VENUS《 FINNICK ODAIR

Chapter 65. COUNTDOWN.

A/N: thanks for your patience on this one, it's a bit of filler but its needed. You'll get another update Tuesday/Wednesday which will be the first chapter of the 75th Games. thanks again guys for sticking around for this update, hope you're all doing well. ♡

JOURNAL ENTRY #99.

Days before the Reaping: 1.

When I was very young, in very stressful situations, I used to count down from 100 to 0.

It was like a test. I had no patience with my own mind as a child, I still don't now. But there I would cease all thought, and count ever so slowly down to 0. I'd never reach it of course, but it was never because I paused to fret even more, it was because I had found a solution to my problem while counting down.

Taking a moment to sit, and breathe, and think was all it would take.

And when I said it was like a test, well, in the figurative sense maybe it was like an assessment. I am who I am now because I taught myself how to handle stressful situations, I don't need that countdown anymore. It's not even what comes to mind when I am in a situation where I'd do well with that technique.

I haven't thought about it in nearly ten years.

I just deal. And maybe I did that with a lot of things. Maybe I did that with my parents. I was five when they died. It's not as if I held any memories of them to retain, or anything I could cling to other than their personal affects. I simply don't remember who makes up my face. Maybe I have my mother's smile, or my father's eyes. I've never quite cared because how could I break myself like that? I have no memory of it. And I have no memory of longing for it.

Brutal, I know. I dont even remember much from when it was only Mali and me. Of course I've tried to think what my parents were like, but there was no point. They were gone, and if I didn't want to be left behind, I had to move on.

I learnt that early. I dont know if that makes me a good daughter for not wanting to know about them. Maybe it makes me a survivalist. Its brutal for a kid to come to that conclusion. But then again, despite having a great family, I didn't have much else going for me growing up.

I've had all the time in the world to think, my mind doesn't quite seem to stop. And all I can now think is how have I become the person I am today when I don't know every moment of it all?

I can't remember half my Games, my biggest traumas, or my parents. I know what it means to recount of them, but I can never sit back and picture what each second was like. Those are my biggest traumas, and I know my mind is protecting me for the moments I should remember but don't. But shouldn't those shape a bit of me? Or maybe that's what the absence of them does.

When Mali took me in, I was the first. I had nothing to give but tears but she didn't sign the papers because she wanted something in return. She just cared. I remember nothing much until Delilah and Lottie arrived when I was 7, nothing apart from the first glance I had of Tomali Paylor. Standing in the dim hospital light like a fallen, star forsaken angel.

And maybe that's why I care so much. Because that is what I remember. She is who raised me.

My siblings and Mali mean everything to me. I don't remember what blood is, what it feels like to share it, other than to know what it means to just care.

Inside my heart, pumping dutifully in my chest - miraculously still, is a whole lot of room for not only every person on this earth I'd die for, but a whole revolution. Is that what blood is? To share it?