Arena, Day Five.

Cassia Winters — 12 years
District Twelve Female

I found Estelle.

I found her, and I think I did just in time.

I'm far enough away that she has no idea I'm there. In reality, I was scared that if I got too close, she'd turn on me and not regret it. That, or give me that same look that she did just before she walked away from me. I don't know if I can handle that again.

I just want to tell her I'm sorry. If she still wants to walk away after that, I'll let her. At least I'll let her go knowing I tried.

She freezes. I squint harder. There's a thick mist in the air, steadily growing. It's too ominous. It's like they want me to know something bad is happening. Is going to happen.

I freeze too. I rise up from my crouched position behind a series of crates. Estelle's still not moving, and I'm too far to know why. Hesitantly, I creep forward, slipping closer to the trench. There's a muddy ridge just before the edge of it. There are hand prints pressed into the edges of it, the mud already beginning to slip back into it's former shape.

She won't move. I don't know if she's hurt, but she's standing there just fine. She looks scared.

Why did she go down there in the first place? Did she see something? Hear something? Does she even know there's the possibility of me being behind her?

There's a noise behind me. I flatten myself as far down as I can go against the ridge. There's enough mud on me that I blend in well enough, as long as I don't move, or breathe, or do anything remotely human.

Someone rises up out of nowhere on the ridge. Tall. It's getting too dark to make out any other features. When did it get so dark? It had been midday only a few minutes ago. But the clouds are as black as ink, spreading across the sky, and the mist is still coming. It's getting easier for me to hide, but harder to tell what's going on.

The person drops into the trench a few feet in front of Estelle. That I see very clearly.

Estelle shrieks, a borderline scream that echoes across the ground. I wince and peek back over the ridge. It's the Six guy. A whoosh of breath leaves me. At least it's not one of the remaining Careers. But he still volunteered, and he's still got a weapon that most definitely wasn't in the Cornucopia, and Estelle's got no chance in hell if he wants her dead.

Two people appear behind her. The Six guy's allies. The girl looks more solid, less shaky, but the boy is infinitely more intimidating, no matter the shaky grip he has on his sword. I was so focused on Estelle I didn't even see them coming, have no idea where they even came from, how did I not hear them—

Estelle lets out a sob and something I can't make out over the wind. Her eyes are filled with tears. My fists clench reflexively.

I could scream. I could yell at her to come towards me. I already know there's no way she'll manage to haul herself up the trench wall and over to me before one of them grabs her and yanks her back down. But I need to do something.

I remember what I told her. I had to kill the Three girl. I didn't have a choice. And they don't have one about killing her.

I think I'm finally getting where she was coming from, and I didn't realize it until I was about to watch her die.

I stand up.

Kiero Mearlove — 16 years
District Eight Male

Spens steps forward.

Estelle doesn't do anything to stop it. I don't think she has anything in her to even try. She knows the second he raises the staff and moves even the slightest bit that she's done for.

I make myself look because it feels wrong to look away. He's killing her so Elora and I don't have to. He doesn't want us to go through that.

None of us see her coming.

A shape, so small I almost think it's a mutt of some type, leaps over the edge of the trench. It's landing is nothing graceful, but it immediately rights itself in the mud and charges towards the pair of them. It's too late for me to yell anything, almost too dark to see, but the size and shape only means that Estelle Galore's ally is very much still alive and kicking and has other plans.

Her hands, small and dirty, almost get there. Her knuckles brush against the staff. She knows she won't be able to stop the momentum, not with her strength against Spens'. Her feet slip, her lunge carrying her across Estelle, in front of her. I know what's going to happen a second before everyone else does.

The staff's blade plunges straight through the Twelve girl's stomach and out her back. The tip of it is an inch from Estelle's stomach.

Time stops. Or it sure as hell feels like it does.

Elora shrieks. Spens stops dead, eyes wide in horror. The Twelve girl was so tiny that it took him almost nothing to do it.

And then Estelle starts screaming.

It's like nothing I've ever heard in my life. It's eerie and frightening and it sends chills down my spine. The Twelve girl wraps her hands around the staff where it's embedded in her stomach, looks over her shoulder at her ally, and smiles.

Something in Spens' eyes die.

She's dead in the next second.

Spens has no choice but to rip the weapon out of her stomach, splattering her blood across his jacket and the ground beneath him. She collapses to the ground. Estelle won't stop screaming. She drops to her knees next to her ally's body, sobbing and choking on her own breath, hands clutching uselessly against the ground. The hole in the Twelve girl's stomach seems too large for her body. This isn't real. He didn't kill her.

He drops the staff next to the two of them. It's like his knees give out, collapsing on the other side of her body. Estelle's all but clutching the body to her chest, head dipped down onto her shoulder, shaking so violently it looks like she's going to fall apart at the seams. Spens looks up at us.

I want to tell myself he did what he had to. But it was an accident. He never would have done it, not of his own choice.

"Spens," Elora chokes out. I didn't even realize I had an arm stretched in front of her, keeping her back from it. "Spens, just come over here."

We need to leave. We need to leave now, before this gets worse, and before Spens refuses to make himself get up. Before he decides he doesn't deserve it.

He braces a hand on the ground, pushing himself up. He reaches for the staff with his other hand.

Estelle barely looks up, but I see it in her eyes. And I realize now why I never have any time to yell. It's because no one in this arena comes with a warning label.

In one swift motion she drops the body and lunges across it, still screaming like a banshee. Spens was half-risen, but he's so unprepared for it that he goes right back to the ground with her wrapped around his knees. She scrambles for better purchase, and all I see are her nails digging into his throat, his knees pressing up into her ribs, and then he throws her off.

She drew blood from his neck. She's heaving and she's furious but she knows, even in this frame of mind, that she won't be able to take him on our own. She turns on us, instead. Spens is still on the ground. I tighten my grip on my sword, fingers clenching the hilt. Estelle rips a small, barely there knife out of her belt. I have my arm out again before I realize what I'm doing, pushing Elora behind me.

"Don't," she whispers, almost against my ear. "I said don't be a hero. Don't start now."

I freeze. Spens makes it to his feet.

Estelle sprints towards me. I raise the sword, the only sort of protection I have against her, just as she slams into me.

She's small, but she takes me to the ground, half on top of Elora, who instantly is trying to wriggle out from under me, frantic in her movements. My wrist bends back under her weight, forcing me to drop the sword. It's lying between us. One wrong move and it's going to slip between my ribs, and she won't even have to kill me.

Elora makes it out from under me, grabbing one of Estelle's arm and yelling nonsense. Spens grabs the back of her jacket, but she wraps herself around me like an octopus, refusing to be dragged away. She's still crying, borderline hysterical. The look in her eyes is terrifying me. She doesn't care what happens to her, not now, and she doesn't care what she has to do before someone finally kills her.

Her elbow catches me in the throat, sending my torso slamming back into the ground, wheezing for breath. My arms are shaking too bad to do anything productive. The arm I had braced against her shoulders to keep her back is pushed back to the ground. In the seconds I'm down, she whips around, knife in hand, and smashes the blunt edge of the hilt against Spens' temple. Both of his hands had been preoccupied with trying to haul her off of me. Wherever she hit, she did it on purpose. He goes down again, instantly slumping sideways onto the ground. Elora yells louder. Spens isn't unconscious, but he's close.

I think this girl trained more than she ever told anyone. And now that Spens is effectively down for the time being, it leaves me and Elora against her.

Elora's strong but she's not strong enough to drag her off. I slam my knee into her stomach, but she's so crazed that she doesn't even move. Her knife digs into my shoulder. There's blood. I can feel myself starting to panic. Finally Elora gives up yanking her off and crashes into her side, giving me a few more inches to wriggle free. I kick out again, this time connecting with her hip. She falters the slightest bit. In the split second she looks up at me, I slam my fist into her face. Something cracks in my thumb. Elora's got her legs now, and with less grip, she rips her off of me. Her elbow cracks into my mouth. Instantly, I taste blood, a few drops of it spraying out of my mouth as the blow sends my head sideways. I shove myself back and get to my feet, head spinning and jaw throbbing. Elora struggles away from her and gets up. We're all on her feet, now. I grab my sword just as she runs at me again, the knife held straight out.

I raise the sword. I can block the knife.

Spens rolls over with as much frame of mind as he has and locks his fingers around her ankle as she sprints past him. Her arm, instead of raised towards me, gets jerked to the side. And the swing of the sword in my hand, ready to crash against her arm to stop the weapon from hitting me, rips itself across her throat.

Everything goes to slow motion. I see with crystal clarity as the metal rips through her skin and all the veins in her neck. There's so much blood. There's too much. The momentum sends her crashing to the ground sideways, hands flying up to her throat like she's trying to coax the stuff back in.

She dies choking on her own blood, eyes wide and terrified, a scream rattling through her chest.

I collapse.

I killed someone. I killed her. I killed her, I killed her, I fucking killed her—

I wasn't supposed to kill her.

There are too many tears in my eyes to see properly. Someone touches my arm, my shoulder, and I jerk away, scrabbling away on the ground. My thumb burns where it catches on the ground. There's blood dripping out of my mouth, and more flies out when I choke out a sob.

This isn't happening. She's not dead. I didn't kill her, she's fine.

Boom.

I can't help the scream that rips it's way out of my throat. Hands lock around my arms again, but they're bigger and stronger and I can't fight them, not anymore.

Spens' arms loop around my shoulders, wrapping around me and I bury my face in his shoulder and just keep screaming. Nothing else will come out. Every time a thought enters my mind to shut up, to pull myself back together, I just see the blood spilling out of her throat, her hands desperate in their attempt to keep herself alive.

Everything keeps fracturing. Every time I tell myself it's going to be okay.

Nothing's going to be okay.

Spens Scrymgeour — 18 years
District Six Male

Kiero won't stop shaking.

Every time I tilt my head the slightest bit I expect to see him in pieces, scattered across the ground. I just dig my fingers in tighter against his shoulder blades, trying to keep him together. Elora promptly plasters herself against his back, the tears dripping down her cheeks landing on the back of his jacket.

I can't think through the waves of pain in my head. I don't think my head's bleeding, but it might as well be. God, everything might as well be.

I don't know how we're supposed to get up. How I'm supposed to be able to hold this all together when it feels like I shouldn't be allowed the capacity to.

I killed a twelve year old. I killed someone who was by all faults innocent, who had a home to go back to, who had their whole life to live.

When I volunteered I signed up for all kinds of things. I thought I knew the risks.

"I don't think you did," Elora whispers, barely there, and it takes me a second to realize I said the last part aloud. She tries to smile, but it wobbles too hard to even past as an attempt. She wiggles her arm free of it's entrapment between me and Kiero and grabs my hand, tangling our fingers together. She lays her head back down on his shoulder and that's the end of that.

We sit there, half-freezing and miserable, until rain begins to fall from the sky. We're soaked within seconds. It takes me being even colder to realize that there's no point in all of this is happening if we all get hypothermia and freeze to death. Even Kiero tilts his head out of my shoulder for a second, blinking the water out of his eyes.

I start to rise, dragging them both up with me. I keep one arm around Kiero, Elora's hand still gripped in mine. She tangles the other as tight as she can in the back of Kiero's jacket, stepping as close as she can get without being practically on top of him.

This is why I'm all for Kiero taking the lead, for him telling us where to go and where to put our feet and how to keep going.

But they need me. Both of them do. And if I have to put that responsibility on my shoulders, I will. No matter how hard it is to walk with it being there.

I don't have a choice.

I look down the direction of a trench. It's stretching into the darkness. There's nothing else in sight. God only knows how far it goes. Kiero peels himself away from me to stare down the opposite one, Elora's eyes switching frantically between both of our gazes.

I follow Kiero's stare, and then look down directly at him. He won't look me in the eye, even though the rain's washed the blood splatters off his face. But I can see the moment his face twists into something determined, something closed off, where he compartmentalizes every emotion he'd been feeling and buries it where no one else is going to see it.

Despite everything, knowing I shouldn't, I still trust his instincts more than I trust my own.

I give himself a second to turn back. Elora's hand squeezes mine like a vice, like she knows when my eyes fall to linger on the Twelve girl's body. Kiero's staring back too, lips white and still allowing himself to be tucked into my side like he never would have before, trying not to shake.

I've been afraid to lose them since the second I saw Astrid go after them in the bloodbath, since the second I saw anyone's blade pointed in their direction and the fear in their eyes. And despite it all, I think I just lost a part of both of them.

Maybe I lost a part of myself too.

13th. Cassia Winters, District Twelve Female.
12th. Estelle Galore, District One Female.

Is this when I start receiving threats on my life?

I guess I'm kind of sorry, but this had to happen eventually, and I had fun writing it. Sort of. It still hurt in ways I didn't expect, but here we are. Also, I feel really bad for whining about the review count now, but getting the amount of reviews I did last chapter was awesome, so. Keep it up, maybe? 100k words and 200 reviews rolled into one. I'm not going to be around much this weekend, so have your early update. You're still waiting until next Sunday for the next one, deal with it.

In other news, the poll results are up, and I'm going to keep repeating that they are not funny. What did I say. Stop voting for them. You're only hurting yourselves. But they amuse me, in the very least. We'll see how accurate your Final 8 is to mine.

#prayfortheholytrinity2k15

Until next time.