haunted /ky 86th

[gamemaker kelsier]

k y .

"You know me better than that
You know I loved you like that
It really waters me down"

It's easy to fall in love with a ghost, he finds that out all over again on the train to the Capitol. The warm yellow light in the bathroom paints his features, gives him a sickly look. At his knees, that's where Emmett was last year, throwing up. He remembers the helpless feeling of watching a kid puke his guts out.

Wishing he could be a better person.

The train hits a small rock on the rail and it makes the bathroom shudder. Ky gazes at himself in the mirror, fingers trailing slowly over his jawline. He's not the same nervous kid from last year but there's something in the back of his head. It shines out dimly through his eyes, a bitter thing, slightly dangerous.

Fractured fragments of a boy raised wrong, it didn't take much for the melting of his resolve.

He watches Emmett wash his face in the sink beside him, his memory embossed on the train car like a sore. He understands now how Opal can still love a dead man. All of the bad things they may have done, all of the inconsistencies that made them mortal fade with their absence. He doesn't want to be that though, the kid with a tombstone on his back carrying a torch for a corpse.

It's hard not to think about Emmett here though, on the train.

There's a new set of kids this year, a new duo to be lost to the arena and this time, Ky looks past them. Maybe he is learning to not get attached or maybe he doesn't know how to thank Alistair.

It feels weird, wanting to thank the kid for saving Asher's life. He probably didn't even mean to, he just wanted to volunteer. Asher isn't even all that friendly to Ky, he just saved his life once some months back. He rests a hand on the scar, a strange habit that had formed over the weeks it'd healed. He probably would have died that day if it hadn't been for Asher.

The last he'd seen of him, Asher was just standing in the square. Peacekeepers were ushering his mom and him to the train, there'd been no time to check on him. He wonders still if Asher would have even wanted that from him. Their relationship sits somewhere between friendship and tired acceptance. Half the time, Ky is pretty sure that he's just around Asher because it seems safer and Asher just lets him be there.

The thought of that slowly digs a hole into him, just below his heart. That strange, empty silence present all through his childhood is back again, filling him. He grimaces at his reflection. His natural instinct is to hide it. At this point, he doesn't know if he's trying to protect his loved ones or if he just covets it. There's something precious about feeling so sad, it's hard to let go of it, to let anyone help him.

It's so much easier, so much better to just smile and pretend. He's gotten so good at lying through his teeth, not even his therapist seems to see through it anymore. With enough lying, people stop asking anyway. It's been a long time since anyone bothered digging deeper.

He kind of wants to call Asher anyway.

Someone knocks on the door, "One sec," he says.

If he stares at himself hard enough, he can see the kid in the back of his head staring back out at him. The control room is full, lights on. It's easier to just go on autopilot right now. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little yellow vial full of neat little pills and pops the lid off. He shakes a single pill out, hesitates, then shakes out another one.

The urge to shut down for a while is so great.

Ky pops both into his mouth and then exits the bathroom.

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

k y .

"Help, something’s wrong with me
Homesick for LA
In the summer of my life
That’s when we first met"

Grief isn't all that heavy, he realizes. It's just always in the wrong place at the wrong time. It hides in cupboards in the very back, a chipped bowl that he dropped when he was six years old, reminding him of the night he saw his dad die on screen. A simple wine glass that he'd stuck a little jade pendent on last year to tell the cups apart when he took Emmett to the Thirteenth floor. Grief has too many shapes.

The sound of digital waves crashing onto a shore made of code wake him up in the middle of his sleep. When he opens his eyes, the ground is cold and hard beneath him and the sun is rising in front of him across dozens of window screens. He can't remember coming here, or why, but no one even bothered to clean up the picnic from last year. A half-drunk wine bottle still sat next to that cute wicker basket he'd stolen from Opal's room. The blanket was still there and Ky just gazes at it.

He isn't mourning Emmett anymore.

He hasn't realized until now that the heavy thing that's been anchoring him to the earth isn't grief, just disguised as it. It was fooling him too easily, or maybe he's been letting it because a great excuse to be sad is to be grieving. The usual signs just haven't been there, at least he hasn't noticed them if they are. Maybe he's been quieter lately, maybe a little bit more avoidant.

It's always so easy to disappear a little bit when they go to the Capitol, Opal always has so many obligations and he can become less of one. He writes notes sometimes, little things like, 'gone exploring' or 'with beck' and he leaves them stuck to the back of the door. Sitting alone on the thirteenth floor hardly counts for either of them but he has to conserve his energy somehow so that when he gets back, he can paste a smile on for his mom, one bright enough to try and match her own.

Ignoring the District One tributes didn't work either. When they died, all the lights were off on the first floor and Ky sat in the darkness, trying to figure out how to stop tears from streaming down his cheeks. The sudden fear of an empty carriage on the train ride home, opening the door to the District One platform to a sombre district and watching as they unloaded two caskets for burial hit him all at once.

Vallora and Alistair are set to become just two more names immortalised into the tiles of the Earnest greenhouse. Ky feels guilt for not knowing them, guilt when he knows them too well, it feels like he can't win.

He should probably talk to someone, at least see one other person today. The idea's there but the momentum isn't. He sits still, even as rays of sunshine from the outside leak in to paint his skin with stripes of gold.

The wish to call Asher rises again, to just hear his voice and listen to him tell a stupid story but calling Asher a friend is maybe a bit of a reach. Ky's just worried still about that expression on his face after the reaping. He'd never seen a look like that from him before and now that he has, he can't stop thinking about it.

But taking a step forwards, making any decision, it all seems like too much. Loving anyone, being anything at all except a witness, it seems like too much.

He remembers his mom asking him why, "why won't you speak, baby?" when he went through his first year of silence. He didn't have an answer for her then. Now he understands better, that opening his mouth is a trial, that he's afraid of what might spill out if he does. There are so many secrets he's held for years, so many silent fears that press on him, he can't wade through them all.

His medication makes it all easier.

When he opens the vial, he counts just eight pills left but that doesn't seem right. He brought enough for two weeks and then some. Ky counts them again, more carefully this time. Oh, nine.

Then two this time should be alright.