Candids [Avriel/Arthur]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

a r t h u r .

"---"

Along the south corridor of the training center sat a set of rooms containing portraits of various victors, hung along each wall with rows of chairs assembled in the middle and a lectern at the front. Arthur guessed it might’ve been used for press conferences, or perhaps lectures when the games weren’t in session, though he hated the way the portraits rotated between scenes of the smiling victors in their prime, to their childhood, to flashes of them killing in games, to wispy, gray-haired ends (for those lucky enough to live so long).

He’d taken time away from the training floor both to get away from all the bruising sessions that left lumps and bumps along the edges of his body, and that he found every crevice of the training center far more interesting. He’d always traveled along the periphery. Often lines were blurred there, things left undiscovered or forgotten that favored the brave who were willing to seek them. And it gave him a good story to tell now and again, poking his nose where it didn’t necessarily belong.

Arthur dawdled along a section of wall that featured some of the first victors of Panem. From what he had read – and there seemed little available to him of victors prior to the fiftieth as it were – some where kids that’d been part of the rebellion, others just plucked from their homes at random. Each story held like a fine thread laced across a deeper tapestry, almost disappeared and unremarkable until one pressed close enough to find them.

He’d never been the sort to listen to the whispers of three and the rebellion, if only that he was so many generations removed, all the stories appeared too fantastical to believe. They were all dead and would stay dead, and to trudge them up now felt a morbid endeavor that only yielded heartache and anger.

Still, he’d taken out his camera and started on photos of the child from five, and then moved on to one from nine. Babe. He puzzled over the name as he focused his camera, snapping one photo and then another, he last name seemingly familiar, wondering just how long he’d held on before he’d crashed under the wave of history forgotten.

He took a seat in one of the plush folding chair and looked over his camera settings. He’d turned to get a glimpse out the glass door – Avriel, the most recent victor had been in the hall, and he snapped another few photos without question, if only that it struck Arthur to be so close to someone so recently put through the ringer.

“Yo. You ever know this guy?” Arthur had motioned to the portrait as Avriel came through the door. Maybe he should've been a little more respectful, or at least introduced himself, but the yearning to know escaped him so easily, he couldn't help but to ask. How connected was the past to the present? He wasn’t sure if the reason Avriel came in was to scold him for taking the pictures or out of curiosity, but he hoped all the same the victor would stay. “Eighty-something years ago is a friggin’ long time.”

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

It's different this year.

Guess that's to be expected.

There's cameras again of course but they can't follow him inside the training centre. Avriel likes to stand in the atrium, staring out the slightly opaque front doors at the shadows and forms that wait outside in case they might catch a glimpse of the victors or the tributes from this year.

He doesn't remember this from last year but when Avriel thinks about that time, it's hard to remember much about the days in the training centre. He remembers flashes of things, of smiles and whispered secrets but every day he remembers a little bit less. It's hard when there's no one else to remember it with.

Two weeks of his life, half-televised and spent with twenty-three others but now just his big secret; his burden.

Scout rattles its head and taps a little foot on marble tile, impatient.

"Mmm," Avriel says. "Allons-y."

We go.

Aneesa and Zane are somewhere inside, Avriel isn't one hundred percent sure what they were wanting to do today and he's got no interest in distracting them. Zane is hard to pin down and Aneesa is confusing for him, Avriel isn't really suited for any of it. He wracks his brain, trying to remember what Colgate did for him in his last few days but thoughts are muffled, blurred.

He remembers Julian holding his wrist in place at target practice and watching Mauve skin an animal only a few feet away from him.

And last night he dreamt about sitting in the dining hall, Blade sat across from him. Her mouth was moving in his dream but he couldn't hear her, the hall around them was too loud. It didn't matter.

It was just nice to see her again, looking so good like that. There'd been colour in her cheeks.

Avriel wanders down the hall a little bit of a ways past the training rooms. He hears noise coming from inside but he's been looked at enough for a lifetime and the other kids don't want his advice anyway.

"How'd you do it, what strategy were you following? Pretty hard to pin down."

"I-"

He doesn't know how to tell them– he didn't go in planning to make it out.

click. click. click.

Avriel flinches a little, the unmistakable sound of a camera shutter comes from his left and he turns to see one of the tributes sitting in the Hall of Heroes, clicking away at the portraits of victors on the walls.

He watches for a moment and then Scout enters ahead of him, waddling along through the rows of folding chairs. Av follows, eyes on the kid sitting in a chair directly beside Babe Adroxis' reel.

"Babe Adroxis," Avriel answers as he approaches, "There's a statue of him in the games square back home." Babe scowls out at them and then in the next moment, gives the both of them a cheeky grin before spinning a gun in his hand. "He kept a lot of people employed and people love him"

"And... Fleur, my fri– my district partner," he says, "She was his granddaughter."

Her name still cuts and Avriel winces the tiniest bit when he says it. He left fresh flowers on her headstone a couple days before the train ride to get here, but they're probably already wilting. Maybe Isabelle would remember to replace him, but Av doesn't hold out hope on that.

Avriel leans against the wall beside the portrait and stares at the boy from Three.

Bellamy and Mauve's District. That'd been one weird fucking stop on his tour.

He nods back towards the door, to the sounds of training happening only a few doors down, "Why aren't you with the rest?"

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

a r t h u r .

"---"

Arthur had never seen a Kodama up close before, and he turned focus his camera and get a snap of the critter as it bumbled around. He turned back to Avriel and gave a wave, as though he wasn’t talking to the most recent victor of the hunger games.

Not that he cared so much as Arthur couldn’t help but wonder what a weird twist of fate that he was standing there. A few weeks ago he’d been in a basement developing rolls of film of his friend’s cat summersaulting across a bed, now here he was pledged to die for some sort of loyalty to district three. (Spoiler alert – Arthur didn’t care about district three or doing anyone proud so much as staying alive and not embarrassing himself).

Babe Adroxis.

Must’ve been some sort of bigshot to get a statue for himself. Arthur couldn’t imagine getting a statue if he’d won. Somehow three felt the sort of place that wouldn’t admire him for surviving the hunger games. And he realized then how cruel he’d been to his own victor, poking fun at his good nature and genuine desire to help him and Tsara. An acrid taste filled the back of his mouth and he swallowed down. No one talked about Klaus anymore, either. As though the man had all but died after the sixty-first, a curiosity that’d never amounted to anything.

He stilled at the mention of Avriel’s district partner. Of course, they were still killing offspring from generations past. The capitol was bloated and lacking in any sort of originality when it came to cruelty. Their stagnant empire did its best when they could conjure up the scars of the past.

“Oh. Huh.” He offered with his head turned. He didn’t want to take in the victor’s sadness, didn’t want to catch whatever sort of grief the capitol trafficked in. He figured he’d have enough of that in the arena. Sadness could only serve to weigh him down, and so he wouldn’t let any get onto his back, not now.

“Well. They give us what? A week to figure out what the hell we’re doing in there. And I’ve seen twelve year olds squash people’s brains out with their bare hands even though they can’t hold a knife.” Arthur gave a shrug. He could do neither, but wandering around felt a better use of his time by far. “This place has all these twists and turns to it. Spots more interesting than getting tossed down on a mat or my ass handed to me in hand-to-hand.”

He turned back to the frames of past victors.

“Why? Do you think it’d be worth it to go back?”

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

"I don't know," he says, "It could be."

But it couldn't as well. It had for Avriel. Relearning target practice without a gun had probably saved his life. Julian stopping beside him that one afternoon as he'd been throwing knives and straightening his wrist had helped him kill. But that was also just luck.

Avriel has no illusions about that though others seem to. He's been called out to fight a few times this year and ignored pretty much every invitation. It's alright if they call him a coward for it; he is one.

"Or this could be more useful," he says, "Who knows what actually helps." The fact that it's Avriel here a year later when there were much more capable killers in his games is enough evidence that it's not always training.

When he looks down across the hall, he sees his own portrait hanging at the end of the line beside Flynn's. Maybe Arthur's picture would be hanging there by next weekend.

"Are you afraid?" he asks.

Avriel hadn't been. He'd only felt peaceful.