no fear of being alone. [ellis jb oneshots]

[bailee]

tw: mentions of suicide

I had torn apart the Justice Building.

The lamp that sat on the end table shattered beneath my suede shoes, the pillow on the red velvet couch erupted with stuffing at the fate of my desperate claws. What one might've been the nicest room in District Twelve had turned into a war zone, yet I had raised the white flag as I sat on the floor, panting and defeated.

"Oi," a Peacekeeper peaked in, "you ready to behave?" A voice inside of me told me to shake my head, to lunge towards him and focus all of my rage towards him, making him pay for the fate I didn't deserve. But if I had learned something from my years in District Twelve was that Peacekeepers were nothing but Capitol brown-nosing traitors who needed to fuel their raging superiority complexes  somehow, and that they wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through my brain.

Yet, somehow the imagery of my brains splattered on the floral walls of the Justice Building still seemed like a better conclusion to my story.

But that was yet another thing I had learned about District Twelve.

The more of a fight you put up, the worse they'll torture you. A drip from the cracked ceiling that never stopped - the maddening sound of water trickling down onto your forehead until your brain drove you into a fit of hysteria. The Capitol was good at those sorts of things - the things Petra had warned me about if my crime spree was ruined by Peacekeeper intervention.

So out of defeat, I let out a sigh and nodded. I had never felt so powerless in my life.

But then the Peacekeeper moved aside to reveal my sister, and I sprang to my feet.

[bailee]

Petra was with Margot and Elliot, both grasping tightly onto her hands. Two minutes, the Peacekeeper told them, and gently shut the door behind him. The two kids rushed over and aggressively held on tightly to my bottom legs. They weren't dumb. They knew it was likely the last time I'd see them.

"Don't worry about us," Petra said, her lips firmly pressed into a frown. She was fighting back tears - as per usual. Petra was a fighter - she wouldn't let anyone see her vulnerable, although I could tell by the way her forehead wrinkled with each breath that she took that her feelings were winning the desperate battle she fought to keep them in.

"I won't," I told her back, which was the honest truth. Petra had dealt with the fallback of an absentee mother and an addict for a father for six years now - to her, this was nothing but another bump in the road, another obstacle that got in the way of her living a happy life. Yet she did it without complaint. She raised us - sold her soul to the coal mines just so our bellies were full, sacrificed her youth and the best years of her life just for us.

And I was forever thankful for her, and I knew the only way I could pay her back was if I tried my hardest out there. If I just... worked that much harder than the rest, maybe I stood a fighting chance.

Who am I kidding?

Fuck.

"We'll deal with the girl," she added, "no one fucks with a Gallagher."

I half-smiled and pulled her in for a hug, the three of us warm and content in our own little bubble. And just for a second all of feelings swirling around in my brain disappeared, a shadow of nothingness replacing it and I finally felt free. I finally felt nothing for the first time since the morning of the Reaping.

And it was fucking liberating.