let no grief | stella & av

They'd finally found him in the stairwell between the seventh and eighth floor, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his brow and his forehead pressed against the cement wall. Avriel hadn't known where else to go but up, he'd been hell bent on finding a good vantage point to watch the sunrise.

As he climbed, it'd become harder and harder to focus and the pain had come back in little pieces at a time. First there'd been his shoulder, pressure twisting in a steady circle as he pulled himself up to each landing, then came his legs, the scars on his calves burning from the pitfall trap. After that it was only a matter of time until his new foot became so heavy that he could barely move.

They'd brought him all the way back and Gloria, District Nine's escort, had lectured him the whole way.

The whole excursion had been taken as an escape attempt and now there are two Peacekeepers camped outside his door. Every time Avriel even sits up they straighten at their posts, hands on their holsters. Sometimes he sits there for hours, gazing into space in their general direction, half aware of them watching him watch them.

It's hard to sleep even with the drugs being pumped through his system. Every time he shuts his eyes, Avriel just sees their faces in the dark, Reece, Aspen and worst of all, Areto.

Areto in that last moment, expression twisted in pain and her hands tight around his.

And then the dark–

The dark is terrifying, even here when the lights are out. It's never as dark as then, but when he shuts his eyes, he falls endlessly, the dark sending him tumbling into the depths of purgatory.

So he hasn't been sleeping much since he woke up. He just spends the morning in silence, fingers cupped around the bracelet Robbie gave him when they brought Avriel back. Four friendship bracelets weaved into one, just a little discoloured from the blood stains. He runs it over his thumb and back again, up and down and pretends the silence of being here without Blade, Ariel and Areto doesn't hurt.

The door swings open and Avriel looks up, expecting Gloria because she comes and goes whenever she likes. It's not thought, it's a tall blonde woman, casually stunning and accompanied by a little bee.

He gazes down at the sheets in question and then looks back up at her, he tends to kick them off in his sleep anyway, but she doesn't need to know that. "Stella," he greets her in unison as she says her name. Victor of the seventy-eighth games, won ten years before him. Avriel'd been seven years old then. "It still beats the arena."

All the sounds, the smells, the lights and new textures were welcome in comparison to that dark, freezing silence. He slips the bracelet back on and pulls his knees to his chest to rest his chin on them.

Scout jumps around on the bedspread as the bee zips around its head. They seem to be playing, two kindred spirits designated to be some sort of therapy animal. "Dunno why they let me keep it," he says after a moment, "Don't know why it wanted to stay either. I didn't even know they could think like that."

He reaches out a hand to stabilize the little kodama as it threatens to tip backwards onto the duvet.

He turns his attention back to Stella, resigned to the fact that he's vulnerable in his hospital bed, there's nothing he can do about it, no shield he can raise to protect himself.

"How long does this part usually last?" he asks her, "I wanna get home."