my faith in you has {faltered} [blair standalone]

You know the moment it happens.

For days you have slipped in and out of this world of ghosts, tied to time only by the cycles of darkness and light outside the window. Life holds little meaning. It is as if they have taken the seconds out of an hour and all minutes are the same, motionless, frozen in a world of grey that churns a half-step in front of your pace. They are faces without recognition and voices without tone. You find yourself thinking your own family nothing but a horde of strangers.

It has been days since you have moved yourself from this chair. They have coaxed you, persuaded you, threatened you. Your eyes remain open and unblinking and your mouth firmly shut. You are her eternal sentinel to guard her when she sleeps; once she had promised that nothing would harm you, (not while I'm around) and now it is time you return the favour. Here, in this tiny room, you have witnessed the rise and fall of kings, of fools, of gods. Of sickness and sadness alike they have all died by your watch, one after the other, falling into the eternal darkness the Arena brings. They try but you see how hopeful they are - the gleam to their eyes when she hits and the gentle hiss when they miss, the clenched fingers and clasped palms and muttered words. They still believe in her power. And so did you, for a while. You let yourself hope. But on the eve of the third night when she touched him so gently, in the deep of the silence, you knew. It was her fatal mistake.

Your family has clustered around the tiny, flickering television, breath caught in the depths of their lungs lest one exhalation break the spell binding them to this little room. Dust gathers on the shelves. Nothing has been touched, nothing replaced for these days that she has remained absent from you. Outside, life goes on without her. But not here. Never here. Not until you welcome her body back where it belongs.

The nightmare starts with confusion. Everybody looks at each other, disbelief painted on their faces as they watch the tributes scream and shout, battering their heads with their fists, swinging at shadows. (What have they done to them? whispers somebody. They've turned them into animals, replies another.) You are the only one sitting down, the only one quiet, and the only one not to cry out as her arm falls.

It is silent in the depths of your mind. Cold. There is something that is beginning to crumple at the first realization hits, that you won't get to see her again, feel her hair, run your tiny fingers across her face and marvel at the structure that plays itself beneath your touch. No more late nights in her bed with the comforting thump of her heart by your ear. No more strong hands protecting you from the attack of others. She left the moment she stepped onto that stage, and in the finality of that departure, something else abandoned you. Something useless but vital. What was it? (Love.)

There is screaming. You can't tell whether it is from the people forced into this room or if it comes from the tributes driven mad by their own diseased minds, but it morphs itself into a mournful howl of voices that echoes and rebounds and seeps through the cracks of this house until it, too, moans with its own agony. Your teeth find your tongue and for the first time the taste of blood nauseates you for it is her blood now, what spills so freely upon the sullied ground and spurts from the remains of her arm and weeps from the gashes upon her body that you know so very well. It is her that is screaming, flailing, stabbing at white shadows that turn themselves over and over until one can no longer tell whether it is simply a nightmare or another, darker fate. Kaelen stiffens beside you and her words travel loud and clear, thick with accusation, from thousands of miles away to lay themselves pretty in his lap. This is his cross to bear. There is some modicum of relief that your message has finally started to push past deaf ears, but any semblance of lightness is wiped away when she begins to sob.

It is strange, seeing her cry. You, for all your empty nights, can never remember one instant where such weakness showed itself upon her face. She is distorted through the lens of the camera and the shadows make her seem smaller than she is. They do no justice to her glory; perhaps she figured out too late she was mortal, able to tumble, but she is not this broken thing that they show to the world. All your thoughts can conjure is a person that was always larger than life, your guardian in the dark, your watcher in the light. You refuse to give those memories up to them. They are yours and you will selfishly hoard them so very close to your chest as she fades and they cry and he trembles and you force yourself not to close your eyes. In her last moments, you should be there. You owe her that much.

He opens his mouth to sing and you find you hold no hatred towards him. He will die, as will she, as will they all. It is not their shame to wear, the mark of their sins, the blood of their slain. Nor is it hers. The girl braids her hair and shivers as they sit beside her in a broken circle, the stump of her foot forming a halo of red around their knees, but they seem not to care. All the world is hovering, waiting on bated breath that she keeps within her chest. She blinks slowly, as if falling asleep, and his voice cracks and dies when the final wisp of air shudders from the seal of her mouth.

Something leaves you with the boom of the cannon. Time stops in its entirety. The vacuum of sound spliced with the scream of your siblings dies away and you are the only one that watches as they gather her body, feather-soft, as if their touch would break the empty mold, and carry her to the river. You are the only one that watches as they wind her severed arm in the rags of her shirt so it will not fall away. You are the only one that watches as they send her out to the depths of the dark with a whispered goodbye. Fitting, you think, but can't find it in yourself to smile, not yet, she would like that. When they let go and the water makes its home in the deepest recesses of her, you watch it invade her mouth and pool in the hollows of her eyelids and cleanse her bloodied hair until she sinks under the tides and is swallowed by the darkness. She has found her home in the place she considered sacred, a tiny bit of faith in grounds of disloyalty.

You don't notice when you close your eyes.

Eight years old and quiet, you watch Kiera rummage through the shadows of your closet with her mess of hair thrown back over her shoulder and her hands raking through the threadbare dresses. The moon rises high - you see the sleepiness around her eyes and how it makes her yawn, jaw stretching and teeth flashing. "Are you sure it was here, Blair?" She asks, voice scratchy with fatigue.

Your legs curl inwards on yourself and you rest your head on your knees, watching her warily as she steps further into the darkness of the room. Nights play tricks on your eyes and render you blind. For long you sit in the shadow of the attic and watch the way the monsters slide like water along the floorboards, grumbling to each other, taking sleep away from you. Not even your doll can keep them away, whispering in slippery sounds. The moon casts them from one side or another and part of your floor is alight in burning light, the other the deeper dark of nightmares (years from now, the word nightmare will take on another meaning, when your shared blood spills itself and everything you have ever known is ripped away) that take any fatigue and casts it away, stuck in paranoia. "I'm sure," you say quietly, eyes riveted to her moving back, "they were hiding in my closet."