haunted /ky 86th

Grief isn't all that heavy, he realizes. It's just always in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hides in cupboards in the very back, a chipped bowl that he dropped when he was six years old, reminding him of the night he saw his dad die on screen. A simple wine glass that he'd stuck a little jade pendent on last year to tell the cups apart when he took Emmett to the Thirteenth floor. Grief has too many shapes.

The sound of digital waves crashing onto a shore made of code wake him up in the middle of his sleep. When he opens his eyes, the ground is cold and hard beneath him and the sun is rising in front of him across dozens of window screens. He can't remember coming here, or why, but no one even bothered to clean up the picnic from last year. A half-drunk wine bottle still sat next to that cute wicker basket he'd stolen from Opal's room. The blanket was still there and Ky just gazes at it.

He isn't mourning Emmett anymore.

He hasn't realized until now that the heavy thing that's been anchoring him to the earth isn't grief, just disguised as it. It was fooling him too easily, or maybe he's been letting it because a great excuse to be sad is to be grieving. The usual signs just haven't been there, at least he hasn't noticed them if they are. Maybe he's been quieter lately, maybe a little bit more avoidant.

It's always so easy to disappear a little bit when they go to the Capitol, Opal always has so many obligations and he can become less of one. He writes notes sometimes, little things like, 'gone exploring' or 'with beck' and he leaves them stuck to the back of the door. Sitting alone on the thirteenth floor hardly counts for either of them but he has to conserve his energy somehow so that when he gets back, he can paste a smile on for his mom, one bright enough to try and match her own.

Ignoring the District One tributes didn't work either. When they died, all the lights were off on the first floor and Ky sat in the darkness, trying to figure out how to stop tears from streaming down his cheeks. The sudden fear of an empty carriage on the train ride home, opening the door to the District One platform to a sombre district and watching as they unloaded two caskets for burial hit him all at once.

Vallora and Alistair are set to become just two more names immortalised into the tiles of the Earnest greenhouse. Ky feels guilt for not knowing them, guilt when he knows them too well, it feels like he can't win.

He should probably talk to someone, at least see one other person today. The idea's there but the momentum isn't. He sits still, even as rays of sunshine from the outside leak in to paint his skin with stripes of gold.

The wish to call Asher rises again, to just hear his voice and listen to him tell a stupid story but calling Asher a friend is maybe a bit of a reach. Ky's just worried still about that expression on his face after the reaping. He'd never seen a look like that from him before and now that he has, he can't stop thinking about it.

But taking a step forwards, making any decision, it all seems like too much. Loving anyone, being anything at all except a witness, it seems like too much.

He remembers his mom asking him why, "why won't you speak, baby?" when he went through his first year of silence. He didn't have an answer for her then. Now he understands better, that opening his mouth is a trial, that he's afraid of what might spill out if he does. There are so many secrets he's held for years, so many silent fears that press on him, he can't wade through them all.

His medication makes it all easier.

When he opens the vial, he counts just eight pills left but that doesn't seem right. He brought enough for two weeks and then some. Ky counts them again, more carefully this time. Oh, nine.

Then two this time should be alright.