Tear It Apart⇸Finnick Odair [2]

16

"Tell me again about that old sea legend," Terra whispers into the dark, tracing swirling shapes across smooth skin with the tip of her finger.

"The one about the girl climbing out of sea foam?" Finnick asks and he brushes a thumb across the small of her back, tingles shooting up her spine and she breathes deeply.

"Yeah, the one from before there were districts."

"It's said that the rolling waves sliding together, moving so intimately spread the sea foam across the sand. A carefree love child of land and water, and from that sea foam birthed what is said to be the most beautiful woman to ever walk the land," he told, gripping her hip and pulling her up and closer, her leg draping over, her foot curling around his thigh. "She brought the knowledge of fishing and sailing, of how to weave nets and swim through the riptides and waves. She gave them all this. One day, when a storm came stiring the sea to anger, children playing on the coast got caught in the downpour, getting washed away too far out to swim. She went in after them, disappearing into the foam. The children turned up the next day and it's said that she stays out there, guarding the sea waiting for her children to return to her."

Terra hummed, splaying a hand across his chest as she pushed herself up to look down at him, hair tumbling around her in a curtain.

"You going to return to the sea one day just like her, Ocean boy?" Terra teased, drumming her fingers gently. 

Finnick laughs, flipping over and hovering above her, squeezing her waist and she giggles, bucking her hips. "Only if you promise to come with me."

Terra grins. "Good thing you're teaching me to swim."

There was fiddling with controls and the monitors flickered with static as they worked to get it running and she sits frozen still as she waits. Finnick flusters over her, torn between shouting his disapproval and whispering his concerns, but she can't bring herself to chance her mind, not when she could see clearly, fill the gaps in her memory.

"You aren't going to be able to forget what you see," Finnick tells her, pleading. "It won't go away if you can't handle it."

"I won't know if I'll be able to handle it unless I see it," is her firm reply. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

"I'm staying. I need to know what happened. What I couldn't prevent from happening," he confessed, brushing a hand over her leg and she covers it with her own.

"It's not your fault, Fin. You shouldn't stay just so you have a reason to blame yourself for something."

"It's not about blame," he disagrees and she gives him a hard look.

"Self-loathing then."

Finnick sighs. "You're so stubborn."

She turns to him, moving so she faced him fully, prepared to make some quip about him knowing she was only trying to distract herself from her building fear and panic, but there was a voice sounding loud throughout the room, terror filled and angry as she was force to the ground, red hot iron burned from behind her.

It was strange to see herself in such a horrible position, held down and in pain, knowing what was going to happen but not being able to stop it.

The scenes flickered by, time spent locked up in chains blurred through as though they were the boring parts, the stuff that wasn't important like she hadn't been living like this for insufferable periods uncertain of how much time had even passed.

They stopped, letting it play as peacekeepers dragged her asleep from her cell, leaving her in the glass coffin and chaining her up. Terra was happy enough to know that they hadn't shown the first time she was placed inside because Finnick was already terribly tense at her side.