VENUS《 FINNICK ODAIR

Chapter 15. LA VIE EN ROSE.

T/W: Slight themes of self harm/suicide during the beginning.

AGONY WAS ALL SHE WAS: A BLISTERING SORE, DECAY IN FULL BLOOM. The ash was back like her dream, sugarcoating the figures before her in a feverous glow. That familiar shadow, paired with a yellow fog met with her shadow family. They dissaperated in a melting heap: only for her screams to be met with laughter.

Edith wasn't aware that three cannons just sounded for those who died in the bomb. No, she was walking into the flames because her body longed for them.

Edith also wasn't aware that the Gamemakers not only set off an earthquake to make the bomb go off early, but that they had set off the acid fog again. Right behind the bomb plume.

She was drunkenly walking straight into deaths arms. All because the venom in her veins was telling her so.

She couldn't fathom that the yellow fog was back, reaching out towards her with traitorous hands. The venom was moving from the slash on her leg, slinking through her veins and making her revel in every pain, every fear, every burn - she longed for the fire, for ash on her tongue.

Edith.

Blind and drunk on pain, the fog touched her. Acidic and as bright as starlight.

She screamed joyfully as it met her too. It was the yellow of sunflowers she could see through the gaps in the wall. The yellow of her raggedy blanket. It was home. As homely as ever, she could just collapse right here on her bed.

Stop.

In a moment it all disappeared. Replaced with blinding marmalade flames and concrete as grey as the hospital corridors. She wasn't home, but the gnawing sensation burned up her arms in black. Vein like tendrils on her hands appeared as if they were dipped in black paint; they were inky vines crawling up her arms. Where freckles once dusted brown were now pearlescent. Edith finally had the tool to create her own galaxies. A new home.

Please.

Never had she felt so torn, one half begged her dearly. That stupidly, motherly voice: a claw coiling her into the fire. It didn't like the other. Oh, no it hated it. It was bitter, and angry and truly heinous to the eye. It had the power to wash her away in the tide, but it was begging on its knees in an orchestral wave of terror. Pleeing for her to hear how the venom sludge through her veins, her inky lungs.

But Edith had been placed on top of the world by that lovely voice, and that's a long way to fall.

Just stop it Edith.

It's not real.

Get away from the fire. Run from the yellow fog.

There's a path in front of you free from both.

Find the basement. Find the passage. Find the ticket booth.

Get out of there. Don't let the venom in your veins inhibit your thinking.

Whatever they laced that tiger's claws with, its trying to get you to kill yourself.

Listen to yourself.

But what if I dont want to?

She could still hear Meekah and Cassius' screams, a numb, melodic hum that crackled like her old record player. This was her reckoning: a twisted hymnal sung in private performance. Was this what death felt like?