Skilled Sailor | f. odair

i

MY NAME IS Scarlett Romes. I am twenty-three years old. My home is District Five. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Jax and Peeta were taken prisoners. They are thought to be dead. Most likely they are dead. It is probably best if they are dead ...

She rocks back and forth on her heels, gripping her knees, leaving marks with her nails. Her hair is unkempt and her eyes wild. She doesn't know what she's doing or where she was going. She just had to run. To get away from that room, and that bed, and those wires, and those machines. And him. She couldn't sit there in that white room and wait for him to stumble his way into consciousness any longer.

It had been revealed to her only after she awoke in District Thirteen that something worse than she'd originally thought had occurred. Not only had Annie, Johanna, Peeta, and Jax were taken prisoner, so had her mind. In a way.

Finnick says the Capitol had a mole in the growing rebellion who'd found out their plan. Says that they implanted some kind of serum into her tracker. It must have been injecting itself into her veins the entire time she was in the arena. They injected her with a substance that she couldn't remember the name of for the life of her. All she knew was that it started with an F. After a few tests, it was determined that the serum wasn't deadly. She almost wished it was.

Finnick reassures her that nobody knew what damage was being done until it was too late. No one could have known. But she knows she wanted to hate him. She hates almost everybody now. Herself more than anyone. But it's hard to hate someone who cries so much. Especially when they're crying over you.

Instead of killing her, the injection would steal her mind ever so slowly. Taking away everything piece by piece until she was all but a corpse. A shell of a girl who'd once been overflowing with stories to tell. She wouldn't remember anything.

She had laughed when she found out. It was comical to her, how close she'd gotten to freedom from the Capitol. From Snow. Soon after her eruption of laughter, she fell silent. Refusing to speak to anyone. She realised what Snow was doing to her and how it would affect everyone she loved. It wasn't only her he was punishing, it was them too. He was aiming to destroy them all with one blow.

She hasn't spoken since that day. She has hardly left her room. Until now, as she hides behind a corner in the never-ending maze of tunnels in District Thirteen. She doesn't know how far she got from the medical block, but she doesn't care. She just cries, curled into a ball on the floor.

"Miss Romes?" A woman asks. It's a nurse. Scarlett doesn't reply, only hiding closer to the wall. "You can't be in here. You need to sleep. We can help you sleep."

The woman rounds the corner, reaching down to grab a hold of Scarlett's wrist. She struggles in the nurse's grasp, not wanting to go back. She screams and tries to pull away. Instead, she is met with a cold jab of a needle and the world once again fades to black.

-

SHE WOKE AGAIN with a start. She felt something rough in her hand and glanced down to see a knotted rope. Finnick had visited her. She stood up, deciding to venture out again. She couldn't stand the white tiles or the dim orange lights.

She slid the door open slowly, soundlessly, and peeked her head out. She looked around for anyone who would try to stop her but saw no one. She walked into the hall, her door silently sliding closed behind her. She moved a single door down and looked in the window.

There he was. He was sitting upright, legs hung over the side of the bed, tying and untying another piece of rope. He looked broken. His curly mass of blond hair unbrushed. Wearing nothing but a white hospital gown.