Response to ScarletRose: Holy shit. Well you just left me the most epic review that I not only have ever seen on one of my stories, but have ever seen on any story. So thank you for that! My eyes nearly fell out of my head when I saw it. I hope that you are happy with your exam results!
If you like Kol then you're lucky because he is one of my favorite characters to write. I don't mind Kolvina (because I just want Kol to be happy) but I've always preferred Kennet for some dumb reason even though they've only ever had, like, 0.5252 seconds of screen time together, but I guess that's enough for me and many other people. I love Rebekah as well, and I do think she is probably the strongest because she's had to put up with so much shit from her brothers, Klaus in particular, along with her parents, that she's just steeled herself.
Matt is just a good person at his core. I think that's all he can be, when he's been surrounded by all these people who have been corrupted by all the bad around them, and then there's Matt, who, yes, struggles just as much as they do, but has never let himself fall completely. I think you're right in saying he's the only person who really survived.
I love constructive criticism so thank you so much for this! I will say that your knowledge of TVD and these characters probably goes way over a lot of what I know about them. I started watching the show when I was quite young (13 or 14) so I don't actually remember a lot about the earlier seasons or episodes, which, of course, does hinder my complete understanding of all the characters, particularly Katherine because those where the ones that really developed her. I could rewatch them, but I don't have the patience (or time) for that, unfortunately. I find what you've said really interesting because it's not something I've really heard or considered, and it makes total sense. As I said, I was young when I watched these episodes so I didn't really attempt to look any deeper into what I was watching, not like I do now. I'm definitely going to take what you said into consideration when writing future chapters.
In regards to Damon, again, what you are saying makes total sense and really has helped broaden my understanding of him as a character. I've always known Damon to be a character who is perpetually frustrated with the world around him, but what you've said (albeit, being slightly harsh on Stefan, but we all have characters that we don't like) has properly cleared up a lot of the reasoning behind it. My biggest issue with writing these older characters who were in the show for a long time (so Stefan, Katherine, and Damon, because they've been there basically since the start and have complicated pasts and psychologies) is that I don't remember everything. So I really do appreciate everything you've told me!
What you've said about Steroline is everything that I didn't know I was feeling. I mean, I know that I didn't like it. Not just because I wanted Klaus and Caroline together (although that did factor into it) but because I found them bland and dull. It had nothing to do with Paul and Candace's acting, they're great, but rather, I always felt they lacked romantic chemistry, as well as the fact that it just felt like the writers were matching up the leftovers with one another. It all felt very contrived to me. I wasn't a fan of Klamille either because it was boring (I, too, felt like I was about to fall asleep during most of their scenes), but I could put up with it because, like you said, their love seemed to be genuine. While both Steroline and Klamille made me feel like I was slowly fossilizing every time they were on my screen because of how dry they were, with Steroline it was more like they were together because there was no one else (and, like you said, this was almost proven when Stefan left with Valerie), while with Klamille is was more authentic. I didn't openly hate Klamille as much as I did Steroline because with Klamille it was just personal preference, with Steroline, it was just wrong. Although you are really harsh on Stefan (it does make me laugh though), I essentially agree with the essence of what you're saying. Don't apologize for the rant, I actually loved reading it and it really made me laugh and think deeply at the same time.
I'm so, so happy that you're enjoying the story! I wish that I could update more often, but when I do, I try to make it the best it can be. My God, she's amazing. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the chapter! X (Oh, and Tina Fey eating that sheet cake... I don't think I've ever been so attracted to her.)

Shame

Kai remembered his first prison. It was his first bedroom, in fact. He remembered it being small and claustrophobic, six by seven feet (smaller than any prison cell), and windowless. Walls with yellow stained peeling paint, raw wood floorboards, one small lamp that washed the room in fluorescent, flickering light. A door that screeched as it swung, a narrow wire-framed bed, some drawers for his clothes, a desk, a stool. Long, rusted chains nailed to the wall, a padlock on one side of the door; the wrong side of the door. When Kai was a little older, he remembered Joshua filling the hollow walls with concrete and replacing the old oak door with a shiny new metal one. He wasn't old enough to really understand what was being done. From then on, only he could really hear his screams.

His screams. Their reasoning was dependent on Joshua's mood, which, when it came to Kai, ranged from mad to angry to furious. Mad was sleeping in the chains, angry was a beating, and furious was the belt, and then later on, a real whip.

He almost lived a life completely removed from that of his siblings. His twin, Josette, was always on the receiving end of praise for her great grades and intelligence. Joseph affectionately called "Joey" by everyone, was already the star athlete. Leah was the most gorgeous of them all. Melanie was a young musical prodigy. Orion was the funniest kid alive. The wonder twins were going to change their future as a community. They all regularly attended community get-togethers; Kai was rarely allowed to come, and when he was, it was just to save face. He didn't like going anyway. It terrified him, seeing all these people who worshiped Joshua like a God.

His siblings did nothing. They had to have known what was happening to him, there was no possible way they couldn't. Maybe they were scared or maybe they just didn't care, but the latter was always a lot more plausible to Kai. They treated him coolly and with distance.

His mother did nothing. She was faded, worn, demented, hardly lucid, barely there half the time yet when she was she spent a hundred per cent of that time ignoring what was happening to him. She was almost always as angry with him as Joshua was. It wasn't a violent raging anger, but a cold and and distant fury that always festered beneath her skin but never truly showed. Kai may've had her looks but he didn't have her love. That had always been clear enough to him.

He was an outcast in his own home.

It was no better at school. It wasn't like he was mind numbingly dumb, or downright ugly, or pretentiously smart. It wasn't because he was the child of some weird cult (or as it was known, "commune") leader, because Josette had friends, Joey did, of course. Only Kai had no friends. Maybe people could see the dark stain on his skin, smell the blood on his back, sense his warped spirit.

His home was his own personalized hell, school was just hell.

It didn't take long for the hate to strip him away, if he ever had anything good in him in the first place; according to Joshua, he was nothing but evil. His mother… He didn't really know what she thought of him. She never spoke to him, although the look in her eyes whenever she (rarely) laid them on him was enough to guess.

Kai's second prison came about after he almost disemboweled Joey. The screams that tore from the depth of his little brother's throat almost startled him because they were just so reminiscent of his own. Leah passed out when she came into Joey's room and found them. Jo was soon after, and she actually tried to stop him, but was stopped herself by him swiping his knife at her cheek.

She looked so shocked.

Joey's moaning didn't overpower the "but you're my twin" that left her lips as she touched the cut on her cheek. The one that would soon scar, the one that would remind her to never ever presume that just because they shared the womb together he had any obligation to her at all. She certainly hadn't let any get in the way of completely ignoring all of Joshua's abuse.

As he continued on Joey, knuckle deep the gut of the brother who had the life that belonged to him, he began to wish he had started with Jo instead. He pushed the wonder twins to third in his list. Yet, it didn't matter, of course, because the police soon arrived, and Joey was in an ambulance, with Joshua and his mother by his side, and Kai in cuffs.

It was then Kai began to wish that he had started and ended the night with himself instead.

The Oregon newspapers reported that day as a family fight, one single stab wound in the little brother's stomach. Kai knew it was a lost worse than that, so did Leah and Jo and Joey, who lived the rest of his life with only one kidney, and the police officers who had searched his room and seen his writings. Joshua had done as much as he could to pay off the newspapers to report this, however, not wanting to tarnish the image of his "commune". It was just as he had with social services.

And so, Kai went to the psychiatric ward of Oregon State Penitentiary, after being charged as an adult at sixteen years old. He arrived and was stripped down to nothing, waiting, bored, as the guard regained composure after seeing the matted scars of his back. He was dressed in a deep forest green, supplied with shoes, and shoved into a room with some psychiatrist who attempted to diagnose what was wrong with him.

The results of Kai's four-hour chat with the doctor were not to be shared with him.

But he could, of course, guess all that he wanted.

He went to bed, in his second prison room, one in an actual prison, and one that was bigger than his first. He was there for six years. He almost thrived in the chaos that being surrounded by mutually insane people provided him with. A part of him never wanted his sentence to finish, never wanted to be shoved back into the world where he was nothing. Another part of him wanted to be released just so he could kill them all, once and for all. Anything after that didn't matter.

Not once during his sentence, did he ever get any visitors. It wasn't like he was expecting it; other than the fact that he had intended to kill them all, his family had always felt little to no affection for him. A part of him wondered why they didn't come, at least, to gain a little closure. And then he remembered; they were in the wrong, not him.

Everything that had happened was their doing.

But they lived on. Josette went to medical school. Joey, unable to play contact sports anymore due to his single kidney, took up tennis, which he was far better at than football anyway. Leah won money and attention in her beauty pageants. Melanie got solos in her school choir. Orion became the most popular kid at school. The wonder twins grew and were loved.

Kai was in prison, rotting away, for all they knew.

He was finally released after six years, not knowing what the hell he would do, whether to go back and try and finish his botched job or not. Instead of those two options, rather than gaining the freedom the shedding of prison clothes gave him, he was flown off to another psychiatric institution on the other side of the country, sans uniform, however fundamentally the same in its functioning.

But the main difference was that in the Augustine Center, there was no foreseeable end to his sentence. His father wouldn't let that happen. No amount of good behavior could get him out earlier, which also meant that no amount of bad behavior would get his sentence extended any longer than it already was.

All together, that meant he had free range to do whatever he wanted. And he didn't plan on letting anyone stop him. That was, until-

"Excuse me," the pretty nurse poked her head through the door after a couple of knocks, "there is-"

"-Do you like Chopin, Seline?" Kai asked from his bed, ignoring whatever it was she was saying as he swayed his finger along to piece that was emanating from the radio. It wasn't his, but the music therapist let him borrow it on the same day every week, obviously because he was her favorite.

She blinked in response, furrowing her brows and frowning, before answering with "sorry, what?"

"Who are your favorite composers?"

"Oh, I, uh, I don't really listen to-"

"What do you listen to, then?" Kai shot up, his voice sharpening and eyes drilling into her, momentarily losing his composure. Yet, as quickly as it went (which was still enough to make her step back), he looked away, regaining his calm. Then, facing her once again only to find her eyes wide and telling of her alarm, he waved his hand, getting up to mute the radio. "Never mind. What was it you came here to tell me?"

Seline swallowed and licked her lips, seemingly taking her sweet time in telling him her reasons for interrupting his quality music time. "You have a visitor."

Kai stilled.

While for any other person, that news may not have come as a shock, seeing as it was the selected day that the center's doors were open for any patients' family or friends to visit, it was startling for Kai, considering he didn't have any friends, and his family hated him and he them. And it was now his turn to take long to respond, feeling heat rush to his face and his heart beat his head. His mouth turned cotton dry and his hands clammy, and he hated himself for turning so weak at the mere possibility that he had a visitor. Yet, then again, that's what it was; a prospect, not a reality. Because he couldn't have had a visitor, he simply could not have. It wasn't possible. It wouldn't happen. It had to be a mistake, an error.

"You must have gotten the wrong person." he said, straightening out and taking a deep breath through his nostrils, feeling a weight lift off his shoulders at what he knew had to have been a slip-up, one that unsettled him more than he would've liked to admit. But it was fine because there was no one-

"No," Seline replied, shaking her head, looking down to the clipboard in front of her, "the visitor said your name, and you're the only Malachai here."

Slowly, he let out the burning breath from his lungs, clenching his fists and cracking his neck to the side, he eyed the nurse in front of him, trying as he could to reign in his ire. "What did the visitor look like?" he questioned, grinding his teeth together and counting to ten in his head because he really didn't want to hurt the pretty nurse, but the urge was growing greater with every passing second.

She looked disconcerted at his reaction, her dark eyes watching him worriedly. "Well, she had light eyes, dark, shoulder length hair, pale…"

Kai frowned at the painfully generic description. Obviously, the visitor couldn't be one of his family members, but he didn't know anyone from his life before prison who matched that description. Could it have been another writer? Throughout the years after the attack he had been visited by authors who wanted to write exposés on him as a victim of being brought up in one of Oregon's largest quasi-religious cults. He, of course, refused. But that hadn't stopped them coming, so maybe someone had once again found him? It was plausible until-

"Oh, and she had a scar on her cheek."

"No."

Seline wavered for a moment. "Sorry?" she said as though she didn't hear him the first time.

"No," Kai shook his head to exaggerate his point because it must not have been obvious enough. "I won't see her. Tell her she can leave."

"I'm sorry Kai but you don't have a choice," she responded apologetically. "Matt sent me to come and get you. He said he thinks that this will be good for your treatment. You're going to have to-"

And he was in the hall, walking as Seline's calls echoed out after him but she knew where he was going. Kai could see other patients with their family and friends, could hear their chatter and laughter, taste their joy in the air, bitter on his tongue.

He was looking for her, half on a warpath, half achingly calm.

Kai walked into the recreational room, eyes roaming the space looking for her dark head of hair. He saw Stefan with a blonde that wasn't Rebekah, Enzo talking with the pretty boy head-doctor, Caroline with someone who had to be her mom, the Mikaelsons sitting across a sibling, Katherine talking with a terse Damon, Mary-Louise with Nora, a nurse and Valerie, Hayley alone, faces, faces everywhere. Smiles and frowns, nodding, head shaking, brow raising, eyes rolling, deep breaths.

With his hands fisted by his sides, he stepped further into the room, feeling like a fucking fool because this must've been a mistake. She couldn't have been there, she couldn't. If it wasn't a mistake it had to be a joke; a shitty, shitty joke that Kai shouldn't have fallen for.

He felt the skin on his back tingle, the scream clog his throat, the twitch in his eye.

It had to have been Joshua. It was the only explanation. Joshua must've been bored, must've called up the clinic to make up the whole visitation, must've reverted back to his old tormenting ways when Kai still used to live with him.

"Kai?"

And Josette was there, as if from thin air, rising from her seat to meet him. She looked almost exactly the same, but for her hair being longer and the white line across her cheek that had been red the last time he'd seen it. Her eyes were wide, displaying every emotion she was feeling in that moment, just like they always did; it was her biggest weakness. She was tentative, his silent stare causing her to anxiously lace her fingers together before her as she stared at him, waiting.

He made a series of sudden changes; rolled back his shoulders, relaxed his hands, chilled his stare, widened his lips, and stood taller.

"Hello, Josette."

A lump rolled down her neck as she swallowed, flashing a quick and inappropriate, nervous smile. After a long moment, just as she opened her mouth to say something, he lifted his hand and gently traced his thumb over the scar on her cheek, making her freeze under his touch.

"You haven't changed a bit."

She was uncomfortable, of course, and he didn't miss the way she subtly leaned out of his hand. A slight grimace washed over her face, as she said, not sounding so sure, "Neither have, uh, you, Kai."

"I think I've grown a bit taller since the last time we were together," he shrugged, dropping his hand and gauging out her reaction, because they both very well knew that that was when he was being held to the ground and hand cuffed. Kai saw something flicker in her eyes, but it was gone before he could know what he was seeing and she pressed her lips into a thin line. With one last glance, he jerked his head to the adjacent table. "Let's sit, shall we?"

Jo nodded, seated herself where she had been waiting, and Kai across her. She watched him and he her, both letting the silence between them extend into what would probably be awkwardness for Jo but normalcy for Kai; he thrived in other people's discomfort.

"So how are the wonder twins?"

Like the rest of his family, she had never cared for him. Kai wasn't about to delude himself into thinking she was there because she wanted to see how he was. She must've had a motive, and hence something to say. What? Kai didn't really care. What he cared about most was showing her that she shouldn't have come there.

"Oh, what about our little starboy Joey? You know, I read in a newspaper a while ago that because of the loss of his kidney in a tragic accident he had to give up football, but the 'inspiring teen athlete' picked up tennis instead, which he of course excelled at, knowing Joey. Is he still at that? We don't get newspapers from Oregon here."

She stared at him. Kai didn't really blame her; he was a much different person now to whom she had known him as. He used to be so quiet, slink in the shadows and stare down at his lap, mumble his words and flinch away from anyone's hand, cower in fear at the world and live a pathetic existence. Who he had been when he lived with his family was who he had to be to survive. His family had gotten a glimpse of what they had created during his last night with them; Jo was now meeting him properly for the first time.

"Does Orion still practice his stand-up-comedy in front of the mirror? What about those celebrity impersonations? Because I will admit that he used to do a great Owen Wilson- Uh, wait, is Melanie still singing? God she used to annoy the shit out of me with her constant voice exercises. Like, do-re-mi ears are bleeding! I was getting ready to cut out her voice box and stuff it-"

"-Mom died."

He paused, noting her thick voice and the welled up tears in her eyes. A second ticked by, Kai said, "Shame" and then "in the morning does Leah still spend an hour in the-"

"-For fucks sake, Kai," she hissed, looking down at the table, holding one hand to her face as another tugged at her hair, the tears now freely streaming down her face as she let out a shaky breath from her weepy mouth, "I came all this way to tell you that our mom is dead and all you care about is Leah's fucking morning routine and Joey's extracurricular activities. Your therapist Matt talked to me and said he thought you were improving but- but- look at you."

Jo's eyes now met his as she wiped the muck from her cheeks.

"Don't you care?"

He couldn't help it, and he didn't really want to, as a laugh slipped between his lips and he threw his hands up in the air. "I don't know what you want me to say, Josette," he said, still laughing, shaking his head. "'Oh man, I'm really upset that woman who hated me is dead', I mean, it's absurd, you've got to admit."

Letting out a sharp breath as though in pain, her brows knitted together and eyes rife in incredulity. Kai, callous, watched as she stared off into the distance, confounded, lips mouthing silent words that didn't leave her throat, until five soft ones finally did; "That woman was your mother."

She jumped in her seat as his hand tightly wound around her wrist under the table, squeezing and squeezing until fear he was so well acquainted with began to leak into her eyes. Kai licked his lips, opened his mouth and squared his jaw, leaning forward so far that the edge of the table cut into his stomach and her face was but an inch from his.

The sounds of the room drained out around them and all Kai heard was the thump of blood in his ears. His features, his voice, were soft, achingly calm, almost serene; as different to what his mind was as black was to white.

"Don't you dare, Josette, ever call that woman my mother. She was not my mother. A mother wouldn't refuse to let her child talk to her, touch her, be in the same room alone as her. A mother wouldn't refuse to look at her child. A mother wouldn't stand by and allow her husband do the things Joshua did to me. A mother wouldn't let her child become what I am."

He could feel it now, her hateful stare, her foreboding silence, her callous attitude, her careful cruelty, her passive scorn. It all hailed down on him in one, massive onslaught. Even now, even dead, whether in heaven or hell or nothingness at all, she was still there with him not being there.

"I didn't have a mother, Josette. I just don't know how you can't see that by now."

A tear fell across her cheek, so dainty and delicate that it made him want to puke. He let go of her and leaned back in his seat. Jo clutched her wrist to her chest, her lips in a small, solemn frown, her eyes on him, now not just looking, but seeing.

He didn't like it.

And then she whispered, "when did you become this?"

Kai felt so suddenly weary; it permeated his bones. He hung his head back, staring at the ceiling, and let out some semblance of a scoff. "Become like what?" he jeered back, not because he cared for her response, but just wanting it to end because she still didn't fucking get it.

"You used to be so quiet and shy and- and…" her voice trailed off because she was lacking the adjectives to describe the hollow shell of a person that Kai had been. "And timid. You were never this angry or violent."

He shut his eyes, blocking out the burning overhead lights, in an act of weakness that he rarely liked to display. He didn't know why he could hardly believe her holier-than-thou attitude, her self-righteousness, her ignorance. He would've been able to understand her rage at him, he wasn't completely emotionally stunted; he knew that what he did to Joey and her and what he had intended to do afterwards would make the average person angry. But what Kai just couldn't get was her not being able to grasp why he did what he did.

Sixteen years. For sixteen years of his life Kai was abused by Joshua. Sixteen years of abuse that were systematically ignored by his supposed mother, and then by Jo, and then by Joey, then by Leah, then by Melanie, then by Orion, and always by child services. Sixteen years of neglect, of scorn, of violence, of being shown time and time again that he had no worth. The only people who knew what was happening pretended it wasn't.

They knew. They had heard it and seen it. And while they may've pretended they didn't, they knew. Jo knew.

And yet, she still didn't understand.

"I was always like this, Josette, you just weren't paying attention."

And it was inexplicable. It really was.

Because those words left his lips, and a moment passed, and another, and she was unwavering during those first two, and then something in her eyes flickered, like a light switch turned on and it was as though she was finally really seeing him. Ever.

Kai, fucking startled, stared at her staring at him without disdain, without ignorance, without apathy, without hate. He didn't like it. He didn't like the way she was looking at him. He wanted to stand up from his chair and turn around and walk away and out the door and never see his sister again but he couldn't. He was stuck there, completely paralyzed.

Her mouth hung open, a breath caught in her chest that choked her up as tears pricked her gaze. Her saucer eyes seared through him, and he could see the images, whatever they were, flare before her sight, he could see her features flicker from something like shock into something he had never seen before. Kai didn't know how long she was like this, staring at him, looking into him. It could've been a couple of seconds, it could've been an hour; it felt like eternity to him.

He felt as though he was back in that room, that dark, cold, room, with Joshua towering over him, his eyes boring into him as words that fell from his mouth with such ease cut and peeled back Kai's skin until he was nothing but raw, bloody bone. Kai felt like he was back on the floor as Joshua beat away every last bit of emotion from Kai until he felt nothing but superficial pain.

Kai could see the bruises blossom across his skin. Kai could smell the rotten floor boards that he laid his cheek across. Kai could hear the grunts that tore from Joshua's lips as he beat him. Kai could taste the salty tears on his lips. Kai could feel the familiar ache in his body as he used to drag himself to his bed, alone, so, so fucking alone. No one was there to bandage him up or give him ice packs for the pains, no one was there to sit beside him and softly stroke his hair until he fell asleep, no one was there to whisper in his ear that it was over now, that it was okay, that it'd get better, that he'd survive it, that they loved him.

No one was there.

And maybe Jo was seeing it too. Maybe she was remembering all that she had refused to see.

Even so, she let out a breath. He couldn't hear it, he could barely hear anything, but he could see the weight press down on her chest. And another tear fell, and another, and she stared at him, and she shook her head as slow as his heart beat.

"I'm sorry."

He didn't think he heard her right but then-

"Kai, I'm sorry," Jo's voice was thick and her tears now freely flowing, her lower lip quivering. "I'm sorry we let dad do what he did to you, but- but we were scared of him. We were so scared of him. I was- we had seen his mood swings, that way he'd just go from happy to angry like-" and she snapped her fingers, her voice now lowered to a trembling whisper and her back hunched forward so her face was close to his. "He never hit us or- or got violent. I wouldn't let that happen, not to Joey or Leah or Orion or Melanie or Liv or Luke. I couldn't let him hurt them. And I thought if I tried to stop him from- from doing it to you he would-"

She broke off, now fully letting quiet sobs wrack her body, her face buried in her hands and hair curtaining around her head.

Kai watched.

He had imagined the situation a hundred, a thousand, a million, endless times.

Though it had been different, then. All those times it had been him with a knife in one hand and Jo's throat in the other. All those times Jo had been remorseful, weak and dying and terrified and crying. All those times he had been bloodied and surrounded by bodies and in control because that was all he had ever wanted in his life; control.

Kai had never had control over his life, most of all when he was growing up when his whole existence rested in the palm of Joshua's fist. It was almost ironic he had more control when he was in prison and the Augustine Center. But that night, that night he almost committed mass murder. That was the first time in his life that Kai had had control over everything, and god it felt good.

And he wanted control over that moment, the moment that Jo would realize everything she did wrong, realize that she had everything he wanted and he had everything that was nothing, realize that what happened that night could've been prevented if she had had some human decency to extend towards him throughout his whole sixteen years. He wanted to be in control of the moment he'd tell her that she could've helped him, could've saved him, could've loved him as a twin should, but she didn't, and who he was today was all her fault.

It wasn't Joshua's, because he was just who he had always been. It wasn't his mother's, because she was never really there anyway. It wasn't any of his other siblings, because they did as they were shown. It was Jo's. She was his twin, his other half, and she was meant to be there. But she wasn't.

He hated them all; he blamed them all, but her most of all.

He wanted control over the moment; he wanted to feel the blood rushing through his veins and the giddy jerking of his heart as he manipulated every word, every feeling, every moment.

But he didn't have it. She had taken that away as well, and left him lightheaded, indistinct, feeling so much at once yet so empty at the same time.

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. And this wasn't how he was supposed to feel.

"Kai."

Jo touched him and he jerked away, her cold, gentle hand searing his skin. He stared at her, eyes wide, impenetrable, nostrils flared, body still but chest heaving. She looked like a wreck, her skin pallid, cheeks wet with tear tracks and eyes swollen. Kai was repulsed by her emotion.

"You've done bad things," she said softly, hoarsely, fingers reaching to trace her scar, "you wanted to do worse. And I- for so long I didn't understand how you could do something so awful… Or I didn't want to. I was blinded by anger at how you could do such a thing, but, looking at you… now I can see so clearly for the first time in a while. And it was awful- so awful, God, what happened- I…"

Her face grimaced in pain, and Kai didn't know if it was because of the memories coming back or because of how he was staring at her.

"It wasn't fair what you did to us. But it also wasn't fair what happened to you. What happened to you made you the way you are now and… It wasn't fair, it still isn't, that this is what you have become…" a smile cracked across her face and she let out a weepy, terrible laugh. "I remember the boy you were before you became this…"

Kai did too.

He remembered that small kid he used to be, how innocent he had started off as. He remembered loving the feel of dewy grass beneath his feet, the sun kissing his face, watching and giggling at cartoons, stealing from the cookie jar and picking flowers from the garden.

But Kai also remembered Joshua hitting him when he found him outside. Kai remembered Joshua's screams when he found him in front of the TV. Kai remembered being locked in his room for whole days when Joshua saw the crumbs around his mouth. Kai remembered Joshua shoving dirt in his eyes and mouth when he found the withered flowers under his bed.

Kai remembered what he felt when these events happened. He remembered the tears that ran down his cheeks, he remembered the utter confusion the plagued his mind, he remembered the at first stinging pain in his chest that soon turned dull and aching and then into nothing at all.

Kai remembered the boy he used to be, dumb, ignorant. He didn't live very long, he couldn't afford to.

"Why'd he have to go, Kai?" she asked, her voice watery and heavy, maybe more to herself than him. It was then that he noticed the more heavily pronounced lines on her face, on her forehead, frowning around her mouth. She looked older than her twenty-two years. "Why'd he have to go?"

He didn't answer. She already knew.

Instead, instead, Kai stood, Kai turned, Kai walked away, as though she didn't matter.

He was steadfast. He was cold. He was detached.

He couldn't listen to her anymore, he wouldn't. It didn't seem real, it didn't seem right. Maybe Jo felt the same, as she didn't say anything after him, she didn't try to stop him, she didn't do anything. He acted as though he didn't see her, didn't care about what she was saying. He acted as though it meant nothing to him, her sudden epiphany and water weak apologies and pathetic cries. He acted as though he felt nothing.

He acted, and he felt it.

It wasn't enough.

But he didn't know that, and, unbeknownst to Kai, there was a crack in his resolve, the resolve that told him he didn't need anyone else, that he didn't love anyone, that he didn't feel anything else but cold rage and bitter hatred. The resolve that told him that he didn't have to feel those other feelings that tried so hard to be felt, that he was better off leaving what was behind him behind him. The resolve that told him it was better this way, that it was stupid to even try to get better because there was no point, that there was nothing there for him.

And yet, Jo's words had wedged themselves in enough to create a crack.

It was small, a hairline fracture. It was small enough that he didn't sense it; small enough that it only affected him deep down in the places he pretended didn't exist anymore.

However it was still there. And with enough pressure, he could break.

Okay so I've finished that last little bit of this and updating it after I've had a bit to drink, so I'm sorry if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes but I just wanted to get it out! I hope that everyone enjoyed this chapter as much as I actually enjoyed writing it!

Please review if you liked the chapter, or have any criticisms, I'm open to anything! Follow/favorite if you haven't already! Why do I still say all this at the end? I don't know. Thank you for reading!

Next Chapter - ? I'll update this once I've sorted myself out.