a buzz under your skin // scout's honor v manticuts

When the sun starts to rise, Avriel opens the bag of trail mix he found yesterday and allows himself a quarter of it for breakfast. It isn't time to wake the girls up just yet and when sunlight hits the surface of the lake, it scatters into hundreds of tiny pieces, so he finds a spot to sit along the bank to watch it.

It's hotter here than it is in Nine, sweat forms on the back of his neck already despite the early hour. There's a weight to the heat, as if someone's soaked a towel and laid it over the whole arena. Avriel spends a couple of minutes clipping his longer hairs up against his scalp with the egg clips.

The lake is still again this morning, there's not even a breeze to cut at the surface. For all its beauty, Avriel has always been pretty good at recognizing a trap when he sees one. There's something so uncomfortable about the lake that it's hard for him to look away, it feels as if as soon as he does, something horrifying will come slithering out.

So what?

He's got a one in twenty-two chance of making it out of this alive anyway, in the end even if he doesn't drown in a lake it's going to be a spear through his gut instead. The knowledge of that kind of makes him want to just lay down where he sits and let whatever is going to happen, happen.

He'd always thought that when it came down to it, he could make the choice to end things himself. it's easy to sit there at home, watching kids get torn apart on screen and thinking of all the things he'd have done different. Avriel used to say that the best option was probably to just step off the platform early and get himself blown up, but it's easier to say than to do. It feels easier to lie to himself in here, to promise himself he has a chance.

Besides, he owes it to Duke and Billie to try, right?

But that will hardly matter to him when he's dead, maybe it'd be better to not make them watch him suffer. Giving them hope that he might return is probably worse than anything else he could do. Av pulls one of the blades that Blade gave him yesterday out of his bag and inspects it. It's a little rusted, as if the Gamemakers collected the throwing knives from an old arena and didn't bother to clean the blood off of them.

He rests the flat of the blade against his skin and it's cool despite the heat already encroaching on the morning. The sharp edge catches rusted teeth on his bare knee and one little drag would do it, there'd be a cut. In the morning light, Avriel feels nothing. It's as if the sun has sapped all thought from him. He lifts the blade to his neck, places it against the skin there and waits for a moment, testing.

There should be a trigger, a little warning in the back of his mind that tells him it's the wrong choice, but there's nothing. This last year has been a whole lot of nothing, a lot of grey fog and days that sew themselves together to create one long waking nightmare punctuated by bright little moments. So why shouldn't he save himself the pain of futility by ending things here, in the serenity of the lake?

His gaze falls on the friendship bracelet Ariel tied around his wrist last night and Avriel lowers his arm to get a better look. The knots are intricate, surprisingly so. Ariel put a lot of work into it, spent time on making these things for people she'd only known a week. Someone like that deserves better than a coward for an ally.

Av lets out a long, slow breath and lets the knife fall to the grass beside him. He doesn't know who he's trying to kid, that's always been his problem, no guts.

As the rest of the camp stirs, Avriel fills his canteen and drops an iodine tablet in. The water looks fine but it's better to be safe in the arena. By the time the girls are awake, Avriel's sitting on a rock, packed up and waiting. Areto stays away from him, checking in on the other two but not quite looking at Av.

That doesn't hurt him.

"Areto, you take front, I'll take rear?" he offers, knowing she'll probably hate having him behind her, but Areto is better with a spear and Avriel is the easiest to lose. If anyone comes up behind them, he can be left behind.

As they walk, he holds his trail mix out to Blade in offering, "Have you eaten yet?" he asks. It's force of habit, sometimes Bills would forget to eat in the morning and on the walk to school, Avriel would hand her the granola Duke had packed for his lunch to eat. He's used to that, a circular sort of loop where they all take care of each other.

The walk is nice, the morning gentle and for a moment, it's easy to forget that this isn't just some school-led camp trip along the borders of the district. Birds chirp and there's a breeze through the canopy of the trees. When Avriel looks into the woods beside the path, he sees dust motes dancing in the light that's made it through the trees. He's never seen this much nature in his life, Nine is so developed and filled to the brim with factories and houses.

He sees the first set of ropes in the trees after a few hours of walking, then more routes start appearing. Avriel has never been a climber, common travel in Nine is via rooftop but that's for gangs and Av has always stayed firmly on the ground.

He stops to test a rope ladder stuck to a tree by putting his foot on a bottom rung and that's when he finally registers that the sound of the wind in the canopy has turned into a harsh buzzing. Avriel turns just in time to see large bug-like creatures going for Areto and Blade. Muttations they're called, because they're things that might have been animals once before the Gamemakers got to them.

He reaches for the throwing knives in his bag, hand closing around a handle as one of them digs its long blade into Blade's thigh. A deep line of red blooms through her uniform and Avriel's eyes widen. He sees the curtains waving in the wind, the speckles of blood on the cream linen and the deafening silence coming from the bed.

"Blade," he manages, "Duck."

He aims at the mutt carefully and tries to keep his wrist straight, Julian's voice in his ear, reminding him. The mutt looks like a giant mantis, so the skull must be protected, but if he can hit an eye, it might end things.

Avriel throws the knife.

[avriel attacks scymon with throwing knife]
8|1C0Mze1pthrowing knife
[Knife in Cheek -- 7.0 damage + 1 tg]

Her spear sank into its exoskeleton with a crunch that reminded her of a falling tree. She drew a ribbon of ooze across its leg as she thrashed to get away from it, nearly throwing herself off balance. As she found her footing again, she heard Areto praise her from her position, "Nice job, Ariel!", yet she barely registered it. Her heart was hammering in her chest, and panic was the only emotion playing on repeat. It had been a surprise attack, and nobody warned her of how sudden it would be - walking peacefully until they weren't, the beasts a heartbeat away.

In theory, fighting with weapons was black and white. Strike the target here, block there, dodge and weave, attack from the side, win the fight. Reality was a different story. They didn't warn her about the suffocating weather, the sweat blanketing beneath her sleeves. They didn't tell her how the sun might block her vision, how certain opponents could fly. She was already exhausted, arms burning from the force of her slash. She had never seen bugs like these before. They were wasps with stingers for arms, yet they looked more like swords. Monsters from a storybook, but that was the Capitol's brand, wasn't it? They seemed so otherworldly from Ten, like she would never see one in real life.

Now one was staring her down, buzzing loudly and violently. It was worse than the jets in the Capitol.

Blade had screamed, and Ariel did a quick double-take to make sure she was alive. There was blood staining the pant leg of her uniform, but she was moving, breathing. Avriel kept his composure, throwing his knife into the creature's face like he was born for it. As scared as she was, it was inspiring to watch. Areto as well, with her own spear cracking into its thorax. These were well-trained people. They had discipline, they had focus. They had something Ariel would never have, but she had to be the bigger version of herself and avoid running away. It was smart, but it was cowardly. She didn't know when that had become important.

The sun burned her eyes as she tilted her head back from the force of a slash. Pain exploded like a migraine outside of its shell. Her eyelids squeezed shut, tears forming between the folds, and she backed herself into a tree. The pain and the sun and the blood blinded her, but she did not let go of her spear. A confused scream escaped her; she hadn't seen the bug rear its arms at her. She wiped everything salty from her eyes and blinked rapidly. Everything was blurry now, but she could see the shadow of the creature in front of her. All she had to do was reach out and jab it.

She had never hated a bug before - even those territorial bees from her childhood - but there was a first time for everything.

"Fuck."

A curse leaves his lips softly and Avriel winces as his knife goes sliding off of the mutt's back. It leaves a hollow line and more of that green goo starts to seep out a moment later, but it hardly seems to phase it.

Blade hesitates and Avriel can hardly point fingers, not when it takes him a solid moment to rouse himself into action at the first sign of danger, but in the moment it's kind of frustrating. It's enough having Areto watching him like he's some kind of poisonous spider, he doesn't need Blade flaking on him too. It's easy to feel a note of insecurity in that, easy to wonder what will happen if the stakes seem to high; will she leave him?

Would Avriel leave her?

Probably.

In the end, they're all strangers. It wouldn't be logical to prioritize their lives over his, he hardly knows them. Avriel trusts them but only enough to get him further in the games. When it comes down to it, they'll leave him, but that doesn't hurt because he'll leave too. Like always, the only person Avriel can rely on is himself.

Then Blade nods at him and all those swells of thought settle, smoothing themselves back down into a calm surface. It's hard not having Duke around to tell him when he's getting ahead of himself. A sharp sting, not the mutts but in his side, metallic like regret and how that tastes. Avriel was so busy trying to keep them alive this year that he barely had time for his little brother.

Blade's strike angers the mutt and it twists in front of them, faster than Avriel can follow it. One long, bladed appendage reaches out and slices at Avriel and he's not ready for it. He gasps as the blade slices through his arm, making him drop the throwing knife that he was holding. Blood bathes the side of his uniform quickly, maroon blooms across the fabric, filling the cotton pockets and sticking to his side in the process.

Avriel grimaces, the scent of iron so strong, so present and sticky and he remembers it coating his hands, sweat dripping down his forehead as he dragged his mother's body out to the woods. She'd been so heavy, dead-weight, she wasn't even his mom anymore, she was just the left-behind, the remains and people don't die with their eyes shut.

Hers stared up at him, vacant and foggy and holding his gaze as nettles fell from the trees above and stuck to the back of his shirt.

"Avriel!"

He straightens, a tear slipping slowly down his cheek. The world shifts back into view and blood streams down his arm to drip off his fingers into the grass beside him. His breathing comes too fast, his usual calm demeanour sapped by the cut on his arm. There isn't time for this though, the mutt is turning its attention back to Blade and she's already bleeding, she can't take more.

"I've got you," he mumbles and wipes at his eye with one bloody hand, "I've got you, I promise."

Avriel wipes the blood on his hand onto his pants then he picks up the knife he dropped and lets it fly.

[avriel attacks scymon with throwing knife]
VbY8RDNSKpthrowing knife
miss!

accuracy:

throwing knife
[Deep Gash on Thigh -- 8.0 damage + 1]