{ s h a t t e r e d } :: kaelen standalone

i think about you every single day, and every time i see your face
i wake and it brings me to tears, we hadn't spoken in years
we were close when we were young and naive
we grew up and we learned other things
you'll always be sweet sixteen

I had told myself to prepare for this.

I tried to, I really did, tried to be ready to watch Kiera fall in a torrent of crimson regret and could-have-been’s, but I never could have prepared myself for this. In all of my nightmares of Kiera dying, she never died in fear. The Gamemakers must be powerfully bored to set a trap of this cruel magnitude, I think distantly as the commentators’ voices drone on about the colorless poison (how fitting) that will drag the tributes into a head-on confrontation with their worst nightmares. The living room of my aunt and uncle’s house is deadly silent, and that silence only makes the scream that tears from Kiera’s throat as she awakens all the louder, the utter terror in it sending a shiver down my spine. Still, a small sigh of relief escapes as she runs her blade through the District Nine’s chest, slaying a nightmare-monster that she’d loved mere hours ago. Perhaps I hadn’t put enough confidence in her. Fear makes some weak, but it seems to have only made her more deadly.

And then her arm falls to the ground.

I’ve never had much of a stomach for blood, have always preferred the cleaner and more elegant intricacies of poisons and potions, but like any good little Career I grew up watching the Games, eventually got desensitized to violence and gore. But all those years of careful psychological training don’t stop me from gagging when I see the crimson liquid squirting from the place Kiera’s arm used to be, a sickening metallic taste sitting thick along the back of my tongue even as I grit my teeth and force my mind into a mantra of don’t throw up don’t throw up don’t throw up. Aunt Laurna shrieks at the other end of the couch, collapsing into fresh sobs, and it takes me a full minute of closing my eyes and willing my insides back into submission before I can bring myself to look back up at the screen only to feel horribly ill again. If anyone knows what someone looks like when they’re dying, it’s me. And Kiera is dying.

“You… you said… you promised, you lied, you lied to me, you bastard, you lied!” she screams in District Nine’s direction, and yet some terrible thought ghosts across my mind that it’s not Wednesdae Drummond she’s shouting her accusations at. I push the idea away with a shudder of revulsion and teeth clenched so hard that my jaw groans in protest. “I did everything you told me to! I gave you everything! EVERYTHING! And you gave me my death sentence.”

I want to shut my eyes again, to clamp my hands over my ears and curl up in a ball until I can shut the world out the way I was always able to before, deny the roaring, consuming flames of guilt that sear in my chest until I can’t draw breath, but I can’t, locked into a stiff posture with my eyes fixed on the car-crash ruination of one of the handful of people I ever loved. I try to tell myself that she’s shouting at something unreal, the embodiment of her worst nightmare turned to a lucid daydream by the shimmering gas. Kiera’s nightmares are none of my concern, but I can only make myself believe that for the few seconds before she finally gives into the sob tugging at her mangled body, looking lost and afraid and so, so broken. “Am I going to die, Kaelen?”

So this is how it feels to be someone's worst nightmare.

and you will always be perfect
you'll always be beautiful
our hearts will never forget you
you didn't belong here and it's become so clear
why heaven called your name

The pain that rips through me is so blinding it’s almost blissful because for a glorious moment, I get lost in it and forget myself. I’m not aware of the hollow shell of my body until I feel a brief flash of red agony in my palms and look down to see that my nails have punched through the flesh from the clenching of my fists, angry crimson half-moons weeping glistening waterfalls down over the pale expanse of my hands. I blink bemusedly, trying to keep myself from remembering who I am and what I’ve done, but then Kiera says my name again and it all comes rushing back, slamming into my being so hard that I actually convulse in an attempt to reject my transgressions, curling in on myself in a futile effort to keep me from falling apart at the seams. Every atom of every molecule in my body wails plaintively for Colt and his strong shoulders and his soothing whispers in the dark to keep me together, but he’s still at my old house, distant and safe and much too far away. Kiera screams the accusations I’ve known the truth of but denied for ages at me across the miles and the camera lenses, and each word, each tear that drips pink with blood from the tip of her chin rips another piece of me apart and shatters it. “I hate you. This is your fault. I might be doing this myself, but this is all your fault.”

The moment she brings her sword down is the moment I die inside.

Something I can’t place destroys me, scooping out everything from my core and leaving me a hollow shell that can only watch as she fades away, as the Drummond boy sings her to sleep and the little girl from Eight braids her hair and her district partner holds her hand. I knew from the time I was a little boy that there was something wrong with me because I thought there was something beautiful about death, but if the death of some menial lower form could be beautiful then Kiera’s is exquisite. She dies like a fading star, her face stilling in a quiet smile as the ghost of a breath stalls on her lips. But then the canon fires, and my world falls. My world falls because we were never the gods I made us out to be, Kiera and I, and my fanciful tales of a higher plane were what damned her in the end. I knew from the moment her name rang from the speakers in Thirteen that I had killed my cousin, but it took hearing her pass judgment on me with her last breath to finally make me admit it to myself. There is nothing left of me, and I’ve lost who I am.

Who am I? Kaelen Arthur Dempsey. Who’s that? I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, nothing besides the fact that I can’t stay here. My family dissolves into a cataclysm of grief that I feel completely separated from, and how could I not? Kiera named her real killer for the entire country to hear, and I could hardly expect her loved ones to let me share in the misery that I myself brought down on their heads. I can’t stay here where Kiera’s ghost haunts the very air, and while I can’t figure out who I am I know that there’s nowhere I could ever run to escape her now. She’ll always be in that darkest corner of my mind that visits me in the dead of night, the same place that houses the memory of my mother’s body splayed on the bathroom floor like a rag doll, tears still wet on her cheeks.

It feels hazy, almost like a dream as I get up from the couch, my limbs stiff and puppet-like as they carry me away from the sobbing and the grief and into the relative quiet of the kitchen. Who am I? Was this room a happy memory once? Did I ever feel at home here? The loss of my identity leaves me feeling more hollow if that was even possible, and I look down numbly at where Moira’s purse lays open on the table, the subtle glint of the glass vials tucked carefully in a side pocket almost unnoticeable. Curiously, my fingers reach into the worn leather bag and pluck one of the crystal containers from its depths, uncorking it and letting the familiar scent of bitter almond spike through the ambiguous veil over my mind. Cyanide.

I remember who I am now.

i miss you and it still feels like i know you
i've got pictures of us
side by side, to show you
but it feels like owe you
so much more

The first girl who walks up to me in the hazy dark of the club is almost ridiculously pretty, long red hair and eyes so blue they put Wheaton’s to shame. She’s also belligerently drunk to the point that I can smell the Jell-O shots on her from five yards away, but that doesn’t matter. Not this time. I’d take anyone, old, young, male, female, drunk, sober, it wouldn’t matter. Just something to help me keep my fragile grip on reality. I used to have standards in my killing because I thought I was bound by a higher purpose, but I can see the cynical truth of it now; perhaps I always have and have simply ignored it until now – I’m a psychopath. Or a high-functioning sociopath, perhaps, I can’t be bothered to do the research and figure out which. To Kiera I tried to be an older brother, the wisdom to guide her hand. To Colt I tried to be a lover, something soft and tender and good. To myself I tried to be a deity, a force of righteousness to cleanse the world. But what I tried to be isn’t what I am. What I am is a cold-blooded murderer, and I no longer care who I choose.

“Hi,” she grins, having to shout over the thrumming music, using the background noise as an excuse to lean within the boundaries of my personal space. “You look lonely. Want some company?”

This is who I am. This is a dance I know all too well, slipping effortlessly into the guise of some horny high-school boy who got in with a fake I.D. and has already had one too many hits of tequila. The club is too dark for anyone to recognize the details of my face, and even if it wasn’t, I’d be safe. I don’t even recognize my own reflection anymore, twenty pounds thinner than I ever was when I lived here, hair grown long enough to curl at the ends and eyes so lost and haunted they don’t even look human. I’m not the face that people will know from the wanted posters. Being back in the game almost makes me feel something, and the glimpse of a returning identity helps me call up a would-be drunken smile as I lean close enough to place my lips at the shell of the girl’s ear. “From a gorgeous thing like you? Hell yeah, I’d love company. ‘Specially in the back room.”

She shudders before grabbing my wrist and yanking me across the dance floor, and if I remembered who I was I might smirk and muse vaguely that I’ve still got game despite spending the last year with only one boy warming my sheets. But I don’t remember fully, not yet, and so I simply let her pull me through a darkened hallway and into a supply closet, drunkenly fumbling with the door handle before turning on me with a wicked grin that I return in earnest.

Her scream gets muffled against my lips when I pull the kitchen knife out of my waistband, jam it between her ribs, and twist.

I watch the light leave her eyes with a morbid sort of fascination, stepping out of the way as she slumps to the floor in order to avoid getting blood all over my clothes. Even so, there’s crimson painted over my hand and on my blade and all over the floor, and despite the fact that I’d nearly thrown up at the sight of Kiera’s blood, the glint of the growing scarlet puddle beneath the sputtering lightbulb overhead manages to look strangely pretty. I can see my reflection in the glassy surface of the nameless girl’s life essence, and within it, I find myself. It isn’t until I’m hastily washing my hands in the utility sink that I realize I’m smiling so widely that my whole face aches.

The blonde with acne scarring and too much makeup in the bar two blocks over doesn’t scream because she can’t do anything but gurgle as she drowns in her own blood, slumping to the grimy floor of the bathroom and painting the tiles red with the river blooming from her throat. After that I take the back alleys across town and duck into a bar of a certain persuasion out of pure curiosity, and ten minutes later a classically good-looking boy with athletic shoulders and bright green eyes looks almost confused as he falls, losing the fight to breathe with a punctured lung and staring sightlessly at the ceiling of the scuzzy private room I’d talked him into. The dilapidated old clock on the wall chimes three in the morning, and a quiet voice in the back of my head whispers all right, that’s enough as I wash up again and fade out into the night like the shadow of death itself.

I realize as I walk that for a few hours, Kiera hadn't even crossed my mind. I didn't do this to remember who I was. I did it to forget.

and you will always be perfect
you'll always be beautiful
our hearts will never forget you
you didn't belong here and it's become so clear
why heaven called your name

She sinks back into my bones with every step I take, the chilling mantra of I hate you, I hate you, this is all your fault, I hate you swirling around in my head until it’s all I can do not to scream, the old wounds in my hands re-opening as my nails carve into them anew. The pain is enough to keep me grounded, to stop me from disappearing like I did back in the living room as she wailed out her condemnation for all the world to hear, and yet every too-loud heartbeat in my ears still manages to feel like a battering ram trying to tear down the fragile identity that I’d rebuilt for myself tonight on the foundations of three lives. Three. Kiera killed three in one day too, remember? She learned how to be a monster from you, and you taught her so well.

My breaths are ragged, wheezing out into the cold night air like I have to fight for each one. The white-hot agony has settled again behind my sternum, and every twinge of it brings another memory (Kiera’s smile, Kiera’s laughter, Kiera’s stubborn pride, Kiera Kiera Kiera Kiera Kiera) which only serves to compound it farther. I had thought it a terrible thing to forget who I was, but now I realize that the moment’s respite was a blessing in the face of staring down an eternity with nothing but my true identity to keep me company. I am ruination. I am destruction and the cold at the end of the world and everything I touch dies. In a terrifying moment of insanity I’m not sure if the blood on my hands is my own or the boy’s or Kiera’s,, and that’s all it takes to make my insides twist to the point that I double over and lose every meager bite I’ve eaten in the past week, shaking like a dead leaf clinging to its place on the branches of the tree of life.

The knife gleams in the moonlight and the sight of it almost makes me sick again – I didn’t take it out of any thirst for violence, I simply knew that poison was my calling card and would alert the authorities to my returned presence, and death was death regardless of its medium – a million unspoken things in the steely glimmer rising and drowning me until I throw it away from me with such force that it collides with a brick wall in a shower of sparks. Just as quickly I run over and scoop it up, cradling it close to my chest like my last hope as silent apologies bloom behind my lips. After all, if I don’t have my madness then I have nothing left in the world.

I can’t stop shaking, either from cold or grief or terror or insanity or some horrible mixture of all of the above. Every move takes all the effort of running a marathon, every breath like lifting a mountain, and for the first time in my entire life I think about just ending it, certain that hell couldn’t possibly be any worse than this – and hell is where I’m headed, I realize that now. With no divine purpose to justify my crimes, there is nothing to keep me from descending to the same depths to which I sent countless people before me. I wonder if my father’s waiting for me there, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a belt in the other. The only thing that stops me from taking Moira’s vial out of my pocket and slipping into oblivion is the light at the end of my street, the flickering candle in the window that whispers the prayer of salvation whose only word is Colt, and with a tremulous breath I resolve the it isn’t time to give up yet. Not today. I’ll lose the fight eventually, one day Kiera’s voice will be too loud in my ears and I won’t be able to handle it, but years ago I made a vow to myself that I would never break, and there’s still a bit of that vow that rings alongside the seductive whispers of eternal darkness.

and it just doesn't seem right
was it really your time, are we dreaming?
we'll never let go of you
wish you were here, but it's becoming clear
that earth's just not the place for an angel like you

”I can do it myself!” she shouts petulantly, thirteen-year-old features teetering on the brink of adolescence screwed up in concentration as she struggles to string a longbow that’s nearly as tall as she is. “Stop treating me like a baby, Kae!”

“I will, when you stop acting like one,” I reply with a roll of my eyes, pulling the bow from her grasp and stringing it properly within a few seconds, which makes her glare as I hand it back to her. “And stop yelling, you’re gonna wake my dad up.”

Kiera pauses, looking at me with that see-right-through-you stare that she’s had ever since I’ve known her. There’s something like pity behind her eyes and it makes the deepest parts of me writhe as they reject it, and yet there’s still a sort of warm glow at knowing there’s someone in the world that might actually care. “You could always come stay with us, Kaelen. Mom would let you.”

“You know I can’t. Your parents can’t afford another mouth to feed and I don’t make enough money at the garage to pay for myself. Besides, I’m fine here.”

She gives me another one of those penetrating looks, quiet for a very long time. “No you’re not.”

“Shut up and shoot.”

“You’re not, and you’re too much of a stubborn ass to let people help you!” she fumes, throwing the bow down with a buzzing twang. “You say I act like a baby, but you’re the one being an idiot and brushing off the people that care about you!”

My face must betray me, because with a final sigh she runs her hand through her hair and marches over, wrapping her arms sturdily around my waist. I stiffen at the contact, unused to touches that don’t hurt and bruise, and she notices that too, squeezing a bit tighter. “I love you, you big stupid douchecanoe. And I want to see you smile for once. You deserve it.”

She gets her wish even if she doesn’t see it, something foreign pulling up at the corners of my lips and relax enough to wrap my arms around her in turn, the phrasing stiff on my tongue but still the only time I will say the word for another almost-four years. “Love you too, Ki.”

“I hate you. This is your fault. I might be doing this myself, but this is all your fault.”

She died hating me. One of the few people that ever had the capacity to love me died hating me with every fiber of herself, hating me for the lies I told her, hating me for the doom I sent her to, hating me for everything I am and everything I turned her into. Kiera died hating me.

I promised myself I wouldn’t break, but the realization shatters me nonetheless.

you meant so much to so many, i'm not quite sure how to do justice to you
if they're ready to say goodbye, i know i'm not
you made the news and the papers for days and days, but it hardly seems fair
the whole world should know your name
i want them to know your name

I manage to make it inside, shut the door quietly behind me, and draw in a single, shuddering breath. And then I collapse. My knees give out from under me and hit the floor hard, taking the air from my lungs with the impact. I don’t cry. I don’t whimper. I wail. It’s the kind of sobbing that won’t let you breathe, that hitches along up your spine and makes you sick and feels like the world is falling. The last time I cried I was six years old and they were putting my mother in the ground, and now those thirteen years of icy composure have fallen down around my head in a cataclysm of ruination, tears streaking over my cheeks like liquid fire and the most broken, borderline-inhuman sounds tearing at the lining of my throat. My body curls inward in an unconscious effort to dull the pain but it does nothing, some part of me that still holds onto my pride making me bury my face in my hands to dull the sound of my breakdown. The blood from my palms smears over my lips and the metallic taste of it makes me retch again, but I have nothing left to throw up. I’m a shuddering, sobbing, bleeding mess on my living room floor when Colt finds me.

He knows. Of course he knows, Colt knows the parts of me that are too ugly for even me to acknowledge and yet he still finds something in them to love. It feels like home when he pulls my weeping ruin of a body into his arms and laces fingers through my hair, whispering soft things like shhh, I’m so sorry, Kae, I know it hurts, I know, I know and pretty lies like it’s going to be okay, sweetheart, it’ll be okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. Nothing. Nothing was ever okay in the first place. Nothing but him. He holds me and I shake and scream and cry until my body gives out, exhaustion sitting like lead in my bones when he helps me to my feet and all but carries me up the stairs.

I strip out of my bloodstained, filthy clothes in a horribly empty silence that echoes off the cracked tiles of the bathroom, and I stash the knife all the way at the back of the cupboard, the sight of it turning my stomach all over again until I’m dry-heaving over the sink with horrible choking sounds. The sight of my reflection, actually having to look at the face of destruction brings on more sobbing even though I’m too tired to possibly cry any more, and with that Colt’s barging through the door and cradling me again on the cold tile of the floor for another half hour until I’m cried-out for a second time. He wipes the rusty stains of blood and tears from my gaunt cheeks with a damp cloth, cleans and bandages the nail-wounds on my hands, helps me stand long enough to fall into bed and covers me up with a nest of threadbare blankets.

“Th-there’s... There’s a bottle of morphling tablets in the medicine cabinet. My mom used to take them to help her sleep.” I croak, my voice so raw from crying and screaming that it’s barely recognizable as my own. And then I laugh because that’s ironic, what I just said, the deranged, crackled sound of it bouncing around the room like the ghosts that wait for me in my nightmares. “Before she took a whole bottle. That helped her sleep, helped her sleep forever. I just want one, though.”

Colt looks at me with a mixture of pity and worry, petting the disheveled hair back from my face. “Kae, I don’t know, they’re probably expired and –“

“Please.” If I weren’t already broken, I might hate how plaintive I sound, spindly bandaged fingers clutching his arm like he’s the last solid thing in the world (he is). I know what waits for me when I close my eyes, and it promises to rob me of any fragile grip on reality I had left. “Please. I don’t… I don’t want to dream tonight.”

I’m too tired to place the expression on Colt’s face, but in half a minute he’s back with a glass of tepid tap water and a little white pill, watching me swallow it before climbing into bed beside me and wrapping me in strong arms and the smell of summer. He is my castle, my last defense, and maybe when I awake from the dreamless blackness eating at the edges of my vision, he’ll be the reason I keep fighting. I am broken and insane and lost but I am alive. Such is my fate, to stand and watch as the world crumbles at my feet, and I’ll accept one day that I can never hold anything good for very long, but for now I melt into the encroaching darkness and find the solace there that I will never find in the world of waking.

There's nothing left of me, but I guess that's all right.

and now we must
let you move forward
our love lies with you
our souls fly
with you