phantom. [avriel/oswald]

[doodle :)]

oz

Sometimes I find myself standing in those stairs
With eyes so blank and unsure
Realizing this is not where I want to be
And not where I want to go.

"They're gonna crush you, man!"

BAM BAM BAM. "Time for the big, big day!"

Oz's eyes jerk wide open. He stares at the blank wall of his bedroom, his cheek pressed to the floor, sticky with saliva. It always takes his brain a moment to remember where he is. Then the electric shot of fear, and he scrambles up to his feet. He does not change; he does not need to; he fell asleep in his training uniform again. He does not groom himself-- what's there to groom? Nothing if he dies. He darts out the door, practically barrelling into Gloria but hardly aware of her even as she squawks in protest; he flings himself down the hall, bolting into the elevator. Food? Who needs food? He doesn't need food. He's going to starve in the arena anyway, might as well get used to it.

He runs like a rabbit fleeing a hawk. But the hawk never leaves. It perches outside the warren, watching.

"Why?"

 His body is dead-weight.

Above his head, his scrawny arms tremble as the weight of his entire body drags down on his shoulders, his wrists, his fingers. He clings to the climbing bars as though they were life-lines, gritting his teeth. He is on the fifth bar. Last time, he only made it to the third. The first time he ever tried it, he fell down immediately because he couldn't grip hard enough.

"Why?"

The chords of  his arms feel like fire. Not for the first or last time, tears sting his eyes -- drawn from exertion, embarrassment, terror, hopelessness.

Panting hard, he releases one hand, reaches for the sixth-- The sweat of his palms betray him. His one hand slips, he clutches at it, manages to stop himself, but he's holding on by his fingers and not his whole hand, he's swinging slightly, body like a slow-moving pendulum of a slow-ticking clock, can't stabilize himself--

He falls.

And in his head, he hears his friend ask him: "Why?"

Why didn't you pick me?
Why didn't you pick anyone?
Why do you have to be here?

The net whips into his face and arms.

"You're the kind of person who gives up."

Sweat trickles down his forehead, drips from his nose. The floor of his bedroom rises and falls, rises and falls. His arms push against the floor, pushing his planked body up -- rising and falling, rising and falling. Lungs rising and falling, rising and falling. Everything shaking up and down, even the floor. Everything connected in a surging earthquake, rumbling quietly, cresting the earth and the creatures that walk on it with insurmountable tides.

"Why?"

He grits his teeth and seizes upward with the earth. It feels as though a spike is burrowing into his head, it wants to nail him to the rocking floor -- he won't let it.

He is not the sort of person who gives up, MRS. PRISCILLA.

Life's just a cruel joke and he laughs at it, that's all. If she knew what he knew -- but adults are so ignorant -- she would laugh with him, and know him better.

Above him, the hawk awaits with the hammer. It nails the rabbit's head to the floor and the rabbit cannot rise.

He crashes to the floor; his eyes are hardly closed when he falls asleep.

The bed is still made from when the Avox made it two mornings ago. Beside it is the nightstand, with the clock that reads 4:40 AM, and beneath the clock is the little lumpy drawing Mrs. Priscilla had given back to him in the Justice Building, with her quote beneath it.

"This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness."

Why are they all bigger than me? he had thought when he had watched the recap of the reapings.

Why are they all bigger than me? he thought at the Opening Ceremony.

Why is it all so much bigger than me? he thought as he looked up at towers that scraped the sky.

    In his sleep, he does not dream, he only has memories.

    He remembered once, he and his friends were having a sleepover at the Loft. Of course, Oz had told his mom that he was staying at Snuff's house -- his mom wouldn't exactly have been thrilled to know that her young son spent his nights in an abandoned warehouse. But the less she knew about him, the better, he figured.

She had clung to him so tightly, when they had made their goodbyes. Anointing his head with her tears.

    Morning had broken. The beams of sunlight pierced through the warehouse's shattered windows, fell across Oz's face. It felt like an embrace, it was so warm. His eyelids had trembled. He felt like a baby again, wrapped within his mother's arms, kissed as the sunlight now kissed him. The realization was what awoke him. He sat up in his sleeping bag, staring out. Gold. Rays of gold washed over the world as they burst from the horizon. Since when? It had never been so bright before in District Nine. Where were the clouds of smog to veil it. Where was the grayish darkness, the gloom that cast the eyes down to the filthy earth. Now Oz only saw the gold light and the sapphire sky, and it seemed to shimmer. He rose and went to it, his hand pressing against the glass.

    He looked at the overlapping gold, the overlapping white, the overlapping blue and the overlapping green -- and he felt, not though (for the ability to think this way is dead in this generation of Panem), that this was what life should be.

    It was the heralding of an ancient memory, sealed deeply shut within the human race, thought blasted away, just as everything always is.

    As his friends slept, he watched the sun rise higher and higher, the gold of the light burst brighter and brighter. And then the smog rolled in, for the factories had awakened and hacked it all out, a sickly mustard yellow, slinking across the slate-gray rooftops like cats. Gathering together into one great cloud. Turning the sky into a blurry haze that could not be seen. Turning the sun into a dull white star, a flat disc phantom shivering palely in the horizon. Eating at the light and the sky, until it was dusky gloom.

    And Oz knew then that life was not worth living. Yet he kept on living it, because his friends were behind him, and his mother was waiting for him to return by lunch, and Mrs. Priscilla expected an overdue book report before the semester ended.

    Such is how the children of Panem bear themselves. Oz was not special in his depression. Nothing about him is special. He only exists, as common people are expected to.

"You can't give up on this one."

Having given up knocking the third time, Gloria opens the door and peeks through. The light from the hall casts a white-ish slant across Oz's prostrate body. Her shriekish gasp awakens him -- because, for a moment, he looks dead.

She will not leave until he has brushed his teeth -- at the least! -- and gotten into different clothes. He slugs around his bedroom, eyes heavy, sliding closed, and sometimes he can't always open them without Gloria's insistence.

"For God's sake," she flings up her hands, "go talk to your mentor!"

"We need you here. Do you understand? Here."

He waits until nightfall before he goes to see Avriel. Per Gloria's insistence, he focuses on the more cerebral stations. Edible plants, fire-making, et cetera. Of course, he can barely pay attention because his eyelids keep dragging themselves closed. But he couldn't say he didn't learn anything either.

Shoulders shrugged forward, he trudges up to Avriel's suite, eyes raised, mouth pulled down in a grimace of dread. He knocks. Fidgets as he waits. He wishes he had brought a notebook, or a piece of paper and a pencil -- anything. Anything to take this weight off of him, just for one fucking moment.

Finally he's granted entry. "Sup," he grunts, doesn't bother to elaborate. He notices the window. How it's streaked with -- blue. Purple. Pink. Green. Yellow. And how the colors radiate -- not like the sun, but more like there are a bunch of tiny little stars, scattered across the city. He goes to it, and looks out. At the Capitol's cityscape, at how it blossoms pockets of color and how those colors haze into the deep starless night.

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

Things aren't quite real anymore, he presses his fingers against the window in his living room and the pane is cool beneath his touch. The world outside seems fuzzy, like a television channel out of focus. He hasn't left the training centre since they got here.

It's simple to go through the motions. Muted voices cut soft around him. A trainer leans over to whisper to a waitress in the dining hall. "Isn't that the victor that punched that talent show contestant in the face last winter?"

Yes.

But they worked it out.

He sits there and stares at his plate, his hand in his lap, still bandaged. The silk fabric from the shirt has gone all grimy from being wrapped around his knuckles and Gloria keeps telling him to get it checked out but Avriel's okay. He doesn't want help.

He nods when he's supposed to and does his best to guide Oz and Nowles on what to do but his throat is always tight and it's hard to look anyone in the eye. It feels like if he does they might notice the fractures and that'll be too much for him, he might cry.

He doesn't want that, he wants to stay like this, still functioning and capable enough to help his tributes. Once they're gone, that's when he can unravel again.

The room's darkened without him noticing it. Scout's inner light leaves a warm glow on the window beside him and when Avriel looks down at the kodama, it lets out three varying soft notes, the last one the littlest bit longer and just a little off. It's mournful. It's the same song it always sings at Fleur's grave.

"I'm okay," Avriel lies.

Scout rotates it's head all the way around and then rattles back into position.

Can't even lie properly to a mutt.

There's a knock at the door and Avriel's so used to ignoring Gloria's knocking that he doesn't register it at first. They knock again and he doesn't move from his place at the window. A long minute drags by. It's only when Scout mimics the next nock with another rattle that he understands that whoever it is, they aren't going anywhere.

Deep breath, so heavy that it feels like a weight is compressing his lungs, then Avriel walks over to the door. They've fixed it since last year, the lock no longer spits out keycards and they've taken most of the electronics out of his room to keep him from pulling everything apart again.

With nothing to keep his hands busy, that just leaves him to pick himself apart.

Avriel pulls the door open, expecting to see Gloria but finds Oswald on his doorstep instead. He steps aside as Oz pushes his way in and then locks the door behind him again, wordless. It takes him so much energy lately to speak that by the end of the day it feels as if he's all used up.

Everything aches, everything's tight, he needs rest and all he wants is to be left alone but he's a victor, all this is his prize.

Tongue heavy, he watches as the kid navigates his space like it's his own. Avriel lets him, knowing that he's going to remember this moment later. A week from now, maybe a few months, he'll lay awake and remember Oswald in his space like this and it will be like being haunted again.

He shuts his eyes and smiles the littlest bit. There is always another ghost.

"You wanna talk," Avriel asks after a long moment of silence, "Or just stare out my window?"

[doodle :)]

oz

Sacrifice, exactly!
I sacrificed
The ultimate sacrifice!
My happiness!
For my kids!
You bet I did! You bet I did...
And I'd do it again, too.
I'd do it over and over again.
Ha, that's my life!
Over and over and over...

"You're both going to die."

Oz's hands flex in and out of a fist, curling in and then opening wide so that the fingers stretched out and he can feel the space between their joints and can hear their crunchy pop. Sign of dehydration.

Outside the window the colors spun round and round. Like stars orbiting around each other, radiating a cool blue then a burning red, never in-between. The colors flash across his face, reflect in his eyes. Beyond those colors were the people that lived beneath them, lived in those colossal buildings, dressed in more colors than Oz noticed in a day. They were betting on him. Gauging if he would live.

Avriel had as well, in his own way, with the way he kept trying to remind Nowles and Oz of their own mortality. But everyone in Oz's life had. Even Snuff. Even Mrs. Priscilla. They all knew it.

He notices his reflection in the glass, radiating blue, then red. His hands seize into fists and tremble with the sudden blast of panic that surges through him. The lights spin round and round, he feels as though he's swimming through the light. He tilts toward the window but catches himself and pulls back.

"You wanna talk, or just stare out my window?" Av's voice cuts so quickly through Oz's reverie that Oz flinches. He thinks to turn around, but then stops himself, planting his feet in a sudden rebellious mood. Why was he even here. Not just in the Games -- but in Avs' room. What did it matter. Why did he come. He was right before, when he told Mya that it didn't matter how anyone died. What did it matter if he fucking slit his own throat for Snuff and Snuff's "whys." He was going to be the first to die, everyone knew it, he ought to just lie down, just lie down, just give up, it's what Mrs. Priscilla told him to do.

One moment he wants to bang his fist into the glass and then another he's staring into his own eyes, reflecting ghostly in the black glass. They look about as wide and dead and stupid as they did in the reaping. So fucking stupid.

His lips are so dry he must pry them apart; tries to lick at them, but there's no moisture there. He finds himself speaking, but he doesn't want to: "Am I going to die?" his voice is quiet, so soft he sounds younger than he is; a threat edges into it.

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

Oz doesn't say anything for a long time but Avriel doesn't push him. He likes when it's quiet anyway and sometimes the less a person says, the more he understands them.

And he remembers this feeling.

For him it was a little different though. He'd been relieved to be here, content with it all for the most part. Everything that had been on his shoulders for so long didn't matter, he was about to die. It wasn't going to be his problem anymore.

Then something changed.

It's kind of a blur now, but there was a moment a switch got flicked and he realized he didn't want to die. Maybe it'd been after watching Ariel get killed by Love. There'd been that ice cold anger, so hot on his skin that it'd burned him. Reece telling him he didn't deserve to live and then Areto-

his hand curls up tight into a fist at his side and Avriel winces. What little healing his skin had done is ruined with that. The back of his hand goes moist against his shitty bandage with fresh blood.

Once he'd killed Areto he had to win, there wasn't a choice.

He presses the bandage into his knuckles with his other hand and watches Scout perk up from its place on the windowsill beside Oswald. The kodama can probably smell the iron. Its inner light brightens for a brief moment and it stands up, mouth stretching across its face like a wound tearing open.

"Am I going to die?"

Oz's voice is soft but it cuts through the silence easy. It's the most serious Avriel's ever heard the kid sound. Vulnerability holds his tone teetering on the edge of a razor blade and Avriel drops his gaze from the back of his head.

What the fuck is he supposed to say to that?

He's run the numbers in his head over and over. Avriel's chances of calling it a win are better than his. For him, victory is if just one of them makes it home. He's got a two in twenty-three chance of winning, that's eight percent. Eight percent out of a hundred doesn't seem so bad but it gets a little more dicey when he calculates for just one of them.

Oswald's odds of coming back are less than Nowles. She's a legacy tribute, an Adroxis, whose been raised with a gun in her lap and has probably never gone hungry in her life.

He's got Oswald's chances of coming back at one point nineteen percent out of that measly little eight but he's not going to tell him that. Avriel walks into the living room and sits on the couch. The city lights shining in through the window paint a mottled scene on the glass coffee table.

The quiet is on his shoulders this time and it gets heavier by the minute.

"You might," he says. "Might not," because fuck if he's going to lie to him. Avriel is Nine's first victor in twenty-two years but it doesn't mean they have to wait twenty more to bring home another. He could get lucky.

"But if your tactic's to keep moping around like this your odds are rapidly going to drop," says the trigger to the barrel.

[doodle :)]

oz

And over and over
And over and over
And over and over
And over and over
And over and over
And over and over
And over and over
And over and over

Silence is Avriel's answer. It obliterates all noise. The city beyond the glass, Scout's rustling, the hum of the AC unit. Those do not exist.

The absence of sound is much like the absence of space. A gap of nothingness that, strangely, one can fall into. As he waits, heart pounding, Oz feels as though he is dangling from the climbing bars of the training center again, weakening, ready to slip into that abyss he's come to know. For that moment when all that pain that's radiating snaps him and he's swallowed into the nothingness, a limp nothing thing. But there's always the struggle before. The tension, the pain -- pain of the body, pain of the will, from the expectation. The expectation to do better, to try to save this, to remain a "something." The expectation that you can't, you're doomed, that you're going to be a "nothing." Even now, as they dangle at his sides, his hands curl as though to grasp the climbing bar, only to round into fists, for the fingernails to bite deep into the softness of his palm.

The silence goes on for too long. Oz's eyes roam away from his reflection in the glass. Into Avriel's. Into the hesitation there. The doubt. The quiet "yes."

Oz realizes he's already fallen.

"You might." The dubiousness, the wavering, as though Av's very voice totters on the edge--

But Oz is just a limp dish-rag thing, spiraling down. That void's swallowed all of him. All that pain he put himself through the past few days. Those "friends" that cut him off at the arms with barely a goodbye. Nothing. Just like him, just like he always has been, just like everyone ever in the entire fucking history of this bullshit country. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!

"You might not."

His head tilts forward. Falling on its own. Clunks against the glass. Its cool and smooth, and almost comforting. He stares down at the city and wonders how far up he is from the ground. How thick the glass is. How long would he have to fall until he hit something.

"But if your tactic's to keep moping around like this your odds are rapidly going to drop."

The words are a lash across the back. They bite in and drag itself across and tears through everything -- skin, bone, everything.

But -- there it is. The net at the end of the nothingness, that you never seem to crash into, but it always seems to crash up into you. The force that reminds you what you've succumbed to. The nothingness. The uselessness within and surrounding you. How you could have made it, if you were just something else.

Oz's eyes round. They stare into the black street below, tinged in hazy purple, flickering with sudden headlights.

"You're the kind of person that gives up."
"But if your tactic's to keep moping around like this..."

Why do they always talk like that. Throwing him aside. Cutting him off at the arms. Not knowing, asking "why", not knowing anything, not GETTING IT. His body was in pain, it WAS PAIN, all he knew was the tension in his arms as their shoulders tried to pry free of their sockets, the heavy emptiness in his stomach, the way his brain swam in its skull and how the world tilted whenever he stood still, how hard the floor was, how fucking hard the floor was and it was all there was to catch him, he was bruised, and yet they threw him away, they asked him "why", they didn't bother to think about what he was giving up, that he gave himself up, that he slit his throat so he wouldn't lose all that he had and all that he had spat in his eye and called him an insect, that he could have been worse, he could have been like twenty other kids -- THE MAJORITY, THE FUCKING MAJORITY, PRACTICALLY THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THIS PATHETIC SHIT-HOLE WORLD -- and FUCKING KILLED SOMEONE SO HE WOULDN'T HAVE TO BE IN PAIN. Because it didn't have to be Snuff. It could have been Kevina. It could have been any one. But he chose himself.

And he was the kid who "mopes," who "gives up."

Burn them.

The sides of his fist ram into the glass, into his own reflection, the impact pushing him away from both as he totters around in awkward, mincing steps, the mincing and the tottering so much a product of his training diet that it's become a part of his natural gait and he doesn't notice it. The large, rounded eyes find Avriel, catch the image of him in their dark manic circles. "Moping?!" his voice pitches up. "I'm busting my own ass out there! I'm fucking killing myself! I'm working harder than ANY of those cunts outside, harder than fucking Adroxis, oh, but she's a fucking Adroxis, so of course EVERYONE roots for her! Shit--"

He staggers forward, the energy of his own outrage enough to overwhelm him, and he has to take a breath before he continues. His round eyes slit, become like daggers as he stares into Avriel's eyes. He wants that man to hurt. Hurt as much as he does. He wants everyone to hurt -- Priscilla, Snuff, Avriel. Bring them all down with him, if he was to go down at all. His voice drops. Yet the venom is more obvious. The initial indignation had been primal -- the trapped animal kicking away at the sky, flailing to get free. This anger was far more human. Far more calculated. "Shit, I'm probably working harder than you. You're just sitting on your ass over there, while I get my nose nearly broken on a daily basis." But the human anger fades fast, giving away to memory, and he's shouting again, not at Avriel, but for ears that linger outside the very city itself: "You want me to die! You all do!"

He slumps against the glass, trembling, panting with the exertion, eyes shutting for a moment because the room's started to spin for some reason. Yet the catharsis of his expulsion settles in quick, a dull, almost soft comfort. And it makes him feel powerful. Like he's a something that can still cling on. His eyes are challenging as he looks back up at Avriel. Wanting to be hurt again, because only then can he hurt back.

elegant

[gamemaker kelsier]

He sits there in Oswald's anger and maybe it's meant to burn him but it sort of just feels like a balm. Feeling comes back little by little.

Oz's fist finds the window and Avriel blinks. He runs his fingers over the bumps of his raw knuckles, back and forth as the tension in the room climbs.

Then his tribute turns on him, gone feral. That's a good thing though, that's what Avriel wanted. Finally a hint of something past the numbness, he reaches out and wraps his hand around the stem of it so tight that his knuckles go white.

He's bad at moments like these but that's okay because at least he knows that right? And he still tries. It'd be so much easier not to try, so much easier to lie there in apathy and let Oswald and Nowles walk themselves into death. There'd be no pain that way, no attachment.

It isn't the first time he's been used as a verbal punching bag and it won't be the last. It's easy to take anyway, this venom slowly sinking under his skin from fangs that have been sharpened for the very first time. Oswald' just yelling to hear the sound of his own voice. Victors are a certain breed, most people know that by now and even though Avriel only won two years back it's fair for the kid to assume he's just like the rest of them.

He could be.

Become a machine, a smiling waving toy like the rest of the victors, on the television kept automated by a steady flow of drugs or drink. He could just do that, fill his mouth full of sleeping pills and chew until the nightmares stop. They could use him as they like, sew strings to his skin and treat him like a marionette. Avriel realized early on that he hadn't won anything good by winning the hunger games.

All he'd done was sign his name in blood on an unbreakable promise. Oswald believes himself trapped but Avriel is watching him from the other side of thick, iron bars, an iron collar with a short chain held by the high council's taloned fingers around his neck.

Death is the only way out of that.

Thing is, Avriel doesn't particularly care. They can do what they want with him, as long as the people he loves are safe. They can put his face on every poster in Panem and call him their golden boy, they can take him apart piece by piece and fill him up with so many circuits and wires until he's more prosthetic than human. Part of him is already dead anyway, buried by the lake in the arena.

You never come back whole.

But that's no pep talk for a kid on death row.

He tries to remember that while Oswald rips into him but it isn't easy. Avriel slips his hands into his pockets to try and hide the way that they've curled into fists. This kid has no idea what he's been through, doesn't seem to care either.

Should he?

His fingers loosen up and Av shuts his eyes for a moment.

No.

Avriel's life has nothing to do with Oswald, not yet at least. Maybe if he comes home– No. He opens his eyes. He's been through this already with Zane and that was a fucking mistake. Avreil couldn't help thinking about it, about having Zane over for dinner and building a family. He can't do that with Oswald, just not again. There are only so many times a heart can break before it can't fix itself right?

Oswald finally goes quiet and Avriel does his best impression of a smile.

"Feel better?" he asks, "Or you got more shit to take out on me?" Maybe it's a little bit cold of him. Oz is just a kid in the end after all and thirteen year olds get a free pass to be shitty right? Avriel was just lucky that Duke's always been sweet but he can remember being a fucking tool himself at that age.

He leans forward, gaze on Oswald.

"It doesn't matter what they think," he says and gestures at the window, "Doesn't matter what anyone thinks. When I was reaped with Fleur Adroxis, she was all anyone could talk about. Does it look like I gave a shit?" Avriel stands and crosses to the window to stand in front of Oswald. Scout's inner glow brightens the littlest bit as he draws near and the Kodama stands as well to greet him. "Fuck 'em, Oz."

"I wasn't anyone's top pick to be here either, don't think I was even in their top ten for victor but here I am anyway." he says, "Just keep on punching up until there's no one left to punch you down."

Scout's head turns ninety degrees to the left and then rattles slowly back into position in agreement.

[doodle :)]

oz

Sometimes I find myself standing in those stairs
With eyes so blank and unsure
Realizing this is not where I want to be
And not where I want to go.

Teachers tend to lie, but most people do. It's just strange for teachers to do it. There's an absurdity to a teacher's hypocrisy; the idea that the so-called arbiters of truth should spit out lies, same as the rest. What made it worse was how asinine their lies could be. "Just ignore them." "Things'll get better." "If you had just walked away, you wouldn't be in this mess." Things that don't need to be said, really.

Then the way they can talk to a student. How easily they can inspire self-loathing. The way they peel off the humanity of a child in one statement, one glance, poison the a child's mind with shame. Assassins of self-esteem.

Oz never had the impulse to respect them because of it.

That's the sort of person Oz thinks he sees. Who he wants to see. Because if Av is just another Mrs. Priscilla, with her hands that hold him back and the piercing eyes that want to peel him apart and that shrill condescending voice of hers, then nothing Av can say will be real. Of all the teachers, Mrs. Priscilla was the worst offender, because she tried to make her lies pretty. "Words connect us," "individuals can connect with any literary character through shared experience," "turn the other cheek," "the Capitol wants you to be thinking about this," "in sorrow, find happiness." Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The wordt of them all.

He gets now why Mya could get so angry all the time. It
elevates you. Whereas he had been wallowing in the muck of reality, she soared to the highest sense of self Oz had ever experienced. The electricity in the veins, the pounding of the heart. He relishes it, he wants to embrace it. Why shouldn't he be like this all the time!
He was born into a world that craved his self-destruction, that waited at any turn to kill him, whether it was in factory machinery or a gang's bullet or an arena. Sure, he'll self-destruct, the way bombs do! He'll take them all down with him! All of them!

What good were they to anyone anyway.

All he needs is a chance -- but that's the cowardice still in him, the depressive, wanting to slink back into the sludge Priscilla called a life. To mope, Avriel called it.

Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.

"Feel better?" Av asks. Oz's eyes flicker. His anger and his hunger erases any inclination to think. "Or you got more shit to take out on me?"

Oh! Oz has the entire world to take out on Avriel, if he's just going to ask for it! And he can do it. Av wants to light the fuse? Then the bomb'll go off, why not. He edges towards the victor, uncertain, there's not a clue in his head what he's going to do, only that there's a fire in him and it needs to get out-- Avriel leans forward. The slight movement snuffs the fuse, for a moment, and Oz jerks to a halt, blinking stupidly, as though lost in a daze.

"It doesn't matter what they think. What any of them thinks." For a moment, Oz doesn't understand what he's just heard. The words all come to him in an electrical rush, and he feels them more than hears them, and the sensation leaves him clueless but wanting more. A sort of elevation -- but why an elevation, if the anger is easing? "When I was reaped with Fleur Adroxis, she was all anyone could talk about. Think I give a shit?"

Fleur -- girl in red -- he remembers.

And then Oz's eyes fall on Avriel's arms, and he wonders which one is the prosthetic.

For some reason, it never occurred to him that Avriel could feel pain, be encumbered, be tossed aside. Maybe surviving the Games makes a person look immortal, godlike. Above it all. 

"Fuck 'em, Oz."

It all clicks then, what Avriel is trying to say. Why the newfound elevation, that is somehow higher than anger, more thrilling, more like flying. He listens intently now, intent, his heart stuttering in his chest as he notes the way the victor moves his mouth, the cadence of his voice, his mannerisms as he speaks. The way Scout nods his little head like an old sage.

Oz stares at the space between him and them, uncertain of it.

Teachers are supposed to lie. They never tell you what you need to hear. They're supposed to peel you like an orange and eat you. To them, you are nothing but another product, a material, needed to be reshaped and twisted round into a profitable material. Another cog in the machine. They only tell you things that make you twitch with the other cogs.

He ought to spit out what this teacher has told him, right back into his eye, and let that evil anger back into him. Become addicted to it, it would be easy, God knows he had every right to it.

But what lie has Avriel told him? Would Priscilla have ever said those things to him? No. She'd tell him nothing. Nothing like "keep on punching up."

Oz sinks into that truth and it floods his heart.

He lurches into the space with his odd, mincing step, passing through it at a quick pace. He flings his arms at Avriel's neck; the embrace happens like a car-crash, lingers for a second too long before Oz jolts away, because the thirteen-year-old boy suddenly realizes that
he has shown emotion and he can't have that. "Sorry! Sorry, sorrysorrysorry," he mumbles, brushing himself off as though he's fallen into dirt.

He's just tired. That's it. Tired and hungry. That's why he's so...not himself today. If he slept better, if he ate better, things would be different...

The sudden yowl of his empty stomach interrupts his fidgeting. He stares down at it.

Oz peeks up at Avriel, eyes curling with the pang of self-consciousness. But there's a new warmth there. A quiet, pleading trust in this new truth-teller.

"Do...you have any food...?"

elegant