watching you {shine} :: kaelen standalone

well this is not your fault, but if i'm without you then i will feel so small
and if you have to go, we'll always know that you shine brighter than anyone does
now i think we're taking this too far, don't you know that it's not this hard?
but if you take what's yours and i take mine, must we go there?
please, not this time, no, not this time

I have always known myself to be a force of destruction.

It was something I accepted about myself long before I ever realized my status as a deity of discord. Before I was ever a god, I was a being of pure ruination, able to bring lives and hearts and souls crashing down around their foundations in p(r)etty shards with a single touch of my hand. Eventually the world came to realize it too, pulled away in apprehension and left me in my elevated state of solitude that came to feel like home, my mere presence in a room enough to serve as a silent introduction of Hi, I’m Kaelen Dempsey, and I’ll take everything you’ve ever loved and watch it go up in flames for fun.

I tried to be better, once upon a time in a story that’s so far away now that it feels like someone else’s, its pages unfamiliar beneath my fingers and words foreign to my mind. When I was young, six-years-old and half-orphaned with nothing to cling to in the universe, my own power terrified me. The knowledge that everything I touched withered and crumbled to dust, the resulting feeling that I had somehow been responsible for my mother’s death (my child’s mind rationalized that perhaps I had loved her too much, had stained her with the toxic veneer that painted the fabric of my being every time I ran freely into her arms to the point that it might as well have been my tiny hands twisting the cap from the bottle of morphling that drowned her sorrows and her life), it was all so overwhelming to the mind of a scared little boy alone in the world that any attempts to fix it crashed and burned in a glorious cataclysm of ruination at my feet. So I stopped trying. The harsh existence of the slums has no place for scared little boys, so I grew up. With the passage of time came the acceptance of what I was, the knowledge that things like attachment and affection would always be impossible for me because even my slightest touch would kill, I had cyanide in my veins and arsenic on my skin and even the most loving caress would be a toxic, destructive blow.

When I was sixteen, it stopped feeling like a curse and started feeling like a gift. I saw people in the way that they rarely saw themselves, saw their sins and vices and hypocrisies all carried out in the name of a love that was the one thing in the infinite universe I couldn’t understand. I saw the world’s problems, realized that my poisonous touch could finally be put to a noble use fixing them. For the first time, the hollow cavern inside my chest felt like a blessing, the icy armor surrounding me like divine protection. I could define away what had always seemed so wrong with me as something righteous and elevated; the fact that I felt nothing but a grim satisfaction as I watched my father drown in his own blood a testament to my divinity rather than a mark of something horribly warped within the confines of my soul. It was simply easier to carry out the burdensome task of cleansing the world if I didn’t get attached to anything or anyone in it.

But there were exceptions. If there is one thing that my life as a supreme being and enforcer of self-prescribed justice has taught me, it is that there are always exceptions. First there was Alyssa, then there were my cousins, and then there was Colt. In an entire world full of people that passed beneath my notice in a dull monochrome blur, each of them shined like their own blazing sun, something that pulled them up from the depths of depravity and made them something special; although not gods and goddesses in their own right they were above the rules I had ascribed to the rest of humanity, and against my will, I allowed that brilliance to work its way under my skin and tether me to them in the slippery slope to their own detriment. In the largest display of selfishness I had ever committed, I loved them even though I knew my love was a love that killed.

But maybe, I have begun to think, that same thing that made them all exceptions to my brand of justice also makes them immune to my poison touch. Alyssa is the same as ever, I can only assume my family is doing well, and despite my most valiant efforts not to I have come to love Colt so deeply and consumingly that sometimes it rattles my bones and feels as if the linings of my veins will burst, and even he hasn’t fallen apart under my inherent destruction, still all sunshine smiles and a voice that can sing away the deepest of my insecurities in the darkest part of the night. Life in the Underground has led me to a conclusion that perhaps it’s all right for a god to love. It is simply a matter of finding those who are worthy so that they won’t be destroyed by it. Although I still miss the sun and stars, still crave the taste of fresh Spring air, there’s a certain peace that comes with the knowledge that I can allow myself to be something a little more human without it obliterating everything and everyone close to me, can descend from my divine pedestal for a while and experience a persona I’d never thought I’d be able to live out, a teenager with friends and a boyfriend, someone who smiles at nothing sometimes because they simply love and there are no consequences to it.

I find myself doing just that come lunchtime on a lazy Friday afternoon, slipping into a seat beside Colt and across from Lyss and laughing (laughing. The sensation is so foreign that it knocks me off balance every time) when she makes a deadpanned remark about what the ‘salisbury steak’ is actually made of. There is a line of TV’s stretching across the far wall tuned to the various Capitol stations that Thirteen has managed to get a fix on, but today every news channel and tacky soap opera is abandoned in favor of images of packed District squares and quietly terrified faces. The smile dies on my lips. “Shit, is it Reaping Day already?”

My eyes scramble over the televised landscapes until the familiar features of One cross my vision, the wild-haired Escort chirping out an obscenely chipper speech into the microphone. I can remember being in the same place as all those anxious faces, clad in a threadbare suit that told stories of exactly how much tesserae I’d taken that year and praying a senseless mantra of notmenotmepleasenotme until some other unfortunate soul’s name had been picked to go on a one-way train ride to Death, leaving me safe atop my pedestal for another year. It’s odd to watch the Reaping with such a sense of removal, not being scared of my own possible journey to the Arena. I trained, of course, was one of the best, or so I’ve heard, but preparation and a death wish are by no means the same thing and I never truly wanted to go bathe myself in blood and carnage. I was much more attuned to the subtle science of poisons, their guaranteed effects and steadfast security in the knowledge that I could never fall victim to my own form of combat. Now it’s simply a vague sort of interest that sits in the forefront of my mind, and I wonder if this is how people watching in the Capitol feel, only a blip on their mental radar as two children march to their demise.

“Ella Dahl-Moreno!” a voice rings out over the tinny speakers, and a familiar head of dark hair goes flailing through the crowd with a sort of anger burning in her that I could never find anywhere else except for maybe in Alyssa.

“Oh, damn, that’s a shame. I knew her. We were kids together,” I note around another bite of what’s supposed to be steak, although my voice holds nothing more than a factual sort of observation. I know Ella, that much is true, and we did grow up together in that sort of slumdog camaraderie that defined all the streetrat children as de facto siblings with the gutter as our mother, but watching her name drawn from Fate’s lottery does nothing to affect me. I liked her well enough, but she was never one of those that shone like the brightest stars in the sky of my elevated paradigm. She could fall from the surface of the earth and it would have no negative connotation for me. I wouldn’t be upset. My world wouldn’t shatter.

“I volunteer! I’m Kiera Dempsey, I volunteer!”

But that. That could shatter my entire universe.

My fork hits the table with an almost musical clatter, ringing out against what feels like dead silence in the cafeteria even though people are probably still talking, the world is still spinning and life is still going on even if mine has screeched to a standstill, eyes wide disks of terrified kohl-lined amber as they watch the progress of a tiny, lean form up to the stage on the grainy screen, take in the stubborn set of her shoulders and how her hair escapes from her braid the way it’s always had a habit of doing. Kiera. One of the brightest lights to ever blaze in my life.

I taught her how to ride a bike. I patched up her knees when she scraped them. I taught her how to shoot a bow. I told her she had a Victor’s spirit.

Oh god. Oh my god. This is all my fault.

As if I needed it affirmed, the cameras zoom up on her face, a smile that’s inordinately serene for someone staring down the Arena. It is the smile of someone so deluded that they don’t think Death can touch them, because the one person they trusted told them as much in an effort to drag them into the light of divinity. The microphone doesn’t pick her up, but her lips are easy enough to read. “Thanks, Kae.”

Oh my god.

I’m only distantly aware of something prickling and uncomfortable licking at the backs of my eyes, twin salty-hot trails blazing over the gaunt planes of my cheekbones and falling in droplets onto my shaking hands. A million miles a way I hear Colt’s stuttered Babe, what – and Alyssa’s murmured That’s his cousin that barely filter through my consciousness, lost beneath a roiling sea of shattered hopes that compounds and builds and smacks into me with all the force of a locomotive, knocking the air from my chest in a strangled half-sob. I was wrong. There are no exceptions. There never have been. Everything I touch dies. It just takes longer for some to get infected with me. And my idealistic belief otherwise has sent my cousin smiling gleefully to her death.

The sound of my chair scraping over the cheap linoleum is as loud as Kiera’s a cannon, neither Colt nor Alyssa making a move to follow me as I storm out of the cafeteria, still stubborn and superior enough to not allow the unworthy masses to watch me break. They both know me, know that in my moments of weakness I’m like a wounded animal and lash out at everything, friend or foe, and it’s for their own self-preservation that they stay where they are. Perhaps it’s better that way. If Kiera was not immune to my poisonous touch then it means that neither of them are either; eventually they will succumb to the destruction I carry under my skin and slip into nothingness. The sudden fear of that eventuality is so crippling that it stops me in my tracks, slumping against the cool metal of the wall in an abandoned hallway and gasping ineffectually for air. Everything I touch dies. Everything. Even my best intentions are nothing but a corrosive toxin, something that could destroy Alyssa, Colt, Kiera…

Kiera. Sweet, innocent Kiera who cried when she saw a dead baby bird that had fallen from the nest in the park. Witty, wickedly sharp Kiera who could hand my ass to me in poker no matter how hard I tried to win. Perceptive, wise Kiera who always held the belief that everyone could be saved, even if she was wrong on so many levels because I have proved time and time again that there is no such thing as redemption for me. Kiera, whom I laughed with. Kiera, whom I trusted. Kiera, whom I loved.

You killed her, you know, a cruel, icy voice whispers at the back of my mind. You lied to her, you brainwashed her, and you killed her. But that’s nothing new. You’ve killed lots of people. They always called you The Mystery Poisoner of District One, but in reality you’re just Poison.

Under a haze of writhing agony that feels like it’s scraping out the hollow cavern where my heart should be, I lose track of how I’m even able to get back to my apartment. Awareness finds me with a worn canvas duffle bag propped open on my bed, clothes shoved hastily inside and my precious bundle of deadly blooms and stems tucked with care into the deepest recesses of it, my hands scrambling beneath my mattress until they close around the holster of throwing knives I managed to sneak past security on my way into Thirteen. I at least have the mental capacity to leave Colt a note, a scribbled I love you I’m sorry it’s better this way scrawled out on a napkin left on the coffee table before I walk out and slam the door closed on the one chapter of my life that ever felt like maybe something could be normal.

No one stops me in my progress through the sterile halls, bag slung over my shoulder and shiny-sharp metal glinting at my hips. Maybe it’s because I give off such a malicious aura that no one wants to get in my way, content to let me go without a murmur and wreak havoc on the outside world that Thirteen stopped caring about a long time ago.

My first glimpse of sunshine in six months gleams through a haze of unshed tears.

I lose track of how long I walk, making aimless progress through the endless forest and not bothering to mark the sun’s progress across the sky until it sinks into the purpleblue veil of dusk, painting the world with bruise-like shadows and fleeting, imaginary wraiths that flicker in the half-dark. Eventually my muscles scream in protest at the constant motion and I stumble to a halt, leaning against a sturdy tree and glaring irately at the world that saw it fit to burden me with the duty of being a god among men, much less a god that couldn’t even do his duty right. I was always meant to be a force of destruction, and somewhere along the way I forgot my purpose, and the people I allowed myself to love have suffered for it. Died for it.

“Fine,” I half-whisper to the silently observant universe, twirling one of the knives absently between my fingers before suddenly hurling it into a distant tree trunk with an infuriated scream. “FINE!”

Fate wants me to be The Great Destroyer? I won’t deny her. But I’ll be damned if I fizzle out into anguished nothingness like all of my victims. My eloquent ruination will be written out in the stars, so great will its magnitude be. I will rise to heights that no one else ever dared to dream, and maybe then I will have enough power to determine what and who falls under the weight of my own wrath. Snarling, I yank the blade from the tree and shove it back into my holster, setting off across the wilderness with glorious purpose.

Hi, I’m Kaelen Dempsey, and I’m going to burn the world down because I can.

if you run away now, will you come back around?
and if you ran away i'd still wave goodbye, watching you shine bright
now i think we're taking this too far, don't you know that it's not this hard?
but if you take what's yours and i take mine, must we go there?
please, not this time, no, not this time