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The dead were supposed to stay dead.
It was something entwined into every aspect of life. A caution she’d been told many times by everyone who had met her. Don’t be foolish, Shelby. The dead stay dead.
And she had listened. At least, as well as she could. She didn’t think it was foolish to fall in love. Nor did she think it was foolish to trust someone as wholly as she had trusted him. That’s why she’d been so willing to put that blindfold on. So willing to leave her life up to chance. Maybe it was all foolish. She knew how it ended, after all.
It was the thought that crept into her mind as the wind dragged her down and the darkness surrounded her.
The dead stay dead.
How she could laugh at that warning now.
Shelby thought maybe it was luck that she'd been chosen to come back, or maybe something crueller, like fate. At first, she’d pushed away the nagging darkness that haunted her, blaming her unease on excitement for a new chance at life. But it wasn’t really life. Not for any of them. She thought that maybe she had a chance at winning, seeing that luck was on her side.
She wasn’t going to be that foolish anymore.
Her luck had long since run out.
Shelby wasn’t sure the exact moment she’d realised it. It should’ve been the first time she’d found herself in the arena, darkness surrounding her again, heavier than the blindness she was used to. Mercifully, Pearl made her death swift. She knew fighting would be pointless but she tried anyway. Flipping a coin into the air, praying it would land before Pearl had taken the final blow. It hadn’t. She had still felt lucky then, though. Drift’s name had been in the picking multiple times. She didn’t know what she would do if they had to fight.
She didn’t know what she was going to do now.
Maybe she’d realised when the first of them had truly fallen. Lost their third life and just… never came back. No body left behind, or so she was told. She couldn’t even think about it without feeling sick. She hadn’t had to watch but she’d heard the screams, the pleading desperation. Then, the nothingness that was left behind. But, selfishly, there was still a fleeting feeling that clung to her heart. It wasn’t her. She still had a chance. She still had her luck
Not anymore, she didn’t.
Shelby had almost felt herself losing all faith in Tyche when she’d lost her second life. It was later in the game- she’d avoided the arena more than anyone else but eventually that turned people against her. Everyone agreed that, seeing as she was the last one with two lives, she should be sent into the arena. She couldn’t blame them. They all wanted to prolong the inevitable and who was she to judge when she too wanted that more than anything? She didn’t fight back against Nikos’ lighting. There was no point.
There was no point in fighting.
She knew exactly the moment when it had stopped.
The vote had taken the same amount of time as it always did. Barely even a minute. But the second Drift’s name had been picked, time seemed to stop. She wanted to blame Owen but she knew it was her own heart that had slowed everything down. She’d reached out a hand, finding Drift’s face, cupping it softly.
“Don’t leave me Drift,” she begged, “please, promise me you won’t leave me.”
Drift chuckled, but her heart wasn’t in it, “I can’t promise that Shelby, I’m sorry.”
Her name was in there once. Once. One single vote. How unlucky she would have to be to be chosen. Luck was supposed to favour her. That was the deal, wasn't it?
It was then, when the selection flicked from Abolish to her, that she knew.
Her luck was all gone.
They both stood there, frozen. Neither of them reached for their weapons. Neither of them dared to move at all.
There was that darkness again, suffocating, all-consuming, overwhelming her with the one, simple thought that she did not know what Drift looked like. She'd heard descriptions, felt the soft curls of her hair and the warmth of her breath but she'd never seen her. There was a chance she was going to die here, again, having never seen Drift's face.
Except there wasn't.
There was no chance she was going to die here.
Her luck hadn’t run out. It had been kind enough to bless her with someone who would not put up a fight against her. Fate was tormenting her. Luck was giving her a free pass to victory, if she wanted it.
She didn't want it.
Not like this.
Winning wasn't worth losing Drift. Winning wasn't worth losing herself. Though, Shelby supposed, it was too late for that. She'd already lost a part of herself the day she'd died.
She never did think she would love again. The thought had struck her as she was falling. How long would he remember her face when she was gone? She wanted to be remembered.
Whatever happened here, Shelby would never see the face of the other. Would never know if her smile really was as warm as the sun. Or her eyes as dazzling as Shelby liked to imagine them.
Her hand reached towards the back of her head, the weight of the blindfold staggering.
"Shelby?" Drift's voice came soft, gentle, "what are you doing?"
She gave no response, feeling the fabric loosening until it eventually came free completely, light flooding into her eyes. It came off so easily, so quickly, like it had been waiting for her to do that. Like it had been waiting for her to give in. She would not play the game fate wanted her to anymore.
Her breath hitched.
It was all so beautiful.
So, so beautiful.
She’d forgotten how blue the sky really was. How vast and exciting it was. She used to sit for hours, tracing the clouds with her fingers, finding stories embedded into them. And it hosted the sun. How she’d missed the sun. She’d forgotten how it sent rays through the clouds and dappled through the trees. How it caught on the glint of metal turning even the sword on her belt into something breathtaking. She wanted to watch the sunset again. And rise. And see the night sky. And…
She couldn’t.
Not if she wanted Drift to live.
Even the arena took her breath away. Curved, marble walls encased them. At their feet, dust and sand coated the floor. She’d felt it the past two times she’d been in there but she’d never seen the gentle yellow of it. She looked around, actually looked around, for the first time since she’d been there. They had an audience. It struck her then that she didn’t know which of them was which when they weren’t speaking.
It didn’t stop her from trying. Racking her brain, she tried to remember every piece of information she’d been told about people’s appearances. Scott always made a big deal of his hair being incredible, which Shelby really wanted to believe was an over exaggeration. If she was right, however, in her guess of who he was, then she had to yield that he was not exaggerating. She’d always thought that if she ever saw Scott, he’d have a smile on his face. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked afraid if anything.
Deduction allowed her to work out the shirtless man on his right had to be Nikos. The lightning bolts strapped to his belt were enough indication for even her to work that much out. The others were trickier to decipher, she’d have hazarded her guess that the woman with striking black hair was probably Pearl. She looked for Owen, he’d understood her in a way no one else could. She was still grateful that she had convinced Abolish to make the stick for her, it had been immensely useful.
Her search was cut off by a voice.
“Oh, Shelby.”
That voice, she knew that voice so well. Knew the sound of it when it was happy, or sad, or when it was spoken just for her to hear. She knew who it belonged to just as well.
“Tonight’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
That was the first time she’d heard Drift’s laugh.
Shelby turned. There was a faint smile on her face despite the tears that threatened her eyes. She blinked them back, she wouldn’t let her vision be blurry for this.
Drift was everything Shelby had imagined her to be. Hair like caramel that waved and danced down her shoulder in a tight braid, leaves of emerald intertwined in it. Shelby’s eyes followed the braid up, the sunlight caught against a golden wreath that perched upon her head. Drift’s skin was fair, a soft, pink blush settled into her cheeks.
And her eyes…
Shelby had never seen anything like them.
Honeyed like the words she would whisper to Shelby in the nights. Twinkling like the stars that blinked down at them from the night sky. Warm like pools of nectar inviting her in, inviting her closer.
She had never seen them before but she understood every part of them. Every inch felt familiar, felt exciting, felt exactly how she did every moment she spent with Drift.
If Shelby hadn't had made up her mind, which she had, those eyes would've done it for her.
“I do not accept fate,” Shelby whispered as she wrapped the blindfold around the top of Drift’s arm. “I choose you instead.”
“Shelby…” Drift’s eyes floated from the blindfold to Shelby’s face, her gaze softening ever so slightly as she did.
They stayed like that for a moment until Shelby turned away. Her gaze was pointed at their audience but her voice was aimed past them. Her words were aimed at the gods themselves. She knew they would be listening. They would be watching.
“I will not fight,” she declared, “not against Drift.”
Shelby wondered if the gods would be surprised at her words or if omnipotence stole that element from her. The audience certainly seemed surprised, watching them with grim looks plastered onto their faces. They looked nervous, fearful. All the arena fights had ended with one clear winner. No one knew the consequence of bailing out of a fight. No one wanted to find out. They all had their guesses. They’d had plenty of late night discussions about how the gods would react to someone not fighting but no one had been brave enough, foolish enough, to find out.
Shelby felt a hand land softly onto her shoulder, “I’m not going to kill you, Shelby, you know that.”
“I know, Drift.”
“So what do we do then?” Drift asked, “we cannot just stay here. You know the gods will punish us if we do not fight.”
“The gods have already punished us,” Shelby offered a small smile. “I would rather die by your side than stand by your grave.”
And she meant it. She could not live with the knowledge that Drift was dead. She would not live with that knowledge.
There was a chance, in all their cruelty, that the gods would not kill them both. Maybe they’d flip a coin, leave it up to fate which one of them should walk away.
Or maybe, just maybe, they’d have mercy and take them both together.
“Describe it to me,” Shelby asked, leaning back against the floor.
She could feel the warmth of the setting sun on her face. She could make out vague hints of oranges and pinks. But she could not see it through her blindfold.
“It’s beautiful,” Drift had replied.
And, if Shelby could see, she would’ve noticed that Drift had been looking at her, not the sunset.
Shelby sighed, reaching her hand out into the air, like if she just hoped hard enough, she would be able to feel the beauty of it.
“I wish I could see it.”
“One day,” Drift promised, “we’ll watch it together. Me and you.”
“Me and you,” Shelby agreed.
The air eventually turned cold. Not cold from the setting of the sun as Shelby would have hoped but bitter cold that dragged up her spine and bit at her exposed skin. So cold that she could see the audience shivering, looking around in panic like they would be able to find the mysterious source of the cold.
Shelby knew. Drift knew. They all knew where it was coming from. No one dared say anything.
Shelby and Drift both knew that they would never watch the sunset together like they had once dreamed. But that was okay, because they had found all they needed right there, within each other.
It was silent for a long time, heavy in the air. People started getting restless fast. They were all waiting for something, anything to happen.
“I figure fate is just something we don’t have any say in. Everyone’s talking about what they’re going to be doing- it doesn’t matter, it’s all predetermined.”
That was what she’d said to Drift on that very first night, when they were all still afraid of each other. When Shelby had trusted fate more than she had trusted the voice she could hear next to her.
Did she still believe that? She didn’t want to. Shelby wanted to believe there was a world in which her and Drift were fine. In which they’d met while they were both still alive. In which none of this had ever happened. There was a world in which she’d never even met Drift. Where the dead stay dead.
Would that have been lucky? To never know what she could lose? Or was it luck that she had the chance to lose Drift?
Shelby didn’t know.
“It’s all going to be okay, Shelby,” Drift whispered to her one night. She had been crying after Drift had lost her second life. “Me and you, remember?”
Yes she did.
She knew Drift was worth it. Whatever the gods brought them, Drift was worth it.
And, as the two stayed there, aware they would fade away soon, Shelby made a wish.
She didn’t wish to stop it, to save herself, to change what was set. She knew the gods would never grant something so selfish.
She wished they would be remembered.
And, somehow, luck was on her side one last time.
Though Drift and Shelby would never know it, their story was etched in the stars. A tale told as the sun met the horizon and the days slipped away. A song whispered into the sky, made to be carried upon the winds and spread around. The waves on the ocean, the trees in the forest, the guiding light that brings you home.
A story everyone knew.
Where one meets the one.
“Me and you.”
Shelby felt a hand clasp around her own.
“Me and you,” she mirrored.
And, as fate would have it, they both come undone.