𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐒𝐊𝐔𝐋𝐋 | ꜰ. ᴏᴅᴀɪʀ | ᴅɪsᴄ.

𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧.

She did not catch the distant sound of chatter or the loudening crunching of leaves as a figure approached the source of the scream he had heard. It grew louder and louder until it was enough to catch Agate's limited attention.

Her heart leaped with joy when a shadow loomed over her, but free-fell when the familiar face of Finnick Odair appeared. He would not kill her. Even with her eyes partly closed and voice lost, he recognized the wish she desperately pleaded for—to follow her two brothers to the Garden of Eden. His eyes reluctantly swallowed the her withering state, a state he had been in mere moments ago.

Broken gazes locked and the tempting concept of following through death, they both understood. "Is that it, then?" Finnick asked.

Parts of her face trembled as a smoke of scorn swirled around her. It was ominous. Then, it all stopped. A movement in the corner of his eye caused Finnick to cast his attention away from her hollow greyish-blues. The index finger on her left hand twitched, vying for attention. Coiled around its base was the golden ring Haymitch Abernathy had described to him, the ring he spotted on Agate's finger the night he was given his bangle.

His words snapped Agate out of the gloomy reverie. If she was not allowed to perish, she would get revenge. After all, that was what she promised menacingly two nights ago. Her eyes hardened, wrath mingling with her woes. The electric blue did not jolt back to life, darkening instead. How had she been so foolish to forget her own vow and want to fade instead? How had she been so foolish to let herself dive into a pit of quicksand and wait for starvation and dehydration to chew her from inside out? How had she been so foolish to not fight for her fallen brothers and take revenge on the Capitolians?

Finnick lifted her body off the ground wordlessly, face creasing at her pained groans and grunts. She closed her eyes, mot wanting him to see her watering eyes. Weaving through the branches, he tried his best to prevent anything from touching her. He mumbled, still looking forward, "Sorry."

They revelled in the silence, neither awkward nor comfortable, just a silence that let them sink into their forever-fractured thoughts—one filled with guilt, one with anguish, both with raging revenge. They were like active volcanoes whose craters had already exuded smog and smoke, spat out molten comets, and it was only a matter of moments before lava spilled over and annihilated cities and lives.

As they emerged from the dense tree line, he felt Agate's body tense even more than it was, no doubt a fear, perhaps hope, that the people he left with wanted to kill her then and there. Katniss and Peeta's head snapped towards them, eyes squinting in hate and suspicion at the body Finnick carried. However, their sneers and hisses were not voiced as Finnick lowered Agate into the cloudy pool.

That was when the screams started once again.

Worse than the fog, the water pinched together her skin, erupting the boils and releasing the liquid. Fully submerged in water, everything burned from her toes to her scalp. She writhed in pain in Finnick's tight hold, body thrashing and legs kicking. Her screams bubbled air into the pool, causing her to almost choke on the water as it rushed in her open mouth. Everything burned, inside and out. Agate clawed at his arms and hands, trying to escape the stabbing agony he put her in.

His jaw was taut and his eyebrows were pulled in for he shared her pain. Finnick fought the urge to let her go and run out of the water. "I'm sorry," he forced out.

Milky white spread from where she was, growing less opaque as it diffused out. The waves calmed as the pain lessened and her thrashing gradually vanished. Agate's hand went to Finnick's shoulder and with a gentle push in her back, the water let go of her aching body. Immediately after getting back on her feet, she pulled her hand away as though his being was a licking inferno.