I CAN'T BREATHE. I CAN'T BREATHE. I CAN'T FUCKING BREATHE. 

My hands don't remove my blazer fast enough. I throw it off of me and onto the ground, as I try desperately to find something that could possibly get me air in my lungs instead of these damned polluted outdoors. 

I'm wracked with guilt all over and all I want is to scream. So I do. 

I press my heel into the school uniform I've just thrown onto the ground because this school did this to me. This capitol. The leaders that are supposed to protect me--that were supposed to protect Mia. 

A scream that burns my throat and drains every ounce of energy out of me releases from deep inside of me as I tarnish and dirty the red blazer. 

But the warm spring breeze brushes against me and it brings another storm of emotions to my body and tears stream down my face as collapse on the top of the stairs. 

My head is buried in my hands as my entire body shakes with the crooked sobs scorching my throat. They're cracked and raw and everything I feel. 

I'm a river of tears and all I want is to release every emotion in my body but I want to hide away into a shell and live in a world of shame and guilt for what I've done.

I promised Mia. I promised her family.

She has little sisters who will now grow up without knowing their big sister. They'll never remember what her laugh sounds like--or how she smells of nothing but lavender and warmth. 

She'll be nothing but a figment of their memories to them and it's almost entirely my fault. 

If I had been there, in that room... I could have sent some sort of distraction the way Coriolanus sent when Lucy Gray was in danger. 

But it's too late now. 

Mia Rowe will be nothing but a memory in my mind from this day onward. 

Through the slim cracks between my fingers that shield my face, I can see a pair of shoes just a couple of steps beneath the one I'm on. 

I slowly peek my head out from beneath my hands to see Sejanus looking down at me. 

My bottom lip begins to shake once more as I stand up and wrap my arms tight around him. 

I understand how he feels now--why he acted out yesterday when he saw Marcus on that screen. I feel exactly what he had been feeling and it's something I never want to feel again. But it's important that I feel it now so I can understand. 

And he understands me too. I know because he wraps his arms back around me and he tells me.