𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games

twenty

Haymitch and Evelyn would be distraught, but they feared that the worst of it was standing right in front of the two of them.

The grief filled silence was only cut short by the cannon, followed by Finnick's sudden and broken shout. Pain filled every syllable of the scream as he looked out towards the element he thought had become his closest friend; it was the waves that saved Finnick from the grief of his family, and yet here they were, the cause of Lorna's death and his inevitable heartbreak. She was his family, she was the one thing left that he cared about so deeply that it tore him in half each time they talked.

He wished that he had been more selfish. He wished that he had done better, given better hints or simply shouted from the top of the Capitol stage what he wanted to tell her. He had tried to save himself the possible heart aches that he knew Lorna Titan could give him with the smallest of pained smiles, and yet what he felt as he crushed his hands into the sand was so much worse than that. The pain seemed minute compared to this.

He didn't just feel the crushing weight of saddness over his heart, but an emense guilt for the way that he had treated her. She had never said anything out of place, never said anything that would of hurt him and yet he let her go into the clutches of death thinking that he didn't like her- that she had made him hate her. He punished her for his feelings; he punished her selflessness because of his selfish ambition; he could never hate her.

He only stopped saying words because he was afraid he would say something more stupid then the pregnant silence.

All the pain fell on him too suddenly, his crushed heart broke too quickly for him to fight on any longer. No one tried to comfort the man, Peeta instead held Katniss close to his hip to try and block her from the grief that radiated from him more than his beauty. He couldn't even think what he would of done if Katniss dropped first instead of Lorna. It was a warning to him; he saw Finnick as an example of what happened when someone lost their one true love.

Even Katniss was upset with the death. She hadn't expected it; she didn't think that the girl she watched on screen two years ago would be the kind of person that lived up to her reputation. She expected a heartless killer, or someone that was so hateful that they would do anything to watch the world burn and yet the girl from District 5 was nothing like that. She was haunted, she crept up on Katniss and had somehow weaseled her way into being somewhat important to the Girl on Fire.

She wasn't aware that it was her fault that Lorna died; Finnick was.

Finnick never had a reason to hate Katniss. Now he did, now he had a reason to hate her and everyone that convinced Lorna to take her life for District 12.

➳➳

A gargled cough escaped me that seemed to bring life back into my body. Water flew from my mouth as I tried to vomit onto the itchy sand and as I tried to find something solid that I could hold on to while the world around me convulsed like I had stepped on an uneven piece of land. It stuck to my clothes, the memory of what happened in the water stuck out before I even got to glance at the side of the beach I had been thrown onto so suddenly.

I remembered closing my eyes before the water could take me, I remembered assuming for the second time in two days in the arena that I was dead. Apparantly not.

My arms felt like they had been run over by a train; my body ached and protested as I tried to stand only to want to vomit again when I did settle into the uneven stretch of yellow. It was brighter then I remembered- the trees had so much more colour in them instead of just green as I looked up at the wall in front of me.

My back still held my sheath, the handles of my two swords dug into my shoulder blades as I tried my best to stretch out the sleep in my muscles. They were still smooth and strong despite what they had been though with the fragile body that kept them; I only just touched the hilt of a blade when the sickening sound of hard metal made me freeze.