visitation rights

"Replay clip."

The scene vanishes and I wait in silence. Then cold air rushes past my ears and there's a soft humming as the program refreshes. The room is sealed, it's so dark that I can barely see my hand in front of my face.

A small campfire blinks to life in the centre of the room. Areto sits behind it, gaze focused on the flame. Light dances across her cheekbones, meets her eyes and pools there. I lean back against the wall and I watch her as if it's still my job to protect her, as if I'm back there in that night too.

I guess I am.

My hologram materializes at the edge of the darkness. I'm just a glimmer of light at first. Then Scout leads me out of the pitch black to Areto. The digital Avriel looks like absolute shit. My legs beneath my shorts are layered in cuts from the week and my ankle is wrapped up in duct tape. My skin is pale, taught, I look like I might be dying.

I guess I was though.

The hologram me pauses when he sees Areto and then lopes clumsily over to her, stumbling along as fast as I could with my fucked-up foot. There's this look of pure relief on my face, joy almost. I reach up slowly and place my fingers against my lips, checking, but I'm not smiling now. I don't know if I can do that again.

We hold each other and Areto shakes from relief, her hands bunched up in my shirt against my back. There'd been bruises after that from her knuckles on my skin. Tear-streaks run through the dirt on both of our faces. It'd been genuine, I think that moment had been at least. It's just not what I'm after today.

"Jump five minutes forward," I whisper.

The scene changes up in a quick flicker. Areto and I are both sitting in the dirt beside the fire, knee to knee. She stares right at me but I can't make eye contact even though I was so happy to be with her again. I remember, even without the video, I remember. Her eyes had been honey brown from the firelight.

"It sounds like they need you," she says.

I'd taken my knives out to clean Reece's blood off of them and there they are now, laid out between our two ghosts in a neat little row. Which one had it been?

She reaches out and I watch as she wipes the tears off my hologram's face. I need to shut my eyes for a moment too. There's a phantom feeling of her thumb against my cheek. It's hard to remember that gentle moment, how it felt, I don't think that I can anymore on my own.

"No, Areto, no, I need you too, no," my voice rings out next. It makes me cringe a little and my jaw clenches, on edge again. Fuck, I sounded like a little kid.

Then she's holding my hand over the hilt of the knife with both hands and it's trained right at her heart. Then she's pulling it towards herself and the tip is pressed up against her skin.

"Pause, wait" I whisper quickly, eyes squeezed shut, "Please."

The scene freezes at my command. Even the campfire is still, the light from the flame sitting heavy on the darkness that surrounds as if it were solid. I get in close and kneel about a foot away from our flickering holograms, trying to figure out what the hell happened.

I was there too but my thoughts ran so fast with panic and I've been told so many different things about it now, I don't really know what happened anymore. In District Two, there was a hand on my shoulder congratulating me, District Four an angry voice calling me a killer and in Nine, a hand holding mine tightly as I sat in silence, missing Areto.

Because she'd killed herself, right? My blade but her hands, it'd been her choice.

The look on her face in this freeze-frame carries that trademark determination but there's a calmness there too, an acceptance, I think. Maybe that's just what I want to see but as far as I know that's how it was. I reach out slowly until my hand lays open, palm down, hovering over the mess of mine and Areto's hands holding the knife. Had her's been below mine or on top?

"Hey," I say, "Show option two again."

A flicker and then the scene changes slightly. Areto still looks determined but it's different. Her hand isn't over mine anymore but under them and the expression on my hologram's face has changed too.

It's empty, revealing nothing. The line of my mouth is flat, my brow slightly narrowed. I look focused.

"Okay, play it back."

"Avriel, wait... don't do this," Areto says, not afraid just angry. She's angry at him, the Avriel there, me. She's mad at me.

"I have to,"

Areto digs the knife into my thigh but this time it isn't to get me to react but a desperate bid to break free. 

I stumble backwards out of the circle of light cast by fire, heart racing. "Stop," I say, "Back. Go back, I wouldn't have said that." Wouldn't have done that either. Why would I have done that?

"Wouldn't have done that," I say, desperate, "She wouldn't have let me, she woulda fought to the end, she wouldn't have-"

But why didn't she fight then, why'd it happen like that?

For a long moment, there's just that, my heart beating in my throat in the darkness, standing there staring at the image of me stabbing Areto through the heart. "She wouldn't-" I try again.

"You manipulated her into it right? Genius work," said the hand on my shoulder in Two.

She would.

I must have known she would.

I step closer again, thinking fast. "Computer load challenge course, day eight, Areto death one."

The scene reverses, my knife comes out of her chest, her hand is over top of mine again, pulling me forward. Her expression glitches then switches back to that calm, determined gaze. I turn slowly and look at the Avriel hologram's face. There are panicked tears frozen to my cheeks and my mouth is open, I'm begging I think.

I'm begging Areto to stop.

I unfurl my hands in front of me. They're larger than Areto's and rough. Hers were as callused as mine, maybe even more. She'd grown up with a spear in her hand while I'd held screwdrivers and wrenches. She could have destroyed me. I knew that.

"I don't-" I whisper.

I don't know what I'm getting at.

"Play."

"Areto, please, please I don't want to, please don't make me," my hologram whimpers pathetically.

"I'll be there with you at the end, okay?"

"Liar," I mutter but I don't know which one of us I'm saying that to anymore.

It happens quickly, Areto digs a knife into my thigh and I react, jolting forward. The other knife goes into her chest and pierces her heart, she dies in my lap.

Liar.

"Replay clip," I say but my tone is shaky. My hands are numb in front of me, it feels cold. I'm cold.

"Areto, please, please I don't want to, please don't make me," my hologram says.

Liar.

The knife pierces her heart.

"Again, play it again."

Sheer panic in my expression, carefully crafted. My father's watch laying in pieces on the kitchen table; my father's watch on my wrist. A shallow grave in the woods.

"Again," I whisper.

Blood on wooden floorboards, staining the ceiling of the living room below. Areto's forehead is on my shoulder and we're sitting there still until the fire dies out an I'm alone in the dark.

"Again."

I watch myself kill her. I go still the moment I realize she's gone and then my expression is blank.

"Again."

Her knife in my thigh, I react and I kill her. I look calm.

"Wait."

The clip freezes and I step closer, it's getting harder to see, my vision is blurry but I can't look away. I have to know.

Areto's forehead is on my shoulder. Her hand has fallen off mine, there's a knife in my thigh. My hands are around the hilt of the knife in Areto's stomach.

There.

I fall to my knees, I'm gonna throw up.

"No," I choke out, "No, please, no."

My hands are covered in her blood and I only look relieved.