i wish that you didn't /areto & avriel

Areto sits near Julian for a long, long time. Long after she's finished her story. Long after he's gone cold. Maybe it's some kind of repentance. Because she had left Emerson so early. Avriel had taken her away from Mauve. She didn't see Blade fall, and they had to leave Ariel behind. This is Julian's right - he deserves to have someone wait.

She runs her fingers along the little stacks of stones. First Emerson's, then Julians, counting the rocks forwards and backwards and then forwards again.

Eleven in both.

She wonders if it was an important number to them.

But Areto sits there, and she counts the stones, and she waits for a sun that doesn't come. She tells Julian about Alectrona and tries not to feel like she's sharing a sweet lie. She tilts her head back, and tries to listen for the sound of the water, but nothing comes. The stars barely give her any light. The sky doesn't get any darker as time passes, but it feels darker. It feels heavier. Like a wool blanket in the middle of summer.

“But now I know that the dark is peaceful – it’s only the ones who lurk in it we should be looking out for.”

She glances over her shoulder and sees nothing.

The anthem plays when she rests her hand against Julian's forehead and finally decides to start moving again. The sudden noise makes her jump, hand flying to her spear, echos of the fireworks going off in her head. And the rest of it sets her teeth on edge. The music warps and changes and sounds like a dying animal, and Areto looks to the sky even though she knows it won't help.

Julian's face is first, and Areto does not do him the disrespect of looking away. The boy who had followed Mauve is there, and that doesn't necessarily surprise Areto. Then Reece is staring down at her, and instead of feeling vindication, or a sense of satisfaction, she trips over a tree root in the dark.

She's not sure how far she walks, she tries to gauge it by the gopher holes she steps in and the nettles that pull at her ankles, but it doesn't quite work. She can't have gotten very far, because she knows the little buildings had been in view of the lake but she hasn't hit that yet. The ground is flat, and slopes downwards a little, and she very nearly walks into a tree.

That's when she decides to stop.

Areto uses a hand to guide herself down the bark, then sets herself between the roots and tucks her knees to her chest.

The dark is a strange thing now. She'd never been afraid of it before. There was nothing in it to be afraid of it. But Julian's words rattle in her head, and Aspen's spear rattles in her stomach and Love's voice rattles in her chest.

She doesn't trust herself to sleep now, and she doesn't think she does, but it stays so dark that she can't tell. She counts the stars until the number starts to change, and then that confuses her. She watches a constellation fade out in between blinks and wonders if she's going crazy.

A horrible screening noise jolts her out of it, her hands fly to either side of her head and she covers her ears because the sound reverberates and she's quickly realized that she hates that.

It's cold without the stars, but it's freezing without the sun. Areto waits for Alectrona but she never comes, Areto just sits there with her head between her knees trying not to hyperventilate in the darkness and the terrible noise because she's too brave to do that, she's too strong, she's too much a warrior, there's too much on the line for her to just break down and stop.

Her whole body aches. Her ears ring long after the screeching has stopped so she can't even tell that it's over when it is. It disorientates her. It makes her hands shake.

Maybe she thought she was okay, but maybe she's not. Maybe she thought she was brave and strong and a warrior, but maybe she's not.

She sits and trembles in the dark and very badly wants to go home.

She's up suddenly then, moving half on autopilot and half on desperation. The darkness is too much now, and it's suffocating. It's closing in and choking her and she can't breathe so she takes her sword to the branches of the tree she'd been up against. But the tree isn't really a tree, and when she hacks at it, there's a sort of crashing noise. It's the obstacle course that they had fought at before, and she hits loose one of the wooden support beams and causes a part of the whole thing to shift.

Areto navigates herself in the dark and pulls at the piece she's cut free and feels her nails scrape uncomfortably over the surface. She gets a splinter in her palm, but she brings her sword down and splits it and makes a little pile to set alight. The first spark is like a sunrise. It's orange and warm and she almost cries when it catches. She watches the light streak across the little clearing she collapsed in and sits as close to the fire as she possible can.

It's a beacon, but at this point it doesn't matter. Love or Aspen, Apate or Polyphemus, it doesn't matter anymore. Let them come.

She stares at the fire until her eyes glaze over, but she's on her feet before she fully processes the sound of running.

The firelight dances across his face and this time, Areto really does cry.

Avriel leaves his bag on the outside of the light, moving forward, and Areto goes to meet him. They collapse into each other, she feels her body give up a bit at the sight of him. His hands are on her face and her hands are on his, holding them there like he's about to pull away and leave again.

"I couldn't find you." She says, sounding small all of a sudden.

And how funny a thing like trust really is. Areto's sure that she used to despise him. She's not sure what changed, but something did. She's not sure when it happened but she can feel a kind of brittleness in her bones that wasn't there before. It must've been somewhere in between Blade and Ariel, or between Ariel and Mauve. It must've been after those mutts, when she helped him out of that pit, when he sewed her back together.

But now, clinging to him, she supposes it doesn't matter.

His arms are around her, and nothing else really matters.

"I killed Julian." She says into his shoulder, but there's no guilt in her voice. There's no remorse. She says it like a fact because it is, her voice steady even if her body isn't.

Avriel's forehead lands against hers gently and she swears she can hear the sound of his heart through the touch. It's like a war drum, like the explosions that had made her shake. She feels nauseous and unsteady, like she's out on the water without her sea legs.

"I killed Reece." Avriel says.

"Good." Areto tells him, without thinking, and it burns her.

How did she get here?

She holds life so freely now. She cradles the flame like a baby bird and then casts it out before it's ready to fly. 'That's how they learn,' Deianeira would say. And Areto knows that she has learned. She has learned more than she could ever ask to learn and she is still learning. She's learning the sound of Avriel's heartbeat, and she's learning to be afraid of the dark, and she's learning the breadth of an emotion she can't quite place.

She's learning that she's not quite who she thought she was, and neither is everyone else.

She's learning that life is not really the way it is on her little island and

She catches herself doing it again -

on the island

on the island.

She's stuck in it. Everything is a comparison. She can't live one moment here without comparing it to one moment there. It's her only guide, and she is not wise enough to rewrite it.

But she's not on the island. Not anymore. She can't get the thought through her head without it getting stuck.

She's not on the sand. She's sitting in the dark with the firelight on her face, in the arms of a boy she barely even knows. She's got a knife to his throat but she can't lift her finger because there's something stronger holding her hand. Her honour is self destructive, and her pride is legendary. She values loyalty above herself, above the waves, above the sun.

It was different with Julian. She tells herself it was different. She was a handful of hours younger then, and they were on an equal patch of ground. They understood each other in a way now one else would be able to, and in the face of Death, they had bowed. They owed each other nothing, but gave everything, and when Areto's spear had slid through Julian's chest, she'd felt the quietest she'd ever had.

The girl who was a storm, and the girl who was a reckoning, had gone still.

Areto's not sure if she recognizes the storm anymore.

Honour above all. Death before dishonour.

"That island of mine." She repeats after Avriel, and it sounds distant.

Ḕ tā̀n ḕ epì tâs.

She is not kind, and she is not good, no matter what Julian said. She is prejudiced and stubborn and proud and she fists the fabric of Avriel's shirt like she's in pain. The fireworks echo and she feels small again.

"I never apologized for how I treated you." She says without looking at him, "I'm sorry."

"Do you know why I was so cruel to you?" She thinks to herself, "Do you hate me for it?"

"I thought I knew you. but I didn't."

She barely even knows herself.

The problem with the pretty, tiny things, is that sometimes that's all they are. Sometimes a star is just a star. A storm is just a storm. A boy is just a child.

But maybe she knows him in this way. In this frightened little way. She knows the feeling of his arms around her, and the feeling of his chin against her forehead. But that's it. She knows the sound of his heartbeat, but she doesn't know the way he laughs.

So "I don't know you." She corrects herself, "Not really. I should have been kinder."

"I deserve it-"

"You don't."

Avriel tries to brush it away but Areto clings to that ugly, guilty feeling. She makes herself stay in it, until it rises up past her chin like the tide, and even then she doesn't move.

"I'm not good." She says, because she can still feel the blood stuck under her nails and she can still see Mauve's face of shock and hear Julian's last breath.

Then she chuckles, but there's no humour to it. It's a dry sound, and it scrapes against her throat on the way out. Areto tilts her head back until it hits Avriel's shoulder and then she closes her eyes.

"Maybe none of us are."

And it's strange to sit like that. He cradles her as much as she cradles him. They cling to each other like children and still there's that little bit of darkness sticking to the ground, trying to slip past the firelight. Areto pulls her feet in closer to herself to get away from it and the way that it creeps.

She sneaks her hand in-between them until it finds his, then she squeezes it so tight that she's surprised he doesn't complain.

Duke, Avriel says. Bills. And his voice gets so soft that Areto feels something twist in her again.

She looks down at their hands intertwined and tries not to start crying again.

"Blade and Ariel weren't your fault."

They were hers.

"Who's Duke?" She asks then, because they both need something else to focus on. There's a brewing in Areto, and it's tumultuous like a storm, but there's something about the way Avriel's voice, and the way it lays over her like a blanket.

She'd told Julian a story as he laid there dying, and she'd done the same thing for Bellamy when she found him in the rain. She wants one of her own now, and it's such a childish thought that it almost makes her laugh again. She's a kid again, sitting at one of the elders feet, refusing to go to bed until they've finished speaking.

She didn't want to go to sleep then, she doesn't want to sleep now. She just holds Avriel tighter and lets herself be held.

Avriel pulls out his set of knives and Areto doesn't even flinch. She watches his hands though, and the steadiness of them. If she tries hard enough, she can make herself believe that this is any other night, with the two of them cleaning their weapons in silence, Ariel and Blade off finding food.

She can pretend that everything is alright. Maybe more for her own sake than Avriel's. She watches his hands move against the metal, and she watches the firelight move against his hands, and she pretends she's not afraid.

She doesn't know what a mermaid is, but she pretends.

"They sound wonderful." She says, and she means it.

Areto's family is different. They don't rely on each other like that. She's always grown up with a sense of independence, and a kind of freedom that comes from fending for herself. She loves her parents, and she loves her sisters, but she doesn't talk about them the same way Avriel talks about his family.

Areto watches him carefully, and when he stops talking, she moves slowly and gently, raising her hands to his face and using her thumbs to wipe away his tears.

"It sounds like they need you." She says quietly, like it's a secret.

Her hands go down then, until they're wrapped around his fist and the knife there, then she guides it back up and lets the point of it press against her chest, right at the heart.

"It sounds like you need them, too."

She squeezes her hands around his and tries to look suddenly brave. Because this is the reckoning. This is the terrible little thing that's been following her around. She'd given her word to the three of them - Blade and Ariel and Avriel. She told them that she'd protect them, and she hasn't.

Maybe this was her purpose all along. To keep her honour and her pride and to be good. Maybe this is her family, and one day Avriel will talk about her the way he talked about Duke and Billie.

"It's okay." She says, and she means it. "It's okay."

His fingertips dance against the back of her hand and Areto so badly wants him to stop looking at her like that.

"No-" He says stubbornly.

But "Yes." Areto fights back with, ten times more stubborn.

"I'll be there with you at the end, okay?"

"When you feel the sun again-" She thinks of Alectrona and her brother and of falling into the sea, of the Mother giving one life for another so the world was light again, "-that's me."

Because she has never been Galatea. Her story is not that simple.

Avriel tries to pull back but Areto doesn't let him. She uses both hands and holds him steady and doesn't look away.

"You can do it."

The knife just sits there, and he's still looking at her with those heartbroken kind of eyes, so she pushes it a little more insistently. Her face rises but her voice doesn't. She's tired of being angry and being so, so full of hate. It's poisoned her in the span of eight days, and now all she can do is steel herself.

"You need to."

Areto looks at him a little sadly, and then she smiles.

She's seen his reflexes. She's smelt the foreign tone of gunpowder in his hair and she's felt the danger laced in his hands. She feels it now, cupping the weight of them like it's a new flame. They feel so heavy suddenly, like his veins have filled with lead.

She holds his knife steady with one hand and then lightning quick picks up one of the others. It comes down fast, before she can think, sinking into the meat of Avriel's thigh, on the outside, through his skin, because Areto isn't foolish enough to stab him in the femoral artery the night before he fights to go home.

And she doesn't think herself cruel for it.

It's the pinch before the needle. It's the kick before the horse's trot. Avriel can say that he killed in self defense now. He'll go home to Duke and Billie and live the rest of his life happily and Areto will be glad for it. Her life won't sit heavily on his conscience, because she won't let it.