save tonight / aspen & reece.

The night lingers around us, like silk shrouds falling over our eyes. Like we are young gods, worth our weight in blood and gold, and there are no terrors waiting for us in the unknown. We wake in the darkness, baptized by the glow of a thousand dying stars, sheltered by the shadows of branches, and we are trapped in it. A cage of fingers closing around us, like a beating heart in the palm of a shaking hand. Being here, only inches between us, I struggle to remember why I need to keep breathing. In, and out, little reasons to keep pushing forward.

Every inhale is a war; every exhale is an elegy.

I want to freeze this moment before it can pass us by. I'm fucking with the rules of time; missing the girl I used to be before this, wannabe peacekeeper with a talent for fucking everything up — wanting him to stay the person he has become to me in this arena, boy with all of his bravery shining in his eyes. This doesn't feel like home. Maybe, in some awful way, I don't want it to. I look at him, and I see them in the empty spaces. Our ghosts. More than I see the trees, and the quiet hills where I would sit and watch the world pass me by. Bruised knuckles, and a bloody smile.

To Reece Jackson, the sun surrenders everything. He is the heir apparent. And I'm just terrified, and mourning, and trying to find the pieces of myself that build the girl capable of making him stay with me. Because I know, as much as I would like to convince myself I don't, that our time together is running out faster than I can salvage. A hundred pieces of sand rolling over my fingertips. Landing on the dark earth, swallowed up by the thick mud where the storms ravaged everything around us. Now, at least, it's harder to see the damage.

The mist reflects the campfire, a cloud of innocent memories. Made for us to hide in.

So, I wear my hair up, and I don't distract myself with sharpening my weapons. Tonight, for just this one endless night, I bow my head and make my peace. That I couldn't keep Willa and Nora safe, that I killed two people who were just like me, who deserved a better hand than the cards they were dealt. I've looked my rage in the face, and I've seen all my worst mistakes looking back at me. A spear through the eye, steel cutting through skin, so sudden and brutal. The embers shine in the air around us, drifting down to burn the grass at our feet.

"Can I share something with you?"

Of course he can. There is no wickedness that we have not shown to each other. It's hard to forget that he wished me dead, so long ago now that it feels like lifetimes. And it's true, I know, but I familiarize myself with the night sky, so that I don't lose my mind waiting for the light to build on the horizon, pouring through everything and reminding me that things can be okay again. But it never comes, and I watch as Reece takes his guitar in his hands as he often has, but this time is different. What used to be his way of disappearing is now a thing he fully wants me to see. His fingers pluck at the strings, music swells in the silence.

We should be afraid, at this point, but there comes a time when you stop flinching. The world has been so quiet, every step slow and careful, and I think we're both tired of the paranoia. Let the monsters come to us. They have already come before. I lean forward, wrap my arms around myself as the cool breeze blows through the space, watching the way his Adam's apple moves up and down in his throat as he swallows, and looks at me, and waits so patiently for me to encourage him. As if it's lost on me, that this could be the last time I ever tell Reece that I believe in him.

If anything, learning that his late night fidgeting with the guitar had all been for me is enough to make me blush, glancing down at my boots and the golden shadows there. "Yes, Reece, you can share it." There's nothing I could ever deny him. I meet his gaze in the melancholy of the atmosphere, and I reach through the smoke to curl my fingers over his. For just a moment, like comets passing each other in the loneliest echoes of space. There are things I cannot say. Things I am too scared to admit to him. But he knows where my truths are hiding.

They're all there to be seen. They always have been.

"It's nothing much, but it's for you."

And I'm not sure how to accept it, but I drop my hand, and I let his voice wash over everything. Haunting, and beautiful, and so raw that I can't stop myself from tearing up. It goes without saying, but no one has ever written a song for me before. My body feels strange as I listen to the words; caught between the way he envelops me so completely, and the way I'm not quite sure how to look at myself in the light he's placed there. He is honest, and he is kind, and he says things that I can never quite manage to express. He names my fears so sweetly. Tells me to want the one thing crafted so perfectly to pierce my heart.

He pours himself into the performance, like a sunset bleeding into dusk. Like it's all illuminated because of him, and now there's nothing I don't know. I have so many questions, and I have bound myself in so many chains. Lovely as it is, there's still a whisper in the back of my mind that I need them. That I need to be weighed down, or the only place to go from here is up. Into the storm. Face to face with all the tributes who have left us, and the sun. Like I am now, haloed by the fire, and breathless by the time Reece finishes his song. The sound of him remains. It hangs off everything.

Which makes me laugh, a little frustrated, burying my face in my hands. Because I don't know how to reply. I listen to the echoes of him on repeat, feel every lyric write itself across my soul, blink away the tears for everything I have now come to realize. He has left no secrets, and he has shared all of his ambition, and now I sit in the silence that follows him, a mess of flushed features and eyes full of sadness. And all the other things I can't bring myself to say. Like that I'm happy, even though I shouldn't be, and that I'd like to stay here in this clearing with him forever. I'd let the world end, and we'd be okay.

He could say he loves me, and I could say it back. In some alternate world, where I'm the brave one, this is what happens. That's all it is. Just a melody, and hope. But I stand up, and I cup his face in my trembling hand, and I stare down at him with all of the unspoken words speaking for themselves in my expression. I brush my thumb across his cheek, and I smile just for him. Not small, or secret, but bright enough to mean something. We are here, and we are doomed, but I'm grateful that I'm here with him. The song plays on a loop in my mind. I think it always will.

And I close the distance between us with a kiss; now until the end of time.