WHO: Kaden, Marcie, maybe Cathal? WHEN: Sunday 29th August, evening WHERE: Burlington WHAT: Kaden's night on the town and how it all comes crashing down WARNINGS: No biggies, but a lot of emotion, and some unfair ragging on Marcie and Cathal
Used to be, Kaden could’ve slept through anything. Fights between Barak and Cin. Cy’s metal. Tragos getting in sometime before dawn. That was all a long time ago, though. Another lifetime.
Sleep was just another thing that the old lifetime had that this one didn’t. Restful sleep lay in a shallow grave next to Tragos and Cy and Barak’s brain. Sleep put him in a state of vulnerability and his mind remembered something real bad waiting for him somewhere in that state. And in a child’s fort, in a playground on the edge of Burlington (though Burlington was so small, he thought, it was kinda all edge) he barely slept at all.
He did try. He curled up around Blueberry, clinging tightly to the hoodie he’d repurposed as a lead so he wouldn’t lose her. He buried his face in her fur, very tired, very very tired, but unable to stop his terrified listening for footsteps, and whenever Blueberry moved he jerked awake, terrified she was going to get away and he'd be left alone. Each jerk filled him again full of sick adrenaline, and by the time dawn was starting to seep into the sky Kaden was on the verge of tears again; it wasn’t fair. He was so tired and it wasn’t fair he couldn’t sleep! He wanted to snap at the wind which had kept blowing a nearby tree over a streetlight in a way that made him think something (someone) was descending on him from the sky. He wanted to punch through the fort that creaked like someone else was walking up the ramp. He wanted to drag Marcie out of her stupid house and make her sleep in the fort because she was the one that deserved to be out here.
He sat up, stiff and painful and hurting through his whole body. The high that had hit him as he sprinted away from Cathal’s place with Blueberry in tow— fuck you all! It’ll take a god to stop me!— hadn’t lasted the night. Turned out more than a god could stop him. Turned out hunger and exhaustion and despair worked pretty damn effectively. And fear. Mostly the fear.
It wasn’t fair, he thought, but the rush of angry injustice was just that, a rush. It faded, and fear slunk back in and set up camp, hunger pitched in a tent beside it. And shame, though the shame did get his defenses up; yeah he wished he hadn’t thrown things at Marcie but at least he didn’t actually hit her. That was all her. She had it coming. She had it coming he told himself firmly, though his stomach felt sick to think it, and his eyes stung all over again.
Then the thought: what would Tragos say about how he’d behaved?
That thought crippled him. Kaden sank back to the floor of the fort, one hand over his mouth and the other clutching his sinking stomach, elbow hooked through the hoodie-lead. He didn’t know what Tragos would have said, because the thought shot his imagination dead. Right between the eyes dead. He couldn't think, for a while. He couldn’t do anything. He didn’t even know how he’d kept breathing. When he finally became aware of himself as a person again, it started with hearing the rasping of his breath, dragging in and out of his lungs like he’d run for miles. When Blueberry licked his hands, he remembered that he had hands. Kaden sobbed, hard, and clung onto Blueberry for his life for a while, till it passed, till he was once again picking through the wreckage of everything that that... whatever that was... had washed up on the shore.
Numb, he started walking again, Blueberry whining at his side, hoodie pulled up over his head, till slowly his stomach roared back into life as well. He sat down in a sheltered picnic area near the edge of a river, digging through his backpack while Blueberry barked at a couple of early morning kayakers. The corn chips tasted so strong it was nearly a shock, and he was licking the inside of the small bag before he knew it, wishing he had more. The salt and vinegar chips went down just as fast, washed down with some warm and— after being jostled about in a bag all night— flat coke.
And then Blueberry put her head on his lap, and whined.
It was amazing how quickly you could realise you were out of your depth, and yet you still pushed on and tried something you knew— you knew— was not a solution. Kaden opened a third packet of chips, and said, his voice thin: “hey, look, it’s chicken?”
And as Blueberry wolfed down the chips, Kaden thought, with a hopeless flavour of hope, that maybe this could work? He could scavenge food for the both of them? Labs ate all sorts of things? It could? Work?
But he could feel despair climbing up his body again, as he looked at the shiny glean of Blueberry’s coat. The dogs in the Hole were all rough, dull of coat and abundant of rib. Sniper had been like that, even before he’d caught himself on the razor wire. Kaden couldn’t— he couldn’t—
“I’m sorry,” he rasped, sinking down off the seat to kneel in front of the dog, wrapping his arms around Blueberry once more. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I have to— I’m sorry—”
At least with Lil T he had food, formula, a car, money... they would have been alright, in the end, if Ares hadn’t—
They would have been alright.
But Kaden had lost all of that. Barely any food. No money, no car.
(No home. No family.)
If Blueberry shared the same fate as Sniper...
He couldn’t let it happen, not to Blueberry, sniffing his fingers hopefully for more food. He couldn’t lead her down whatever path he was leading himself. He knew he was heading somewhere hopeless. He couldn’t drag her down with him.
He still sobbed like a child into her side though.
Walking back through Cathal’s neighbourhood felt like walking through a dream. Everything seemed distant, his tired brain making him both twitchy and numb. Nothing felt quite real, and he didn’t know what he would do if Cathal stepped out of his front gate and confronted him. Kaden was half sure that he’d just stare blankly. He was so, so tired.
Once more, he dropped to his knees in front of Blueberry, but the dog, who’d been straining at her hoodie-leash for two blocks as she recognised home! was eager to try and get through the gate. All Kaden wanted to do was hold onto her soulfully one last time, to beg her forgiveness, to... to hold onto something, but when he didn’t open the gate right away she started yapping, and Kaden wasn’t so numb that he didn’t know he had to open the gate, let her through, and get out of there fast without saying goodbye.
It shouldn't have hurt. He'd never had the chance to say goodbye to Tragos, either, and Blueberry was just a dog and... it shouldn't have hurt, but it was like every day the world surprised him again with new ways to feel pain.
Alone again, the fear came back. This time it wasn’t the nighttime fear that someone was hunting him. In the cold light of morning, it was the simple reality that he was on his own... that he had lost Marcie. That he was homeless. That he had a few squashed chocolate bars in his backpack but not much else. That he was so, so tired. That he really, really needed to go to the toilet.
And he thought... Cin always took Barak back, when he showed up at her house.
And he hadn’t even done anything really bad to Connie. Kissed her and then blanked her and then called her cousin a bitch and ran out.
She’d help him. She liked him! It was all he had.
At Connie’s house, her parents BMW was parked in the driveway, its boot open as her mother loaded in a clingwrapped tray of triangle sandwiches. Kaden crouched in the bushes round the side of the house, creeping his way through to the back. Her parents were having a disagreement over the tie her father was wearing, though it was a disagreement in overtly cheerful voices, the kind of cheer Kaden was sure was going to snap given enough pressure.
He watched them both head back out to the car, her mother carrying another tray, her father arguing about the compliments he’d received while wearing this tie in the past, and Kaden darted round through the back door and took the stairs two at a time up to Connie’s room, just as she was stepping out of it.
Connie gasped, and covered her mouth with her hand to stop herself screaming. Kaden held out both his hands, talking quietly and quickly “please— Connie, please, I need your help.”
“I’m on my way to church!” Connie hissed, waving at her outfit, a pale blue dress she’d definitely never worn to the basketball courts. “My parents are outside!”
“They’re at the car arguing about a tie, they didn’t see me. Please, can I just...” his head was swimming he was so tired, so aching to lie down on her windowseat or fold into one of her beanbags. His bladder so full it hurt. “Can I just hide here? For a bit? I’ve run away.”
“What?” Connie hissed again, though this time with added alarm.
“It was so bad there, Connie, you don’t even know. I had to – I had to get out. I will explain everything, honest. Hey— hey,” he said, with a persuasive tone as she looked anxiously down the stairs. “You like me, right?” Kaden pulled her attention back, as he stepped toward her and took her hand. “I like you too, Connie, I really like you—” His heart beating a panic in his throat, Kaden leaned forward and kissed her, squeezing her hand the tighter. “Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope,” he gave her his most endearing smile, a bright and charming mask over a riot of desperation.
Connie, pink in her cheeks now, slapped his arm lightly with the back of her fingers. “Alright nerd,” she relented, and— hand in his— dragged him into her room and closed the door. “You can stay here till I get back from church— oh shit, no, we have a fundraiser straight afterwards, we’re going to be hours. Um— um—!”
“Hours is fine, I’ll just go to sleep!” Kaden tried not to show how absolutely rabid he felt about lying down. “I kinda spent the night in a park, I’m so tired.”
“Okay...” Connie said, worrying her lip with her teeth. “Okay but, my parents can’t find out you’re here. They’ll think you spent the night here,” she went even pinker. “So don’t, um, move anything in the house— oh, shit,” she winced, as her mother called (in a bright and cheerful and utterly untrustworthy voice) that if she didn’t shake a leg they were going to be very late, darling!! “I have to go, just... gaah,” she drew the kind of blank someone draws when asked to hide a very cute fugitive and risk deep parental disappointment.
“Just go, I’ll be fine,” Kaden tried for another trustworthy smile, but he was so tired he couldn’t remember how to get his eyes in on the action, and he thought that if he relaxed enough to smile he might piss himself. But it didn’t change anything— Connie gave his hand another squeeze, pulled her handbag back onto her shoulder and shouting a singsong “COMING!!!” to her parents, and pulled her bedroom door shut after her.
Kaden dropped to the floor and crawled toward her window, keeping out of sight as he watched them leave. (What did this remind him of? Watching through lace curtains, watching down into a carpark, watching a car— what did this remind him of?)
But the BMW with the cheerfully disagreeing parents and the blushing savior and trays full of little triangle fundraising sandwiches was leaving, blissfully leaving, and with a groan of relief Kaden bolted to the bathroom.
He bolted— just as quickly— awake a few hours later when Connie shut her bedroom door, waking with such a violent start he fell off her bed with a thump. “Kaden!” she protested in a whisper. “SSH! They’re downstairs!”
“Ow,” said Kaden, rubbing his shoulder, his head barely any clearer than it had been when he lay down on top of her covers (it wouldn’t have been right, climbing in. The only reason he’d slept on her bed and not on the windowseat was that her bed was closer to the power socket, and his phone needed charging.)
Connie tested her bedroom door again nervously, and crawled across the bed to look down at him. “Did you eat a bunch of gluten free bread while we were gone?”
“I made a sandwich,” Kaden replied— both of them talking in whispers. “I’ve only had chips since— since I left here yesterday. Is that why it crumbled so weird?”
“Well Mom now thinks I ate six slices for breakfast and she had a go. Kaden, why did you run away?”
Kaden had opened his mouth to say something about the bread, another explanation of his hunger, some comment about her judgmental mother, maybe an apology? But then the heavier question, and Kaden squirmed on the floor, and frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.
“You said you’d explain.” Connie had spent the last several hours first at church, and then surrounded by churchgoers as she passed plates of food around. More than one person had mentioned to her that there’d been someone vandalising her school, and there were rumors there would be no vending machine when school started again. Mrs Hasanovic was overjoyed that her stolen dog had been returned after someone (she was certain) opened her gate and took her, last night. Connie knew that went she’d hugged Kaden, he’d smelled strongly of dog. And she knew Mrs Hasanovic was Cathal's neighbour. And she was pretty sure she knew where he’d gotten those chips. People talked in a small town...
Kaden, though, was not from a small town. Kaden was a Murphy. “Yeah well, now I don’t wanna talk about it,” he muttered, rubbing his shoulder again, a little because it hurt, a little because he needed her sympathy. Everything was hard, so so hard and he had no one left on his side. “It’s just bad, trust me.”
Just bad... “Did... did Cathal do something to Marcie?” Connie asked, her face paling. “Did he do something to you? Is that why—”
“No,” Kaden hissed, horrified, and Connie stared back at him, horrified.
“It’s just...” Connie winced her way through her logic. “The way you said that Marcie would never... and you were really... weird when I kissed you... I thought that maybe...”
“No, no no, fuck,” Kaden shook his head violently. He wasn’t happy with Cathal, but fuck. “Cathal didn’t— it’s Marcie, I can’t live with Marcie.”
“So what’s wrong with Marcie?!” Connie asked, her tone way less likely to believe anything... dodgy, about a Bellini. They'd lived in Burlington all her life!
“She... she thinks I’m awful,” Kaden refused to look at her. Whatever he saw on her face, pity, disbelief, whatever— it would break him. Saying this practically broke him. “She never really loved my brother. She— she doesn’t understand anything. She’s shallow and— and she’s so fucking selfish, you can’t even know.”
Connie rocked back and forth on her bed. Shallow and selfish sounded like a lot of adults, shallow and selfish and didn’t understand? Yeah she got that. She’d never run away, though. “Well... where are you gonna go?”
“I have no idea...” The fear of the future roared up in him again, everything past today was a black, open maw. “Can I just... hang out here... a bit? Please?”
“Oh... kay,” Connie said, her bottom lip entirely in her teeth. “Um— I’ll go downstairs, tell my parents I need to mentally prepare for school starting, and they probably won’t come in here. You should, um, you should probably stay on the floor there in case they do, though. You can have a beanbag? And then I’m going to have to get out of this dress so you’re going to have to step into the cupboard for a bit.”
“Can you bring up some more food?” Kaden asked, plaintively.
“Only if they’re not in the kitchen,” Connie said. “Or near it... I ate at the fundraiser. Um. I’ll try and sneak you something.”
She managed to pocket two apples, and Kaden lay down on the beanbag on her floor and ate it, and while she lay on her bed, pretending to read, he quietly stared at his phone.
It got boring, real fast. And yet Kaden couldn’t calm down. Couldn’t stop thinking about how he didn’t have a damn idea what he was going to do or where he was going to go. Connie passed her own phone down to show him a meme and Kaden couldn’t even see it, couldn’t focus enough to read, all he wanted to do was grab her hand and beg her to let him stay. He could sleep here, down beside her bed! Or in her closet! He could be silent and sneaky and live in her house like in Parasite! It was such a big house, her parents wouldn’t notice! Okay so, apparently her mom counted the number of slices of bread that went missing but he could work around that!!
What else could he do?? He had nowhere else to go??!
The only reason Kaden wasn’t curling into a ball and trying to disappear into the floor was he didn’t know how to do that in front of Connie when she was giggling at a racoon. But something must have slipped out, because she gave him the weirdest look, confused as shit... and worried, so worried.
“Liiiiisten,” she said, rolling onto her side, facing him. “I’m going to have to go down and do dinner soon, I don’t know what...”
“I can stay here,” Kaden said quickly. “I’ll be dead quiet. No one will know.”
“Yeah but... all night?” she asked warily, and Kaden sat up and grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers through his and looking up at her.
“Please?”
How could she say no to that? With her hand in his... Kaden hoped she couldn’t. He didn’t know what to do if she could. Could she feel how fast his heart was beating? It felt like it was shaking his whole body.
“Okay,” she said again, and he melted against the side of her bed when she pulled back. “I’ll be up again after dinner...”
Kaden managed to hold it together till after she’d closed her bedroom door again... and then curled up into the tightest, most miserable ball.
It was... he didn’t know how long before the door opened again. He’d unclenched, a little, when he eventually stopped shaking... but he was still curled on the floor. There was a fold in her duvet that draped down a few inches from his face and he couldn’t stop staring at it. Even though every now and then he’d think about reaching for his phone, he didn’t. Even though every now and then he thought he should think about the future... he didn’t. He just stared at the fold.
Hecate never should have turned him back into a person.
She should have left him to die.
Kaden closed his eyes and pressed his head harder against her carpet, clenching all his muscles so tight that even though his body wanted to sob, he wouldn’t let it.
So he had absolutely no idea how much time had passed when the door opened. It looked darker, outside. That was all he had.
“Um, Kaden?” Connie’s voice was quiet and uncertain and... guilty. “Can you... come out?”
For a moment, Kaden wasn’t sure he could. His whole body hurt, stiffer than when he woke up in the fort this morning. But he pushed himself up, and looked over her bed toward her door. Her mother stood behind her. Kaden stopped moving. “Can you come downstairs please Kaden?” Mrs Lash asked, then turned around, and he heard her heels clicking down the stairs.
“What did you do?” Kaden hissed at Connie. “What did you— Connie!?”
“It’s okay! It’s okay Kaden, they’re going to help! Can you just please come downstairs? Please?”
Kaden’s chest was heaving, his vision starting to tunnel down to what he needed— phone and charger, yank that out of the wall. Grab his bag, grab Tragos’ hoodie he’d been using as a pillow— and— and—
He only followed her downstairs because he didn’t have a choice. Clutching his bag straps, breathing shallow, frantic with panic and betrayal. All of which compounded when Connie stepped into the lounge and her parents were both there, sitting together on the couch holding hands, and rising to greet him was a police officer.
Kaden threw himself backwards so hard he banged into the wall. “Kaden, you’re not in trouble,” the standing officer tried to reassure him. Her partner stayed seated, the calm looks on their faces feeling like the worst kind of trap. “I’m constable Sydney Taylor, but everyone in town calls me Syd. I just wanted to check in with you. Please, lets have a chat.”
“Fuck you!” Kaden snapped, still backing off. It was never just a chat with cops. That was how they got you. But they weren’t getting him! He wasn’t going to jail!
“Kaden—” Connie tried. “Syd’s nice! We go to school with her sister.”
“Fuck you too! You set me up!!”
“I did not!” Connie snapped back. “I—” But Kaden wasn’t staying around to listen. Hell no! He was outta here. He was outta here so fast and— and this time fuck it fuck everything he was taking their motherfucking car and no one was catching him because he was too fast—
He bolted toward the front door where the keys hung next to coats, above neatly arranged shoes, and he pulled open that door so quickly, feet pounding across the driveway toward the BMW which he yanked open, and— vision so tight now he couldn’t see anything except the key lining up into the ignition— he started the engine and put the car in reverse.
He didn’t notice Connie running at him till she’d torn open the passenger door and climbed in. “Kaden stop! What the fuck are you doing?! Stop!”
“No! Get out of the car!!” Oh god, they were coming— they were coming and he had to go— he saw one of the officers step out of the front door and he choked out a panicked sob and pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator, shooting the car backwards into the street. Connie screamed and grabbed onto the roof handle and Kaden had to blank it out while he changed gear and sped forward.
Connie shrieked at him to stop again, but all Kaden heard was give it up, Kaden.
The whole world went utterly quiet, he heard no other sounds, just that voice in his head.
Give it up and you will have a quick, clean death.
He couldn’t see – his eyes betraying him by swelling with tears, but the road on a Sunday evening was empty, and wide, and straight.
He couldn’t see and he couldn’t breathe and someone was screaming his name in fear for him to stop. But he’d die, he’d die and he’d lose— he’d lose— Kaden barked in fear himself when Connie grabbed the wheel and screamed right in his ear “STOP THIS CAR YOU FUCKING DICKHEAD!!”
Kaden turned to look at her for half a second before she shot her leg out and forced her bare foot down on the brake, slamming them both forward— Kaden into the wheel and herself into the dashboard. Connie yelped, and with angry tears in her eyes jerked the handbrake on. “GET OUT OF MY CAR!” She screamed, clinging onto the handbrake like her life depended on it, terrified as well as angry. She’d almost been kidnapped!? “GET OUT!!!”
Kaden stared at her, breathing like a wounded animal, fast and feverish, all his options gone, all of them— he had nothing left— he had nowhere to go— and when he practically fell out of the driver's seat of the BWM, he fell into the waiting arms of constable Sydney Taylor.