"if i'm a ghost
then so are you"
Emerald Colter hasn't known peace at any time in her life; and with her reaping comes a chance for her to finally make her mother proud of her. Only, when she returns home, everything remains the same and...
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The reality of her situation hits that night, the girl curled up in bed with tears sliding down the side of her cheeks. Within a few days, she will be dead. Emerald Colter will simply be a name written in the history books, the victor who wasn't strong enough to outlast the rest.
The Capitol residents aren't celebrating how they had been the day before her first attempt at this, instead there are screams of detest. Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen had shook up the Capitol, again, and she hopes that Snow is kind to them when he initiates his revenge. They're still so young, and so is she, none of them should have to face anything like this anymore. They were supposed to be safe.
Safety is simply a facade, on that Snow uses to hide his control over a group of victors who fear him and his wrath.
In comparison to some of the other victors, Emerald has hardly spent any time with the president. He placed the crown on her head after her victory and gave his congratulations, and then there was the time he hosted her and half the Capitol at his mansion for a celebration of her Games. That was it, she didn't have much else to do with him, unlike some of the others.
And yet, she is still here being tormented by his twisted games.
Sniffling quietly, Emerald sits up in her bed and leans a against the headboard. Phoenix's room is on the other side of her's, his loud snores passing through the walls. She almost wants to go in there and wake him up, find some comfort with the man who has done nothing but take care of her the past few years. However, she doesn't want to wake him because sleep is a struggle for him — it has been for a while now.
So instead, the brunette teenager sits by herself and drowns in her fear and grief. All she can see in her mind is people dying, the deaths of all these people she cannot save in the arena. First there is the very real images of Francisco struggling to breathe as blood pours from the wound on his neck. Then it's the ones she could have to experience in the coming days, Silas' lifeless eyes as he stares up at her or even the sight of Peeta Mellark's golden hair splashed with the deep crimson of his own blood.
Emerald doesn't want to kill these people, she doesn't want to see them die either. Each and every one of them has had to experience similar trauma to her own, they deserve a happier ending than the one they're going to get. Twenty three people who thought they would live the rest of their life in peace will see it end in a way they thought they'd avoided.
In a way, Emerald supposes it would be a little kinder to die in the arena for many of these tributes because it means they won't have to face the life after. So many of them are friends, and they will have to live knowing their own friends died so they could live.
After a few moments, she decides she can't take it anymore and pushes herself off the bed. Tiptoeing out of the room, Emerald enters the hall and peers down it, her eyes landing on one door in particular. Maybe he won't be asleep either.
