Worth it | F.O.

XXX

Nivea held her breath, lips clamped shut, pale.

Because beside her stood a girl who must have swam in the blood of another. Splatters of crimson both dried and sickeningly fresh speckled her pale cheeks like freckles. Her arms, too, now wore sleeves and her clothes had taken on a new color under all the blood that weighed them down. A wicked grin with squinted, forest eyes and long, rust eyelashes taunted the boy flinching at the end of her sword. 

Flinching under her pride for the lives she had so clearly taken. And flinching because this girl, tall, strong, hailing from the luxuries of District 1, had her steady sword pressed against the soft, fragile skin of his neck. And yet with the malice swarming her, she failed to notice Nivea, pressed into the tree inches away, blood trailing down the blade of her knife as it, slowly but surely, began to move. 

“Didn't get far, did you, little Four?” she purred. Head tilting, russet hair tumbled to her shoulder, edges singed in a flaking charcoal; the aftermath of the day before, the death of her district partner. 

If Nivea reached out but an inch, the idea of her hand grasping at that hair, sending this brainwashed coward to the ground to be killed filled her with a kind of joy she wasn't too certain could be considered much different from One's own. 

Sheldon's eyes were wide. His skin trembled. His throat bobbed. His eyes gained a new sheen. That new sense of betrayal she had felt but once before snuck up on Nivea like a sudden sword carving a hole through her stomach as his tears glistened in midday light. She felt rotten in much more than one way. The young boy managed only a squeak, eyes clenching shut for one horrible moment. 

One shuffled forward, sword sliding to indent the side of his neck with its blade, beads of sweat trailing to the line where they met. “How sad is this?” jeered the older girl. Nivea couldn't possibly see how they were the same age. “With your protector, well, dead-” She chuckled. “-there's no one left to save you; to shield your eyes, is there?”

As thunder crashed in their chests, his brown eyes shimmered and began to pour the rain of his fear. Of the pain no doubt left with the memory of such an important person in his life becoming nothing but, just like that. Each drop watered the flower that was One's grin. Each sign of a weakness she clearly fed off of stilled her limbs with surety, stretched her cheeks to flaunt the blood staining her teeth, settled a madness in the heavy squint of her eyes. 

So One opened with an easygoing slump in slender shoulders just as those reddened eyes and sniffling nose turned in Nivea's direction. Turned in the direction of the girl hiding away in hope that she would defy those heartless words. In hopes that Nivea would step forth and act as the protector Oceana had been right up until her last breath. But in doing so he blew her cover and Nivea was left without a choice to her next move. 

Time slowed when One froze. When her shoulders tensed at the wandering gaze of a desperate boy. And Nivea stepped forward, a shot of pain racing through her bones. That blanket of leaves creaked and groaned and screamed in the silence beneath her weight, just the same as an old wood floor in a house that could never be a home. 

And just as it had done before with the boy wavering at the end of a sword, a hand bandaged and dirty and burning came to silence that sick grin. Broken fingernails filled to the bed with dirt, mud, and ash dug into crimson freckled cheeks. 

A dented knife pressed into a slender neck. A neck pale. A neck not his. A neck she too would slit. 

Blood dripped from her bandages, drip drip dripping to join One's stained skin. And the girl only laughed under her hand, pinned to her front, waiting under her killer's blade.