You Are My Sunshine // A Finnick Fanfic

Chapter Thirty-Six - Manipulation

Reef

   She seemed to fall so slowly, her blood spilling and painting the concrete floor like a canvas. But as slow as it felt, it happened so fast. One moment, she was crying and smiling, telling me it was okay, and the next, boom, she's dead. I felt everything in me, all the sanity that I had been able to hold on to, die with the girl.

She was too young. I remembered the first day I met her, all nervous but confident, wearing pretty pinks and purples. I never knew why she always insisted on changing the color of her hair, maybe to be creative. I think she had a son, or maybe a daughter. God, who knows, I only got to be with her so much.

   "This is a real shame." The doctor said, backing away from the body of my former stylist.

There was so much blood.

It pooled up in a circle around her head which rested against the ground. Her eyes were wide open, staring at me as I knelt on the ground, tears streaming down my cheeks and my body trembling. I didn't say anything and I didn't scream, in too much shock and still trying to process.

"If only you had told us the truth," The doctor then continued. "Then all of this could have been avoided."

He was right. All of this was my fault.

Except he held the gun.

He fired tbe bullet.

He tortured me and he tortured Peeta.

He's the bad guy, not me.

Right?

"It looks as though, you've killed your friend." He said and those words echoed through my head over and over again like a parasite, eating at my brain.

Then I finally snapped.

The peacekeepers didn't think I would try to fight them, so when I did they weren't prepared for it. I slammed my elbow into one of their shins, making them double over in pain while I grabbed their handgun. He didn't have time to react before I pulled the trigger and he went down screaming.

The other peacekeeper tried to pull out his weapon but he wasn't quick enough for it. I shot him first, getting up to my feet, the adrenaline and shock numbing my usual aching pain. The doctor looked back at me terrified while I never felt stronger. Without his soldiers to intimidate me, he was on his own, and he knew what was going to come next.

I lifted up the weapon but the man began shouting, lifting his hands into the air in surrender.

"Don't!"

"You should have thought about that before you killed Paola." I said flatly, pulling the trigger with no hesitation.

What had I become?

Well it didn't matter, the man was dead and I was the one left standing so I ran over to Paola. I got to my knees, pulling the woman into my arms and holding her close. Her blood smeared across my clothes and got all over my hands. I shifted her head so that she was looking at me.

"Paola, please wake up." I said, shaking her limp pale body. "Wake up, oh god wake up!"

Nothing

"They're gone, you can stop pretending." I pleaded, tears streaming down my cheeks as her lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling. "WAKE UP PAOLA! DAMN IT!"

Nothing

   "I can't do this on my own! Wake up please! Oh God, please wake up!"

   She wasn't going to wake up and I was a fool to think she ever would. Her dead eyes continued to look out into a void of nothing and they were deprived of their natural vibrant color. She was dead. I let her die. This was my fault.