Christmas in July

Once Bitten and Twice Shy

The rest of the afternoon had gone by in a blur. It had been crisis after crisis to deal with for Kate, leaving no time for her to deal with her own current personal crisis. Lucky hadn't wanted to be parted from them, probably something to do with the fact that his moms weren't talking. The florist had gotten lost and had needed retrieving from 94th and 5th instead of 49th and 5th, which had been an absolute schlep up Maddison Avenue and then back down. What florist takes Uber XLs to venues?

Thankfully everything had started to come together with a little time to spare before guests had started to arrive. Wine was on tables, the string quartet was warmed up and raring to go, as string quartets always were, waiting staff were milling about and looking dapper as fuck and the caterer had kicked off proceedings in the kitchen. Everything seemed to be coming together, and of course, that's when disaster had struck. The MC texted, of course they had, calling would have been far too much of an imposition, especially for someone with laryngitis. LARYNGITIS. Just a little spot of laryngitis. Just a person who gets paid to speak for a living, with a little spot of laryn-fucking-gitis that they failed to mention until thirty minutes before guests arrived! Kate felt murderous and at the same time, completely apathetic. She was done, cooked, over. That was it. She couldn't just pull an MC out of her ass, three nights before Christmas in New York City, thirty minutes before her event kicked off. It just wasn't going to be possible. She'd had all the suppliers booked for months, months. Kate wanted to laugh, and cry and vomit, and the one person who could usually stop her from doing all of those things was making her want to laugh, cry and vomit.

So, there she was, in front of all her guests, holding back the tears and the vomit and the despairing cackle with a microphone in hand. The room was big, silent and expectant. With an extremely nervous smile, Kate's eyes scanned the room for a diminutive blonde in a red dress, but came up empty. She hadn't seen Yelena since her trip to rescue the florist, something else that she'd been left to handle by herself, and since returning she had really hit the fan, so seeking Yelena out, despite being high up on her list of things to do, had sadly fallen by the wayside.

At this point in the day, Yelena's absence despite being disappointing, wasn't entirely unexpected, and Kate had to now shift her focus onto surviving the evening. Survive tonight and save her relationship tomorrow, because under this kind of pressure, there was no way that any conversation was going to be constructive, or have the time it needs.

Her hand was tight and clammy around the microphone. These were her mother's people, and her people really. She'd grown up around them, at their events, their fundraisers, their parties their bachelorettes. It was the kind of crowd that knew very little about you but seemed to know everything about you, often before you did. Your grades, your love life, your family's financial dealings, which had always left Kate wondering how much the people around her in that moment knew about her mother, and before her, her father. She knew that they had very little sympathy for her family's current situation, despite the kind words and the pleasantries, because one rich family's loss was another's gain, and if one rich family went down, a tonne of bad shit could be pinned on them. Which is why Kate's position was unique.

Her mother was almost certainly on her way down, for how much, Kate wasn't sure, but Kate was totally in the clear. Not only because she was the one who turned her mother in, and completely innocent, but because there was almost no way S.H.I.E.L.D. would now let anything happen to her. She had protection, and so did Bishop Security, because unsurprisingly, her mother had her fingers in the government contract pie too. So Kate was an untouchable. She was rich, she was powerful, and she was a threat to these people. That didn't make them any less terrifying. They were old, they were rich and they were powerful, and the disdain they felt for Kate was palpable. She'd turned in her own mother, what would she do to them? If she had her own way, she'd run for cover and never see these people again. No galas, no benefits, just give it all to charity and do away with it, but that's where the family lawyers had disagreed, as had her mother. Kate had to reestablish the Bishop name amongst the elite of New York City, amongst the politicians and the law makers. Kate was young, beautiful, and just, and a mother who raised a girl such as that couldn't possibly be all that bad a person right? The lurking Russian assassin probably wasn't a testament to that.