displaced distance /

In the end it was the feeling of death on his back that got him. Anxiety pushed him right down into the confines of his bedsheets and when he opened his eyes again, they were on the train home. Opal was sat across from him, glowing with something other than sadness for once and even though he should have been happy, for a solid ten minutes he hated her.

With every fibre of his being, Ky fucking hated her.

He couldn't say why that was, he smiled and nodded at her anyway when she spoke. Her words filtered through disjointed and he only caught every second one. Sweat pooled between his shoulders and Ky stared out the window mostly. The first year back, he'd been amazed by the seemingly endless countryside that they'd passed through. The horizon had seemed so far away then, the possibilities had seemed endless.

Ky saw it for what it really was fast. Looking at the endless, empty fields was a promise of grandeur, of wealth that would never be theirs. Allowing them to see it was just a show of power. For all of his privilege as the child of a victor, Ky was unlucky. He had the pleasure of viewing his cage from the outside.

And what kind of maniac brings a child into a world like theirs?

Most of the train ride home was spent in silence, Ky having excused himself to another section of seats in the train car pleading a headache. His mouth was too dry no matter how much water he drank, the pills he'd been taking for pain relief long gone. He'd blown through them too fast.

Arriving home, victorless, had been quiet as always. The sun had already set, the lights in their home dark. The days were short with winter. Valerian was in the backyard with a campfire going. Ky'd sat with him for a few moments, the awkward feeling between them always present. He didn't blame Val for resenting him, he just wished he knew how to make it stop.

But he'd always been shit with words.

So he'd gone inside and sat outside the study in the dark, listening to Opal talk to Kaitlin through the door. He was old enough for her to be gone for six months of the year. Maybe she'd be happy down in Eleven, in a way that she never had been in One. Maybe Ky resented her a little bit for that too.

He'd stood in the closet when she hung up, not wanting to talk. His eyes stung, bad, his lips were too heavy. His brain wasn't working anyway, he didn't know why he didn't just go to his room but when Opal left the study, he slipped in and locked the door behind him, eyes on the phone.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, he stumbled against the stupid ornate desk, hitting his knee hard. "Shit," he breathed.

People would still be awake, probably. It was late. He half-dialled for Teddy first, wishing for that gentle voice of reason. "Anytime you need me, alright?" he'd offered. Ky hung-up three digits in and rested his cheek on the desk. His skin was too warm, the dial tone too loud and he wasn't even worth the effort, he wasn't a victor, he hadn't been through half the shit a victor had, he was just a little bitch of a victor's son.

Beck never seemed to mind him so he rested a hand on the phone, his number the first one he'd memorized. He didn't click any of them though. Beck was going through enough without Ky bothering him. It was easy to convince himself that he'd just be being a nuisance.

He hadn't heard from Asher since the reaping.

He had nightmares about it anyway, twisted things where no one had volunteered for Asher, where he'd sat across from him on the train. In his dreams, it'd seemed normal. It hadn't bothered him, it'd made sense.

The scar on his torso, that stabbing from Tatton and the rescue from Asher, all of it was just as real. It was getting hard to separate all of it, increasingly pointless to sift through.

Ky left the study behind. The house was dark, the backyard too. Valerian and Opal had to both be asleep already. Maybe he should have been concerned about the lost time, more worried that what had felt like ten minutes had been two hours. Time stretched oddly, disjointed and noncommital as if Ky realizing that time didn't matter had made it so.

His room was stifled, quiet. His bed was made well, everything tidy because he always had been. No one had taught him that, he'd just always been quiet, good, obedient.

Ky pushed the window open, and was met with a light drizzle. The street was quiet, the few other occupied homes quiet too. Ky gazed down the street, back towards the district centre, eyes searching the darkness for the shape of a boy. There was no one though, of course not.

Of course not.

He sat with his back against his bedroom door, the cold let in by the open window quickly making him numb. It was a departure inside of him that kept him from getting up to close it, a sort of hope he didn't have the right to carry.

But did.