The Lie

📅 September 22, 2011

✚ ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ, ʜᴏᴍɪᴄɪᴅᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ ✚

Raw terror. That was basically it, from the second Kato had kissed her: Athena’s predominant experience had been one of raw terror. As soon as Seth had shut the door behind him, leaving her in the dark and totally alone, she’d just sat there, paralyzed in it.
He wouldn’t. Surely, surely, he wouldn’t.
She was wrong, she had to be wrong.
He wouldn’t.
He was just renting guns. Hadn’t that been what he said?
She strained to remember, even though she’d already tortured herself over it the night before, because no, he hadn’t said that. He’d said that he “could” rent a gun at the range he went to, and when she’d asked outright if he actually owned one, he’d sarcastically said he had “a million.” As though the question was too stupid to legitimately answer. But he hadn’t answered. 
She put her head in her hands.

It would take Seth nearly an hour to get there, if traffic was good. If traffic was bad, he might only arrive halfway through first period. If traffic was bad, he might not be able to get into the parking lot, past the police tape…
“No,” she said aloud; “No.” 
He wouldn’t.

She checked her phone as an anxious tic, praying for Kato to have texted her back, saying that his phone died and all he meant was that he wanted to skip school with her today and that she was a moron. Please.
Nothing changed, of course. He was MIA. His Facebook was still gone; everything else loaded fine. Her tumblr dash wasn’t glitching out, but his blog—his stupid blog, with the edgy pictures and the Dostoevsky quotes and the gifs of the Columbine shooters—was a “404 Not Found” page. 

She finally turned on a news channel and just sat. There was nothing else she could do. Talking heads on the TV blathered about hurricane Hillary and the stock market; Gov. Cuomo answered some reporter’s questions about heroin overdoses spiking and then something else about heat related deaths in the homeless population. Athena let it all wash over her. Waiting, dreading. 
The ticker at the bottom of the screen showed the time. 
First period classes had started. Gabe was sitting down for English class. Savannah and Devon were somewhere, crossing their legs at their desks. Trent was probably laughing, tossing a pencil case back and forth with Chris or Jake or someone and refusing to listen to the teacher. 

Athena stared at the time, then at her phone, even though it’d stayed silent with the ringer at its highest volume. She tried Kato's number anyway, despite it not having worked the million times she already made the attempt. It rang once, then disconnected, just like she expected it to.
Please don’t, she thought at him. Please don’t. You wouldn’t. Not actually.

The news stayed mundane while the clock ticked stoically forward, somehow pitting her stomach even worse. They didn’t lock the doors between classes. Kato had made note of that; had stared so long at so many doors and windows; what could Seth even do if he couldn’t figure out where to find him? Seth should be there by now, even if traffic was atrocious, he had to be there by now. 
Athena curled up on the couch and rocked herself, feeling like the not knowing was going to splinter her apart.
When her phone finally chimed, she actually punched it off the edge of the sofa in her scramble to grab for it.

Sethy 🌲: «I’ve got him, he’s safe. We need to drop off his mother’s car and retrieve his belongings. He’s coming to stay with us. See you in an hour or so.»

Athena clutched her phone to her chest and cried.
Thank God.

She had managed to collect herself somewhat by the time Seth texted again to say they were on their way up, and Kato had barely crossed the apartment threshold when Athena barreled into him, having sprinted the distance from the breakfast bar to his chest.
“Julian WINTERS, you FUCKER,” she yelled into the crook of his neck, “You scared the absolute shit out of me!”
“Yeah,” was all he said. He sounded rattled. 
She pulled back to look at him: Pale, wide-eyed. He looked shell-shocked. His hair was a mess even pulled back into his usual ponytail. He was looking at her, but not quite seeing her, it seemed like—too dazed behind the eyes. She was clinging to him and he’d raised his arms, but his hands hung limply in the air next to her for a moment; when he did return the embrace, it was feather-light, nearly disbelieving, as though she was the ghost standing before him and not vice-versa.
She turned to her brother, who was setting down a cardboard box of Kato's stuff. Mostly composition notebooks, it looked like. 
Athena gasped.
“Seth! What happened?!” His nose was blatantly broken—so badly that it was visibly crooked. His glasses were bent at the bridge, with a crack in one lens; there was blood crusted under his nostrils and staining the front of his sweater. He must have wiped it off his face.
Seth blinked, then glanced down at the stain on his sweater. “Oh, that. Have you noticed that your school has two sets of glass doors at the entrance?” he asked.
“Uh, yeah?” She released Kato—who remained standing stiffly in place, also looking at Seth—in order to inspect her brother.
“Well, I did not,” Seth said, giving her a slightly sheepish smile. “I was pulling in just as Julian was walking into the building, and, well, perhaps I was slightly unobservant, given my urgency…” He gingerly touched the bridge of his nose. “I sprinted right into the second door. It’s a rather spectacular break, isn’t it?”
“Sounded pretty brutal,” Kato said. His eyes were still wide; haunted-looking. His voice came out a little strangled.
“It looked worse than it felt,” Sethfire replied, rather gently. “Shall we get the rest of your things, Kato?”
“Wait,” Athena objected, “Wait, though, like, what…? How, why…?” Everything was okay now, but she’d been trapped so long in not knowing that it was, not knowing if it would be, sick with fear, that she couldn’t quite handle the attempted normalcy. She needed to know why it was okay, how it was okay, so that she could accept it. Believe it. She stepped back towards Kato; he looked close to collapse and she grabbed onto his sleeve, not wanting him out of sight again. 
“Let’s let Kato get settled, then we’ll discuss matters further,” Seth said. “Will you give us a hand, though, Athena? His books are heavy and I’m afraid my wrists are not quite up to task.”
“Okay. Okay…”

They retrieved Kato's belongings from the car; mostly books and clothes shoved into trash bags, though there was also his PC and his backpack, which felt too heavy and rattled ominously. She peeked into it in the elevator and let out a frail shriek that there really were guns, plural, inside it. She looked up at Kato, whose eyes finally didn't seem quite so distant. Instead, he looked exhausted.
“What were you expecting?” he asked heavily; “Groceries?”
“Where did you get guns?” she whispered fiercely, even though they and Seth were the only ones in the elevator; “You’re only 16! We live in New York City!”
“Gun show upstate, the internet. I have a fake ID and no one cares, Athena, Eric and Dylan and Robyn didn’t even have to sign anything.” Kato looked dully at his feet, his voice toneless. “I bet the Uzi’s hot already anyway, the guy selling wanted it out of his hands.”
Athena held the bag as far away from her body as possible.

“Okay, so—so what happened?” she asked again when they were back in the flat, Kato's stuff piled next to the sofa bed. She’d dropped the bookbag on the coffee table as quickly as possible, as though it might spontaneously explode.
“I couldn’t…do it anymore,” Kato answered. “Be treated like shit, day in, day out…Thought I’d settle some scores and make some kinda name for myself before eating a bullet.” He sat down on the sofa, surrounded by his things, like a refugee, and stared at the backpack; black, punk-patched like his pants. “...Didn’t work out.” 
His lip trembled; he bit it; he ducked his head. 
“He is going to withdraw from school,” Seth explained further. “He felt his father would not receive the news well, so I said that he could stay here, with us. I hope that’s alright.”
“What? Of—of course it’s alright, anything’s alright, now, anything’s better than you…” she stared at Kato. “...Were you actually gonna do it?” she asked. It came out hushed, like a secret. He dragged his eyes from the floor to meet hers.
“Yeah.” He gestured towards his bag. “I mean, I planned it for 9 months. I buried the rest of the shotgun barrel in Alley Pond in August. A few days after we went to Summerstage.”
“Nine months?!” 

Athena struggled to wrap her head around it. It’d felt more reasonable when she thought she’d seen it, seen him get cold and impulsive at the end of summer break, with the tattoo and everything. Now she was rifling through her memories, horrified that he’d already been planning for blood on his hands while encouraging her to recover, and writing her songs, and taking her all around the city, smiling.
She couldn’t force it all to fit together.
“But—but—”
“You did not go through with it, however,” Sethfire said quietly, approaching the sofa and placing a hand on Kato's shoulder. “I offered you a way out and you took it. Let us not dwell on what you might have done otherwise. That part is unknowable.”
Kato raised his head and gave Seth a long look. “...Yeah. Right.” He turned back to face Athena. The distance between them was just a couple feet; the width of the coffee table holding his arsenal. It could have been a canyon. But his eyes met hers and he looked like he’d been shot; he looked like he was dying; something mortally wounded in his eyes.
“I can’t—justify it to you,” he said, his voice cracking. “But you…you saw, you saw what they did to me there. You saw how my dad was never…never gonna be okay with me. That my mom was never ‘there.’ And how no-one at school gave a shit if I got black eyes or bloody noses or if I fuckin’ slashed my wrists or forced the whole goddamned medicine cabinet down my throat and threw it all back up...” He dragged his hand across his eyes. Tears streaked his cheeks anyway and deepened the dark circles under his eyes with his smudging eyeliner. “All the teachers and shit just saw me as—as insolent, or disruptive; just a fuckin’ problem student who deserved to take my lumps. I was worthless, I was no-one. Just an impotent, weak, stupid punching-bag of a faggot on the fast track to being a disappointment of a headstone.” He looked back at his backpack. “They were willing to watch us both die! They wanted me dead, they said so, they’d tell me to kill myself in the halls, you heard them! They practically forced my hand, that’s what it felt like, I fucking…I wanted to get even. I wanted to be something even if it was evil. I didn’t want…” His voice broke and he shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s all fucked.”
“It’s all over,” Seth said gently. “You’re alright. Everything is just fine.” He gave Kato another pat on the shoulder, then took the backpack and ferried it off to some secret location in his bedroom, probably just as uncertain as Athena was about what, exactly, to do with a bunch of illegal firearms. She thought maybe they should bury them in Alley Pond Park, too.

In the beat after Seth stepped away, Athena gingerly approached Kato and sat down beside him. He couldn’t seem to look at her; he stared at the floor instead. His leg was bouncing like it did on the train two months ago. She put her hand on his knee. It stilled. Slowly, she leaned against his side like she had done so many times over the course of summer, and though he was tense, he still smelled familiar; like he did back then; like black Axe and menthol cigarettes. 
“Do you, um…” she hesitated. “Do you wanna have a cigarette?” 
He finally laughed, even if it cracked a little. “Yeah. Yeah…maybe twelve, actually.”

They went out onto the balcony so he could smoke, and she spent a long time just looking at him, trying to sort out whatever was going on in her head.
“Did it mean something, like, all the…everything, over summer vacation, or was it just a last hurrah because you were planning to die?” she blurted out.
He turned to her, an ache in his eyes. “‘Did it mean something?’ That the last memories I wanted to make, I wanted to make with you?” he asked in return. “I wanted…you to actually remember me.” He wiped his hand over his eyes again. “You were the only person who knew me.”
“I still do,” she said, her hand starting toward him on instinct.
“Are you scared of me?” he abruptly asked, pulling backwards even though it seemed like it cut into him to do so: His expression twisted; his frown got steeper. His eyes were red-rimmed.
“I’m scared of the guns.” She stared up into his face and searched his eyes. She’d discovered how well he could lie with them, even to her, but all she saw in them now was something pained. They were the same blue they’d always been, and almost pleading, not darkened by the rage that he’d somehow gotten so caught up in; fallen too deep into; in over his head to where even he thought he’d lose himself. 
“I’m not scared of you,” she said. “You’re my best friend.”
She moved in to hug him and he didn't pull away a second time. Instead, he dropped his cigarette without hesitation and clutched her to him, as though feeling the easy summer breeze as a gale-force wind that could blow her from his grasp.

Seth called the school and informed them that Athena was ill and unable to make it in, and was fortunately able to excuse his own absence from work, having broken his nose as he did, and so the three of them spent the rest of the day trying to set things up a little better. They’d get Kato a bed of his own soon, Seth said, so that he wouldn’t have to camp out on the sofa long-term. 
“You don’t need to do that for me,” Kato objected; “Where will we even put it?”
“It can go in my room,” Athena said. “We can move the desk into Seth's room, or out here, or something.”
“Yes, that should work,” Seth agreed. “We could make a small study area against the far wall, there. It looks rather bare at current, anyway.”
“...You don't mind sharing a room with me?” Kato asked Athena.
“It’ll be like an infinite sleepover,” she replied, instead of telling him that in her opinion they could actually just both sleep on her bed, because she thought that might make Seth reconsider his relative lack of chaperoning. They hung Kato's clothes in her closet while Seth took some measurements to see if an additional dresser could fit into the room, and examined the desk, which unfortunately would need to be mostly dismantled to remove from the room.
“A task for a different day, that,” he shrugged, and went off to make them all lunch.

Kato couldn’t quite seem to figure out what to do with himself. With his clothes put away, he wandered around and kept trying to help out in the kitchen. He’d seen Seth with the accessibility devices his hands required him sometimes use, before, but seemed abruptly guilty over being provided for when it was “such a fuckin’ hassle.” Seth eventually requested that Athena either “entertain or restrain” his anxious, over-helpful shadow, and politely offered, “I am not a cripple, you know. Allow me to take care of you.” 
“You shouldn’t be having to, though,” Kato almost whispered.
Seth hummed. “Agree to disagree, then, Julian. Why not put away some of your books? There may not be a great deal of space on the shelves, but there ought to be near enough.”

Kato took a little bit of convincing that he was allowed to ‘actually move in’ so thoroughly, but eventually Athena just started putting up his stuff all on her own and he was forced to help out. They stacked his computer games in the media center and started arranging his books on the bookshelves next to Seth’s own collection. While she was turning over one of the six or seven books Kato had on school violence, he pulled a stuffed animal out from amongst his notebooks and novels and shoved it onto the top shelf of the hall closet, out of sight.
“What’s that?” Athena asked.
“Nothing. Old toy.”
“Can I see?”
He reluctantly pulled it back down and let her hold it. It was grey with dust and made her sneeze when he handed it over. She carefully gave it a few gentle pats and thumbed its glassy blue eyes clear. It was a mountain lion, its worn fur the same dirty blond color as his hair, under the dust.
“He looks like you,” she teased.
“Got it in Montana. There are real ones there,” he said, taking it back. “You gotta watch out ‘cause they’ll kill your kids.” He put it back in the closet.

With them planning on moving the desk shortly, they didn't bother with setting up his computer, which stayed sat in a cardboard box in the corner of the living room, the last of his unhoused belongings. Instead, he and Seth used Seth’s computer to download and submit the necessary forms for him to formally withdraw from school. Seth continuously referred to it in that way—“withdrawing.” Maybe because Kato said “drop out” like it was a slur, and it crumpled his expression the same way every time it left his mouth. 
“Maybe I can get a job or something, so I’m not just a waste of space here,” he told Seth, who shook his head. 
“You are not a waste of space regardless. Settle in first, we can come back to this later, if desired—you’ve no need to justify your presence here, however. If it’s of comfort to you, I am lucky that my parents have allowed me a position in life where I will likely not be struggling financially any time soon, if ever, provided I do not make a great deal of rash decisions.” 
“Rash decisions like adopting other people’s stupid kids?” Kato moped.
“If I’ve adopted any stupid children, you will have to introduce them to me,” Sethfire said kindly. 

“We want you here,” Athena told Kato while they washed up after dinner. His grasp of his new situation appeared rather rocky. Sometimes he seemed nearly back to himself; even willing to joke around at dinner, a little. After Seth—prompted by Athena's relative admiration of just how terribly he’d managed to break his nose—contributed that he “didn’t understand what that second set of doors was even for,” Kato did give a shallow sort of smile and offer, “Yeah, pretty useless, seeing as they clearly don’t do anything to keep the active shooters out,” with some semblance of his old sense of humor.
He was looking lost again now, though, rinsing his plate in the sink.
“I just don’t get it,” he said softly.
“Well, you don’t gotta. I’m just happy you’re here. Deal with it.” She took his plate and put it in the dishwasher. “You don’t have to worry about doing it wrong anymore, you know,” she said. “And you can keep your shoes wherever you want without tying the laces.”
He gave her a frail smile. “That’ll take some getting used to.”
“Well, get used to it.” She grinned and flicked his septum ring.

He’d seemed a little too fragile to actually sit and interrogate about anything, most of the day, and Seth’s presence had been welcome, but even if he wouldn’t have necessarily reacted in any kind of way, Athena felt like discussing with Kato whatever the two of them “were” needed to be a more private affair. 
He’d kissed her. Finally. He hadn’t really answered her about whether their summer had been romantic, in his eyes, but he’d wanted to make those memories with her…so. So.
She tried to go to sleep and put a pin in it again until morning, but her brain refused to turn off, so she finally gave in and got up. Insomnia had plagued Kato throughout highschool and followed him even into his new living arrangement; getting out of his parents’ house didn’t magically grant him sleep. So when Athena padded into the living room, past midnight, he was still lying awake on the sofa bed, staring at the ceiling. He greeted her with a tired nod.

“Thought you’d still be awake,” she whispered, then carefully lay down beside him, keeping a few inches of space between their bodies. She silently studied him for a few moments.
“...What’s up?” he finally asked, self-consciously turning his head to look more directly at her.
“Yesterday. You kissed me,” she prompted.
“...Yeah,” Kato replied, “I was never going to get another opportunity.” He sat up, waited for her to do the same, then continued, looking down at his hands in his lap rather than at her: “I’m sorry. You don’t want to be with me. Even if I had a chance before…I don’t now. I’m dangerous.”
“Kato—” she started, but he shook his head to cut her off.
“Don’t try and let me down easy. It’s fine. I know what choices I made.”
“Can you not put words in my mouth? I haven’t even said anything.”
He stayed silent, then, and let her talk, still staring at his hands.
“...I never told you that you didn’t have a chance,” she said quietly, “and I never said that I thought you were too dangerous.”
“No, you didn’t. I did,” Kato replied, continuing to avoid her eyes, “But are you going to say you disagree?”
“What happens if I do?”
He sighed and it stuttered; there was grief in the air that left his lungs and it weighed on the words he spoke. “Then I tell you I’m sorry. That it isn’t about you, that it’s not that I’m indifferent—clearly, I kissed you—but that we shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t try and be...something. And then you agree with me. And we leave it there.”
“Because you think you’re dangerous.”
“Because I know I’m dangerous,” he said, finally looking up at her, some level of desperation creeping into his tone, “Come on, Athena, you do too. Less than twelve hours ago I’d come to terms with the fact that I was going to kill people. That I might have to hurt ‘innocent’ people, like, I knew that. It’s not that I think I’m dangerous. It’s that I’m dangerous. Full stop.”
“You’re still you, though,” Athena said, “I know you, like I said. You just got too—too caught up in it, but I know who you were before you started thinking about—”
“Athena,” he cut her off, shook his head, looked away and then back at her. “Who I was before all this doesn’t matter. I’m not him anymore. I’m not—I’m not saying this for kicks or to be edgy or any of that bullshit, but I destroyed a lot of myself in order to become someone capable of doing what I was going to do. And I didn’t make room to survive it. When Seth was—was talking me down, he said, ‘they don’t deserve you sacrificing your humanity for them,’ but…I think I did. I think I did that already, and I think that ditching your humanity and your—your morals in the way I did is something you can’t ever quite come back from. Not completely.” He paused. “...Just because I look like the kid you met in ninth grade doesn’t mean I’m him. Like, honestly?” Kato looked away again and his voice grew strained. “I think he’s the only person I managed to fucking kill.”

“I don't believe that, Jules,” she said softly.
“You don't have to. It’s just what happened.” He gave her a sad look. “I’m sorry I only kissed you when it was already too late. I didn’t want you to have to deal with it, ya know, having been the school shooter’s girlfriend.”
Athena wrestled with the desire to argue with him; to say that maybe it wasn’t too late, because now it’s not exactly a concern anymore, is it? That it wouldn’t have been great, either, to have just been the school shooter’s lovesick female best friend. She dropped it for the moment, though, not wanting to pressure him, especially not when he was clearly so shaken up and sick with guilt.
“Thought I told you I didn’t want you thinking about me while planning to kill yourself,” she said instead, touching his hand. 
“Couldn’t help it. I think about you a lot,” he replied, too sadly. “But I guess not enough when it matters. You should, uh…do better.” He swallowed. “You always should have.”
“I don’t regret anything.”
“Well, that makes one of us.”

📅 September 22-24, 2011

It bothered Kato that she was still interested. No, it did more than that, it ached in his chest. He didn’t deserve it. He’d never deserved it, but now he deserved it even less.
Seth had lied.
To her face, without hesitating, without them even talking about it, Seth had lied. 

When they’d gone and collected his things from his house, all they’d really talked about was what he was bringing, and Seth had reminded him about his toothbrush and his meds and his documents. Mostly they’d been quiet. Nothing had felt real, so he hadn’t even thought about facing reality when seeing Athena. But apparently Seth had, and had decided that Athena needed to not know, and so he’d lied.
She’d never forgive me, Kato thought to himself. Seth knows she’d never forgive me for it.
But how could Seth forgive him for it?

Kato found himself almost terrified. Of course Seth didn't forgive him for it, who in their right mind would?! Seth just didn’t have any options—he had to offer up his home to the kid who pointed a gun at his chest because the alternative was letting him mow down a bunch of other children! And he could lie like the devil, could look Athena in the eye and reel off the oldest line in the book—ran into a fucking door, for Christ’s sake—and make her believe it. Of course he could say whatever soothing shit to Kato just as easily, about wanting to ‘take care’ of him. That ‘everything was fine.’
He knows I’m a fucking landmine, Kato thought to himself on the sofa bed. He has to act like he cares, because he knows I'm dangerous. He doesn't have any other choice, even if he hates my guts. He has to keep me happy so that everyone else can be safe.

But Athena didn't know, didn’t know what Seth knew, and so she wasn’t scared, and didn't hate him how she should. Instead, she touched his hands, his face; leaned against him like she had all summer, thinking that darkness had found him and trapped him and carried him away and not that he’d bred it, nurtured it, on purpose. And she still thought he deserved a fucking chance with her.
He stared at the ceiling, heavy-hearted, until the lights from cars passing by outside rippled, darkened, and finally disappeared when he could no longer hold his eyes open.

He found himself walking down a school hallway. It was familiar, but not acutely: Too soft around the edges; the lights weren't as harsh and sterile as the ones he knew well. Instead it all glowed golden, like a summer afternoon. He glanced down and to the left and Athena was there, her hand in his, their kiss now realized; she was laughing about something. She looked up at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners. His heart swelled when she leaned closer to him, still talking; smiling. They were heading to some class that they never seemed to arrive at, but they wouldn’t be late; it was too easy here, for that; this summer-gold school was just a stage set for them to wander and bask in the spark between them on. No one jeered in the hallways; faceless people passed as part of the backdrop; some of them smiled or waved but melted away, undistracting. 
He and Athena turned a corner and the light changed. Colder, starker. Suddenly their indistinct peers were running—no, sprinting, away from something. They jostled him and Athena as they shoved blindly past; the cheerful hum of chatter in the background had ceased. Instead, there’s screaming.
“What—?” Kato asked, wrapping his arms around Athena, preparing to push her back down the hall they’d come from and flee like everyone else, and then he rounded the corner. 
It’s him, himself, up at the mouth of the cold hallway, dressed in that black duster that Athena told him not to get; a sick grin across his face, the Uzi in one hand, the Glock in the other. He laughed and brought a fleeing body to the floor, then caught Kato’s gaze and his grin grew broader. Kato moved to push Athena behind him—she can’t see this, she can’t know that it’s him—and then someone came up from behind him, crowding both him and Athena backwards. Sethfire stepped between him and himself, and he heard Athena say her brother’s name, saw Seth take a step forward; watched him raise his hands to bargain—
Bang.
He was laughing—some version of himself was laughing—and Seth's nose was bleeding again—no, no, all of him was bleeding—and Kato was laughing, and he couldn’t tell which one he was. He was kneeling next to Seth, the hem of his duster soaking up the blood pooling around his boots, and he looked up to Athena, who stood, suddenly alone, at the hall corner. Her cheeks were hollow again; her sunken eyes terrified, and she raised a bony hand to her heart in fear before the double doors behind him blew open with the force of an explosion and her brittle figure turned to ashes, to be whipped away by the frigid gust tearing the building down.

Kato jolted awake in an icy sweat, the air conditioning from the vent overhead assaulting his skin and adding to the shivers racking his body. He gasped for air, choking on it. It all still tasted like blood; smelled like blood. He staggered to the bathroom and threw up, and gripping the toilet bowl reminded him of the cold grip of the gun when he’d held it up to Seth as he’d leapt towards him, and suddenly he wasn’t sure if it was over. He wrapped his arms over his head like he was sheltering in an earthquake and rocked back and forth, haunted by Seth dead on the floor beside him. Seth, dead. Seth, the only thing keeping Athena alive, dead on the floor. 

“Kato? Are you okay?” The bathroom light came on. Seth stood in the doorway, his nose still swollen and bruised. Kato clutched his hands behind his neck, pressing into his spine, feeling like there was some phantom third limb held out before him, pointing a gun at Seth's sternum. He couldn’t speak.
“Julian. Julian,” Seth said, crouching down to touch his shoulder. He was so convincingly concerned. “Breathe. Breathe, you need to calm down. Did you have a nightmare?” 
Breathe? Kato was breathing. Plenty, actually, maybe too much. He was practically panting. That was almost all he could hear; the airless, heaving breaths and his racing prey-animal heartbeat and the ringing in his ears, swelling into a deafening single-note chime like when he’d first shot a gun without wearing ear protection.
“...What is your favourite colour?” Seth asked.
“...What?” Kato stared at him. Which one of them was going insane?
“What is your favourite colour?” Seth repeated.
“...Blue?” 
“Mm. Mine is maroon. What shade of blue?”
Kato mouthed wordlessly at him for a moment. “Um. Cornflower blue, I guess. Chicory?”
“A gentle colour, that. Do you like the flowers?” Seth asked, crossing his over-long legs on the floor and looking rather like a folding chair about it.
“What?”
“It helps sometimes, with panic attacks, to engage your brain by thinking and answering questions about a neutral subject,” Seth explained. “You are no longer hyperventilating. Do you like the flowers?”
“They’re okay,” Kato said. He lowered his hands and looked at Seth. The light overhead cast a dark shadow under his jaw; a stain; Kato couldn’t tell if it was spreading.
“You’re starting to breathe rather fast again. What’s happening?” Seth asked.
“I killed you,” Kato whispered.
Seth patted himself down. “I fear I beg to differ,” he said lightly. “Nightmare?”
“I tried to kill you yesterday.”
“Ah.” Seth studied him, his expression inscrutable. “You were cornered. You’ve not made a second attempt.”

Kato wanted to say something else—anything else, they had to fucking talk about this, surely—but the sound of Athena’s bedroom door opening silenced him.
“What’s happening?” she asked blearily from the doorway, screwing her eyes up against the light.
“Julian had a nightmare of some nature, I believe,” Seth said.
“Yeah, it was…a bad one,” Kato agreed. “I’m okay now. Sorry,” he said, then again; “I’m sorry.”
“No apologies necessary, Kato. Are you sure you’re okay?” Seth asked.
“I’m fine.” Kato dug his nails into his ankles. “Can everyone get out of the bathroom? I threw up, it’s gross, just give me a second. Fuck.”

Thankfully they withdrew, though Athena seemed concerned that he puked. 
“I have a weak stomach,” he said, and let Seth explain that nausea was an anxiety symptom to her while he shut the door. He stared into the mirror, alone, his knuckles white on the edge of the counter. His reflection stared back at him. 
I’d have killed them both, he thought to himself.
Maybe Seth was right. Maybe he was cornered. Maybe everything in life had cornered him.
But he’d have killed them both.
They forced my hand, he thought. Everyone at school—they put me there.
But I’d have killed them both.
Who could he even blame?
I’d have killed them both.
Only two of them knew it, but…
Cornered, he’d have killed all three of them.

—

Somehow Kato managed to adjust—or managed to start adjusting—despite everything. Athena was allegedly still getting over her illness on Friday and Seth took another day off as well, despite Kato objecting that it could wait, and the three of them moved the desk out of the bedroom and then they all went out and got a bed and a mattress and Seth bought them lunch. 
It was kind of fun. Normal, even. Obviously everything about it was distinctly abnormal, but wandering around a furniture store looking at fake plants and laughing at terrible, trite throw pillows with Athena, who pointed at a dumb print of a goose wearing glasses and told Seth, “Look, it’s you,” just felt…right. Easy. 
Even so, Kato smoked so many cigarettes he thought he probably should start applying for jobs pronto, because with these stress levels he was going to be up to a pack a day by the next week. 
But Seth kept being so…Seth. Kato stared at him, trying to catch him in the act of looking resentful, or suspicious, or fucking anything, but he just didn’t. He did buy a lock for his closet door, where the guns were, but even then he didn't manage to look reproachful or anything. Not even when he mentioned not knowing yet ‘how to dispose of them’ and Kato said, “They’re my property, I paid for them, you can’t just throw out my shit,” which should have pissed him off.
“Hm. We will discuss it later,” Seth replied, waving a hand. Athena was the one who gave Kato a look. 
It hurt, but he also deserved it, for more reasons than she knew, so when she asked, “Why do you even still want them?” he just crossed his arms and replied, “‘Cause they’re mine.”
“But what’s the point?”
“Memorabilia. It’s like scrapbooking. I’ll tape ‘em into an album one day to show my kids why bullying is bad. I’ll be like, ‘And these are from when daddy tried to blow a bunch of little stinkers like you off the face of the earth for being mean.’”
She sighed through her nose and wrinkled her brow. “You were funnier before, K-O,” she said.
“Yeah, probably.” He frowned. “…It’s just how I cope.”
“I know.” She reached over and gave his hand a soft squeeze; maybe she still heard the strain in his voice. “Just….maybe you don’t gotta cope so hard anymore.”

He thought he was coping pretty well, all things considered. After all, he could’ve been trying to break into the closet and get the hell out of dodge before Seth could decide he made a stupid decision and turn him into the police or something. Instead, come Saturday morning, he was helping put together furniture and entertaining Athena on the making-music thing again.
“I mean, you live here now,” she said, tilting her screwdriver towards him. “It’ll be easier. Maybe we can hire a bassist or something. Or, well…you know Gabe, from school? He and his brother—”

She was interrupted by Kato’s phone ringing. He lifted it up and his blood ran cold: It was his dad.
“It’s my dad,” he said blankly. Athena stared up at him; Seth stirred in his periphery. He answered the call on some automatic instinct.
“Where the hell are you?” his dad asked, instead of offering a greeting; “I got an email from your school about you dropping out!”
“Yeah, well…makes sense you got that, seeing as I’m dropping out,” Kato replied in a monotone.
“Like hell you are. Get home immediately, we’re re-enrolling you this instant.”
“Like hell we are,” Kato echoed.
“Don’t you curse at me, David,” Walt said, his volume rising with his fury; “This isn’t a debate! Now you tell me where you are!”
“Do you want me dead?” Kato asked. His hands started to shake and he was standing up, suddenly, clutching the phone so hard his fingers were going numb. “DO YOU WANT ME FUCKING DEAD?” he screamed down the phone: “COME DRAG ME HOME THEN! I’LL SLIT MY FUCKING WRISTS IN YOUR FRONT YARD, THEN EVERYONE WILL KNOW—”
Seth lunged forward and grabbed the phone out of his hands, vanishing down the hall to presumably mediate the situation and leaving Kato shaking where he stood. 

“I’ll kill myself,” he said, turning to Athena. “I’ll kill myself if he finds me. I can’t do it again.”
“He won’t,” she swiftly replied; “Seth will convince him to let you stay—it’ll be alright, Kato!”
“I can’t,” he repeated. “I can’t go back there.” He sank to the floor and clutched his head. His wrists itched like they always did when he felt trapped, and he wanted to flee to the kitchen and hack into them. “He’s gonna kill me,” he whispered. “He hates me. He’s gonna take me back and smash my guitar or something. What if he calls the cops and reports me missing? I can’t do it. I’m gonna die. I need to get out of here!” He stood up and started stumbling towards the door; stopped short by Athena grabbing his wrist.
“Seth will take care of it,” she pleaded. “Just let Seth take care of it!”
“And if he can’t?” Kato demanded. His heart pounded in his ears.
“Then we run away,” she said.
We? 
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he started; “You can’t…like, what? You have to stay here!”
“Just let Seth deal with it, okay? Maybe it won’t have to be like that anyway!” Athena replied. “Just calm down, Jules, we’ll…we’ll figure it out!” 

He couldn’t calm down. He was still standing in the center of the room with Athena holding him by the arm to keep him from bolting, having a half-argument about running away because she didn’t trust that if she let him leave now he’d actually come back for her later, when Seth eventually emerged from his room and handed Kato back his phone. 
“Finally the surname was of some use,” he said with an expression of distaste.
Kato just stared at him, trying to decipher his expression. Athena was still able to speak, at least.
“He can stay, right?” she asked, rather fiercely, tightening her grip on Kato's arm as though he might wrench himself free and throw himself off the balcony, which honestly, he was considering if things had gone south.
“Yes, it’s sorted. More or less,” Seth said. “I have to phone father and deal with that, but it will be fine.”
“Why do you gotta call dad?”
“In case Mr. Winters calls him to ensure that I am who I say I am. I don’t know what I’ll tell dad, because I may have allowed it to sound as though I’m running a group home of some nature, but I’m sure I can come up with something. Maybe your father will be satisfied by the thesis and all else,” he told Kato.

“What? How…how did you get him…to let me stay? How bad did you have to lie?” Kato asked, the muscles in his legs still tight, caught in the purgatory between fight and flight.
“It was mostly the truth, actually. I did tell him that you were a legitimate danger to yourself, I’m afraid,” Seth apologized. “I said that you were here by choice, having anticipated his displeasure over your decision to withdraw from school, and I informed him that I’m a doctor currently working at a Brooklyn counselling practice. And that my father is Dr. Todd Brookes, the neurosurgeon, should he have any reservations about me. Character references and all such things…He did demand I provide him with proof of my degree, hence me directing him to my profile on the clinic’s website and my thesis…I’ve never hung the diploma up, otherwise I’d have just sent a photo. I believe it’s somewhere in my closet. Anyway…I assured him I would prioritize encouraging you to return to schooling as soon as you were mentally fit.” Seth shrugged. “That was the only falsehood.”
“That was enough?” Kato asked.
“He isn’t happy about it, but I was rather uncompromising about your school and home environments being detrimental to your health. I don’t think he liked very much my line of questioning either as to if he felt having his suicidal son largely alone at home with no one but an equally depressive mother to talk to while his father worked twelve hours a day was a particularly fruitful treatment plan. I expressed the opinion that likely everyone would rather you were able to be kept out of a hospital setting if possible, as well, and that while it is still very early on, you appeared to be showing improvement in a ‘controlled household environment.’ So.”

Kato was still trembling. “Am I?” he asked. He couldn’t tell if he was about to cry or laugh. “Am I showing improvement?” He did both: Suddenly laughing, breathless, tears streaming down his cheeks. His legs threatened to fail him but then Athena was hugging him, half-holding him up and laughing her relief too.
Seth put his arms around both of them with a kind chuckle. “Yes, I daresay you are,” he murmured. 
“What if he makes it hell for you?” Kato asked, wiping his cheeks. “What if he changes his mind?”
“Then I shall make it hell for him,” Seth responded gently. “It’s all alright.”

—

Kato didn’t need to know, Seth thought, that his father had asked if he’d be expected to pay for his son's care, and when informed that he would not, had asked if he “should expect him to be dumped back on the doorstep” at some point, then. Nor did he relay Walt's message, despite being requested to, that Kato was “not to expect any bail-outs later, if he’s still so committed to proving me wrong and ruining his education. Let him know that he can get a job and support himself.”
I’ve just told you he’s intent on ending his own life, Seth thought to himself; and you’re concerned about being right?

Mr. Winters seemed convinced that the suicidality they were discussing had some undercurrent of obstinate school avoidance—as if that would have made it less of a concern regardless—and had come across as simultaneously controlling and indecisive. He hadn’t seemed certain of whether he wanted Kato back home or not, only really able to be brought to a conclusion when essentially told he’d failed as a parent and then allowed to dictate his terms—namely, that Kato return to school when well enough or otherwise be informed that he was wrong if he failed to do so. It perturbed Seth, the bizarre fixation on something that should have been irrelevant at that point, but Athena had told him that Walt was…Rigid.
It reminded Seth in some way of his own father; so latched onto the concept of having a surgeon for a son that he could see nothing else, but he tried to shake it off and busied himself with other things, afterward, while the kids put the furniture together—back together, in the case of the desk—and considered his options, moving forward. Having Kato there wasn’t a concern in and of itself, but he knew he would need to return to work, and then Kato would, largely, be alone in the flat. He needed to make sure he would be okay.

In that vein, Seth still didn't know what to do about the guns. Kato had shared that he thought the Uzi might already be “hot,” and the shotgun had been sawed down past the point of legality: Selling either would be reprehensible. Yet…he couldn't be certain that turning all three into the police would have no repercussions. It unfortunately did seem that the best option, short of throwing them into the nearest body of water, was, indeed, to keep them locked in his closet. Seth tucked his tongue to his cheek. It did bother him that Kato still seemed attached to the weapons, and he glanced up from his paperwork to study him: Sitting cross-legged on the floor, sorting screws and reading the assembly instructions out to Athena. Calm enough; smiling again, now, how he’d done at the store. Aside from the new tearfulness and visible anxiety, generally, he seemed much the same as ever. Seth wondered if he ought to feel more suspicious.
Well, obviously, he thought to himself. 
And yet…Kato had stood here in this kitchen just a handful of months ago, rooted to the spot until he could be certain of Athena’s safety. 
Yes, he’d drawn that gun at the school, but…he was not alone in having made an attempt on Seth's life in an impulsive moment: Seth's own wrists could attest to that. 

There was something about him; about what he’d become to Athena, that Seth couldn’t shake and couldn’t condemn. And his pain, his visceral pain; the father who cared more for practicality and his own ego than he did whether his son lived or died; an essentially comatose mother, a hostile school…of course the boy had felt trapped. And he did seem better, at the flat; out of school, reassured that his father would not be coming to retrieve him. It seemed so much of his issue came from his circumstances, and those had certainly changed. He’d likely feel less of a comfort from the idea of arming himself as he adjusted to not always needing to be on the defensive-become-offensive.
Seth figured he needed support, still, and structure that didn’t strangle, but hell…he was a doctor, and therapist-in-training: Surely he could provide as much. It seemed to be going well enough thus far. 

“Counter-clockwise, Athena, oh my god,” Kato said from the living room, his tone coming out equal parts exasperated and affectionate.
“I don’t know which way that is!”
“Just let me do it. Holy shit.”
Seth looked over again and watched Kato exchange places with Athena; a gentle sort of smile on his face despite his profanity, brushing her arm with his fingertips before he twisted to screw the desk shelving together. She failed to look scolded with the hand-off; instead, she was smiling, too.
Seth returned to his papers. Yes, he was sure, It would all work out. It seemed it already was.