I Can See Your Shadow [The End of Pisces]

"There's times I stayed alive for you
There's times I would've died for you
There's times it didn't matter at all"

~

I swing my weapon into the boy's arm again, this time cutting it pretty deep.

"I would rather you die," the boy tells me. After that, everything seems to slow down. His knife comes toward me, aiming for the side of my head, but I'm far from being quick enough in my movements to actually stop him. I can't block his attack this time, which means that his knife meets my flesh for the final time. I would've thought I could hold on longer than this, but as the blade he uses stabs into where my ear once was, I collapse.

The pain is more intense than anything I'd felt so far in this arena, or in my entire life, for that matter. I knew that my cannon would be the next to sound. I also knew that other cannons had sounded that day, and at this very moment, I was praying to Ripred that none of them were Dominic's. Dominic deserved to live. He deserved to make it out of this arena alive and move on with his life, leaving this all behind him.

The reason I was here was to make sure he got to live. When I volunteered, I hadn't known why, at first. Although, soon thereafter, in the training center, I found out why. I was here to meet Dominic and protect him with my life. I came here because I was meant to meet Dominic Merluccius, fall in love with him and prove to him how much I loved him by protecting him. That's how things were supposed to go, but now, I was useless, lying on the ground, dying among the tombstones.

I'd never told Saggitarius why I'd volunteered when he asked back home while he visited me in the Justice Building. I'd never told my parents, either. Everyone I knew outside of the arena, back home, would be moving on with their lives with that question still deep in their mind. Why did he do it? Why did Pisces Gem take the place of the boy who didn't show up for the reaping?

That made me wonder, why did that boy never show up for the reaping? Unfortunately, that was something I'd never know. Although, when I committed myself to ensuring the survival of this boy that I fell in love with- Dominic- I knew there were a lot of things I'd never know the answer to. I knew that there were a lot of people I'd never see again, too. My mother. My father. My siblings. My cousins. My friends. I would never see any of them again. Would they miss me?

I don't know why I even wondered that- of course they would miss me. With how much we all cared about one another, there was no way that they wouldn't miss me. Being here, I had missed them, but the time for missing them way over, as I was starting to fade.

Now, I just hoped that Dominic was still out there, living and fighting, because that's what I needed him to do. That was the reassurance I needed.

"Keep fighting, Dom…" I managed to let out as my life faded away for good this time, even though I knew that Dominic couldn't hear me. Dom wasn't there to hold me in his arms as I died this time, but that was okay. I just had to hope it was because he was still out there somewhere, fighting for himself.

~

lyrics: "The High Road" by Three Days Grace