kellan fray ; one | resub

He woke up next to a girl once, and he thought his life was over. The one you don't mess with. The one you don't touch: you don't fuck with Pyrite Shore. And he had. Twice, at least from what he could remember.

He wakes up next to her now, and he knows that night is when his life really started.

He'd been bred to be better, to be the leader of the pack and to destroy anyone who wore a different insignia on their clothes or had a last name that was anything other than Fray. Respect them, sure. Keep them close, even. But always, deeply within, in the most animalistic parts of him: to hate. And he hated Pyrite Shore; she hated him back.

And so, they made it a game. They tried to see who could hate the other the most. For Kellan, that was easy; he hadn't ever really minded the feelings of others before. It was easy to stroll Phena around the district, vapid thing too dumb to realize he was using her, too caught up on the fact that he was popular to care. It was easy to kiss her on the cheek when he dropped her off, flip off Pyrite through her window when he was leaving. It was easy to yell insults back into her face just as quickly as she jabbed them into his. It was all so easy. Until it wasn't. Until he found himself smiling during the middle of a screaming match, found himself looking at her, even in public, and thinking, "I want to kiss you right now," before remembering he wasn't allowed to.

Because this was a game of hatred, and Kellan Fray had never, not once, lost.

Neither had Pyrite.

Perhaps that was the issue; Opal had won so many years before and then the Shore name went stagnant once more when she married. Pyrite was the oldest, same as Kellan. It was her responsibility to show everyone that they mattered. That their parents mattered. They were so alike, the summer boy and the winter girl: fire and ice, both too dangerous to play with but beautiful to observe.

By the time Justice won, though, that was when things really changed. That was when Pyrite gave up. That was when he started kissing her wherever he wanted. Neither of them were reaped, neither of them volunteered. And there was a part of Kellan that had always told himself not to fall in love, because he never wanted that to happen. He hesitated, last reaping eligible year, final chance, perfect excuse because his kid brother's name had been called. But she was standing right there, right next to him, an entire future. A promise, which, no matter how confident he was about his abilities, the games could not give him. It was a moment, a fleeting second of opportunity. And he didn't take it. And he thought he would hate her for it; he didn't. He couldn't because he never had.

He did, however, resent himself. Even after the marriage and the new house and the dream job with the hottest girl. Because he knew, deeply within himself, he could have done it. He could have. He would have. That's what his father said: Tarver Fray, smoking a cigar, feet propped up on a coffee table while he stared at the picture of himself and Justice that was hanging above the mantle.

"He never even took it seriously. So imagine, son. Imagine what you could've done if you hadn't been hung up with that girl." He always spoke of Pyrite like she was less than human; he spoke of everyone like that, Kellan supposed.

He often wondered if his agreement to the marriage between Kellan and Pyrite was his way of washing his hands of him for good. And Kellan hadn't ever considered how that might feel. No, he'd considered how it would feel. He just hadn't ever imagined he would actually feel it. He'd been the favorite: golden boy, prized child. Best in the center. Heart throb. Charismatic.

Now he was reduced to Justice's older brother.

And if that was hard, losing Pillar sent him over the edge, the one sibling out of the entire fucking horde he liked. Just a year after Justice, so eager to prove herself. So close to being finished. So close to coming back. But she hadn't, not with a pulse. And if it hadn't been for Pyrite hiding his face with her umbrella and Corran and Garnet falling to pieces, everyone would've seen him cry.

So he did what Kellan always does: he fucked up. He got angry, really angry. Blood-boiling, teeth clenching, tunnel vision, only seeing the color red angry. And he fought people, looked for reasons to do it. He broke a man's nose because he was blocking the door to the Center. He was still paying for a window pane he'd sent a chair through when one of his students wasn't getting his direction.

That anger, that resentment for himself: it was a seed that had been planted when he was eighteen years old. A boy. When the crowds stopped cheering his name on reaping day, when people stopped looking his way when he walked into a party. And it had grown and grown and grown and grown for five years.

It took almost dying for him to snap back to his senses. A drunken night with Pyrite, which was almost always a recipe for disaster- it had been since the beginning. He'd mouthed off to some girl, and the girl had friends. And Pyrite fought the friends and won. And then the friends told their husbands, and the husbands found Kellan pissing in the bathroom and beat him so badly that he didn't remember his name for three days.

He remembered waking up for good in the hospital then, Pyrite asleep in the chair next to him. One eye was swollen and bruised, there was a cut on his lip that cracked when he tried to move his lips and any time he took a breath deeper than a pant, it sent a sharp pain through his entire rib cage. But he'd taken Pyrite's hand in his own, kissed it. Promised to stop sleepwalking through life from then on, to be grateful for what he had, thankful for what she had given him. Because the truth was he didn't know he would've won the games. Not anymore. He had a bad temper and he was an easy target. Maybe, after all, she'd saved him from being an even greater stain on the family name than he already was. Maybe she'd sensed it that last day in the square, taking his hand in hers when she didn't volunteer. She'd never said it, but maybe she knew he'd die, and she knew she didn't want him to.

"I love you, always," he'd said.

And he would.

Always.