you're a coward {nina stand alone}

It's okay, Nins, it's my turn to help you.

The words that would be burned into my brain for many lifetimes now haunt me as I stand before the Emerson's home. My hands are clenched into tight fists, and the desire to run, to flee like a petrified child fills me. It had been two days since my name had called, Aura stepping out in front of the gun which had a bullet with my name. The Emerson's were a family which had become something like my second family, my second home, and because of me, their only daughter was now preparing to enter a game of survival where the rate of survival was 1 in 24.

How was I supposed to face them?

How was I supposed to face them after I might have just assisted in the murder of their only child?

Teeth snag my lower lip, and I don't realize that I am chewing on it until I taste blood. Cursing I release the lip, come on Nina. You can do this. You can face them.

Taking a deep breath I take the first step, crossing the letterbox line. I take the next and the next until I am one step away from the door. Just knock. Just know and apologize profusely and beg them to forgive you, I needed them to forgive me because I simply needed them. Aura was like a sister to me and I wasn't ready to lose her, I couldn't lose her. I still needed her and I still needed them. After losing my mother I leaned on Mrs. Emerson, she treated me like her own, she loved me.

Loved.

I was already thinking in the past tense. Maybe they didn't blame me, after all, Aura was an annoyingly stubborn girl.

But I had seen the way Mrs. Emerson looked at me when Aurora stepped forward, I had seen the pain, the blame that burned within them as she screamed t me to fix this. And I had tried. I had begged the officials to take me instead, I had demanded a meeting with the escort, but I had simply just been turned away, there's nothing we can do, Miss, they kept saying, ushering me from the building.

there's nothing we can do, Miss

There was nothing I could do.

There wasnothing I could do.

Summoning my courage I take a deep breath, balling my hand into a tight fist I prepare to knock, my fist hovering barely a hair width from the surface. Knock, I command myself silently, my fist trembling. Knock. Knock, damn it, Nina.

"I can't," my voice trembles, tears blurring my vision as I fought to control my breathing, a familiar burning sensation in the back of my throat, a warning of the sobs that were about to consume me.

"I can't," I cry, turning and bolting down the pathway I sprint away from their home, my home. I run until the muscles in my legs burn, I run until my lungs give way and I am bent over, hands braced on my knees as sobs battle with my lung's need to consume air.

I was a coward.

[word count: 537]