role reversal // kenji

The mutt was dead. The girl who'd struck out at you in hopes of blindsiding you was dead.

And Steel was dead. Dead-ish. If he was correct, if he'd solved the puzzle, she wasn't really dead, only sort of dead. Tomorrow, she'd wake up in some underground cave, probably with other dead people, and then?

Well, then she'd have to fight her way out. And that in itself was scary in its own right.

You hated yourself for that moment. Hated yourself for dying earlier. Hated yourself for letting that mutt cave in her skull. No doubt it'd be returned to normal come the morning, if the tributes from five years ago were anything to go by, but still.

Steel had died to a mutt that you should have killed. That you would have killed if it hadn't been for the mismatched duo that had tried to get the drop on you.

There's little that fills your mind except frustration. Fighting is what you were good at. What you were supposed to be good at. You'd killed a Career, you'd killed a girl, and for what? Steel had still died, and you'd been unable to prevent it.

Perhaps it was better that way. Eventually, it would have to come down to you two, and at this point you weren't sure if you had it in you to do the deed yourself. But still, the frustration flooded with you.

With a yell, you punch the ground. Your knuckles come away bloody. Steel's death was what was best, in the long run.

So why did her absence leave you feeling so hollow?