jesus, mary magdalene you are, are you okay? / kaitlin

[goat]

theola mckenzie

My mother says that killers are sinners, and that they’re all going to hell. I want to tell her that Ripred also kills. In fact, I could claim that every death in this world is on His hands. Sure, other people can cause death, but He created it in the first place. He is a killer just as much as the children in the games are. I would never dare bring this up to her, though, as I’m sure she’d have a fit thinking I was assuming that I know more about Ripred than she does.

I have to leave the house after dinner. The air is becoming suffocating, bearing down on me like bricks on my chest, more so than usual. I wish I could run away, but I know my mother would find me. She always finds me. There is no escape from her, and if my sisters have shown me anything, it’s that there never will be.

I end up walking to the church. There’s no service today, but the doors are unlocked and open, so people can still come and go as they please. The inside is illuminated only by a row of lit candles near the front. I settle in one of the back pews and lean forward with my hands clasped. Please, Ripred. Get me out of here. I know you better than my mother does. I know you are kind and merciful and would never condemn me which is why you need to get me out—

A noise snaps me out of my frantic prayer. I turn my attention toward the set of double doors that open into the garden. It’s a community garden tended to by members of the church, with vines and flowers and stone statues of biblical figures. The older members love to sit out there and play cards, but I didn’t see anyone in it when I walked over. I stand up and walk toward the open door. I expect to see one of the older ladies who always brings cookies to share after service, but instead I find Nico Thorne. Victor of the 81st Hunger Games, here in District 8 on his victory tour. Killer of Jayne Ashbrook-Laws, Raven Elsu, and Diana Sayers. I watch the games just like everybody else does. I know who he is. Still, is that all he is? According to my mother, it is.

I should walk away, go back to the pew I was sitting in and talk to Ripred some more, but there’s something I need to settle. Not for my mother, but for me. I know I shouldn’t— after all, I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me— but I’m already marching over, my shoulders set straight and my hands clenched into fists at my side. I stop in front of him, planting my feet firm on the ground.

“I know you,” I say to him. “My mother says you’re a sinner, but I’m smarter than she is.”

The wind blows aimlessly as the setting sun turns the leaves around us orange. “Unless you are, and I’m wrong.”

But I don’t want my mother to be right.


[ title from cocaine jesus ]

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

   

n i c o  t h o r n e

Nico can see the ghosts everywhere.

Ever since he first stepped foot outside of the arena—fuck, even inside of that forsaken place, he had felt them lingering all around him. They clung to his fingertips like he was their last lifeline, like somehow, in some universe, someone was telling him that he would be their savior, that he was the one who would bring them back. Or maybe it was something worse than that, something infinitely more terrible. Maybe he could feel the ghost of Myrcella clinging to his skin because he had failed her, because he had disappointed her, because he hadn't been the cannon fodder she needed to protect herself in the arena. Maybe even in death, she hates him for what he couldn't do. He likes to think about Francis in the sun, but then every single moment that passes where the sun in not shining, Nico cannot help but feel like perhaps it is because Francis has forsaken him, too, realized that his love was misplaced.

That, just perhaps, the hands of a killer had never deserved to touch his skin, to trace the curve of his eyebrow or the little dip above his lips. When Nico feels the ghosts, it's like he stops knowing how to breathe. He'd stood on that stage, giving his speech—too practiced, too well-memorized, nearly the same one that he had given in the past three districts—and he's looked out over the crowd and seen the faces of Damaris and Stanley, and he'd sworn he could feel them all the way down to his bones. He had thought he would come apart at the seams, felt his body tremble and his breathing quicken. He'd remembered that first morning in the bloodbath, running for his life, before he had lost both of his limbs—Stanley had been the very first person to swing out at him, though he'd avoided the boy with ease, ducked out of the way and kept on running. He'd run and run and run that morning, trying to find Myra, trying to find Jess, trying to find Francis. He had barely remembered Stanley swinging out at him at first, couldn't remember his name or his face until he'd seen it painted across the night sky in bold letters and a pixelated canvas.

He'd never forgotten it since.

Damaris was both worse and better.

With Stanley, his ghost was quiet, not quite there, a faint humming at the edges. He didn't know his voice, didn't know him, but Nico had horrible memories of Damaris. He remembers her as kind, remembers her as cruel, remembers the blood that she spilled and the boy that she had allied with. He remembers her apology, remembers her frustration and anger when Nico met her regret with nothing but barbed wire and a caustic tongue.

She had been kind, and he had been cruel, but she was an enemy, and when she died he had been glad for it.

And her ghost in his bones had matched his cruelty tenfold.

In his dreams, he is the villain, slits her throat time and time again. Sometimes he stands by and watches as that horrible skeleton creature jabs its tusk through her throat, or her eye, or the side of her head. Sometimes he is the one that holds her still and makes sure that the creature spiked claws can reach their way across her throat. In all of them, he remembers her apology, over and over and over again she says I'm sorry, and Nico laughs in her face and lets Death claim her. He sits in this garden now, the private one outside the church, not because he believes in Ripred, but perhaps because he especially does not.

And perhaps it's one the place no one has bothered him.

Until now.

“I know you,” a voice says, and when Nico looks up his vision is a halo of blonde. Her hair shines in the sun, bright and otherworldly, as light as can possibly be. It's almost as bright as Nico's stylist wants to color his hair, all sun-bleached and horrible. Something tells Nico that this intruders is real though, that she wouldn't be allowed the freedom to change who she is on the outside, but he can never be sure. “My mother says you’re a sinner," she goes on, and any kindness that Nico might have built up over these last moments of quiet vanish, "but I’m smarter than she is.” Nico has to clench his jaw, wonder why this girl has approached him, why she believes he's not a sinner but wanted to tell him that her mother knows that he is. “Unless you are, and I’m wrong,” she goes on, and Nico has to inhale slowly, close his eyes and tip his head back, let the rays of midday kiss his cheeks as the wind carries burning leaves all along on the breeze.

If the sun weren't out, he thinks he would have run.

If the sun weren't out, then Jayne would win. He would hear Fuck you, Nico Thorne and Who hurt you? echo over and over. He would lose himself in the memory of Damaris's regret and his own cruelty. He would vanish into the grey and into the anger and the despair and the cruelty, and he might not come back out.

But Francis is with him, and instead, he is patient.

Well, as patient as he knows how to be.

"You don't sound very sure of yourself," he says, opening his eyes, exhaling the breath he had collected in his chest. It's a calming action, one he's trying to practice. "Am I a sinner? Or are you smarter than her?"

A cloud shifts, and the sun is too bright, blinding, and he wonders absently if it's Francis trying to scold him. I'm not being cruel, he thinks. Be kinder, he hears in response.

"And you should probably figure out the answer before walking up to a killer next time."

The sun rolls his eyes.

1,005.

[goat]

theola mckenzie

I stand and watch him, the shifting of his jaw, the way the sun beams down onto his skin. I wonder if he’s going to say anything, or if he’s just going to leave me standing here looking like an idiot. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. He’s under no obligation to speak to me, I know this, but I want to know, I want to be right.

“You don't sound very sure of yourself,” he says, after exhaling a deep breath. “Am I a sinner? Or are you smarter than her?”

I don’t know, I think. That’s why I asked you.

“And you should probably figure out the answer before walking up to a killer next time.”

I guess he’s right. What an impulsive decision for me to be making. It’s part of my whole new mild rebellion thing. Still, I’m not used to acting like this, what with the memory of my mother’s hand striking across my face still fresh in my mind. I can only imagine how angry she’d be if she saw what I was doing right now. I don’t care what she thinks of me, but I do think I’m a little afraid of what would happen if she found out. She would say, you shouldn’t interact with people who don’t know the things we know. They don’t understand our lifestyle. They want to change us. They’ll take you away from me, is that what you want? Do you want to live amongst all those sinners?

I don’t know what I want, mother. Now, fuck off, please, I’m trying to do something.

“There’s a difference between being a killer and being a sinner.” I say it so matter-of-factly, like it’s a fact set in stone, like it isn’t just one of the many things in scripture that seem to be up for endless debate, but it’s a fact to me, and I suppose that’s all that should matter. “People read over the scriptures once and think they know everything. Or they don’t read them at all and get all their information from the people who’ve read them once.”

I cross my arms over my chest, a bold move, trying to look tougher than I actually am. I hate having such a need to prove myself, but the need is there and I have to satisfy it. “I don’t think killing when you have to makes you a bad person. That’s just survival. It’s the people who sit around and watch children kill each other, or who hoard wealth and sit at the top of the food chain while everyone else starves. They’re the bad people. The sinners. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of Ripred, you know.”

He probably doesn’t. It’s not his fault. Not everybody is forced to memorize scripture from the day they started reading. The verses swirl around my brain and dare me to spit them out, but I never want to. I don’t like throwing them into the faces of people, not like my mother does, but I guess sometimes you have to if you want to prove your point. But isn’t that why my mother does it? Or does she does it because she thinks Ripred wants her to? I don’t know, and I’m not going to ask her, and I’m done worrying about whether or not I’m acting too much like my mother. Right now, I’m acting like myself. “So there. I am sure of myself.”

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

   

n i c o  t h o r n e

She's a strange one, that much Nico is sure of almost immediately.

She radiates light and warmth, blinding and bright, there's no doubt about it, but there's something about her that Nico can't put his finger on. She barely flinches when he calls himself a killer, and he wishes desperately that she would have. He thinks, just maybe, that he needs her to have, needs her to want to run away from him, to see him for the dark and rotten thing that he's afraid he's turned into. He needs this blonde little girl to look at him and see his sins, and he needs her to call him out on them. He needs her to condemn him just so that he can finally know, so that he can finally understand what is and what is not. He needs her to put him in the ground, to bury him alive and leave him breathless.

But she doesn't.

And he hates her for it.

“There’s a difference between being a killer and being a sinner,” she says with such conviction, breezing over the fact that he's just called himself a murderer like it's nothing. He supposes, in a way, that he's a dime a dozen. After all, weren't all victors the same in that way? Even Eight had their victor, Shelby Leviane. Maybe this girl is right, and there's a difference between the blood on his hands and the blood on the hands of the man who had killed his father, but Nico can't be sure. “People read over the scriptures once and think they know everything. Or they don’t read them at all and get all their information from the people who’ve read them once," the stranger goes on, and as much as she is trying to comfort him, trying to get to know him and make him understand her way of thinking, all she does is make things worse. This girl, with her gilded conviction, seems so sure, seems so confident, but Nico can't bring himself to feel the same. Every time he tries to think about forgiving himself, for giving up on all his fears and his anger and his sadness and just granting himself with absolution, he thinks about how glad he was when Diana Sayers fell to the ground dead. He thinks about how it felt, holding the back of her neck as he whispered in his ear that she was going to die, and that he was going to win. That he already had.

This girl, she has her convictions, but Nico has his violence, and he thinks that one will always win out over the other.

He's looking at her hard, but she doesn't hide and she doesn't cower, doesn't even shrink into herself like so many other people would. The entire world had been forced to watch Nico as he shoved a pitchfork through a young girls' face, had watched as he tried to slit two other girls throats and burned one to the ashes he thought she belonged to. This girl had to be the same, had to know exactly the unkindness that Nico was capable of, would have seen him exchange barbed wire words with Diana Sayers and call himself a villain and a king, yet still, she crosses her arms in front of her like a shield and stands tall. “I don’t think killing when you have to makes you a bad person. That’s just survival," she goes on, and Nico can feel every single nerve ending in his body, feels like a boy on fire and at any moment he is going to crumble the same way that Diana had. He hates this girl, hates her for asking all the questions that Nico is horribly terrified of, all of the ones that make him want to curl up in the earth and find Francis one more time in the sun. Fuck you, Nico Thorne, he hears over and over and over again, echoing in the back of his head as he tries to listen to every single one of this girls words. She's saying what he should want to hear, that who he killed doesn't matter, that he was just trying to survive.

But he wanted Diana Sayers dead.

There's no taking that back.

She doesn't stop there though, just keeps going and going, making everything worse that should be better. "It’s the people who sit around and watch children kill each other, or who hoard wealth and sit at the top of the food chain while everyone else starves," she says, echoing every thought that Nico has ever had. Is that what the source of the pain is then? The source of the anger? That he has spent his entire life condemning the exact same people, those who stood by and watched as he starved every day? "They’re the bad people. The sinners. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of Ripred, you know.”

He doesn't know, not really, has never been religious and he has no interest in it now, but he does understand that condemnation. He's thought about it for years, how all of his problems come from those stupid fucking people everyone loves to glorify and praise, those capitolites who make the laws about not being allowed to go past the borders, but then take the strawberries he used to pluck without question. He hates everyone who could have assisted him through the years but refused to, and he has always been outspoken about that. Had that not been his reaction when he was reaped? Anger that he could not even volunteer? That the Capitol had even taken that agency from him? He can feel himself spiraling, wishes that this place could have stayed a sanctuary. He pushes up from the bench that he's sitting on, and is startled by how much taller he is than this girl.

“So there. I am sure of myself,” she says, and Nico's chest fills with air as he inhales deeply, frustrated with himself and with his anger and his unjustified rage and his confusion and just—everything.

Everything aches.

He has limbs where limbs don't belong, a right hand where he lost one and a left leg that shouldn't be there. He has metal in his veins and a face free of scars, a pristine boy with a dark heart that's been broken too many times.

"The fuck do you need from me then?" he says, chin tilted down so that he can look directly at her. "You just talked circles around yourself, convinced yourself that you're right, so what does it matter? What do you need me for?" What does anyone need me for? hangs in the back of his throat, swallowed dry. He doesn't know her, but he knows that she probably thinks she knows him, knows that the entire fucking world thinks that it knows him. The angry one, he knows Myrcella used to call him in her head. Does the rest of the world see that from him, too? That untamed and feral thing that he had always been, is that still who he is now? A wolf without his pack, is that who he is now? Is that who he will be? "Maybe you're right that not all killers are sinners, but when your precious Hope died, I was glad that it meant her ally was alone, that he was vulnerable and I might be able to ram a blade into his throat before he could ram one in mind. I still dream about killing her myself." He fists are clenched at his side now, and he can feel the place where his nails are digging into his palms.

"You people," he starts, head shaking, not even know what he means by the generalization, just knowing that anyone who had never been a tribute was one kind of person, and those reaped were entirely another. "You think just because I didn't volunteer that I wasn't glad when Diana was dead? All you're sure about are fucking theoreticals. You don't even know if the kingdom of Ripred is real or a ruse."

1,373.

[goat]

theola mckenzie

“The fuck do you need from me then?” He stares down at me, and I feel like I need to take a step backward, but I don’t. “You just talked circles around yourself, convinced yourself that you're right, so what does it matter? What do you need me for?”

“I just— I wanted to know,” I start, but then I think, I don’t really know what I wanted to know. I wanted to know that I was right, wanted to know that I was smart, wanted to know that somebody other than myself believed what I was saying. Everybody thinks they’re the most right person. I did, and I shouldn’t have. Is this who I am? I don’t know. The more I think about it, about everything, the more I think that I don’t know anything.

He talks about Damaris, how he was glad her ally was alone when she died, how he has dreams about killing her. He says it like he’s trying to hurt me, but I didn’t know her. I mean, I knew her family, her reputation. We all did. But I didn’t know her.

“You people,” he says, and then he’s talking down to me just like everybody else does. Of course he would, he doesn’t know me, he has no reason to believe me or anything I’m saying. He’s going to finish his victory tour and never come back to Eight and forget that this conversation ever happened. I have no reason to be upset about this. If I keep telling myself I have no reason to be upset about this, I won’t be upset. “You think just because I didn't volunteer that I wasn't glad when Diana was dead? All you're sure about are fucking theoreticals. You don't even know if the kingdom of Ripred is real or a ruse.”

He’s not wrong. In fact, he’s more right than I want him to be. I pause, and then I bite down hard on my bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood. I want to lose my temper, to be angry. My mother yells, hits, brings books down onto my hands and spits her own twisted version of scripture into my face. I don’t want to be like that. I am bitter and angry but I do not want to be like that, so I dig my teeth into my lip and let myself bleed.

“I prayed for them,” I tell him. “Damaris and Stanley. I prayed for one of them to come home. I prayed for all the tributes. I asked Ripred to make sure they didn’t pass in too much pain, and that the people who loved them could heal someday. I don’t know if He listened, but I asked Him anyway.”

The blood in my mouth tastes like old metal, like every regret I’ve ever had. “But you didn’t die. So I didn’t pray for you. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t need the regret of some random girl he’ll never speak to again, but it’s all I have. I think, why do I need to give him anything? Because the scriptures want me to? Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Ripred. Well, nobody has ever offered to carry my fucking burdens. I guess that’s what Ripred does, being concerned for others and expecting nothing in return. I’d rather be like that. Better than being selfish and only being concerned with your virtue.

I shrug and flip my hair off my shoulder, trying to be all blasé and unbothered, but after I think I just look like an asshole. “I don’t know if the kingdom of Ripred is real, okay? I don’t even know if I believe in it. But I do know that I believe in forgiveness. So you can believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I believe.”