a heart of good intentions // Cass & Ele

k y .

"I cope badly when
I'm madly, deeply alone"

When he'd finally gotten back to his room at around five in the morning it'd taken a lot of willpower to not just fall asleep on his bathroom floor. He'd lain there for a solid fourty minutes, vomit on the floor beside his head where he'd missed the bowl.

Ky could vaguely recall either Sampson or Jem telling him that throwing up was good if you were feeling sick. If that was true, then why did his throat burn and why did he feel one hundred per cent worse than before the beginning of the night? His empty stomach felt like it was doing its best to avoid him and the sink felt too high up, impossible to reach.

But he'd consider killing for a glass of water.

Sobriety was approaching him slowly as the sun rose and carefully laid strokes of burnt oranges and yellows across his bed, still made from yesterday morning. There were bits of him that still felt too light, pieces that felt too heavy too, like bags of sand on his legs. He wondered if it was something to do with that pill he'd taken.

He'd thrown back anything they'd given him last night. When Sampson and Jem had found him in the stairway, maybe that was the last thing he fully could piece together. Everything after that was a blur of colour, sound and skin. Maybe there'd been a moment of euphoria hidden in the moment but if there had been, it was gone again.

Ky felt it again, this deep heaviness pulling at him from the inside and it was something that he hadn't felt so sharp in years. He knew it was grief, that he was in pain and he pushed his hand against his chest hard. It was a harder pain than the one he felt in the pit of himself but it didn't push the image of Emmett's body falling into the red sea out of his head.

But maybe that would never go away.

He dragged himself up and into the shower, where he sat, head bent. Sleep was already off the schedule for the day, the hour where he would have gotten up for a run long past. The best he could do for himself was clean up so that he didn't look like complete shit for lunch later.

Because he was supposed to meet Katelyn finally. It was something he had been looking forward to for a while. He'd been feeling nervous since his mom had told him the plan to introduce them though because he knew that he was an acquired taste. He didn't think he could try today, that he could be a victor's son.

Let alone Opal's.

He stood in front of the mirror as eight hit and waited until his expression had settled. It was easier than it should have been. Sampson had supplied him with concealer for any shadows under his eyes. He hardly looked different from the day before but he could feel the hole in his chest where his heart was supposed to be.

When he moved the wound stretched and it hurt. He winced at his reflection. All he needed was to be okay for an hour or two over lunch and then he could disappear again, make his excuses and leave. It wouldn't be too hard, he was sure his mom and Katelyn wouldn't be against extra time to be alone.

His stomach rolled.

If Katelyn didn't like him, it wasn't a big deal. She just needed to like Opal after all. It wasn't like Ky needed another parent, not at seventeen. As long as they could be polite with each other, it'd be fine. As long as she continued to make Opal happy, it'd be fine.

Lunch would be fine.

Ky lay back on his bed and flipped his window to the games. Emmett had a chance to live he just had to kill two other tributes first. He didn't know what to do, how to feel. The odds seemed low somehow and Emmett felt further from his reach than he ever had and Ky didn't really want to leave his room until he knew for certain.

At least then he'd have time to compose himself, but out there he couldn't crack, not once. He couldn't give any sign that Emmett had meant to him than he was supposed to. The last thing he wanted was to worry his mom, not when she'd be hurting too over Emmett.

When had he gotten so good at lying?

He hadn't meant for that to happen.

Ky dozed in and out of sleep for a few hours as the games played on mute and he watched Emmett, fresh stitches on his neck, as he beat up a statue. Perhaps he'd gone insane. He still thought he was beautiful, even with a crazed expression like that. It was so beautiful how he looked alive like that like yesterday had barely happened.

He wasn't ready to lose him again.

Somehow he was walking down the hall on floor Eleven with his mom slightly in front of him. She looked alright as far as he could tell, maybe a little bit off, like her smile was ready to break at any moment. He knew that she cared about Emmett, like she always had with all the tributes from One. Their deaths were always hard on her.

He wondered how she did it, year after year, filled those kid's ears with hopeful promises as she shooed them off to their deaths. How could she do that without losing herself in the process because Ky could feel himself dissolving, a trail of ash following him as he walked.

Winning wasn't a prize.

When Katelyn opened the door, Ky smiled or at least tried to. He held a small bundle of photographs wrapped in tissue as a gift for the Victor from eleven. Since they'd arrived home last year, Ky had 'borrowed' a camera from the training centre and started taking candids of his mom as a gift for her girlfriend.

Just so she'd have something to look at when she missed her.

He watched the way she greeted his mom, so familiar. His palm felt empty, he could feel the spaces between his fingers where Emmett's fingers had been, the air colder there.

"Hello," he replied, "It's good to meet you, I've heard a lot." He held the stack of photographs out, limbs seeming to move almost robotically. His smile, having done its job, left his face.

"Lunch looks amazing, thank-you for having me."

k y .

"I cope badly when
I'm madly, deeply alone"

He knew that it wasn't going right. Ky could see it in the way that his mom looked at him across the table and in the way Katelyn's expression seemed strained. He'd gotten pretty good at telling when people were fed up with him. Social cues were hard, they'd taken him a little bit longer to get than most people but he'd always been pretty good at reading his mom and he didn't have to be a genius to tell that he was making Katelyn feel awkward.

It felt like he was holding his breath and for a moment he felt like just telling them both everything. He could start with that first day where he'd ran into Emmett on the train and how he'd felt different since. His stomach had flipped oddly every time he'd seen him in the halls of the training centre after that, words had come out of him tangled.

Maybe he could tell them about kissing him, about how when Emmett had lain on top of him, for a long moment his brain had just been quiet. It'd felt so right and perfect and he wanted to feel that way again and again. He knew his mom would understand the feeling of waking up alone the morning of the bloodbath, maybe Katelyn would even have advice for him.

For a solid moment, he gazed across the table at the two of them, at the way they naturally leaned towards each other and Ky just felt separate from them. This was their world where they fit together and he felt wrong about invading it. All they wanted from him was one lunch and he couldn't even give them that without making it awkward. The last thing that he wanted to do was ruin this first meeting with his personal problem, it was something he'd figure out on his own.

So he smiled and he nodded. He closed his lips over the straw of the smoothie and pretended to drink as his mind raced. A strange sort of panic was settling over him, a quiet thing that begged him to just get up and run. It draped itself over his shoulders and settled heavily on his neck. His hands shook a little as he tried to look natural under the added weight and Kenji went for Emmett, a flash of silver in his hand as he took aim with his knife.

He swore his heart stopped even as Emmett's blade went up to meet Kenji's, ending the attack with the ringing sound of metal on metal.

ba-dump.

"For fun? I," he paused, trying to hold focus on Katelyn, "I like to run, I garden too, how could I not right?" He gestured at his mom, a corner of his mouth lifting in an attempt at some cheek. "Yeah," he nodded along with his mom's words, "I really like working with the kids, they're quick learners and have so much energy."

Ky knew it was weird that he was barely eating and suddenly, he was acutely aware of it. He waited for Katelyn and Opal to both look elsewhere before quickly dropping some of the fries into his lap. It was just a patch-job if anything, he'd still have to figure out what to do with the fries later but at least he wouldn't look rude. He didn't want to disappoint either of them.

"What about you?" he asked quickly, "I know you like cooking, but what else? Mom told me that Eleven is really beautiful?"

He just wished that he knew how to be the son that people expected when they met him, he knew how often he left a person feeling vaguely disappointed. He was underwhelming in general, kids had been telling him for years how little he deserved his lofty position as a victor's son.

He'd had to prove them wrong time and time again and had arrived home more than a few times with a bloody nose or a split lip. Their opinions of him had never mattered to him though and he'd always operated on that understanding that he didn't mind being weird.

But he minded if it made Katelyn dislike him and the idea that she didn't had already formed in the back of his chest, he could feel it crawling slowly up his throat.

"Could you pass the water?" he asked, mouth dry.