#ahs kit

The night at Briarcliff carried its own weight. It wasn’t the silence that brought peace, but an unsettling stillness, where even the faintest sounds echoed through the peeling walls. You had learned to live with it since you first arrived at the asylum. The rigid routine, the hallways spotless on the outside but steeped in despair on the inside… All of it had become part of what you accepted as your calling.

But lately, something had been different. The shadows seemed longer, the whispers between patients more charged. And what had once been a job that required patience and faith now felt like a burden you carried alone. It was impossible to ignore what happened to the inmates when no one was looking. You tried to justify it, believing it was your duty to follow the rules and not question. But that justification was becoming harder to sustain.

Especially when it came to Kit Walker.

He wasn’t like the other patients. Some said that Kit was dangerous, that he deserved to be there for the crimes they claimed he had committed. But you saw something else. Kit was human. And that was exactly what seemed to disturb the people in charge of his “rehabilitation.” It wasn’t his fault he kept resisting, refusing to be crushed by the machine that was Briarcliff.

And perhaps that was why he suffered so much.

When you heard the muffled screams in the male wing that night, something inside you broke. You had seen the aftermath before – bruises scattered across bodies, eyes hollow from exhaustion and pain. But never the perpetrators. They were like ghosts who haunted the hallways, leaving only marks as proof of their presence. This time, however, the sound lingered in your mind, stubbornly echoing long after the silence had returned.

You stayed in your room for hours, fighting against the burning impulse in your chest. Sister Jude’s words hammered in your mind: “The inmates need discipline, not pity. If you start getting involved, you’ll lose everything that holds us together here.” She said it with conviction, with strength. But you were beginning to realize that perhaps it was fear that gave weight to those words.

You shouldn’t be out of your room at this hour. If someone caught you… No, better not to think about that. Still, your feet seemed to move on their own, guiding you down the hallways to Kit’s door.

You opened the door slowly, the sound of the hinges ringing loud in the silence of the wing. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands crossed over his knees, staring at the floor as if it were the only solid thing in the world. Even in the dim light, you could see the damage: Kit’s face was marked with fresh bruises, his left eye starting to swell, and there was a long cut on his eyebrow that hadn’t fully clotted yet.

He looked up when he sensed your presence, the confusion flickering across his face before dissolving into something more tired. “What are you doing here?”

“Shhh. Don’t speak too loud.” You closed the door behind you, the feeling of being watched burning at the back of your neck.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he muttered, his voice hoarse. Even so, there was something almost playful in his expression. “You’re gonna get yourself in trouble, sister.”

“Don’t call me that,” you replied, unable to hide the irritation in your tone. The truth was that the title felt empty now. The weight of your actions – or rather, the lack of them – seemed to grow heavier with each passing day. “I just… I needed to see how you’re doing.”

“Well, now you’ve seen.” He tried to smile, but gave up when the pain made his lips tremble. “It’s not that bad.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

You pulled up a chair and sat facing him, taking the first aid kit you had smuggled beneath your robe. Kit watched in silence as you prepared what you needed. He didn’t resist when you started cleaning the cut, but the slight shiver he tried to hide made your heart ache.

“This should never have happened,” you murmured, your voice a thread of regret.

“It’s nothing new.” Kit shrugged, but the movement was followed by a grimace of pain. “They have a way of… keeping us in line, you know?”

“That’s not keeping in line. That’s torture.”

“It’s Briarcliff,” he corrected.

You had no answer to that. The silence that followed was heavy, interrupted only by the sound of the cotton soaking up the blood and the rustling of the bandage against his skin.

“Why are you doing this?” Kit asked, finally.

You stopped, the damp cloth still in your hand. “I… I don’t know.”

“Of course, you know,” he shot back, his eyes locking onto yours. “You felt guilty. You didn’t want Father or Sister Jude seeing you ignore what happened to me. But this… this is more than you should be doing, isn’t it?”

You felt your face flush, but you couldn’t deny it. He was right. Every step you’d taken up to this point was against everything Briarcliff stood for. Against what was supposed to be your role there.

“You don’t understand,” you began, but he interrupted.

“Maybe not. But neither do you. You don’t survive here being who you want to be. You survive being who they let you be.”

Kit’s words hung between you like a raw truth, something you couldn’t contest, no matter how much you wanted to. He didn’t speak with bitterness or malice, but with the hardness of someone who had already accepted what you were still struggling to acknowledge.

You felt the air trapped in your chest as you watched him. His shoulders were tense, and the gleam in his eyes, even under the swelling, belonged to someone who refused to be completely broken. How did he still hold on to this after everything?

“This shouldn’t be like this,” you whispered, more to yourself than to him.

“But it is,” Kit replied, with a simplicity that almost made you cry.

You looked away, focusing on the materials in front of you. You held the bandage firmly, but your hands were trembling. As you gently pressed the cloth against the cut above his eyebrow, you heard the soft sound of his breathing. It was rhythmic, controlled, as though he was trying not to react to the pain.

“I need to clean this before it gets infected,” you murmured, not looking at him.

“Do what you have to do, sister,” he replied, his tone lighter than you expected.

Though the words were simple, they carried weight. It wasn’t just about cleaning the wound or easing the physical pain – it was what it meant. A violation of Briarcliff’s rules. More than that, a step toward acknowledging that something was terribly wrong with the place you had sworn to serve.

As you moved the damp cotton over his bruised skin, each mark seemed to scream the story of how it had been caused. The clenched fists of an impatient guard. A forced fall to the ground. The complicit silence of empty hallways. You wanted to say something, but no words seemed fitting.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kit said after a while, breaking the silence.

“But I do,” you replied, more firmly than you expected. Finally, you looked at him, your eyes meeting his. “Because if I don’t… who will?”

He didn’t answer. He just stayed there, letting you continue your work in silence.

With every small gesture – cleaning the dried blood, applying the ointment, securing the bandage – you felt a mixture of guilt and relief. Guilt for not having done this sooner, for ignoring so many things for so long. Relief because, at least this time, you were trying to make it right, even if it was only for one person.

But the conflict in your heart was bigger than Kit. You knew that. The voices of the other inmates echoed in your mind, cries of anguish, muffled pleas, stories that were never heard. How many times had you walked those hallways, pretending not to hear? How many times had you justified to yourself that it was out of your control?

As you wrapped the bandage around his wrist, where a purple bruise almost circled his skin like a bracelet, you felt bile rise in your throat. “I wish I could do more,” you said, almost without realizing.

Kit chuckled softly, but there was no humor in his laugh. “This is already more than most would do.”

“This isn’t enough.” The words slipped out before you could stop them.

You wanted to say more. You wanted to scream about how everything seemed wrong – about how Briarcliff wasn’t a place of healing, but a purgatory where souls were crushed bit by bit. You wanted to confess how, night after night, you asked yourself if your vows meant anything when they served a system like this.

“So why are you here?” Kit asked, echoing the question he had asked before.

You paused. He didn’t speak with judgment, but the question still hit you hard.

“I… I thought I was doing the right thing,” you admitted, finally. The words were hesitant, but true. “I thought I could help people. That I could be… good enough to make up for what no one else did.”

“And now?”

Now. That word seemed enormous. It carried the weight of all the days you had closed your eyes to what was happening at Briarcliff, the times you had convinced yourself that it was all okay.

“Now, I don’t know,” you confessed, your voice breaking.

Kit watched you for a moment, and there was something in his eyes that seemed different. It wasn’t pity, nor hope, but understanding. He knew what it was like to fight against a system bigger than you, to feel powerless but unable to give up completely.

You finished tending to his wounds in silence, your hands moving automatically as your mind spun with thoughts you couldn’t organize. When you finally put away the supplies, you looked at Kit one last time.

“Promise me you’ll rest,” you asked, even knowing it was a futile request.

He tilted his head, a ghost of a smile touching his bruised lips. “I promise.”

You didn’t believe him, but you nodded.

As you walked back to your room, the silence of Briarcliff seemed more oppressive than ever. But something inside you had changed.