The day Kitty died, something was off when Kit came home from school.  

He had turned his keys in the lock quietly, paused inside the door, held his breath, scanned the hallway for signs, listening like he always did.

Then his eyes snagged on a faint, dusty footprint on the threshold to the living room.

Everything seemed to sharpen around Kit at once as his emergency responses kicked in and he shifted his bag to his back, tucking the keys away silently and squaring his shoulders, mouth pressing into a thin line.

Murmuring voices - that could be Kitty dreaming, could be the TV - but sand from shoes - he hadn't left that - and a new smell in the air, a sour tinge. 

...Stale alcohol?

Should he get a weapon? Most could be taken away and used against you, and he didn't have time - one more second and she might -  

Kit brought up his phone and punched in 911, ready to press call if it came to that. 

And then he heard a laugh that wasn't hers - low and rough - and he balled his hands into fists, stalking through the doorway without hesitation, shoulders squared, eyes shooting daggers.

"Get out," he hissed.

There was only one man there and he might have been one of her old friends. He was young but looked old, wearing baggy washed-out clothes, his skin loose and wrinkled as if it had been wrung out and hung to dry on his bones. The look on his face was slack surprise. 

"Get the fuck out."

Striding forward, Kit grabbed the guy's arm, hauled him up before his surprise could fade, and dragged him bodily from the room, shoving him though the front door and aiming a kick at him so that he reared back.  

He slammed the door shut and locked it despite his mother's shrill protests. 

How had she even managed to let him in?

"You - you have no right to treat my friends like that - " she spit at him, coughing, as he strode back into the room. 

"Give it," he shot at her instead of replying.

"What?"

"Give me whatever he left you, give it!"

He grabbed her wrists (fuck, that would bruise, she bruised so easily now, but this was more important) and pried her fingers open.

Nothing.

"I don't - "

He dragged the blankets off her, shook them out, pushed her to the side to rifle through them.

"See, there's nothing - "

Got on his knees and pulled out a plastic freezer bag, rolled up around something and tied with a rubber band, from underneath the mattress where she must have hurried to tuck it away. Not a great hiding place, but then again he had only been out of the room for about ten seconds.

Kit held it up in front of her. Raised an eyebrow cooly, but inside he was fuming.

She grabbed for it and he snatched it away, snarling.

"Give it - please, Kit!"

"Fuck! No!"

Kit felt so tired, isolated and alone. They had no friends. No relatives. No money. Kitty couldn't leave her bed anymore without help and she was getting worse every day.

Sometimes, Kit longed for it to end - then spent day living in fear, wishing for more time with her, any time at all.

It had been so far gone when they found it that surgery and radiation wasn't an option, only chemo was. But she couldn't afforded it at first, couldn't  have afforded it at all if he hadn't  - 

Kitty had never been to see a doctor after she dropped out of school at 15, only seen a nurse and midwife when Kit was born. But she had gotten into a rehab program via a church charity a year after her son went into foster care.

It was in connection to that program that she'd received a few medical check-ups.

Initially, they missed it. But when she was getting released they noticed that the problems with her lungs and general health weren't just related to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Once she was out - clean and in treatment - she applied for Kit back, knowing that she might die.

Kit was in a closed group home by then (an expensive placement), branded a troublemaker, and eager to go back to his mother. So eventually, they let him.

At that point, they hadn't seen each other in over two years.

And he started looking after her.

Kit had never really expected her to stay clean. And as she started getting worse, he wasn't surprised...but he refused to let her old friends back into their lives, putting himself as a buffer between her and them, and ordering what she needed online or through the dealers he knew.

He tried to hold onto any semblance of structure and stability as things slowly, steadily deteriorated around them.

School stopped seeming important in comparison. Kit mostly went so that no-one would decide to report his absence, and to have a place to relax and find distractions to help him keep sane.

He fooled around with anyone who wanted him, teachers and students and students' parents, and got shipped around half the public schools in the area. 

He'd been walking around with a self-destructive numbness, a feeling that it didn't matter what he did, that tomorrow might not come. The future and his usual self-preservation skills were just sort of on auto pilot...

What mattered most, was keeping her alive and comfortable.

But he was failing.

Everything I try...there's just no way to win.

"Please, it hurts, I need it!"

"No! Stop, just stop!!! Untried, untested - God knows what's even in this - "

"Well you won't buy it for me anymore! He was sharing with me because I'm in pain and he's a good person - unlike my son! Who won't help me, only hurts me - "

"I'm giving you the drugs doctors recommend! If I give you more morphine you'll deteriorate faster!"

She laughed, and it became a cackle and a quiet, gasping-for-air cough.

"What does it matter anymore?" she wheezed.

"I don't want you to die, you - you - !"

"For you - so you get to stay..."

"Yeah, stay in this paradise. That's why!" 

His laugh, raspy and sarcastic, sounded like her laugh.

"I just want to feel good!!!" 

Her voice cracked, breaking, and his was heading there too - Kit could hear the stretched-thin strain of it.

"You don't know what it's like!"

"I've had friends who started at 12, and I have you! I know!"

"You don't know, you can't, you've never tried it..."

"Are you saying I should?"

"I don't know - maybe - I don't, you just don't know, baby you can't understand - "

"Maybe I don't know. But I won't try it. I don't care what kills me as long as it isn't this shit! I'd rather bite a fucking bullet."

"That's your choice - but how can you take away my choice?!"

Kit gripped the little packet so hard in his hand his knuckles turned white. Without looking down, he could tell what was in it. 

Wrapped in the freezer-bag was one of those aluminium spoons that aren't even shaped like real spoons, not for eating, straight from the needle exchange. A slim syringe with it's fluorescent orange plastic cap, and off-white heroin in a separate tiny bag. No lighter, but then again she had her own. 

"You horrible, selfish, ungrateful little shit! I hate you!"

"Jesus fucking Christ, mom! Fine - take it!!!"

His chest heaved as if something, some monster, was trying to break free from it.

"Fucking take it!!! I don't care if you die!"

And he threw the packet at her, spun around and stormed out the door without bothering to lock it.

He could barely see what was in front of him, blood rushing loud in his ears, thoughts a gnarled mess, a twisted ball of yarn.

How could she?

So stupid, dangerous - how could she - 

- Doesn't care about herself, accuses me of not caring - how could she - ? 

Kit was so angry he walked for almost two blocks over cracked tarmac before he even realized what he had done.

What he'd left her alone with.

How could I?

"No, no, no, no...fuck, no..."

His veins froze to ice. What had he done?

Turning on the spot, all the blood draining from his face fast enough to send spots across his vision, Kit ran.

He stumbled forward, started sprinting like his life depended on it (someone's did), sneakers slapping on the grey asphalt, loud in his ears.

Now he could see - everything sharpened around him until it stung his eyes, crystal-clear - 

Every noise became deafening and the air rushed through his throat as he reached their building and took four steps in each stride up the stairs, shoving the door open and praying - 

He hadn't prayed in years, not ever really, but now did, he begged,

- Please God let her not have taken it -

But he knew even before he burst, skidding and almost slipping into the silent, still living room -

Of course she had. 

"No, no," he breathed, shaking hands going to her chest.

"No - mom, I love you, I love you, don't, please don't - "

He felt his eyes blur with tears and blinked furiously, forcing them away.

Not now. Can't cry yet.

He worked frantically, checking her breathing and heartbeat - nothing - giving her the nose spray and then more Narcan intravenously, which even EMT:s were not allowed to do, only paramedics, and starting chest compressions, punching 911 into his phone and putting it on speaker on the floor.

You're not allowed to cry. You can cry once she's alright. You can cry once she wakes up.

"Mom, please..." he whispered, pressing down hard on her sternum, 60 compressions and then two breaths, shouting at the operator on the line, voice cracking. She was still too pale, grey with a blue tinge, but he couldn't give up. 

Kit had only felt this afraid once before in his life. 

And this time, it was all his fault. 

It took 20 min for the ambulance to arrive.

When the EMTs finally took over, swarming in their dark blue uniforms, he was sweating from the effort, arms aching, no improvement but that didn't mean anything - maybe they still could - how long had her brain been without oxygen?

How much could her frail, cancer-ridden body survive? 

Kit rose without feeling his own limbs, followed them because he couldn't fathom being too far away from her, as if a magnetic force bound them together. 

He stumbled climbing into the ambulance, eyes refusing to focus on anything. Sounds of beeping, voices, footsteps , and an engine starting all seemed muted, far away now. 

When he held her hand and it was bony, cool, and dry, like always.

There was a hand on his shoulder, another voice asking him questions he couldn't hear and had no answers to, and Kit looked up from her pale fingers.

"Interacted with her medications, son, should have called us weeks ago - "

"Might have been fentanyl-laced - what can you tell us about - "

Something stirred in him, something angry and primal and helpless, straining to get out. 

The first thing his eyes focused on was a small day calendar taped to the inside of the ambulance opposite him. Kit stared at the date, blinking.  

It was his sixteenth birthday.