waypoint /avriel+mackenzie
Jun 12, 2022 23:59:04 GMT -5
Post by ✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ on Jun 12, 2022 23:59:04 GMT -5
a v r i e l .
"told me
every blessing
has a scar."
The forest is a stranger in the dark.
The dim glow of the Kodama a few feet ahead of him casts just enough light to catch the lower branches of the trees. Ferns glint briefly silver at them from the forest floor as they pass by.
The sound of water lapping at the shore of the lake grows louder, it's the only sound other than his own laboured breathing in the dark. Everything else has been swallowed whole, the moon, the stars, there is nothing left but Avriel and Scout. His heart is racing with nerves, every small sound puts him on edge. There's a knife in his hand, and the scent of blood and sweat and rot all mixed together permeates everything.
He hears the sand shift and then the end of a spear forms out of the dark, lit by Scout's dim light."Can you see me?"
Avriel jerks awake, hand closed in a fist over his heart, feet propped up on the seat across from him. Scout's asleep on the seat beside him, the train car is otherwise empty, the lights off. Summer evening filters in through the window beside him, gentle pinks and oranges painting the sky out the window to his right. The world outside is still.
"Why're we stopped?" he mumbles, "Fuel up?"
They won't be in Nine until the morning.
He staggers to his feet, body sore from sleeping sitting up. His foot boots up too slowly and Avriel starts to fall but catches himself before he can stumble into the seats an aisle ahead of his. "Merde," he mutters.
They're stopped at a platform, one of the middle districts but it's hard to remember which one this might be. During his victory tour they all looked the same somehow, crawling with people and he was never quite sure what percentage of the crowd probably wanted him dead.
The door to the next car opens and Gloria steps through, signature annoyed expression on her face. "Something's wrong with the engine, they've said that we're stuck here until the morning."
"Where's here?" Avriel asks.
"Seven."
One hundred percent then.
"It's probably best if you don't leave the train," Gloria sniffs, "Seeing as you killed both-"
"I know," he says quickly.
Gloria crosses her arms and just stares at him for a long moment. Avriel stares right back at her, catching the exact second her disdain for him settles across her face.
"Aspen and Reece," she says pointedly.
He leans back over the seat and scoops Scout up before turning and pushing past his escort.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"Out," he mutters and pulls his hood up.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," Gloria scoffs.❦
Seven is green.
More than any other district he's been to, more than Nine with it's rows and rows of factories throwing up smoke. The trees are so abundant here that their canopies reach over the dirt roads to meet each other and form tunnels of leaves. The sun filters through them, highlighting the veins within, casting each leaf in golden hues above his head.
He walks fast, purposeful. Dust kicks up off the road and coats his ankles and his shoes in a fine layer of light brown. August has been hot, it hasn't rained much, everything's dry.
There's a rustling in the underbrush to the left of him and Avriel pauses, fingers going to his belt on instinct. His hand ghosts over nothing, his knives sit at home in his closet where they rust quietly in the dark.
There's an odd energy under his surface, still on the outside but electricity runs under the skin. It's almost strange to feel fear again but there it is, biting.
The rustling stops, whatever caused it already moved on. Avriel stands there for a moment longer and staring into the spaces between the trees. The forest seems to go on forever, fading into a dark blur in the distance.
If he was to get lost in there, he might never find his way back out.
A low note sounds from a few yards ahead of him and Avriel turns away from the woods and starts walking again. Scout hops around in a patch of sun and chirps, waiting for him to catch up.❦
The graveyard is empty at this hour, though the sun won't finish setting for awhile still. There's a bundle of wildflowers in his hand tied together with a long piece of grass. Flowers already wilting from the heat. Houses rest along the edge of the graveyard but the windows are all dark.
Scout and him make their way through the rows of graves, some of them are so old that the dates are impossible to read but it isn't long before they find her.
"If I'd known I was coming, I'd have brought you something nicer," he says and lays the bouquet at the foot of Aspen Peake's tombstone, "'Guess anything's better than a knife though."
Not a good joke, no one laughs.
Av reaches out and digs some moss out of her name with his thumb. It crumbles under his touch, already dried out from the summer. The curve of the letters is smooth under his hand and even after the moss is gone, he keeps tracing.
There's a heat beneath his eyes, and though he knows this moment is real, it doesn't really feel like it is. Two years ago still feels like yesterday. When he shuts his eyes, it's just the same as being in that dark, standing on that beach with Aspen's name on his lips.
"I told you I'd come see you, didn't I?" he says.
It's hard to remember now if he had. Maybe when his palm was pressed into the wound on his shoulder and he was trying to hold himself together long enough to kill her and live, he did.
"Guess we both said a lot of things."
"You're my friend. Just decided."
He can still hear her voice, bright in the dark. It'd been at the end of all of it, they'd both been near on their knees from the blood loss and the pain but before he'd struck the last blow she'd promised him that she'd stay with him.
"Did you mean that?" he asks, "Or did you just want my last moments to be kind?"
And it feels insane to stand here and talk to her like she can hear him but part of him feels cheated out of that friendship. Before the arena Avriel never really had friends. Then he'd lost all the ones he'd made in the span of a week.
He was alone again but not really, known by thousands but disconnected to everyone he loves. Even Billie and Duke feel like strangers sometimes, they don't know what he's been through, not all of it, and he doesn't know how to explain. When he looks in the mirror he can't even find himself in his reflection.
"I killed you," he says, "But I think you killed me too."
