you're good for one thing, avriel

Tick

He opens his eyes before the tock, fingers circling around his wrist in a futile search for the watch that isn't there. Sweat drips down his brow into the corners of his eyes and he blinks before running a hand through his hair. His stylists had left it long, they'd said it made him stand out but in this heat, he regrets it, even with the little hair clips someone had sponsored him. Avriel is perpetually damp.

The clear sky above displays thousands of tiny little lights and they offer their own chill to the evening. He sits up to avoid their cold gaze and looks to make sure that each of his allies is accounted for. The night has gone deep, the embers of their little campfire burnt down to nothing but a sleepy orange glow. It isn't Avriel's turn to take watch for another fourty minutes but it's too late for him to fall back asleep, he's awake now.

Their haul from yesterday sits in neat little organized piles between them all and Avriel shivers, it's easy to build weapons out of all of it. That's what his brain does, it takes things and deconstructs and reassembles over and over again. He can't remember the first time he realized that wasn't really normal, he's just always been this way. His parents used to praise him for it but it's only ever gotten him into trouble.

He overthinks, takes the words people say and disassembles them into a scattering of vowels and consonants and then puts them back together again in his head. It's easier to deal with disappointment that way, easier to lie to someone when all the things they're saying are binary.

Avriel glances over at Areto, curled up asleep and he knows he messed up with her today. It would have been better for him if he'd just nodded and promised he'd do what she'd asked but he's tired of doing as he's told. He's lived with threats over his head for months, promises that were carried out to show how serious those threats were still haunt him, they always will.

Here, for the first time in a long time, Avriel is free to make his own choice.

So maybe Areto will be the one to kill him. If that's so, at least he won't have spent the last week of his life being her pawn.

After a few more moments, Avriel stands and goes to relieve Ariel of her watch. If he's awake anyway, he might as well let her get more sleep. The moon has started to set and the sun will be rising soon, beginning the second day inside the arena. He wonders if Duke and Billie have been watching him. Do they hear the ticking too? In his dreams it's hard to tell whether he's got hours left to live or minutes.

He picks up the string of lights and detaches them from the battery, the last thing that they need is a beacon for the other tributes to come find them. A part of him knows that he should have told Duke and Billie the truth, that their parents didn't go missing, they'd died, June twelfth, on that really hot day in the summer. All the windows had been open when Avriel had gotten home after ditching school. He hadn't even realized anything was amiss until after he'd pulled a pie his mom had been baking for Duke out of the oven, blackened to a crisp.

It had been hard to catch the heavy scent of iron over the burning cherry.

Maybe he didn't tell them the truth because a smaller part of him still thinks he might make it home. Or, maybe he didn't tell them because he's a coward.

It's too late now.

The first golden rays of light push through the blades of grass between his allies' sleeping forms and Avriel turns toward the sun, gazing into the gold, waiting for a touch of warmth.