phantom. [avriel/oswald]

Things aren't quite real anymore, he presses his fingers against the window in his living room and the pane is cool beneath his touch. The world outside seems fuzzy, like a television channel out of focus. He hasn't left the training centre since they got here.

It's simple to go through the motions. Muted voices cut soft around him. A trainer leans over to whisper to a waitress in the dining hall. "Isn't that the victor that punched that talent show contestant in the face last winter?"

Yes.

But they worked it out.

He sits there and stares at his plate, his hand in his lap, still bandaged. The silk fabric from the shirt has gone all grimy from being wrapped around his knuckles and Gloria keeps telling him to get it checked out but Avriel's okay. He doesn't want help.

He nods when he's supposed to and does his best to guide Oz and Nowles on what to do but his throat is always tight and it's hard to look anyone in the eye. It feels like if he does they might notice the fractures and that'll be too much for him, he might cry.

He doesn't want that, he wants to stay like this, still functioning and capable enough to help his tributes. Once they're gone, that's when he can unravel again.

The room's darkened without him noticing it. Scout's inner light leaves a warm glow on the window beside him and when Avriel looks down at the kodama, it lets out three varying soft notes, the last one the littlest bit longer and just a little off. It's mournful. It's the same song it always sings at Fleur's grave.

"I'm okay," Avriel lies.

Scout rotates it's head all the way around and then rattles back into position.

Can't even lie properly to a mutt.

There's a knock at the door and Avriel's so used to ignoring Gloria's knocking that he doesn't register it at first. They knock again and he doesn't move from his place at the window. A long minute drags by. It's only when Scout mimics the next nock with another rattle that he understands that whoever it is, they aren't going anywhere.

Deep breath, so heavy that it feels like a weight is compressing his lungs, then Avriel walks over to the door. They've fixed it since last year, the lock no longer spits out keycards and they've taken most of the electronics out of his room to keep him from pulling everything apart again.

With nothing to keep his hands busy, that just leaves him to pick himself apart.

Avriel pulls the door open, expecting to see Gloria but finds Oswald on his doorstep instead. He steps aside as Oz pushes his way in and then locks the door behind him again, wordless. It takes him so much energy lately to speak that by the end of the day it feels as if he's all used up.

Everything aches, everything's tight, he needs rest and all he wants is to be left alone but he's a victor, all this is his prize.

Tongue heavy, he watches as the kid navigates his space like it's his own. Avriel lets him, knowing that he's going to remember this moment later. A week from now, maybe a few months, he'll lay awake and remember Oswald in his space like this and it will be like being haunted again.

He shuts his eyes and smiles the littlest bit. There is always another ghost.

"You wanna talk," Avriel asks after a long moment of silence, "Or just stare out my window?"

Oz doesn't say anything for a long time but Avriel doesn't push him. He likes when it's quiet anyway and sometimes the less a person says, the more he understands them.

And he remembers this feeling.

For him it was a little different though. He'd been relieved to be here, content with it all for the most part. Everything that had been on his shoulders for so long didn't matter, he was about to die. It wasn't going to be his problem anymore.

Then something changed.

It's kind of a blur now, but there was a moment a switch got flicked and he realized he didn't want to die. Maybe it'd been after watching Ariel get killed by Love. There'd been that ice cold anger, so hot on his skin that it'd burned him. Reece telling him he didn't deserve to live and then Areto-

his hand curls up tight into a fist at his side and Avriel winces. What little healing his skin had done is ruined with that. The back of his hand goes moist against his shitty bandage with fresh blood.

Once he'd killed Areto he had to win, there wasn't a choice.

He presses the bandage into his knuckles with his other hand and watches Scout perk up from its place on the windowsill beside Oswald. The kodama can probably smell the iron. Its inner light brightens for a brief moment and it stands up, mouth stretching across its face like a wound tearing open.

"Am I going to die?"

Oz's voice is soft but it cuts through the silence easy. It's the most serious Avriel's ever heard the kid sound. Vulnerability holds his tone teetering on the edge of a razor blade and Avriel drops his gaze from the back of his head.

What the fuck is he supposed to say to that?

He's run the numbers in his head over and over. Avriel's chances of calling it a win are better than his. For him, victory is if just one of them makes it home. He's got a two in twenty-three chance of winning, that's eight percent. Eight percent out of a hundred doesn't seem so bad but it gets a little more dicey when he calculates for just one of them.

Oswald's odds of coming back are less than Nowles. She's a legacy tribute, an Adroxis, whose been raised with a gun in her lap and has probably never gone hungry in her life.

He's got Oswald's chances of coming back at one point nineteen percent out of that measly little eight but he's not going to tell him that. Avriel walks into the living room and sits on the couch. The city lights shining in through the window paint a mottled scene on the glass coffee table.

The quiet is on his shoulders this time and it gets heavier by the minute.

"You might," he says. "Might not," because fuck if he's going to lie to him. Avriel is Nine's first victor in twenty-two years but it doesn't mean they have to wait twenty more to bring home another. He could get lucky.

"But if your tactic's to keep moping around like this your odds are rapidly going to drop," says the trigger to the barrel.

He sits there in Oswald's anger and maybe it's meant to burn him but it sort of just feels like a balm. Feeling comes back little by little.

Oz's fist finds the window and Avriel blinks. He runs his fingers over the bumps of his raw knuckles, back and forth as the tension in the room climbs.

Then his tribute turns on him, gone feral. That's a good thing though, that's what Avriel wanted. Finally a hint of something past the numbness, he reaches out and wraps his hand around the stem of it so tight that his knuckles go white.

He's bad at moments like these but that's okay because at least he knows that right? And he still tries. It'd be so much easier not to try, so much easier to lie there in apathy and let Oswald and Nowles walk themselves into death. There'd be no pain that way, no attachment.

It isn't the first time he's been used as a verbal punching bag and it won't be the last. It's easy to take anyway, this venom slowly sinking under his skin from fangs that have been sharpened for the very first time. Oswald' just yelling to hear the sound of his own voice. Victors are a certain breed, most people know that by now and even though Avriel only won two years back it's fair for the kid to assume he's just like the rest of them.

He could be.

Become a machine, a smiling waving toy like the rest of the victors, on the television kept automated by a steady flow of drugs or drink. He could just do that, fill his mouth full of sleeping pills and chew until the nightmares stop. They could use him as they like, sew strings to his skin and treat him like a marionette. Avriel realized early on that he hadn't won anything good by winning the hunger games.

All he'd done was sign his name in blood on an unbreakable promise. Oswald believes himself trapped but Avriel is watching him from the other side of thick, iron bars, an iron collar with a short chain held by the high council's taloned fingers around his neck.

Death is the only way out of that.

Thing is, Avriel doesn't particularly care. They can do what they want with him, as long as the people he loves are safe. They can put his face on every poster in Panem and call him their golden boy, they can take him apart piece by piece and fill him up with so many circuits and wires until he's more prosthetic than human. Part of him is already dead anyway, buried by the lake in the arena.

You never come back whole.

But that's no pep talk for a kid on death row.

He tries to remember that while Oswald rips into him but it isn't easy. Avriel slips his hands into his pockets to try and hide the way that they've curled into fists. This kid has no idea what he's been through, doesn't seem to care either.

Should he?

His fingers loosen up and Av shuts his eyes for a moment.

No.

Avriel's life has nothing to do with Oswald, not yet at least. Maybe if he comes home– No. He opens his eyes. He's been through this already with Zane and that was a fucking mistake. Avreil couldn't help thinking about it, about having Zane over for dinner and building a family. He can't do that with Oswald, just not again. There are only so many times a heart can break before it can't fix itself right?

Oswald finally goes quiet and Avriel does his best impression of a smile.

"Feel better?" he asks, "Or you got more shit to take out on me?" Maybe it's a little bit cold of him. Oz is just a kid in the end after all and thirteen year olds get a free pass to be shitty right? Avriel was just lucky that Duke's always been sweet but he can remember being a fucking tool himself at that age.

He leans forward, gaze on Oswald.

"It doesn't matter what they think," he says and gestures at the window, "Doesn't matter what anyone thinks. When I was reaped with Fleur Adroxis, she was all anyone could talk about. Does it look like I gave a shit?" Avriel stands and crosses to the window to stand in front of Oswald. Scout's inner glow brightens the littlest bit as he draws near and the Kodama stands as well to greet him. "Fuck 'em, Oz."

"I wasn't anyone's top pick to be here either, don't think I was even in their top ten for victor but here I am anyway." he says, "Just keep on punching up until there's no one left to punch you down."

Scout's head turns ninety degrees to the left and then rattles slowly back into position in agreement.