Worth it | F.O.

XXIII

Nivea turned a blind eye to the situation and turned back to the fire with a restless tapping itching at her finger, seeking out what had once been a boy of 9. As she had begun to notice, there was no possible relief from the fumes of a burning body and a man-made swamp as the others turned back with her lead. 

There was a pregnant pause. 

“Why does the fire smell so bad?” asked Sheldon, voice still owning that lilt of youth alongside a cruel innocence. 

Her chest tightened. What it meant, she didn't know. It just wasn't at all in any way positive nor good. She found quickly that she hated it nonetheless. 

Nivea turned her gaze on him slowly, pointedly. “Where exactly were you after the bloodbath ended?”

Oceana answered for him as though Nivea hadn't completely forgotten her existence for a brief second, “We were in the cornucopia…”

She knew why. She hated that too. 

Nivea scoffed. “Hiding, I presume?”

“No!” She was scared of that truth, it seemed. “He's just not ready for that. It's hard to watch, y'know?”

“Stop trying to protect him,” Nivea snarled, leaning in far too close. “Look around. We're in the Hunger Games.”

“He's only twelve.”

“I know. But it doesn't make a difference, does it?”

“Of course it does.”

“Do you really think any of the others will hesitate a second to kill their weakest link when it all comes down to us? Are you really that naive? Naive to believe he won't have to kill, to see the dead?”

Oceana glared and Nivea realized this was the first of those in the arena she had allowed to hate her, to lack trust in her or her loyalties. “That doesn't mean I won't try to stall it as long as possible.”

Nivea lifted the very corners of her splitting chapped lips but nothing more. “I'm afraid it's a little too late for that, Typecast my dear.” 

Oceana faltered, eyes shining in something fearful, much like horror. “What?” she breathed. 

That horribly vile smile Nivea was so proud of was turned on the small boy. “That smell, Little Sheldon,” she pointed into the fire at the bone shining white in the firelight half-submerged in the ashes of flesh and wood. “- is the boy from District Nine.”

The young boy was too young to be told something so terrible so simply especially considering he had been breathing in a dead body all this time, yes, but he needed to be exposed to all the true horrors in that arena. This way he would know the severity of the cloak of death settling around their shoulders and in the smell that embodied it. 

She was doing what was necessary, what Oceana didn't have the guts to do despite knowing of all the truth in it, no matter how hard it may have been. 

Whatever it took, after all. It would all be worth it in the end. 

It took him a moment but the very second he came to the full realization of what she had shared with not a care how old he was, much like the last kill of the bloodbath, his cheeks tinged green. Innocence had to be a thing of the past when one was in the arena, when one had to do whatever it takes to survive. Nivea had only helped. Both he and Oceana, actually, had come to this for they abandoned their spots after a small pause to the nearby bushes on the edge of the dense swamp forest. Precious food was lost to nature and to the weak stomachs of those living in eternal denial. 

Nivea spent her last night as a career alone by the fire of a dead boy's request.

(Had to take this from the last chapter cause it was too long)

Word Count: 628