judgement | katelyn&kass

[sbeeg]

We know what we're doing
We are here to help you
Everything's connected

Kass ran down the stairs from the roof, leaping over the steps two at a time. She kept going until her heel hit a concrete edge and she fell down the final steps to the landing.

She was crying. Why did he have to do that? Why did Delroy have to make her feel this way? Her metal fingers curled into a fist and she slammed it into the stone. She wished it hurt.

Maybe it wasn't that terrible of a thing to want. Security. Comfort.

No one would blame her for savoring it. Her life had been so hard for so long.

Poor thing they said to the orphan.

Poor thing they said to the girl covered in dirt selling palm readings.

Poor thing they said to the child too young, too small on the reaping stage.

What did winning a Games do to make her not that child anymore? She returned the same fourteen year old minus an arm and with a lot more things to be pitied for.

But there's always orphans. There will always be poor people and there will always be victors with thousand yard stares and scars they can't hide.

She used to think she was special. The girl who could see through all the bullshit and didn't let herself get soft.

But she was just a child.

Not special just broken like everyone else.

She picked herself up off the floor, wandering her way back to the District Eleven quarters. She walked past the dark common room to Persimmon's door.

She thought of the teenage girl refusing to sit on Snow's throne in front of the whole country and how that same girl was content to bake cookies and stay out of the way.

Kass couldn't see it before but now she could. She could see how revolutions crumbled and how words of power wilted into whispers. She could feel it inside of her own chest.

She knocked on the door.

lyrics from Redesign Your Logo by Lemon Demon | table by griffin

[charade]

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Reviewing the list of potential sponsors was always a slog. She’d come to know a few of them quite well over the years, but there were always new faces and new wallets when people were old enough to spend that kind of money on the games. Some she had grown to like; Bartholomew Manetti was a kind man who considered sponsoring the lowest districts a matter of charity.

Others she could tolerate. Like Theresa Drakeheart enjoyed the game and making victors dance. She was kind of a bitch, but she could be counted on to spend some cash once she’d been made to feel important. Then there were the ones like Karl Weiderman. He loved to talk about himself, his mansion, and how inattentive to his needs his wife was. He always sat too close, drank too much and let his eyes wander uncomfortably low.

Well.

There were some indignities she had chosen to bear for the sake of the lives she was expected to care for, though the next time he touched her thigh she was going to stab him with a fork, the consequences be damned. But Delroy and Neysa were proving to be hard sells. Delroy had blown his interview big time and though there were those who liked to root for the underdog, no one wanted to voice support for someone so treasonous.

Neysa was a little better, and she’d been able to garner some support for her by playing on Neysa’s connection to Harbinger, but it still wasn’t as much as she’d hoped. There was a knock on her door, which given the time was a little surprising. Katelyn sighed and stacked her notes up, putting them on her nightstand and tying up her robe and getting up to open the door. It hadn’t been this difficult to drum up support for a tribute since—

“Kass?”

Katelyn was bewildered. Kass looked like she had been—crying.

It was alarming enough that something had reduced Kass to tears. It was unnerving that Kass had come to her door to deal with it. It wasn’t that she minded; Katelyn had often said that her door was always open. Kass was just someone who she never expected would ever take her up on the offer.

Katelyn rubbed the back of her neck as she tried to gather her thoughts and stood aside to let Kass enter the room. “Come in Kass, come in,” Teenagers. That awkward time of youth where a person wanted to be treated like an adult, but was still so very young and unlearned. Deep breath, she told herself. It wasn’t possible to say the wrong thing to them every single time was it? She was concerned, and she knew it showed on her face. Kass, despite her youth and prickliness, was one of them.

“What’s wrong?”

[sbeeg]

If you know what's good for you
Behave yourself this time for me
If you know what's good for you

The door swings open and the surprise on Katelyn's face twists Kass' heart. The woman is so quick to welcome her inside, to ask her what's wrong.

She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve Katelyn's kindness after what she'd said to her, just like she didn't deserve Delroy's respect that he refused to give.

All her words were caught in the lump in her throat that she couldn't swallow back. Fresh tears pricked her eyes and she flippantly wiped one away with her thumb as if Katelyn wouldn't see it.

How do you admit you were wrong? How do you apologize for a million cruel words?

She can't. The last four years were lost to Kass. There would be no building all of the bridges she burned and that was fine.

But one. She could help put one back together.

Kass ran her hand over her metal arm, messing with the metal roller ball that functioned as her elbow.

"I know it's late..." her voice was soft. It feels like she's whispering in the Arena again. Talking to Dio in the eerie silence of an abandoned world in the stars.

They would have all been better.

The thought hits her like a lightning bolt splintering across her skin burning everything as it went.

Red. Jacob. Cyrus. Dio. Nell. All of them. They all would have been better. They wouldn't have snapped at everyone. They would have been kind on their victory tour not nasty.

Her throat burned with every word she'd ever spoken. They felt good in the moment, a semblance of power. But she wasn't sticking it to the Capitol, she was desecrating graves and salting the wounds of grieving families.

There would be no apologizing for any of that. It was too little too late.

Her eyes fixated on the door frame beside Persimmon's head. If she wasn't looking at her then maybe she couldn't see the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Could you... could you show me how to make fudge?"

lyrics from Be An Astronaut by Declan McKenna | table by griffin

[charade]

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Each time Kass had started insulting her or needling her insecurities, Katelyn had tried to remind herself that the young girl was a child. A mouthy one, perhaps, but one lashing out at the world. At her. It had hurt, and some of the insults hurled in Opal’s direction had severely tested her patience, but after some self-reflection, Katelyn had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

The 82nd had been a rough year for her. Still recovering from her ordeals in prison, in the capitol, still reeling from eleven’s tributes killing one another the previous year. She’d been harsh with Kass and Jacob, perhaps harsher than she needed to be. Kass, for all her vitriol, might have benefitted from a gentler hand in the beginning.

She was just a child then. Still was in many ways.

Katelyn tried to search her face for an explanation and found none as Kass wouldn’t meet her eyes. It was still surprising that Kass was talking to her without any of the usual biting sarcasm. “Sure, I was planning to prep a pecan pie tonight, but I—we can do fudge. Only need five ingredients.” Didn’t Kass hate her fudge though? Was this Kass’s attempt at an apology or—

“Kass, are you all right? You seem—“ The next word had to be chosen delicately, of that much she was certain. What was it like, being that age? Eighteen felt so long ago, and yet like yesterday. All of them, victors that was, had had to grow up fast, had had their youth stolen from them. Kass was the youngest victor since Saffron Lowe and she had no friends, no family. Rebuffed Katelyn’s attempts at getting to know her until she’d given up on trying to. Maybe that had been her mistake too. One she could rectify now.

“—what’s wrong,” she repeated. “Did something happen?”

[sbeeg]

They'll probably make up your mind
As if you want them to

Kass let a small smile take over her lips. Of course Persimmon had a baked good lined up for the night. She baked nearly every night. Was it to keep her hands busy? To occupy her mind with fractions and grams instead of the cameras in the walls and the microphones in the light fixtures? Can't get in trouble if you bake all the time. Can't commit treason if you're baking cookies with your girlfriend.

What was that saying? Idle hands are the devil's playground.

She thought of her tarot deck in her pocket and of The Devil card she'd spent the winter repainting. It was about a life dominated by fear, bondage, and feeling trapped.

Kass couldn't think of time where her hands were not idle with the exception of perhaps the Arena. Always a wound to clean, a child to kill.

There were too many thoughts in her head now. The Arena, Delroy on the roof, all her tarot cards shuffling around her head. The orphanage, Killian and the rebels, and the cold emptiness of her big house.

"Nothing happened," Kass said, and it wasn't entirely a lie. Delroy had not said anything wrong, had not set out to make her crumble in on herself. She hadn't been snatched by a Peacekeeper or threatened.

Just a young girl who got her feelings hurt in finally the right way.

"I just wanted to..." Apologize? Ask a million questions? "Know how you make the stuff so horribly sweet."

The words don't hold any bite. There's not much left in her.

lyrics from Be An Astronaut by Declan McKenna | table by griffin

[charade]

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Something had definitely happened. But Katelyn wasn’t going to press the issue. It would come out on its own. Or so she could hope. She hadn’t intended to start prepping the pie for another half hour, but she start the fudge now. “Really depends on what kind of sugar is being used.” She said with a grin. Heading out of her room and heading to the kitchen.

Once there, she took the margarine and a can of sweetened condensed milk out of the fridge and grabbed a tiny bottle of vanilla off her spice rack. “There should be a bag of chocolate chips in that cupboard,” she said, pointing with one hand as she knelt to take two pans and the roll of wax paper out. Damn! There were no nuts or marshmallows to use for the center. Oh well. Plain chocolate fudge was good too.

“I always liked cooking. I made a lot of meals for myself as a kid cause my parents were always working.” She’d always wanted to have a little bakery. Well, she’d achieved that. It had just taken longer and been harder to get to than she had anticipated at sixteen. Katelyn sighed. No time like the present. Whatever had caused this massive change in Kass's attitude aside, she needed to seize the opportunity that was given to her. “Kass, I’ve been doing some thinking,” she said after a moment.

It had been so different in the old days. The three of them against the world. Truth be told, after Harbinger she’d never expected another tribute to come home alive. “I was seventeen when I stopped being a kid. You were fourteen, but I should have treated you like an equal from the day you came back. Not as a child. Tantrums notwithstanding.”

She offered Kass a wry smile as she poured the milk into the pan. “I’m—sorry.” She held the measuring cups out to Kass. “Two tablespoons of margarine, and about 18 ounces of chocolate chips. then you can start stirring until its well mixed.” The burner clicked as she turned the dial, raising the heat slowly to get a good melt without wasting too much of the liquid. "Then I'll add the vanilla."

[sbeeg]

On and later on, you will tell them what went wrong
And they'll say you're lying

They moved to the kitchen and Kass followed Persimmon's gaze to the cabinet. She reached up and opened the door looking at the bag of little chocolate pieces on the second self. Kass placed her metal hand on the counter and pushed herself up, her foot balanced on the handle of a floor level cupboard. She reached up and grabbed the bag dropping it on the counter with the rest of the supplies.

Kass wondered where Katelyn learned all of this. Was it from her parents before they left for work? Or was it all self taught? Kass didn't think much about the assembly of meals. She ate whatever the orphanage served out, and if she was out on her own whatever she could get her hands on. It wasn't until she came back and was alone in her big winner house that she realized she had no idea what to do. She tried to make tamales like Marisol had showed her but it was a lot to ask of a teenager who barely knew the basics of cooking. Kass mostly ate cold food that were easily put together in her mind like sandwiches. It's obvious how to make sandwich, the instructions are the food. She'd made some stews before but they didn't taste good. Food could taste good, but Kass had no talent for it. She regretted turning down all those dinner invitations the other victors offered, they ate far better than she did.

“Kass, I’ve been doing some thinking,” Kass looked up from the chocolate chips and watched Katelyn start to pour ingredients into a bowl.

Kass was taken a bit of guard by Katelyn's words. It was no secret that they'd butt heads at the slightest opportunity. It was also no secret Kass often initiated these encounters on purpose. She met Persimmon as an angry child and she had no idea how to act like anything else. No one really asked her to do anything else, be anyone else. Except Katelyn.

The apology left Katelyn's lips easier than Kass could ever imagine her own doing. She was up late making fudge because the words wouldn't come and the thoughts wouldn't align. And she did it so easily. Just like she seemed to put all these ingredients together like it was second nature.

Kass screwed her mouth to the side and did as she was told, trying to figure out how to measure a blob of yellow matter into the proper amount. Part of her wished she had actually attended classes in District Eleven both before and after the Games. She rarely showed up at school at all and a few letters were sent to the orphanage but plenty of kids didn't always go to school. And then she won and suddenly no one seemed to care what she did.

She peered intently at the measuring cups from Persimmon, squinting at the tiny numbers engraved in the metal. It took her longer, she could tell. She'd seen Persimmon dish out entire pies faster than it took her to measure out ingredients. But after a few minutes everything was in the bowl and she was stirring it all together.

Kass looked down into the bowl watching all the different parts start to come together.

"How do you..." Kass started, her eyes still on the bowl. Emotion threatened to choke off her words but she fought against it. She had always had words, cruel ones but they were always there.

"How do you do this," Kass said lifting the spatula from the pan and watched the batter drip back down. "and not think about everything else."

She frowned. That wasn't exactly clear but she felt like she could hear the hum of Capitol microphones waiting and listening.

"How can someone live a normal life after all of this?" Kass asked. She sniffled, quickly rubbing her sleeve under her nose less she ruin the fudge. "And how do you not feel selfish for it?"

lyrics from Be An Astronaut by Declan McKenna | table by griffin

[charade]

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

Was it the right thing to say? If Katelyn was being honest with herself, she didn’t know. All she knew was that Kass was upset, in need of comfort.

And Katelyn hated to see people in pain.

Surviving the games marked you as a mentor for life. Not just for the ones that came back in coffins every year, but the ones that came back with dead eyes and wounded souls as well. She understood why so many of her peers preferred to fade into obscurity or drowned themselves in alcohol, hoping to kill or at least numb the pain and self-loathing. She knew why many of them couldn’t give their tributes the time of day.

It hurt too much too get attached. But it was something she felt she had to do. She couldn’t phone it in. Besides, what else was she going to do with her time? It wasn’t as if she had very many options. She’d always had too much heart. “Well, I wouldn’t call this normal, but I know what you mean.” She poured the vanilla into the mix as Kass stirred. If only the answers Kass was looking for were as easy to explain as fudge. She set the vanilla down and double checked for walnuts, just in case. Nothing. Katelyn leaned on the counter instead.

“For quite a few years I did nothing but try to make it worth it, you know? Because I lived. And the friends I’d made didn’t. Because I killed three kids who wanted to go home as badly as I did.” How many other victors were this open about their experiences she wondered? Most of them were trying their best to forget. A few had been able to move on entirely. Kate felt as though she were somewhere in the middle. She’d made her peace with the games, but it was often difficult to separate what had happened in the snow that week and everything that had happened afterwards because of it.

“But eventually I learned that I had to live for myself instead of my ghosts. To roll with the punches. I wouldn’t be of any help to anyone if was trapped between who I used to be and who I thought I should be.” Katelyn shook her head slightly, staring at the ground. That didn’t sound like a good enough explanation to her. Not like one of Vasco’s speeches. How to put this into words? The words that Kass was asking for? That she needed to hear?

“I can’t save the whole world, and if I spent all my time marinating in the injustices I’d never be able to function. That’s what my normal is. There will always be people who hurt others and people who are hurting. But there will also always be people who try to heal. I help where I can. Who I can. I don’t—“ The phrasing Kass had used was strange to her ears.

Selfish? Katelyn had plenty of regrets but why would she have cause to feel that way? “Sure, I have a semblance of normalcy after many years of misery. I have more than most in eleven. Really, us victors have more than practically anyone living outside of the Capitol. That being said, I wouldn't wish this life on anyone." She wouldn't. But she would still try her best to get any tributes home because once chosen for this nightmare, surviving it was the better alternative. It was why volunteers infuriated her. Being forced into this and making it out anyway was far different from choosing to put oneself in such a predicament.

"People don't get it. They don't understand what its like to watch the light leave someone's eyes while their blood stains your hands. What surviving does to you when you watch the allies that stood with you, bled with you, bled for you are reduced to faces in the sky. Or worse, when its your hands that put them there." City, Marc and Lexi. She still thought about them from time to time. "They see the money and the mansions that the capitol give us as a thanks for playing and think we revel in it like dogs patiently waiting for another treat from their master.” And perhaps for some of the career victors that was true.

"They don't see that its a cage," she continued, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice. "That its a leash and a life of indentured servitude, saying what they want, doing what they want or suffering. Watching everyone you care about suffer because of what you did or didn't do." They'd all suffered, not just Kirito and Harbinger, but Arbor. Opal. Annie. Patricia. The list was eighty-five names long, soon to be eighty-six.

“But I can help more people being Katelyn the victor than I can being Katelyn the recluse or Katelyn the detention center detainee. If that means biting my tongue when my instinct is to speak out then—“ Her gaze dropped to the fudge. It'd be ready soon. Katelyn laid a strip of wax paper down in the empty pan and smoothed it out. “—then so be it. What is selfish about that?"

[sbeeg]

Those boys tell you what to do
All the time

Kass felt her mind drifting to the Arena. To Dio's concentrated face as he lined her eyes in black. To the taste of packaged ice cream in a dark cold tunnel with Nell. To the three people she killed to get home.

There were times, like now, that Kass thought they maybe any of those people could handle it better than she did. That the knew how to cook and would be nice to their fellow victors.

But she never let herself grieve over their deaths. Not the ones that came at her hand. She refused to feel bad for being put into an impossible situation. They put a weapon in everyone's hands and told them to get out so she did. It wasn't her fault that so many seemed to dislike her for it. It didn't mean she wasn't human. It didn't mean she wasn't sorry for the lives that didn't get to play out. But, being the one to live that life, she wasn't sure it was such a prize.

Katelyn echoed her thoughts. Kass' gaze stayed on the bubbling liquid in the pan as Katelyn went on. Her mind hung on the words detention center detainee.

"Is the crime for speaking out that harsh?" Kass asked barely above a whisper. Was the punishment for criticizing the Capitol so horrible that it was easier to ignore everything?

Her heart was heavy in her chest. She didn't want to ignore anything, and Kass could rarely hold her tongue for any reason, but was there something worse on the horizon? If she followed Delroy's advice and pushed aside her fear would they beat it back into her?

lyrics from Be An Astronaut by Declan McKenna | table by griffin

[charade]

k a t e l y n .

Two silver lines cut right through the dark
And hold my heart while my head spins
I am so lonely yet surrounded
By the most beautiful things

“The price for going off script varies depending on who you are.” That was the whole thing summarized, wasn’t it? In winning the games, every victor had lost more than they’d ever know.“When Opal failed to deliver a victor last year, they had her son beaten within an inch of his life. Put him in the hospital. And then forced—forced Opal to maim herself." Anger blazed in her eyes for a moment, but she let it pass. Not the time to start ranting about that. Katelyn cleared her throat and focused on Kass’s stirring motions. Everyone had their breaking point.

"When we were younger we—the tri11ogy that is; we started to think we were untouchable. We were drunk on our successes. Our little victories. That was our crime.” She stared at the scars on her hands, the ones she’d received years after her stay in the ice and snow. “They sent Kirito’s cousin Iain into the games. Then Harbinger’s brother Weaver. You still see the name Rhodes come up every now and then. But it isn’t just victors they punish with that.” There was nothing treasonous about this discussion, was there? She was just telling the truth plainly. "Its anyone who steps out of line. Or did you think it was a coincidence that the Izar family lost two children to the 84th?”

Katelyn supposed she was different in that respect. A terrible relationship with her parents. No siblings. No children. One cousin from the estranged branch of her family. It had been harder to pin her down, but they’d done it eventually. “The Persimmon family is small. So one day they came for me. I refused to bend my knee, so they broke me instead. Oh it took years; I gave them hell every step of the way." She said it with a sardonic smile but her heart wasn’t in it. It left her face slowly.

The thing was, she had thrown off one chain and another capitolite had fashioned her a new one. It chafed and she felt like sooner or later she was going to do something stupid. The problem with Kass’s question was that it wasn’t harsh at first, not for everyone. It wasn’t harsh for her when she had had the strength to stand tall, to dare them to hit her again, she didn’t feel the bruises then.  It was harsh after the hundredth hit. When she had nothing left and she felt like she was the only person that gave a damn, so why was she still bothering to try? But that— like she had told Vasco on more than one occasion, that was when the burden wasn’t meant to be shouldered alone.

People had asked her before why she didn’t give up, why she kept doing it in spite of hating it. She couldn’t. It was as simple as that. She refused to let those in power take that from her too. The day I stop trying is the day I wind up like you Mr.Halt. Well, she’d suffered like him. Maybe more than him. But she’d come out on the other side still standing. Covered in scars maybe, more cynical and less trusting but she was still standing, still putting on her gloves and getting back into the ring.

“I won’t stop you from traveling the same road I did. I’m just warning you, it’s a hard one. Maybe you’ll do better than I did.” As hard as a person made it for themselves, she mused. The fudge was looking alright. Time to pour into the pan lined with wax paper and leave it to chill. She tasted the mixture and nodded approvingly, a sadness in her eyes that was at odds with the smile the chocolate brought to it.  “I guess, when it comes down to it, life as a victor is an arena that never ends. We do what we have to do to survive.”