Time for a Change

Kim's scalp is tingling and she looks at the box again, hoping it's the right color. When she asked for dye, Bar hadn't given her a chance to say what color she needed, but the hair of the woman on the package *looks* like her old hair color.

She had been putting this off for a while, afraid that she couldn't face the world without her new look. It is strange but the different hair color is almost a mark that something had happened to her - and if she went goes back to her old color, she will be erasing the only evidence that anything had happened. There are no scars, her memories are almost back to normal, or at least she knows that she visited the other place and then had returned.

Her nightmares aren't getting better and she doesn't think they will for a while. But after she dyes her hair she can pretend that she's all better, which is preferable to feeling like a visitor in her own life.

It's hard to figure out time without a watch but she figures she has a few more minutes left until she can wash out the dye.

She knows it's going to be much harder to fix what she said and until Chris had told her, somehow she hadn't even thought about her dad witnessing what she had seen. She knows that he didn't tell Chase out of cruelty or disregard for his well being - no, he told him out of fear. But she also knows that she undid months of work in a few words and isn't sure she has the strength to start again.

She misses her old self. And she knows that changing her hair color is a step towards getting her back.

"Okay, enough time's passed," she mutters to herself and goes into the shower to wash out the dye.

A few minutes later, she's done and she vigorously dries her hair with a towel. As she slips the towel off her head she closes her eyes, afraid that maybe the dye didn't work, that she could not change anything...

She opens her eyes and lets out a small gasp. She touches her hair, the wet strands are dark but she looks in the mirror and she finally recognizes herself.