nightshade bane ;; district four

[attr="class","petitcontentstyle"]

he is cold hard ice with a stone core and a titanium shield. Whatever flickering flame that once glowed within her had been snuffed out long ago. She is an empty house with broken lights, its inhabitants and furniture long gone, swept away by the floods. After everything, she was all that was left standing. But survival comes with a price.
[break][break]
Blood.
[break][break]
And she paid the price, indeed. But not with her own blood. No. The crimson river that flooded down the wooden staircase and stained the carpet of the Bane home belonged to her father. Wretched, cruel people. She could be called a murderer, but her siblings call her the avenging angel. Mistletoe, Foxglove, Castor, Iris . . . they did not deserve this. They did not deserve the murals of black and blue and sometimes with a scarlet accent painted onto their skin from their father. They did not deserve the scars on their minds, made by mother's harsh words and dagger stare as she watched everything happen.
[break][break]
But she ended what her parents started, carrying out the dark deed with caution and cleverness. It was the night of her eighteenth birthday. She took her mother's gloves, pristine and white, the ones she had worn at her wedding, stole pieces of her mother's dark red hair, almost identical to her own, from her hairbrush, and took her mother's boots. With a kitchen knife, she did what she had dreamed of doing for years while blissful in her slumber.
[break][break]
There were no horrific melodies of screams ringing throughout the house. Even if there was, there would be no one to hear them except one eighteen-year-old girl. Her mother was out drowning in alcohol and would end up passing out at a party. Her siblings were in a deep sleep and would not awaken until morning.
[break][break]
When it was all over, all of her rage was released and the walls were draped in carmine, she looked at her sinister work and felt no remorse. She had done a favor to the world, to District Six, to her siblings. She stood over her father's bloody corpse and dropped tendrils of her mother's hair onto the crimson drenched ground.
[break][break]
She stood in the shower that night, letting the water pour down her scrawny, boyish looking body. All the blood gave the water swirling into the drain a pinkish tinge. She watched as the pinkish water ran into the drain in a tiny whirlpool with empty dark eyes. After all of the blood had been washed away, she stepped out of the shower and wrapped her drenched, naked body in a soft blue towel. From where she was pressing her hand to hold the towel, she could feel her rib cage, prominent beneath her fair skin.
[break][break]
She remembered staring in the mirror and looking at an empty vessel. Not a girl. Not a monster. Not a murderer. Just an shell of who she used to be. She is cold and bitter and she knows it but does not care anymore. This is what pain molded her into. A warrior who only has a heart for her brothers and sisters. She has always wondered who she would be if none of this had ever happened. But it is just a thought of fantasy. It will never be a reality.
[break][break]
Once she had changed into a white nightgown, she took her crimson stained clothes and set fire to them in her backyard. She watched as they burned and crackled in the inferno, just as she had done all her life. But her burning was over now. She was not quite reduced to ashes as the bloody clothing was. She was left scarred and blackened, but at least she was alive. That is all that matters in the end. The part of her that could but on a smile at school and could still laugh with her friends did burn to ashes. The part of her that was still innocent was dead. She had seen too much tragedy to be an innocent child.
[break][break]
Next, she burned the body, just tossed it into the fire like trash. (Because that was what it was to her.) Watched as the hungry tongues of flames devoured it, turning her father's flesh shriveled and angry red. She just stood there, her ebony hair rippling in the soft breeze like a sheet of black water. If it was anyone else, she would have felt differently. But this man that she killed was a monster who inflicted so much agony on she and her siblings. And he did not work alone--her mother was just as much of a monster, but she did not hurt with her iron fists. No, she struck with her words, harsh as whips against soft skin.
[break][break]
Even when she had blown out her birthday candle, and everything was just ashes, she was not satisfied. There was one person left to pay. Her work was complete. For the first time in many long, excruciating years, she slipped into sleep peacefully. There were no bouts of panic thrusting her into consciousness. There was only peace, as there would be for many more nights to come.
[break][break]
The golden sun rose over the horizon, chasing away the darkness of the night. She remembered how beautiful it was, her father-free world. The sky was like a water color painting. Pale shades of gold and azure and lavender smeared all across it as if it were a canvas. She rose out of bed that morning, before her mother had pulled herself out of sleep. Once dressed, she ran to the Hall of Justice, her heart beating with excitement. It was the day she slayed her demons.
[break][break]
She told the nearest peacekeeper that she woke up to find her blood all over the living room and her parents missing and burned ground outside. False tears poured down her cheeks as she spoke, and her lip trembled with nervousness. Her house was searched, they found the pieces of her mother's hair. And after more investigation, after there were no other leads, her mother was arrested.
[break][break]
She looked into her mother's eyes when they took her away. It was like staring into her own reflection. The soft curves of her narrow face, her dark eyes, her long wavy locks of dark auburn, her fair skin. Daria Bane's face was naturally so kind looking, like a delicate pixie, but she knew better than to be fooled by that as so many people were. But at that moment her face was distorted with rage, her dark eyes blazed with fury. Daria looked like she yearned to scream at her daughter, but she could not--there was no tongue to form the words with. She had doomed Daria to a torturous life of an Avox. It must be like holding in the air while underwater . . . wanting to scream but not being able to.
[break][break]
Iris, her little sister, asked, weeks later, "Was it you who killed Mom?"
[break][break]
And she just looked at her and said, "Mom and Dad got what they deserved."
[break][break]
"Are you going to take care of us now?"
[break][break]
"Yes."
[break][break]
They were all she had, after all. The only human beings on this earth that she loved. She was a mother to them, she was their knight in shining armor. She was ice cold and bitter but somehow, what was left of her heart belonged to them. They had each other, they survived together, and that was all that mattered.