in the attic of the universe [cedar v nell day 7]

He leaves in the night. It shouldn't feel like betrayal, the way that he slips away while Red sleeps. He didn't blast a hole in her skull at point-blank range. He didn't take any of her supplies. In a place like this —where it's everyone for themselves, where hesitating means certain death, where blood is the only currency with value — relieving Red Stone of the responsibility to keep him alive cannot be anything besides a gift.

One leg lost, he clumsily jetpacks through the metal corridors of Aeternium. He thinks he should keep the racket down. He thinks he should keep an eye out for the seven other tributes in this place. He thinks he should figure out where he's going, but despite the way the wind blows his hair and the hallways change he knows he isn't going anywhere. Not in any way that will make a difference.

When he gets to the garden, he stops for the night. Curled up under a bush he's seen before, eleven-fingered leaves stroke his curls as though to comfort him to sleep. He stares at his watch instead, eyes unfocused, awash in the blue glow, as he taps out a message — not with his thumb.

Cedar: Hey Red

Cedar: Sorry again for shooting you yesterday

Cedar: It wasn't on purpose... but I'm sorry for the way that I thought that maybe I should shoot you on purpose, too.

Cedar: I just wanted to express my gratitude for everything that you've done for me. Or for the things you've done for yourself that I've benefited from. I guess it doesn't matter which at the end of the day, when it comes down to the fact that you were willing to make yourself a murderer three different times just so that I could live another day.

Cedar: I'm never going to be strong or resilient like that, and that's okay.

Cedar: I'm sorry for leaving, too. It seems like things are getting down to the wire and... I get that I'm going to die, even if I don't want to. But I don't want you to be the one to kill me, and I don't want to kill you either.

Cedar: Hope the morning finds you well

Cedar: And Good luck out there

Cedar: You do whatever you need to, okay?

Cedar: All the best,
Cedar

Rolling over onto his back, he sighs, staring at the tangle of roots above him for he doesn't know how long. Two minutes. Two hours. His watch hums on his wrist, but he doesn't look at it. He doesn't want to hear whatever Red has to say about him leaving. He doesn't want to think about her snarking at him for being a coward, chewing him out for leaving, agreeing that it was for the best — he doesn't know which sounds worse. He rolls onto his side. The flowers across the way are browned and wilted. He wonders how he ought to feel about outliving them.

His watch hums on his wrist, and a face catches the corner of his eye. His heart stops and he bolts upright, accidentally punching himself in the nose as he scrambles to bring the small screen four inches from his face.

Dad.

Arbor Halt looks worse for wear — eyes sunken and dark, the ordinary lines and creases on his face deepened to canyons, brow weighted — but there's an unmistakable gentleness in his expression, the kind that forgives the broken lamp in the dining room, the kind that sits him down on the couch and tells him Kieran is moving to District Ten. The clip is heavily edited — Arbor starts mid-sentence, cuts off and jumps to the other side of the frame, a tear appearing in the corner of his eye. "It's okay," he says, low and comforting. Like he knows that it isn't okay until he says that it is like he believes that it will be. "It's okay. I love you."

Cedar watches the fragment on loop for the rest of the night. He curls up on his side, watch pressed to his ear, I love you., at last lulled to sleep, it's okay., some time before what passes as dawn. Everything still hurts, but despite the way his tongue is cotton, he feels better in the morning.

He makes himself some tea from the only living chamomile he can find on the hot plate he took from the lab, the magnetic stirring attachment gently spinning the liquid counterclockwise as it steeps. Hypnotized by the vortex, he leaves the tea for too long. It turns bitter, but he doesn't mind. Better than no tea at all. There's so much leftover after he's drunk his fill — muscle memory, he'd made enough to share. He'd like the company, he thinks, but Sky is dead and Dusty is dead and he left Red on the other side of the Arena. It's okay. He loops the message on his watch again. It's okay. He can handle being alone.

He slips away when it grows apparent that he isn't, because as much as he could use a friend right now, he knows he won't find one here. Even if there were another person in the arena that wouldn't shoot him on sight, the circumstances of their situations call for each of them to do whatever they need to. Today. Tomorrow. The day after. Maybe there's someone in the world who would return the kindness that Cedar has shown them with mercy of their own, but traits like empathy and leniency are incompatible with longevity in here. It's okay. Even wondering about his father's Games always felt like an invasion of privacy, but after a week in this place — the end of it tantalizingly close and impossibly far all at once — he can't stop himself anymore. He must've done some heinous, horrible, monstrous things. I love you. That's what he would have needed to do. It's okay. Right?

Like a game of jetpack-assisted hopscotch, he limps out of the garden and towards the open air of the bridge. Back to where he almost died yesterday. He wonders if his right leg is still attached to the cable, gently rocking back and forth in the breeze, or if maybe the cleaner robots have come for it, or if maybe it's plummeted into the icy abyss below. Flexing his three-fingered hand against the thrust trigger, he wonders if the Gamemakers and the arena plan to claim him piece by piece, or if the next thing to leave his body will be his soul.

He finds his space suit where he hung it yesterday, then falls over backwards and dies of fright at Nell Cyprus's face pressed up against the glass of an adjacent case. Lying in wait or waiting to die, even when his pounding heart settles Cedar has no idea what she's doing in there. Stuck, maybe. Definitely. A sitting duck. A fish in a barrel. A beta in a bowl. Floundering.

Top heavy with his jetpack, it takes Cedar awhile to get back up. He knows he should keep walking, or he should set a fire, or he should tow the whole thing off the bridge. Seven days in this place should've shot and stabbed and bludgeoned the naïveté out of him, but here he is: still hesitating. "If I let you out, are you going to kill me?" he asks, but he doesn't wait for an answer. The best he can do is draw his blaster as he cautiously opens the compartment door.

"Are we supposed to be killing each other?" Despite knowing that they are, he asks anyway. Business end of his blaster dropping from Nell's face to Nell's stomach as he fishes his stash of medicinal plants out of the folds of his robe, he has one other thing of value left to offer besides the blood in his chest. "Want to smoke with me again instead?"