Colourway . ffg vs bb

The stories she had read, the ones that she had created, had all encouraged her to believe that slaying an enemy should fill you with a feeling of victory, pride and power. She had seen it hundreds of times in her mind and in the pictures drawn onto warn paper. The warrior standing over the body of their enemy, sword thrusted into the air, lips parted screaming in glory. She had lived and breathed those stories, growing up begging Ripred that one day she could be a part of that world. That she would stand over her enemy, eyes alight with victory, words of triumph escaping her lips.

She had imagined that the hero or heroine would be bathed in warmth, the sun's rays causing a ring of light to burn around them. A ring of fire, she often thought. It never dawned on her what it really meant to defeat your enemy. She knew that they were dead, but the reader often provoked to be on the side of the hero, skin buzzing with the victory of the battle.

So when the knife buried itself into Hellemine Cauchemar eye she had expected her body to flush with the victory of battle, for her fist to go flying into the air and her lips to part with a 'woop woop'. She had convinced herself that she was not the lamb, that she was the lion, the predator that stalked this arena. So she waited, waited for the rush of endorphins, the feeling of glory to pulse through her.

She waited as she watched Jamison Wolfram crawl over to the lifeless body of his district partner, her body desperate to feel anything but the impending doom that crashed into her. She waited as she felt her blood turn to ice, causing shivers to run over her skin. This wasn't what it was supposed to feel like. Why didn't she feel the urge to throw her knife into the air? Why did her knees feel weak, threatening to collapse beneath the weight of her body. The Stories never told her about this, they never educated her on what it felt like to morph into a killer.

They always neglected to share the twisted reality to what it meant to really take away the life of another human being.

Would Katelyn be proud of her? When she had sent that letter had this been what she had envisioned?

Arabella's shaking hands cling to her torn cape, her trembling legs forcing her to take a few steps back. Tears begin to blur her vision, her bottom lip trembling. Hellemine Cauchemar was dead, murdered by a child from District Eleven. Murdered by Arabella Shirley.

Murdered.

Head shaking from side to side she tried to banish the word from her mind.

Murderer.

Arabella Shirley a murderer from district Eleven.

A sob escaped her lips, "wh-what have I done," she cried, burying her face into her hands as she falls to her knees. The girl who ran through the woods with a broken branch that she imagined to be a sword felt like it was from another lifetime. She wanted to go back, go back to being the girl who would gaze up into the sky at night and created stories filled with happy memories. She wanted to go back to her small home at the edge of the forrest where Ellen and Matthew had made a place for her. She wanted to be wrapped in Ellens embraced, tucked in for the night with a kiss on the forehead and words filled with such affection that her heart would be full.

She wanted to go back a couple minutes to the time before she had killed a child from district Seven.

Suddenly there is a hand on her wrist pulling her to her feet. Through teary eyes she see's that Meredith has grabbed both herself and Lysander, dragging us behind her as she raced from the events that were unfolding. Words refusal danced on her lips, dying quickly as she hears Meredith call out to Cyro, “let’s go, these two need us, we have to get out of here alive.”

And Meredith was right, Arabella did need them at the moment. She needed them to help stop the cracks from growing and collapsing in on themselves, to help save the child that was drowning in her own despair.