Take my hand~take my whole life too. {K-H}

"Have you seen a boy around here? He was passed out when I left, but he could've gotten u-" Katie stopped speaking abruptly, her eyes fluttering up from the mushroom-covered ground in an almost tentative way. Mentally transfixed as she processed the all-too-familiar teenager hardly fifteen feet from her - how did I not notice? - the girl snapped out of her reverie. Only a few hours had passed since she'd begun walking back to the mushroom fields, yet the combination of chilly wind and finally being well-rested had made Katie less frenzied and paranoiac - taken the edge off of her recent, rather unhinged, emotions. Almost like normal. So though she'd seen the girl sitting there among the 'shrooms, Katie hadn't really looked; hadn't worried enough to double-check whether this person had a non-negligible identity. Instead, she'd stayed absorbed in the day's goal, which was to find the body of that boy she fought with a few centuries ago.
"-Oh," she finally forced out, staring wide-eyed at the girl on the ground. Instinctively, while she kept her gaze fixed, Katie dropped to her knees after narrowing the distance between them. Cool mushrooms squished satisfyingly under her kneecaps, bringing a childlike smile to the teenager's face even after she set her switchblade down (when did my knuckles get so white? How long have I been holding this thing, anyway?) and extended a hesitant left hand to the short-haired female before her. It stopped in midair, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath as Katie's eyes glazed over with horrifying flashbacks - I attacked her! what did I do?! - that left as quickly as they had come, leaving nothing but a vacuous wake of remorse. Confused but nonetheless driven by an urge to help in any way possible, Katie blinked and took stock of the girl's injuries; the only ones she managed to somehow miss were the stumps of thighs. "Here," she said, clearing her throat matter-of-factly and digging around with one hand in the satchel at her hip, "let me help you. I can bandage some of those-" (she waved a bony hand at the numerous wounds on the other teenager's body and head) "-up."

Rewind.

Trudging through miles of mushroom caps in search of a boy in whose existence she didn't really believe was slowly becoming a somewhat arduous task for Katie. She was just so goddamn tired - not physically, well not comparatively anyway - but just in her mind. Every hour of every day the overused organ had been fumbling through thought after thought, picture after picture, and the sheer overwhelming nature of everything pelting her all at once was just debilitating. Katie's brain took best to repetition, to nuance, to planning out the minutes and letting them happen; none of these were features of the Games. She'd thought and thought until she couldn't think anymore, and now the girl was tired. All she wanted was to fix her mind on a near goal, like a monolith on the horizon, and track toward that goal unwaveringly.
Choosing the boy was easy. Acknowledging events that had transpired a few days ago brought twisted relief to Katie: on the one hand, unfamiliar apprehension and cold fear (this is why I forget! I don't like this not-knowing, don't like it at all, can't I just let it go-?); on the other, she was for once in a long time allowing herself the privilege of closure. Closure was becoming increasingly important as a countdown clock ticked the seconds past in the teenager's mind. It was as if the countdown had begun eight days ago but wasn't apparent except in the quick-paced beating of her heart and the urgent need to wake up hours before dawn every day and walk to who-knew-where. Soon, Katie subconsciously felt, this would end somehow. These mushrooms weren't a staple of her life, but a symbol of transparent days, of moments in time spent wandering and forgetting and fearing all over again. None of this would stay, she thought. So closure was the thing here, closure was best: why not, why not? If she ever wanted to get out of the Arena, Katie had to first make sure of the things she had done within. Because otherwise she would never know if the boy had survived or if he was dead; never know if her moral compass was past redemption.
After another weary scan of the endless mushroom-clad plain around her, Katie apathetically realized the presence of another person. She knew, instinctively - or at leas, she refused to believe - that it was not the boy she'd fought oh so long ago; nevertheless, though the girl consciously acknowledged this person as an unimportant facet of the landscape, she began to move in his or her direction.

Rewind.

On potentially the last day of her life, Katie Morven woke up tired and cold but unbelievably happy. Sleep was wonderful! For the first time in a week, she'd slept through the Anthem, slept past midnight, slept even past sunrise. Considering she'd established an unintentional habit of waking up in the still darkness of very early morning and walking wherever her sore, bare feet could take her, a full night's sleep was all kinds of therapeutic. Though she'd dreamed vividly during the sleep, Katie could remember none of these dreams (though she felt a vague sense of unease when she thought of them lying there in half-awakening, weaving coherency into her morning thoughts). A chilly wind blew and ruffled lightly at the mats in her hair; it stung at her eyes and sharpened previously fuzzy thoughts into a kind of half-baked resolve. There was a finality about this day; it was everywhere in the Arena, pervading the air and coloring the landscapes bleak.
Minutes sluggishly pulled by, stretching into a half-hour, before the seventeen-year-old finally sat up. She discovered that her dirt-splattered yellow bracelet slipped far enough down her wrist that she could compulsively play with it with the fingers of the hand it rested on (touching the bracelet was a comforting sort of habit before being broken by the loss of her right forearm, but now it was back in a way). Oddly, though, the loop of wires no longer cast a film over Katie's face of sorrow or determination; rather, she could stare at the thing for as long as she wanted and still not feel a thing. The thing about today, the thing that made it really the end - really the final day of this-this-whatever it was, was that Katie had forgotten Gage. Forgotten home.
As she idly tugged at it with roughened fingertips, some of the wires began to loosen.

Time to go. Katie straightened and scooped her little bag onto her good shoulder without checking the contents, without casting a backward glance at her tamped-down sleeping spot in the stubby grass. Yes, she was moving and walking and leaving once more, but this time there was a reason: after a whole day (and night, subconsciously) spent thinking about it, Katie had reached an inevitable conclusion: she'd killed the girl from a few days before. Committed the worst ethical violation her mind could comprehend. But before it drove her mad, before she would accept this, the teen had gotten it into her head that she needed to go back, farther back, to the boy from several days ago - killing one person, now that was something she (an all-time champion of forgetting, surely?) could wipe from herself to retain sanity. Killing two people wouldn't go away. It would be...unfathomably terrible. So she needed to return, needed to check and verify and cling to that one last sliver of hope that he was okay, that she hadn't done as much damage as the innocuous little switchblade in her permanent grip could have done.

Were she able to look back on this moment, Katie would smile and call it the most peaceful of her life. For a girl who has only ever wanted to be the embodiment of light, she would find darkness oddly comforting; it waits beneath her lids, it laces its fingers in hers, weaves through her hair. Darkness is in her mind now, filling all the empty spaces that love never quite could. It encapsulates her rabbit heart and cradles it to stillness but does not enter (even darkness has boundaries). Down her legs and through her veins the darkness streaks, oozing out of an opening in her chest then pulling back; it shadows the curve of her mouth, fills her ear canals to overflowing until darkness spills out onto the ground and seeps across it, catching hold of fungi and retreating again, receding to where it is comfortable; darkness shields itself in the folds of her clothes and in the dirty creases in her left elbow. Finally it ebbs onto the scars on her hands, sliding across and taking them away; darkness will have no signs of previous conquest, it starts anew, it is its own thing. It takes possession of the girl and shivers inside her bones, climbs into her cheeks and pushes the color there out of the way, waiting until it can glare up at the eyes of the opponent.
For a girl who punished herself for doing anything she deemed wrong, she would find this- this- lack of life, this total wrongness, a final contentment. Many people love living and fear nonliving, but it is only at this moment that Katie could really truly know she is all backwards from those people. Released from the pressure of right and wrong, black and white - there are no such hues now, only colorless dark - from the pressure of being good and knowing she sometimes couldn't, would be the sweetest instant in her life. If only she could know. It is a cruel twist of irony, but luckily irony spares three: the beautiful, the innocent, and the gone.

For a girl who filled herself and others with life, Katie Morven would be ultimately happy in death.
Unfortunately, that isn't something she will learn, because while emotion comes with recollection (even if it is just a tiny tiny fraction of a second later that one remembers and feels), there is no remembering in death.
She really would be happy.