brother when she talks to him, to not let so many words linger rotting and unspoken on her tongue.

Katie answers the call.