#hatta

You have my heart, Jest. I don't know if you deserve it or not. I can't tell if you're a hero or a villain, but it doesn't seem to matter. Either way, my heart is yours.

📖:Heartless, Marissa Meyer.

They confused me. Like, these two never really got along at all during the book, but they also had this mutual respect for each other.

Hatta hated that Cath and Jest loved each other not just because he was also in love with Jest, but because Cath could spell the ruin for their plans and even their lives. His distaste is so founded, but he seems to grow a fondness for her after the tea party, and even gives her a hat.

Then everything low key falls apart with the Mock Turtle event and the King of Hearts just… kind of announces his technically nonexistent engagement to Cath, and Hatta’s attitude dips again drastically and doesn’t really recover after that. He is blatantly against her, and everyone knows it. He doesn’t think she could make it to Chess because he doesn’t think she is desperate enough, and spends a good amount of time mocking Cath.

Despite this, he is incredibly considerate and caring towards her after Jest’s murder. He is the one who removes her from an obviously distressing situation, and he even CARRIES her home. And what’s more, this display of consideration, we are shown, did NOT change his feeling about her. He is openly hostile at the end of the book, and verbally attacks Cath repeatedly.

Cath doesn’t treat him much better at this point either, what with the blaming him for everything and banning travel between Chess and Hearts, but she does show her concern for him and his decaying mental state. She genuinely feels bad for him when he admits he too loved Jest, and, to me anyway, the fact she stayed with him until his mind was completely broken says she wanted to be something of a comfort.

Had things been different, I feel like these two would have been amazing friends who cared deeply for each other, but they instead were two broken people stuck in similar circumstances. They understood things about each other no one else could, and that led them to care for each other in their own odd way, but they were able to breach that contempt in blaming the other for what happened while they had the wherewithal to do so.