Fluid || Finnick Odair

11

The second day was much the same as the first, only colder. Without a bloodbath to kick things off, they relied on the natural resources to wake them up.

Despite the cave, there was little warmth, and all through the night, Coda and Rio had shivered. It meant they hardly slept, which may have been a good thing. It was hard to tell sometimes. Even a fire could do them no good. There just wasn't enough dry wood.

     Rio woke first. Coda didn't want to move. He understood. Rio was tentative at first; he didn't know what he was supposed to do. There were a hundred hundred options, and Finnick had talked him through them all. Only, Finnick wasn't there now. He couldn't tell Rio what to do.

     Eventually, he decided to go outside and test the waters. Neither boy had any fluids between them, and they only had a short window of time before they could start hallucinating from dehydration. They'd be looking for a source for days if the Game Makers had anything to do with it. Or, with his luck, it would all have frozen over.

     The snow was unprecedented. It had never shown up in an arena before. Water and heat were a given most of the time, rain showers weren't uncommon, but snow was unheard of. Rio couldn't take any tips from the older games. The same survival tips didn't count anymore. Without a fire, he would die. With one, there was only a possibility that he would be found.

Two canons could be heard in the night. When they had finally managed to sleep for longer, they sounded. It was just his luck.

     Coda didn't speak to him he woke up, only huddling closet to their dying flame until it was gone. Afterwards, he just sat. Perhaps he'd seen something in the bloodbath. Rio had. They didn't want to talk about it.

     Rio had always wondered why no one spoke of the war. At first, he wondered if it was because there were very few people still alive from those days. Only now was he realising why.

     It was harrowing.

     If war was anything like the Games, then speaking about it would make it real once more. The victors, the survivors, whatever they wanted to be known as had to live with their decisions. Rio knew that he couldn't. His life would never be the same should he live to tell the tale.

     Coda stayed hidden all day. He wasn't in any shape to leave, especially if they were ambushed, so Rio went alone to search for water. There were hunting knives stashed in as many pockets as he could; one of them was blood stained. He didn't have a way to clean them yet. It was a reminder of his guilt, as if Coda wasn't enough.

     There was no way to tell time other than the sun in the sky; but the winter scene meant that the nights were longer than the days. Not only that, but it was cold. It spent far too much energy just walking. They needed food too... that was secondary to their need for water.

     It must have been hours that Rio spent searching for water, and all he found were frozen lakes and ponds. Having gained nothing, he returned to the cave. The fire was out, so he relit it. Coda must have been going mad from the cold.

Rio quickly realised that Coda wasn't going to talk any time soon, so his entertainment would have to be self provided. He'd been avoiding the subject of his family for as long as he'd been in the arena. Now, without eternal distraction, they were the only thing on his mind.

He hoped his parents weren't watching. It was almost impossible to avoid the Games, especially as there were screens in every establishment. Even so, he hoped they hadn't seen them kill that girl. Just because he'd never be the same again, didn't mean they would have to undergo to same duress. If only it wasn't him.

They didn't deserve to lose their only son; that wasn't fair on them. Rio just had to hope that he could take good enough care of himself, and that Finnick would be looking out for him. Though, that might be a little bit of a tall order.

Hours must have passed by the time Rio next looked up. Three canons had gone from them; counting them made the time pass faster. Briefly, he wondered if one of them was Ondine. Then, he shrugged away the thought. It would take all night to find out the truth in that matter. Coda was asleep again, and there was a slight beeping in the distance. Someone was getting a gift from a sponsor. Only when he stepped outside, he realised that it was his.

He caught the small metal box when the parachute deflated. Even through his gloves he could feel how frozen it was. After hitting it off a rock several times, and thawing it out by the fire, Rio managed to finally get it open. Inside, two thimble sized boxes and a note.

Use heat. Stay safe. Look after yourself. - F

     Rio was glad to find that the boxes were filled with water, but the note had confused him. Was he supposed to abandon Coda, because that didn't feel right. Being alone for so long couldn't be good for the game. Anyhow, there were two thimbles full of water. He gave one to Coda when he awoke, and downed the other almost immediately.

     However, it was helpful. If they could make the fire portable for a time, then they could melt enough water to take with them. That would be tomorrows job, because as this happened, the sun began to set. The darkness wasn't safe.

     When the sky was completely black, the capital anthem played. Rio poked his head out of the cave to see who had died that day. None of them were Ondine, and none of them were particularly surprising either.

     The girl from One. The girl from Seven. The boy from Seven. The girl from Nine.

There were ten of them gone now. Almost half of the children were dead. And, more than that, there were three districts now completely eliminated from the Games. Seven, Nine and Twelve were all gone, and Rio had played a part in none of their deaths. Although, it did mean that he had missed one of the canons. Unless, it happened so closely to another that it had slipped Rio's mind.

However, that wasn't the worst part of the night. That was yet to come.

     It was midnight, or close enough to call it that, and he could hear the noises start. At first, it was nothing, because they sounded like the same sounds that came from his sister when she had bad dreams. Although, she was barely anything other than a baby, which made it concerning all of a sudden.

     It took hardly a minute to realise that it was Coda. He was tossing and turning on the stone ground, bound to bruise his skin through the night. The whimpers left his lips, and Rio could feel his heart break.

     What if this was his fault? What if this was because he had killed his District partner? That was something Rio wasn't sure he could live with. 

     All night he was kept awake, half from the noise, and half from the guilt. If Finnick wanted him to take care of himself, then this was the exact opposite.

     Rio was sure this wasn't going to be the worst of it either, because the Games could last for weeks. Once, no one died for so long that they invented new rules which allowed them to attack the tributes themselves to force them together. He expected it would happen in their Games too, but whether he was alive to see it or not was another thing entirely.

      

    

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Disclaimer!!!
I do not own the Hunger Games or any of its original characters, plot lines, arcs and ideas. The only things I own are the changes made to the plot, the relationship between my original characters, and the characters I added to the original books.
Any resemblance of real life is purely coincidental.