-TakenAwayLike- \Lightning\ {Lightning Death}

Well, this was what she wanted. Ever since she was thirteen, she stood in her District Square, waiting to hear the names of the people called fingers tightly crossed. Praying, ever so silently that the name would be hers. She just wanted to hear the words ‘Lightning Vox’ so that she could go up on the stage and go to her most welcomed death. But now that she was actually there and went through the hell herself, she realized that wishing death over to you wasn’t a good thing. Bringing the death to herself.

As her left collarbone cracked and broke at the evil hands of the boy who wielded a flail, she looked back up at the boy in disbelief. You… the one I paid no attention to. This boy is my killer. She knew that many of the other tributes had contributed to her deal, but this was the boy that sealed her fate. If she remembered properly, he was from District 1, and he had gotten a 8 or 10 or something in training. Why didn’t I ever see him coming? She was smart. She thought things through. She lay awake in bed planning her battle strategy. So why wasn’t she smart enough to detect that all of the tributes would gang up on her, like a mouse invading in someone’s home?

Falling into the sand on her back, her face directed at the light blue sky, she focused on each cloud that would pass the sky, trying to ignore the sounds of death and bloodshed. Soon, I will just become another cloud in the sky. People will know I was there, but I will be blown away and be forgotten. A chill went up her spine as the thought crossed her mind. And then she thought of Kent. Is he disappointed that I didn’t try hard enough? She doubted it. She did her best, but in the end, she just wasn’t good enough. And evidently, not even good enough to fight for myself.

As her body slowly sunk in the sand, rising slightly over her ears so everything was muffled, and little mountains forming around her arms and legs, she realized that nobody loved her. Not her mom. Not her dad. None of the tributes even knew her well enough to allow themselves to love her. But she believed that Kent had been sincere when he said he loved her. Not romantically, but as a sister. And little did she know that he was at his Capitol home, thinking about everything that had happened between them in the short time they had known each other. But she didn’t want someone she had barely known to love her; she wanted someone who she had known to accept her. And she never got that.

But she knew it was true. Nobody had ever loved me…

As she sunk further into the sand, she could feel herself getting tired and very sleepy, the corners of her mind folding in on eachother, telling her to let go. And so she fought back, trying to hold on to something. No. No. I can still fight. If I am going to fight for anybody, it’s gonna be for myself. She tried to move her arms to she could push herself up, but the astounding mass of blood that had left her already feeble body rendered her weak. And so she couldn’t move. All she could do was look at the light blue sky and imagine what death was like. People are so afraid of death. But why are they so afraid of this paradise that everyone thinks happens? She could imagine herself sitting in a field of flowers, at the edge of a cliff, with her hands twitching as her blue eyes would look along the horizon. She imagined that there was a special reserved part of death for the people like her; people that had been the deaths of themselves.

Mentally shrugging her shoulders, not caring about her inevitable death anymore, she thought about what her life was. My life was just grains of sand; easily manipulated, easily stained. But with each passing wind, it clears a new slate, but even though the stains have spread out, unseen, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Her life was just a game. It was a game that was difficult to play. It wasn’t exactly a fun game either. Everything in her life had been a combination of immense pain and suffering, and hoping that death would come at her soon so she could just forget the world as they had forgotten her.

But she had been mistaken. If she had just stuck around for a bit longer, she would have found out why she was alive. She would have found out that she had a lesson to teach.

But as the game known as her life went on, she realized something. Everybody, whether they are mental, or physical, have wounds. They could be little scratches or big bleeding trenches. But either way, every single person on Earth has wounds. Maybe they are from going to a job, or to school, or getting in a fight, or maybe just being in an abusive home.

Take the average working man. He prepared himself in the morning, dressing himself to make himself presentable. As the day goes on, he may encounter problems. Maybe his boss yelled at him for doing something. Maybe his assistant screwed something up that he would have to fix. Maybe he accidentally lost an important paper. But as he goes home, he would have to think about everything and learn from it, so he wouldn’t allow his assistant to do that job again, or fix his mistakes so his boss would yell at him.

Take the average schoolkid. She would put makeup over her delicate cheekbones and dress to impress the other kids. Throughout the day, she could easily encounter several things in her life. Maybe her boyfriend was cheating on her. Maybe her best friend spread a rumor about her. Maybe the file on a computer got messed up and you couldn’t turn it in to a teacher. But as she would go home, mentally battered and bloodied, she would stitch her wounds so that she could go back into battle and face the cheating boyfriend, or the deceitful best friend, or whatever problem lied ahead of her. It is every person’s job on Earth to stitch their wounds so they can learn from them and take experience from them, so they know not to do them again, or to do something different.

But Lightning, on the other hand, let herself bleed. She wouldn’t allow herself to pick up the needle and thread and help herself. All she could do was sit in her bedroom and draw, wondering why nobody would talk to her. The reason why is because people didn’t want to touch a girl who let herself bleed all over the place. She never took consideration for herself and believed she didn’t deserve to be stitched up.

But now she knew better. And now, as she bled, nobody would be down there to hear her scream.

~~~~

Lightning was so alone. She knew that nobody liked her, and she was an outcast. This killed her on the inside (and it almost killed her on the outside). But she has left, for the better or for worse. She believed that she was worthless and not worth anybody’s time, and believed that her life didn’t have any purpose to it. But she did have a purpose: she was put on earth to teach a lesson. In her time that she spent going through all of the Games routines, she learned and taught a lesson about repairing yourself. She learned that to be better, you have to make yourself better. You have to stitch your wounds to go back into battle the next day.

Lightning, you weren’t worthless. You would have made a difference in people’s lives.

I know you made a difference in mine.

The End of Lightning Vox