where'd all the time go / baptistes [88th homecoming]

And just maybe Duke felt like Avriel was dying long before they called his name. He remembers watching a ghost shamble onto that stage, a stranger wearing his big brother's face. There was a war in his stomach, anger managing to rise above the all-encompassing grief. That he could feel it at all was telling of how long he'd been mourning Avriel Baptiste.

It should have been a lonely three weeks, but it was just more of the same. He busied himself with scribbling recipes in his little red book; enough to replace all the ones he'd had to tear out because the memories they held also belonged to Av. He had insisted that Billie taste test them all, a burden his older siblings had previously shared. If she minded, Duke figured she wouldn't tell him. He's always been a little bit selfish because they've always let him be.

He found it startlingly easy to keep on living, probably because Duke has become well accustomed to ignoring all his missing pieces. If anything it was nice to know that an answer was on it's way. Even when sitting on the couch, white knuckled and voice hoarse from begging his brother to keep fighting, he never lost sight of him. Whether Av lived or died, at least Duke would know.

And it's gone all awful and rotten inside of him because he knows that's a terrible way to feel.

He's chewed his thumb jagged and bloody by the time the train arrives, shifting from foot to foot in an attempt to expel nervous energy. His other hand tugs on Billie's sleeve. "Do you think he'll find us?" He worries for the thousandth time that morning. It's a question without an answer, only meant to fill the silence. "What if he doesn't look?"

He shakes his head, hair tickling the tops of his cheeks. "We have to make sure he doesn't have a choice."

Because when the carriage doors slide open and Duke takes off at a sprint. Strangers have gathered around the station too, some carrying big cameras on their shoulders. He knocks more than his fair share off balance in his haste, slinging his arms around Av's shoulders before he has even set foot on the platform.

At least Duke hopes it's him and not the stranger wearing Avriel's face.

"You came home." The words are half choked by the sob that then rips through his throat, "You came home." He repeats, to prove to the both of them this is real.

"You're really here."

At least he can hope.

Gloria finds him just before the train comes to a full stop, her hands on her hips, a look of annoyance to match her stance. "You've been whinging about wanting to go home all week and now you're dragging your feet?" she asks him.

Avriel doesn't have an answer for her. He's trying to keep his hands steady, trying to remember to breathe and failing. His chest rises and falls too fast as if he's run all the way to Nine instead of sitting on the train. He doesn't feel like himself or like the brother that he was before this, he feels hollow, as if everything inside him has been removed to keep his shell pristine.

"What if it's more than my foot?" he asks her.

What if it's all of me?

A boy made from a diamond core, cold. He flexes his right foot inside his shoe as if to reassure himself. It only feels slightly wrong, just the littlest bit off to tell him that it isn't truly his.

"Please, just speak sense for once," she moans and tugs him up by the arm, "Everyone's waiting."

He bites his lip as she pulls him down the cars back past the stylists, past the peacekeepers and the camera team and the tables of food and the drinks cart.

The sound of the crowd outside starts to grow and nerves pluck at Avriel, catching on his shoulders, trying to tug him down, he stumbles over a corner of carpet and almost loses Scout.

"Pocket time, buddy," he tells the kodama softly and slips it into his pocket.

Then he's stood in front of the door and Avriel can see the crowd distorted through the little window and there's so many people out there, more than he thought Nine held. He blinks, air caught in his throat, bubbling, stuck, it's almost as bad as his victor ceremony except worse at the same time. These are the people he's lived with his whole life and these are the people who have threatened him and held him at knife point and written him off.

Now he's got to prove that he's worthy?

The door slides open and Avriel hesitates, legs broken, unable to move him forward. He doesn't like crowds, he never has.

Then he feels Gloria's hands on his back pushing him forward and Avriel's right foot stalls for a moment, still not the best at reactions and he's falling forward, gonna go down, gonna go dow–

Arms around his neck.

"You came home," Duke tells him.

Avriel shuts his eyes, something in him bends so far back that it nearly snaps and he can't process this.

Arms around him, then a spear through his shoulder.

No, arms around him and Duke's voice in his ear.

"You came home."

Avriel shudders as his whole body comes to terms with the idea of being held again.

"You're really here."

"Duke?" he whispers, "Duke?"

Then he sees Billie, right there, eyes on his as if to confirm that what she's seeing is true, always so logical, always so Billie.

And then she's holding him too and Avriel's legs give out then, finally, his whole body shaking with relief, he pulls the three of them down to the floor of the train, arms wrapped so tightly around them as they sob that for a long moment, their chests heave in unison and no one else matters.

"Tu m'as manqué aussi, moi aussi, me too," he whispers softly, "me too."

Billie's hair is a different colour and Duke looks taller, like he's grown a whole inch in three short weeks and Avriel holds them both, his hands cupping their cheeks, he presses his forehead to both of there's and he hears Gloria above them, something about getting off the train.

But this is all he's wanted since he left them and now that he has them again, Avriel doesn't know how to let go.

"You okay?" he asks quietly, eyes on theirs, "Nobody hurt you, yeah?"

Conversations of the Baptiste kids were immortalized on camera's they'd never see again, starting with the two of Avriel and Billie following after the third, Duke, as he breaks through the crowd. 

"You're all being very rude right now! Get out of the way, please!" 

"Are we going home? I thought it was the village now," she asks, hanging onto the back of Duke's coat as not to get lost. Billie tried to think of what the Victor's Village could be like -- if it would be just as cold as their home. She's gotten used to life without electricity; how does it change now? Their neighbors, Colgate O'Leary. 

Kids these days are told he's a myth.  The most lethal tribute; Billie knew numbers, and of eighty-nine years, their next door neighbor is the deadliest one. 

She can't help to agree when Avriel says, "should we? I would rather go home first." 

They eventually push through the crowd, three kids on the other side of it all, they're panting when they make it outside of the train station. "We walked here, I don't know you're plan on getting home but that's ours," she says, already heading south-bound as Avriel trails keeping up.

"Then I can also walk," he says.

"We can all walk together!" Duke responds, and she can't help to grin, it always makes her happy to know he isn't brought down by District 9. Somehow, some way he always finds a way to be a ray of sunshine -- it's a foggy day of September. The end of summer, a season come and gone while Avriel was away. One of the last days of May she had spent with him and Duke at a creek, he was smoking while their younger played in the water. 

Billie just watched. Kept an eye on everything, a girl too on edge to relax; and then they took Avriel. 

He's back, and the sky is grey and the tree outside their parent's old home is browning. The grass is dying, and she's amazed they're all still in roughly one piece. Avriel walks into their home prosthetic-foot first, and his first step around the corner is the first time Billie took her eye off of him since he stepped off the train. 

She's almost surprised when she turns into the living room and sees her older brother in the middle of their decaying childhood that she understands he's here to stay. 

Wherever that takes them.