ｉ ｃ ａ { ｄ5 }

{ i c a }

They fucking killed her.

They fucking killed my baby sister.

They killed Cam.

They reached a cold hand down from that stage and plucked her away from me. They took away the girl who cowered behind me her entire life. They took away the girl who I had to push away from the gruesome scenes covering district five to protect her. It didn't matter in the end. They killed her and it's done with.

No more hiding her eyes from the peacekeepers cruelty. No more gentle hugs as she cries into my arms. No more standing up for her in the winding darkened streets that we called home. No more bullies tormenting the quiet one in the corner.

I was always supposed to be the loud one, the one that grinned and was popular. She was just the girl in the corner doodling on a sheet of paper. I was the one who protected her. It was never supposed to end up with me biting my fist on the edge of the couch as she runs off into danger.

I knew she was dead the moment that she stepped foot into that arena, I just didn't want to admit it to myself. My little sister was never meant to be fighting, she was never meant to crush other's heads, she was meant for a better life than her new red, sleepless eye life.

I only wish I could have done something more. I could have stepped forwards and guided her myself like the protector I was supposed to be. Mom and Dad told me throughout my life that I needed to protect her, and I failed. I should have taken the boy's spot and protected her, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't raise my voice in protest. I am weak.

---

My friends surround me, my sullen green eyes stare back at them. They try to comfort me with jokes and punching me lightly on the arm, and I crack a small grin, not revealing my ghostly pale teeth. Maybe one day I will go back to being my normal self, a smile on my face as I joke around with my friends, but that day is not today.

When Cam's skull was crushed, I broke.

Gone are my twinkling eyes and cracked jokes. Gone are my days of flirting with everyone I met.

---

Have you ever lost something... someone so important to you? I hope you haven't.

It feels like someone reached past your chest and into your heart, and crushed it slowly. The pain forcing it's way out of you into silent gasps of pain in the corner of your room when you're all alone and no one is around because you just want to be... alone... and no matter how much muscle you had trapping your heart inside you, there is no way to stop that icy hand.

---

I wish we could go back to the way that things were. Cam in her corner with her grades and her little batteries that I learned alongside her with mom. She was always obsessed with those little things, but it was more than I could handle. I would be in the open, grinning my wild grin plastered alongside my freckles and burning hair, running through the streets of district five with my friends.

We can go back to those days.

I just need to forget.

But it's so hard.

Sipping from a bottle to give you a false sense of forgetfulness and happiness only lasts a few hours, and when it's over you're in more pain than you've started, but I just can't stop myself. My friends take me out, trying to help me, but they don't realize the pain I feel when I wake up in my bed with someone else or in someone else's bed with them and not remembering how I got there or why I was there.

Maybe one day my pain will go away so that I can go back to laughing off my grades and sneaking out of school and feel that same feeling of childishness I once called my own, but for now I remain broken with scattered thoughts flying in every which way as I try to piece together what I have become with the part of me that is now gone.