kel – capitol

He never liked writing long hand.

There was something wrong with his fingers, they couldn't keep the pen straight and he'd spend all his time trying to get the letters neat instead of writing the story. But he liked to type, always did. It was uniform, clean. He used to slip into his mother's office while she was gone, which was often, and sit at her desk to tap away at the keys of her typewriter. The way the buttons sounded when he pressed them, the clipped little clicks and the thunderous note of the carriage return, it drowned out everything else.

And there was always so much of everything else.

Ever since he could remember, the monsters were there. Tiny silver metal beasts that flashed at the first hint of movement, they seemed to feed off of the bodies attached to them. If Kel even peaked out the front window, there'd be flashes of light and the nanny's hand wrapping around his arm to yank him back out of sight.

They'll see you, and then what? she'd ask.

He didn't know the answer to that. He was just a boy and he wasn't meant to know these things, all he could do was guess.

One afternoon, while his mother was gone for a long stretch, he wrote all about it on the typewriter. He was a prince of a distant kingdom who had been hidden away in an enchanted tower. It was guarded by the silver monsters. If he ever even tried to escape, they would capture him with a flash of their single-eyed gaze and a hundred different pieces of him would be dispersed across the stars.

He wouldn't be dead, but he also wouldn't be a prince anymore. He'd be something else and the world would forget about him.

The end.

It didn't occur to him that his mother would ever read his story. Kel had taken all the sheets with him that afternoon and stowed them under his pillow for later but somehow she'd known. In the morning, it was missing, it'd been taken from him.

His mother liked the colour of his eyes. They were different from hers and when he was born, they were so light and so green that it was almost as if they held no colour at all. In his first year, they bloomed slowly into a deep gold with a permeating central ring of that same, strange green. They were beautiful.

Trade me, she would say. Then she'd pinch the air in front of him as if she was going to pluck his eyes right out of his face. It always made him cry, an emotion so heavy, so complex that he didn't have a name for it yet running through him, splitting him open like lightning.

Maybe even then he knew, what his mother liked, she never waited to receive. She always took.

What does it mean, Kelsier?

He didn't know, he'd only written it.

Stories are meant to have happy endings.

He thought that it was a happy ending.

No.

Oh.

-

He was born at the end of the rainy season, five weeks before he should have been. They had to get him out, there was something wrong with his mother's blood. As if it knew her mind, one night it turned on him, already fully formed. He was never really wanted there.

Some things, people, they're just not meant to be.

His birth made the paper, anything his mother did in those days did. She was an heiress to a fortune that was older than Panem was, Capitolite royalty. The whole thing was blown out of proportion, they claimed that she had nearly died and the baby was on death's door. Then two days later there was an article about her already being back on set, how she was so dedicated to her craft that they couldn't keep her away.

Kel spent the first few months of his life in the sterile warmth of an incubator, kept apart from everyone else. It was touch and go for a while. His due date came and went without a whisper of his release. People started to lose interest as time went on, eventually the poor little thing was hardly spoken of at all.

There were theories of course, some said that he didn't look enough like his father and so his mother was hiding him from the world. Others said that he must have been born with a horrible deformity, but most people thought that perhaps he hadn't lived.

The mother never spoke of him, turning away when anyone asked after him. A demur smile would tug at her lips, a gentle promise given, I'll talk about him soon.

Flowers were left on the hospital steps, candles burning in tribute to the child of one of their most beloved socialites.

That's where the story ended.

-

In the beginning, the fear was hardly there at all. It was small enough that it could settle into the seams of him, liquid amber spread over his fissures to create the illusion of perfection. So it was some time before anyone noticed it and when they finally did, it was too late, it had already become as much a part of him as his laugh was.

It was something that his mother used to say. He came in from the inner courtyard balcony once, grey silt from the air that had settled on the rail framing the palms of his skin, making them chalky. She held his hands under the tap, water burning hot to kill any germs.

We don’t touch dirty things, she told him, the bristles of the nail brush felt sharp, slipping up under his fingernails and jabbing at the tender skin. She scrubbed hard, as if she meant to completely erode the pieces of him that had touched the world.

He wanted to know why.

You know why, pet, you'll get sick again.

Oh.

It was true that more often than not, there was something wrong with him. Sometimes his whole body ached, as if his puppet strings were all tangled up, criss-crossed tight across his muscle and bone. He burned hot for days, body heavy in that heat, so tired with it, of it, all of it. He'd lay in the dark, staring at his curtains and watching the way they grew slowly lighter and then dark again through the day.

When he was sick, his mother would stay away. She'd tell him it was to protect him, her voice would sound so tinny through the phone speaker, so far away, he couldn't tell if she was lying when it was like that.

He'd sleep for most of the time anyway. The doctor said it was because his body was tired from fighting but the sleeping always made the exhaustion worse somehow. He'd try to keep himself awake instead, clenching his jaw through the pain, he'd whisper stories to himself through grit teeth about other worlds, lands and people.

There'd be a television sometimes, when he could stand the sounds it made and the colours that danced across the screen, which wasn't very often at first. Then it became comforting to turn the volume down low until the muffled sounds became friends having a conversation in another room.

It was bearable because it had to be but it didn't mean that he wanted to go through it all again if he didn't have to.

And when he wasn’t feeling well again in the morning, he wondered if it really was the balcony rail, or if it was something else that he'd let come too close.

Something dirty.

-

He was almost seven by the time the first picture was taken.

It was an accident; it could have been an accident.

The window was meant to be closed like it always was. His mother had strict rules about it. When Kel was a kid, he used to think it was because she wanted to protect him but then he grew up and he knew.

If the window was kept closed, if the curtains were kept shut, then the mystery remained and his mother was still on the public's mind.

Everyone likes a good story but they like to be the first to tell it even more.

The window had been noticed in the early hours of the morning. Those watching often kept an eye out for those sorts of things. A couple years ago, they'd almost gotten a shot of the child when the front door had been open for a moment too long, they wouldn't waste another opportunity like that.

And Kel always liked the smell of rain. He used to stand under the eaves in the inner courtyard, listening as it hit the roof above him and rolled off to land on the hot stones at his feet.

She knew that about him.

It was raining that morning but beginning to slow when Kel came across the window. He was alone, he can’t remember why anymore, it was a long time ago now and he was so young.

But the window was open and sunlight was breaking through the clouds. The window pane was steaming, the drops on the glass disappearing in the sudden heat. He just wanted to see more, he didn’t know.

In the morning, his face was plastered across every publication in the Capitol.

FENWICK LOVECHILD? screamed the papers.

"NO," SAYS MARINA. they yelled back the next day.

It was too late by then, everyone already believed what they wanted to, what his mother wanted them to believe. That picture of Kelsier was used for years after. A young child with long dark hair, peaking out of a window, small hand on the edge of the frame as his eyes found the camera first.

-

It was like a dam broke.

After that, invitations poured in weekly for his mother, everyone wanted a piece of her, the first interview, first photoshoot. A publishing house reached out and offered to ghost write a whole book about the whole sordid thing, all she'd have to do is write her name on the cover.

For Kel, nothing changed, not in the beginning at least. The one small thing was that he was banned from going near the front of the house at all and was sequestered to his bedroom most afternoons.

But his mother didn't seem angry with him, in fact, she was happier than Kel had ever seen her.

He wanted to make her happier.

-

Lights flashed in front of his face, lightning, so much closer than it should be, the sounds of shutters clicking like beetle wings.

Tell us -Wow!- your name! Your name kid, what is it? Gorgeous. Yes, look -so pale- over here! -like a living doll- Your mother -look over here!- buy you those eyes?

The grass wet beneath his feet. Not from rain, just from the morning dew. Kel had never left the inner courtyard before because he wasn't supposed to. He didn't know that the grass would be wet.

Cold and slick beneath his bare feet. His breath clouded in front of his face. It was almost fall and the world was shifting. The rains were colder, the days a little less long and Kel thought that it would make his mother happy.

What's your -why's she been hiding you?- name, kiddo? your father! look over here! your father's? His name! Fenwick? Are you a Fenwick?

There were so many questions.

All those years, he thought that the bodies attached to them were just empty, lifeless husks. When he looked out the window, they were always so still and quiet. He was wrong. They had voices and bodies that swayed and shifted in the breeze like the flowers in the courtyard garden. They all called out to him at once, an endless cacophony, babbling like brooks.

Kelsier opened his mouth and for a brief moment they were finally quiet, but even their silence was loud. It was like thunder rolling across the sky, heralding another strike of lightning.

I was a prince, he told them softly.

But now I’m something else.

My father died on the day I was born.

Mother never spoke about it, she said there isn’t any point in bringing up the past, and that’s the end of the story.

All the official records out there say that it was an allergic reaction, but from what I’ve been told, my father was a careful man. He was known for being well organised almost to a fault. Careful men don’t do careless things, at least that’s what I used to believe.

Sometimes the things that we believe in don’t match up with what we know to be true. It is true that my father is dead. I know that it was classified as an accident.

But sometimes the truths that we have are just paper-thin lies that have been layered over themselves so many times, they’ve only become like the truth.

I think that he was killed.

Oh don’t be ridiculous, my mother says, Why on earth would they ever do that?

I don’t know. It’s probably because the older I get, the more evident it is that he wasn’t really my father. If I ever said that to my mother I think she’d strangle me, but that would only give me further reason to believe I’m right.

I don’t doubt that she herself was the catalyst, I only doubt that she ever even loved him.

Cold thing to think about your own mother, I know.

Cold thing.

I was cold once too.

My back against the white stone wall of the inner courtyard, gaze fixed on the glass-paned doors that led back into the drawing room. I’d already tried the handle eight times. The door was locked.

It was the rain that drew me outside and it was the rain that did me in. She didn’t want me ruining the hardwood and so she instructed the staff not to let me back in until I was dry.

But It rained all night.

I never really felt warm again after that.



I figured I'd be dead by now.

That's what the doctors said, and often. Each day was a new record, every breath a feat of my own strength. First I was only supposed to live until five if I was lucky. Then it became six, after that they got a little brave and said ten, it goes on. It doesn't matter, I was just raised with the knowledge that I was going to die.

Most kids don't have to touch death until its shadow passes over them as it reaches for someone close by. The spectre fades from memory as time goes on and they get to forget again.

Not me. I'm the one that death came home to.

I was constantly told that I was going to die and that's what made me bearable to her, my mother I mean. She thought that she only had to care for me for a year or two.

Then I kept on not dying.

Every year, my mother's patience wore more thin.



I used to be afraid of the sun, sometimes I think I still am.

It was a displaced fear, of course. Children are rarely rational, but I myself at least, needed to relate my slow withering to something that I could see and feel. All I knew was that if I went out on a sunny day, I'd pay for my transgression. I'd spend weeks in my room, body so heavy it felt like my pockets were full of rocks and all I could do was sink.

I was sick a lot as a kid, I didn’t know that was odd until I was almost ten. I just figured everyone’s existence was as miserable as mine. My mother told the papers that she didn’t send me to school because of how poor my immune system was.

In reality, I was just a prop for her to keep her popularity up. I think if it weren’t for the rumours and the mystery surrounding me then she would have ignored me entirely. Her affection was only earned by what I could bring to the table.

I’m not a Fenwick love child, if that’s what you’re wondering. After all that fuss in the papers when I was little, they had a test done, which, when I think back on it, is stupid. I don’t look anything like the man who was suspected to be my father.

My father was named Alaran. He was an analyst at Fenwick & Sons and he was deathly allergic to honey. My eyes came from him and when my voice deepened, I was told that we had the same laugh.

It felt strange to hear that, to know I had something in common with a man I’d never met. Weeds are like that though. You cut them down and they spring up again.

That’s why you need to pull them out, roots and all.



I started writing when I was little but I never had any intention of sharing it with anyone. I wrote because I needed to. I had to get the words out of my head or I’d be stuck with them.

I’d use the old typewriter in my mother’s office. No one ever went in there except for me so I thought it was safe.

Then one afternoon, I was flipping through one of my mother’s magazines and there it was.

It was printed near the back, between a column about my mother’s next movie and an ad for a vacuum.

My story.

The story wasn’t one that was meant to be shared, none of them were.

The one she chose to take from me was a piece I wrote in the winter. It’d been snowing for days and the world outside my windows had looked so different, it lacked colour. The days were shorter, the nights long and though I’d spent my life inside I could feel myself unraveling.

I wrote a story about opening the inner courtyard doors and letting the snow in. I imagined it would be cold. At the end, I walked out into it and then I joined it.

I wrote a story about how lovely it would be to freeze to death.

Half of the city applauded my skill while the other half insisted I needed therapy.



That’s a given.

I stopped going outside when I was around eight, it was just easier to avoid germs that way. It was around then that the obsession began, I think. It started with trying to touch things that might be dirty less, then evolved into hand sanitiser between touching anything, then became needing to wash my hands over and over to the point of pain.

I thought if I scrubbed hard enough, I could keep myself from getting sick again. I just needed to get the germs off of me.

The avox kept the house sterile. On days I was sick, they’d wear masks and gloves if they came near me.

My mother would get home from work, parade through the house in the clothes she’d been wearing outside and then cup my face in her bare hands to kiss my forehead.

It didn’t matter if I asked her not to.

You came from me, nothing I do could ever hurt you.



After my story was published, offers came in the mail. Publishing houses eager to work with Marina’s son offered up large advances. They wanted more from me, short stories, poems, a novel or two. I didn’t have anything that I wanted to give them and so I ignored them at first.

Then a letter came, this one more formal. It was in a thick black envelope and embossed with the logo from the firm my father had worked at.

It was a stack of legal papers and a note-

’Have a read through and let me know if you’d like to continue. - E. Fenwick’



For the longest time, I couldn’t imagine ever living my life without her in it. It didn’t even occur to me that it was possible. I believed that I needed her because that was the truth that she gave me and it was the truth that I accepted.

I was wrong.

I don’t know how he knew that I needed my freedom. He told me that there were signs, he said that an intern had been tasked with keeping an eye on my case.

Maybe he didn’t know at all and it was just a way to get back at my mother for the scandal she’d roped the Fenwick family into all those years ago. I didn’t really care, for me it was just a way out and I filed for emancipation when I was fifteen.

I took one of the advance offers to pay for it all and six months later, I lived alone.

Fenwick found me a place at the very edge of the Capitol, far from the city lights, somewhere no one would ever bother me again. It was retrofitted to suit my needs. Built in air purification, a sanitation chamber at the entrance, the list goes on.



It’s been years now since I last saw my mother but I’ve yet to drop dead from her absence. In fact, I’m doing better now than I ever did in her care.

And I call it ‘care’ with a delicate mouth.

What she did to me, how she raised me, I’m not certain I was ever a person to her, let alone her son. I was a pawn to be used or a bauble to dangle in front of her adoring fans to keep their attention, nothing more than that.

There’s something animal about the bond a boy has with his mother, something primal and older than I’ll ever live to be. There is no part of me that believes that she loved me but there are parts that still want to, that cry out for her.

I’ve tried to bury those parts many times, but I can’t. This is what we've been from the start. It’s in the blood, all you need to know about us is there, in hers and mine- we are a snake swallowing its taiI.

There are two truths that I live with now.

I will always want my mother.

And I will never let her in again.