loose ends /avriel
Apr 17, 2022 18:43:14 GMT -5
Post by gamemaker kelsier on Apr 17, 2022 18:43:14 GMT -5
✦ ✦ ✦
There's a paper cup of black coffee in his hand and its hot. Not enough to make him drop it but just enough to make his hand shake, to make it hard to think much about anything but keeping his hold on it. They'd offered him a sleeve but Avriel had just shaken his head. He'd thought he could handle it, he was wrong.
Feeling hollow again, fragile, like bird bones, he took flight down the stairs to the lobby and then to the street. People milling, some sparks of recognition, but he moves faster than their gazes, hood pulled down low over his face.
Eighteen messages on his phone in the last hour, he feels it buzzing again in his pocket. Gloria frantic, there was some sort of show he was supposed to do this morning, or maybe it was an interview. It doesn't matter, there's always something else. Except Avriel's already answered all their questions, has been poked and prodded and second-guessed, he doesn't have anything left to say.
He wasn't made for this type of attention. It's been two years, he's not even supposed to matter anymore but there are still reporters at his door. His skin still hurts, the cuts in his knuckle sting, there's a twist of pain in cold weather in his shoulder and sometimes he shifts in his sleep, hurtles through time back into the body of the boy that was dying in the dark.
His crown sits in the back of his closet under a pile of his old clothes, slowly tarnishing from neglect.
There's a letter in his pocket, folded five times over in different ways. His aunt's name is on it, along with an exact date and time of death. He's meant to be grieving, he knows that, but at this point, she's just another name on a long list and he doesn't know how yet. How many different ways can he feel loss and where else is there left in his body to hurt?
All he feels is nothing lately, he can't help but wonder if it wasn't just his foot that was replaced. Maybe Aspen's spear hit a little too close to home, maybe the rhythmic pumping of his heart is manufactured.
Avriel stops to pull the paper out again and checks the address at the bottom of the page even though he programmed the coordinates into his foot this morning. The games play on big screens just above street level. Pang of guilt, he should be watching. He did try for a moment this morning but then he realized that the places inside him that should feel for the tributes were dormant. It was a strain to pretend that he cared, a burden to ache for them.
Avriel isn't a good person, he's got to stop pretending, it'd make things easier.
His gaze is low, trained on the sidewalk to avoid the screens and that's how he spots the glitch.
No stains.
The sidewalks are clean, crisp as if they've just finished setting. There're no stains, no mess from last night's celebrating, not even gum stuck to the asphalt. No ash from a cigarette or trash blown from the bins lining the street, spotless.
He pauses, one hand holding the letter and the other the cup. The heat makes the pads of his hand tingle and it burns slightly. In the end it's just another pain that he's grown accustomed to.
The phone in his pocket starts buzzing again but Avriel's hands are full. He could put the letter back in his pocket. He could ignore the buzzing again.
Then his hand opens and the coffee cup falls. It hits the pavement on an angle and the lid pops off. Black liquid floods the sidewalk, splashes against the front of his pants. Little spots of pain on his shins, like shrapnel. He pulls his phone out of his pocket.
There's no caller ID.
"Hello?" he asks.
Silence.
"Hello?"
An intake of breath on the other end of the line.
Dark Amber running down the clean pavement and people staring at the mark on their otherwise perfect street. A man with a broom stops and sweeps the cup up, gone again just like that.
"Eden, please, say som-."
Dial tone, line dead.
Phone back in pocket, Avriel walks through the puddle, frustrated. A pressure washer starts up behind him, a steady hum and the sound of the spill being cleaned away faster than when he made it. No one's looking at him anymore, the mess is gone, the problem dealt with.
This might be a dream.
His foot turns him and he's entering a lobby. It's too big, like whoever designed it figured that someone twenty feet tall was going to need breathing room. He can still hear muted sounds from the street but other than that, the room is dead silent. There's a desk at the far end and a body behind it. Avriel walks over and places the letter on the counter.
It's made of marble, cold to touch and for a moment it's hard to breathe, it feels like he isn't supposed to. There are mausoleums in Nine's graveyard that are just as cold, just as devoid.
"My name is Avriel Baptiste," he says after a moment and the receptionist picks up the crumpled letter with one taloned claw, "I came to get my Imo Theo."
They look at the letter and then at Avriel, "Alone? It's too heavy a burden for just one person."
He nods. "It's easier like this," he says.
They push the paper back towards Avriel.
"Your funeral."
Minutes later he's in an elevator and it's going down. The letter is in his pocket and now he's holding his phone. He could call home maybe. He could talk to Duke, hear his voice on the other end of the line, coming in all tinny and small.
But maybe then Duke would hear the way Avriel's tone is heavy and he'd know that his older brother isn't okay and Avriel would have to explain everything. How he knows he's doing the right thing but that only highlights all the wrong things he's done.
How he's going to bring their aunt home for a proper burial all while their parents rot in unmarked graves in the woods, trapped there beneath the dirt.
Duke is going to find out what kind of person Avriel is sooner or later. When he got home from the eighty-eighth, he'd been hopeful. Part of him thought it'd never happen, that he could keep the lie going forever and at least the three of them could be happy. Still it never ends, his world continues to crumble and he has to continue to survive.
He's tired, all the time.
The phone slips from his hand. It hits the floor in such a way that the screen shatters, leaving shards at his feet. It lays there, dead.
The elevator doors open and he just stands there for a long moment looking at his mess but this time no one comes to clean it up.
He gets down on his knees and picks up the pieces himself.
Feeling hollow again, fragile, like bird bones, he took flight down the stairs to the lobby and then to the street. People milling, some sparks of recognition, but he moves faster than their gazes, hood pulled down low over his face.
Eighteen messages on his phone in the last hour, he feels it buzzing again in his pocket. Gloria frantic, there was some sort of show he was supposed to do this morning, or maybe it was an interview. It doesn't matter, there's always something else. Except Avriel's already answered all their questions, has been poked and prodded and second-guessed, he doesn't have anything left to say.
He wasn't made for this type of attention. It's been two years, he's not even supposed to matter anymore but there are still reporters at his door. His skin still hurts, the cuts in his knuckle sting, there's a twist of pain in cold weather in his shoulder and sometimes he shifts in his sleep, hurtles through time back into the body of the boy that was dying in the dark.
His crown sits in the back of his closet under a pile of his old clothes, slowly tarnishing from neglect.
There's a letter in his pocket, folded five times over in different ways. His aunt's name is on it, along with an exact date and time of death. He's meant to be grieving, he knows that, but at this point, she's just another name on a long list and he doesn't know how yet. How many different ways can he feel loss and where else is there left in his body to hurt?
All he feels is nothing lately, he can't help but wonder if it wasn't just his foot that was replaced. Maybe Aspen's spear hit a little too close to home, maybe the rhythmic pumping of his heart is manufactured.
Avriel stops to pull the paper out again and checks the address at the bottom of the page even though he programmed the coordinates into his foot this morning. The games play on big screens just above street level. Pang of guilt, he should be watching. He did try for a moment this morning but then he realized that the places inside him that should feel for the tributes were dormant. It was a strain to pretend that he cared, a burden to ache for them.
Avriel isn't a good person, he's got to stop pretending, it'd make things easier.
His gaze is low, trained on the sidewalk to avoid the screens and that's how he spots the glitch.
No stains.
The sidewalks are clean, crisp as if they've just finished setting. There're no stains, no mess from last night's celebrating, not even gum stuck to the asphalt. No ash from a cigarette or trash blown from the bins lining the street, spotless.
He pauses, one hand holding the letter and the other the cup. The heat makes the pads of his hand tingle and it burns slightly. In the end it's just another pain that he's grown accustomed to.
The phone in his pocket starts buzzing again but Avriel's hands are full. He could put the letter back in his pocket. He could ignore the buzzing again.
Then his hand opens and the coffee cup falls. It hits the pavement on an angle and the lid pops off. Black liquid floods the sidewalk, splashes against the front of his pants. Little spots of pain on his shins, like shrapnel. He pulls his phone out of his pocket.
There's no caller ID.
"Hello?" he asks.
Silence.
"Hello?"
An intake of breath on the other end of the line.
Dark Amber running down the clean pavement and people staring at the mark on their otherwise perfect street. A man with a broom stops and sweeps the cup up, gone again just like that.
"Eden, please, say som-."
Dial tone, line dead.
Phone back in pocket, Avriel walks through the puddle, frustrated. A pressure washer starts up behind him, a steady hum and the sound of the spill being cleaned away faster than when he made it. No one's looking at him anymore, the mess is gone, the problem dealt with.
This might be a dream.
His foot turns him and he's entering a lobby. It's too big, like whoever designed it figured that someone twenty feet tall was going to need breathing room. He can still hear muted sounds from the street but other than that, the room is dead silent. There's a desk at the far end and a body behind it. Avriel walks over and places the letter on the counter.
It's made of marble, cold to touch and for a moment it's hard to breathe, it feels like he isn't supposed to. There are mausoleums in Nine's graveyard that are just as cold, just as devoid.
"My name is Avriel Baptiste," he says after a moment and the receptionist picks up the crumpled letter with one taloned claw, "I came to get my Imo Theo."
They look at the letter and then at Avriel, "Alone? It's too heavy a burden for just one person."
He nods. "It's easier like this," he says.
They push the paper back towards Avriel.
"Your funeral."
Minutes later he's in an elevator and it's going down. The letter is in his pocket and now he's holding his phone. He could call home maybe. He could talk to Duke, hear his voice on the other end of the line, coming in all tinny and small.
But maybe then Duke would hear the way Avriel's tone is heavy and he'd know that his older brother isn't okay and Avriel would have to explain everything. How he knows he's doing the right thing but that only highlights all the wrong things he's done.
How he's going to bring their aunt home for a proper burial all while their parents rot in unmarked graves in the woods, trapped there beneath the dirt.
Duke is going to find out what kind of person Avriel is sooner or later. When he got home from the eighty-eighth, he'd been hopeful. Part of him thought it'd never happen, that he could keep the lie going forever and at least the three of them could be happy. Still it never ends, his world continues to crumble and he has to continue to survive.
He's tired, all the time.
The phone slips from his hand. It hits the floor in such a way that the screen shatters, leaving shards at his feet. It lays there, dead.
The elevator doors open and he just stands there for a long moment looking at his mess but this time no one comes to clean it up.
He gets down on his knees and picks up the pieces himself.
