going nowhere fast // d9 train. 94th.

There's a razor burn on the side of his neck.

The collar of his shirt keeps catching on it and rubbing, making it worse. Avriel thinks about taking a pair of scissors to it, about just cutting away the fabric that offends.

A corner of his mouth lifts, he half sneers, half smiles at his own reflection. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Just cut out the things in your life that bring you pain instead of doing something about it. Become like those people who run from everything that hurts and then turn their noses up at those that try to sift through it.

He pinches his shirt collar and tugs it slightly away from his skin, then imagines cutting a hole right where the seam lies. "Just finally become holy," he mutters. Then the other corner of his mouth lifts at his own stupid joke. Avriel smiles.

Good, he should be smiling when he meets his tributes, right?

People always tell him to smile more.

"What worries could someone like you have?"

Sometimes people forget that he's killed people. No matter how hard you try to cut those memories out, they always find a way of resurfacing. Like now, for example.

Tap running for the last ten minutes in the bathroom, even after the train lurched to life beneath his feet and he felt that familiar swaying of the carriage. He vaguely remembers Areto telling him it was a little like being on a boat. It makes sense, sometimes when they're passing through the fields of tall grass along the tracks it's like being on a great, golden sea.

Tap running for the last ten minutes because there was motor oil on the back of his hand, just under his knuckle and for a moment it looked a little bit like blood. But he always gets a little funny around this time of year so maybe that's normal.

There's a knock on the bathroom door and then it jiggles as someone tries the handle, "I'm almost done," Avriel says, shutting the tap off abruptly, "Two seconds." He glides the already half-used bar of soap off the counter into the trash bin stationed at the end and then opens the door to see Eden gazing at him, a slightly disapproving expression on his face. Or maybe it's worry, he's not sure.

Avriel stares back at him, then leans in and gives him a peck on the forehead. "Gotta go," he says, "Tribute stuff."

He sidles past him and makes his way down the train cars, to where they always hold the reaped. They're not permanent enough yet to deserve their own cars, instead, a spread is laid out for them in one near the back as if to show them what they could look forward to if they won. Avriel's always viewed it more as an offering, a last supper for the damned. In six years of being a mentor only one's ever made it home. He's allowed to be a little bitter.

He reaches the last car and pauses, halfway through the doorframe. There are too many people sitting in the seats. Then he blinks and it's just Leonora and Olette again. The rest stay buried.

Gonna be one of those days.

Avriel sighs and steps into the train car, Scout waddling along behind him. The Kodama has never seemed to mind it when tributes don't make it back. It's a creature of opportunity and will take what it can when it can. As Avriel steps further in, the mutt beelines for the table laid out with the usual fare.

"Hey," he says, gaze falling on both girls, Olette busy with either tying or untying Leonora's dress. Avriel's head tilts to the side as he stares at the two of them. "Am I interrupting something?" he asks, voice flat, forgetting to make it teasing. He's bad at tone.

Avriel sits down heavily in the window seat of one of the rows that faces another and rests his cheek in his hand, elbow on the sill for support.

His eyes don't leave the two of them, gaze intense, weighted, as if he's trying to commit them both to memory. "I'm Avriel," he tells them after a pause, then points at the table to where Scout is standing on top of a platter of sandwiches, "That's Scout."

He doesn't offer them anything else yet.

Let Storm come and share hollow dreams for them to latch onto, Avriel doesn't make promises that he can't keep.