As Your World Disassembles [Fangor's End]

[kap]

"Your name, your face
Is all you have left now
Betrayed, disgraced
You've been erased"

"I won't go down that easily," were my words to the boy.

"I didn't think you would," he told me before the final blow.

His blade cut my flesh for the final time, and I felt my body collapsing. I collided with the ground, and it was then that I realized that the ground would be the last thing that I'd ever know. Everything slowed down as I laid there. It was if the world was spinning, the boy who'd taken me down still standing above me.

I'd failed. I hadn't killed him and made sure he wouldn't get out of the arena alive like I had promised Prismarine that I would do. I'd not only failed, but I'd broken a promise. I'd broken a promise to one of the few people in my life that I'd ever called a friend. Prismarine Cobble deserved a better protector. She deserved someone who could have actually saved her from that fight when Eight cut off her hand and the boy delivered a killing blow to her small, fragile body.

She deserved someone who could have at least avenged her if they couldn't have saved her. I wasn't good enough for that.

I wasn't good enough to make it home alive, either, like Fiona had wanted me to. I thought of the little charm she had given me- a bear. I dropped my axe from my hand and through the shaking of my limbs and struggle of my body to keep going, I reached for the charm. I'd kept it in my pocket, hoping dearly that I wouldn't lose it in the chaos of fighting in the arena, and when I reached for it, I was lucky enough to find that it was still there. I pulled it out, turned it over in my hand so that I could see the front of it, and held it up so that I could see it within my field of vision.

I formed a weak smile upon my face as I looked at it, thinking of Fiona and how grateful she'd been for me taking Fable's place. Even now, I wondered what her connection to Fable was, but I could always make an assumption. He wasn't family, I was pretty sure, as Fiona didn't have any family left, as far as I knew. He was definitely more than a friend, judging by her reaction to my volunteering. He had to be her lover.

Fable was still alive because of the choice I had made to volunteer in his place, and although I never really met the boy, I was glad about that. Fiona didn't deserve to suffer anymore. She'd died in the Games and been brought back to life, which I could only imagine was torture for someone who didn't want to be in the Games, or, hell, it could even be torture for those who chose to be in the Games by volunteering like I did.

Dying should only happen once, and I was lucky enough that this was the only time I would die. I wouldn't be revived like the Eightieth tributes, and to me, that was bliss. I'd gotten what I wanted out of the Games. I'd gotten change in my life. I didn't regret that decision, not even now as my life started to escape my body.

I gripped my hand more tightly- the best that I possibly could- around the charm of a bear that Fiona had given to me, and placed my hand back down at my side, as I was too weak to hold it up any longer.

My father may not have been alive to see me fight in the Games, but I'd see him again, soon, if there truly was a form of afterlife. I'd see him, and I'd see Pris. I may even see my mother, Loren, if she wasn't alive anymore. I didn't know what had ever become of her, so my guess was as good as anyone else's as to if she was still in the world of the living today.

My aunt and uncle would have been watching this fight, surely. They may not have kept me in their homes, but they surely had to have cared enough about me to watch and see if I survived the Games, right? Thinking of my aunt and uncle made me wonder if Tobias, who I'd passed on to live with my uncle before I left, was still doing okay. I wondered if he'd let him go, or if he had decided to continue to care for him like I had done for so long after nursing him back to health.

I supposed I would never really know.

I started to feel the end coming closer. I was dying, right here, right now. That meant that, if there was anything else I could possibly want to say to the people of Panem before I faded out of life, I had to say it now.

I mustered up the strength to speak, and said something that needed to be heard. It didn't need to be heard by everyone, no, but it needed to be heard by someone. Fiona needed to hear me.

"Fable needs you. Take care of him, Fiona."

I then felt as if someone was reaching for me as I faded away. Was it my father?

I wanted it to be him, oh how desperately I wanted it to be.

Maybe, just maybe, I'd be seeing him again.

- kaitlin -
896 words
lyrics: "Bitter Taste" by Three Days Grace