Candids [Avriel/Arthur]

It's different this year.

Guess that's to be expected.

There's cameras again of course but they can't follow him inside the training centre. Avriel likes to stand in the atrium, staring out the slightly opaque front doors at the shadows and forms that wait outside in case they might catch a glimpse of the victors or the tributes from this year.

He doesn't remember this from last year but when Avriel thinks about that time, it's hard to remember much about the days in the training centre. He remembers flashes of things, of smiles and whispered secrets but every day he remembers a little bit less. It's hard when there's no one else to remember it with.

Two weeks of his life, half-televised and spent with twenty-three others but now just his big secret; his burden.

Scout rattles its head and taps a little foot on marble tile, impatient.

"Mmm," Avriel says. "Allons-y."

We go.

Aneesa and Zane are somewhere inside, Avriel isn't one hundred percent sure what they were wanting to do today and he's got no interest in distracting them. Zane is hard to pin down and Aneesa is confusing for him, Avriel isn't really suited for any of it. He wracks his brain, trying to remember what Colgate did for him in his last few days but thoughts are muffled, blurred.

He remembers Julian holding his wrist in place at target practice and watching Mauve skin an animal only a few feet away from him.

And last night he dreamt about sitting in the dining hall, Blade sat across from him. Her mouth was moving in his dream but he couldn't hear her, the hall around them was too loud. It didn't matter.

It was just nice to see her again, looking so good like that. There'd been colour in her cheeks.

Avriel wanders down the hall a little bit of a ways past the training rooms. He hears noise coming from inside but he's been looked at enough for a lifetime and the other kids don't want his advice anyway.

"How'd you do it, what strategy were you following? Pretty hard to pin down."

"I-"

He doesn't know how to tell them– he didn't go in planning to make it out.

click. click. click.

Avriel flinches a little, the unmistakable sound of a camera shutter comes from his left and he turns to see one of the tributes sitting in the Hall of Heroes, clicking away at the portraits of victors on the walls.

He watches for a moment and then Scout enters ahead of him, waddling along through the rows of folding chairs. Av follows, eyes on the kid sitting in a chair directly beside Babe Adroxis' reel.

"Babe Adroxis," Avriel answers as he approaches, "There's a statue of him in the games square back home." Babe scowls out at them and then in the next moment, gives the both of them a cheeky grin before spinning a gun in his hand. "He kept a lot of people employed and people love him"

"And... Fleur, my fri– my district partner," he says, "She was his granddaughter."

Her name still cuts and Avriel winces the tiniest bit when he says it. He left fresh flowers on her headstone a couple days before the train ride to get here, but they're probably already wilting. Maybe Isabelle would remember to replace him, but Av doesn't hold out hope on that.

Avriel leans against the wall beside the portrait and stares at the boy from Three.

Bellamy and Mauve's District. That'd been one weird fucking stop on his tour.

He nods back towards the door, to the sounds of training happening only a few doors down, "Why aren't you with the rest?"