where the children go {Kass & Kirito}

[Arrows]

White coats. The constant smell of disinfectant. Every inch of the white walls are meticulously managed. Every single segment of tile scrubbed by servant hands. And wandering through the pristine halls, a never-ending chorus of mechanical chirps serenades its ailing occupants. Kirito has spent hours studying science and uncovering the methods to preserving life inside this very institute, but today is different. As he walks past familiar faces with Sonja snuggled into the curves of his chest, he feels foreign.

He feels fear.

An announcement over the intercom attracts the young father's attention from fixing his daughter's hair to watching as a squad of surgeons surges by. On another day he may have asked to follow them, to be granted the privileges to practice alongside them. He would be thinking of home, of what he could bring back to the rolling hills of gold and those who suffer beneath the waves of wheat. But all his focus fixes inward, for once allowing itself to be selfish. He places a soft kiss on Sonja's head.

The desk Kirito and his family find themselves at is circular and cluttered with chaos. Charts and records rumble through various sets of fingers as digital databases are updated by manual input. Luckily the face of Kirito's own Doctor emerges from the medical arena. Both relief and panic pierce the victor's heart as he greets her with a small smile.

"Miristioma, Kirito. Tower Three, floor six, room 618."

Her words are as confident as the personality which originally captured Kirito's trust. In a matter of moments, a bracelet is printed and placed on Kirito's arm in exchange for Sonja given over to Oasis in a reluctant release. He feels almost worse for what he is putting them through, all of them. The panic Oasis is surely settling beneath the surface of her skin. The blinding worry which roughens the waters of Anastasia's eyes. The subtle shaking Sonja seems to be sharing with her Dad. How could he have lived just to possibly die in front of them?

"How are you today, Kirito? The symptoms?"

His Doctor's question steals him away from his internal inquiry.

"Oh, uh, I'm alright. Just tired and have a bit of a headache."

Her eyes seem to analyze every slight fidget of his facial features, just like he would do. She really is good. It's reassuring.

"What about the tremors and nausea?"

His eyes drop to his left hand subtly shaking by his side. She nods and makes a note. Ripred, how he wishes he could just wake up. Find Ikaia and Ma sleeping in the same single room. It was simpler then, wasn't it? But when he looks at his kids and at Oasis, he knows he really would do it all again. Even if this is the last place he'll see.

Anastasia clings to Kirito's sweat pants as he begins to follow a nurse towards his new room on a secluded floor. However, he stops and places her small hand of soft lavender into her Mom's before turning towards their guide. He has other things he has to do first.

"If you'll excuse me, I have to go see my trib... District's newest victor. I know the way to tower six, I'll meet my family in my room soon."

The further from the main corridors Kirito wanders, the stronger the silence grows. Then it's there, absolute silence except for the faintest flickering sound of a single heart monitor. A pack of peace keepers assigned to protecting the most private wing of the hospital nearly tackle Kirito when they first see him. Out of his normal Capitol visiting attire, custom suits, he is almost unrecognizable in his light cream shirt and grey sweats. However, they soon do recognize the victor of the 70th Hunger Games and let him enter the ward of rebirth, a ward only those who have survived know.

The ward with a single room.

It's been only a few hours since Kass has been cleared for visitors, therefore, Kirito believes he is first from home to come see her. A flurry of odd emotions erupts into the older victor's mind as he steps into the same room he once shared over a decade ago. He hasn't stepped foot in this room since Harbinger won, and she is no where near as large as he was in the bed. She seems almost like a shadow within the sheets of white, strikingly similar to how he suspects he appeared to Katelyn. She's almost the same age as Anastasia and yet she has suffered so much already. Kirito knows that a fire burns fiercely within her, but the girl who's room he entered now is not the same as the one who left ten days ago for the arena.

Her history might say she's an orphan, but he won't let her be alone again like she was in the final moments of the Games.

He adjusts a chair shakily by her bedside before slowly setting himself into the seat.

"We don't have to talk, if you don't want to."

Kirito crosses his arms across the nearest rail of her bed.

"But I'd just like to be here with you, if that's okay?"

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[sbeeg]

Mackenzie leaves and she realizes how lonely the hospital room is. She's grateful he came to her. The sterile room and honest hum of machines reminds her of the Arena she just escaped. The space station that claimed twenty three lives before it opened to spit her out.

Had she truly seen the stars? She tosses her head across her pillow, eyes searching the walls for a glimpse of the sky but there are no windows here in the belly of the training center. Don't want to have any victors hopping off the sill.

The coldness of the mist still wraps around her ankles, the recycled air still dry in her lungs. Were the little blinking lights actual stars? Had she been so close to them? Or was it like this hospital room, closed off from the world and controlled.

The air in her room had the same sharpness that bit at her lungs as in the arena. The air in District Eleven was warm, a lot of the times humid. It never felt like this, like needles poking at your organs.

They built it all. All the stories, all the letters. They built a society and flipped it upside down just for her to crawl through the wreckage. They tortured lives that never existed just to make the journey harder.

The door opened.

Kirito enters looking not at all like himself. She knows his face, he's been a victor for as long as she can remember. Always shown off on the reaping stage alongside Persimmon and Harbinger. A constant witness to the district's pain. And here he was, welcoming her to their vigil.

"We don't have to talk, if you don't want to. But I'd just like to be here with you, if that's okay?"

He took a seat and Kass watched him. He looked horrible. Like he had been apart of the arena with her and yet he'd been in Eleven in his comfortable victor house. Her first instinct was to consult her cards, to read out what his future path might be.

But she didn't trust her cards, not after winning.

"You're sick." She meant is as a question but it came out as a fact. She didn't know Kirito, he was a decades older than her and had barely spoken at all on the train up to the Capitol. Kass had been so occupied with Persimmon she had shrugged off the other victors.

If he was sick, he shouldn't be around Kass. People had a bad habit of dying around her.

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