Work Text:
Kota hates this house. He hates the peeling paint, the weeds that strain through the concrete driveway, the sad old treehouse in the back garden. But most of all he hates the memories that haunt it like lonely ghosts. Once, Kota had assumed that they would fade over time, but he knows now that those memories of hunger and hopelessness will remain branded into his heart forever.
So here he is, hand resting on the doorknob and staring at it like an absolute idiot, not wanting to commit. He likes to think he hates his family too, but deep down he knows it’s a blatant lie. He doesn’t hate his family, but sometimes he gets really, really, close. It would be so much easier if he could hate them, at least then he could move on with his life, free of the twisting mess of longing and anger and not-quite-hatred that is his heart right now.
Though he’s been dithering here for the better part of half an hour, Kota still can’t bring himself to twist the knob and enter, so when it’s the voice that comes from behind him that finally breaks him out of this agonising indecision, he can’t help feeling more than a little annoyed.
“Kota?”
The voice is soft, confused and Kota knows immediately that it’s America before he even turns. Resisting the urge to run his fingers over his face, Kota faces her, eyes flicking over her and that frankly ridiculous dress before landing on her eyes. As expected they’re guarded, flat, and Kota suddenly remembers exactly why he had reservations about coming here in the first place.
America studies him, just as he does to her and Kota is suddenly struck by how different she looks, not just her appearance, but the way she holds herself, the way she runs her eyes over him - and Kota doesn’t like it one bit. This is not the America Kota knows, no, this one is refined, regal and dangerous.
This one looks like a One.
Kota fucking hates her for it.
But then Kota sees the armed guards emerging from behind her and just about regains a semblance of control as he stamps that particular emotion deep down.
“America,” he responds, voice as flat as he can make it and America takes a single hesitant step forward. It’s one step too far for Kota who decides then and there that he’d rather take on the entirety of his family than America alone.
Turning sharply on his heel, Kota shoves open the door and enters the house, ignoring the flash of hurt in America’s eyes as he goes. He just has to get through today and he can leave. He lived in this house for years, he can deal with this.
He can.
~*~
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kota couldn’t keep the incredulousness from his voice as he stared at Aspen.
“I means that you can’t leave, you’d be a security breach.”
Oh no. No, no, no. The last few hours had been full of agonising small talk and barely contained disdain directed towards him ever since Kota had returned, he’d been itching to leave, to get out of this house and it’s suffocating air. And now he was being told no ?
“I can’t stay away from my studio, I have deadlines.” He didn’t, or at the very least his patrons had been more than happy to delay them when they found out about his father’s death, but he needed to say something.
“Any materials you need can come to the studio here. We’ll make as many trips as necessary.”
Oh absolutely not. Even if he hadn’t been lying, the idea of working in that garage - his father’s garage - made Kota’s skin crawl.
“That place is a dump.” It wasn’t even half of what he was feeling, but god, Kota needed to get out of this house and if it made him look like a whining child - well, he could be embarrassed later.
“Fine,” Aspen says firmly. “The choice is yours. You can either work in the dump, or you can risk your life at your apartment.”
Kota stares him down and realises with shock that he’s not bluffing. Briefly, he wonders when Aspen of all people grew a backbone, but quickly discards the thought as he runs his hands through his hair. Vaguely, he’s aware of America organising sleeping arrangements but Kota can’t bring himself to care. He really is stuck here, in this house, with these people who clearly want nothing to do with him.
His indifference, however, lasts up until he hears Gerad offer to share a room with him.
“Absolutely not!” Kota snaps, “I’m not sleeping on a bunk bed with a child.”
“Kota!”
He turns to see America with a look like thunder on her face. If this was any other situation, Kota would have laughed at how ridiculous it looks. Even though she’s suddenly an elite, America was never able to hold her own in an argument.
“You can sleep on the couch or in the garage or in the tree house for all I care but if you don’t check your attitude, I’ll send you back to your apartment right now! Have some gratitude for the security you’ve been offered. Need I remind you that tomorrow we’re burying our father? Either stop the bickering or go home.”
Kota wants to go home, God does he want to, but that small, rational part of his brain turns on then, informing of how truely stupid he would have to be to leave. And besides, America’s little rant has just reminded him how she was always his least favourite. Always the first to judge, to turn on him, always Dad’s favourite. Always the first to condemn him after he left.
The shred of self control that’s been slowly flaking away since he arrived very nearly snaps as he takes a series of controlled breaths. He could argue, he could scream, but this situation was far, far, out of his control.
So, for the second time that day, he turns his back on her and stalks out of the room.
~*~
The funeral passes in a blur of black and tears. Not Kota’s tears, he hadn’t cried once through the entire service, hadn’t let himself even feel anything but numbness throughout, sure if he was to unpack all his feelings then and there in public, his tears would’ve been a lot more than just sadness.
He’d avoided America too, not wanting to touch the tension between them that felt very much like a ticking time bomb and now sat on the opposite end of the living room to her, sprawled on a armchair and trying very, very, hard not to make eye contact. One more night, that’s all he had to last.
The chatter in the room is subdued and lapses often into solemn silence and Kota makes no effort to join in. In fact, it’s taking all his self control not to bolt for the door right now, or scream at the lot of them for how they were mourning a man who didn’t deserve to be mourned.
Again, he takes a breath as his mother enters the room, looking nervous and clutching a handful of envelopes. A hush descends over the room as they all stare at her. She takes a shaky breath and it’s all Kota can do not to snort at her.
“You know your father’s condition was something that ran in the family. I think
he could tell he only had a little time left, because about three years ago, he sat down and started writing these letters to you, to all of you.”
His mother probably says something else, but Kota isn’t listening, too distracted by tearing into the envelope the moment it’s handed to him. He’s enveloped by a kind of frenzy, wanting to know exactly what his father said to him, how he justified treating Kota. His breath catches and his heart slams in his chest as he finally pulls out the crumpled paper. The handwriting is scrawled, rushed, but just about legible.
Kota,
You were always the most ambitious of my children and it has carried you far, much further than me. You burn so brightly that sometimes I fear you’ll consume yourself and everyone around you with your flames. I worry that life is not worth living if not for those around us and you seem to have forgotten that.
To you, I leave our house, our family home so that you may always have a place and people to return to.
Be kind to your mother and sisters,
Dad
Kota laughs and it’s a wild, hysterical thing that forces it’s way past his teeth, but he laughs nonetheless because the alternative is screaming as his shred of self control violently fucking snaps.
America is staring at him like he’s losing his mind and honestly Kota feels like it as he clutches the paper in his fingers, shaking it.
“That’s it? What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
The words weren’t meant to be spoken, but they come out unbidden regardless, bitter and accusing.
“What’s wrong?”
Another unhinged laugh rises in his throat and it feels like broken glass in his chest as he swallows it.
“Dad’s letter. He gave me this house. What am I supposed to do with this dump?”
Kota stands, the frenzied energy humming through him desperate for an outlet. This was a joke, if not from his father, then from the universe. It has to be because otherwise all he's got left with is a letter from a man who he can’t even yell at, giving him some vague warning about how he ruins people's lives.
“Kota, Dad wrote that before you moved out,” Kenna’s voice is thick with tears, “he was trying to provide for you.”
If anything, that just causes molten anger to pour through Kota, bursting through his eyes, his ears, every pore until all he can see is red, red, red. Because he knows full well that his father was not trying to provide for him with this letter, but mock him. Why else would he leave Kota this house, the place that Kota had been desperately trying to escape for the past twenty years? He had tried so fucking hard to start over, to reinvent himself, to make something of himself that wasn’t tainted by the man who had never truely cared for him in the first place, and here he his. Back to square fucking one.
“Well, he failed then, didn’t he? When have we ever not been hungry? This house sure as hell wouldn’t have changed things. I did that for myself.”
The words are harsh, aimed to hurt, and Kota knows it works when Kenna’s face flushes and she glances away. But he’s also right. His father had always favoured his sisters and Kota had been painfully aware of that even when he was a child and for them, love had been enough to ease the hunger pains and the shivers of cold, but Kota had been starved of that too. Every single time his father shut him out of the garage, looked at him with disdain and uninterest, pushed him away, sometimes literally, was another reason for Kota to scrounge every penny he could and make a break for it. And when that break had come he had run and run, never looking back at those he left behind - Kota wishes he could say he regretted it, but when he looks back all he ever saw in his childhood was misery and months without his father ever speaking a single word to him and it only ever felt like relief.
Sometimes he wishes his sisters weren’t so fucking blind to his pain, but he supposes that, like his father, they just chose not to see it.
“Do we have any liquor in this place? Aspen, go get me a drink,” he mutters, hands running through his hair. God, he really cannot be sober right now. The idea of drinking himself unconscious suddenly seems like an excellent plan as Kota throws the paper onto the floor.
He doesn’t really look at Aspen until America’s voice rings out.
“Stop!”
Kota throws his head back in frustration. She can’t even let him have this one single thing, can she?
“That’s what he does, America.” He means that Aspen is literally there to wait on them, but of course his sister takes it the wrong way.
“No, he doesn’t,” she spits, staring him down, “you might have forgotten, but Aspen’s a Two now. It would do you better to get him something to drink. Not just for his status, but for everything he’s been doing for all of us.”
Kota decides right then and there that he’s done walking on eggshells around America, elite or not, and he strides forwards, closing the distance between the two in three steps.
“Oh that’s really fucking rich, America,” he hisses the words directly into her face and to her credit, she doesn’t flinch away, “but you know what you sound like to me? A hypocrite. A massive fucking hypocrite. You preach about ending the castes, you use the fact that you’re a five as some kind of shield from the public, but you’re still not above pulling rank when it suits you.”
America’s face reddens, exactly like it did when she was furious as a child. “That is not fair, Kota. You’re the one who’s so obsessed with his station that he left us behind the moment you saw the opportunity to become more than a five! You never cared about us!”
“I left because I couldn’t stand another day starving! I left because my children will not have a father who willingly lets them freeze at night!”
“You left because you’re selfish! Because you couldn’t cope knowing other people had more power than you!”
“Oh you’re one to talk!” Kota finally explodes, allowing himself to finally yell, to finally have a semblance of control, “I work my fingers every day until they bleed to be where I am now. I clawed and fought my way to where I am and I’m not about to stop. I am the reason why I have power! Me. And look at you! You won your power through a dating show to a Prince who only has his because of some bullshit hereditary laws. And what’s worse, you don’t even deserve it! You can’t run a country, you can’t strategise a battle, you don’t know the first thing about statecraft - you can’t even make the King like you, America! The one even mildly competent thing you’ve done is surgesting to end the castes, but I know you won’t do that because you enjoy flaunting your undeserved status around. And even that you didn’t have a proper plan for. And that, America, is why you will always be a coward and a fraud.”
Kota realises he’s gone too far about half way through his rant, but he doesn’t stop, letting half a year rage out in a single tirade. He knows that the line has been crossed not just by the way America’s face goes pale with shock and hurt, but by the frankly treasonous words that he’s just screamed. Those are dangerous words, the kind that leave you belly up in some freezing river with the investigation saying you drowned omitting the strangle marks around your throat. Kota has heard the rumours as well as anyone, but strangely he finds that he can’t bring himself to care. Deep down he knows America won’t turn him in, but he can’t speak for Aspen who has been watching the exchange with narrowed eyes.
His sister raises her head to meet his furious glare.
“You’re wrong, Kota.” Her voice is hardly a whisper and Kota almost misses her next words, “I got to where I am because I am a person who wants to do right in the world, who sees imperfections and wants to fix them. Because if I don't, no one will.”
Kota stays silent, knowing that if he opens his mouth, he’ll just end up saying something that’ll either get him killed or drive his family away from him permanently. So instead he gives a jagged sigh and slumps back down in his chair, feeling thoroughly boneless.
“You want to know why I really left, America?” His voice is so soft that he’s almost surprised when America gives a cautious nod.
“I left because I couldn’t bear seeing father dote on you when he couldn’t even spare an inch of love or pride or anything on me.”
“That’s not-”
“True? It is but all of you just chose not to see it because he loved you. Did you know he used to come into my room at night when he thought I was sleeping and just sit there, staring at me with such disappointment I thought I would die. I was nine. He was a monster and I’m glad he’s gone.”
And out of everything he’s said today, that is finally the thing that shuts America up. Kota can’t even pretend that he’s sorry, it’s the truth and it feels horribly good to get it out in the open. He heaves himself out of his chair and moves to the kitchen, not sparing them a single glance as he wanders. He leaves horrified silence in his wake. It’s probably the last time he’ll be invited back to the house, so he might as well make the most of the free liquor while he can.
What little is in the barren cupboards isn’t going to be enough to drink himself unconscious, or even really get so outrageously drunk that he truly doesn’t care about anything, but it’s enough to briefly forget the past few days, and really, that’s a small mercy in of itself.
Kota yanks that stopper off the bottle of amber liquid.
And drinks deeply.