burning heart | [Kass]

[sbeeg]

Overheating
A burning heart unstuck in time

Kass had hardly spent an hour outside of her room for the duration of the games. There were too any thoughts clogging her mind to speak to anyone else. Not that anyone seemed to mind her absence.

Her hands fiddled with the argizaiola Vasco had gifted her. She'd taken it back after the Victor's dinner, after all it belonged to her. A morbid reminder of her close scrape with death, but her fingers rolled the end of the wax as if it were a toy.

The channel feed switched to a different fight and she grit her teeth, picking up the remote to switch to a channel that showed his face. It was creased with pain, as his leg was certainly broken. Kass had gone through nearly her whole games with her dominant hand broken, he could get through the last few days with a limp.

She chewed on her bottom lip, hugging her knees to her chest. She hadn't brushed her hair to taken a shower in the last seven days, but she had done a lot of thinking.

Thinking of Delroy and of Katelyn. Of fighting and of surviving. Was the detention center worse than her own conscience? It had to be to bend the ice queen to the Capitol's will.

They'd hurt them all. Katelyn, Kirito, Harbinger, Opal, she could see it in Patricia's eyes. All of them. The arena had simply grown around them and the game was still afoot. She had not survived space by being kind or empathetic. She'd lived thinking purely of herself and of the life she had to live.

What was she doing with this life now?

Her mind flickered back and forth, a red needle slapping against one extreme only to pull towards the other.

She should be using this life to better the world, to rebel.

She should get to savor the time she had won after what was sacrificed.

She wanted to tear it down.

She was one teenage girl.

Kass banished the thoughts and stared at the screen, watching Delroy limp through the fight. He had come far, farther than she thought he would. And now she was allowing herself to think of what she might say when he woke up in the hospital. She never visited the new victors there, but she would for Delroy. She'd sit at his bedside like Mackenzie had for her.

Maybe two unruly teenagers could start a rebellion.

Her eyes were watering, the whites of them tinged red from staring at screens for too long. The gums holding her back molars in place sore from the constant grinding of her teeth.

And then it was over. A cannon fired and he was gone. Another body in a wooden box to unload in District Eleven.

She clicked the screen off and sat in the darkness of her room. Her eyes stung with fresh tears but they never fell.

Kass slowly unfolded herself and left her bed. Her muscles were sore, her pajamas wrinkled. She shuffled out of her room slowly and went to the small kitchen in the corner. She reached up and grabbed a mixing bowl from the cabinet.

Persimmon had won. Delroy's fire had not brought him home, but Katelyn's consistency was unmatched. One was alive and living as much as she could considering the circumstances.

Kass had so wanted to see Delroy again. She had never this kind of pain with a tribute before. Se had grieved, of course, especially for the first two. But she had wanted to speak to Delroy. There were words left unsaid and questions unanswered. There was something incomplete inside her ribs that would always be left that way.

Kass looked a an old chocolate stained card sitting on the counter; a recipe for cookies in Katelyn's handwriting.

She might as well give it a try.

lyrics from Lazerray by TV on the Radio | table by griffin