and everything golden dies :: astrid shaw's departure

There are locks on the doors
And chains stretched across
All the entries to the inside

No sooner had the words left my lips than the knife had left my hands. There was the briefest moment where the world went silent, a collectively held breath, as my weapon spun toward the girl from District two. She lifted a hand, intercepting the blade before it plunged into her eye. I had wanted it to be over quickly, with as little pain as possible. She wasn't a monster like Celia, she was a human like Iain had been and I wanted to extend to her the same mercy I had shown Iain.

But she raised her hand and now the knife was sunk to the hilt in her palm.

I could hear the world scream. Some were cheering, some were sobbing, some were just yelling because everyone else was. The world was no longer silent, but I have no words. Astrid screams with the world and falls. I'm too late to catch her, stunned by the gravity of what I have done once again. She is the third person whose life I have directly ended.

One: Iain Miristioma.

Two: Celia Mortuus.

Three: Astrid Shaw.

There's a gate and a fence
And bars to protect from
Only God knows what lurks outside

Her knees thudded into the waterlogged soil, causing small craters where they impacted. A moment before she would fall face first to the ground, she extended her good hand. Another crater formed around her fingers, a meteor shower of death and pain and endings. Her whimpering tugged at my heart, wrenching at my veins, trying to find a way to make me feel the pain she was feeling. My cuts and bruises ached as I moved, leaving my stomach to ooze blood like a scarlet tap. For a moment the world pulsed with bright light before I came to stand beside the fallen girl.

I wait there for a few seconds, selfishly wishing she would just die so that I wouldn't have to watch her suffer anymore. We both knew she was going to, so why didn't she simply leave her body behind and get it over with. Around her the ground was turning red, or redder than it had been from all of the other times people had fought and died here. Astrid was not one of the first, by any means, to die, but she was almost the last.

In some other, unknown, spot in the arena, I was sure Danny was fighting the boy from Three. Most of the attention would be on them, as the whole of Panem was watching a District tear themselves apart. District partners were notorious for turning on one another at some point, but this time they were pure enemies.

Who stole your heart
Left you with a space
That no one and nothing can fill

I'm terrified for Danny. I'm terrified of her dying, and I'm terrified of her killing Atticus.

I don't want her to die, I really don't. If one of us was to make it out, it should be Danny. Still, even know I sit on the edge of the end, waiting for that last fight. The entire world was watching two people die, and here I was watching each moment for signs that I might live.

I was so close, so close to freedom from this place, but I didn't want to have to go through Danny to reach it.

I'm in the middle of wishing two things would happen, while also wishing that they wouldn't. As Astrid lays dying, cloaked in my shadow, I am contemplating the cost of my own life. Am I worth Danny's life? Quiet sobbing begins to float up from the girl at my feet, the girl I had just sentence to death. Am I worth any of their lives?

Who stole your heart
Who took it away
Knowing that without it you can't live

She realizes I'm there all at once, her body trying to spring her away from me but she's too week. With all that effort, she might have moved an inch. I don't close the gap, just shift my distant gaze to her. "Wait!" She was trying to yell, to scream, but she couldn't. Blood was beginning to bubble in the back of her throat, turning her voice hoarse and wispy in moments. All that came out was a wind's breath of a sound. I don't move, I hadn't planned on moving. It's in that moment that I realize what I look like.

I am standing over the body of a dying girl, thinking about living.

She raises a hand at me, a warning, a gesture, to not come any closer. I still have a knife in my off hand, one I had been readying to throw if she had continued to come at me. She hadn't, but I still had it out. Was it mercy or murder that kept me from putting that blade away.

The hand she lifted is the one with my knife embedded in her palm. "Wait..." Around the edge of her hand, her eyes search for mine and hold them. I feel like a rock, held in place by her desperate gaze. When her eyes move to the knife in her hand I feel a bit of relief that she isn't looking at me, mixed with immediate guilt that I had been the one to cause her this pain.

I'm wondering if living is really worth all of the pain I have to cause.

Who stole your heart
The smile from your face
The innocence the light from your eyes

She pulls at the knife and I wince like the hand it was being pulled from was mine and not hers. At first it stays stuck, but then she gives a strong tug - probably using up a lot of her remaining strength to do so - and yanks the blade free. All at once I realize that I am vulnerable to the whims of a crazy, dying girl, and I had been stupid enough to leave her with a knife.

The handle of the knife is now pointed at me, suddenly and unexpectedly, as Astrid goes to hand me it back. Surprised, and somewhat wary, I hesitate. When nothing happens I go to take it, but just as my fingers are about to brush the weapon she pulls it from my grasp and flings the knife as far as she can away from us. The soft thump of the blade bouncing against the ground was the only sound. I can't even be angry with her, I know that if I were her I wouldn't want to give my killer another weapon to use against me.

Besides, in her weakened state the knife didn't go very far. I could still see the glinting of the blade, alerting me of its location. No knife left behind. If only I could say the same for my friends. Delta, Basil, Eryn. I had had to leave them all behind.

Who stole your heart
Or did you give it away
And if so then when and why

Her hand on my wrist jerked me back into the present. Astrid's breathing was growing more laboured and I waited for the moment when the next breath wouldn't come, but each rasping gasp followed after the one before it. She wasn't dying just yet. The grip she had wasn't extremely strong, but right now it did not take her much to hold me there. I was worried she might go at me again, and yet I knew that she couldn't - the knife I held in my left hand was enough of a comfort right now.

Her eyes searched mine for something, peering into my soul somehow and leaving me feeling vulnerable and exposed. The look of the dying revealed so much to each of us. I now knew that I was completely uncomfortable with how she looked like she suddenly understood me. This whole situation of being held here by her was unsettling. I felt like she was trying to drag me down the pit with her, for both of us to be swallowed by the blackness and never be seen again. I wanted to shake her off so that she would leave this world without my soul being dragged along.

I was already destined to pay my dues, but that didn't mean she could decide when to cash the check I hadn't yet written.

Who stole your heart
Did you know but forget
The method and moment in time

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her unoccupied hand go fishing in her pack. My hackles went up as I expected her to pull another weapon from the bag and attempt to stab me. Yet, even when she had held my knife in her hands with me in easy range, she hadn't tried to kill me. We both knew time was coming to a close for her, just as we both knew that it wasn't for me. "Listen to me..." though she was surely at the last of her strength, she managed to find enough energy to squeeze my arm hard enough to make me wince. If I hadn't been paying attention to her before, I was now.

"Listen. You...you need to take care of...him okay?" I have no idea who him is, and for a sickening moment I wonder if she means Atticus, because I can't promise that. Not when I am bent on seeing him dead, if Danny hasn't killed him herself. "Please...I can’t take him...with me...you need to take care of him, it’s really important that you be good to him..." Things have stopped clicking and I'm left like some cartoon character with a giant question mark over my head. Perhaps she's gone insane. "You might not feel good but ...you might be good...deep down..I am sure of it..." I'm shaking my head, partially to deny her words and partially in disbelief. This girl has never known anything but the worst of me, the only parts of me that I know still exist. Whatever she thinks, I don't think I can believe her. She doesn't exactly seem stable. "Please take... care of Eggie"

The words slip out of my mouth before I can stop myself, before I even realize what I'm thinking let alone the fact that I'm saying it. "What the fuck is Eggie?" It's in the breath of a moment after that when I notice the rock she's putting into my palm. I stared at the egg shaped rock in silence, somewhat taken aback by... by how ridiculous this all is. Here is a girl, and she's dying, and she wants me to take care of a rock like it's a living thing.

She's mad, I'm mad, this whole world is fucking mad.

If you can tear down the walls
Throw your armor away
Remove all roadblocks barricades

But she's fading and I feel the urge to offer her some sort of comfort. If it's to promise to take care of a stupid rock then I'll do it. "I'll... I'll take care of -" I eye the rock dubiously - "of him." I motion a fake pat to the stone, feeling very awkward and self-conscious.

Not knowing what to do, I search through her things and find a pile of bandages. I have more than enough for myself at the moment and so I pile the bandages near Astrid in a makeshift nest. "An egg needs a nest, right. So here's one for -" I want to let out a sigh here but I hold it back - "Eggie." Settling the rock into the pile of bandages, I turn my attention back to the oddest girl I have ever met.

If you can forget there are bandits
And dragons to slay
And don't forget that you defend an empty space

I don't know how to say what I want to ask, so I just go for it. "I... I could make things qui-quicker if you wanted?" I hope that the pleading I hear in my own voice isn't noticed by anyone else. Maybe I'm just hearing Astrid's desperation in my own words. Though no, probably not, this whole time I've been selfishly wishing she would just die already so that I wouldn't have to listen to her ragged breathing or see her desperate eyes anymore. I wanted this to be over with so that I didn't have to suffer with her. Is that mercy, or is that murder?

Before I had even said it I knew that she would refuse. If I were her, would I take the offer? No. There is some part of me that has to cling to the stubborn belief that I would fight to the end. I wouldn't give up like that, and I certainly wouldn't give my enemy the satisfaction of watching my beg for my death. I don't blame her for wanting to walk herself down the aisle on her way to marry Death.

And remember the tinman
Found he had what he thought he lacked
Remember the tinman
Go find your heart and take it back

She speaks about having to do something, about having to accomplish that first. She tells me it's not my fault. She tells me this is all a game. So I watch as she crawls drunkenly toward the largest sinkhole, the one with the giant spring in it. For a moment I wonder if she's just going to stare down into it for a bit and contemplate things.

Then there's the heart stopping, chest seizing, breath catching moment where she plummets over the edge.

A splash echoes like a gunshot in the silence. I realize I had moved half of the distance between where I had been and where the spring was in that second before she had toppled. Had she done it on purpose?

A second shattering of the silence comes as the cannon sounds. The booming sound almost quiet in the wake of Astrid's final act. She had vanished.

I peered over the edge of the sinkhole but she was gone, nothing stirred on the surface of the water. When I breathe in again it's a shuddering gasp. I don't stop to check why my cheeks are wet. I tell myself it was some of the spring water, that it had splashed up and hit me on the face. I knew that couldn't possibly be true, but it made more sense than crying for a girl I had barely known, a girl I had killed so that I might live.

I grabbed up a few things from her bag before turning away from the whole scene.

Walking toward the setting sun, I left Astrid's bag behind, a little rock sitting in a nest of bandages beside it - all alone.

Who stole your heart
Maybe no one can say
One day you will find it I pray