take my soul, wipe it clean /eden + avriel

[tick 12a / calla]

e d e n .

"i am the escape to
something that's worse.
what was it like
to feel in love?"

The first house isn't Avriel's.

He has no intuitive feeling. He doesn't feel drawn to it or not drawn to it. He just looks through the window first, because he knows that other people live around here based on what Kacey said. The little bead swings in Eden's hair and he remembers her looking very studiously at the magazine picture of Avriel, squinting at it and saying "He's a lot hotter than Colgate" with all the graveness a pre-teen can muster.

So when Eden cups his hand against the glass to look through the window and sees what Kacey had described as old man shoes, he ducks back down to press himself against the side of the house and move on to another one.

He's been in Nine for five days.

Maybe six because he'd passed out sometime between day two and day three and he's still not quite sure how much time he lost then.

He's tried not to sleep much. If he closes his eyes then 10 will show up, or Eurydice's people will finally catch up to him, or without the stimulus of just seeing his heartbeat starts to sound too-loud too-big in his chest and he has to smash his fists against the ground to drown it out.

Three knuckles on his left hand are split from it.

Eden crosses the yard of the house with the old man shoes into the one beside it. There's dew on the grass now, it's still dark but probably not for long. Eden hops over a bit of wire fencing that's collapsed and circles the house. The curtains are all closed on this one and he stares at the front door. Tries to decide if there's anything special about it.

He needs someone like Isaac for this. Eden doesn't know shit about doors. He doesn't know shit about anything. There's no difference between oak and mahogany besides oak hurts a lot more if you're thrown into it. A dessert fork and a regular fork do the exact same thing except if you stab someone with a dessert fork you have to be a lot closer.

He needs someone like Isaac for this, because Isaac knows about fancy rich shit. Except Isaac's dead now. He died instead of Eden and it's something that Eden can't think about for too long because it makes the space between his sternum and his ribcage burn.

So Eden just stands there in the dark like an idiot and he glares at the maybe-oak maybe-mahogany door.

The first and only step in his plan was to find the right house, but he can't even do that.

The burn is his chest comes back.

It licks against his insides like a candle flame, so sudden and sharp that he's suddenly worried that someone will spot the light glowing from under his shirt.

He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't have a fucking clue. The only step in his plan for the past week has been putting one foot in front of the other, and then it became trying to keep his head from being smashed in - accidentally or not.

Maybe Avriel isn't even here and Eden will have to wait another month. Maybe he stayed in the Capitol or he went to Four with that new victor or he went back to the trail in the woods and fell off of that cliff because Eden wasn't there to catch him like last time.

Maybe he's just asleep.

One of the streetlights down the way flickers on and then back off again.

Eden would love to be able to sleep again except he hasn't for about fifteen years and he doesn't think his body is about to change its habits anytime soon. He didn't even spend one night in that bed the Le Roux's gave him. He slept on the floor beside it in hour-long intervals and his brain deemed that good enough.

He's tired, though. He's tempted to go back to Four and get stabbed in the chest just so he can rest again.

He crosses back over the lawn, and he's about to scale a higher fence when there's a flash of movement that catches his eye.

He freezes instinctively, ice along his spine, body tense and fingers curled against the chainlink.

Cluck-cluck, the flash of movement says.

Eden stares at it.

'It' is a little chicken, white splattered with bits of black, and when Eden doesn't move from his place by the fence, it squawks.

Eden lurches forward, finger against his lips like the chicken will instantaneously learn human gestures and somehow understand what that means. It just wiggles its head at him, bobbing back and forth to watch him with beady little eyes. It's claws drag against the dirt softly, like a bull about to charge.

Echo's never going to believe this.

But the chicken seems to get tired of their stand-off real quick and it picks its way towards Eden, who watches it like someone might watch a bomb. It stops and pecks at his shoe. Eden bends over to swat it away and it seems to take that as permission to peck at his ankle instead.

Cluck-cluck, the chicken says again, mocking him in some chickeny language that he doesn't understand.

Eden picks it up because he doesn't know what else to do. There's a coop he can put it in but it's on the other side of the yard and now that the chicken's been elevated it's seemed to calm down. It preens a little, shuffling itself in Eden's hands until he's holding it in his arms instead.

Cluck-cluck.

It looks smug now.

But Eden has shit to do. He has shit he needs to figure out so that he can do the shit he has to do. A chicken is not part of that equation.

He only takes one step towards the coop.

There's a faint click and suddenly light fills the yard. Eden immediately recoils and the chicken in his arms squawks at the movement. It pecks at his fingers, disgruntled, as the light turns the grass green and yellow. There must be a motion light there on the porch - not sensitive enough to pick up a chicken, but definitely sensitive enough to pick up a chicken-thief.

Not that that's what he is. The chicken glares at him, but Eden's not going to steal it or anything.

This is your fault, he tries to tell it with his eyes.

Cluck-cluck, the chicken says.

[gamemaker kelsier]

a v r i e l .

"lost in the blue
they don't love me
like you do"

He feels the rain coming before it falls.

The air itself feels heavy, the burden of carrying the weight of water bringing the sky to its knees, Avriel pushes all the windows open and waits for the rainfall.

It takes some time.

He kneels in the upstairs hallway and digs dirt out of the grooves in the floorboards while he waits, fingernails chipping as he pushes a sponge along harder than he has to. But he can smell it again, that dark, rich scent. Iron cut with aching warmth.

It's impossible to get the blood out.

Part of him knows it was never here, this is the wrong house. This place's only story is the way it sat empty for decades, waiting for a Victor to claim it.

This house never knew his parents.

"You woulda liked them," he tells it, "Mom used to sing all the time."

Nothing serious, just hymns and things while she worked. You could hear her from anywhere in the house. Sometimes he'd walk into a room and his dad would just be standing there, eyes shut, listening to his mother's voice coming from upstairs.

Somehow he'd forgotten about that.

A drop falls on his hand and Avriel sits back on his heels.

The rain has finally started.

It lasts for two days.

The chickens stay in the coop he built them a couple weeks back for most of it, only coming out every now and then to ruffle their feathers and peck at the lawn.

Avriel sits on the porch, a blanket across his lap and his gun tucked in under his knee, out of sight but for just in case.

It's nice to sit and listen to the rain on the roof, The air is cool, welcome after the endless heat of August. And the heat's all there's ever been, it's hard to remember what winter feels like.

"Hmmm," he hums softly to himself and tips his head back against the wall. It's been hard to think lately, as if he's thought about everything there is already and now there's nothing left.

Or nothing matters.

It might not anymore, there might be nothing left for him to do. For the longest time, the only thing that's been keeping him going is knowing that Billie and Duke needed him, but now they don't, they don't even want him.

All he's got left ahead of him is the tributes and that feels fruitless too. After only two years, Avriel's already sick of losing them. No matter how strong willed they've been, no matter how much time he's spent with them it's never been enough to save them.

The only future left for him is one where he ends up as bitter and twisted as the rest of the Victors and Avriel doesn't want that.

"Maybe we should leave, Scout," he says.

The corner of the blanket shifts and then falls away as the Kodama stands up and then looks back at Avriel with two sunken voids. After a moment, it opens its mouth and lets out this long, mournful note that almost sounds more like a howl than it does a kodama's song.

"Yeah, I miss them too," Avriel whispers.

The rain stops eventually and the world goes dark again. Avriel sits up slowly, safe in his corner of the front porch, eyes on the street, same as every night before this one.

It was about a month ago, a few days after Billie left when Avriel first saw the figure on the road.

Three in the morning, weak-eyed from exhaustion, he knew he was just seeing things. Legs too long, sunken eyes, dragging a spear behind it so that the tip scraped against the asphalt, he knew then it was just another monster in his head.

That first night it'd stopped at the place where the trees began and simply stared at his house from there until the sun rose. Avriel had sat there, still for three hours, watching back but the thing had never come any closer.

The next night it was there again, but this time it'd stopped a couple feet closer, at the spot where the sidewalk started up again.

The next night closer.

Last night it'd stopped at the front gate.

And his heart doesn't race when it starts its slow walk from the woods today. Avriel simply sits there, watching as it moves, shadow clinging to it, making it hard to discern any real features. He knows it isn't really there, he's ninety percent sure that it's not.

But maybe the dark just decided to come different this time.

"Is this normal?" he whispers, "Do all victors deal with this?"

Or is he the only crazy one?

Hard to say, he isn't on speaking terms with half of them and he might as well not exist for the rest. Bad at making friends, Avriel was always alone at school, his mind goes blank at the idea of talking to people.

But his phone is still in his pocket.

He slides it out slowly, not taking his eyes off of the creature as it moves towards the house, each step deliberate.

The victor's numbers were pre-programmed into his contact list when he got the phone and after they won, Nixie and Talon both showed up too. He scrolls, hands shaking, as the creature's shadows snuff out the street lamps, as the dark opens the gate to his house and steps onto his walkway.

His thumb hovers over a name.

But then the dark stops there, two feet down the path.

For a long moment, Avriel just stares at it, heart beating so loud in his chest that he's sure the dark can hear it too. It makes no move forward, all it does is stand there, staring.

Avriel's eyes fall on the spear still grasped loosely in its hand. Now that it's closer, he can see that the tip is dark with blood. The smell of it is in the air, it mixes with the fresh scent of the rain and ruins that for him too.

"What do you want from me?" he asks.

"To go home," Aspen says.

Then she lifts the spear and throws it at it him, driving it deep into his chest.

He sits up, gasping, reaching out into the dark in front of him. The clock beside his bed glares bright red numbers over the white sheets tangled around his legs.

Avriel bends forward and cups his head in his hands. Sweat slicks his hair back, and runs down the back of his neck.

"Merde," he mutters.

That dream again.

He turns his head slightly to look at the clock. Four in the morning, he got abut three hours of sleep. Still more than he'd had in days, but not enough.

He staggers to his feet and goes to shut the french windows that lead out to the balcony. It must have finally stopped raining some time in the night, the night is cooler than it's been in weeks.

Scout is curled up on window seat, little inner light pulsating slowly in the kodama's sleep. Av hopes its dreams are better than his.

He's about to turn away when he spots movement in the yard, a shadow on the lawn, lit by the porch light.

For a moment, he freezes. Something cold wraps its hand around his heart and squeezes.

"It was a dream," he promises himself, but his voice wavers. It's getting harder and harder to tell reality and dreams apart. His gaze slides to the chicken coop. The doors are open, the chickens loose already for the morning. The shadow doesn't belong to any of them.

Av doesn't stop to dress, he grabs his gun from the drawer in his bedside table and slips down the stairs, heart now in his throat.

"It's okay, you're okay," he whispers to himself but even as he says it, it doesn't feel true.

He pushes open the front door carefully with his shoulder, finger on the trigger of the gun. It's been years since he shot it, years since he had to raise it against someone in self defence and those days have been over for a long time.

But he never got rid of the gun.

A figure stands there in the half-light of the sun trying to rise, but his face isn't in the light and all he sees is his chicken in the would-be thief's arms, clucking indignantly.

Anger, cold, moving fast runs under his skin like an electric current. It feels like he's never just going to be left alone. Avriel raises the gun and points it at the intruder.

"Don't you know what lives here?" he asks, tone icy, "Or do you just have a death wish?"

He releases the safety with an audible click.

"Put my chicken down and I might let you go."

[tick 12a / calla]

e d e n .

"i am the escape to
something that's worse.
what was it like
to feel in love?"

The chicken seems to notice something's up before Eden does.

He blames that one on the fact that he's pretty sure he's still got a concussion. The porch light swims through the grass in a way it's not supposed to, like it's a billion little snakes trying to get at his ankles. But he hears a shout, one of the snakes rears back, and his breath stops.

The chicken seems less phased and takes the opportunity to squawk in his face again. It makes him jump; caught between freezing and moving and then completely tensing up. He moves all jerkily, like a puppet being controlled by a child, and the chill that hits his ears makes him hunch in on himself.

Ever since he got that spear through his left lung, his breathing hasn't been the same. It's like being screamed at again, being slapped and falling and never being the same. He's twelve years old and huddled under the stairs nursing his first broken arm.

It was the thunder that used to scare him before the yelling started.

His feet are in the grass but his shoulders are up against a concrete wall somewhere. He's listening to that stupid 88th rerun that Echo used to watch upside down on the couch because she knew Eden hated it.

He thinks that if he were anyone else he wouldn't even recognize Avriel.

He really does look like shit.

But the light behind his head gives him a halo, and the way it hits his hair makes Eden's chest feel fuzzy because it's the same way the bathroom fluorescents lit him up as he sat above Eden and stitched up his forehead.

The animal part of his brain recognizes the gun, but the rest of him doesn't. The rest of him remembers being on a balcony with Avriel ages ago and trying to give him his jacket because it was cold and Avriel had, for some hopelessly indecipherable reason, decided not to dress for the weather. He wishes he had that jacket now, just so he could wrap it around Avriel's shoulders and tuck himself inside, right up against his ribcage so he could steal the warmth there.

The chicken echos the sentiment; clucks once more and then settles further into his arms. Eden tries to nudge it out, slowly puts it lower to the ground so it can hop away, but it just turns into a pool of feathers and nips at his thumb once before tucking its beak down. Eden tries to just open his arms so it drops out, but its talons dig into his arm and its wings flap against him once before he gives in and holds it again.

He keeps watching Avriel though, there's something in his face he doesn't recognize because it's never ever been directed at him before.

Something in the back of his mind shifts at that, like a switch flipping on without warning. It's some kind of survival instinct that he'll never be able to shake. Ever since that first day with the warehouse and the pennies, he's been more predator than boy.

But he remembers lying in that hospital bed with Avriel's wrist in his hand. He remembers holding it loosely and some sick part of his brain telling him to squeeze tighter, just to see if he could. He remembers his fingers locking up like it was physically impossible.

Maybe there's just something in his coding that was hiding; someone broke into his consciousness while he wasn't paying attention and wrote in you cannot hurt Avriel Baptiste.

So his hackles raise and his fists stay down because that's what they're meant to do. His shoulders brace but he stares at Avriel like a doe, with wide, wide eyes, and he doesn't move.

He didn't know that the chicken was Avriel's, but obviously it is. It makes sense anyways, with the way it stubbornly clings to him.

Avriel wants his chicken back but Eden doesn't know how to get it off him so he just kind of holds it out stupidly.

If he gets shot, that's fine. He's had worse before and he'll probably have worse still. His mind's screaming at him, but Avriel could put a bullet in him and he'd still try to give him his chicken back, Eden wouldn't hold it against him. Eden's the one that won't put the chicken down, he's the one explicitly defying the threat. He's the one that tried to kill Eurydice's daughter and got her nephew instead, then ran before any kind of real consequence could find him.

Maybe this is that.

Maybe Avriel's his repentance and that's why his body's held out for so long, so focused on finding him with no follow-up plan. The gun's in Avriel's hands and the chicken's in Eden's but he can't stop looking at him, watching him, following the way the light cuts across his skin. If it's the last thing he sees, he thinks that'd be okay.

Maybe this is that.

[gamemaker kelsier]

a v r i e l .

"lost in the blue
they don't love me
like you do"

It's never just anger.

The handle of the gun is cold in his hand, it feels foreign there, out of place now. He doesn't like the way his finger rests so easy against the trigger, doesn't like the way he can visualize the kickback in his head already and his left foot is already slid back, ready to take his weight.

It shouldn't feel this easy to hold something so deadly, shouldn't feel this easy to point it at someone.

But he can hear his heart beating in his head like a drum beat – da dun da dun da dun – and his tongue is heavy behind his teeth. Sweat pools at the back of his neck, his skin is cold and clammy. His hands are shaking again, maybe rage is just weaponized fear.

Freckle squawks in the intruders face, her wings flapping over fingers covered in black soot. He can make out the tail feathers of ink on the back of his hands despite the ash, can smell the faded metallic scent in the air before he sees the bloodstains.

Is he awake or is this another dream?

They step forward and Avriel's grip tightens on the gun, "Don't," he says, but there's an uncertainty beneath the command.

He knows those hands.

"Eden?" he breathes.

But it doesn't make sense.

Even as Eden steps forward into the light cast by the porch light, it can't be him. Scar, healed ridged and pink over wide brown eyes, hair swept back, dirty, bloody. Avriel draws in a shaky breath and leans back on his left foot, the recoil hitting before the trigger was ever pulled.

It can't be him.

But joy anyway, filters through him, the grim line of his mouth turns up into a confused grin for a brief moment, then fades again.

"You're not here–" he utters, and shakes his head.

Can't be.

It doesn't make sense.

"You're not–?"

He shakes his head again, gaze tripping over him, trying to look at him all at once.

It's been a little over half a year since the last time Avriel saw him in person. Eden was half-alive on a hospital bed. Eden, self-proclaimed 'not a career' but destined to be one, fighting in some stupid career tournament. Name called at the 90th reaping and then the television went black. Because Avriel's fist had splintered the screen.

Now he's standing here, gazing up at Avriel with Freckle tucked under his arm, past the barrel of the gun he's got pointed at his face.

And if this were a dream, this is when there'd be a knife through Avriel's heart or a spear through his throat, this is when he's supposed to wake up.

Nothing happens, Eden just stands there looking at him like a deer in the woods and Avriel just stares back.

Here in the twilight, light skimming the tops of the trees, brushing light over Eden, over his arms, his chest, his mouth.

He looks like hell.

But the pockets of it that Avriel's been to.

His gaze falls a little, lands on the gun between them, pointed at Eden. Part of him forgets for a moment, hears the sound of water on rocks despite being far from the river, the wind through the trees. Crackle of firewood. Areto's voice in the dark.

And Eden looking at him like that.

"Oh."

Suddenly it's hard to see. His shoulders slump, then his knees hit the ground. "I... I'd never–," he whispers.

"Psychopath."

Words get stuck in his throat and a tear slips slow down the slope of his cheek. He busies himself with the gun still in his hand, pushes the safety back on and opens the chamber, turning it over in his grasp to let the bullets out into his palm.

"I'd never ever hurt you," he says, tone desperate, "I–"

Like he didn't kill Areto, or lie to Billie and Duke.

"Psychopath!"

His parents, Blade, Ariel, his Imo Theo.

People fall like dominoes around him.

He squeezes his eyes shut, fingers wrapped so tight around the bullets his hand shakes from the strain. He keeps it to his chest, curling in on himself as if to protect himself. It's hard to think, hard to breathe, there's a vice around his ribcage and suddenly Eden is so much more out of his reach than he's ever been.

He's only ever hurt the people he loves.

[tick 12a / calla]

e d e n .

"i am the escape to
something that's worse.
what was it like
to feel in love?"

A wheel turns in on itself, two spokes break loose, the set of them roll down hills the way children do after it rains. And they don’t quite fit back together, the mud stains them until they don't match, but they could still work, they could if someone wanted them to. The jaggedness could be sanded out and the glue could be replaced.

Judge, jury, executions; salvation often takes the least-likely form.

Is that really why?

It started simple.

It would be nice to see him before Eurydice catches up.

Blink, and then the thought became a wildfire; something tumultuous, inescapable, something that sparked into a flame and licks between the fourth and fifth ribs. Thought became want and want became need. A boy became a man, dying from thirst and slowly starving, turning in on himself until there was nothing left but two splintered bones, shifting, crawling, dragging themselves across the ground.

When the body stops, the mind keeps moving. When the mind fades, the body takes over. They'll get there eventually.

The chicken in Eden's arms goes quiet, bumps its head against the underside of his chin.

Eden breathes like he punches, the pull-back of it jarring, the reel exhaling in a waltz-like three-count. The bullet never comes and Avriel says his name, makes it brush against his eyelids and Eden opens them. He doesn't know when he closed them - just that the porch light stings and it takes six seconds for Avriel's face to take form again.

Eden, he says, wonderfully and terribly.

'We need to call you something,' Eurydice says, terribly and wonderfully. The number burns and she glances at it like she knows.

Avriel smiles and the light gets brighter, fluorescent turns into incandescent, he glows warmer. There's a fleeting second of the smallest supernova and it gives Eden the slightest edge of courage he needs to step forward again.

Avriel's smile drops.

Eden's never been to Nine, he wants to tell Avriel that. He wants to tell him how different it is from One, how similar it is. He wants to tell him that the roads are a darker colour and that the streetlights are taller and that there's a little shopfront near the fence that's still playing reruns of his interview, that there was a little kid standing there watching, not because he was a victor but because he was one of them. He owes them nothing but they owe him everything. He wants to tell Avriel that his district loves him even if he doesn't love himself.

And Eden -

They look at each other for long enough that the motion light flickers out, smothering the yard in ink again.

The gun clicks but Eden doesn't flinch.

"I'd never ever hurt you." Avriel whispers in the dark.

Eden's gut instinct, the first thing he thinks - But I'd let you.

And then he recoils from it, the oldest part of him clashing against the newest, when 10 had screeched I'll bring them back your hands and Eden had kicked out his knees in a way that said you won't even get the chance.

Because he has been hurt too much already. He has been the wheel and the spokes, let himself be broken and then set loose to raze some distant forest. He is hurt now, in ways he can see and in ways he can't. He's so done with hurting that it makes him ill, he takes hold of the feeling and forces it to bend and twist, shapes it into something that's not quite a shield and not quite a sword.

The house behind Avriel looms over them and swims but Eden has that pebble in his shoe still, and he still remembers the way Avriel had thrown it at the blackbirds to make them scatter.

There's one in the topmost window now, pecking at the glass, but the light's still out so Eden can't see it, just hears the tap-tap-tap that echoes against the inside of his skull.

Clare had grimaced when she'd seen the way he hit his head against the warehouse floor, but that had been weeks ago.

The light triggers again and Eden's on the porch steps, letting his knees fall on the last one so he's in front of Avriel, so he doesn't have to stand anymore because he's tired and the chicken shouldn't be heavy but it is, the same way Eden's hands shouldn't be so heavy but they are, when he finally pulls them free from the pile of indignant feathers and rests them face up against the wood slats.

The chicken tries to peck at them but Eden's hands shift, quicksilver through molasses, a beak hits the wood and then it gives up.

You won't even get the chance.

[gamemaker kelsier]

a v r i e l .

"lost in the blue
they don't love me
like you do"

His hand opens, the bullets fall to the floor of the porch with a clatter and roll in little half-circles until they get trapped in the wood seams.

The gun falls next, handle first, barrel pointed up, aimed right back at him. He flinches as it hits the floorboards but the chamber is empty, he emptied it himself. All the bullets, they jump as the gun connects, then clatter back down and it's so loud. Avriel squeezes his eyes shut, shoulders cave inwards, fists unfurling in front of him, palm up.

His heart blooms from his mouth, pumping air, trying to at least. It gets caught somewhere between lung and throat, lost as him. The only sound that he makes is a soft cry, woven behind each panicked breath in an effort to hide it.

And how pathetic he is.

His legs give and his knees, bruised already, hit the floor too but he barely registers the pain of it. The light above his head waxes, then wanes, breathing with him in short little bursts. Too sporadic. The dark swallows what light doesn't make it back and the little halo Eden stands in warps, half-eaten by the dark.

Avriel knows how hungry the darkness gets, how it can eat everything until there's nothing left anymore.

And there's nothing left anymore.

Eden must not actually be here.

This has to be just another dream, Eden can't be in Nine.

Just because Avriel's been thinking about him so much, that's got to be why, because there's no way, "You can't be here," he whispers in a strained voice between laboured breaths. His fingers curl up against the floor and he digs his nails in, scratching them against the wood grain, collecting splinters beneath his skin.

Wake up.

Hot tears run down his cheeks and he doesn't know anymore if it's from the pain or the exhaustion because Billie isn't here to tell him when he's hurting and Duke– well, Duke won't even look at him anymore and Avriel isn't very good on his own. With no one that needs him, he's been rusting faster than usual.

An obsolete bit of machinery, just continuing on day after day with no reason.

Please just wake up.

"Why would you?" he asks, curious, throat ragged from the breathing, tone in ribbons, raw.

Licks his lips, dry from the heaving, his stomach; empty.

"Why would you be here?" he whispers.

Avriel.

He looks up through his hair, and the porch light has flicked off but Avriel's eyes have adjusted now and there's Eden still, motionless, just a silhouette in the dark with Freckle tucked under his arm. And there're no features, no words (never any words) just a shape the size of Eden exactly where Avriel wishes he would be.

Like a dream.

Open your eyes.

And he wants to laugh but all he can manage is this weak, half-hearted thing.

He was supposed to be okay on his own. Even if everyone was gone, if he'd managed to push them all away, he had to be okay. Because he'd stolen Areto's future, promised Aspen that he wanted to live, fought Reese tooth and nail for the privilege, but it's all so much harder than he thought it was going to be.

You're losing it.

The shadow moves and the motion light flicks on again, brightening Eden's features, the ink on his skin, the curve of his mouth. The way his hair falls over the scar on his forehead from the stitches Avriel did that no one bothered fixing. He steps closer and then he's on the steps of the porch in front of him and Freckle is on the ground again.

And the shadows fall away.

Eden falls to his knees and they're so close now, Avriel could reach out and touch if he wanted to. He can see the way Eden's chest rises and falls with each breath.

And the porch light reflects off his face like firelight and he's too close all of a sudden but so far away at the same time. And Areto's asking him questions about Billie and Duke as she guides his knife into her own heart and there's a gun deconstructed on the porch steps between them laid out like his knives on the cloth and Eden's already bleeding and the dark is at the front gate.

Avriel squeezes his eyes shut again, recoiling, "Don't," he chokes out, "Please."

Freckle squawks, indignant and Avriel opens his eyes, his hands held out in front of him, palms out as if to guard himself.

There's Eden, palms laid flat, but for one pinky folded over.

Ten more minutes, he whispers on the Le Roux balcony, breath clouding in front of his mouth. And Eden looks so small in Avriel's winter coat.

Eden holds nine fingers up in answer.

Vaguely, he becomes aware of the hum of crickets, and the scattering of stars still in the sky above them in the twilight. A breeze runs over them, waking the tall grass in the yard up, ruffling his hair like a gentle hand through it.

And the night is cold on his bare skin.

Avriel reaches out and his hand finds the curve of Eden's jaw. He holds his palm against the warmth of his cheek and runs his thumb over his lower lip, waiting for the moment it all disappears and he wakes up but it doesn't come.

He can count the number of days he's spent with Eden on one hand.

But that's never seemed to matter.

"You came all this way, for me?" he whispers.

[tick 12a / calla]

e d e n .

"i am the escape to
something that's worse.
what was it like
to feel in love?"

Eden stills at a touch.

There's an association with Avriel now - a finger on a pulsepoint, a thumb on a palm; a chest under an ear as the room sways back and forth and back again.

It shakes him sometimes, contrasts itself against the rest of the slideshow in his head. He still feels his shoulder slam against concrete when someone bumps him in the street. The noise of the Le Roux house made his ears ring and he wanted to recoil but he couldn't because that was a weakness and showing a weakness like that was worse than death for a kid like him.

That file he stole burns a hole through the bag on his back. Eurydice might have a copy somewhere, he doesn't know, he doesn't care. It's just a tangible thing, something he can pull out at night so he can know what he made up and what he didn't. The pictures are tucked away in his pocket because they feel like something different, but he's got some of the words down already and he knows what most of the numbers mean.

He knows that there's three and a half pages that have every fight result and every behavioral correction. He knows that there’s a note from during his first year that says he never shuts up and then it’s never mentioned again.

He knows because he remembers it, the same reason he knows not to wave when he's next to Echo because all she sees is the hand raising in the corner of her eye. He remembers it.

The world turns again, the colours shift warmer.

Eden leans into Avriel's hand.

He's got a complicated relationship with touch, he knows that, he knows its not going to go away. But he craves it, like a flower craves sunlight. The feeling claws at him, twists around him like a vine; how dare you be selfish for the first time in your life. How dare you want. How dare you want to be treated gently, like something that matters.

Weapons get polished and sharpened, but they don't get held. They get used and then put away until they're needed again. They don't get stitched up so tenderly or cradled so softly.

Weapon to weapon, tool to tool; Avriel sounds like something splintering, Eden raises his hand. He presses all five fingers to Avriel's chest and feels the bass thump of his heart. He breathes to it.

He takes Avriel's hand from his face, gentle underneath the soot and the blood, and puts it against his own chest. Holds it there.

He came here for Avriel, but he came here for himself too. He came here for Echo and Steel and Fray and everyone that he ever hurt. It's a good plan in the end - he disappears and doesn't bother anyone anymore, he gets to see Avriel again and make sure he hasn't died by falling off a cliff or eating a poisonous mushroom or freezing on a balcony.

Eden needs Avriel more than Avriel needs him. It's a peace of mind thing. Even if he decides this is the last time they see each other and he sends Eden away. This will be enough, this moment right here.

He moves painfully slow, telegraphing his movements like an old shutter camera. He leans forward until his forehead rests against Avriel’s, and he stays there. His hair slips - too long now, Eurydice would hate it - and it falls across them like a curtain.

It blocks the chicken out. Blocks the rest of the yard out too. It smells like smoke and dirt and it somehow makes the space between them darker without really darkening it at all.

He's real, they're real, this is real.

Eden breathes through it, holds himself still and easy and tries to count Avriel's eyelashes even though he can't see them. It's cold, but he can't feel it, not like this.

[gamemaker kelsier]

a v r i e l .

"lost in the blue
they don't love me
like you do"

It's cold.

It was always cold until now but it's the first time he truly notices it. A shiver runs down his back as he kneels there, hand against Eden's cheek, his thumb running back and forth over Eden's lip, it catches on split, dry skin. There's a bruise under his fingertips and it shouldn't be this easy, to hold someone so broken.

But it is, like it's always been with Eden, it's simple.

He opens his mouth, I missed you he wants to say. But that just seems obvious, of course he did and it's hard to speak through his panic breathes. He tries to form the sound anyway, thumb still over the split in his lip, pressing slightly, "I-"

Eden's palm, flat against his chest, Avriel's breath catches on the chill of it, his hand, warm, Avriel's chest, freezing against it in the night air. But Eden's fingers pressed against his skin and he leans into the touch and he's forgotten what it's like to be touched like that, so gently. He forgets what he was going to say or maybe it just doesn't need saying.

"Ahh," he whispers.

Then Eden's hand wrapping around the back of his, taking Avriel's hand away from his cheek, he curls it slightly in Eden's grasp as if he can somehow keep the shape of him.

Then his fist is uncurling beneath Eden's direction and he presses his hand flat against Eden's chest.

He understands without him having to say anything.

"Thank-you," he says, voice wavering as Eden presses his forehead to his. He smells like ash and iron. His heart beats under Avriel's hand and he can feel the warmth of his skin through the shirt. Campfire and forest, but for the first time in minutes he isn't afraid.

He shuts his eyes and breathes in, trying to match Eden's purposeful breathes. His heart beats beneath Avriel's palm, measured, firm. Gradually, he matches his pace and the tension leaves his shoulders. The space between them grows smaller as they lean into each other, propping each other up in the half-dark.

"Thank-you," he says again, soft this time and he slips his free hand around the back of Eden's neck, holding him in place even though he's better. Maybe he can anchor him there.

If this is a dream, maybe he can hold tight enough to keep him.

He opens his eyes and looks into Eden's. Dark in the space between them but he can still read him well enough. He remembers what pain looks like on him.

Avriel pulls back slightly and cups his face gently in both hands, worry furrowing his brow.

"You're hurt," he says, "Where?"

[tick 12a / calla]

e d e n .

"i am the escape to
something that's worse.
what was it like
to feel in love?"

He holds Avriel's hand against the sound of his own heart, fingertips pressing into the skin where all the smaller bones are, they feel so fragile there. Eden is suddenly, unreasonably glad that it was only a foot Avriel had lost and not a hand.

He can feel a pulse, but he doesn't know if it's his own or if it's Avriel's. He knows it doesn't matter either way. He doesn't mind the sway of it. Eden's heart knows how to draw out Avriel's by now, he's done it before, learned it like it was a natural thing. He breathes so purposefully that he can hear each inhale between them, he can feel the way it moves the air.

He's started tracing an E absentmindedly on the back of Avriel's hand again, just like that bathroom floor and just like that hospital bed. He grounds himself in the four little lines and ignores the way the chicken is still there staring at them, staring at what must look like a mess. But it doesn't matter because Eden knows he's no better; he has his own problems, he has his own things that wait in the dark and make his chest change tempo -

The man with no face with 6 at his feet, blood on 6's face that matches what's on the floor and the table and the hem of the man's pants. 'Thank you', 6 is saying after each punch, choking on his own tongue to try and get the tone right but he never does. Eden stands there and watches until they've both forgotten him, nothing he can do because he can't get the tone right either.

- but this is something he can do. He knows how to fix it.

'Thank you' 'Thank you' 'Thank you'

He imagines taking all his good thoughts and pushing them into Avriel's head through their contact, like scooping water out of a capsized boat to give it back to the ocean. He'd liked the one little glimpse he'd got of the ocean in Four. It'd been storming, violent and crashing, soothing in the way he knows horrible things are to him.

But he doesn't give Avriel the nice-horrible things and only tries to give him the nice ones. He gives him the memory of the pigeons on the sidewalk bobbing for corn instead of the one of them fighting for it, picturing it over and over again until he can visualize it passing between them like saltwater tide.

He shakes his head against Avriel's voice, face barely moving from his grasp. He's hurt, but it doesn't matter, not anymore. There's no salve on earth that could make him feel better than this could. He'd kneel like this forever if he could - lax, cradled. He stays selfish in a way that he wouldn't have before.

'You came all this way, for me?' Avriel had whispered to him, amazed at it, and the guilt of the sentiment hadn't washed over Eden until he felt Avriel's hands and his arms and his face. He doesn't deserve to be selfish like that, but he wants so badly.

He starts when Avriel moves, his hand shifting up, curling, warm on the back of Eden's neck. It should feel suffocating, but it doesn't. It takes the memory of something horrible, hand on his collar, around his neck, in his hair, turns it into something nice-horrible. Turns it into something nice.

He thinks maybe Avriel got his thoughts after all.

There's a smudge on Avriel's forehead from where it touched Eden's. It's the first thing he notices when he stops staring at Avriel's eyes - dust and soot and dirt and probably someone's blood. Not Eden's though. He feels like he'd be able to tell. But it feels wrong to look at. Eden's seen the clips of Avriel in the Arena looking half dead, everyone has, but now, with this little bit of ash on his face, it turns painful.

He did that.

Eden presses his thumb against it, wiping back and forth like it'll do anything but make it worse. It stretches bigger from Avriel's eyebrow to his hairline before Eden gives up.

He sinks a little further down when his knee gently gives out. It clicks once against the porch step and he hisses, catching the sound between his teeth as he keeps staring at the mark he left on Avriel.