pushed to breaking point / {Nina one shot}

n i n a .


*   *   *

Today was the day and I felt sick. For the last couple of weeks, I had barely slept, my dreams filled with nightmares of the various ways that she might die. For weeks I had barely eaten, unable to stomach food, barely even able to bear the sight of it. I hadn't been back to work, my pager buzzing wildly, left unanswered on the kitchen bench as I hide beneath a mountain of blankets.

I didn't cry anymore, I think I had run out of tears.

I hadn't but the courage to face her parents. I was too scared to see the look of hate in their eyes. I didn't know if they hated me, after all, they were like family, but I was the reason why they might lose their only daughter. I knew I had to face them, I had to look them in the eye and take whatever it is they needed to through at me. For them and me, but I wasn't brave enough, not yet.

I push the covers from over my head, slipping from my bed to run my fingers through my greasy hair. I needed to wash it, but just thinking about it was exhausting so I just wrap a blanket around my body and waddle over to the couch. Flicking on the TV I hug my knees to my chest cringing at the screen brightness until my eyes adjusted.

"And we're back, folks!" The man on the screen smiles, an energy of excitement buzzed around him as he tried to hype up his crowd, his viewers. "Who excited? I know I am! I've been told to expect good things for these games! The arena is an exciting new chapter for these kids!" He laughs, clapping his hands, overjoyed, and I want to throw the remote at his face. It was sick the festivities they planned around the games. Every year I forced myself to watch though, to watch as the kids who were murdered, forced to turn on one another because they wanted to survive, they wanted to live.

I don't think I would have done it though, kill.

I- it was not who I was and I'd rather die than be forced to change who I am.

That's why she did it. Tears I didn't know I had blurred my vision and I wipe at them hastily. I could still feel her hand in mine, I could still see the way she looked at me, those eyes... Those eyes would haunt me till the day I died. My hands tighten on the remote, and I take a few deep breathes, she could still do this. She could win. She could make it home.

Suddenly sounds blares and we are taken into the arena, tributes raising from the ground and instantly I see no one other than Aurora. She looked so small, so innocent, and yet there was a determination that scared me.

Silently I begged her to run, to hide, to wait out the worst of it, and maybe... well then maybe she would have a chance.
But when the gong sounds she does not run for the tree line, instead, she leaps towards the fight, a battle cry on her lips.

The first strike against her has me on my knees, scrambling towards the screen. But she does not to stop, throwing her fist at the closest tribute. The next strike comes, and then the next, and I still held hope. But then fists turn to steel and a knife is buried in her thigh. Most would have screamed in pain, but not Aurora, she wouldn't have felt it, wouldn't have realised the damage she was taking. "Run!" I gasp as the careers close in on her, hounds tearing into the flesh of a girl who had barely entered her teens.

The next career takes his shot, his sword pierces her stomach and I watch as she stares down in disbelief. There was confusion and frustration painted on lips that had begun to turn scarlet, blood slipping from them, dribbling down her chin.

"No. No. No. No. No."

She was dying.

Surrounded by trainer killers she was cornered, a deer caught in floodlights she was frozen, she didn't know where to run.

The career from two pulls his sword from her stomach and I watch as she begins to fall until the boy from 1 comes from behind, thrusting his blade into her body from behind. The tip of its blade bursts through the flesh of her stomach, her blood and flesh and muscles and tendons rain to the ground beneath her, and as the boy rips his blade from her back she falls.

The boy from four strikes her again, and she does not cry out, her eyes only turn to the sky, stained in blood.

The boy from two takes the next shot and my stomachs twists.

How could they swarm on her like that? A girl who hadn't even had the chance to live was dead, men twice her size all carried weapons stained with her blood, and she had nothing but a whip to defend herself.

A whip, compared to hardened steel.

It took three of them to take down one little girl, practically unarmed.

It took three of them to kill Aurora Emerson, whose eyes stared lifelessly up into the sky, blade hair drenched in blood, skin pale.

The hounds having had their pound of flesh move on, but I am left staring down at the girl who had saved my life. The girl who had become my sister.

and I feel myself shatter, completely, without restraint.

I stare at the screen, and even though they do not show Auroua's shredded body, that is all I see.

Grief turns to fury as I throw the remote at the television.

And just like I had, the screen shatters.

Shrugging on my coat I leave the room in silence.