A/N: I had a burst of inspiration to write a sequel for Attached since you all loved it so much and gave such nice reviews. It will be set in District 13, but it won't follow the story line of Mockingjay. It is something completely different, but I hope you enjoy this as much as Attached and give it lots of love!
Blood is everywhere. It's smeared on the walls and floor. I'm slipping in it. I wipe my lip on my sleeve. More blood. I laugh, but it's humorless.
"Is that all you've got?" I ask the girl.
A punch to the gut. I groan, bending over.
A kick to the head. I flatten against the wall, my vision blurring.
"You hit like a grandma," I wheeze out.
She sneers. "You've got some fucking nerve," she spits. "I'm done." She walks away, her cronies following her. The crowd disperses, everyone going about their merry way. I slide to the floor, laughing hysterically. There's blood on my teeth. It tastes metallic and salty. It's a taste I'm very used to by this point.
My sister Prim kneels down in front of me. I look away, not looking her in the eyes. I know all that will be there is disappointment and pity, pity I neither want nor need. She acts like I'm fragile, like if she touches me wrong, I'll shatter into a million pieces. Well, fuck her. Fuck everybody.
"What?" I ask harshly. Blood flies out of my mouth and lands on her white shoes. She ignores it and touches my arm. I snatch my arm away from her, glaring.
"What?" I ask again, louder this time. "What do you want?"
She sighs and I clench my fists. "It's dinner time," she says.
"Yeah?" I say. "I don't have an appetite." I stand up and limp away from her, spitting blood onto the floor.
When I get to the stairs, I groan. My body is screaming in pain. Bruised ribs. Broken nose. Busted lip. I probably have a concussion from getting kicked in the head. My room is on the fifth floor.
Stop being a whiny bitch and just climb the freaking stairs, I tell myself. I grab the rail and begin to take the long grueling climb up.
Every step sends a shockwave of pain through my body. I grit my teeth against the pain and put one leg up in front of the other. My vision is blurring and my head is spinning. I lose my balance and grab the rail with both hands to regain it. I focus on my bloody and bruised knuckles that are turning white from how tightly I'm holding onto the rail. When my vision clears, I continue to climb, the stairs seeming to grow longer and longer.
What if I climbed forever? It would be like my personal punishment. Climbing and climbing with my bruised and battered body forever and ever, never seeing the end. And I wouldn't die because that would be bliss compared to the eternal punishment of climbing loud, creaky, metal stairs with sore legs. I would be like Sisyphus, never getting the rock to the top of the hill. God, that would be so frustrating. Did he really deserve that?
Do I really deserve this? This never-ending pain? Do I really deserve to never stop climbing these damn stairs?
Yes.
When I get to my room, I lie on my bed and groan. The cot is already uncomfortable, so my body being as beat up as it is will make for a hell of a night.
I already have hellish nights. Every night.
I look at my hands. My nails are chewed down to a stub and there's crusted blood in the cracks of my hands. I have scabs that have been opened and reopened, never healing. Nothing is ever fixed. I'm forced to face a life of nevers. I'll never stop climbing the stairs.
As soon as I close my eyes, his face appears. His light green eyes, gold glitter surrounding them, making them even more vibrant. His sharp cheekbones. His high eyebrows. His long nose. His small mouth. His pink lips that I used to kiss. His smile that I'll never see again.
So many nevers.
I open my eyes. I feel tears streaming down my cheeks. I sit up, grabbing my pillow and throwing it as hard as I can. I scream from the pain in my arms and my frustration, my anger, my sadness, my broken heart can be heard in that scream. It knocks over a glass of water and it shatters to the floor. I stare at the pieces, some big, some so small, I'll never be able to pick them up. I feel like that glass. Perfectly fine one minute, the next, being taken by surprise and knocked over and shattered.
Someone comes in. It's Gale. I don't acknowledge him, just continue to stare at the glass pieces on the floor.
He sits down on my cot, but not right next to me. He's keeping his distance. He treats me like Prim does, like I'll just go off one day like a bomb and he doesn't want to be around when that happens. He's ready to flee at any moment.
"Do you want me to pick that up?" he whispers. The room is too quiet for us to talk in our normal voices, or else it will seem like we're shouting.
I shake my head. Even doing that hurts. "What do you want?" I ask.
"I just came to check on you," he says. I can feel his tension. He doesn't want to be here, but he feels obligated since we were best friends at one point.
"I'm fine," I say sarcastically. "So you can leave."
He sighs, frustration rolling off of him in waves. Why the hell is he frustrated? I didn't ask him to come check on me. He didn't have to. I hate when people get mad about something that they could have avoided. It's like they're mad at themselves for doing what they repeatedly told themselves they shouldn't have done.
"Leave if you don't want to be here so bad," I say.
"I do want to be here," he lies. I'm so tired of the lying. If everyone would just be frank with me, these situations could be avoided.
I clench my fists in my lap. I don't want to lose my temper, but I'm dangerously close to doing so. He stands up, sensing my growing anger. He walks out the door, shutting it behind him.
I relax slightly, lying back down. I'm afraid to close my eyes or I'lll see him again and I'm not emotionally stable enough to handle it. I don't think I'll ever be emotionally stable enough to handle it.
More nevers.
I stare at the ceiling, the plain white ceiling that I've stared at for over two months. I haven't seen a blue sky in so long. I haven't been outside at all. I've been trapped in District 13's underground hellhole, forced to deal with my thoughts and emotions. The pain is too much. It's always sitting like a heavy stone in my chest and I just want it to go away. I'm tired of it. I've found other ways of dealing with it.
I get into fights. It's a different kind of pain so I don't feel the deep aching in my chest. Instead, I feel bruised ribs and busted lips. Physical pain feels much better than the emotional pain I carry around with me wherever I go. I can't ignore it when I sleep, so that's why I don't sleep. I did, at first. All I saw was blood and his eyes full of panic. I felt my throat burning from the screams that ripped out of me. I saw them carry his body away as I went into the arena.
Not sleeping is worse, in a way. There's nothing around to distract me, so I'm forced to find solace in my thoughts, but all I find is chaos and sadness. I feel so angry, all the time. I keep wanting to run away, but where would I go? I really just want to run away from myself, but I can't do that. I'll never get rid of myself.
Never.
They took him away from me. They killed him and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. That's what kills me the most. I was stuck in a stupid tube, about to go fight to stay alive, while they beat him to a bloody pulp.
I'm done. I can't live with this ache in my chest anymore. It hurts too much. It feels like Sisyphus' rock; heavy and impossible to get rid of. When they killed Cinna, they killed me, too.
We were attached.