Worth it | F.O.

XIX

She would never dare to admit it out loud, or even to herself completely, but Nivea was nervous.

But it was just that: nervous. Not quite scared, not quite confident in her ultimate safety, but in a strange kind of in between nonetheless. 

It was a known fact to all that the games had a tendency to be… unpredictable. Whether it be the numerous personalities affecting how they all went about surviving, the torment cast by gamemakers looking to breed drama for entertainment purposes, or the changing of tides in one's self, it was a given. And, if there was anything she hated, it was something of those exact 13 letters. It only ever seemed as though they strove continuously to further complicate an already complicated lifestyle that needed no more complicating. 

So she had gone into this with the one goal to win, and to make it as predictable for herself as possible.

But, sadly, it still didn't change the nerves buzzing through her bones that day of the arena's opening where she stood frozen by an unknown force on the rungs of a ladder. It was a strange thing, the ladder, that she had never before encountered when she stepped upon it to allow it to grant her passage into the hovercraft meant to transport the rest to their final resting places and her to her throne. She tried to squash it all down to something infinitely more acceptable and watched with narrowed brown's when a woman approached, a strange syringe clutched between no-doubt experienced fingers, something other than liquid laying within. 

Words floated from uncaring lips with a blatant tone that suggested she had quickly become bored with the phrase that really served little to no purpose, “This is just a tracker, Nivea.” Against her better judgment, her glare sharpened and she would've bristled - if she weren't physically incapable of doing so - at the use of a name she didn't permit for any rotten Capitol citizen to use. “The stiller you are, the more efficiently I can place it.” 

This woman must've been a moron, Nivea quickly decided. What else was she going to do as she was quite literally frozen in place? Protest? She tested it and, sure enough, she couldn't even part her lips.

How infuriating. 

It soon became clear that the vile… thing held no sense of sympathy for someone incapable of protesting when the sharp needle broke through skin as it was shoved into the inside of her left forearm. A grimace flashed in Nivea's cold, angry eyes and when the plunger was pushed and the tracking device inserted, pain radiated outwards from the very area and seemed to head straight to the nerve sensors in her brain.

A frantic energy burst to life with this when she finally comprehended entirely the extensivity of her immobility, unable even to expel emotions and energy that she could only with the tapping of a single finger. It itched so terribly and for a few short seconds as the pain once more worsened only to disappear for the most part when the woman and her syringe walked away, Nivea found her thoughts in more disarray than they had been in quite awhile.

Luckily it didn't last much longer or she thought she might have gone insane when, quite suddenly, a force lifted and the click of her nail repeatedly striking the ladder rang out with a shocking speed through the carrier. The ladder was left behind with a fear she hated to feel hovering at the sensation of helplessness she had experienced just moments before. 

It was terrible and she never again wished to feel it but, at the same time, she found it so very hilarious. Nivea just loved how this was what she feared the most when she was headed to the second most dangerous place in their world. She held no fear for a place that would, at the end of the week, harbor the ghosts of 23 children killed in cold blood. A smile graced lips that would so very rarely smile as genuinely for years to come.