The Flames in the Fight

The Beginning: By Jinx

It all seems a bit cliche, starting at the "beginning"...even though it wasn't exactly a beginning, more of a big rubber ring that fate happened to throw to me when I was sinking. 

I was only fifteen when I met Vincent. It was two months before my sixteenth birthday, and I was just a kid. I still am just a kid, in most people's eyes. 

After losing everything; my home, my family and my friends to the uprising, I decided that I would have to run if I wanted to stay alive. I tried to stick to rural areas as best as I could, there were too many fights within the cities, and fires that burned constantly. I couldn't look at the sky anymore without seeing a red, smoky haze. There was a constant, ugly glow in the sky caused by years of fighting. I was thirteen when it all kicked off, but with living in a rural area, me and most of my family managed to stay safe for just over a year. I started running when I was fourteen.

As I said, I met Vincent in the December before my sixteenth birthday, just as snow was starting to fall. It seems oddly romantic I suppose, and maybe a little bit cute. Well, that is until I tell you that I tried to kill him. 

Due to the uprising, it was a general rule that anyone you came across, you slaughtered and robbed. It was the only way to stay alive really, to take their life before they took yours. I wasn't a girl who really liked guns, a knife and a knuckle duster was enough for me. Guns attracted too much attention and risked exposure, if you knocked someone out and then stabbed them, no one would hear them dying. 

I met Vincent when I was out trying to find something to eat. Anything would have done. It had been two days since I had last eaten, and even then, it had been a pretty pitiful scrap of dog meat. I was shivering hard in the brisk winter air, I was freezing cold and needed to get back to shelter with food or I knew that I wouldn't survive the night. The burning in my rattling lungs was enough to tell me that much. 

As I was rooting around in some discarded sacks of rubbish, I heard very faint footsteps. Faint but...close. My brain quickly snapped into action, I hunched over into a ball in an attempt to hide myself from whoever it was. It was a male, kind of tall, probably about six foot judging by the length of his strides. He was too large for me to take on my own, he could overpower me in a second and then my warm blood would turn the snow red...but maybe he was carrying food...?

The very thought caused me to swing into action like a feral beast, I jumped up and charged at the approaching figure, knocking him to the ground with one blow...but also managing to fall on top of him in the process. That wasn't a problem though, I had him now. I quickly produced my knife and held it to his throat, ready to cut. I closed my eyes, ready to take another life, just like I had done many times before. One...two...

I couldn't do it.

I just couldn't.

Underneath my own body, I felt the warmth of another body, a LIVING body, something I hadn't felt since...well, since I had a family. My brain kept telling me to just take the cut, to just slice his throat and get it over with, but underneath my freezing skin I felt my heart give a scream of protest. I'd completely forgotten that human emotion existed to me anymore. In my opinion, I was just a machine built for survival.

I opened my eyes, taking in a deep breath and gently relaxing the knife's pressure on my victim's throat. In the dim glow of the evening I saw a slight look of relief wash over his face. My eyes fell onto his as I observed his features, there was nothing particularly harsh about any of him. In his eyes I could see he was tired and fed up, like he was old before his time, but the rest of his face told me that he was still in his late teens. Even in the dim light, I could tell. Despite his unthreatening looks, I was still nervous, this man could still kill me at any time. He was much taller than me, and I could tell just from restraining him that he was pretty damn strong...so why hadn't he just thrown me off? Was he still waiting for me to kill him? Did he have nothing to live for...like me?