creases in their footsteps [anise & gabby -- day 3]

It's strange, how some things never leave you.

You're in a place so far away from where it happened, and yet, the sand underneath you is the same and so is the salt that cakes your lips. You listen to the quiet ebb and flow of this shallow sea and remember somewhere else, an unassuming island off the coast with a sound just like this one.

Anise's breath brings her back against yours, in and out. It's comforting. Soothing, almost. It loosens the sutures you sewed into your lips what seems like a lifetime ago.

"It was three years ago," you murmur, raking your fingers through the sand at your side, "I was fifteen. There was a... cruise, off the mainland. A party. I don't even remember why I was invited anymore."

You know the Capitol has switched all the cameras by now. The only thing they hate more than disobedience is knowledge; keep the Districts stupid, in the dark and isolated, and you'll never have a reason to fear. You blink the salt from your lashes and glance up at the fish making lazy loops around your heads. What you'd give to fly with them.

"I should have known it was too good to be true, but I was younger then. Too trusting. I went, and... the first little while was good. I made friends. One or two turned into friends with added benefits."

Cold fingers touch your face and you gulp back the knot in your throat. In the water's reflection, you see the pair of blue eyes you've been carrying around for three years over your shoulder, shrouded in a swath of golden hair. "But it, uh. It didn't last. Things went bad pretty quickly."

Even after all this time, it's easy to bring up her face. Long and narrow, beautiful in a fragile kind of way. Thick, dark curls and expressive eyes. Nyx didn't have the face of a killer, but maybe that's what made her so dangerous. Her horror as she watched that man swing from the ceiling by his neck was so genuine that you didn't even think to suspect her. No one did until it was too late.

"People started dying. A man hung from the ceiling, another speared to the wall. He was still alive when I found him. He begged me to kill him, to make it quick." Your breath swells harsh and hot in your lungs, and for a second you think you imagine Anise pressing harder against you to keep you upright. You rake your hands through your hair and become infinitely glad she can't see how they shake. "Everyone was hysterical, but we were trapped there. Hunted. I laid under the body of a girl I--"

You press your forehead into your knees until it hurts, but it doesn't take away the memories. Nothing does, not even the morphling. Your gut twists in and out of knots and you aren't even sure what's doing it anymore - the withdrawal, the grief, or the hunger. Or perhaps something else; a longing for a life you lost the second you stepped onto that boat.

I forgave you three years ago. There's nothing to hurt over anymore.

You sit there, quiet and hurting, until the hitch in your breath settles. Q's hair brushes against your cheekbone but you won't turn to look your ghosts in the eye. Maybe, but I can't forgive myself.

"I killed her, in the end," you sigh, tipping your head back until it rests on Anise's shoulder, "with my teeth, because I didn't have a knife. It was a mercy. She bled so much I nearly choked on it, and I felt the second her heart stopped against mine."

A sardonic smile. Sometimes, you can still taste her veins on the back of your tongue. "All that fighting to survive, and you're still better at using a weapon than I am. Seems I'm just fated to be at the mercy of pretty girls."

---

Day Three comes on the tail-end of fever dreams. Talking about things bring them into the light, but you could've gone the rest of your life without seeing Qilena's tear-soaked face staring back at you from the undersides of your eyelids. Sometimes you beg her to leave, and other times to stay. Today you didn't say anything, just let her fingers touch your jaw in the same place you bit through the last living part of her.

Anise woke you from your thrashing. She didn't say anything, but her eyes tell you things that her mouth never might. You wonder if she thinks less of you now, and why that stings more than it should.

The two of you start walking with the glowing faces of the fallen tributes above you. Anise won't look up to watch them after Malachite's face flows into view, and you take it upon yourself to track the dead and wish them safe passage. A few of your own district appear, but there are still plenty others roaming like animals who have lost their pack. Sometimes you think you see your own face, but when you blink it disappears.

When the whales come, you think you're hallucinating again. You've been seeing strange shadows in the corners of your eyes, hearing things that don't exist. Your throat is sandpaper and sticks together in a way you think will suffocate you - Anise is so heavy across your shoulders but you have no choice but to bear it, to walk on step by step in tandem to whatever may come.

The orchard will have water, you promise yourself, but the whales tremble as a great, thundering roar swells up from the direction you're heading, the pilot whale cheeping as it hides between your temple and helmet, its tail curling against the shell of your ear. It's already impossible to put one foot in front of the other but Anise breathes run and you have no choice but to follow, half-dragging her and her broken leg over what seems like miles of shifting sand. If you look back, you see a strange animal that looks stretched out like someone took it and lifted the body away from the ground, but - that can't be it, can it? That horrible, deafening boom, coming from something so unassuming... you must be seeing things again. That's right.

Either way, you don't want to find out.

By the time you're far enough away, the knots in your stomach have turned to a vice. You stumble to a stop and lean over in a desperate attempt not to retch, sweat dripping down your nose and making little dark circles on the ground beneath your feet. Your head buzzes and your fingertips are numb and god, what you wouldn't do for some--

Ice?

You didn't realize it because you were seeing right through it, but in front of you is probably the strangest creature you've come in contact with yet. It looks almost like a maggot, but it has little hands with fingers (ew) and a snout that bobs in and out as it moves. It must hear your gasp and turns to face you, but as it does, you catch a glimpse of a canteen deep inside its translucent body. Can you maybe...

"Hey buddy," you croak nervously, inching forward until you're a few feet away. It stays still, that same snout disappearing and reappearing, but this time you see the ring of sharp teeth that lines the inside. Anise's whispered careful flies over your head like a strong wind. You crouch, gingerly offering your hand for it to sniff. The narwhal chirps and pokes his head out of your borrowed tuxedo jacket, unsure whether to be nervous or curious. "C'mere. There's a good, uh... boy?"