vivre. /avriel

He falls to his knees after.

The cannon sounds so close, the ground seems to vibrate with it and Avriel stares across the grass at Reece through the eyes of the mask.

His hands shake at his sides, blood slips down his fingers from his arm and it hits the grass, painting the blades a rusted colour. A breeze pushes through him then, warm and gentle and Avriel, for the first time, is grateful for the mask covering his face.

Tears roll down his cheeks and collect at the base of the mask, rooting him to the spot. His head is empty, there are no thoughts, no elation at having lived, not even anger at Reece, just a deepness pushing him down into the grass. He never wanted to do this; he never wanted to be a killer, but now he knows what it's like.

And he hates it.

But he knows now, that he didn't do it, he didn't kill the others. Nothing has ever felt like this before, it feels different, worse but better than before, Avriel reaches out across the dirt and takes Reece's hand in his.

"I killed you," he tells him through the mask, through the tears, "I- I don't want this to be relief."

He wants to feel the sorrow that he's supposed to feel, the madness that comes with it, the grief to carry but it doesn't come.

Just the pain in his ankle.

Avriel lets go of Reece and curls forward, hands holding his ankle in place as his adrenaline fades and agony comes back in full force. "God fuck-"

He's afraid to look at it, afraid to see the way his foot must be hanging by a thread and his foot feels numb. It's not supposed to be like that, he knows that. It's hot beneath the mask, so stuffy and salty from sweat and tears. Avriel can feel his hair sticking to the back of his neck from his sweat and not for the first time, it becomes hard to breathe.

The lake is so close, a canoe sits on the bank and Avriel lets go of his ankle to pull himself towards it, "Shit!" he almost screams it from the pain.

There he is, a winner, holding onto the ground for dear life, a trail of blood behind him.

Maybe I should just get it over with, cut it off myself.

The idea stops him for a moment. Reece's axe is just behind him, still marked with his blood and just sitting there in the dirt. It wouldn't be that hard and then maybe the pain, pushing through him, eating him alive, would be over.

He pulls himself to his knees again and looks over his shoulder, at Reece, still as he left him and the axe beside him.

It's pathetic.

He's pathetic.

The mask feels closer on his face than ever before, as if the life has left it with Reece's murder and Avriel reaches up again to tug at the edges to check.

And it comes away.

The relief of cold air on his skin is enough to silence him. For a long moment, he just sits there in the moonlight, eyes shut, face turned up towards the stars. Avriel runs a hand through his hair and it slowly unsticks from his forehead and neck. It's easier to hear the night now, to hear the water in the lake lapping against the shore. He hears a soft buzzing and it reminds him of summer nights at the river side in Nine, staying out too late with Duke because the sun only set an hour ago.

How does he keep forgetting how badly he wants to live?

The mask sits in his lap, long hair falling over his knees and tickling him. He looks down to see the face of a pig and he thinks of greed, of gluttony, of filth.

But he thinks of his father too and how he saved up for a pig for their new years dinner all year once because to him, to his grandmother, it meant fertility.

He can't consolidate the two.