Close Your Eyes {Industria's End}

"A fallen angel, in the dark,
Never thought you'd fall so far,
Fallen angel, close your eyes"

ϟ

Dying in the dark without one’s friends, surrounded only by those who were trying to kill you and the one who succeeded was likely not the expected way for Industria Spark to die. Although, before she volunteered, it’s likely that not many people expected her to die at the young age of thirteen with her odds for the reaping so low. The odds didn’t mean much, though. She still could have been chosen. Her sister Florence was chosen at merely fourteen years old, after all. Dusty wasn’t chosen, though. She volunteered for the Games, and therefore, in a way, she volunteered to die, too. She was dying in place of the girl she’d saved. She was dying in place of Plunder Theft.

If Dusty hadn’t volunteered at the reaping, right now, the people at home would likely be seeing Plunder theft die instead, whether or not it was in the same way Dusty was dying. Or perhaps Plunder would have pulled through and won the whole Games, but those odds were slim to none. Dusty had saved Plunder. She knew that much. She felt it in her bones. Plunder wasn’t going to have made it out alive, either.

The cannons that had sounded that day in the arena were ones that Dusty would never be able to match faces to. She just had to hope that neither of them were Nell. Nell was Dusty’s only remaining friend in the arena, and she didn’t want to think of it even being possible for her to be dead. Surely, she was still alive. Perhaps she’d even killed another tribute to cause one of those other cannons to fire. Dusty didn’t want to think of Nell as a killer, but it was better than thinking of her as potentially dead. It was hard enough on her watching Sky die the day before. She didn’t want to think that the same could have even possibly happened to Nell.

Dusty couldn’t even think of the last words she’d spoken to Nell. She just hoped that they were words with some meaning to them. She didn’t want it all to have been pointless blabbering. Dusty talked a lot- she always had. Her rambling was something that she didn’t like about herself, but she couldn’t help it. Hopefully, hopefully, the last words Nell heard from her meant something real.

Thinking of what her family at home was seeing right now was starting to eat away at her. Joule would undoubtedly have to be the one to stay strong, trying to help the others stop crying. Mrs. Spark would be in tears, her voice shaking if she tried to speak. Mrs. Spark, being the mayor of District Three, would surely be getting plenty of unwanted attention following Dusty’s death, the media just trying to eat up every emotional word that she let escape her lips. Cal would probably be hiding in her room, sobbing and refusing to come out for the next few days, even to eat. Cal and Dusty had always been closer with one another than with anyone else, which would have made things exceedingly difficult to deal with.

Dusty tried to think of how Joseph would have reacted. Would he be in tears like Mom and Cal, or would he be trying to calm the others down like Joule would, holding back emotions the best that he possibly could? How would Cordelia be faring? Surely she’d be crying. She was always protective of Dusty, and now she was losing her because she couldn’t protect her. Her family was going to be broken in this moment, and that broke Dusty. Tears started streaming down the young girl’s face more than they had been during the fight. She had broken her family by volunteering and dying in the Games. It was all her fault. They’d all already been through so much with Bolts and Florence being forced to leave them, but Dusty had chosen to go, only making it worse.

Lying there in the darkness, the pain of the last strike of Red’s blade still stinging, her killer’s words echoed in her mind.

“You are a fighter, little one.” A fighter, she had called her. “You really are.”

That had been Dusty’s goal: to be a brave fighter and show her worth in the arena, even if she didn’t make it out alive. Dusty looked in the direction of Red’s glowing sabre, hoping that she was looking at her face as she lie there on the ground in pain. She managed to struggle out a few words.

”Thank you, Red.”

Then, as she thanked the one who ended her life, death took the rest of Industria Spark, the coldness of the lab floor and the sting of her wounds being all she could feel until there was nothing left for her.

ϟ

lyrics: "Fallen Angel" by Three Days Grace