Blood In Your Mouth vs Blood On My Hands

📅 September 21, 2011 ➞ September 22, 2011; second week of the school year

✚ ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ ʜᴏᴍɪᴄɪᴅᴇ ✚

Athena hadn’t necessarily had high hopes for eleventh grade, considering tenth, but it was still a bitter disappointment that it only took school being in session for a week and a half to see that Kato’s anticipatory pessimism from summer hadn’t been misguided. He’d blown by her in the hall without a greeting after the final bell rang and she’d had to follow in his wake, knowing from experience that something had happened. Again. 

The fury in Kato’s stride forced her to jog beside him, barely keeping pace with her friend as they pushed through the crowded hallways towards the school’s front exit.
  “It was Trent, again, wasn’t it?” she asked, “He’s a shit. Do you want me to beat him up?” 
Kato kept his head down and didn’t reply, but his long hair and silence couldn't conceal the evidence of schoolyard warfare; a black eye had already begun to color the side of his face, and his lip had clearly been split. Athena tried again:
“C’mon, Jules, I’m strong enough now, I could take him. I’ve been getting into kickboxing, I could—”
“Don’t fucking bother, Athena!” Kato snapped, stopping abruptly as they reached the main lobby, and spinning around to face her. His voice had been angry, heated, bitter—how could it not be—but it became something terrifyingly serious in its rage with his next words; “Just don’t come to school tomorrow.” 
Without warning, he stepped forward; put his hand to the back of her neck and pressed his mouth to hers: A hard, split-second kiss that ended almost before it began, and oh. She hadn’t expected that.
“Kato—?” she gasped confusedly.
“Just don’t, Athena!” he snapped; his tone protectively desperate beneath its anger. His eyes flashed with meaning, but he turned on his heel and vanished into the days-end crowd of students leaving school before Athena could reach out or respond or ask anything at all. She hugged her arms to her chest and felt anxiety begin rising like floodwaters in the back of her mind.

Even after getting home, she couldn’t shake the weight—the undeniable wrongness that now seemed to blanket the world. Every text she sent to Kato pinged as “undelivered,” making her feel deaf and blind and sick inside. Her guilty anxiety ate at her as she sat in her room, unable to concentrate on her homework, but unable too to meet Seth’s concerned, searching eyes with the truth.
“Are you alright, Athena?” he asked her that evening, “You know that I’m here for you.”
“It’s the second week back. They’re piling on the work now,” she replied, and though she knew her tone couldn’t pass for genuine, her brother didn’t pry. He just sighed, rested a comforting hand on her shoulder, and made sure she ate her dinner.

When she got up in the morning, she couldn’t tell if she’d slept fitfully or not at all: The situation felt nightmarish in and of itself, anyway. Her texts still weren’t going through, and Kato appeared to have either deleted or gone underground with his social media. She tried to make up her mind on what to do about it all; struggling to pass off as normal as the morning went on and the panic kept mounting in her chest. There was no way for it to slip beneath Sethfire’s notice: He was always on alert, now, and she felt too sick with anxiety to eat breakfast. He took a seat across from her, his brow knotted with worry. 
“Athena, please talk to me. I can tell that something is wrong,” he said, reaching across the table for her hands, and the concern in his voice was so drawn that it made her heart ache. She fought a silent internal battle, chewing indecisively on her lip and feeling horribly guilty over her fear. But her brother’s wide, worried eyes made her throat ache—and the dam broke:
“I don’t think—I don’t want to think he would do anything!” she finally gasped out, “but Kato, like, people have treated him bad for years, you already know, but—he’s been saying—and I thought it was all just—just a fucked up way of blowing off steam—” she kept choking on her rushed words; tripping over them as she started to hyperventilate, “He’s always been angry but it’s gotten so much worse—he said he started going to a shooting range over the summer and I know he has a fake ID; I thought it was just for cigarettes! But he joked about getting his own gun and the way he’s been talking, it’s all so dark—and then yesterday he got beat up again and he told me not to go in to school today, and I’m so scared, Seth, I think he’s going to—” her voice cracked and she had to swallow a stuttered breath. “...I think he’s going to do something really bad.” 

She couldn’t bring herself to outright accuse her friend: Couldn’t force herself to say she thought he’d really go that far. But she’d said enough: Sethfire knew what she meant, and after a trepidation-filled glance at the clock, got hurriedly to his feet.
“Are you going to call the police?” Athena asked quietly, her voice heavy with anxiety.
“No,” Seth replied with hesitant conviction, “I’m not certain that he would allow himself to survive a confrontation with them.” Sethfire grabbed his car keys off the counter and spoke over his shoulder as he hastened to the door; “Stay here. I am going to try and talk him down.”
“I’ll come too, he’s my friend—” Athena objected, starting to get to her feet. 
“Like hell you will,” Seth shut her down, his voice resonant and protective: A less violent echo of Kato’s own “Just don’t, Athena!” 
Sethfire seldom cursed and it was half due to the shock of hearing him do so that Athena sat back down, fear burning her throat like bile. Seth gave her the faintest ghost of a comforting smile, and his eyes softened slightly—along with his tone—as he walked out the door with a last, backward glance. 
“I love you. I’ll bring him back safe,” he said.

Athena wished the conviction had stayed in his voice.

📅 September 22, 2011; second week of the school year; immediately after previous

September had forever felt like the onset of winter to Kato. Continued summer temperatures and cicada song didn’t change the fact that the ninth month always blew in cold to him: It registered without fail as looming gray, as the beginning of the autumnal wilt, as the point at which that winter die-off appeared on the horizon. And this September, he’d known that die-off would come before October did. It seemed that at some point last year he’d picked up the weather to bring it with him: Had become deep autumn and now turned to winter; with its hoarfrost and hypothermia and black ice.

His lip wasn’t split due to the dry cold of midwinter, though, and it was a fist and not frostbite that had purpled the skin around his eye. Still, the hollow chill in his chest and overwhelming sense of numbness could almost fool him. He felt empty and half-absent as he packed his bookbag. Even sawed-off to illegality, his secondhand shotgun just barely fit in, wedged against his Uzi. Next to the others, the Glock felt somewhat unnecessary—but it had been a good price, even for how beat-up it was. Kato’s lips twitched as he ran a thumb over the scratches in its worn plastic grip. He considered just tucking it into his waistband, but it felt like far too great a visibility risk. He had a plan, anyway. He’d arm up once he got there. 
Kato zipped his backpack closed over all three guns and more ammo than even he thought he’d need, and took a moment to sit back on his heels and think. He smirked to himself over his ‘Made By Society’ shirt and added it to his mental itinerary that he really ought to get in clear view of a security camera at some point. Gotta make sure they have something good for the front page. He nearly laughed at how surreal the whole thing felt. Everything around seemed to have some sort of halo of unreality to it, and he himself felt not-quite-of-Earth: Separated from the world by the fact that he now knew the future, knew what was to come, knew what no-one else did. Well...most likely. Kato frowned slightly, Athena’s name a splinter of reality still lodged in his heart. He’d blocked her number to avoid having to answer to her, but he knew she might be scared, might be guessing...might have guessed. 
Kato pressed his tongue to his cheek with a twinge of regret. If he were to be honest with himself, warning her had been a patently stupid move: In all his months of organization, tipping anyone off had never been part of the plan. But impulsivity had gotten the best of him yesterday, desperately not wanting her to witness either his retribution or another blood-soaked floor. Her sake over his, ‘til the end. No cops had come calling, though, and school hadn’t been cancelled due to any ‘alleged threat’—so it seemed his lapse in judgement had been of no real consequence. He just hoped it wasn’t because she’d dismissed his words.

Kato’s musing was interrupted by his bedroom door opening. His father leaned in from the hall, expression already stern, tone already cold.
“I’m about to leave to take your mother to her appointment, so—” he started, then frowned and furrowed his brow. “…Why are you just sitting on the ground, staring into space? Pay attention to the time,” he chastised.
  “I am,” Kato replied icily from the floor, staring daggers out the corner of his eye.
   “Good: Don’t be late to school. And don't start any more trouble.” His father withdrew without waiting for a response. 
  “...Of course not, dad,” Kato said in a dark undertone to the empty doorway.
He listened to the front door close and the car engine rumble to life outside, and felt the faintest pang that neither of his parents had said—or recieved—a goodbye. The moment faded like the sound of the car leaving the driveway, though, and Kato shook his head; letting his emotions settle back as resentment. Alone in the now eerily silent house, he checked the clock. 
Paying attention, just like you said, dad.
It would be a while before he could leave, and it felt ironic that the one day he’d bothered to get ready quickly enough to manage to be on time was the same day that he needed to be late: He had to make sure everyone had the chance to arrive at school and get to class, after all. So he fiddled absently with his car keys...and waited.

It was well past the bell for the start of first period when Kato pulled into the school parking lot. He parked diagonally across two staff spaces—because nothing mattered, not anymore. The cig he’d carelessly smoked in his mother’s car—As if she’d care about the smell of cigarette smoke after today—was burning worthlessly at the filter, so he tossed it to the ground and crushed it into the asphalt under the heel of his boot. His backpack strap weighed heavy on his shoulder as he strode across the parking lot to the building entrance with bitter purpose. It had become a habit of self-preservation to keep his head down when walking into school, and even today instinct won: He was still looking at the floor as he pushed through the building’s front doors into the vestibule.
  "...Julian."

  Sethfire’s voice stopped Kato in his tracks, with his palm already flat on the interior entrance’s push-bar. His startled reflection stared back at him from the glass door, and slowly he turned away from it to look over his shoulder. With his brisk pace and his head down, he hadn’t noticed Sethfire standing outside—or realized he’d been followed in.
  "...Seth..? What’re you doing here?" Kato asked slowly, trying to sound casual as he looked up to meet Sethfire’s searching gaze.
  "...Athena told me what’s been going on," Sethfire replied, sounding carefully calm, "The things you have been going through. The things you’ve been saying. Why did you tell her not to come into school today?"
Kato stiffened and he felt some of the color drain from his cheeks. He tightened his grip on his backpack’s strap half-consciously as he stared mutely back at Seth, his mind beginning to race: The push-bar was still compressed under his palm; the door was still just barely ajar.
  “Give me the backpack, please,” Sethfire said softly, with a minute step forward and an expectant, open palm.
Kato glanced down at Seth’s hand, then looked back up and said nothing—just dug his nails into the strap of his bookbag and subtly adjusted his weight. The door edged open an imperceptible centimeter.
  “What is your plan, here, Kato?” Sethfire asked with another step forward, “Are you intending to fight me? Just give me the backpack. We can talk this all through.”

Kato carefully let his gaze soften and gave a slow, shallow, half-ghost of a nod as though considering the merit of Sethfire’s words. He let his shoulder drop by a degree, saw Seth start to relax—and then spun on his heel; shoved the interior door wide open and bolted. He heard Sethfire bark out a desperate “No!” behind him as he broke into a sprint through the empty main lobby and made to take a sharp right down the hall. Sethfire had already caught up, though, with his longer legs and larger strides: He collided with Kato, slamming him against a wall of lockers hard enough that it almost felt like any other average school day—but his backpack hit the floor with a metallic clacking noise that couldn’t be mistaken for textbooks or binders. 
  "It’s not worth it, Julian!” Sethfire said desperately, “This isn’t the answer, you know it!" 
  "Just get the hell out of here, Seth! You don’t fucking know what they’ve done to me!” Kato snarled, spitting his hair out of his mouth as he struggled against Sethfire’s grip, “They—”
  “—Don’t deserve you sacrificing your humanity for them!” Sethfire interrupted, “This isn’t what you have to do—what you have to become! Please, Kato, listen to me!”
Kato stopped struggling, briefly, and just let himself be held against the lockers: His heart pounding in his ears, his panting breaths condensing on the metal door pressing cold to his cheek. Silently he shut his eyes; mapped out a course of action and throttled his reservations.
“I don’t have any other options.”

He stomped his heel onto Sethfire’s toes at the same time he slammed his head back into Seth’s face—and the stomach-turning crunch of a nose breaking was unmistakable. Sethfire groaned, instinctively clutching at his nose, and took a staggered, backwards half-step. As soon as he felt Sethfire’s grip loosen, Kato wrenched himself violently away; kicked his backpack out in front of him and dove for it. He hunched, panting, over the bag; his heart hammering as he fumbled with the zipper, and just barely managed to get it unzipped before Sethfire tackled him so hard they were almost both pulled into a roll. As they half-spun on the floor before managing to lurch upright again, Sethfire managed to loop one arm around Kato’s neck, and he strained for the backpack with the other as Kato thrashed wildly against the hold.
  "Kato, please! Just—" Sethfire begged haltingly as they grappled. 
  "I told you to get—the fuck—out of here!" Kato snapped, struggling to keep the backpack out of Sethfire's reach, “Fucking go, Seth! Run!” 
  “You’re not a killer!” Sethfire gasped, his desperation clear even though his voice was strained and thickened by the blood in his mouth.
  “Wanna bet?!” Kato snarled hoarsely.

Unable to bite the arm looped under his chin and beginning to compress his throat, Kato leaned into it—then reared back: He slammed his left elbow into Seth’s ribs at the same time he flung his head backwards for a second sickening collision with Sethfire’s already-broken nose. It worked: Kato felt the hold on him loosen and he threw himself into a forward somersault with the backpack, his heartbeat deafening in his ears. On his knees, he thrust his hand blindly into the bag—and the jackhammer pound of his racing heart warped into a ringing fever-pitch as he closed his fingers on the grip of his Glock. Time slowed to a crawl as he started to turn around, raising the gun to his chest-height, curling his finger toward the trigger.

  It was too late; Sethfire was on him already. Kato had no time to react before he was being slammed to the floor; trapping his arm beneath him, sending the gun clattering to the linoleum tiles.
  “Drop out of school, Julian! There are ways out of this situation besides bloodshed—you’re sixteen. Just drop out!” Sethfire tried to bargain from overhead, desperation in every syllable.
  "Fucking drop out, Seth?” Kato snarled, “My dad would fucking disown me! He already hates my guts, do you think he wouldn't throw me out of the goddamn house?!" Kato strained to push himself up, half-breathless from Sethfire’s weight compressing his chest to the floor, but managed to rise only a millimeter or two before being forced to the ground again. 
  "You can come live with me and Athena,” Seth pleaded as Kato struggled beneath his hands, “I can set things up for you today. I can get you out of this, Julian, you just have to let me. PLEASE." His voice was tight and strained and exhausted; both he and Kato were soaked in sweat from the fight. At first his words hung, unanswered, in the air—but after a few tense, silent seconds, Kato finally let himself go limp: The glock had spun out of reach; Sethfire could well be too strong to break away from. If anyone rounded the hall corner and stumbled upon the scene, there would be no talking himself out of the situation; no fighting his way out, and no shot at a blaze of glory, either. No escape routes. Excepting one.
  “Okay,” Kato breathed, closing his eyes, “Get me out.”

At first nothing happened: Sethfire seemed taken aback, and Kato couldn’t blame him for not trusting the surrender. Slowly, though, he eased his grip. When Kato continued to lay still, he let go—and scrambled for the guns. Kato waited until Seth had zipped the bag closed before he risked moving; slowly sitting up and letting the weight of everything that had transpired start to shake his breaths.
A hand appeared in front of him, to help him to his feet, so Kato took it—and as soon as he was standing, got pulled into a swift, heartbeat-long hug he could in no way rationalize deserving.
“Okay,” Sethfire breathed, almost to himself, his hands staying on Kato’s shoulders even after they stepped apart, “You’re okay.”
Kato stared up at him: Glasses bent at the bridge, nose badly broken and bruised; blood all down his front. 
The same blood that was now drying in Kato’s hair...and staining drop-spatter into the school floor. 
“...So what do we do now?” Kato asked, crossing his arms uneasily at his ribs, feeling sick and alien and desperate to be anywhere else, “Do I just go into the office and tell them I’m done? I...I just want to get the fuck out of here.”
“Then let’s get you the fuck out of here,” Sethfire replied seriously, and Kato’s jaw nearly dropped: Sethfire didn’t curse. Seth didn’t miss a beat, though: “Withdrawal forms are available online,” he continued, “We can walk out, right now, and you never have to come back here again: Let’s go.”

  He kept a warm, guiding palm between Kato’s shoulder blades as they walked briskly back through the main lobby. It’s offices and the double front doors both blurred by; Kato couldn’t manage to shake off his feeling of overwhelmed unreality enough to truly enjoy that it was the last time he’d ever have to see it all. The warm, humid air outside helped him start to come round again, though, and he shook his head to clear it—finding himself tugging on Seth’s sweater to get his attention.
“I, uh, I drove my mom’s car here...” he stuttered, quickly dropping his hand to his side, feeling childish, and trailing off uncertainly.
“Is she at the house?” Seth asked.
“No, she’s out…”
“Okay, good: We can go by your parents’ house, drop off the car, and get you your belongings—and then I can take you home,” Sethfire said, something about his matter-of-fact tone and the calm brontide of his voice unmistakably soothing, “I’ll call Athena and make sure that she knows you’re safe. Okay?”
Kato let out a wavering breath, a lump rising in his throat that he couldn’t quite swallow as he turned Sethfire’s words over in his head: 
Athena. 
Home. 
Athena and home, Athena as home; Athena, home, you’re safe. 

  “Okay,” he replied shakily, choked up and misty-eyed despite his best efforts, “Okay, yeah. Home.”