hell is empty, all the devils are here {88th finale}

The fire dies down soon after, crackling flame going quiet but Avriel just sits there with the embers until those fade too.

In the dark, he doesn't have to look at Areto anymore.

Yes, he feels the weight of her in his lap but she's gone, she might as well be gone. He pushes her body off of his knife but the weight doesn't leave him, it just travels up into his chest and settles down in between his collarbone and his heart.

The blood on his hands has dried, the hour must be late.

His stomach rumbles.

But the dark holds him in place, icy fingers wrapped around a willing throat.

In the silence, Avriel slowly lifts a bloody palm to his mouth and bites down on the fleshy part beneath his thumb. A muffled sound emits from him then, a low keening, soft, hopeless, wilting.

Waning.

He drops his hand and finds Areto in the darkness, fingers searching her wrist for the friendship bracelet that Ariel made her. When he tugs at it with one finger, it doesn't come away so he reaches down and finds one of his knives. He cuts through the thread, careful not to cut her.

She promised she'd stay with him so he'll take her along.

A soft call comes from the dark and Avriel stills, hands hovering over the knives as he searches fruitlessly for the source, but nothing comes. He works quickly, wrapping the knives in the dark, pulling the one from his thigh and wiping his blood off on the leg of his shorts, and shoving them into his bag.

The call comes again but Avriel can't tell if it's closer or not.

It seems so close but eons away.

He reaches out one last time and smoothes Areto's hair back, "*Adieu," he whispers, "Adieu, adieu." He bends over her, kisses her forehead as if he's kissing her goodnight, and then he's on his feet and-

The call comes from behind him.

Avriel stills.

His hands shake.

But slowly, he realizes that he can see soft shapes. It's fuzzy, lent by a soft glow. It isn't a flashlight beam, nor a fire this time, but it's just enough to see gently by.

He turns slowly and there, standing on a tree root, is the little kodama that began following him all those nights ago. For awhile, Avriel had though he'd lost it. There were mornings where it took hours to catch up to them on its legs, Avriel had thought that it'd have given up by now.

It shakes its little head at him briefly, rattling around on its tiny neck before letting out another distant little call.

Avriel gazes at it for a long moment.

He should be scared here, he knows that, but seeing the kodama again is enough to let a little bit of warmth back in.

"Hi," he says.

The kodama rattles again and then walks up to him purposefully. It climbs up onto his bag and Avriel watches as the little mutt wiggles into it beneath the flap. The bag swallows the Dodoma and the light with it, so Avriel kneels down reverently in the dirt and pulls the flap back to see what it wants.

It wiggles down into the bottom of his bag, rooting around with more strength than Avriel thought it could have, and when it starts to struggle to push itself back up, Avriel helps by reaching in to pull it out.

"What're you tryna get?" he asks.

Whatever it is, it must have really been at the bottom because Avriel has to pull hard to get it. When the the top of the Kodama finally comes back into view, Love's cassette player dangles from its grasp.

"Oh."

That'd come to him sometime in the week, dragged along by the Kodama itself. Avriel hadn't wanted to listen then.

"I don't want that," he tells it.

The Kodama drops the player at his feet and rattles its head and hops back and forth on its little feet.

"...fine," he says.

He kneels down and scoops the headphones up. The Kodama chitters at him, a combination of the rattle and the scream that should be unsettling, but it's not. It settles on the end of his right foot, hands on it's knees, waiting patiently for Avriel to listen.

He clicks play.

At first, there's just staticky silence. Avriel shakes his head, annoyed already. He'd tried to fix that for Love in the training centre, but then Love had misunderstood or something and pinned him against the wall by his throat. His jaw clenches at the memory, about how scared he'd been in the moment. It'd been half his fault for forgetting what a career was then.

He still holds a grudge.

"That static shit is back in the cassette again..." comes Love's voice out of the tape and Avriel starts a little bit.

Then he listens.

When it reaches the end of the recording, he tears the headset off of his head and throws it down in front of him.

Love's voice, it's too human, it sets him on edge. It's been so much easier to set Love as his villain, so much more simple to hate him because then later, he won't have to hesitate the next time that he sees him.

Hearing how he misses his mom, his stupid thoughts, the things that make him a boy, Avriel wants none of that. He doesn't want to relate, doesn't want to think of his father's watch and hold it up against Love's mother's cassette player and compare them.

They both make sound, they're both the last things they have left.

Both, both, they're the same.

"No," he says to the dark, "No I have more than that."

The Kodama kicks its legs on his foot and Avriel picks it up and lets its light guide him.

"I don't need to care about you, I'm not like you," he tells Love, vehemently, "I can't, I'm going to live and I'll kill you to do it."

He holds the mutt in the palm of his hand and sets off down the path back towards the lake, eyes straight ahead to watch the light. The trees watch, solemn as he moves, and Avriel, angry, barely feels his ankle anymore.

He remembers wondering how other tributes did it, days ago, he remembers the first few agonies, thinking he couldn't go on. He gets it now, he understands that after awhile, none of it even matters. He's already dead anyway, a dead man walking can't feel pain. A dead man walking only moves forward, ever forward, towards the edges of the world, seeking seeking seeking.

He's going mad.

No, he's not.

Everything's just more clear now.

"LOVE!" he shouts into the dark.

Blue streaks above the sky over his head and the anthem's light gives Avriel enough visibility to see that he's coming out to a clearing. He rushes forward, the Lake in view again.

The anthem plays and Avriel winces. It's off again, not right. He wrings his free hand out, frustrated and exhausted, raw.

Areto's face looks down at him first and Avriel stops, eyes on hers, searching, she said that she'd stay with him.

She said that she was the sun.

Then her face disappears and the next one slides into place and Avriel stops in his tracks.

Love, gone too.

The Kodama lets out a long, low wail as if it can feel the pain that lances through him.

"Ariel, I'm sorry," he says, "I'm sorry, I didn't, I told you I would, I didn't get it back."

He's on his knees, the Kodama standing in front of him, guarding him as the dark falls again and Avriel is alone, heaving in the dirt, hot tears falling down his cheeks.

There is nothing, no thought, just heat and pain.

Avriel holds onto the grass and another low cry falls from his lips.

He's forgotten about the cameras, about the world outside, about the game. It isn't a game, it was never a game, it was always just dark, he can't remember the light.

"I can't, I can't, I can't," he whispers, panicked, "Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom."

His legs burn, his eyes are heavy from tears, his skin stings, the world is dark, there's only dark.

The sun was never real, just one of Areto's myths.

Eventually, he sleeps.

He wakes slowly, body heavy on hard dirt, he aches from it. Light shines against his eyes and something within him unsettles, loosens, departs.

But when he opens his eyes, the light is just from the Kodama, curled up and hugging its knees beside his face, the light from its body seeming to beat like a slow heart.

He watches for awhile, listless.

"I dunno your name," he says softly, "So what should I call you?"

The Kodama doesn't move.

Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe he only has a few hours left anyway.

Avriel squeezes his eyes shut, counts down from three and then sits up.

The silence deafens but Avriel isn't as scared of it as he used to be, it's all he knows now. He puts the sleeping kodama on his knee and then digs around in his bag for his bandages. It was careless of him not to do this last night but last night is now something that happened to someone else. He distances himself from it, quiet calm settling over him as he becomes Avriel again.

As he finishes wrapping, the camp speakers spark to life and release their usual stream of static. Avriel seems unbothered by it, at this point, he expects nothing less.

Yesterday, it was impossible to hear the announcement, but like the day he fought Reece, an offer is extended to them once again.

"My condolences, campers. Do me a favor, whoever makes it, and savor the sunrise," says Apollo Monarch.

Avriel bites his lip and ties off the bandage sharply. He'd love to take the game makers and shove them in a dark room for three days, see how they like it.

"Fuck off," he mutters.

The Kodama stands up on the end of his knee at the end of the announcement and stretches its little body out. Its mouth seems to open a little wider in a yawn as it does. Not for the first time, Avriel can't help but find the little ghostlike creature cute.

Then it climbs down off of his knee and starts walking away.

"Hey, wait," Avriel says.

He pushes his supplies back into his bag hastily and then scrambles up to follow the kodama. He leaves a wealth of supplies behind him, but he knows it doesn't matter anymore.

This is, after all, the end.

"Can you see me?"

Avriel goes still, realizing belatedly that there's a shape of a person in front of him.

"Aspen?" he whispers.

As if she and him aren't the only ones left.

"I remember you, but I don't know your name."

"Avriel," he tells her, he doesn't want to die anonymous.

She was the girl that Reece wanted to find, the one that was there when Ariel and Blade killed Nora and Willa.

"Same old story," he echoes sadly.

Aspen isn't a witch at the end of the forest path. She's not a demon, sharp-taloned and merciless. Her voice is gentle, sweet, a spring rain bending the petals of daisies.

Tears prickle the back of his eyes again and he blinks hard to quell them. This isn't Areto. He can't be soft here, he can't rest with Aspen, she wants to go home as much as he does. She's killed to be here too.

He thinks about Reece, dying beneath the mask on a distant shore, but this time, he isn't stupid enough to bring him up.

"I don't think-" he starts, then stops.

Avriel takes a step back and drops his bag in the dirt, hand wrapped around his bundle of knives. He feels Blade's hand on his, holding him in place. The urge to turn tail and run pulls at him but all he has to do is think about Blade's eyes on his, promising him that she'd protect him.

And she did.

"I feel like the less we know about each other, the better."

But maybe that isn't true.

Aspen seems content. Before he can process it, the end of her spear is beneath his skin and Avriel stops breathing as an icy cold pain slips through him, stopping every other thought in his head.

"No," he gasps, desperate, "No."

Areto died for him.

He has to live for her.

He steps backwards off of the spear and each move he makes feels like hell but Avriel only grits his teeth against the pain that batters at the back of his skull.

"Do you remember the sun?," he whispers.

Avriel steps backwards into the dark, away from the light, away from her and the light from the kodama bounces off the blade of the knife in his hand.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, and he means it, truly,"I'm so sorry but I'm gonna see it again."

He throws his first knife at her, and like every single time, he feels Julian's hand on the back of his, his voice in his ear, breath tickling the back of his neck.

"Let your wrist relax, it’s only a cog. Hold it back like this and now release!"

[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
Dxk3SgcqTpthrowing knife
Deep Gash on Chest -- 9.5 damage + 1tg + 1rivalry

He only breathes again when he hears the knife make its target.

Blood runs down his thigh over the bandage he put on this morning and it gains it's own beat, a drum in the back of his head, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. This battlefield has a rhythm.

Maybe home is too close, the idea of it so in reach that it seems further away than ever. It's hard to imagine that there is anything past the little ring of light that the kodama gives off. Like yesterday, it's just Avriel and another, and the light and the dark.

Areto's fire was warm.

Here, in the dark by the lakeside with Aspen, all he feels is cold.

There's no room for a mistake here and he knows that he shouldn't just be standing idly as she collects herself, he knows that he shouldn't be giving her room for that but it doesn't matter. This is the fastest that he can move. His body screams with effort, his foot unresponsive and burning with constant pain. There's very little energy left in him and this is the most that he can offer her, a throw of a knife every few seconds.

He stands there in the dark and watches, silent. Aspen doesn't move like a killer, but careful, balanced. He sees himself a little in the tightness of her jaw and the way she holds herself up still, despite everything that brought them both here. If he was a better person, maybe if he were someone like Areto, he could offer her the same sacrifice.

Because, after all, he is very tired.

He would like to rest.

"I'm glad you want to live. I do, too."

Just like him.

Blade, Ariel, Areto. Willa, Nora, Reece.

A chill runs down the back of his spine, he feels them all watching with bated breath, but this isn't for them. Avriel doesn't hit Aspen out of anger and maybe she can feel that from the way his blade skims her skin.

He'd end her faster if he could, she'd do the same.

"I'll tell you about it," he says softly, "The sun, if I see it again, I'll tell you all about it, I'll bring it to you."

The words are nonsense but they make perfect sense there in the dark, where the sun is a myth and three people with too much power can take it away.

"So please," he says, "Know I- I don't-..."

Know what?

"If I didn't have to hurt you to leave here, I wouldn't."

He steps forward, dancing quickly out of the way of the end of her spear as best he can, but it isn't enough. The end of it finds his arm and he flinches back, a fresh cut opening quickly, spilling blood down his arm.

At this point, he's more cut than boy.

"There's just someone I wanna see again, I bet you got people too."

He slips back into the dark and the kodama stands up, waddling after him. He runs from it, back towards Aspen. The dark has to be useful for at least one thing.

Then he throws his next knife.

[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
aVzzzpZANXthrowing knife
sc on stomach +4

"I wouldn't know how to give you the sun."

He pauses, hand already on his next knife.

"Oh,"

She isn't Billie. She doesn't understand the odd things he says, the English into their mother's tongue rung back out into English and missing pieces along the way. Aspen isn't Duke either, tongue so laden down with stories that poetry flows out whether he means it to or not.

"Then visit me where I lie and tell me about it," Avriel says and that will be enough for him to rest well. It'll have to be, "I'll do the same," he promises.

He circles her, watching the end of the spear as much as she watches him and he knows what they are, two figures in the blackest night, circling a tiny source of light.

Rats in a cage.

Aspen speaks gently and it feels like every moment they circle each other like this, the less he knows what he's doing. He blinks and in the dark, that's not long blonde hair but dark curls and freckles. He blinks again and it's Aspen, wide-eyed, beautiful.

Aspen is beautiful.

"I know, Avriel. It's okay. We're okay."

She shushes him but it's in a kind sort of way, hand moving too slowly to be a threat, eyes soft, tone softer. The heat pools again in the back of his eyes and for a moment all he wants to do is throw his knife down and yell, as loud as he possibly can, he wants to scream. He wants to to rage, to hold the world captive, bated breath, at the tip of his knife.

Her kindness is almost sharper than her spear.

Avriel grimaces, fingers wrapping tighter around the hilt of his next blade. He shuffles backwards and his foot catches on a rock, sending him stumbling back into the darkness. The spear follows him down and he throws his arms back desperately but catches another cut on his arm.

"fuck," he whispers.

The kodama rushes over on its stubby legs, cold little hands touching his fingers, tugging him, trying to pull him up. A tear of frustration falls.

"My foot doesn't work right anymore," he explains, though he can't see her in the dark, "I tried to use the tape to- I dunno, it didn't work."

He gets on his knees and then pushes himself up slowly, stumbling on the bloody stump of where his ankle meets his foot, but he keeps his balance.

"I hope you see them, Aspen," he says, "One day, I hope you get to hold them, I wish that for you."

But he doesn't hold back.

He can't.

[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
sxy8kWDA71throwing knife
Knife Deep in Neck -- 9.5 damage + 1 tg + 1 rivalry

"You're fine," she tells him, and the lie is pretty.

It'd be nice to pretend that he is, that he ever could be again. To be soothed, even as his blade fits snugly under her skin, even as he kills her, she takes care of him.

He doesn't know Aspen, she doesn't know him.

He'd like to know her.

Then he thinks about Reece again, fading out of sight under the starlight as Avriel took his canoe and left him on the beach. He thinks of those eyes, unseeing but watching him leave him, knowing that Aspen was still out there, needing him. Then he thinks about Areto, waiting all alone in the woods, the fire bright against her cheek, a blade in her hand.

Her gaze had been soft then too, gentle.

"Why," he whispers, "Why're you being so kind?"

In Nine, there wasn't time for words. In Nine, it was always life or death and if you had a knife in your hand, you used it. Avriel'd kept a gun tucked into the back of his pants since the day his parents had been killed. He knew Billie'd seen it on him once but she never said a word then.

It still feels less deadly than the rusted knife gripped so tightly in his hand now that it almost burns him.

He watches, waiting, patient, as she deals with the blade embedded in her shoulder. He thinks about that knife and what it's seen and he can't tell which one it is, if it's the one who killed Reece or the one who killed Areto, or if that knife killed neither of them.

It doesn't matter.

"Please," she asks of him, "Please don't talk like I'm already dead."

He swallows, looks away.

"..'K" he says, and squeezes his eyes shut against the break in her voice. Reece was easier because he was angry until the end, blaming Avriel for things he'd never had control over. With Areto, he didn't even have a choice.

Here, he does.

But he doesn't.

To lay his knives down here would be to ignore everything that Areto did for him.

He's tired, aching, before he even arrived to the capitol, he'd already made peace with death. Avriel had even believed that he was ready for it, but now, standing here in the dark with the hint of a light across from a girl as cold and in pain as him, he knows that isn't true.

"I know," he tells her softly, because it's his turn to soothe her, "I know, I believe you."

When she comes for him again, his body gives in, tipping to the side and failing to dodge her spear. He's slower than he was even minutes ago, wilting fast. His vision spots, he can't lie and pretend that she's worse off than him because truthfully, he's been waning for a long time.

"I'm just scared," he says, voice hitching, "I gotta pretend I'm not, I gotta pretend this isn't the end. Because if it is, then what was the point? "

No more tricks this time, he doesn't pull away from the light but he lets her see exactly where the blow comes from.

"Everyone else is dead. It's just us."

[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
SVjFtTSSebthrowing knife
Shallow Cut on Hand -- 3.0

He shivers.

Not from the cold, but the lack of warmth twisting slowly through his body. When Avriel looks down, it's hard to see anything at all in the dark. He can see thought that sis front is soaked with blood, all the little badges that had been appearing after every sleep are indistinguishable underneath the rusted coating.

How long have they been here?

How long does it take for rust to overtake.

He adjusts his stance, sliding back slowly on his right foot in the sand of the beach. The kodama sits still between them, exhausted from running around and Avriel's body shakes from the strain of standing.

"Don't say that," he echoes her, "You can be good."

It's directly hypocritical of the things he tells himself, how he's a monster, how he can never be forgiven for the things that he's done, that he's had to do. Avriel knows that there's no hope for him but there's a voice in the back of his mind that protests that, that understands that it can't be over.

This can't be the person that he was born to be.

"You wouldn't be trying to kill me if you didn't have to."

He wants that to be true, so he makes it so.

"Qui n’avance pas, recule” he says softly, “Who does not move forward, recedes”

He shuts his eyes for a moment, remembering the way that his mother's accent would run over the phrase, like water over stones.

"This is just how it has to be, that doesn't make either of us bad."

He doesn't want to be the bad guy but he doesn't want to die. He doesn't want to be the monster, receding into the lake, damage done. He thinks about Love and the way that he was so eager to blame him for Ariel's death. He was happy to see the other boy as the monster who helped end Blade and then killed Ariel himself.

It was easier then, to act as if he hadn't had a hand in their loss.

But last night, listening to that tape and the waiver in his voice, he knows. The monster is what he makes it into. It'd be easier if he let Aspen take that mantel, easier to walk away after all of this, but it won't save him.

He's seventeen, Aspen must be around the same.

She tells him that she's scared too and for the first time in a very long time, a corner of Avriel's mouth lifts for a brief moment. Because he knows it's wrong to admit, but she takes his hand in it.

And she becomes harder to kill, but so does he.

But it shouldn't be easy.

He watches her catch the end of his blade in mail gloves and send the knife flying into the dark, lost. It's almost laughable now, how they look like two kids playing with sticks and stones.

"But I'm here with you."

Her spear slices across his thigh, reopening old wounds and spilling more of his blood. He looks down at the patchwork mess of his skin there and feels nothing about it anymore. He's starting to feel numb, but not in a good way. The adrenaline pumping through him does its best to reanimate him, to lift his arm, but it's like moving through molasses.

"Promise you'll stay," he says, "Even if I go, stay with me."

[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
s9KX6ZZ09Pthrowing knife
miss

accuracy
[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
throwing knife
sc on thigh + 3.5

There's enough blood on both their hands now.

Avriel flips his last knife in his hand and catches it again, eyes on hers. His throws, once so sharp and fast have slowed down. The strength that he was meant to have here, recedes like the lake's subtle tide.

This is the end.

"You're my friend. Just decided."

Avriel blinks at Aspen, at the spear gripped so tightly in her hands, at the knife in his. Everything about this moment screams that they aren't, but when he looks at her, truly looks at her, he knows that it's true. When he dies he won't curse her.

Hopefully she won't curse him either.

For awhile, they stand there like that, quiet, hopeful, as if if they could just wait long enough, the sky would start to lighten and the sun would begin its rise.

But the dark remains.

This can't end until one of them does.

"Friends," he echoes.

He's never had those in Nine, but here there have been too many. What good has that done? They're all gone, left him, receded.

When Avriel throws his next knife, Aspen lunges towards him instead of back, and he isn't expecting it. Fear sparks through him as the point of her spear comes closer but then it's around him, over his shoulder and there are her arms, holding him so tightly in the cold light of the kodama.

And there is Areto, holding him in the warm light of the fire.

And Blade, the weight of her on his legs on that last night as she slept and he was too scared to move, in case he woke her up.

He shuts his eyes briefly, sinking into it.

Then Aspen is pulling back again, eyes somewhere else, somewhere distant, either way, he can't follow.

"It's just me and you," she says.

"Wait," he says, voice wavering, "I don't want want-"

-the point of her spear digs into his collarbone, pushing against his muscles and Avriel screams. his cry echoes across the lake, feral and full of pain. White dances before his eyes and the push of it sends him to his knees.

He isn't brave, the man that he was supposed to always be, he isn't a career, a fighter.

Avriel was simply built to survive.

"The other side," he says, "Meet me."

And he throws his last knife.

[avriel attacks aspen with throwing knife]
QoUlL35Z2Mthrowing knife
Deep Gash on Thigh -- 8.0 damage