Donna

13

BULLETS WHIZZ BY, GRUNTS, GROANS, CRIES OF pain. Steady walking, steady walking to her.

I brought fifty. 

She brought seventy-five.

None of my family is here, I know better. I'm intent on killing her. A few fall from my army. A few from her's. Then no one. No one but us.

“I'm going f*****g kill you.” I whisper but it's a roar in the dead silence.

Fuck I should've left her alone.

“I know Vitya.”

I pull out my gun, she pulls nothing out. Faith. Crazy b***h decides to have faith in me? Not likely.

A few seconds later there's a barrel to my face, and my gun is on the ground.

You know you could've just—

At stare at the barrel on mild interest, but not fear. Still not fear. I'd prefer to be alive, but dead works just as well.

But I didn't see it. Not until it was much too late. I didn't see the few soldiers of mine, that were still alive.

Didn't see her.

But I feel them, the soldiers, hold my hand up.

“Nobody shoot.”

I hear gun c**k against my orders, the barrel is at brain now.

“I said don't shoot!”

But just the same, the bullet whizzes past my eyes, into her. Into her body. My body. Pure unadulterated rage, fills me.

I hate the b***h, but she is mine to hate. Mine to kill. She is mine. Amanda Genovese is mine, and I didn't—

I don't look, I see red. Red blurs my vision, red blood, red haze.

I shot at the shooter. By the echo in valley, and the trajectory of the bullet I know how tall they are. Where they are. Just not who they are.

I shoot. 

I shoot and I kill my sister.

I killed...my sister.

She's dead, her brain matter on the ground. I did that. On purpose. That was a kill shot through and through.

No chance of survival.

But she is still breathing. And I hate her for it. I watch her chest heave, not steady, but not too weak either.

I get down on my knees and I look her in the eye. She knows. I kiss her, fill my lungs with her scent once more. I touch her skin, which is going cold.

“I'm sorry.” Tears, mine, drop on her face.

“I'm so sorry.”

One more time, just once, I kiss her. She still breathing. Her eyes are still open they stare at me. They talk to me.

Then I get take my dead sister and leave her there. I ignored that look in her eye, I had to or I wouldn't have left.

That look, that she got when we would talk about our families. The one that said:

Not you too. Please don't abandon me too.

I walked away, didn't look back, didn't stop. I keep walking, staggering, apparently I'd been shot. When? I don't know.

I walk out of the valley into the streets. I get a phone, tell them to go to the valley, that someone needs help.

By then, she's dead. She had to be.

I call Yuri, and pass the f**k out, mission accomplished.

Two people on the same side of the highway, destined for murder.

I killed her. In the end, I killed her, I could've saved her.

It didn't have to end this way. But it did.