Cognizant [Fiona's reanimation]

A heaviness took over my body. Something happened that I couldn't seem to decipher. My body ached with pain in so many ways, but it was my vision that I couldn't seem to get to work. "I gotcha FiFi. I gotcha." The voice was that of my grandfather. It felt like arms had brushed under my back and my body felt lighter than air. He pressed me up against him own chest like the day of the fire. As he carried me, I sauntered into a type of calm.

Until voices carried over and I had to see for myself that I had finally arrived to them after all. It was finally happening. I was coming home.

"Fiona! Fiona's here, momma! Daddy look, it's Fiona! Grampa's saved her again." Aubrey's voice chimed into my mind. Out of the darkness came a kind of light that was so majestic that I didn't flinch from, but around her was a hue of light that was precious and so docile and warming. It was like seeing her for the first time in ten years, but she's never aged. She was still a child. She was still five years old. Her tiny little smile and she was pointing as figures in the distance from me walked slowly toward me and grampa.

"Mom? Dad?" I whispered, but my eyes began to cloud over and they became blurs in the distance. The closer they came to me, the more blurred the images became. Aubrey's figure, with Callie somewhere behind her also began to do the same. I rushed out of my grampa's arms to go to Aubrey to catch her in my arms. She felt like a cloud. I held her for only a moment. Callie's arms rested around my body and the familiar sound of my brother came over the scene.

"Took you long enough, but I guess you can't stay. Shame, rat. Miss you."

Just like that, I felt the entire scene darkening, but the images of my family cursed my mind. "Please, don't leave me! I love you! Don't leave me here alone again. I want to come with you! Why can't you take me with you? Why...? Why?" I screamed until a hand came across my chest, and this time it felt real. Not like the clouds of my family, but actual physical force pushing against my own body. Was the fight not done just yet?

I can't wake up though.

"I will make you think twice for stepping to us." The last words I remember reply through my head. It was only in a moment of time, but those words were expelled when I saw them going for Quest as well. My fear was that they were going to harm Carmen. If I had to die, then it would be protecting the one person I deemed worthy.

"Ca..rm..en?" The words felt like a rasp in my throat, but my body felt like it was being held down by tons of bricks. Only moments ago, I felt like I had been weightless, now it's the opposite.

Beep... Beep... Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. My heart started to thump wildly as I called for my friend. The state in which I was in, I didn't care that my arm felt like it was on fire or the fact that my head, on my right side, was throbbing painfully as well.

"Ca..rmen. C...Car..." I tried to look where she was at, but all I saw was darkness. "Why - why can't... I see...?" The doctors voice tried to tell me something. It was important, but it wasn't as important as to know where my little friend was. My new little sister. The little sister that was mine to protect and here I was... dead?

"You've been unconscious since you fell in the arena. At that precise moment, the tracker in your arm administered a concoction to put your body into suspended animation..." and his voice disappeared as veil of fear and sadness.

I am dead - sort of.

I am not alive but I am not dead.

"Why - did - you -?" I questioned instantly feeling as though tears were going to start spewing from my eyes but the odd thing is... I couldn't tell if I could? "I ne...eed... Car..."

"...do not cooperate, we will administer more morphling. Nurse?"

"No... no... n..." Comfort came at last and I drifted off into an almost eternal slumber.Darkness shrouded my body and plunged me into a fearful sort. The only thing I could do was embark upon a new life filled with pain that I could not find because the only thing I ever wanted was to be with my family, and they stripped me of my only wish.