seek salvation in the saints [kahinta/mace]

Everything is so loud.

Kahinta's not unused to being surrounded by sound as she tries to sleep. Years of sharing the bed with Temple, and more recent nights spent out in the barn or overnight in the basement of a run-down building with Libertas had insulated her in the sound of night in District Ten. It had been muffled snoring, and cows in the distance, and the sound of marching feet just beyond a boarded-up broken window. On the train, however, everything sounds wrong, and she finds herself staring up at the ceiling, quietly counting out the seconds between her shallow breaths.

The hum of the train is too insistent, too steady, too everywhere for her to get comfortable. There is no rhythm to its pace, just a monotone that she can feel vibrating against her skin as she presses too close to the glass of the window to try and see into the darkness outside with night-blind eyes. A sigh, condensation building on the pane until her hand wipes it away, and Kahinta stands quickly in a flurry of irritated movement, grabbing at a sweater that's draped over the back of a chair and making hurried steps into the hallway. She can't keep sitting still, and her mind races and rallies against the sleep deprivation, a second sleepless night building behind her eyes and drinking her dry. Pulling on the sweater, too soft and too small to hide in properly but her own sweater had disappeared when she'd changed into the clothes that had been laid out for her, she pads down the hall barefoot. Her hand trails along the wall as she squints, catching sight of light beyond the far door to the main car, and pauses.

It's late, or at least late enough that Kahinta had expected to be alone in her wanderings. She's been alone in them for so long that the night has almost grown to feel like a second skin, that scratchy feeling behind her eyes and the way she can feel herself shake with the exhaustion familiar to her in ways she wishes they weren't. Her body sags minutely, her arm pressed against the wall bending to keep her upright and supported, eyes blinking blearily at that glimmer.

She's been alone in them for so long.

Three years since she had followed a stranger down an alleyway as quietly as she could, followed him straight into an abandoned building that had not been as abandoned as it had seemed. Three years, and Kahinta feels them all settled around her shoulders like a mantle, an honor and a burden all at once, watching people disappear into the darkness beyond the district and hiding secrets from Temple at every turn that put her in so much danger. And they know. She'd been so careful, but what stroke of petty luck could possibly paint a picture so unfortunate by chance and chance alone? It cannot be; she's as sure of it as she is of Bette Sublino deserving every pain in the world and none of them all at once. Another victim, another choice. Kahinta's sure she'll learn that first hand soon enough.

Her pale green pajama pants swish around her ankles as she moves towards the door, until she's able to push it open with her shoulder and slide through into the mellow light. Not all of the overhead lights are on in the car, and it takes her eyes a moment to focus and find who else is inside, curled slightly over a piece of paper and a piece of cake on the table.

Mace.

Uncertainty settles in her stomach and she feels wrong in her skin as she disrupts whatever it is he's doing, pulling her sweater closer around herself as if the flimsy layer over the set of silk pajamas they'd left for her will offer any protection. Kahinta drops her eyes, hesitating and shifting back and forth on her feet a moment before stepping towards an adjacent chair at the table. Her sister would know what to say, how to settle into comfort with this man who has killed four and ferried how many others to their deaths. Despite their distance over the past few years, as Kahinta has drawn further into herself and tried to keep Temple out of everything she's been a part of, she knows that Temple and Mace are close or close enough that this would be easy if only she could have her sister-

The thought stops her in her tracks. It would be easy, but Kahinta would rather throw herself from the mountains before she'd see her sister here again. Drawing her legs up, she rests her feet on the edge of her seat, gaze flitting from Mace, to the paper, to the cake. Quiet, so quiet, her fingers swirl patterns against the wood as her other hand clenches her legs close to her chest, eyes drifting to the cake and back again as she swallows against the dryness of her mouth. Her mind races with so many thoughts, and she feels dizzy with the swirl of them inside her. They always circle back, though.

"Do you think-" and when had her voice grown so small, so frail sounding? She halts, unwilling or unable to look up as she swallows again, clearing her throat as quietly as she can manage in a moment that feels so delicate between her fingers that she's worried she'll see it fracture in her hands. "Do you think this is on purpose?"

It's the first time Kahinta has said it out loud, and it tastes sour on her tongue, a bitter sting to an open wound she's not sure she'll be able to patch up. If this is her fault, if she's drawn their attention, if they're trying to use her to hurt Temple in some way for what Kahinta has done, and is doing, and will continue to do should she manage to survive, she's not sure if she can forgive herself for jeopardizing everything. Years of herself she has paid to the night sky until all that she can see of the stars is the darkness in between.