𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games Sequel

twelve

☆ CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN! ☆
037. mummy told me

|| WITHOUT ME ||
❝took it too far to
keep you close, I
was afriad to leave
you on your own.❞

➳➳

FINNICK FORGOT IF it was his mother or father that first told him it was wrong for men to cry, but the same couldn't be said for the sentiment behind it.

Between the thick walls that surrounded each corridor in District Thirteen and the fluorescent lighting that didn't quite warm his skin like the fresh sun in Disrict Four had done for years, it was hard to remember a time when he could only cry with the sound of the ocean by his side. A time when the smell of seaweed and the course massage of eroded sand gave him the comfort he lacked from his family for the final moments before he would choke on his own unstable reality.

He couldn't blame his parents for making it impossible for him to express what he really wanted to, because he understood perfectly why they taught him to push it all away.

Between the Hunger Games that hung around every childs neck until the floor snapped open and the noose finally tightened, and the reality that their own child could one day die without really getting to live, it was easy for Finnick to see the positives that came with keeping it all inside. He could see how easy it would be to disassociate from it all- hell there were times when Finnick Odair was thankful he needed a particular smell to breakdown, and a very specific sound to let the tears fall if he had an ounce of control.

But it was all so exhausting when the world had been split into two, and the only person he wanted with him had been wripped towards the wrong side. Inside Thirteen he couldn't bring himself to shed a tear, or smile when he saw somebody he thought was surely dead alive and well, because all he could really hear was the voice of his parents when they caught him letting loose in their home.

When he'd first seen Peeta Mellark on the projected screen of the canteen, he remembered it was his mother's upturned nose that crinkled as she reprimanded her son. It was her thick blonde hair (that parted exactly in the middle of her forehead) that was pushed behind her ear as she wiped away a single salty tear- his dad wasn't even home yet from the docks.

She'd been close to tears herself, but that wasn't ever the point.

Just like when the boy looked directly into the camera, it wasn't the person that Finnick forced himself to remember.

He remembered how Katniss had gasped the moment their dinner was interrupted by the boy with bags large enough to hold an entire new set of eyes, and how sick it made him when he realised the boy was alone. Despite the trip to Eight there was a lively hope dancing between Katniss's eyes and the white on screen that could've almost itched the spot of sorrow that rose on Finnick's rosy cheeks, but it was quickly evaporated as the minutes past and the raven-haired Victor filled with a sickness that could only be caused by love.