True Blue ✷ Leo Valdez.

19: War... Again.

JUST BECAUSE BLAIRE Sullivan didn't have long, fatally-sharp fangs protruding from her gums, or blood-stained claws sprouting from her fingertips, didn't mean she wasn't a monster. In all reality, young Blaire was the exact epitome of a monster. In fact, she was something even worse than a mere monster. Because she was able to disguise herself as a perfectly normal being— as someone who was good. Effortlessly, she was able to blend into crowds, without onlookers batting an eye.

She was able to adopt the illusion of a normal girl, with a completely normal life—well, as norma of a life a Half-Blood could have. Blaire was able to surround herself with good, relishing in the second-hand beauty of flawless morality, all while being a foul creature deserving of a brutal fate.

It was horrid of her, honestly. And, because she'd never had an easy life, this fact, of course, was a reoccurring topic in her dreams.

If she weren't a monster, she wouldn't have been holding a sword that would soon be tarnished by the blood of her best friend. But she was. She was holding it, and she didn't have it in herself to put it down.

She wept over Sunny Garfeild's limp frame, holding her trembling hands against his newly inflicted wound, in a desperate attempt to lessen the outrageous blood flow. It wasn't working though. It wouldn't ever work.

It seemed there was no universe in which Sunny Garfeild and Blaire Sullivan got a happy ending. Their conclusion would forever stay the same. And there was absolutely nothing she could do to change that.

Still, each time her subconscious mind forced her to relieve the tragedy, she found herself clinging onto the boy, as he did her. She was his lifeline, quite literally and metaphorically.

"Please," Blaire cried, salty tears free-falling from her face and ricocheting off the broken frame of Sunny's glasses that had long ago slipped far down his nose,"don't go. You're all I have."

He couldn't say anything, there was too much blood. Too much pain. So, he managed a measley croak in aknowledgement of her words.

Blaire wouldn't allow herself to blink, not willing to miss a single second of the scarce amount of time she had left with Sunny. She stared down at his face, once so beautiful and prestigious, but now was tainted with the consequences of war, polluted by ruin of the disaster around them. She tried to burn the image of him within her retnas for enternity, so she could forever haze upon his features.

  "Please," she tried again, as if the desperation in her voice would will him well. "Sunny."

But it didn't. And so Sunny Garfeild died. There was no gentler way to put it, because nothing about his life was gentle, especially not his death.

And Blaire cried, she cried so hard, for so long, that she thought she might not ever be able to cry again. She thought her tear ducts must have been close to running dry despite the impossibility of that. And she thought the world might end, for a reality without Sunny seemed impossible. It was like a reality without joy— without happiness. Without smile lines and bright summer days, without vibrant colors and racous laughter.

It was like a reality without life. A reality where Blaire was a ghost, forced to endure the same mundane cycle on a daily as ahe watched those around her strive and achieve sucess.

  When the stutter of his pulse beneath her shaking fingers totally dwindled, Blaire cursed at the darkened sky, shouting terrible promises to whatever higher force might have been listening. She gripped the fabric of his torn windbreaker so tightly, her knuckles began to turn white, losing their color. Bile rose in her throat, and her vision blurred.

  Olivia Kingsley did this. Olivia had ran the boy through with her sword without a second thought, as if he'd never meant a thing to her. She'd killed the only person Blaire deemed worth living for, and in turn, she killed the final slivers of humanity in the girl.