² MANIA ─ catching fire

[ 013 ] i hear voices over my shoulder

Back home, Alecto spent a summer before her Games at the healer's clinic two blocks from Victor's Village, just shadowing the healer. Her father had thought it was something she might've wanted to pursue as a career after graduating from school, and so, when she'd brought her intention for the summer up to him, Atlas had pulled some strings and called on favours from friends around the district. But Alecto didn't want a career in medicine. What she wanted was far less noble, veering toward a scientific curiosity about the human body. In the training academy, Alecto had come to think of the body as a machine, how it ran, how best to disable it, which points controlled what parts, and how quickly a knife could cut through flesh and tendon. What she wanted, out of the summer shadowing the healer at her clinic, was to learn about the human heart, and how to stop it.

From time to time, a person would come into the clinic with heart failure, and Alecto would watch as the healer performed the resuscitation, the furious compressions, the ribcage butterflying under her hands, its individual bones cracking and giving, pumping and pumping and pumping until the person jerked back to life, gasping for breath. The relief afterward was secondary only to the satisfaction of witnessing someone on the cusp of death, as close as Alecto would get to feeling death in the same room. Until her Games.

"Alecto," Atlas said, sternly, as he shot her a disapproving glare. "Go help Finnick."

Alecto pursed her lips. Everything she'd learnt that summer, she'd carried with her into the Games. She knew best where to hit, which points to strike for quick death, and how much time it took to cut through flesh and bone to get to the heart. As Finnick started pumping away at Peeta's chest, Alecto felt her legs beneath her, propelling her forward toward Peeta. She knelt on Peeta's other side, tapped Finnick's wrists to get his attention. Finnick's brows were furrowed, and he'd begun to work up a sweat. Alecto tapped a finger to Peeta's nose and mouth. It took a moment for Finnick to understand. As he finished up his set of compressions, he bent over to keep Peeta's oxygen flowing. Two breaths.

"You tag in," Finnick panted, nodding, "I'll keep time."

Alecto nodded. She pressed the heels of her palms against Peeta's chest, right over the heart. It was a strange feeling, pushing so hard and not feeling something fluttering back against the cavity's membrane, and it sent an eerie tingle up her arms. The moment Finnick bent down to keep Peeta's oxygen flow going, Alecto begun the compressions. One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Again and again until Peeta gave a strangled cough.

Sweating and exhausted, Alecto sat back on her haunches, and shook out her arms. When she lifted her head, she saw spots dancing in her vision, and her throat felt raw, scratchy, thick with heat. Finnick sent her an approving nod, and held out his fist for her to bump her knuckles against. Alecto sent him a wry grin, but did it anyway. He could've done it all by himself, but Alecto was starting to see what her father was trying to get her to do. Katniss couldn't be won through words, and since Alecto had nothing to give, what she had was something much more effective. Save Peeta, gain an inch with Katniss.

Relieved, Katniss flung herself at Peeta then, crushing him against her chest. Alecto got up, numb, now, from head to toe, and found herself by her father's side once more. Staring at her scarred hands, Alecto flexed her fingers. These were the same hands that'd once tore her district partner's heart right out of his chest. The same hands that'd killed Diane by accident, smashed a rock against her skull and rolled her body off the ledge into the dark pit of the quarry for the Peacekeepers to find. The same hands that'd only known how to savage someone to death, adapt for violence and survival. This would be the first time she'd given a life back instead of taken it. The world around her felt upside down, shaken at the root.

In her mind's eye, she found Nikolai, his silhouette, his silken voice rasping against her ear. You'd rip my heart out without a second thought, but you would jumpstart the heart of another you barely even knew? Who're you really fooling here?