i can see us // lost in the memory { sera, day 6 }

So like, Inga Vanas was a cold-blooded killer, yeah? Sure, maybe she didn’t live long enough to show it to the world, but we all saw how she threw those spears around like they weighed absolutely nothing. You could tell the moment you laid eyes on her she was a pure-bred Career. She probably bragged about it too, but I didn’t watch any of her highlight reels, I’ll be honest.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – I was deeply jealous of that girl. And I could probably pay someone to psychoanalyse those feelings about whether I wanted to be her or be with her, but honestly, I think I just wanted to be in her position, as crazy as that sounds.

Because she stole my best friend away from me. Inserted herself into some alternate storyline which fucked up the time space continuum where Iz and I were meant to live together, grow old together, and then die together very peacefully – preferably whilst high. And now we’ll never get to do any of that, thanks to people like Inga. But there was always a small comfort in knowing that even if it was circumstance and shitty luck that brought the two of them together, Izzy would never in a million years have ran with a girl who would kill her in her sleep. And I felt good knowing there was never going to be any threat to our friendship, because I’d never be the type of girl Inga Vanas was.

Haha. Fuck.

Artemis’ head is caved in and there’s a weapon in my hands that I know for a god damn fact I must have swung at her with, but none of it feels real. I can barely hold onto the memory of the last twenty minutes. I try to drop the spiked bat from my hands, but my fists are curled too tightly around the wooden handle to separate myself from this new Sera I’m going to have to learn to live with.

I guess I thought I’d be more afraid. Or disgusted. Or nauseated. But there’s just nothing in my chest – nothing hammering away at my ribcage, nothing rattling my bones. I’m suddenly grateful for the weapon I can’t seem to extricate from my grasp. It’s probably the only thing stopping me from reaching down my throat and forcing myself to spew up the meagre contents of my stomach just to try and feel something, even if it’s just the burn of acid travelling through my body the wrong way.

I don’t know how long I stay there, with Artemis’ body. But dusk becomes midnight becomes breaking dawn, and through the hours I sink lower and lower with the weight of gravity and guilt, standing to kneeling to sitting. I don’t offer her any words of condolences as she lays in the black sand rotting her life away. I don’t whisper any kind of prayer when the hovercraft comes to take her disfigured body away. I just think about how I hope she has a nice spot picked out for her gravestone back in Two. It’s what I would have wanted, if it were me instead.

---

Like clockwork, the walkie-talkie starts vibrating at some point after midnight; I’m not surprised at it. That manchild back in the Capitol would have no idea how to take a hint even if it slapped him across the face about a bajillion times. I wish the guys back home would have blown my phone up as much as Flynn has been doing. But I guess that’s just what it’s like, flirting with death. The world only wants to talk when it’s already too late, and you’re already gone.

It’s ringing again. Burning a hole through the tatters of my backpack hanging off my shoulder. But nobody’s home to answer.

I finally manage to shake myself out of my own kind of rigor mortis and let the weapon in my hands fall to the ground with a deafening thud. I pull the device out, hold it in my palm. Something’s shaking – I don’t know if it’s me or the phone. I watch it light up, just to watch it go dark again. It’s quiet for a few beats of my ravenous heart. It always is, until it’s not.

The third time it rings, I let out a heavy groan –

“Dude, fuck off.”

– and I throw the little fucker as far away as my tired-ass arms will allow.