Survival Of The Fittest

((Kai Rosado-Prince continued from Witch Barrier))

When Kai was twelve years old, his mom had tried to kill herself.

Nobody in his family had ever acknowledged out loud that that was what she'd done. She'd been drinking a lot then. It wasn't that much a stretch to think she could have mixed alcohol and pills by accident. Or even on purpose, just with different intent. People did that for fun. Kai hadn't even known what exactly she'd done until the middle of the divorce, when his parents were dragging out every last bad thing either of them had done over the previous two decades. That was just an attempt to hurt each other more than they were really trying to win custody of him.

Kai himself wasn't sure when exactly he'd put the pieces together fully on all of that. It had been years later, for sure. He'd gone through so many earth-shattering changes already by then. One more didn't rock his world so much when it was already years past and had resulted in a different kind of crisis than what his mom had originally planned.

But it had stayed with him all the same, and sometimes he wondered if that was part of why he'd stuck so close to Kitty.

He thought about that while he and Ren took turns chipping at the frozen ground with the digging bar. After stitching Ren up and making camp, and some horribly awkward and stilted conversation, they worked into the night to carve out a groove in the frozen ground just deep enough to lay Meena in. Ren had insisted they go back for his body. They hadn't had to insist very hard once everyone pulled themselves back from the brink of hysteria.

They'd settled in the trees off the side of the road. Their campfire was probably visible from the road itself if anyone bothered to look in the right direction. Kai was mostly banking on there not being too many people wandering about in the dark and cold. Kitty had gone to sleep by the fire while Kai and Ren worked. She'd seemed grateful for the ability to rest with someone trustworthy nearby. Mostly though, she'd just been exhausted once the emotional roller coaster of their reunion faded. No room for anything else.

Kai felt that way too, but he kept on digging.

The campfire, shielded from melting snow by his umbrella, shed dancing yellow light over their camp and the space a short distance out where Kai worked. Kitty and Ren were indistinct shadows on the trees. The pile of snow, dirt, and rocks he and Ren had dug up created a boundary between him and them. It felt like the wrong ambience. Not cheerful or comfortable like trips they'd taken before. Not menacing either. The camp occupied some weird liminal space where nothing felt right. The thing he was digging felt more like a ditch than a grave.

It was backbreaking work just to chip out a space inch by inch, but he wouldn't have been able to sleep. This kept him busy. It was an ache he preferred to everything else. It gave him something to look at besides the people sitting nearby and the pile of weapons next to the fire.

The digging bar's edge struck a rock, jarring Kai out of his wandering thoughts. He grimaced at it, but the momentary pause made him more aware of the heaviness of his arms and the soreness setting into his shoulders, back, and neck, so he stopped.

"Do you think this'll work?" He asked Ren without looking up. His voice was still hoarse.

[Ren Vu continued from Witch Barrier]

Ren started slightly, and turned away from staring into the darkness that surrounded their camp. Their eyes flickered to Kai, then to the hole that he and they had dug, and they stood up--the motion slow, smooth. Carefully, deliberately, they made their way around the fire, until they arrived at Kai's side.

The grave looked done. It was shallow, but it would have to be; the digging bar's strikes rang too loudly, too clearly, for comfort, and every minute that they continued digging was another minute spent in unnecessary danger for Ren's sake. Burying Meena hadn't been their suggestion--Kai had brought it up--but Ren knew he was doing it for them. Why insist on the retrieval of your friend's body, if not to bury it?

Ren heaved a sigh. Their face pinched, and, not for the first time that night, they touched a hand to their throat.

The stitches, still raw and tight, had been done by Kitty. She and Kai had sat Ren down, and told them to tilt their head up, and leaned in; and Ren had tried not to scream, or cry, or yelp, as Kitty stabbed the needle into their throat over and over and pulled their flesh back together with a thread. They had known that Kitty would cry if she thought too much about the pain she was causing Ren, and so they had tried not to show it--but though they could silence their screams, their cries and their yelps, still they could not keep their traitorous body from flinching, from tensing, from hissing and whining. And so Kitty had cried, and apologized. And Ren--when they found that they could speak again--had apologized too, and told her that neither their pain nor Meena's death had been her fault, for whatever that was worth.

Meena's body, laid out in the snow, far enough from the fire to disappear if Ren wasn't specifically looking for it, had been retrieved by Kai. He had held Ren in his lap as Kitty repaired their throat, had allowed them to hold onto his arm when it came time to move and Ren found themself lightheaded (nobody but Ren was surprised by that; nobody but Ren had underestimated the amount of blood they had lost). When Ren couldn't stop themself from making their stupid plea, it was he who had gone back, and then returned with Meena's limp body slung over his shoulder; in the intervening minutes, Ren barely breathed. How could he do this for them, when they hadn't even asked after his own wound?

Ren had thanked them both with their words. They had no other way of thanking them, for they had nothing else of value to offer; and in truth, even their words were beginning to seem of questionable value. They had been worthless to Meena, after all.

You were never my friend.

Now it was the middle of the night--and Kai, who had already helped them dig for hours, was asking if he should do more.

"I think," Ren said aloud, "that it'll work."

They stepped into the hole, and crouched down. Slowly, carefully, they laid back, until they were facing the stars.

It did not make for a comfortable place to rest. The ground was uneven, hard and jagged. The sides of the grave were tight around their body, which meant that they would be tight around Meena's--the two were close enough in size that Ren's body made for a decent measuring stick. All told, Meena deserved better--but so did Kai and Kitty, and Ren's sentimentality had put their living friends in danger for long enough.

"Yeah," they said, sitting up. "She'll fit fine in here."

In truth, that would have been their answer no matter how the grave felt.

Kai hadn't expected Ren to lay down in the grave and looked away when they did so. "Okay," he said quietly. He only looked back when he heard Ren get up.

He could have carried Meena's body by himself, but he took his time laying the digging bar aside and moving over to where Meena lay. Let Ren have a moment to get there first.

Maybe Kai should have been asking more questions. What had gone down between Meena and Ren to turn things so sour, so fast. What had driven Kitty to keep going and going and going after Robin's death. He'd told himself that he was giving them both space and time, and that was true. It was just also true that he didn't really want the answers. He didn't think knowing all the gritty details would make anything better.

"Lift on three?" He asked Ren, kneeling and preparing to take Meena's legs.

Ren grimaced, but they nodded. They weren't getting out of this one, and they didn't want to, anyways. The funeral was being held for their benefit, after all.*

Their hands squeezed under Meena's shoulders, and latched on around his armpits. They tried not to think about how cold he felt, which was easy; the snow was colder, after all. Without gloves or mittens, the snow was cold enough to burn. Ren was grateful for it.

"1, 2, 3--!"

They staggered slightly under the weight. One of Meena's hands whacked them in the knee, and they shuddered. Rigor mortis had begun to set in, as they had known it would, and he was--yes, he was very, very cold, which they had also known he would be. It still felt violating, somehow.

They swore to themself, silently, as they took shuffling steps back towards the grave, that they would not drop him.

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And just like that, he was in the grave. There was still the burial itself to do, and the eulogy, if Ren was feeling particularly indulgent. Ostensibly any eulogy they gave would've been for Meena, but weren't funerals really for the mourners? It wasn't that Ren dismissed the notion of an afterlife, or that they hadn't given the concept some thought. Meena had told them that she would've liked to remain as a ghost, when she died. Ren didn't want to dismiss that. They hoped for it, even. Mostly they were just convinced that if Meena's ghost was listening in, she wouldn't want to hear Ren's eulogy for her. What good was it to be remembered by someone who didn't know you, anyways?

Ren stood up from where they were crouching beside the grave, and blew their cheeks out as they exhaled. They looked at Kai and looked away again, tempted for a moment to seek--they didn't know what. Reassurance, maybe. Forgiveness, which didn't make any sense. Something to help with the feeling that they really weren't any good for anyone.

Instead, they said, still without making eye contact, "I'll have to use my hands for the burial, I think. Digging bar seems a bit unwieldy for that."

((Katelyn Graves stirred from her slumber.))

Her eyes opened, half-lidded and barely able to be kept that way. Groggily, she let out a long, high-pitched yawn and flicked her gaze around the surroundings. The crackles and pops of the campfire greeted her on her return to the waking world, as did the voices of her friends. She rolled onto her back, cocooned in her emergency blanket as she was, craning her head to see what the commotion was about. Had they finished burying Meena?

Stitching and bandaging Ren and Kai after what had happened went smoothly enough, both of them doing their best not to flinch as the needle broke skin over and over again. Katelyn had made sure to give them both painkillers afterwards, both for the wounds and pain she had caused them herself. Once they had all settled in, and her friends had resolved to give Meena something resembling a proper burial, Kitty had passed out the digging bar and spear to Kai and Ren, and then curled up by the fire, too exhausted to help directly.

Now, she was awake, and while she was still tired, now was a good time to see what progress they had made.

She sat up, releasing herself from the wrapping of her blanket, eyeing the massive pile of debris that her friends' heads were behind and poking over. Pushing herself off the ground, she waddled over to the pile, only to rest her arms and chin upon it, looking over it and into the grave. Her breathing was slow, and intentional, trying to keep herself calm in spite of the morbidity. Dead bodies were hardly new for Katelyn, given how many she had made and how many she had found in her explorations. Burying someone wasn't even new to her, even if she hardly did as good a job digging as Kai had done for Meena. Yet, Meena was at least familiar to her, and she swore she could almost taste the grief hanging in the air.

Her gaze went to Meena's lips, bloody and blue, the skin of his face carrying that all-too-familiar pallor. She was less distraught at the circumstances of Meena's death now than she had been in the immediate aftermath, with Ren's reassurances calming her down like they always had, and helping her to see reason. Meena's actions had been his own, and while she might have accelerated his downfall, doom magnet as she was, he was always going to end up doing what he did.

Even though Meena had ruined their reunion, she didn't hold it against him. She had too much to be grateful for with Ren and Kai, because in spite of the blood spattered over every inch of her clothes, they were still sticking by her. They hadn't even asked about what had happened like she had so feared, though she knew they would, eventually, and she would be ready to answer honestly. Maybe they still wouldn't hate her afterwards.

Still, first came the matter of Meena's funeral. Perhaps delivering a eulogy would help Ren come to terms with their feelings on his death?

"Sh-Should we, um," she mumbled, "say a few words, or something?"

Kai stepped back after laying Meena down and dropped into a crouch, hands resting on his knees. He couldn't sit down properly just yet. The minute he did, he could tell that he wouldn't be getting back up again easily. He stayed active, sure, but digging the grave was the hardest continuous labor he'd probably ever done.

He nodded absently to Ren when they mentioned using their hands to cover Meena back up. They were probably right. It was sort of like what you did at funerals anyway. Take a handful of earth and toss it in. One last fistful of your love and your regrets. A way of saying, This is the last thing that I can do for you. I'll cover you, so you can rest easy.

Kitty's appearance nearby was so familiar that Kai barely reacted to it. There was a bizarre mingling of the comfortable and the horrific as the three of them sat at the edge of their campsite, staring at the dead body of someone they'd known and calmly discussing what to do with them. The peak of the horror had passed. Now they just waded through the dregs.

"I don't really know what to say," he said, when the other two didn't go on with any sort of eulogy. "I guess... I mean, I didn't know Meena that well. And I guess I would have liked the opportunity to know him better. I'm- sorry it didn't happen that way."

He could imagine Meena saying that these were weak and pathetic words. That they were useless after everything that had happened. Maybe they were, but Kai didn't mean them any less for it.

But of course, they would be expected to say something.

Ren sighed, and idly considered the possibility of pretending they hadn't heard. They could just bury Meena without saying a word, if they wanted to. They wouldn't, of course--it wasn't the kind of idle thought worth taking seriously. No, Ren would follow through with their duty of giving a eulogy they didn't want to give, for a person who probably hadn't wanted it.

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They would have, anyways, if they could.

They stepped back, until they were standing between Kai and Kitty, and hugged themself against the cold.

"I don't know if I have the right," they mumbled, at last.

"You do, Ren," Katelyn replied, so quickly and automatically that she even surprised herself.

She laid her head on her arms, themselves resting on the mound of snow and dirt, as though she was laying her head on her desk back at JEM, and looked at Ren. Gears turned within her mind, trying to process what exactly she meant, all while clearing away the cobwebs that had built up during her nap.

"It's, w-well," she started to say, only to stop to think, her mouth having worked faster than her brain.

Her sleeves began to dampen, snow melting from her body heat and absorbing into the fabric. The bitter chill nipped at the skin of her arms, but she didn't move. She was used to pain, as most of her life had been defined by it, much the same as it had been defined by grief and loss. Now she could use that experience for something good, by taking Ren's hand and guiding them through it. This was the least she could do.

"Eulogies aren't for the dead, they're for the living," she said, calmly and deliberately, her voice lacking in its usual stuttering. "They're to help you process and come to terms with the loss. It's not like Meena cares at this point what we say about him. But you do, and you need to grieve. So talk about it, and how you felt about him."

In these few, rare, precious moments, Katelyn's thoughts would cut through the usual malaise and emotional turmoil that defined her day-to-day existence, leaving behind nothing but crystal clarity and a tragically old soul.

"If it h-helps," she continued, her words starting to waver, ever so slightly, "as s-someone else who often becomes emotionally c-compromised and says and d-does things I don't want to do, I don't think Meena meant what he s-said to you. I think he was just l-lashing out."

She smiled, a small and sad smile of someone who knew that she was often just as bad, if not worse.

"If he really h-hated you, then he could've just k-killed you, instead of h-himself."

"I hope," Ren said haltingly, "that you're right." That they didn't think she was would remain unspoken.

There was something dreadfully familiar about Kitty's words. Mourners, weepers--that was an Anne Carson quote, wasn't it--weren't tears were all about the weeper? Weren't funerals all about the mourner? No doubt she was right. No doubt talking about Meena, as Ren knew her, would help them move through the grief. Except--Meena was their failure, and they didn't want to move on. They didn't want closure, they didn't want to stop wondering what they could have said or done differently, to save Meena's life; they didn't want to stop thinking about whether Meena truly would have been better off without their friendship. No; what Ren wanted was to be haunted.

The grotesque thing, of course, was how obvious it was that the funeral was really for their benefit. It was that Kai had stayed up for hours to dig the grave. It was that Kitty was so very clearly speaking from experience in her attempts to support them. Ren couldn't very well turn her down.

Ren took a few more steps back, until they were right up at the edge of the fire, and sat down. The heat licked their back, burned and warmed them. The hope was that it would give them the strength to draw out the words they were supposed to have.

"I'm...I don't know where to start. I guess--here. They were--we liked to look at each others' writing. When that was a thing we could do. She was...she was good."

Ren laughed, nervously, at how half-hearted their words sounded. But what else were they supposed to say? That his writing was unsettling, hard-edged and jagged and heavy? That his writing felt like a knife twisted in the gut? These were compliments, in Ren's head. They weren't the kind of compliments you were supposed to share at the funeral of someone who had died by suicide.

They continued. "He was...not talkative, exactly, online. But...moreso. He could get rambly, sometimes, even. If you got him talking about witchcraft, or magical girls, or horror games, or tabletop."

What else should they say? That she had a morbid sense of humor, and that Ren had probably laughed at a few of her jokes when they shouldn't? That he had a shitty boyfriend, and shitty parents, and online friends who always took more from him than they gave? Essential parts of Meena's life, yes--and it was tempting to speak it aloud, to hurl it at the cameras, so that those they had left behind would know what they had done. But none of that was Ren's to share. Meena had been diffident enough in telling them what she had.

"I don't know what else I want to say, that wouldn't be a breach of confidence. I trusted her. I thought...I thought that she trusted me. I miss her. That's all."

Ren stood up, and strode back up to the grave; they were finished, whether they wanted to be or not. They fixed their gaze on the dirt and snow that their hands shoveled up and threw over Meena, too ashamed to look anywhere else. It was an apology, of sorts.

Kai let Ren do most of the shoveling now, but he did eventually stand back up and lend a hand. Handful upon handful of things that could have happened differently, if any of them had been given a chance.

Dawn wasn't yet breaking when they finished, but the sky had begun to lighten from black to blue. Kai wasn't sure how he'd be able to sleep, even with the bone-deep ache and exhaustion that he'd beaten into himself digging that grave. Things were so quiet now without the constant noise of the digging bar in the dirt. Just the crackle of their campfire and the wind in the trees.

Whenever he let his thoughts wander, he saw Meena again. Screaming, bleeding. Saw Dominiqua dying under his hands without a word. Jess lost and alone and frozen, despite how hard everyone had worked to save her.

He hugged Ren and Kitty tightly, huddling against them for a long time, before moving back to their belongings by the fire. The pile of weapons that Kitty had claimed. All of them glinting in the light.

Kai picked up the date machete, walked several feet into the trees, and then hurled it as hard as he could away into the darkness.

He returned to the fire without a word of explanation or apology for what he'd just done, removed his glasses and bundled up as best he could, and laid down. He was certain up until he laid his head on the makeshift pillow made from his bag and clothes that he wouldn't be able to fall asleep. The exhaustion took him before he even felt it coming.

When the announcement eventually came, it didn't wake him. A new day crept over the island, and Kai slept like the dead.

((Kai, Kitty, and Ren continued in Aiskhylos, Agamemnon, line 805))