Bound to You [Opal; Standalone]

Say something, I'm giving up on you
I'll be the one, if you want me to

Pain.

It was a word I had become so accustomed with that it had lost all value and meaning. And what was a word without a meaning? It was nothing. You know when you repeat a word over and over again it just seems to lose meaning? Each letter no longer means a sound, and the word as a whole is nothing anymore, it just seems like a sound, no more and no less. Well, that is exactly what pain means to me now. I’ve gone through too much, seen and felt too much to have the word affect me. It stirs up no reaction within my veins; it’s a sound, a numb, meaningless sound. So three years from the beginning of my nightmare I was an iron bound shield, every bullet hit nothing, and when they got past they slipped in, soon to be drowned out by whatever else was there because this thing called pain wasn’t the worst thing in my life. Most people would say that pain was what I got for everything that happened, and it was the worst part of this nightmare, but it wasn’t. Pain was simply the conclusion, the end, the part that told you this was as worse as it got and if that pain increased then it was all a lie and there was more torture to come.

Watching the bloodbath had been agony, watching him fight, watching him hit and slice and tear had been painful. I’d found it easy enough, but he wasn’t evil, there wasn’t a scrape of bad in him and seeing him hurt other’s was horrible to watch because I knew each swing was like a blow to his own heart. And I drank, I drank whiskey and vodka and whatever I could get my hands on, heart and head numb before he had even removed himself from the chaos. Never once did I think about the tributes from district one, never once did I think ‘were they alright?’. I couldn’t. I was a broken tape recorder set to one channel: him.

Pain.

The pain threshold I held had been so badly destroyed that there was no end to it all. But everyone had their end, everyone had that point that they reached that would either break them or kill them. Now it had simply become a race, whether I would break or die first, whether the pain would kill me or snap my mind in two.

I’d seen that happen before, people locked away in cages made of white, they looked horrible, they looked defeated on the outside, wild eyes and torn faces. Tooth, claw and nails were not enough to end the continuous flow of suffering in their minds. It seemed far more horrible then death, it was a kind of pain you couldn’t fight physically, it was all mental, it was a battle of will-power and strength and courage, the kind you didn’t see in books, the kind you didn’t see in the arena. It wasn’t brutal strength or how well you could wield a weapon; it was your ability to pull yourself away from the edge, to prevent your body from plummeting into the shadows. The insane weren’t truly broken until they succumbed to the darkness and I feared for my sanity.

I did not have the strength to pull myself back from that cliff’s edge. A full throttle jump into its arms was the only thing I knew. What if you weren’t strong enough to draw yourself away? What if you were as weak as me? How did you fight off your own mind when it was so vile? How did you fight off the blood, the killings and the death? How did you claw your way out of that black abyss and back into the real world? I’d like to ask them how they did it, but I’m afraid of the answer, just as I am afraid of this world.

I was not foolish enough to believe that there was an end in sight, that this end was going to be anything other then painful. It was to be bloody, screaming, crying misery, it was to be agony and an unbelievable fire of wrath, rage and anger, it was my descent into hell, into that burning lake of despair. There was no happy ending. My happy ending had come and gone and I’d waved goodbye to him, and I’d kissed him and hugged him and held him and told him I loved him. That fleeting moment of giddiness, joy and happiness had been stolen from me as quickly as it had come. The winds of this world had snagged it from my clasped hands and carried it away as soon as he had slipped away from my sight. As soon as I could no longer reach up and cup his face and whisper in his ear (I love you, I love you, I love you). My happy ending had come and gone and I didn’t think I was going to see it again.

How those words tasted so bitter on my tongue, how the thought of thinking such things left a foul taste in my mind. The lack of hope I held was depressing and the guilt at feeling so little tore into me as much as everything else did. But I feared that by feeling hopeful I was setting myself up for more despair, anguish and pain then I could cope with. In the end I was saving what was left of me, tearing a limb off to keep something alive, if this boat tipped off of the wrong edge I’d fall with it. I’d lost too much. Gained too little and then lost all of it again.

Sometimes I wondered how they coped with it all. How Topaz fell in love, got married and had children, how Mace fell in love and had children of his own, how they smiled and lived their lives. How Lethe looked at her family and her child, how Klaus looked at his children and the people he loved. And I looked at myself, at a family that didn’t love me and at the one person who did who was in those games and I’d look down at my hand, at that ring and I’d try not to cry. Oh how the mighty fall, how the one that had smiled so brightly broke the quickest. Did that make me the weakest? They were as broken as I was and they stood tall, they kept going and they kept living and I kept losing again and again and again.

I’d never once believed that it was going to come to an end, my body, my mind, my heart and soul, none of it could lie to me, none of them could tell me this is the end and that it was going to get better.

Pain.

For something so meaningless, for something that meant nothing it kept appearing. The word was the first thing to cross my mind, a jab to my heart as I watched Potato behead a girl. It was a sharp agonised twist of a blade, it was Xanthus Grimm cutting off my leg, Drace Vandel stabbing a knife in my back and Akasha burning at my own hands. It was seeing Locust’s dead body and watching Yaa fall, it was watching my husband kill a person. I had gasped, fingers tightening around the chair, one hand moving to my chest, as I curled up, dragging my legs to my chest. Wide brown eyes stared at the television screen, blood, blood and more blood filled the screen and all I saw was burning red. All I saw was something I would never wish upon him, all I saw was the pain he was going to suffer, the nightmares and the torment. I couldn’t breathe. My mind had no time to grasp it all, though, the girl’s alliance attacked him again and again and again, they sliced him open and they cut him and they made him bleed. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe and no word escaped my parted lips as I watched the man I love get torn to shreds.

Pain blossomed in my chest like rapid gunfire, it exploded, a volcano erupting and I toppled forwards, gasping for air, pleading with my body to work. Stars danced across my vision and I hated this feeling, I hated the pressure and the ache and the way that I couldn’t fix it. This battle was internal and no medicine, no pain relief would make this pure, burning agony go away. Wildfire roared through my lungs, a raging blaze that consumed me and took away all notion of the world, that locked me up in a battle and forced me to the edge of that cliff where it was me and that abyss and –

He was there.

He was on the screen, just a flash of him between her destroyed body, but from the corner of my eye I saw him.

(I love you, I love you, I love you.)

The agony morphed all at once, it was sucked from my limbs and I was dragged from the edge of the cliff, pulled away as the fire withdraw, turning itself into a raging ball of terror as it flooded my chest.

But I was safe. The cliff edge disappeared, a mighty explosion of pain in my heart brought tears to my eyes and I cried, and there was little more then a moment before those tears tore a sob from my lips. Slipping to the ground I drew my knees up to my chest, his face flashing across my vision. His smile as he held me.

Pain.

It was such a stupid meaningless word and yet it was destroying me.

(I love you, I love you, I love you.)

I love you, he had said.

I love you too.

You're the one that I love
And I'm saying goodbye