let no grief | stella & av

[alex 🐺]

The nightmares never leave. Not really. Sure, alcohol can dull the sensation and dreams can filter by like memories on repeat, but they never leave. Drugs are even worse and Stella had never thought to try them after one dark night when Ex had found her on the edge of the balcony, her foot on the railing. They never talked about it. Stella had sunk into her embrace and buried her head in Ex’s curls and they had never talked about it.

They probably should have talked about it. 

Stella still wakes up chilled to the bone with frostbite, her teeth chattering and her fingers and toes turned black in the dim light of the cabin. The dreams have it wrong though.

It was never frostbite.

It was always flames—flames tearing at her skin and pulling her cheek taunt and singing her hair and marring everything in its path.

She still feels like rough hands and sharp edges, like a wound. She feels like her skin is bruised purple and bleeding and her fists are forever curled around a spear.

She’s sure she’s dreaming as she makes her way through the hospital, heels clicking on the sterile white tile floors. She had pocketed her engagement and wedding rings the moment she had made it through the security checkpoint, gnawing the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t dressed in anything more than a white t-shirt and jeans, a black blazer over her shoulders because she didn’t need to armor, not today at least. She didn’t need to be anything other than a girl who had survived. And yet, it had been ten years since she’d been down here. Ten years since Teddy Ursa sat next to her bedside table and tried to—

Ten years of memories and experiences and a life that she has and Avriel Baptiste had just endured the worst torment than anyone can and he needed—she wasn’t sure what he needed and it sure as hell probably wasn’t a victor from Twelve who had watched Nora Patterson and Evan Macmillan die not long after each other, their souls following each other to the afterlife. But if there was anyone who had to know what he was feeling, it could be her.

She swallows, flicking a pale blonde bang out of her face and feeling very much like she’d never left this place. The walls stretch and shrink for a moment and two deep breaths later, Stella knows that she’s in the right spot. The Avoxes outside the door are always a giveaway. The guards across from them are new though—their shiny black uniforms sparkling in the dim light. She’s no warrior, not even after surviving hell. Nor was she raised on divinity and ambrosia. She owes no one her scars but herself, and here, they drink of sin, licking the poison of the berries and running their tongues across their teeth. But Avriel clearly wasn’t like them, not yet at least. Stella narrows her eyes at them before she turns back to the Avoxes, a smile painted on her lips.

“Can I?” she asks, without waiting for an answer that wouldn’t be forthcoming.

Pulling the door open, Stella isn’t sure what she expects to see. A teenage boy, probably—resting or asleep or angry at the Capitol and the world and himself. She spots the spirit before she sees Avriel and her bee peeks out from his spot under the lapel of her coat before buzzing happily to the kodama. Avriel glances at her nervously before she opens her mouth, and then closes it. She drops to the seat at the foot of his bed, watching her bee fly around with excitement before glancing back at Avriel.

“I remember waking up here,” she starts, lamely, nearly shaking her head at herself, as she looks about the room. It was too clean, too anesthetized, and sharp for a girl from the forest. For a boy from Nine. “It was overwhelming and didn’t smell right and the sheets were scratchy, even after sleeping in a tent for days. I’m Stella, Avriel.” She looks at him with a smile, her hands in her lap. “I thought maybe—maybe you didn’t want to be alone aft—after everything.” She glances back at the kodama. “Well, not alone. But, you know.” She lets the words hang in the air between them.

[gamemaker kelsier]

a v r i e l .

"Whatever mess you're in
The demons you've been fightin'
Know that your quest
is only just beginning"

They'd finally found him in the stairwell between the seventh and eighth floor, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his brow and his forehead pressed against the cement wall. Avriel hadn't known where else to go but up, he'd been hell bent on finding a good vantage point to watch the sunrise.

As he climbed, it'd become harder and harder to focus and the pain had come back in little pieces at a time. First there'd been his shoulder, pressure twisting in a steady circle as he pulled himself up to each landing, then came his legs, the scars on his calves burning from the pitfall trap. After that it was only a matter of time until his new foot became so heavy that he could barely move.

They'd brought him all the way back and Gloria, District Nine's escort, had lectured him the whole way.

The whole excursion had been taken as an escape attempt and now there are two Peacekeepers camped outside his door. Every time Avriel even sits up they straighten at their posts, hands on their holsters. Sometimes he sits there for hours, gazing into space in their general direction, half aware of them watching him watch them.

It's hard to sleep even with the drugs being pumped through his system. Every time he shuts his eyes, Avriel just sees their faces in the dark, Reece, Aspen and worst of all, Areto.

Areto in that last moment, expression twisted in pain and her hands tight around his.

And then the dark–

The dark is terrifying, even here when the lights are out. It's never as dark as then, but when he shuts his eyes, he falls endlessly, the dark sending him tumbling into the depths of purgatory.

So he hasn't been sleeping much since he woke up. He just spends the morning in silence, fingers cupped around the bracelet Robbie gave him when they brought Avriel back. Four friendship bracelets weaved into one, just a little discoloured from the blood stains. He runs it over his thumb and back again, up and down and pretends the silence of being here without Blade, Ariel and Areto doesn't hurt.

The door swings open and Avriel looks up, expecting Gloria because she comes and goes whenever she likes. It's not thought, it's a tall blonde woman, casually stunning and accompanied by a little bee.

He gazes down at the sheets in question and then looks back up at her, he tends to kick them off in his sleep anyway, but she doesn't need to know that. "Stella," he greets her in unison as she says her name. Victor of the seventy-eighth games, won ten years before him. Avriel'd been seven years old then. "It still beats the arena."

All the sounds, the smells, the lights and new textures were welcome in comparison to that dark, freezing silence. He slips the bracelet back on and pulls his knees to his chest to rest his chin on them.

Scout jumps around on the bedspread as the bee zips around its head. They seem to be playing, two kindred spirits designated to be some sort of therapy animal. "Dunno why they let me keep it," he says after a moment, "Don't know why it wanted to stay either. I didn't even know they could think like that."

He reaches out a hand to stabilize the little kodama as it threatens to tip backwards onto the duvet.

He turns his attention back to Stella, resigned to the fact that he's vulnerable in his hospital bed, there's nothing he can do about it, no shield he can raise to protect himself.

"How long does this part usually last?" he asks her, "I wanna get home."