judgement | katelyn&kass

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Reviewing the list of potential sponsors was always a slog. She’d come to know a few of them quite well over the years, but there were always new faces and new wallets when people were old enough to spend that kind of money on the games. Some she had grown to like; Bartholomew Manetti was a kind man who considered sponsoring the lowest districts a matter of charity.

Others she could tolerate. Like Theresa Drakeheart enjoyed the game and making victors dance. She was kind of a bitch, but she could be counted on to spend some cash once she’d been made to feel important. Then there were the ones like Karl Weiderman. He loved to talk about himself, his mansion, and how inattentive to his needs his wife was. He always sat too close, drank too much and let his eyes wander uncomfortably low.

Well.

There were some indignities she had chosen to bear for the sake of the lives she was expected to care for, though the next time he touched her thigh she was going to stab him with a fork, the consequences be damned. But Delroy and Neysa were proving to be hard sells. Delroy had blown his interview big time and though there were those who liked to root for the underdog, no one wanted to voice support for someone so treasonous.

Neysa was a little better, and she’d been able to garner some support for her by playing on Neysa’s connection to Harbinger, but it still wasn’t as much as she’d hoped. There was a knock on her door, which given the time was a little surprising. Katelyn sighed and stacked her notes up, putting them on her nightstand and tying up her robe and getting up to open the door. It hadn’t been this difficult to drum up support for a tribute since—

“Kass?”

Katelyn was bewildered. Kass looked like she had been—crying.

It was alarming enough that something had reduced Kass to tears. It was unnerving that Kass had come to her door to deal with it. It wasn’t that she minded; Katelyn had often said that her door was always open. Kass was just someone who she never expected would ever take her up on the offer.

Katelyn rubbed the back of her neck as she tried to gather her thoughts and stood aside to let Kass enter the room. “Come in Kass, come in,” Teenagers. That awkward time of youth where a person wanted to be treated like an adult, but was still so very young and unlearned. Deep breath, she told herself. It wasn’t possible to say the wrong thing to them every single time was it? She was concerned, and she knew it showed on her face. Kass, despite her youth and prickliness, was one of them.

“What’s wrong?”

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Each time Kass had started insulting her or needling her insecurities, Katelyn had tried to remind herself that the young girl was a child. A mouthy one, perhaps, but one lashing out at the world. At her. It had hurt, and some of the insults hurled in Opal’s direction had severely tested her patience, but after some self-reflection, Katelyn had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

The 82nd had been a rough year for her. Still recovering from her ordeals in prison, in the capitol, still reeling from eleven’s tributes killing one another the previous year. She’d been harsh with Kass and Jacob, perhaps harsher than she needed to be. Kass, for all her vitriol, might have benefitted from a gentler hand in the beginning.

She was just a child then. Still was in many ways.

Katelyn tried to search her face for an explanation and found none as Kass wouldn’t meet her eyes. It was still surprising that Kass was talking to her without any of the usual biting sarcasm. “Sure, I was planning to prep a pecan pie tonight, but I—we can do fudge. Only need five ingredients.” Didn’t Kass hate her fudge though? Was this Kass’s attempt at an apology or—

“Kass, are you all right? You seem—“ The next word had to be chosen delicately, of that much she was certain. What was it like, being that age? Eighteen felt so long ago, and yet like yesterday. All of them, victors that was, had had to grow up fast, had had their youth stolen from them. Kass was the youngest victor since Saffron Lowe and she had no friends, no family. Rebuffed Katelyn’s attempts at getting to know her until she’d given up on trying to. Maybe that had been her mistake too. One she could rectify now.

“—what’s wrong,” she repeated. “Did something happen?”

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Something had definitely happened. But Katelyn wasn’t going to press the issue. It would come out on its own. Or so she could hope. She hadn’t intended to start prepping the pie for another half hour, but she start the fudge now. “Really depends on what kind of sugar is being used.” She said with a grin. Heading out of her room and heading to the kitchen.

Once there, she took the margarine and a can of sweetened condensed milk out of the fridge and grabbed a tiny bottle of vanilla off her spice rack. “There should be a bag of chocolate chips in that cupboard,” she said, pointing with one hand as she knelt to take two pans and the roll of wax paper out. Damn! There were no nuts or marshmallows to use for the center. Oh well. Plain chocolate fudge was good too.

“I always liked cooking. I made a lot of meals for myself as a kid cause my parents were always working.” She’d always wanted to have a little bakery. Well, she’d achieved that. It had just taken longer and been harder to get to than she had anticipated at sixteen. Katelyn sighed. No time like the present. Whatever had caused this massive change in Kass's attitude aside, she needed to seize the opportunity that was given to her. “Kass, I’ve been doing some thinking,” she said after a moment.

It had been so different in the old days. The three of them against the world. Truth be told, after Harbinger she’d never expected another tribute to come home alive. “I was seventeen when I stopped being a kid. You were fourteen, but I should have treated you like an equal from the day you came back. Not as a child. Tantrums notwithstanding.”

She offered Kass a wry smile as she poured the milk into the pan. “I’m—sorry.” She held the measuring cups out to Kass. “Two tablespoons of margarine, and about 18 ounces of chocolate chips. then you can start stirring until its well mixed.” The burner clicked as she turned the dial, raising the heat slowly to get a good melt without wasting too much of the liquid. "Then I'll add the vanilla."

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Was it the right thing to say? If Katelyn was being honest with herself, she didn’t know. All she knew was that Kass was upset, in need of comfort.

And Katelyn hated to see people in pain.

Surviving the games marked you as a mentor for life. Not just for the ones that came back in coffins every year, but the ones that came back with dead eyes and wounded souls as well. She understood why so many of her peers preferred to fade into obscurity or drowned themselves in alcohol, hoping to kill or at least numb the pain and self-loathing. She knew why many of them couldn’t give their tributes the time of day.

It hurt too much too get attached. But it was something she felt she had to do. She couldn’t phone it in. Besides, what else was she going to do with her time? It wasn’t as if she had very many options. She’d always had too much heart. “Well, I wouldn’t call this normal, but I know what you mean.” She poured the vanilla into the mix as Kass stirred. If only the answers Kass was looking for were as easy to explain as fudge. She set the vanilla down and double checked for walnuts, just in case. Nothing. Katelyn leaned on the counter instead.

“For quite a few years I did nothing but try to make it worth it, you know? Because I lived. And the friends I’d made didn’t. Because I killed three kids who wanted to go home as badly as I did.” How many other victors were this open about their experiences she wondered? Most of them were trying their best to forget. A few had been able to move on entirely. Kate felt as though she were somewhere in the middle. She’d made her peace with the games, but it was often difficult to separate what had happened in the snow that week and everything that had happened afterwards because of it.

“But eventually I learned that I had to live for myself instead of my ghosts. To roll with the punches. I wouldn’t be of any help to anyone if was trapped between who I used to be and who I thought I should be.” Katelyn shook her head slightly, staring at the ground. That didn’t sound like a good enough explanation to her. Not like one of Vasco’s speeches. How to put this into words? The words that Kass was asking for? That she needed to hear?

“I can’t save the whole world, and if I spent all my time marinating in the injustices I’d never be able to function. That’s what my normal is. There will always be people who hurt others and people who are hurting. But there will also always be people who try to heal. I help where I can. Who I can. I don’t—“ The phrasing Kass had used was strange to her ears.

Selfish? Katelyn had plenty of regrets but why would she have cause to feel that way? “Sure, I have a semblance of normalcy after many years of misery. I have more than most in eleven. Really, us victors have more than practically anyone living outside of the Capitol. That being said, I wouldn't wish this life on anyone." She wouldn't. But she would still try her best to get any tributes home because once chosen for this nightmare, surviving it was the better alternative. It was why volunteers infuriated her. Being forced into this and making it out anyway was far different from choosing to put oneself in such a predicament.

"People don't get it. They don't understand what its like to watch the light leave someone's eyes while their blood stains your hands. What surviving does to you when you watch the allies that stood with you, bled with you, bled for you are reduced to faces in the sky. Or worse, when its your hands that put them there." City, Marc and Lexi. She still thought about them from time to time. "They see the money and the mansions that the capitol give us as a thanks for playing and think we revel in it like dogs patiently waiting for another treat from their master.” And perhaps for some of the career victors that was true.

"They don't see that its a cage," she continued, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice. "That its a leash and a life of indentured servitude, saying what they want, doing what they want or suffering. Watching everyone you care about suffer because of what you did or didn't do." They'd all suffered, not just Kirito and Harbinger, but Arbor. Opal. Annie. Patricia. The list was eighty-five names long, soon to be eighty-six.

“But I can help more people being Katelyn the victor than I can being Katelyn the recluse or Katelyn the detention center detainee. If that means biting my tongue when my instinct is to speak out then—“ Her gaze dropped to the fudge. It'd be ready soon. Katelyn laid a strip of wax paper down in the empty pan and smoothed it out. “—then so be it. What is selfish about that?"