call me under {kirito}

[Arrows]

You were made to make it hurt,
Disappear into the dirt,
Carry me to heaven's arms,
Light the way and let me go.

Where are the throngs of orange trees or the orchards of apples? They do not exist in this city of steel. Beneath a furling funnel of light smoke, the train went swiftly speeding back without him. A District desolated from devastation and explosive emotions awaits their newly crowned child. Kirito will not stand by her side to see the swaths of swaying banners or to be blinded by the incapacitating illumination of Capitol cameras. Instead as she welcomes in the world she has won through blood, he will descend away from it. The older Victor questions whether he will ever see the young girl again.

The morning melts night amid an absence of usual anarchy. There are no children cowering in corners or children crying for comfort. The tributes have gone now to their final slumbers and Kirito's children sleep soundly under the eyes of Ikaia and Ma. It all reminds him of the end, of the crumbling of the clock tower. Of those final days, drifting through dust in search of another soul by then sunken in number to single digits. The loneliness of life is nothing compared to the loneliness birthed from the burden of murder. In life, there are others around you even in silence. In the arena, as the numbers dwindle, you know with all too much certainty that the emptiness is the direct companion of Death.

Kirito's hand twitches, the lamp on the table beside his bed breaks. Oasis is awake in an instant, but Kirito cannot bare to bring himself to meet her stare. He stands instead, his knees nearly buckling with every individual step he takes. The walls waver in their dance to nausea, but the Victor wretches his eyes shut.

He feels for the bathroom.

He enters.

He vomits.

He hates his body, hates his brain for betraying him.

He vomits again.

Several sets of hands arrive and help Kirito to his feet. The nurses set to to supervise him until, well, until today. He's been in the hospital for only a few days, but at last the wait has withered to zero. The nurses help him wash and settle into a new robe before returning him to his room with Oasis sitting in a chair by his side. He can feel their fingers flowing over his skin, but he is beyond the body they prick and poke. Kirito doesn't recognize the man they're preparing for surgery. He won the Hunger Games, a Quell, he's supposed to be an icon of strength. He was a mayor, he's supposed to be someone his Dist rict can look towards for hope. He's a husband and father, he's supposed to be able to support his family in every way. He's a doctor, he's supposed to be healthy. Yet, he is none of these things.

He's a fading clock tied to the ticking of a heart monitor.

Sometimes he wonders whether that's all he's ever been, the living version of the clock that died where he buried the boy of softness and met the tribute of terror. Even as the years have past and his gentleness has guided him again, he felt the clock ticking within him. Perhaps just as Charlie and Warren had reduced their tower to rubble, he has been destined to follow its fate. Yet this is the optimistic output, the one which shelters him from the true sorrow that suffocates his thoughts. The question which really runs him into the Earth is whether twenty three died just so a sick boy could die twelve years later. His thoughts are quieted by a rush of ice.

"Mr. Miristioma, it's time to take you up."

Fingers fold into tight tethers around each other as eyes of brown meet eyes of brown and worry warps them both. Using a thumb, Kirito traces the gold outline of Oasis' ring finger. Beneath the blinding white light of the hospital, Oasis' hair is almost as iridescent as it was all those years ago beneath the light of the moon in the District of the sea. How he wishes they could still be dancing together there now. Maybe that's where he'll go when his mind's suspended. Lips connect, a whisper follows.

"No matter where I am, I will always be thinking of you. I'll see you soon. I love you."

The gurney moves with a jostling start, spotlights of white passing overhead. Unfamiliar faces walk unaware in a world away from the one on the edge of the unknown. But in the shadows between the lights, there is familiarity. First it's Rowan, then it's Rhyme. Then there's Imp and Olivia, Orion and Circe, Sue and Wyatt, Elya and Nat, Gunner and Stella. A sea of faces from the shadows, the ones who have walked with Kirito since the start of it all. And they're all here, watching the one with their life head towards another fight. And right before the double doors and the cold compressed operation table, there are two final faces.

Kiena, her eyes still searching for the stars of that night.

The Light.

&

Kiri, his eyes still hungry for the power he killed to capture.

The Dark.

Kirito's hands shake. Which will emerge? Or will both lose to the call of Death? These question accompany Kirito onto the table, beneath the most blinding light of them all. A voice asks if he is prepared, but his attention is elsewhere. The last image he has which mixes with the scent of gas is of the private gallery full of all twenty three faces. They speak in one voice.

"Welcome."

Dear Agony,
Just let go of me,
Suffer slowly,
Is this the way its got to be?

Lyrics : Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin

[Arrows]

You were made to make it hurt,
Disappear into the dirt,
Carry me to heaven's arms,
Light the way and let me go.

A midnight moon dances in a sky of speckled stars, a single scream of screeching wheels slices through the silence of night. The train car is empty, shadows slipping over its undeniable similarities. Kirito knows he's been here before, sat in the very same seat he sits in now. But his conscious knows such a scene is not possible, for these trains now lie in ruin at the bottom of their rails. However, his certainty is fading with every passing second. A hell hound's pelt portraits his head just as before, and the sun is beginning to bleed into the sky. Delirium directs the narrative of Kirito's existence, and he falls fully into its fingers.

Dawn breaks darkness and brakes erupt into the air. Doors heave open and all movement dies in a sudden shuddering stop. Hesitation hangs over Kirito's features, fear for what exists beyond the precipice of the doors. But a gun shot cracks through the air louder than the canons all tributes tremble beneath. Kirito stumbles towards an exit, his body bending awkwardly before angling out of metal and into dust. Another shot shatters all segments of silence moments later and the trains suddenly surge with new found life.

A single whistle rides on the back of the rising sun, a high c nearly sharp, yet just as splintering. Kirito crawls up from the dirt to find a face belonging to the garden of Hades. Owls emerge from above and again her flesh is torn to tethers. A single strand of black hair falls across Kirito's face from a feather and a droplet of blood drips slowly down his nose. Hands cup over ears that are absent as the sound of the feasting flock fills the air. Kirito's body quivers and his eyes follow the running rivers of red rushing out from between the demons' treacherous talons.

Another gun shot. The birds take flight. Suddenly the carnage is gone.

Imp Stole sits staring at her old ally with her legs crossed.

A hand falls upon Kirito's shoulder, Rhyme's voice follows softly.

"Let it go, she's gone. You've already done this."

Imp ignites and her funeral pyre sends small embers adrift into the sky. The Victor remembers, it's the one he built her after carrying her body away from the fight with gun shots ripping through his skin. But the shadow of Sue Tate in the distance swirls with the smoke into non-existence. Rhyme begins walking away and Kirito only turns his attention to her for a moment, but in that time, the fire vanishes entirely.

"Come on Kirito, you have a few more people to see."

A constant rhythm dances to a mechanical melody while bountiful brown hair falls to the floor. Cold cream and sterile gel glide across the exposed scalp of Kirito Miristioma now unconscious on the operating table. Hands hover in various stations, but a single set moves with complete confidence. His surgeon marks his skin with lines to be precisely followed, so specific that she doesn't even let a finger falter from fatigue. She finishes and requests a scalpel. She looks out towards the empty gallery one last time. Her hands are prepared.

She makes the first cuts.

As always, her slices are exact to the lines she has laid. Thus, she stares now at the final barrier between herself and Kirito's brain. She asks for a drill and it whirs on a pitch of high c. She makes swift work of the skull and the easy part is over. Now she goes after the beast.

"Here."

Rhyme stops, her eyes angling towards a forest of power lines. Kirito's heart races instantly, he recognizes this spot too easily. He reaches for her hand but she pulls away.

"No, we've already said goodbye. And this was my stop."

Her hair is like a halo encircled by the sun's embrace. She's still smiling when the train blares and the knife comes swirling out of the sea of red. Kirito catches her in his arms just as he did last time. He lays her in his lap the same way and plants a soft kiss onto her forehead. His mind flashes for a second to Anastasia, how similar she is to Rhyme. But the image fades and so does the girl with her head in his lap. Her final words are the only things different from her original ending.

"No more goodbyes."

She's gone. Her weight and her body as if they were never on Kirito's lap in the first place. Tears fall into the dry dust of the 70th's soil. Kirito can't understand what's happening, but when Key arrives he knows to follow her. Kirito recalls the arena being bigger, but they reach the mouth to the sewer in seconds.

Precisely placed pillars of electrodes meander through the maze of Kirito's exposed mind. An air of intensity radiates through the operating room as each piece of the tumor is mapped and measured. After placing the final pole Kirito's surgeon requests a condition update, the results are within regular rates. She takes a moment to steady herself and to assess what the measurements reveal about her prey. The silence of the pause ends with her words.

"Now beginning the extraction."

A sense dread overlays the damp darkness of the sewers. Kirito recalls the nights he spent shivering beneath the manholes searching for the stars and the faces of the fallen. Every step he sinks deeper into the shadows, closer to a kind of evil energy. But her red hair is the lantern which he follows. Follows past the place where their lips locked. Past the place where two laid dead in the water. Kirito trods through the murky memories unaware of where she leads him before the shadows swallow her whole.

A different phantom emerges with steps rippling across the stained water's surface. His eyes are cold copies of the one's in Kirito's head, yet they hold not even an ounce of compassion. He is the captor turned captive. The demon which arose from the darkest depths of humanity. He came to deliver Kirito to a crown. He came to slaughter and to survive. And when the Game was won he was locked away in a dungeon to die. But Kirito knew he never fully faded, for in every human there is a darkness within the hollows of their heart. Kirito just happens to know the name of his.

"Kiri."

Fingers of frost suddenly constrict around Kirito's neck and lift him from the water. A force of primal fury flings him like a stone across the water's surface. A sinister laugh of something far from human echos through the cryptic sewer system with death as its drive. Kirito tries to stand only to feel a sudden sharpness sear into his legs. He falls face first into the sewage and sludge. He fought this fight years ago, yet somehow now he falters. A foot forces his face beneath the water and breath becomes impossible. Amid Kirito's thoughts panic sets in as water begins to replace air. His mind sends him visions of the sea. How far he is from his dance with Oasis.

Several screens shift to red as short sirens surge out of small speakers. The operation room goes from calm to chaos in an instant. Hands fly across features of Kirito's body performing procedures of movement while Kirito's main surgeon watches with worry. The tests confirm the screams of the speakers. Both legs have lost function and now she has to find out why, and fast.

Another monitor begins to cry for attention only seconds after beginning to handle the first errors. Kirito's surgeon stares sternly at the sight of Kirito's slipping vitals. Whatever is causing her patient to crash she needs to address it immediately or she knows where she is heading. To a press conference, to a confession that the Victor of the 70th Hunger Games is dead.

Her fingers fly into action.

Pictures of the past and of the present blind Kirito's brain with every failed breath of water. He can feel his body beginning to break, his will  for existence beginning to ebb. But in those final moments his fingers find hold of something in the sewer, a knife. They christen its discover by driving it into Kiri's leg. Suddenly air surges into Kirito's lunges in a violent sputtering of sounds. Meanwhile, a sadistic scream splits the lips of Kirito's Doppleganger unsatisfied with being injured, but Kirito knows how this ends.

Rushing forward, Kirito drives his knife deep into Kiri's eye. One moment Kirito revels in the death of his demon, and in the next he is staring in complete confusion at Orion Hammerfell. In sync with his past self, Kirito falls away into the sewer's slosh just as Orion's body falls to the floor away from him. The once tribute-turned-victor stares at the knife protruding from the other boy's eye and at once it's as though all the warmth in the world has been devoured. But in a blink, the body vanishes. Key stands in its place.

"No more goodbyes."

She repeats the words of Rhyme and Kirito is left staring in silence. She reaches out her hand and he hesitates. He took Rhyme's so willingly and look where it got him. But his resolve to reservation is out matched by her patient persistence. He takes hold of her hand and the sewer explodes into space. Stars stretch across its walls and galaxies glimmer in its once rancid rivers. Yet the series of stars they stand at the center of are not random, they are the exact ones both he and Key shared beneath a bottle of booze. They were the beginning, and yet they're being shown to him where it ended. The last place he ever saw Key alive.

She steps forward through space and through time. He can see it now, the moment she kissed him to find if any feelings still stirred beenath Kiri's skin. Her lips touch his now and it's different. Now he has the feelings of twelve more years of living. He wonders whether she can tell. But by the time their lips part, she's gone and she's taken the stars with her.

"Alright there, check the reflexes again."

Two hands begin to test the balls of Kirito's feet and each confirm a reaction. She was able to reverse whatever had caused the issues earlier, but she'll have to wait to know whether it affects Kirito's movement in anyway. For now, she takes in her victory and continues her work, the hunt is nearly over and she can see the conclusion in sight.

Kirito's frail frame pulls himself up and out of the sewers and back beneath the storm covered skies. From memory, he expects the rains to pelt against his skin and for the winds to drive him towards Wyatt and the whirring factory. Alas, the rain merely falls lightly as the clock tower crumbles in the distance. In response, Kirito walks for what feels like hours through the mud before coming to the ruins of the tower. There are no other faces, no other souls.

There's no other goodbyes, they've all been said.

Kirito sits slowly against the cracked glass and broken handles of the clock while looking out over the rainstorm. Last time a boy went running from the finale with souls tethered like shackles to his ankles. This time, a man sits alone watching the rain wash away the battles of before. He lifts the hell hound pelt from his head and rests it on a nearby broken brick. For once, Kirito actually feels at peace.

A sudden shaft of light breaks through clouds and through Kirito's contemplation. He stares up towards it unafraid. The hovercraft has come to take him, and he's ready to return to the world. 

Dear Agony,
Just let go of me,
Suffer slowly,
Is this the way its got to be?

Lyrics : Dear Agony by Breaking Benjamin