martyrs and saints { alara/kitt }

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

Empty hallways would soon be filled, and the wrought iron gate that stood in front of the Cross estate would mean something different. Beggars and street performers and people who lost their homes would see my father's contract as a beacon of hope: a shining spotlight at the hearth of hopeless darkness.

I wondered if any of them read the black and white before they signed their names in blood and began to move their few possessions into our house, or if they were so excited to have a bed to call their own that they didn't bother.

I hoped they were smarter than that.

"They're here," My mother whispered from behind me. Together, we watched the first few of my father's signed souls fall perfectly into what could have been their heaven or their hell.

I hated myself for it, but I clenched my jaw and ran to open the door.

---

In the months since the contract's beginnings, all of my fears had shone through. People couldn't meet payments and suffered the consequences; others were so terrified that they tried to run away. This house had been a prison of people's expectations my entire life, and now, there were others who knew exactly what I was going through. Clean, white walls that were decorated lavishly, cabinets and freezers full of food, parents who had stayed together: It seemed like it was all too good to be true.

And that was for one reason: It was.

Dirty money that even peacekeepers seemed afraid to investigate the origin of, gunshots from the garden every blue moon. My parents were not good people. And while they had been good parents, I had not ever been able to be grateful. I hated that. I hated how things were not always black and white, good and bad. I hated gray morality and I hated how the people who had fought to give me everything in my life, it turned out, were only taking away from others.

"It is called redistribution, Kitt. Not stealing," My mother claimed, popping an apple pie into the oven. She wiped her hands on her apron while I snatched one of her unused apples. "What we give to you is rightfully yours." I rolled my eyes at her. "And before it was rightfully mine, it was rightfully someone else's." She had huffed out in that way she always did when I was right, like when she knew she had no good arguments so she acted as if I had hurt her feelings.

"Sorry," I offered, turning to leave from the kitchen. She didn't reply.

Our house seemed both bigger and smaller since the arrival of our new guests. While it was completely ordinary for me to pass at least three strangers in my own hallways before breakfast, there were two ways to look at it. There was either a lot of space occupied, which would have made it small, or there was a lot of space to be occupied, which made it big.

I turned down the left wing, where all of the contracts were staying. Most of them would be out trying to beg, borrow, and steal to keep their room and board and lives, but I saw one light on in the dark hallway. I didn't have to look in order to know whose room it was, but I told myself I did in order to have an excuse to talk to her.

I found Alara in her room, door cracked open. She carefully connected wires to other wires and tightened screws and pressed buttons on her computer. Reading spectacles sat on the bridge of her nose, and her hair was pulled back in a messy heap on top of her head. He liked seeing her like this— consumed by her craft. It was Alara in her very best element.

Here, she was an art piece, or a machine, making people cry for what she was, what she could do. Beauty in a raw form.

I leaned against the door frame, my arms crossed over my chest.

"I didn't know you wore glasses, Tink." I took a bite out of my apple, chewing it up and swallowing it before talking again.

"Are those prescription, or do you just realize how cute they make you look?"

[AJ]

A few weeks had passed since the echo of a gunshot became the only sleep Alara knew as the nightmare of her father’s death was a repeated occurrence that she couldn’t escape. Nights were spent waking in a cold sweat as her heart broke with every flashback she had to endure. No one truly understood what she was going through as she kept to herself when she was actually at the mansion. Different assignments would keep her out of the place for days on end, and she had little time to actually get to know the others that had signed their life away as well.

 

It was rare that they had gave jobs that kept people at the mansion, but her recent job consisted of spending every moment awake tinkering away of the new gadgets the Cross’ had requested within her room. Something about being able to communicate with those in other districts seemed to be their main goal, and it was an amusing task to try to actually get done. They wanted the line of communication to be untraceable with the distance outmatching even the peacemakers' gear, which was something she had never done on her own. This would have been one of those moments where she would exchange a few questions with her father until they resolved the problem, but now it was only her that had to figure out the missing piece to this never ending puzzle.

 

The tiniest of creaks sounded from her door, but it was the voice that spoke up that caused her jaw to draw in tightly. Respect was something that the Cross’ didn’t earn; they forced it. Hands kept busy with the tools and wires in front of her before she couldn’t handle the gaze that must have been resting on her any longer.

 

“And I didn’t realize you cared little for the privacy of others.” She had no reason to give him the satisfaction of drawing her attention away from her work, so she simply continued to focus on the current project assigned to her. It had been an improvement from being forced to travel halfway across the district to her family’s shop. It might have been more of an avoidance from the reminders that surrounded the place than the time that it would taken to walk there.

 

He still hovered at her door as if he expected her to give into the honey-filled tone that drew in plenty of people at the mansion, but she knew better than to become a lowly worker bee; no, she wanted to be the queen in the end and giving into him would prevent that from happening.

 

“Are you keen on wasting your time bothering those that could careless for your presence?” Alara asked sharply with eyes finally darting from the small tools in her hand to him. Kit knew where he belonged in this scheme; above everyone else. He knew that all he had to do was exist, and his family would be able to carry him along. In truth, they were one in the same as their families could provide anything they wanted if they only asked, but unlike herself, he didn’t have to lose a father in the process.

 

Alara had been devastated after her father’s death as the potential of reconciliation was taken with a single bullet and threats of more to follow. What more could they take from her that would actually hurt her? Her mother meant little to her in regards to having to watch her die as her father had, and her own life was already a countdown to when the games would take her or starvation. She was not naive in the reality of which she lived, so it made little change to her actions when it came to what she did or didn’t do as of late.

 

To look at him was to give into the part of herself that she denied; he gave way for unknown possibilities or revenge, if that was what she honestly sought after. He could be the last act of her life as to kill him would surely mean the end of her own. However, the concept of being the reason for someone’s life to end was far too heavy for her to take on at this time, so she simply chose to ignore him altogether unless ( like this moment ) he came to her.

 

“We are not supposed to get along, Kitt,” Alara mused quietly before finally breaking her gaze from him to look back at the gadgets on the table. She hated how she wanted to have a friend in the house as much as she wished to be alone. “You make it hard to keep up this act.” She pulled the glasses from her face before setting them down on the table, spinning her chair to face him directly. “Are you seeking company or quick conversation? I am unsure I would be good at either today.”

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

Whiskey memories and hollow streets and night time with Damion Mercury were once a god-like gift that I cherished more than the money and the gifts and school and practically anything I could think of. One step behind him, my feet falling in his tracks as I watched him for approval but prayed he didn't notice.

My friendship with Damion had been a drain, whirlpools swallowing up my attention and focus until only the skeleton I started with was left. A rooftop and some stars, and a stupid argument were all it had taken for the limbs of our fate to unwind and grow toward separate suns, and the KC he had tattooed onto my wrist and my memories were the only things I had left of him.

I pulled my sleeve down, held the edge of it in my palm just to make sure I didn't accidentally see it. My eyes and Tink's. She looked at me like I belonged under beds and in closets, and she had every right to hate me— I would have, too.

"And I didn’t realize you cared little for the privacy of others."

Open doors brought unwelcome guests. I had my mouth open to speak the words before stopping myself. She hated me because of the situation. She hated me because of my status. Because I was a boy who didn't die, I was a boy who was bronzed and put outside public libraries, and she was once a girl who would have stood next to me.

But she did not hate me because I had ever actually done anything to her, and I couldn't give her the satisfaction. Pursing my lips, I knocked on the door as if to make things better.

It didn't.

"Are you keen on wasting your time bothering those that could care less for your presence?"

I took another step into the room, picking up a metal whatever-it-was, tossing it into the air as I snatched another bite of my apple.

"Quite the contrary," I said, peering down at what she was working on: a prosthetic leg that seemed more advanced than probably anything I had seen. "I tend not to dwell on lost causes—" not that she was one, but— I hadn't ever met someone so set on hating me, was all.

I came to a stop behind her. "But I've decided to branch out."

I sat the metal contraption down on her desk.

"I don't usually have to work this hard to make a person like me, you know," However, when one's parents killed someone else's, some discomfort seemed perfectly within the realm of possibilities as far as the aftertaste was concerned.

"We are not supposed to get along, Kitt," I smiled down at her. That was fair. Hell, that was logical. There was a poetry in her honesty, an art to her clenched fists. I wondered who we would have been under a different light, if we would have been friends, or if we had been doomed to parallel, never cross, from the moment the stars kissed us goodbye and laid us to bed on earth.

"You make it hard to keep up this act," she said. I took a step back from her, hoping she didn't see the discomfort in my face.

Damion Mercury's black hair in his face, backdrop of city lights. I could still smell his damn infusion of aftershave and cigarette smoke. His mouth opened and I had hoped for something that did not come. What had come instead was unexpected, an icy bite that left me shattered and confused and lonely— my own fault.

("You make it hard to keep up this act."
"Then don't."
"We can't, Kitt.")

Then don't, I wanted to say, because maybe this time would be different. Trembling lips, and I still remembered the feeling I felt after storming away when I realized he wasn't following me.

I snapped back, smile returning to my face. Apparently she hadn't noticed, because she was already speaking again: "Are you seeking company or quick conversation? I am unsure I would be good at either today."

A step forward. Bite from my apple—

"I didn't ask you to," I said.

[AJ]

A singular knock against her door seemed to satisfy him more than her in his attempts to undo what had already been done. Her privacy had already been taken from her, and though her door had been open, she wished there was still an ounce of respect left somewhere in the house that would have caused someone to keep walking than to pry. 

She hurt more than she let on as everything she knew was crumbling down around her faster than she could grasp it ; moments slipping between her fingers and crashing to the floor before they could go anywhere. This was one of those moments she would have gladly let slip from her grasp as Kitt was dangerous to the person she was trying to become. 

{ She hated him ; no, she hated his family. }

 

Everything they stood for seemed to be found upon the foundation that consisted of the struggles of others and the desperation that came from needing more than you had. She had been escaping a life where she was nothing ; simply hands that got work done for people that should have loved her but didn't. She escaped the 'nothing' that was her life before for the little freedom that came from saying she no longer had to answer to them, but it's hard to see a difference when you leave nothing for nothing. 

It was one of the many reasons she even reached out for the contract she's now a part of. Kitt was the single factor that was not supposed to exist as he seemed to be fueled in a similar way to herself, and she grew to actually search out for him when her days grew too lonely to bear.

"Quite the contrary, I tend not to dwell on lost causes—" Yet you're still here. Alara was thankful that he couldn't see her face because she smiled ; a small smile that showed amusement more than anything else. "—but I've decided to branch out." For me. If she were someone that allowed such silly words to affect her, she would swear that this would have been a moment where her cheeks flushed a pale red before a teasing laugh fell from her lips. 

He was closer to her than he ever had been before, and she could feel her skin burning ; unlike a blush but rather a fire that he could ignite within her.

Unfortunately, she couldn't place value in words when it was so easy to let them slip from your lips. It was actions that could get such an emotional response from her ; actions that showed how much a person actually cared for her. No one had made any attempt in her entire life to do something that actually captured her heart for more than a second, and she realized that she was playing easily into Kitt's hand ( though, she swears she didn't mind it ).

He surprised her with what came next as some amount of truth spewed from his lips because even she knew it to be true. "I don't usually have to work this hard to make a person like me, you know." She didn't have to look far to see how easily many within the district fell for his words before they ever had a chance to fall for him. Kitt had never been given a reason to put effort into getting to know someone because there were surely others out there that could replace them, but still – here he was day after day trying to get closer to her. 

An attempt to busy herself again fell short when he suddenly stepped away from her, giving her the opportunity to turn her chair around towards him. He must have been caught up in a memory because his eyes didn't meet her this time ; they seemed to be looking off in the distance at a time she couldn't understand yet or know. Her palms pushed into the arms of the chair to bring her closer to his level with curious eyes watching him intently.

"Curious boy, where is your mind?" The question fell from her lips before she could stop herself, and she almost hated that she even allowed herself to ask it. His lips soon trembled and her hand reached up before she stopped herself from fully touching his face. Her hand hovered so close that she might as well have completed the gesture, but there was the unknown of what happened once she did finally give into him. 

Her own words seemed to be a plea for him to reach out and touch her, but instead, he put up another wall between them that they didn't need to exist. She wanted some fight to be within him to get her to care for him, but it was a constant back-and-forth wave of emotions that kept them from closing the distance entirely.

"I didn't ask you to." She pulled her hand back down to her side at his response and turned back to her desk. "Of course, you didn't. How foolish of me to think you actually came here for more than a quick tease—" She looked desperately at some excuse to get him out of her room, but there was nothing that could save her from herself.

Yes, she could have ran from him in this moment and shut out all possibilities that there could be someone out there that wanted to get to know her for more than her name, but here they were in a situation that she had never been a part of before. 

"You never ask for anything, Kitt. It's what you do. You never have to ask because you are just given everything. How amazing that kind of life must be? You really have to take the time to fill me in on such luxuries." A single step forward for them meant that two steps back were close in the distance, and her words were affirming that aspect of their relationship thus far.

Once she finished, Alara allowed herself to turn back towards him with a heavy expression that was the only form of an apology he would ever get from her. "You can get out now." There it was ; the dagger that found itself on her tongue right when progress was being made. Her words might have been telling him to leave, but her eyes were pleading for him to stay ; a contradiction she wished never existed.