get me through this {nightmare} :: argos, day 4

looking out from underneath
fractured moonlight on the sea
reflections still look the same to me
as before i went under
and it's peaceful in the deep

Peri’s eyes are a puzzle.

He looks blank as he lowers himself to the crimson-stained ground at her side, like he isn’t quite sure if this is still their strange nightmare-world. If laughing didn’t hurt so much, Kiera might chuckle, hold up one of her ragged stumps and say Pretty damn sure we’re not dreaming, Myler. Want me to pinch you? His hands grasp her token like a lifeline – and in the end, that’s what they were to each other. Lifelines. The last ties to home and who they were in a world that could have robbed them of the very essence of themselves – chapped knuckles whitening in an iron grip around the fragile little necklace before something clicks into place behind those enigmatic eyes of his and he leans forward, lips ghosting along the shell of her ear in a barely audible whisper. “Say hello to my dad for me. Tell him I'm coming home soon. Home to him.”

Kiera does laugh at that, despite the fact that her amusement might be cruel, and in punishment for her disregard an exquisite stab of pain racks her body, bowing her spine and sending a brilliant flower of red blooming over her lips in a ragged cough that gives way to a weary smirk. “I w-would, Peri, but I d-don’t think I’m… don’t think I’m headed t-to the same… place as him. Heaven’s f-for wimps. You heard me in the B-bloodbath. I’d rather dine in Hell.”

“You’re a diamond, Kiera Dempsey,” the jewel-cutter’s son says confidently, something in his voice that’s caught between pride and remorse. “An unbreakable diamond.”

“And you’re a rock, Peridot Myler,” the murderer’s cousin replies in turn, resting her hand atop the two larger ones clenched around the last piece of her. “You were my rock. Thank you for that. And… and…”

Another shudder of agony shoots down her spine and across her body, pulling a grudging sob in its wake. Kiera grits her teeth until her jaw groans in protest, stubbornly clinging to her own fading light. I’m not done yet. “And if you... if you make it out, and you find him, you t-tell him... you tell him I died hating him, you hear me? Tell him that everything I d-did was for me, not him.”

She can tell from the shift in those puzzle-piece eyes that he understands, that who Him is needs no clarification. Out of all of them and for whatever reason, Peri is the only one she would ever trust to speak to Kaelen on her behalf, to issue her last words to the ears of the one responsible for the drastic shortening of her life. Maybe it’s because she knows that Aria would be too scared to say a word and that Wes would kill him with his bare hands. Or maybe it’s just because Peri is hers, is a piece of One, just as much a part of the fabric of her life as Kae was even though his threads in the tapestry never shown golden until now. And in the end, that means more than people might think. Really, it does.

cathedral, where you cannot breathe
no need to pray, no need to speak
now i am under, oh
and it's breaking over me
a thousand miles out to the sea bed

Wednesdae’s voice is a sunset.

Kiera thinks that if she had the strength left in her, the beauty of it might make her cry. Her own voice had always been icy water, rolling and smooth as it wove pretty verses of absolution to ease the path of wayward souls, ebbing and flowing like the tide and only rising to its full, stormy potential when it was necessary for all to hear. But this, the simple song that weaves its way across her fuzzy consciousness, this is different. If Kiera’s voice was cold water then Wednesdae’s is blazing fire, the sun and the stars and the cataclysm at the center of the universe all muted down to the soft glow of a lit hearth on a winter’s night, the heat of it warming the rapidly encroaching chill in her veins. Sighing sleepily, she curls into the safety of his arms because even now at the end of all things she knows that this is where she is safe. What she and Wednesdae have (had?) will never be perfect or idyllic or the type of love that the poets will write about, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Besides, the two of them have never needed anyone else. With their voices of ice and fire they could write their own story across the pages of time, a love song that mortal ears will never understand.

“I’m not sorry… because I don’t regret a second of knowing you,” he whispers, sounding more broken than she’s ever heard him, and it’s that brokenness that finally makes fresh tears well in her eyes, her one remaining hand shaking from the effort it takes to reach up and brush her fingers across the prominent ridge of his cheekbone.

“I d-don’t regret it either. I’d do it all again, Wes, all of it, if it… if it m-meant knowing you.” The words are a dry, parched croak that has to fight to tear away from her throat, painting themselves across her chapped lips with a quiet sincerity. Kiera knows her strength is failing, can feel it sapping from her bones along with the crimson essence that once gave her life, and yet somehow a final surge shoots through her limbs, resolve sparking through the cloudiness in her eyes and her hand tightening to a viselike grip around one of the arms that had held her so closely a day, a million years, a thousand lifetimes ago. Fleetingly, absurdly, she remembers every detail of those frenzied moments now in this scarlet dawn – she remembers the visceral drumbeat of his heart keeping time with hers, the taste of blood and sweat and glory on his skin, how his hands had felt strong, steady, fingers splayed across the small of her back like he’d been afraid that the world was going to rip her away from him. He’d told her she was beautiful in an urgent murmur against her neck, and Kiera hadn’t realized until after that he was the only person who had ever said that to her. They’d had everything for an hour or so in a damp grotto by a murky river, but Kiera only realizes that now, when they’ve passed the point of no return. They loved each other if only in the stunted, twisted way that deities of destruction are capable of love. And love fights even when the battle is lost.

Her blunt fingernails dig into the pallor of his skin, carving little half-moons into the flesh of his forearm and punctuating the forceful command that fights its way through bouts of pain. “You win this, Wednesdae Drummond. You win this for me, for both of us. You win this for everything we could have had.”

found the place to rest my head
never let me go, never let me go
never let me go, never let me go
and the arms of the ocean are carrying me
and all this devotion was rushing out of me

Aria’s heart is a hurricane.

Kiera can feel it in the delicate fingers that brush through her hair, can hear the roaring tempest beneath the Little Wolf’s skin even as she tries to smile and tries to speak her soothing words and tries, tries, tries to turn this harsh reality into a pretty fairy tale where nothing has to come to an end, not today. Three days ago, Kiera had wanted to kill her. Three days ago, before she had learned that Aria Wolfe had a sharp tongue and a quick, dry wit and a laugh like a summer storm, Kiera had wanted to slit her throat and watch her bleed out before taking her supplies and moving on. But three days are three lifetimes in the Arena, and somewhere in those seventy-two eternity-hours Aria stopped being an enemy and became an Argonaut. In another life they might have been best friends, these two girls with rebellion in their blood and stars in their eyes, but as things are now there are only the fragile echoes of the might-have-beens, the stutter of Aria’s fingers weaving her hair together, reassurance soft on her lips. “You ain't dying today, Kiera. Not today. Not really. You'll be around us all, in the water, right? ‘Cause that's where you belong. And I won't be screaming when I go down. I'll howl.”

“I bet you will,” she whispers, something heavy pulling at her eyelids as the weariness begins to drag her down. There’ a sense of peace to it, really. As much as she thrived in the field of battle, Kiera has grown awfully tired of fighting. The Little Wolf’s agile hands finally tuck the last of her braid in place, all messy and lopsided with the short, downy fluff sticking out where Blair had hacked off the dark locks to make a soul-vessel that Kiera had promised her she wouldn’t need. You’ll be around us all, in the water, right? Aria had said. ’Cause that’s where you belong.

“Th-the water,” she barely manages to slur, eyes closed, consciousness drifting and lost in the smell of earth and home that is Wednesdae overwritten with the coppery tang of blood. “P-put me in the water… wh-when I’m gone, please. You three… you three take care of each other, okay? For me. F-for what it’s worth, I loved you all.”

And there in the fragrant gardens, with Aria’s fingers in her hair and Peri’s presence by her side and Wednesdae’s embrace to keep her warm up to the end, Kiera allows herself to sleep.

She is three years old, shrieking happily as her father sprays her and Cora with the garden hose, wondering why no one else can hear the song the little droplets sing to her. She is six years old, wobbling unsteadily in the seat of her bicycle while Kaelen holds her upright; her face screwed up with determination even though she’s fallen half a dozen times and the scrapes on her knees and elbows bleed freely and sting like fire. She is twelve years old, struggling with her grip on a sword that’s too heavy for her (It’s as heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, Ki) under the sweltering heat of the summer sun. She is fourteen years old, bumming hits off Kaelen’s cigarette and laughing languidly at some dry observation Aurora just made about their English teacher. She is sixteen years old, standing at her twin sister’s empty grave and fighting back tears with a lioness’ ferocity because she promised to never cry. She is seventeen years old, saving Ella Dahl’s life, wincing as Moira slaps her and sighing as Blair rages at her and shaking as the Detective holds her closer than he’s probably held anything in his oh-so-distant life. She is seventeen years old, training with Atlas and Peri, laughing with Wes, sizing up the competition across the gym. She is seventeen years old, screaming like a demon unleashed as she carves through three lives in one day. She is seventeen years old, shuddering beneath Wednesdae’s hands and trying to make sense of a world that is rapidly falling into chaos. She is seventeen years old, lying in a pool of her own blood and surrounded by her almost-family, drifting lazily into oblivion.

Somewhere a million miles away, a cannon fires.

She is seventeen years old, and she is dead.

and the crashes are heaven for a sinner like me
the arms of the ocean deliver me
though the pressure's hard to take
it's the only way i can escape
it seems a heavy choice to make

Death has Kaelen’s face.

In all reality, Kiera knows she shouldn’t be surprised that this is who emerges from the Abyss to greet her. Still, a shiver of revulsion shoots up her spine at the sight of cold amber eyes, hands (two of them now, and two feet. At least being dead carries the perk of being whole) curling into tight fists at her sides. “This is ironic.”

“Is it?” Death muses – It’s not really Kae, she knows, because somewhere in the world of the living the real thing is still breathing, still spreading his poison to anyone that will take it – crossing his arms and cocking a skinny hip to the side. “Glad you appreciate it. Eons and eons of reaping souls gets pretty boring when you stick to the whole skeleton in a black robe with a scythe thing. Irony’s about the only source of entertainment I’ve got.”

“You even talk like Kaelen.”

Death snorts, kohl-lined eyes rolling upwards. “Wouldn’t be surprised if your snot-nosed cousin gets my job when he finally kicks the bucket. He’s gotten a pretty good start so far. But I’m not vacating my office anytime soon, so he’ll probably end up in the same place as you.”

“Oh, so I take it I’m not headed for fluffy clouds and wings and pearly gates, then,” Kiera counters with a smirk, surprisingly unafraid. “Didn’t figure I was, what with setting a kill record on Day One.”

“You’d be surprised. Usually they give Tributes a reprieve upstairs, you know, the whole ‘killing as a necessity’ thing. No, sweetheart, you’re headed to the basement because of the… twenty-two civilians you drowned. Now, if you’ll kindly step forward…” Kiera hadn’t even noticed the door until now, one of Death’s spindly hands closing over the knob and pushing it open. She wasn’t really certain what she had been expecting – flames, screaming, little red imps dancing around poking Stark Harper with pitchforks – but what she gets is nothingness. A bottomless, endless void, swirling blackness that is utterly empty except for the tendrils of whispers that murmur within. Death takes one look at her raised eyebrow and cackles. “Hellfire and brimstone is so two-thousand years ago. We went custom a few centuries back. Everybody gets individualized eternal torment now. That sounds like a whole heap of blame, darling. You’ll be spending the rest of forever being held accountable for every single life you’ve wrecked. Enjoy.”

For some reason, that endless black, those accusing whispers (she hears a wounded, betrayed voice that she knows is the Detective and it makes her entire being writhe) are so much more terrifying than any fire and pain could ever be, and Kiera reels back from the doorframe, horror-stricken. “B-but I… I never wanted… I thought I was helping them, he told me, I didn’t have a-“

“You always had a choice, Kiera Dempsey,” Death hisses, the flat brown of Kaelen’s eyes flashing brilliant red. “And this is the consequence of the choices you made. Now face it.”

Her cheeks feel wet, eyes stinging with tears, and Kiera realizes with a stab of fear that if a soul can cry, she’ll probably be crying forever. “I don’t want to go.”

And suddenly with a mighty tug, she is ripped back from the precipice of Hell itself.

but now i am under, oh
and it's breaking over me
a thousand miles out to the sea bed
found the place to rest my head
never let me go, never let me go

Blair’s face is the embodiment of Salvation.

For a wonderful, fleeting moment, Kiera think that this – the Reaping, the Games, her death, all of it – has merely been a terrible dream, that she’s woken up screaming on Reaping Day and Blair is standing there looking at her with that age-old sadness far beyond her years that lingers behind her eyes. The illusion only shatters when she goes to breathe a sigh of relief and realizes that she has no breath. Panicking, she tries to grab for her throat only to realize that she can’t move, can’t scream for help, can’t do anything of her own power. The room feels as if it’s closing in around her, tighter and tighter as her confusion and fear compounds, and maybe this is Hell, a forever of paralysis while who-knows-what horrors will parade in front of her eyes for the rest of time.

But right now the only thing in front of her eyes is Blair. Blair, and behind her, a mirror. Slowly, disbelievingly, Kiera lets her vision center on the reflective glass, locking onto a carefully-stitched fabric body, clothed in the scraps of a white Reaping dress and crowned with a long shock of dye-mottled hair. Blair had promised her that day in the Justice Building that her soul would be safe no matter what, and although the immobility and inanimate state will take some getting used to, Kiera is willing to wager that it’s far better than an eternity of darkness and guilt.

So she laughs.

Even though she has no breath, no lungs or throat or movable lips, she laughs, and the sound rings out across the room in beautiful peals of something that feels almost like life. Her sister hears it, hears it the way she’s always heard those odd little dolls of her whispering in the night, a fragile hope sparking across her face with a whole universe of almost-okay that swells and washes over her skin. It’s not so pleasant, not so conventional, and it sure as hell isn’t normal, but they’ll deal. Kiera laughs until it feels like the sky will fall, because despite all the odds, she has come back to the exact place she wanted to be. And slowly, sadly, Blair reaches out, brushes a finger along her cotton cheek, and smiles.

“I know it’s not the way you wanted… but welcome home, Kiera.”

never let me go, never let me go
and it's over
and i'm going under
oh, slipping underneath
in the arms of the ocean, so cold and so sweet