immortalize me ; aspen v. love / day eight

He doesn't think of Fleur's body. He can't think of Fleur's body.

The two statements are entirely different and entirely the same, an endless battle in the shattered pieces of his soul as he sits on the damp grass with nothing but the night to keep him company. Every breath feels like a betrayal and every wince of pain that shoots through his form feels like poison, laced into his bones and muscles and veins with a rusted needle and venom thread. He'd collapsed into the dust and dirt at some point and the world had done nothing but pass him by since, dragging shallow claws against his flesh and counting the amount of cuts turned scars turned warnings that now adorn the same skin he'd considered diamond.

Every breath is borrowed, expected to be paid back in double. As he sits, he realizes he's living on borrowed time that can only be payed back with one thing.

He fights back against the feeling, dissects it in the back of his mind until there is nothing left but unrecognizable pieces of a fleeting thought, jagged edges of a shattered reflection that are easy to throw away. It's a strategy he was never taught at the Academy, to reduce everything that could have been down to its worst form, down into the fact that it simply never was. Seven days of hopelessly fighting back against the ghosts that haunt him, tearing up the memories and the reflections and tossing away the poisoned pieces of glass. Now, they pile up in the pit of his stomach and dig themselves into the holes in his heart in reckless abandon, slowly killing him from the inside out and dancing with the ghosts that embed themselves into his skin. He shudders, shivers, blood loss and hollow pain flowing through his body like an ocean wave, crashing and burning and pulling away only to do it all again.

By the time the sound of horns blaring hits his ears and the night sky coats itself in electric blue he feels it a blessing, broken gaze drifting up to stare towards the familiar look of the end.

Coated in blue are the faces of the fallen above him, peeking through the mist and the shadows as neon ghosts and hollow souls. Before he'd entered the arena he'd thought this would be considered sweet, that the faces of the fallen would feel like sugar dripping down his throat and candy on his tongue, spread out into a smile and watch the forgotten memories slip by in and out of his mind like they are nothing. Now, as he stares into the void and feels the void yell back at him in trumpet and horn he hears the distant voice of his Father's tone, stern and stoic in tone and reflection. Even the angriest of hives will work for you so long as you offer honey." Coated in honey and offering it to every single tribute that stood near him, watched them flock and swarm with a smile plastered on his face. He gulps now, as face dissolves into face dissolves into sin and sadness, tasting nothing but bitterness scratching at the back of his throat.

When Julian's face greets his gaze it feels like a million stingers pierce his skin at once.

Worse than any other pain that he's felt in this arena before and for the briefest of moments he goes numb, revels in the fleeting thought that maybe his body will coat itself in shock and awe, until he can't feel any of the pain both inside and out, until the cuts turn to shallow wounds turn to scars turn to nothing, until he can forget. A heartbeat and a half later his foolishness is righted, and the wave of grief and pain and shattering heart runs through him in a battling war of fire and ice, freezing every fried vein and nerve in his body before burning them into nothing but the same dust that floats heavy in this arena. The smoke and the mirrors collapse into his lungs and he chokes as he hears a lion's roar from the sky above, caught in between the trumpets and the tears in his heart and he unknowingly returns it with a meek roar of his own. Guttural sob claws its way up his throat and slips from bloodied lips as he pulls his knees to his chest, presses them into his form until he can hardly feel the way his heart falters and stumbles in between shaking breaths, until he can't feel himself feeling anymore.

And it's instinctive, the way his mind wonders if the sob is from pain or sadness or fear or fury or all of it at once. He whispers in bated breaths sweet nothings that feel like venom on his tongue, convincing himself that it is nothing but the first, that a warrior's heart only has room to cry from the wounds on the body. Then, he convinces himself that it does not matter what it is from at all, that is has never mattered. The face of a boy he never knew fades into the sky and he's left with nothing but memories he wishes he could forget, buzzing and swarming in the back of his mind.

"I hate you."

"All of us deserve better."

"I hate you."

"When- if- I win, that's what I'm going to do."

"I hate you, I-"

"I am going to make it all better."

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate-"

He says it until he thinks he's convinced, that it will become fact in the back of his mind, until the smoke and the mirrors in his lungs fade into obscurity just like Julian's face, until the hollow sobs that threaten to spill from his throat lose the battle and focus on the war.

Then, he wonders how long the pain will stay with him. His heart answers forever. The voice in his head confirms in silent agreement.

The final falls from his bag when he pulls the bandages out from in between the items, steel and plastic landing in the soft chill of the grass. They stare at him in mockery and laughter, a chorus of his own failures and the shatter playing in the background as he wraps bloodied fingers around the first one, pulling it closer until Julian's name greets his sight, written sloppily in the wake of his own downfall so many days ago-

-shoved into the bottom of his bag as the only tape he hadn't had the bravery, or lack thereof, to send.

Even now, his thumb hovers over the play button, memories of speaking into metal and static and hearing nothing return playing in the back of his mind and daring him to listen to the stammering voice of a broken boy. And he can't, doesn't have the instinct or the warrior's heart or the fool's mind to play the final words he wanted Julian to hear from him, the final words that he wanted himself to be remembered by.

As if it was ever his choice in the first place.

He drops the tape and slams Fleur's throwing knife into the casing, hearing the scream of static crackling in final breaths.

Vanya's tape to him runs on repeat as he pulls his knees tighter to his chest and buries his face in them, feeling tears spill forth in a war won. The cameras around him immediately crackle and groan as they turn away from an unwanted sight of a broken career, and he mutters bitter nothings to himself under his breath as he sobs.

"I love you, Mom."

"I love you, Vanya."

"I love you, Lux."

He continues until he runs out of people who he wishes could care about him, until he runs out of people who will never hear his sobs or his confessions. Until he runs out of people who won't remember him.

The tears dry on their own in the dead of the night, and when he wakes up he feels foreign in his own skin, battling against the soft ebbs and flow of pain that still wash over his body as he stands, gathering what is left of his heart and his energy and beginning to walk.

He lets the mist and the shadows that dance within it guide him, too tired to carve his own path and too used to the choices being made for him to think of anything other, and when the towering sign of the Cornucopia finally begins to materialize through the fog he gulps down the chill that attempts to crack his spine in two, tapping the spear against the ground to steady himself as he sways. He wonders if Emerson Le Roux is waiting for him there, if the Gamemakers have raised a lion in place of Julian's fall, if she will drive her blade into his throat and pull all the lies and sin he's spewed out from his insides, let him fall to the ground and become forgotten in the dust and the dirt.

He nearly thinks it true when the figure in the shadows in front of him turns real, when blonde hair meets his eyes, when Aspen steps into his line of sight. "I was wondering where you were hiding.", and Love gulps down the fact that all he can feel is Chad's form pressed against his palm, thrown into the line of fire and mercilessly taken at Aspen's hand.

His ghost stands behind Aspen and laughs, hollow and guttural and filled with blood. "Should I bow?"

"Neither of us are in any shape to be bowing." He quips back, taking in every shallow cut and bandaged wound that is scattered across Aspen's body, reflected on his own. "We might not be able to stand back up." And he coughs, iron and dirt still staining his tastebuds.

"Did you run out of puppets? Was it worth it in the end?"

His body begs to answer yes and no, the faces of the ghosts flitting through his mind all at once and all for nothing. Emerson and Chad and Waverly and Ariel and Six and Fleur and-

"The hive dies quick when the honey turns out to be poison." He mutters, feeling a million stings of pain echo through hollow bones.

He scoffs at her offer, laughs at the fact that even with a million bodies near him he'll still be alone in his own death, "Can't promise I'll return that kindness if it's me watching you die."

The metal of her blade flies forward in between his own hammering heartbeats and he dives to the right, body flaring up in pain as adrenaline floods the source when he stands, spear gripped tight in white knuckled hands. "I don't think either of our trainings prepared us for this, huh?"

He jabs the spear towards her with the ghosts screaming behind him.

"Who've you hurt? What have you been through, Aspen Peake?"

Aspen Peake's voice is laced with liquid rage and humbling fear, spoken with nothing but malice laced into every word as she stares at him. His fingers curl tight around the spears handle as he pulls it away from Aspen's neck, the tip stained in red and black as he spins it in his grasp. The shadows comfort him, ghostly hands in misted tendrils pushing and prodding against the exposed flesh of the wounds that litter his body, red seeping through the bandages he'd wrapped tight against skin.

Aspen's tone sounds like fury and bloodlust and, when he swallows the words like poison and feels the bitter aftertaste, he recognizes fear.

"So, you admit it? You're the reason they're all dead."

And Love's muscles tense, then release, gaze drifting up from measuring the feet of blood soaked soil between them and up to Aspen's eyes as she stares him down, the shadows in the fog dancing between them. There's a feeling that simmers up from the pits of his stomach and spits shallow wounds into his lungs and soul, drags sharpened claws onto the edge of his tongue and leaves a million words left unsaid in its wake. Love laughs, guttural and filled with every lie and half-truth that has slipped between his lips in this arena. Because he's looking at a girl who pierced through Chad's body like it was nothing, whose boy buried a lion in a shallow coffin so many days ago, who has done unspeakable things just like he has, who is a monster just like him.

And here she stands, swaying in the breeze with red leaking from her neck, trying to throw the blame onto him.

He'd hardly shouldered Julian's quiet roars. He would not shoulder Aspen's fearful blame, too.

"You'd like that, right? If you could throw all the blame on me."

He tries to laugh again, but a wave of pain erupts from wounds left open and it comes out more a meek cough, body fighting against phantom pains that still linger heavy in his flesh. He thinks of everyone who has already fallen, of Emerson and Chad and Six and Waverly and Ariel and Julian and-

The ghosts are too many to count at this point, too many pairs of hollow eyes drilling holes into his soul.

"I just charted the path. Don't blame me just because they chose to follow it."

Six days ago he would have followed it up with a smirk, would have reveled in the way Aspen looks like her bravery is painted in broad strokes across her face, waiting to chip and crack and reveal what's underneath. But now he does nothing but tense as the other girl listens, focuses in on the wave of scarlet that leaks from Aspen's open wound and pools on her chest. He sees the faces of Emerson and Chad in the red reflections, watches their ghosts chatter and scream in every drop, hopelessly calling out his own involvement in their downfall.

He waits for the sickness to come up from his stomach, waits for guilt to settle in his skin. It never does.

Maybe that's the only benefit of shattering like he did. That you don't have to pretend to be hollow anymore, for you just are.

"That crown carries a load of guilt, Peake. Can you handle that if you win?" He says it quietly, as if it is more a whisper to the wind than an actual question, and he feels his words swallowed up by the soft breeze of the shadows that flicker in the edges of his vision.

"Then I'll haunt you."

"Bad news.." He starts, readying his spear at what he knows is to come. "but there's a long, long list of people ahead of you for that one." And Emerson and the others laugh, then roar.

The darkness does its best to swallow up the metallic glint of Aspen's javelin as she launches it forwards, the tip piercing through what fractured remains of the moonlight still scatter between them. He dives to the right, muscles and veins and bones and flesh screaming in protest all at once as he tucks into a sideways roll, fast but not fast enough. Aspen leaves her mark in a thin line of red, the javelin falls to the ground with a tip stained scarlet and Love gasps out even at the shallowest form of the pain, fire and fury washing over his body like it had done that day prior as he rises on unsteady feet. He fights back against the wooziness that has laid dormant underneath the wounds since he'd woken this morning, fights back against the way his body yearns to slip into the darkness as one final facade.

"Do you care?"

The words pump toxic adrenaline into his veins and he looks to Aspen with narrowed gaze, ice and fire and crimson and cobalt all swirling in blue irises as he bites back the words that want to spill from his lips. "You didn't give a shit about Chad. What about Waverly?" Because who the hell is Aspen Peake to know who he gave a shit about, who gave a shit about him. Waverly's face haunts his dreams and his nightmares like a specter, and Chad's was no different.

"I killed them, and the boy from Six, too."

Oh.

Love's muscles relax for the briefest of moments, heartbeat hammering in a shattered chest and he cocks his head at his opponent, mouth hung slightly open and words still hanging from the edge of his tongue. Because Aspen has torn a page from his own book, adorned with red lettering and toxic kisses and tried to throw it out onto the field and claim it her own.

He knows better than to fall for a facade half-broken before it is even worn.

"I mean, do you care?" He cuts her words in two, feeling the redundancy slip and slide from his lips in reckless abandon. "Seems useless when I ask it, right?" Question thrown to no one and there is no answer. If Aspen wanted to pretend to revel and bathe in the blood of those she's killed then so be it, he could play along with that game. He knows it all too well.

"It doesn't matter whether we care, Aspen."

Emerson and Chad and Six and-

"We did what we did, we'll do what we do."

Julian and Waverly and Fleur and-

"This isn't a therapy session."

He stares through Aspen and into the ghosts behind her. They do nothing but stare back.

"It's a sentencing."

”I could blame you for a lot of things.”

Love grimaces, frown spread across bloody lips and spear still wrapped tight in his grasp as he backs away from her, waiting for an opening to strike like a snake left unseen. Join the club. the voice in his mind whispers, and when he looks at Aspen he sees Areto and Avriel and Julian laced into the reflection that stares back at him. It’s target practice for misplaced blame and sorrow, spat out into the air as if they don’t deserve it.

"That's the problem with people like you…”

”People like me?” He cuts into her sentence with words of a sharpened knife, practiced and perfected in seven days and eighteen years of monstrous expectation. And he’s tired of the way Aspen sounds when she makes him the other, the way her voice strains so badly to classify him as anything but a scattered reflection of herself.

He’s seen it all before, time and time again and running on loop since he’s stepped foot in the arena. Areto and Avriel and Ariel and Julian and Aspen and-

They so badly want to make him into the shadows in the corner of the room, with shadowy claws and tendrils as dark as the void. They so badly want to make him to be the one that looms over the arena, the bumps in the night that keep them from sleeping. To make him into a monster with nothing but bloody fangs and bloody grin.

Something to gawk at, something to be afraid of, something to defeat.

He thinks that in the end, when all is said and done, the hardest truth for them to face is that they are all just shattered reflections of the same image. Teens holding weapons holding trauma holding fear, swinging wildly into the night in hopes that the light will come back soon.

”We’re not that different. You want us to be, but we aren’t.”

”I don't care about anything else. I don't have anything left to lose."

”Bullshit.” He barks, snarls the words in blood and spit as he cuts her off, fingers tightening around the spear at the sound of her woes slipping from between her lips. Fatigue wracks his voice as it cracks, eight days of torment and fury and everything in between laced into the words when he stares her down. Because he’s tired of hearing people tell him they have nothing left to lose, nothing left to bury, nothing left to hold to. It makes his stomach flip and curl in bubbling fury whenever he thinks of it, of the fact that everyone here is so unafraid to announce their failures and write them into the dust and the dirt.

Having something to lose, in a place like this, is forever constant.

”Cut the woes, Peake. You may kill me right here, and right now..” He points the spear at her, the shadows and the ghosts biting at his flesh.

"But don't act like the list of what you have to lose isn't just as long as what you have to gain. If we're both going to lower into our graves here, don't insult me by pretending you’re fighting on hollow soil."

He hears the whistle of steel in the air.
It sounds like his Mother’s songs.

Sounds like seven years old and sounds like when he’d crawl into her lap at half past midnight, when the shadows and the spirits that he thought haunted him would run and knock on the walls and dance in the hour of the witches Vanya had told him amount. He’d cower under blankets until no amount of white-knuckled grasp against silk could protect him, until no amount of pretending to be brave could make the fear that rested heavy in the pit of his stomach.

He’d crawl into her lap underneath the fire that burned in her orange locks, rest his head against her chest until he could hear her heartbeat knocking away any demons that wanted to grab him from the dark and into the dust. She’d whistle soft tunes into his ears, slipping between her lips as effortlessly as could be and it was like magic to him, all those years ago, that a woman like her could exist in a world like this.

There was safety in her touch, then. Safety in strong arms filled with loose expectations.

His Father pulled him from her with strong legacy and strong wrists, sat him down and told him that only a boy is afraid of the shadows, not a man.

A Mother’s touch turns to kiss of steel in the span of a single shattered heartbeat. Love feels the spear enter his stomach before he sees it, feels Aspen's anger split skin and muscle and flesh alike and pain rush out in a crashing ocean wave from the source as he coughs blood onto Aspen’s feet, all sin and flesh and stone before he stumbles backwards from the momentum.

It feels like penance. It feels like too much. It feels like too little. A father’s scolding and a lion’s swipe, all in one and all for none.

He gasps and chokes on a breath that just won’t catch, screaming out in pure pain and fear as his back hits the tree behind him, a new wave of fire and brimstone and scattered torn muscle ripping his body anew.

And, for the briefest of moments, when his hand wraps around the steel as if to ask the world if the weapon that has laced itself into his stomach is real, as if he expects his hand to pass right through it, as if he expects the pain to be nothing more than a passing phantom,

Love looks nothing like a monster, nor does he look like a man. He looks like a terrified kid who is staring at Death’s door.

A shadow is only terrifying if you don’t understand that it is offering shade. The things that go bump in the night are only the sounds of creatures who can only dance in the dark. A monster is only terrifying if you don’t understand that it never had a choice but to show its fangs.

Blue eyes follow the course of steel and find Aspen’s gaze, shock and fear and pain written over and over again all over his face, and a soft whimper escapes from his lips as he stumbles forwards in blue and black, hardly managing to catch his balance by driving the tip of his spear into the dirt. He presses a palm to the wound and watches it run red, pulls it back and feels his own morality spill from the source, scattered against cold steel and staining the grass beneath with the scarlet writing of his tattered legacy. When he looks to Aspen there is nothing but a fire caught in the ocean of his eyes, fighting a lost battle and a losing war as it waits to be snuffed out.

”Who says I’m the one- fuck.”

He wonders, as his eyes drift down again to the wound in a state of dying and disbelief if he looks any different to the girl across from him. He wonders, if with sagging shoulders and spilled sin Aspen considers him still to be nothing more than a terrifying beast waiting to crumble, if the way her hands wrap tight around her weapon mean she’s still scared of what he is, or that she’s scared of what she has to do. He wonders if there’s any difference.

Maybe she sees him in a new light, in the scattered flames of a dying fire, hopelessly illuminating something that never wanted to be seen in the first place. Maybe she simply sees a boy that is eighteen years too young to be dying like this.

The problem with seeing someone in a dying light is that the outcome is inevitable: it will never last forever, it will always fade.

Dad always said to die as a man, not as a boy.

So he chokes back the way his eyes water with pain and fear and everything in between, presses them tight until there are no tears left to spill down bloodied cheeks and presses his teeth into one another until all he can feel is the pressure of his own shattering, until the scorn and hate and survival he’s been taught stitches itself back into his face.

”Who says I’m the one sentencing you?” The sentence is accompanied by a chorus of blood filled spit dribbling down his chin with labored breaths, swaying on shaking legs and black spots coming in from the darkness to cloud his vision. ”By the looks of it..-“, the sentence is cut off by a pained gasp for air, head and heart suddenly coming to the full realization that there is steel still sticking from his body. His gaze drifts down again, meeting red with blue and then back to Aspen.

"I'm guilty. I'll keep being guilty if it means I get to live."

”Guilty.” He chokes out, as if he’s just now tasting the word on his tongue, just now feeling the repercussions of his own actions. It’s a lie, of course, only told to himself in between restless nights and haunted dreams. He’s felt the sin and the sorrow he’s caused in the diamond tattoos pressed into his flesh since the first day here.

He still wants it to feel foreign, guilty, as if he's spent his whole life and then some running from it, as if it hasn't followed in the footsteps of every ghost and ghoul that drags their feet in his wake.

It never has. It never will. He’s been raised guilty, forced to be, guilty pleasures and guilty pain.

Guilty. Instead, it feels like home.

”Ariel-“ He chokes out, the name dancing with rust and iron on the edge of his tongue. ”I killed Ariel, and-“, maybe the pain is working for him as it surges up from the steel, desperately trying to pry the words he holds from his mouth before they are spoken. ”Nine, the girl from Nine.” Blood loss and spotted vision try to pull back the puzzle pieces from a killer’s mind. ”Fleur.” He finally fights out.

”I’ve hurt a lot-“ but he can’t fight out the sentence, pain too deep and sorrow to strong and red too plentiful.

He’s hurt a lot, and he has hurt a lot.

”Are we still guilty if we had no choice?”

The names leave his tongue and feel like betrayal, memories forged and memories forced to be forgotten bubbling up to the surface and dragging hot iron against what’s left of a fractured soul. It dances hand in hand with the way the pain flows up from open wound, carrying red and black and blue through every fried nerve and broken vein that is scattered underneath his skin. He feels like he’s in limbo as he stands on shaking legs, watching the black spots cloud and gather in his vision in between every blink.

A parasite spills its guts to the ground. He gulps and swallows in between the waves of pain, wanting so badly for the world to be anything but black.

"If you have it all figured out, then tell me. Explain to me how to be okay with any of this."

Love laughs, then gasps at the way his body cuts him off, pain cutting through smoke and mirror and spilling out from his lips in so much red. He feels it trickle down his chin and carve unspoken word into his own tarnished legacy, then feels it fall from his skin into the darkness below.

So much darkness in a place like this. He misses the soft blue of the light, the way it made him think of the ocean and how he had always wanted to see it. Now he’s drowning in the waves, feeling his bones crack and shatter with the ebb and flow.

He cracks a grin, heartless and empty and feels it burn his skin, pain erupting from his body when he steps forwards towards her.

Because Aspen Peake still doesn’t get it, still can’t see past the walls she has built in between the two of them, and can’t realize that she’s only looking at her reflection written in red. She begs him for an answer that he can only give in blood, question to question and life to life.

”You fake it.”

The admission burns his tongue and scalds his breath, and he watches it gather and fall around his lips before it dissipates into the fog, poisoning the mist around him and forcing him to perish to his own poison. You fake it, his mind repeats to him as if it wants to hold the dagger in his back and twist it clockwise, count the hours he’s spent in smoke and mirror as it turns and watch his penance run red with every second. Because you’re not strong enough to break from it. He clutches the spear closer, hopeless against the tidal wave that rises and falls in his head and his heart.

Eighteen years written into the hilt and it does nothing to protect him from his own truths. First a parasite spills its guts into the soil, and then it spills its sins.

The arena responds in exactly the way he knows it would, in exactly the way it should when a heartless Career finally shatters just before the fall. The cicadas hiss and scream in their frustration, and the shadows bump and clack in the night, and finally he hears the sound of the cameras turning away from their fight.

He watches little specks of monstrous red disappear from sight as the world forgets about the two of them for only the span of a few heartbeats. No Capitol citizen would see him break, no loved one would watch him confess, no hatred would be diminished, no kindness would be unpunished.

He’s their own narrative, their choices are his namesake. And to them, he’s better off a monster than a broken boy.

The cameras leave them in the void as in the distance a cannon fires. Love wonders if Avriel or Areto has fallen, and if they saw the same shadows that he’s seeing now.

And it becomes just him and Aspen and the walls they throw between them to convince themselves they are any different.

And it hurts so much, and it feels so little.

”Cause that’s the catch-“ He starts, and every word feels like he wants nothing more than to swallow it back down, push it into the dust and the dirt until it fractures and splits into a million unrecognizable pieces, until he can forget it, until he can pretend he never realized it in the first place.

”-you can never be okay with it. You’ll never be okay with it.”

Eight days of pretending to be okay with it, of feeling it gnaw at soft flesh and eat his soul from the inside out. He’d fallen on the fourth, stumbled with half a heart and all of his sin against the dust and the dirt and broken down in front of Areto and watched her do the same.

”You carry it, then you run from it-“

He’s so cold now, swaying against the soft breeze of an arena that wants its count, and he thinks of the way Julian had described his skin as gold and how he’d described his own as diamond.

So caught up in pretending, so desperate to recognize themselves as anything but human.

He wonders if Julian felt like the gold plating was falling in scraps and sin from his skin before he died, wondered if his eyes took in every cut and bruise and bump and scar as a final inventory before taking in the night. He wonders if he was just as cold as he is now, and if all he wanted was the warmth of something that didn’t want him.

”-then you become it, then it takes you back.”

He blinks, and watches himself drive his spear into Ariel’s skin, drive his Axe into Fleur’s neck.

The steel in his stomach reminds him that this is his final stop.

And there’s silence that spreads between them. It drags its claws slow and oh so unsteady between two people who stand on nothing but blood and skeletons, swiping at each other with steel and regret and anger and untold fury. He feels himself choke on the sins he

"Does it have to be a sentencing? Can't it just be quick, and finished?" She asks everyone and no one in particular, and he catches himself in between the two.

”You’re asking the wrong person.”

Aspen’s gaze drifts away from an ocean of blue and to the arena around them and Love’s follows, eyes rolling lazily up to what is left of the sky above them. He watches the death and the darkness and the shadows stare back, and as he gulps down a cough and a choke that threatens to shoot from his lips he can only think of the way Julian held him even against the cold dark of the night, against the wind and the rain and the tornado that whipped and whispered between the two of them.

He misses the warmth, and he misses the feeling of the boy’s arm wrapped around his chest and carving patterns into his back, and he misses crying hollow tears into a lion’s mane just to feel them dry.

And, as the spots in his vision are briefly lost against the endless void above him, he misses the feeling of having a feeling at all.

He hopes where he’s going is warm, like that. The cicadas and the fog hiss at him that it is not, and the ghosts murmur in agreement.

”I don’t know. You know I don’t know.”

He hears Areto in her tone, sees Avriel in her face and Julian in her movements as she lets the words sink into the silence they share, cutting against the hum of the cicadas in the night and the scream of wind in the trees. Aspen is Love is Areto is Avriel is Julian is-

An endless list spills in red from both of their wounds, holding the names of those who have fallen and those who stand uneven on their skeletons and nothing in between the two.

It’s the same answer Julian would have given him, with a lion’s claw scratching memories into the surface of his skin,

It’s the same answer Areto would have given him, even as she held steel in her hands and took every step to avoid catching her own reflection looking back at her with hollow eyes.

It’s the same answer he would give Aspen if it were her voice spilling from trembling lips, tumbling carelessly to the ground and staining it with a different feeling other than red.

All images of the same shattered reflection, all watching themselves sliced thin against the jagged edges.

”You and me both.” He answers to her in shallow breaths.

Because they all don’t know, and they all never will, and they all were never supposed to in the first place.

”But I do have a choice, Love.”

He laughs only to himself, hearing the hollow voice of a broken boy echo and groan with every protest of his own body. ”And I’m making it.”

So sure, so sinister, so scared.

Her words still echoes in his mind even as she strikes, clutching desperately to the steel laced into her fingertips and moving towards him on heavy breaths and borrowed time. His mind screams at him to roll out of the way, every memory of eighteen years of Career training laid out in the front of his mind like cards stacked on the table.

They flip one by one as his body protests the commands, muscles groaning and bones shattering under paper skin. He gasps in pain as Aspen’s spear drags against his skin again and again, metal to flesh and flesh to ruin as his opponent writes a scarlet eulogy on his skin.

He returns it with one of his own, watching as his own sin seeps from her flesh and into the darkness. So easily found, so easily lost. Always there.

Words to remember are etched into both of their bodies at this point, carried in little white scars until their soul is taken back.

And he’ll play along with Aspen’s grand illusion of choice in a place like this, he’ll pretend the cards they’re throwing onto the table are anything but a losing hand. After all, all he has ever been told to do is pretend.

They cheers to a life worth losing and a life that won’t be worth living, watch their reflections shatter in the glass and steel and watch liquid spill in scarlet out of their cups.

”To the choice we think we have, Aspen.”

”Well, that’s depressing.”

Love does his best to shrug, feeling exposed muscles fight his every movement as he does so. All he manages is a a half a movement, pain cutting him off at the source and he gasps on air that feels so toxic now, coughing up blood.

”You asked.” He chokes out, reminds her that she wanted to know what to make of the shadows and what the shadows would make of her.

Those black spots dance so heavy in his sight now, clouding Aspen’s already silhouetted form further until he can hardly make out the way she scoffs and scowls at his words, the way she chews on them and they chew on her in equal measure.

”What’s it say about us that we’re still standing here? You’d think we’d just give up.”

He laughs, but the laughter turns to pain and he’s left with a gut punch of scarlet as he feels the wooziness kick into his system, tearing and pulling the world at the edges.

”Almost like we both have something to lose.” The words are pained, strung out against flesh and blood and broken legacy but exist as a mockery nonetheless. Her words from just moments ago live in the dead space between them, hopelessly flickering as a dying flame begging to be snuffed out.

Aspen Peake, the girl who claims to have nothing to lose, stands before him with the spear still wrapped so tight around her knuckles. Running from what she’s lost and towards what she thinks she is gaining. Against the darkness he tries to smile in the irony of it all, in all of this, but his teeth are too red and face too burdened to show anything but the fangs of a monster.

”But I can’t stop fighting. And I know you can’t either.”

”No choice in the matter.” He coughs, feeling a wave of nausea spark from his stomach.

”I have one more question for you.”

Aspen’s voice calls out through the darkness, and Love can do nothing but offer a shallow grimace in response. Because he’s tired of all the questions they have for him, thrown into

He can’t always be their answer, he can’t always be their question. He can’t always be the only person realizing what this is, and what it isn’t.

He can’t always be the thing they look to just to make themselves feel better than. They are not, they never will be.

Neither will he.

”Did you love Julian? Truly, I mean.”

The question stings his skin, leaves it singing with a fire so hot that it’s as if the flesh and sinew will simply melt from the bone, slink to the ground in heart and abandon and mark what’s left of his forgotten memory into the grass and the darkness.

Neon blue lights up in his mind of Julian’s last stare, looking down from the sky with a lion’s pride and a boy’s torment and everything Love had managed to sew in between the two. He gulps, eyes waver and muscles shake as he clenches the spear tight and a tear dribbles down to his chin, refracting what is left of the moonlight in the briefest form of innocence.

It mixes with the dried blood that coats his skin, and falls to the ground tarnished in his legacy.

It’s like the arena starts to respond to his own trial. His ears catch the way the cicadas sound like the static that dances behind the blaring anthem, the rush of the wind in the trees sounds just like the materialization of those they have gained and those they have learned to lose.

The hammering heartbeat in his chest sounds like the trumpets, blaring and glaring in hollow tune. A mockery.

”Because I—“, her voice trails off into the whispers of the shadows, and Love understands. He thinks of the way he met Julian in the waves and the water, made a deal in the sin and the sorrow and the red and the gold. His chest tightens again and again, as if Death itself is taking his skin and twisting it tight as punishment and pleasure, and his heart responds in a wave of shatter, the kind that echoes underneath the skin, the kind that walks the line between hurt and harrowed.

”I loved someone.”

I don’t know. He wants to repeat back to her, wants to lie. You know I don’t know.

But his hands are at the altar now, and his blood is on the pages, and the guillotine blade is sharp enough to cut through lie and leave only truth.

”Love, in a place like this.” He says, and it hurts. He’s so tired of hurting. He wants to laugh at the thought, wants to make it a mockery and a memory, wants to forget it.

”I cared for him, but only in selfish ways.” Spill his guts, spill his sins, spill his truths. The sponsorship gifts and the fame and the applause are all marked on his tombstone, reflected against the cracks that desecrate it.

Because that was the core of it, the eye of a raging storm, the ember that lights a raging flame.

Love’s affection was a gamble and not a gift.

”One week, twenty three dead, one dying. Love can’t exist in that, it—“

Every touch was expected to be repaid with warmth, every sweet nothing was expected to be returned with sugar and sin, every held hand was just to share the blood between them.

”I liked that I could be bad, and he could think himself good, and neither of us could fix the other. I cared for him- but I couldn’t love him.”

The words simmer in his skin, even as Aspen lashes out with her spear and it takes everything in his body to parry the blow. He stumbles backwards on uneven ground, driving the tip of his spear into the ground and steadying his balance. Pain fires out from the source as he gasps, focusing on the way the metal melds with his skin as he clutches the spear.

”I couldn’t love him” He repeats, as if trying to convince himself of empty fact. ”And he couldn’t love me.” His heart wants to tell him that, in another life and another world and another game, they could have found something else.

He thinks they could have found a spark that warmed instead of burned.

But they are not in another life, they are in this one. That is why Julian Le Roux is dead, and that is why Love Bellisario is dying.

”We weren’t built to love.”

He stumbles forward like a wounded snake, shows his fangs and tastes the poison dripping down his throat in rust and iron. Aspen readies her spear as well, and their chapter writes itself in words of red.

”Did you love him?” He fires back, red tipped steel in his grasp.

”Or did you just love that he made you feel human, even when everything you were doing told you otherwise?”

”You always sound so bitter. Everything you say, it's just miserable."

He arches an eyebrow, training his gaze on the girl in front of him and watching the black spots curl around her face. They hide her from his sight, until he can hardly see the way she looks at his words with venom and disgust.

It’s just like they’ve always wanted, for no one to be able to truly see one another.

Facades, faking a smile, eating a grin until you can’t taste the blood behind the smile.

He knows it, and it knows him. He hates it, but it will always love him.

”It’s just the truth, Aspen.” He says, fighting against heaving breaths. ”You asked for it, and you got it.”

Dance in the dark, the ghost claw at his skin as he desperately attempts to remain standing, focusing in on Aspen’s form as she moves towards him. She’s too fast, and he is too slow, and he feels his heartbeat counting down the seconds until he’s reclaimed.

”Are you just one of those people who can’t be happy? My Mom’s a lot like that.”

She asks like she wants to know, as if she truly means the question she throws so effortlessly into the night. He curls his fingers against the steel, feels the cold give way to his warmth and feels himself fading. ”Does it matter?” He asks, disconnected from the world and the way blood flows so easily from his wounds.

He feels the music his Mother used to sing him, the way it cut through the shadows and made everything seem so light.

and he feels the way Vanya used to swing him around when she was still so much taller than him, the way she felt like a giant and he was just happy to rest on her shoulders.

and he thinks of Lux, and the way he would burst through her door as if he owned the room, carve their affection into witty banter and shit-eating grins. ”I think-“

”I think that it can’t matter here.” He says, and a tear forms heavy in his eye.

He strikes silently, unsuccessfully.

It’s when he turns to distance the gap between himself and her blood-tipped spear that he feels it connect with his back, feels it drag down and rip a new chapter into a torn through page. Flesh and muscle give way and he screams out in raw pain, raw sadness, raw sorry and scarlet and black as he stumbles away from her on shaking limbs. He whimpers, broken and shattered and feeling his sins spill from the wound that is carved into his back as the last bit of adrenaline surges against muscles too tired and bones too broken, barely managing two painful steps before he collapses to his knees and faces the ghosts that lurk in the shadows.

”I don't always understand what I'm feeling, but I know I could have loved him. I really would have liked to."

Aspen stammers as she circles around him to stare into his eyes, still wielding steel as if the boy in front of her isn’t halfway into the shadows. Maybe it’s mercy, what she will do.

He can’t blame her.

He understands, the way the words sound like they hurt to hear. The cold seeps into his bones now, and his breaths are labored as his gaze rises to meet hers, tears falling heavy from his cheeks and refracting the moonlight.

”Maybe in another life.” He confesses, and the poison bites into his tongue.

He can hardly keep himself from collapsing forwards, every muscle in his body screaming for him to finally succumb to what was already written for him. His breaths sound like shrieks, the way the air can hardly fill his lungs as he sits dying.

He’s kneeling at the alter and professing his sin, a sacrifice in the making and a boy for the taking.

”Have you ever loved anyone? Anyone at all?”

He thinks of Vanya, of Lux, of Julian, of his Mother, of his Father.

They all feel so cold, and so distant, so forgotten and so longing to be remembered.

”No one who knows it.”

It hurts worse than the wounds.

”Guilt.” He spits out, stammering as he looks at the ground and the ground looks back, the world collapsing in on itself in a mess of black spots and blue waves. He can hardly feel the tears on his cheeks, can hardly sense the feeling of the grass carving his bare shins. His gaze rises to meet Aspen, one final time.

”Good luck with the guilt of all this, Peake.”

He means it.