where'd all the time go / baptistes [88th homecoming]

[gamemaker kelsier]

The train ride is the same but this time different–

everyone is looking at him.

Avriel stares out the window and pretends that they aren't. He rewinds time in his head and remembers passing that old empty red barn on the outskirts of Eight but it was different coming from the opposite way.

It's hard to remember leaving.

Fleur had been there too, this time she isn't.

He tries to think about what she'd say if she was but it's hard, he saw her briefly in the Bloodbath and then he never saw her again. He never even really knew her.

It's still easier to think about Fleur than about whether or not Duke and Billie will be happy to see him.

He knows it's a possibility that they won't be and he's trying to prepare for it, he knows he's been gone a lot longer than just three weeks, that the boy he was disappeared months ago.

But he loves them, he stayed for them, they have to know that, right?

The train starts to slow and Scout sits up on his lap and stretches. It's been interesting to study the kodama over the last few days and understand its patterns. He's noticed that Scout prefers naps to long sleeps, sort of like a cat. Sometimes Avriel wakes up in the night and the Kodama is sitting there watching him but in a sort of rest state, inner light pulsating slowly.

Like a therapy animal, Scout always seems to be able to tell when Avriel is anxious and the little creature has yet to leave him alone.

He reaches out and taps it on its head.

"Duke is gonna steal you away, I think," he says softly.

What if they don't even recognize him?

Avriel scoops Scout onto his shoulder and stands up, heart rate speeding as the train slows. Robbie glances up at him and Av waves a hand, "Bathroom," he mumbles.

This is all he's wanted since he left so why does he feel like throwing up? His feet take him down the train and into another seat facing the other side. Home looks like home as it approaches but Avriel is changed, not the same as when he left.

He might not even fit there anymore.

[[nyte]]

And just maybe Duke felt like Avriel was dying long before they called his name. He remembers watching a ghost shamble onto that stage, a stranger wearing his big brother's face. There was a war in his stomach, anger managing to rise above the all-encompassing grief. That he could feel it at all was telling of how long he'd been mourning Avriel Baptiste.

It should have been a lonely three weeks, but it was just more of the same. He busied himself with scribbling recipes in his little red book; enough to replace all the ones he'd had to tear out because the memories they held also belonged to Av. He had insisted that Billie taste test them all, a burden his older siblings had previously shared. If she minded, Duke figured she wouldn't tell him. He's always been a little bit selfish because they've always let him be.

He found it startlingly easy to keep on living, probably because Duke has become well accustomed to ignoring all his missing pieces. If anything it was nice to know that an answer was on it's way. Even when sitting on the couch, white knuckled and voice hoarse from begging his brother to keep fighting, he never lost sight of him. Whether Av lived or died, at least Duke would know.

And it's gone all awful and rotten inside of him because he knows that's a terrible way to feel.

He's chewed his thumb jagged and bloody by the time the train arrives, shifting from foot to foot in an attempt to expel nervous energy. His other hand tugs on Billie's sleeve. "Do you think he'll find us?" He worries for the thousandth time that morning. It's a question without an answer, only meant to fill the silence. "What if he doesn't look?"

He shakes his head, hair tickling the tops of his cheeks. "We have to make sure he doesn't have a choice."

Because when the carriage doors slide open and Duke takes off at a sprint. Strangers have gathered around the station too, some carrying big cameras on their shoulders. He knocks more than his fair share off balance in his haste, slinging his arms around Av's shoulders before he has even set foot on the platform.

At least Duke hopes it's him and not the stranger wearing Avriel's face.

"You came home." The words are half choked by the sob that then rips through his throat, "You came home." He repeats, to prove to the both of them this is real.

"You're really here."

At least he can hope.

[Deleted]

It feels so weird, knowing you jumped off a cliff too early. 

Billie and Duke spent a month together, alone, doing what they do best: surviving off delusion. Maybe it's something that comes naturally to these three kids, their natural knack for not dying. She couldn't tell you anywhere else that that'd be a good thing for a sixteen year old to have, nowhere but in Panem is surviving the unfortunate a privilege. 

To jump fifty feet and live; begrudgingly, almost, as you see two brothers still at the cliff top. 

She spent so long convincing Duke that they wouldn't be more alone, a month of living the delusion that they weren't fucked out of life before graduating high school. Aunt Theo left after Avriel did, a peacekeeper call that left a sixteen and a fifteen year old between two empty houses for six weeks. Billie thinks the numbers -- there's a bit to her that thinks math can save it all somehow. 

But she knew the numbers, when Avriel got put on that stage he was dead -- so was Duke, so was she. It's ten days of a game Av's been playing for years. A game District 9 wins a handful of times in 100 years. It's what they've always done: survive, only televised this time. She keeps the televisions off at home, the windows pulled down since she noticed people in black taking photos of Duke in the living room. 

Billie dyes her hair so they won't notice her as quick. They ask Duke for a top 8 interview. 

Billie should have told him Avriel was dead. 

Cut those loses so much earlier, she ignores her brother's death sentence for six months, shuts down in a way she convinces herself Duke won't notice. "Do you think he'll find us? What if he doesn't look?" 

They're at the train station, physically, when Duke asks. She only makes eye contact when he talks to her, just enough to show she's still there listening. "He'll-" two questions, she feels like she's in the ocean. Every step is against a wave telling her not to, "he always finds us, you know?" When hasn't he? But she looks to the train and she sees the camera's, heard them before she even entered the station. 

It's chilling, each day closer to Winter. 

"We have to make sure he doesn't have a choice," and he's so much quicker than she is.

Billie hardly comprehends, her eyes hard trained on the Capitolites recording her brother. It's a meek "Duke," like a scowl, as she sees him move from her side. It's a harsher one that she yells, "DUKE! Damnit," as her living brother runs to the train. She looks to her hands as she follows him, trying to keep up without touching anyone. 

Duke hugs him, and it's then that she realizes; Avriel is really alive. 

The two are a half-ugly mess already, Billie cowers as she gets closer. Smaller and smaller as Avriel looks so much taller now, skinnier than he was when he left and she wonders what hell he's been through that they haven't shown. His hair done in a way she's never seen and Duke's so quick to appreciate him again. 

Billie had spent so long convincing herself he was dead, she sobs when they make eye contact. Hand covering her face as Avriel pulls her to his side, she wraps her arm behind Duke's back. They're allowing this? She can't bring herself to ask. Train A-445's warmer on the inside, Billie feels it as she hugs her brothers for the first time since the reaping. 

"You came home... you came home," Duke mutters for the both of them, face in Avriel's chest "you're really here."

She wipes her eyes on her brother's sleeve, nothing and everything on her mind for once. All she can do is nod to what Duke says, as eloquent as you can get, "tu nous as manqué," Billie can hardly admit it nevertheless whisper it to Av. A bit of sincerity she's terrified to share again; what if they take him again?

It's a quell around the corner, what if it gets worse?

But her brother's here, Av's alive with a shit foot and Duke & her aren't alone. She stared down the barrel of another nightmare and there's a piece of her that feels awake on the platform -- if just for today. They'll figure the rest out together, "little asshole." Billie sniffles where the laugh is supposed to be, but she's trying.

We'll figure it out, she convinces herself. 

Besides, at least they're rich now. Right? Motherfuckin' c'est la vie to the rest. 

[gamemaker kelsier]

Gloria finds him just before the train comes to a full stop, her hands on her hips, a look of annoyance to match her stance. "You've been whinging about wanting to go home all week and now you're dragging your feet?" she asks him.

Avriel doesn't have an answer for her. He's trying to keep his hands steady, trying to remember to breathe and failing. His chest rises and falls too fast as if he's run all the way to Nine instead of sitting on the train. He doesn't feel like himself or like the brother that he was before this, he feels hollow, as if everything inside him has been removed to keep his shell pristine.

"What if it's more than my foot?" he asks her.

What if it's all of me?

A boy made from a diamond core, cold. He flexes his right foot inside his shoe as if to reassure himself. It only feels slightly wrong, just the littlest bit off to tell him that it isn't truly his.

"Please, just speak sense for once," she moans and tugs him up by the arm, "Everyone's waiting."

He bites his lip as she pulls him down the cars back past the stylists, past the peacekeepers and the camera team and the tables of food and the drinks cart.

The sound of the crowd outside starts to grow and nerves pluck at Avriel, catching on his shoulders, trying to tug him down, he stumbles over a corner of carpet and almost loses Scout.

"Pocket time, buddy," he tells the kodama softly and slips it into his pocket.

Then he's stood in front of the door and Avriel can see the crowd distorted through the little window and there's so many people out there, more than he thought Nine held. He blinks, air caught in his throat, bubbling, stuck, it's almost as bad as his victor ceremony except worse at the same time. These are the people he's lived with his whole life and these are the people who have threatened him and held him at knife point and written him off.

Now he's got to prove that he's worthy?

The door slides open and Avriel hesitates, legs broken, unable to move him forward. He doesn't like crowds, he never has.

Then he feels Gloria's hands on his back pushing him forward and Avriel's right foot stalls for a moment, still not the best at reactions and he's falling forward, gonna go down, gonna go dow–

Arms around his neck.

"You came home," Duke tells him.

Avriel shuts his eyes, something in him bends so far back that it nearly snaps and he can't process this.

Arms around him, then a spear through his shoulder.

No, arms around him and Duke's voice in his ear.

"You came home."

Avriel shudders as his whole body comes to terms with the idea of being held again.

"You're really here."

"Duke?" he whispers, "Duke?"

Then he sees Billie, right there, eyes on his as if to confirm that what she's seeing is true, always so logical, always so Billie.

And then she's holding him too and Avriel's legs give out then, finally, his whole body shaking with relief, he pulls the three of them down to the floor of the train, arms wrapped so tightly around them as they sob that for a long moment, their chests heave in unison and no one else matters.

"Tu m'as manqué aussi, moi aussi, me too," he whispers softly, "me too."

Billie's hair is a different colour and Duke looks taller, like he's grown a whole inch in three short weeks and Avriel holds them both, his hands cupping their cheeks, he presses his forehead to both of there's and he hears Gloria above them, something about getting off the train.

But this is all he's wanted since he left them and now that he has them again, Avriel doesn't know how to let go.

"You okay?" he asks quietly, eyes on theirs, "Nobody hurt you, yeah?"

[[nyte]]

It never occurred to Duke that he was lucky to have grown up knowing what it's like to be loved. This warmth is familiar, a tangle of limbs that is not comfortable but oh so comforting. Right now there is no trace of tight smiles and words that cut off right before the bitter truth spills over into their syllables. It's just Duke and Billie and Avriel because that's how it was always supposed to be.

Avriel's absence hadn't felt lonely, his siblings are far too good at shouldering his burdens. It's apparent in the way that Billie sags a little when she sees Avriel, emotions Duke doesn't recognize flashing across her features before she manages to tuck them away. He squeezes her fingers because he doesn't really know what to say but he needs her to know he's seen it. That he's grateful even if he's not sure how else to tell her.

It's why he never speaks in their mother's tongue, he's worried that the words won't belong in his mouth. Or worse, that he doesn't deserve them. He was little more than a child when his parents disappeared. They haunt his nightmares, retreating farther and farther into the fog with each one. One day they'll be garbled memories of warm emotion, faceless monsters that mean nothing to him anymore. And that's okay because he looks at Av and realizes he doesn't have any mist between his teeth.

"Nobody hurt you, yeah?" Avriel doesn't sound much different, but it's an unusual question. Duke untangles himself from his siblings, pushing himself to his feet and swaying beneath the weight of lights flashing in his peripheral. His limbs have started going long and lanky and he's still getting used to the way his center of balance keeps shifting.

"Don't be weird," The words are half obscured by a chuckle. His smile is uncertain as he offers each of his siblings a hand to help them up. Strange that they're not heavy in the slightest anymore. The Capitol has done a good job at hiding how gaunt his brother has become but sometimes when the light catches him just right his skin flashes with the memory of bloodstains.

Duke shakes his head in an attempt to chase them away.

"Who would have hurt us?" He doesn't release his siblings' hands after they've all struggled to their feet. In fact, his knuckles are white with strain as he tries his best to anchor them both to his side. It's not a comfortable way to walk, especially with all these strangers pressing too close for comfort.

"You're all being very rude right now!" He barks, stomping his foot at a particularly pushy reporter, "Get out of the way!" A pause as he tries to hold his ground, caving mere moments later with a soft, "please," tacked on to his demand. "We just want to go home."

It's been waiting for them, after all. An empty shell locked in time, holding its breath as it begs for a homecoming. Things will never be the same again but Duke has always been good at pretending otherwise.

[Deleted]

Conversations of the Baptiste kids were immortalized on camera's they'd never see again, starting with the two of Avriel and Billie following after the third, Duke, as he breaks through the crowd. 

"You're all being very rude right now! Get out of the way, please!" 

"Are we going home? I thought it was the village now," she asks, hanging onto the back of Duke's coat as not to get lost. Billie tried to think of what the Victor's Village could be like -- if it would be just as cold as their home. She's gotten used to life without electricity; how does it change now? Their neighbors, Colgate O'Leary. 

Kids these days are told he's a myth.  The most lethal tribute; Billie knew numbers, and of eighty-nine years, their next door neighbor is the deadliest one. 

She can't help to agree when Avriel says, "should we? I would rather go home first." 

They eventually push through the crowd, three kids on the other side of it all, they're panting when they make it outside of the train station. "We walked here, I don't know you're plan on getting home but that's ours," she says, already heading south-bound as Avriel trails keeping up.

"Then I can also walk," he says.

"We can all walk together!" Duke responds, and she can't help to grin, it always makes her happy to know he isn't brought down by District 9. Somehow, some way he always finds a way to be a ray of sunshine -- it's a foggy day of September. The end of summer, a season come and gone while Avriel was away. One of the last days of May she had spent with him and Duke at a creek, he was smoking while their younger played in the water. 

Billie just watched. Kept an eye on everything, a girl too on edge to relax; and then they took Avriel. 

He's back, and the sky is grey and the tree outside their parent's old home is browning. The grass is dying, and she's amazed they're all still in roughly one piece. Avriel walks into their home prosthetic-foot first, and his first step around the corner is the first time Billie took her eye off of him since he stepped off the train. 

She's almost surprised when she turns into the living room and sees her older brother in the middle of their decaying childhood that she understands he's here to stay. 

Wherever that takes them. 

[gamemaker kelsier]

They break free from the crowd thanks to Duke and there's some confusion there–

was he not supposed to give a speech?

People mill around the square behind them as Gloria speaks about him. Some stragglers follow them a few blocks and the back of Avriel's neck prickles from their stares. He holds his sibling's hands too tightly, animal brain caught on the memory of his knives and where they used to sit on his hip. He listens carefully as they walk, agonizing over every little sound. Where he was never primal before, there's a feral look to Avriel now. He doesn't need a gun on his hip anymore to feel safe.

It's too open between the buildings lining the street. He moves closer to Duke, shoulder to shoulder almost, cheeks flushed from the walk alone. He matches his stride to his little brother's, watching the way they align, sitting in that quietly, feeling the wind on his cheeks, Billie's fingers pressing into his knuckles on his other side. The air is crisp with late summer, the bite of it cuts into his skin, he shuts his eyes and lets them lead him, safe.

Avriel'd forgotten that it's always been like this. Before last year, it was always just this, the three of them against the world. Before he'd cut them out, before he'd started the lies, they'd been in unison and hadn't needed anyone else.

He opens his eyes again and it's just them again on the empty street in front of their house, everyone else is at the square. Avriel stares at the peeling yellow paint, going near black from bad weather and smoke and freezes.

It was a day like this one, where he came home to blood.

"I didn't think-" he starts.

But it's too cruel to finish.

He never thought he'd have to come back here ever again, never thought he'd see the dying garden or the blackened hole in the wobbly picket fence that Avriel and Duke had set on fire by accident once. The grass has been eaten by the sun in his absence and Avriel steps forward, hands slipping out of his sibling's grasp as he walks up the front steps. Part of him waits there, stuck.

If he's returned, why haven't his parents?

It's childish to wish the world to go back to normal, to wish for them to be sitting on the couch when he walks in. It's only him who knows that they can't be, that they never will again. It's just him who knows exactly where they lie.

But if this were a story, there'd be dinner on the stove, a fire in the hearth and his father, sitting at the kitchen table with his watch laid out in pieces in front of him.

"Have at it, Avri."

He bites his lip, hard, it's raw from weeks of him trying to ground himself but it serves its purpose. He pushes the door open and steps inside. There on the doorframe to the kitchen is their height measurements, the meadow painting, off-centre on the living room wall hides a hole from when Billie was going to be an acrobat.

Avriel shuts his eyes, hands shaking a little. The house smells of smoke from the wood stove and he remembers tossing his backpack onto the couch before going into the kitchen to see a cherry pie burning in the oven.

The entire thing had been on fire, he'd rushed over and pulled the door open, to see the embers of a pie before tossing a bucket of water over it.

"Mom?"

He'd called out for her.

There'd been no response.

He steps into the hall and stares into the kitchen, at the light hitting the breakfast table and the pint of blackberries sitting on the counter. Duke was probably working on a pie.

Their father's watch sits on the table still, all the pieces lined up, but not how Avriel had left them. He steps onto the red clay tile and nudges a cog back into its proper spot.

"Are you okay leaving here?" he asks Duke and Billie.

The home they grew up in isn't anything special. There are stubs of candles everywhere because at night, it gets so dark and the electricity doesn't work without Avriel there. In the summer months it isn't bad, the sun stays around forever, but in the winter it's so dark and cold and sad.

"I feel weird about it," he admits. Avriel's always been bad at change.

He pulls a cupboard door open and instead of mugs, he sees plates and pots.

"You've rearranged," he says, then opens another door. His favourite mug, a little brown spotted one that their aunt made him is there so he pulls that out and fills it with tap water.

The motion is rooted within him but now it's foreign. Avriel leans against the sink to drink it, eyes catching on the little knickknacks on the window sill across from him.

They've been there so long that he stopped seeing them.

His pocket wiggles.

He reaches a hand in carefully so Scout can grab onto his thumb. The kodama can always seem to tell when he's anxious.

The house means nothing to him while meaning everything to him all at once, it belongs to the Avriel who left here, exhausted.

And he's tired still but not like that.

"Bet the new place won't be so cold."