no way out [.snowin VS .bats]

[Jasik]

~ SNIP BYSHO ~

Once more, the bat drew closer, but rather than aiming low it homed in on Snip's head. He tried to bring his hatchet up to fend it off, but was too late; it steered its head up to the side of Snip's head and latched on. He gasped and swung his hatchet wildly about, desperate to dislodge the creature, but all at once its fang pierced into his skull.

At that moment, Snip lost the ability to control his thoughts. As the bat drew away, violent shaking racked the albino's body, and his fingers released the hatchet he'd been relying on since the Games began. It embedded itself into the soft dirt beside him as Snip's legs gave way and he sunk to his knees, trembling. But he wasn't dead yet; the mutt's fang had doomed him, but his body was still active, desperate to save itself as his brain began to shut down. He could not think, could not register anything, but a fog still existed, memories and thoughts and emotions all wound together into an indecipherable cloud. From this mess emerged random bits of information and images, but at this point Snip could not discern reality from fantasy. He had no control.

Before him appeared the smiling faces of his parents, standing beside the corpses of the two bats that had fallen before him. Desperate, Snip's arms lifted themselves and grasped feebly at the air, but too soon the two spirits were gone, vanished to the realm that Snip himself was preparing to enter. With tears streaming down his face alongside the blood that was gushing from his eviscerated ear, Snip struggled to retain consciousness. But he was losing the fight, and once he fell asleep he would never wake up.

Two more apparitions took the place of those that had just disappeared. Winona Kirby and Soren Ryder stood before the dying boy, smiling gently with the arms outstretched. But before Snip could even try to reach them, to return to their protective embrace, they were gone. No one appeared after them. The only four people that Snip had ever cared about had come and gone.

The visions were not complete, however. Suddenly, he was not in the arena anymore. He had abandoned the carnage of that sick place for a happier image of District Four. While he normally wouldn't consider himself to be at all happy with his home, the scene he was observing took place in a different time, with a different Snip. The dying boy looked on longingly as he observed a small, white-haired child -- maybe two or three years old -- laughing happily at a beach with his smiling parents. That was back before the incident that had ripped the two adults from the picture and all of the joy from the playful child. But they would all be together soon again. They could be as happy as they had been in the scene that Snip was viewing.

Finally, it was over. Nothing was left for the albino boy in the world. He slowly began to fall forward, leaving his soul behind. For the first time in too long, what looked like a smile found its way onto his face. Snip Bysho's short, tragic life had finally reached its conclusion.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

ooc; I'm getting really emotional right now, so sorry if any of this is off or poorly written. Once I've pulled myself together, I might come back and fix this up.