if i had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense

[Deleted]

[presto][/presto]

I honestly don't know why Stella Calloway came back for me in that feast, and I'm almost too light-headed to care - I'm not quite sure when that began either. Stella caring about me and my light-headedness, maybe they both came from the same thing. Either it be from not eating in 5 days or the blood loss of both a missing eye, missing finger and nearly losing a leg to a cave in, I'm not sure. All I know is that when she wraps her hands around my wrists to drag me out of possibly the last time I'll ever see Pearl and Cha, I'm smiling. I'm smiling that she's back, and I'm so happy that I don't have to be alone again. Only for a single night was I alone (if that even counts, it was a good few hours at most) and I managed to nearly get myself killed.

As long as she's here, I won't be the biggest threat to myself, that's for sure.

With only my one eye, I can't see what I used to see in Stella I think, that fear I held about her on day one up until my spear was lodged in the skull of a tiny blonde child. I think I'm not scared of her killing me now, because I'm not scared of being killed anymore. I mean, I don't think I want to die, not in the slightest, but, but it's like one of those cat in the box kind of deals. One of those things that I'm not sure what it's gonna be like until it happens, so I shouldn't worry as much as I have. If that makes any sense - I hope it does.

Stella could've killed me there; she could've left me to die by a cave in or let me starve to death in a less merciful outcome. Honestly, I deserved it, the cave in. Something hit me in there harder than the rocks, and it hurt more than any physical affliction, and it was that no matter what happens. No matter which bastard crawls his ass out of this pit, Stella or I will die. Stella and I could both die. There is no happy ending, nothing I can prevent and nothing I can help. Barnabas, Asa, Zelphyr, Blaire, the tiny blonde girl and the rat's dinner - in no alternative universe did they all walk out of here together. Meaning that, in no alternative universe, will Stella and I both be happy and well with Cha to keep us alive as well.

No matter the outcome, at least two of us will die. And somehow, this relaxes me a little.

"Y'know," I don't know why I was trying to talk, out of all these times I could've said anything to Stella, why I had chose to speak up now. As if, right after her dragging me out of a literal cave in was the most appropriate time to strike up common conversation, but sometimes I don't even have an explanation for the trains of thought I try so desperately to jump. "I don't remember anything that happened last night," bullshit, I had my story, my own alibi up to "the whole eye thing." I wave my better hand, the one with all five fingers still in front of my missing eye, "I'm guessing you don't either, not much at least."

Not much at all, I doubt she knew what actually happened, and the entire situation is still fuzzy in the back of my mind. It's like the old television my father always worked on, it never kept a signal for long, and whatever did manage to come across that screen was so blurred it seemed like the entire station was censored. That television only actually had two stations, the one connected to the capitol, and one my father tried to hijack from whatever he could, and that was the fuzzy one. My entire last twenty-four hours felt like that second channel at this point.

At some point when Stella threw me onto the ground, I dropped the three bags I salvaged from the cave in - mine, the tiny blonde's and bag #3. Quite appropriately nicknamed, for I haven't opened it yet, and the only thing I actually have on it is the number three printed on the front in that big Capitol font. I throw my hand aimlessly in her bag, the tiny blonde's one that was full of everything including the sword I stole from her body (what do I even do with that.) My fingers wrap around a flashlight, a lot like Stella's wrapped around my wrist and my prime instinct is to flicker it on, blaring the light directly in my sore eye.

"Ack," it stung like a bitch too, and immediately I shove it back into the bag after turning it off of course. I'm sure Stella's only see-able sight being my bloody face and bloodshot remaining eye isn't a pretty thing. I wasn't focusing too much on her words at this point, I was more inclined to the spots infecting my vision, since those spots were the only thing I could actually see, with all one eye of mine. I still have that second eye, the one I stabbed out, it's wrapped in the airplane Jael gave me and the map I stole from Cha (and Ripred help me if I never find her to give it back, I've had enough sins for this lifetime and I will not die a thief) in the bottom of my bag. "So, I'm guessing you've never tried optic surgery before, huh?"

I chuckle a bit too, and I shouldn't be. I shouldn't be this calm after killing that girl, I shouldn't be able to laugh with Stella. But I guess that's what happens when you're defined by your sins.

hi this is stella/finn only pls don't jump us
we just want some character development pls

[ines izar d11a 🖤 cait]

This time of day seems stifling to me. A time of day that is not warm in any sense of the word, but instead leaves a freezing blizzard of destruction in its wake to suggest Winter as just around the corner. It’s a time of day when I find myself reaching for blankets that douse my spirit and hug me so tightly I can barely breathe.

Every so often, I tug on the strap of my bag slung softly over my shoulder. It is heavier with the weight of stolen gifts tucked safely into its folds and what was left of Finn’s innocence tucked safely into my arms. The fraying straps leave the ends exposed and through the countless hours of thumbing the material, they are only just beginning to unwind. Each time I find myself reaching for the comfort and stability they provide, I check my bearings and take note of my own embodiment – just to make sure I’m happy enough, for the time being.

Each time, I’m left with burns – flameless blazes of non-existent smoke – yet the pain could never compare to that of other, more severe inflictions. Like tally marks of the dead, that have fallen by your hands, residing on discarded weapons, and surely that is a blessing.

Like playful children, we had wandered off from that place of death and been swept up into storms of silence that I really hadn’t wanted to endure any more. Silence is the neighbour of loneliness, and I find both to be quite unwelcome – curtains of unhappiness I did not want to find myself draped in any longer. We had run, run away from imaginary pursuers like it was a twisted game of ‘Tag’ that neither of us knew how to play correctly.

It wasn’t for our own fun that we ran; it was to stop us from becoming lost – we had nothing but each other to guide us through the darkness.

With the weight of water in my chest – not the water you consume to replenish thirst, but the fluids of fatigue and loneliness that drown you if you stay submerged too long – nothing reminds me of home. The scents are too miserable – what happened to the sickly sweet heather fields and stench of burnt cooking?

There is nothing, nothing, nothing but the Autumn squalls of November’s evenings that have brought with them the winds of new change. Today, I’m determined to listen a little harder to the only trace of home I have left; I don’t want to miss what they have to say.

Their voices are strangely familiar. Voices of gilded gold and spun silk that make goosebumps appear when the warmth of vocalisation touches my ears, and yet they are tainted in a way which makes the hairs on my arms stand straight and pointed all the same.

Voices of Finn.

‘I’m guessing you’ve never tried optic surgery before, huh?’

I look into the place where his eye would lie – a single stormy iris full of indecipherable emotions. His single eye has taken on the same glazed look that I felt settle in my own only days earlier, indicators of corruption and evil. Like the straps of my satchel, I can see the gears in his mind slowly beginning to unwind, and I worry what it means for our future. Yet I’m grateful that he’s here with me, because for once in my life, I’d found love and friendship in someone that wouldn’t spoonfeed me tales of woven magic before ripping the utensils from my mouth and leaving me to fend in a world where the only guidance they gave me were webs of lies and commands that falsely promised happiness.

(He tried to kill you.)

(Never forget that.)

So long as we could hold onto our sanity in a collapsing world, we would be okay. I don’t know how long it is to last, but I can feel it running thin. When he walks, he stumbles, and he frightens me – that is why I carry him. Even if he wasn’t Finn, somewhere, I think he is still alive.

But this is but a world of nonsense and I am just as misguided as he. I am none to judge the missing puzzle pieces, and I can only hope that with the flickering of Esme’s his flashlight that is snuffed as quickly as it is illuminated, along the way he will fill in the gaps with temporary fragments just as I had began to do already.

Despite the direness of the situation, I can’t help but muster a tiny grin as his voice echoes in my mind.

‘I just saved your life. There’s no way I’m going anywhere near your eye.’

(Why did you do that, Finn?)

(Why did you have to hurt yourself?)

(Why did you have to leave?)

Already the memories of only hours earlier are beginning to blur, and whilst I can’t be certain what parts of it were real and which were simply hallucinogenic tricks of the mind, I can still taste the blood from the wound he left on me, feel the scar forming beneath my nose. It resembles the laceration he incised across my heart.

I wonder which wound will disappear first.

ya what rave said
this is meant to be amadeus only
but you can jump in and be a rood person if you feel that
pls don't tho

[Deleted]

[presto][/presto]

It's hard to see myself as more than half a man like this, but I guess I made it pretty easy for me to be seen that way. A broken leg, a missing eye, a missing finger, I'm pretty sure the only thing of me that's still whole is that, in all of my strength, I am fully sorry for all that I've done in five days. I was supposed to be good, and I mean good, not just comic hero style good, yet I've spilled more blood than there is in my body at this point, and I can feel it choking up to my throat like the water inching to my knees. I can feel all this pain that I thought I would never cause, and it's choking me like when I nearly died trying to drink for the first time in four days.

It's hard to see in general, I guess, all I know is that Stella is near me and our five combined bags are resting on the same rock I kept my balance on now. There's silence and for a second the pit of my stomach feels almost the same it did the night before - it's maddening that's for sure. If I had a strap for each strand of silence I had to sit through in these past five days, I'd be able to cover all my wounds, that's for sure. I start breathing a little heavy, not because I'm panting or anything, it's just to cover up the silence. Just to make sure I'm still alive, and that I haven't drowned in the own blood that is supposed to keep me alive.

(In out, in out, in out)

"I just saved your life. There's no way I'm going anywhere near your eye."

What do I even say in response to that, I just need conversation at this point, something to keep the blood flowing in my jaw rather than in my throat. "Actually, you'd be near the," I pause, idiot, I mean I've never been great at conversation but I've never had to work at it. I've never had to make sure a conversation didn't die, because I always, "y'know," ramble. Jael said it was my gift at some point, that I could always keep talking and keep living, because dead men don't talk. "Yeah."

I'm still talking, so I'm not a dead man. (Please don't stop talking.)

I'm not quite sure if what I think makes any sense any more, but I think that's a good thing, I think. I mean, insanity isn't good, staying sane is good, but if I do go, then I'll have so much to talk about. There'd be so much to say at that point, and I think that's good, maybe, there'd be too much to say and to do, that this lifetime wouldn't cover it completely. Maybe that's why I'm still here, trying to talk with Stella, because maybe I'm going a little mad. And that's good, I think. Or not, there's not really a way to tell, and maybe I think too much but that's good. I mean, thinking can't be bad. So maybe mad is, y'know, "good."

Now, I didn't mean to say that out loud and for a split second I stopped thinking about whether over thinking was good or not to think about whether I actually said that out loud, but I realized I was fidgeting with the bags. Not actually going through them or anything, just opening and closing and moving them around while I was thinking, and that 'good' was a dead stop of movement. My hands were stuffed inside the tiny blonde's bag at this point, and at this point I'm almost "positive I'm a little insane." I whispered it under my breath, as I felt it, the thing in her bag, the cold plastic-like flesh that met mine that was definitely not one of mine.

Panic hit me in the chest like I think heartbreak felt like, and I slung her bag onto the ground in a frenzy to get my hand away. I could almost feel the whites of my eye strain if that's even possible as I tried to distance my self from the severed leg now bobbing in the water. If I had eaten anything in the past five days that I hadn't thrown up the day before, that leg wouldn't be the only thing in that water right now, and my head feels completely absent on top of my neck as I try to walk. I stumble, fall, and I'm weak.

(So damn weak.)

Stella catches me, at least I think, it's either her or a rock and I swear I can't tell the difference between the dark and me immediately jumping off of whatever it was to lean back against the wall. It hurts, the pure embarrassment of it, because I can barely keep upright by myself to the point that I was bested by a floating leg. I'm supposed to be good, I'm supposed to be saving something in this pit, and yet I can barely walk by myself. It hurts, not as bad as losing a finger or an eye or an almost leg, but somehow it hurts more at the same time.

All three of the bags are back by the leg too, and I'm too scared to go back over there. Scared of what I'm not sure, there's just something unnerving about touching a severed human leg and knowing that that little girl held onto somebody's leg for long enough time for it to get cold. I sit for a second, embarrassed out of my mind, until I chuckle over the fact that I nearly fell over a leg. Of everything I've seen in five days, a leg, an actual leg was just chilling in my bag. And then I get an odd idea, an odd, wonderful idea that sparked out of pretty much nowhere.

"You know what Stella," I start walking along the wall, towards her or the opposite way I'm not too sure, but I'm headed somewhere, all I know is that I gotta keep talking, or else I'll be a dead man soon. "I'm gonna throw a party, not like one of those extra extravagant ones, but like a tiny get together, y'know?" Keep talking, dead man, "just for like us two, and Pearl and Cha, they're both invited, and your friend, the really tall one, he's invited." Even though we killed all his friends, the two boys and the tiny blonde, we killed them all didn't we, Stella?

"But not the red heads, neither of them," keep talking, keep walking along the wall, "they scare me a little." By this time, I guess I'm a good five feet further ahead of where I was, and I feel accomplished. For some odd, crazy, maddening, insane reason I feel like I got something done in going five feet forwards. "It's gonna be like a tea party, just for the five of us." Yeah, that'd be nice. Just the five of us, maybe Jael'll see that I'm not completely bad. (Mad's not bad though, dead man, just keep talking.)

"Do you think they'll show up?"

[ines izar d11a 🖤 cait]

When he falls, I catch him.

I could have let him stumble to the ground – I could have left him there, taken our five bags for our five days of sins and his weapons and his sanity and run away, alone. Abandon him like we had abandoned Cha. But that would only make me even more of a sinner than I already am, and whilst I am no saint, I am my mother’s daughter, Belle’s sister, Finn’s ally.

So I don’t run.

Instead, I catch him because I had needed him, and now, he needs me. Black and white we co-exist and I don’t want to let him go – I’m not ready to be alone yet, I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to be alone – but he is already moving away (he’s the one to be feared, even though I’m evil, so is he now too) and his momentary absence makes me falter a little in my resolve to be stronger than I felt.

‘Finn, you can’t –’

Distance is an enemy, for the further you are from the ones you care for, the easier it is to become lost and lose your way back to them.

Each staggered breath of mine is met with a mismatched step of his into the darkness, away from the stone-cold limbs of the faces in the sky, away from our bags with their unspoiled wealths. We’d promised not to open them just yet. No words had been spoken to confirm that pledge, but somehow, we had known.

Finn is half the boy he was yesterday, and I don’t know how long it will be until that half becomes a quarter, until that quarter becomes an eighth, until that eighth becomes a sixteenth, and until the descent into psychosis truly begins.

How long did we have left?

‘You know what Stella? I’m gonna throw a party.’

But I think it’s already begun.

I think he deserves some innocence for now.

‘Okay Finn. We can have a party.’

In the darkness are rattling words that I can barely hear over the dragging noises of his limp leg

‘I’ve never had a party.’ The words embarrass me to say out loud, and so I whisper them beneath my breath where only the insects living within the grass underfoot are able to hear the murmurs of stolen childhoods.

He doesn’t notice.

‘...but not the red heads. They scare me a little.’

You scare me. A lot.

‘Do you think they’ll show up?’

(He’s talking about the others.) Cha, Pearl. Crusader. And whilst I know in my heart of hearts, within Kirk’s heart, that they are already far away from us – that we are to be safe for another night, at least – I don’t think Finn would mind the company. Even if that did mean ambush and death.

(He’s just not afraid to die anymore.)

I didn’t want to disappoint him any further. I didn’t want to break him and potentially lose even more of him. For then loneliness would surely engulf me to swallow me whole, even if there was still to be a soulless body to hold my hand.

‘Yeah, I think so. And when they come, they can bring their bags with them and we can make wonderful things from the odds and ends and trinkets we’ve all collected to make a constellation of importance – we wouldn’t have kept those things if they weren’t important. Do you think that would be nice, Finn? Maybe they might have peppermint leaves, and we could make a fire and boil our water and drink tea. Crusader can come, and we can talk to him and he can tell us about his family – he gave me this photograph, you know? It was of his family, it was his token, and I think that’s nice. I didn’t have a token, but he did, and I do now, too. We can see Cha again, and we can stay with her because I think when we’re with Cha, we’re safer than when we’re alone, don’t you think? And Pearl can come too, but I don’t think I’m meant to like her very much – or at least that’s what Belle tells me, because she says she was killed by Pearl, but that can’t be right, no, it can’t be right, can it. It’s hard to tell what’s right and wrong, but I like that idea, and I think that is a right idea, and I think they will be here soon with us, yes.’

I catch my breath as it comes in exasperated bubbles. It’s a dangerous thing to became lost in a world of your own that didn’t exist, that has never existed and can never exist. If you stay trapped in it for too long, all you are rewarded with is a false grasp on reality and decades of unhappiness, striving for more than you would ever receive. I forgot Finn, and only now as I look to him do I see the look of peace that sits upon his face, as it does on my own.

He’s so tired.

My face hardens instantaneously.

‘You need to eat.’

There’s a small fortune in my rucksack, and as I pull it into my lap I ignore the leg that bobs like a forsaken omen in the water nearby. From the inside I pull a tiny bundle of mushrooms, reflecting on how meagre the supply of fungus is, wishing there was more I could do to help. But it’s enough, and as I begin walking back to the place where Finn creeps along the wall, it is my turn to fall over my own feet. Feet that are sharp, dangerous, gleaming silver. feet that aren’t really feet at all.

Feet that had the power to kill.

I hadn’t seen Finn gather the array of weapons in his arms as we had fled, but the evidence stares me straight in the eyes – a knife, a sword, a spear – and to be within the same radius of exposure as these war playthings sickens me. My own axe ran cool to touch, and I only keep it for if I did not have it in my possession, I’d already be dead. But these? These are cruel. This is evil.

That wasn’t Finn.

I push down the dread that rises like bile in my throat, muster a smile as I approach him with the food. I’m fuelling the devil.

(Isn’t it a relief to no longer be the evil amongst your party?)

I reach out and take his hand – his bad hand, the one with one less finger – and allow his four ligaments to fill the spaces in my own.

‘What are you thinking about, Finn?’

No more negativity today. Please.

[Deleted]

[presto][/presto]

"I've never had a party,"

I don't respond to that, I'm not sure how to in all honesty. Me, he who never shuts up, (a dead man) I just kept talking about my party, and it's participants. Not the red heads, they scare me so, one of them is Patricia, I know that. I don't know how, I don't remember if I overheard it from Cha or our escort (Ripred, what is their name, I can't remember for the three days of life I still have). She was with Barnabas and Pearl the only other time I remember seeing her - and remember her I do. That was the last time I had any doubt that Stella was fully good, that was the last time two people saw past the whites of their eyes. That was the last time I saw Barnabas Stroud with both of my eyes.

How do I respond to that? Her first party in life is my tea party, and I don't think that's an honor, not anymore. Nobody loved her enough to throw her a party, not even one of those doll parties that are in Matilda's old photos of her as a kid with her dad and the stuffed bat. Nobody loved her like Jael loved me, like I used to love her. This party is going to be great though, I'll make sure of it, (I promise, Stella, from a dead man.)

"Do you think they'll show up?"

"Yeah, I think so," I think I grinned to this with my back still turned to her, but in the dark I can't tell and my ear is still ringing from the cave in, so in all honesty I don't know or care, "and when they come, they can bring their bags with them and we can make wonderful things from the odds and ends and trinkets we've all collected to make a constellation of importance." "Wonderful things," those things aren't in here anymore, I had so many with me, I had the paper airplane and Cha's map and Stella's love and somehow in a single day I screwed them all to hell. I soaked my airplane and used it as a baggy for a spare eye, I blurred whatever importance there was in Cha's map - I wouldn't know, and I wouldn't even begin to know where to ask because it's all just one smear at this point - and Ripred knows, and him only where I placed Stella's love in both her heart and mine. I'm stoic.

"We wouldn't have kept those things if they weren't important," maybe that's why your love for me is gone, Stella. "Don't you think that would be nice, Finn? Maybe they might have peppermint leaves, and we could make a fire and boil our water and drink tea." Is there any food at tea parties, surely there has to be, it's a party, I mean. I drank yesterday, I'm starving more than anything, Jael told me that mostly when you're homesick you're just hungry. Maybe that's why I'm hurt so badly. "Crusader can come, and we can talk to him and he can tell us about his family-"

He has no family Stella, no, we killed them, didn't we? The man from ten, Stella you bled him dry and I took the tiny blonde's life, that much we both know. I tried to kill Crusader though, didn't I, back before the cave in I nearly took off his leg. Why? Why did I do that, I could've been great friends with him, I feel. I fucked that up, I fucked it up so bad. I should've killed him.

(That is a heavy set of words, dead man.)

I shouldn't of invited him, Stella, "he gave me this photograph, you know? It was of his family," "family," I hummed the word, family, it doesn't even feel like I have one anymore. Even through this darkness I can see that Jael isn't as much as family as he used to be, he used to be a model for me. He was like, a replacement dad if that makes sense, but those old jokes we used to throw around don't even seem relevant, for I can't even remember them. (It's only been five days, dead man.) Only five days, and I've already forgotten so much about Jael.

His real name isn't Jael, I still know that ("I didn't have a token, but he did, and I do now, too.") His real name was Jonas, but I've called him Jael everyday of my life for so long that you'd think that I'd think that was his actual name, I don't know why I called him Jael, ("We can see Cha again, and we can stay with her because I think when we're with Cha, we're safer than when we're alone, don't you think?")

(No, Stella, I don't want to think anymore.)

Jael was just like our father, no matter how immature me and him acted, he was always, always, completely and one hundred percent mature, and I have no idea how that is. He'd counsel me like he was our father too, and he looked just like him too, except with less stress and frown lines. ("And Pearl can come too, but I don't think I'm meant to like her very much -") I think they were caused by me. In old black and white photos of my mother and father he didn't frown as much, he looked happier. Maybe it's because I wasn't there back then, back when Jael's tongue and throat couldn't complete a single coherent sentence.

("- or at least that's what Belle tells me, because she says she was killed by Pearl, but that can't be right, no, it can't be right, can it.")

(No, Stella, that's possible and impossible, somehow, I promise there's a way for it to be, but I can't think of one right now.)

Maybe I wasn't supposed to make it back, that fate had it that I volunteered because I was meant to die. I wasn't supposed to be happy and whole in this world, because my life was more evil than the boy's that I took place for. It hurts to think of that, but maybe Ripred didn't want me as badly as he wanted Mar- Ma- whatever the boy's name was. (It's hard to tell what's right and wrong, but I like that idea, and I think that is a right idea.)

"We won't know until it happens, Stel-"

I stop talking, mostly because she kept talking and I didn't want to interrupt. But I feel so hollow, standing there staring through the darkness to the ground as she talks because I'm not wanted, by the one thing that I've followed my entire life. The one person Jael and I followed has no room for me, and I can't feel anything in my body but my heart beating to the syllables of Stella's voice. I stop listening altogether, because I realize that my faith is just one giant maybe. And I'm left staring with one, starry eye at the ground.

"You need to eat."

"I can't eat before the guests arrive, though." That's rude, to eat before the guests arrive, that's what my mother always told me. I'm still after I say it, silent. I don't want to eat, not in this lifetime. I haven't eaten in five days, and I haven't felt happy since, I don't think. If I ate something, I'd be happy, (and we wouldn't want that would we, dead man?) Stella takes my hand, the one with four fingers and a gap where a ring is supposed to lay. "What are you thinking about, Finn?"

Family, Crusader's family or Jael, or your sister Belle, and my parents, both my mom and my dad. Food and proper eating etiquette, everything my mother's ever taught me, manners and manners and love, (well, where is it, dead man?) The ring that'll never be on my real ring finger at the day of the wedding that'll never happen, because that finger is lost to rats or in my bag. My bag, what's even in there anymore, there's my eye and Cha's map and-

(I don't want to think.)

"The paper in my bag," I'm facing Stella now, now that I know where she is for a fact and I'm waving my other hand in front of my empty right socket, "it has my eye in it, but it used to be a paper airplane." I choke on something,

"My brother gave it to me, before Cha and I left."

[ines izar d11a 🖤 cait]

I am hopelessly ungrateful.

I’ve never felt a need to hold onto much in life. Some days, the only thing that kept me going was the promise that when night-time fell, Belle would sing me to sleep in a voice that didn’t seem to fit within her cold demeanour she so carefully spent perfecting to present to the world. When she died, there wasn’t much of anything left at all. I realised all I’d took for granted – the unfortunate family that I’d been given – and I think that was what hurt me most of all. My own disregard of life and love.

Family. There’s an unfamiliar word that doesn’t seem to fit into my vocabulary anymore. Or rather, the definition attached isn’t one that fits the meaning the rest of the world would apply to the 6-lettered word. We make our own classifications to live our lives by, and a family in the true sense of the word is a privilege I lost years ago.

Only now can I realise I’ve found a new one, within the burning darkness.

Crusader’s photograph sits beneath my shirt, pinned to my chest, close to my heart. When I look at the strangers’ faces, I feel their judgement glare into my soul. (You killed Crusader when you sliced that man’s throat. You didn’t go back for him; you stayed with your killer friend. You don’t deserve to have a family.) I label them as a disagreeable aunt and uncle – I suppose that makes Crusader my cousin. A cousin who despises me, who no longer loves me.

Cha was a mother. I say was, because her absence makes me feel like a bereaved child, and death doesn’t warrant for the furthering of familial relationships. I think I would do almost anything to have her back.

There are no words to describe Finn. All I know is, somewhere in the mess of my definition, he belongs.

They aren’t much, but they are all I have. And after all this time, it’s still not enough.

(I am hopelessly ungrateful.)

Finn.

(But I’m grateful for him.)

I think I loved Finn Stoddard at one point. To call him anything else doesn’t seem right.

And the weirdest part is, I think he loved me too.

I don’t know when, or how, or why, but there was a time between the switching of collapsing hearts – whether they were mine, or Meghan’s, or Kirk’s – that my soul expanded somewhat, exercising muscles of my heart that hadn’t been utilised in a very long time. And yet now, when I look at Finn – watch him painfully adjust to life with one eye (why did you do that, why, you didn’t deserve that, you didn’t deserve any of this) and feel his fingers cautiously test their movements in my tiny hand as they, too, adjust to life with one less ligament – I have to adjust to life – and what short expanse of time was left of it – with a stranger. We’re both strangers in our own skin.

‘I can’t eat before the guests arrive.’

(They’re not coming, Finn.)

We’re both crazy. And we both knew that.

‘What are you thinking about, Finn?’

I don’t know if I’ll ever love Finn Stoddard again. I don’t know if I can, and I don’t know if he’ll ever love me.

Perhaps it is better that way.

‘The paper in my bag.’ I feel him shift to face me; I don’t dare let go of his hand. Even if it was just as corrupted as mine, and even if he couldn’t save me anymore.

‘It has my eye in it, but it used to be a paper airplane.’

Beat.

‘My brother gave it to me, before Cha and I left.’

The way he says Cha and I presents an exclusivity I don’t want to intrude upon. The words sounded right together – Cha and Finn – rather than Crusader and Stella, or even Finn and Stella. Cha should be here, not me. She would understand him better, understand the lives they'd both left behind in District 8 when they'd both volunteered.

His only connection left to home that hadn’t been severed is something sacred and special, and whilst I don’t understand how you can embed yourself into a single piece of paper, I envy him and his token – a reminder of his life before the arena.

(Why did you give that all up?)

‘Can you show me the airplane?’

He nods at my stupid request, too paralysed to move for himself. With a sinking feeling at the thought of letting him go, even if for only a moment (a moment is long enough for him to leave you again) I walk back to our discarded pile of bags, cringing at the glint of Finn’s blades that might soon hold upon them my own blood. It's a possibility only the stupid would be idiotic enough to forget to consider.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful for the dark than I am in that moment, for when my hand wraps around something spherical and gelatinous (it’s his eye, it’s really there, he really did that, why why why) it’s hard to stop my imagination from wandering, and even harder to stay upright on my own two feet (Finn doesn't have two feet anymore, either) – occurrences that would only have been more difficult to manage with the sense of sight and the grotesque view I had been spared seeing.

Maybe I’m not completely ungrateful, after all.

Scrambling back to where Finn sits, I cradle the paper-covered eye (why did you keep this?) and crouch next to him again, taking his hand once more to unravel the thin sheet of paper together.

‘I think it must be hideous.’

Not the airplane, no, that’s special and beautiful.

Your eye, Finn.

Why did you do that, Finn?

In the dark, I can’t see the folds in the paper, and the flashlight is back by the bags where an abandoned leg that I’m too fearful to approach again lies. But I imagine the crease marks in them, the product of hours spent folding and unfolding and folding again into the shape of a flying machine that had the potential to carry him away from the chaos. But that was a stupid thing to dream of.

We both knew what our lives had become. We both knew what we’d lost along the way. Too much.

‘Did you love your brother?’ Did you love him like I loved my sister?

Do you think we’ve lost them both forever?