Worth it | F.O.

XXIX

If it was even possible, Nivea awoke in more pain the next morning than she had been in the entirety of her initial torture. Even after they were dead (quite literally burned to ashes in the wind) their hold still clenched tight around her every wound. 

Around her leg. Pressing on the entirety of the left side of her face. Spotting darkness impenetrable in her vision. Breaking the bones in her right hand. Raking along the gash on her arm. Burning the welt on her other hand. Pummeling vengeful fists into the bruises and sores scattered about. 

The adrenaline had clearly worn off and Nivea found it to be nothing more than hell. It… sucked. Never before had she ever been in so much pain, been so miserable, and that was certainly saying something. She staggered out of the cave not an hour later, nonetheless. She had shit to do that certainly couldn't wait for her many little inconveniences. 

There still remained the Careers. She had done her job and killed off all others but now she needed to move. Yet she hadn't quite decided where to. The question was both a good and truly stupid one: was it worth it to go to the careers? Or should she just let them tear each other apart and deal with the leftovers? But just as she had decided, a face flashed in her mind. It popped up so abruptly her feet stopped of their own accord and she had to scramble to stay standing, the cauterized gash on her thigh burning in protest beneath taught bandages. 

Why was she thinking about him? But her feet led her away beyond her control and soon she found herself standing tall where she had explicitly decided against. In the edge of the treeline surrounding the cornucopia, Nivea stood with heaving breaths staggering her balance, shoulder relying much too heavily on the tree beside her, one of the very few that remained after the sun had shone. 

A drop of blood escaped from her bandaged hand to land in the layer of blackened, ash-burdened leaves lining the ground, landing, as it sounded, as a scream in the silence. 

Because the silence was that heavy. Because it did bear down on her shoulders. Because where the Careers were was empty and blood stained the dirt. 

The fire that had burned that Nine boy to ashes sat abandoned. Yet no cannon had sounded. Yet she knew most all of them had to be alive still. So they were either being tortured as she had or… there was no other option. 

At least not one she could think of. And it made her heart clench in her chest. 

Slumping against the tree beside her, Nivea felt more then the weight her vision had carried. Now that she was downgraded to one eye with a forever splitting pain everytime she blinked her split eyelid, she hadn't any hope to see as much as she had before. Remaining alert enough to avoid… ambushes became much more of a task than it had been the day before when she had been whole and blades had yet to rake their way through her flesh. Even then it required the constant turning of her head to survey the grounds of the abandoned cornucopia before her. 

She didn't know how long she stood there before something changed in the air. A scream ripped from within the cornucopia. Then there ran a boy of a mere 12, blood splattered on his skin, and feet so fearful to run as he did stumbling their way into the trees where she stood. 

That scream echoed once more with a single word, desperate, fearful beyond words, and sounding much like what Nivea was sure she did the day before during her torture, “Run!”

She was prepared for what came next. The simulated elements weren't on this girl's - Oceana's side as they had been on Nivea's. 

So the cannon boomed with a crunch of bones even detectable to Nivea where she stood so far away. Even more so to the boy sobbing and running for his life just as his protector had demanded with her last word.