𝐔𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐎𝐃𝐃𝐒, finnick odair

𝐢𝐢.𝐢𝐢𝐢. 𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐥 𝐠𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠

Softly but swiftly removing the female's hands from the boy's chest, it was Finnick who lowered his head against his frame. Pressing his ear against it to see if there was even the quietest response to his and Elowen's attempts to push oxygen back to his empty lungs. The curse under his breath and rapid raising gave them enough answer before he moved back to his mouth, newly initiating the rescue breaths.

Katniss' sobs and pleading muted any sound or noise around, Finnick soon joining her with encouraging, anxious words as Elowen's hands went back to Peeta's chest. While the brunette was solely and fully focused on him, the Alenerant female could feel Finnick's stare on her as her hands kept moving an pressing on the boy's chest, without a thought on giving up anytime soon. The same way his eyes had flickered with surprise ─ maybe even something else, when he had seen her next to him. Hands and mind ready to continue what he had started.

While she kept going, Elowen's sharp breathing asked her to focus on something that wasn't the boy she, and solely she, saw under her hands. Her mind suddenly travelled back to pieces of memory she hadn't thought about visiting anytime soon, like the first time she had seen Sawyer smile, or the first time the two had ever talked. She thought of the two small dimples that would appear on his face when he smiled, and the way the ends of his eyes tightened when he laughed. About the spark that would appear on his blue sight the last time he had visited her and Callista back home, and he had been playing around with Elys.

A single word crossed through her almost sealed thin lips, pressed in concentration as she kept the compressions going, trying to muffle Katniss' sobs that would surely just set more pressure on her. A word that was full of nothing, but the heart-breaking pain she had felt when the light had faded from her friend's eyes. "Please."

As if coming to meet the pleas of the three tributes crouched around him, in the second that followed, Peeta's chest went to meet Elowen's hands, breaking the patterned rhythm and the motion her palms had managed to keep. Bringing them to an abrupt stop as his mouth opened in a quest to fill his lungs.

Katniss' whimpers didn't cease as her hands went to cup the boy's face, his eyes still partly closed as his mind came back from sleep. It took Elowen a moment to see that she still had her hands above the blonde's chest, just a few inches away from touching the fabric she had been pressing them against.

Despite how firm and secure they had looked while she had been making the compressions, her fingers now trembled, making the female pull her hands into fists and rest them on her lap to hide the sight of it. Even as her deep breathing slowed and began to recover, just as Finnick's, she knew that the reason behind their shaky state wasn't the effort she had just pulled into them. And even when she knew it would pain, she forced herself to bring her sight up. To the boy still lying on the floor.

Where she should've felt relief, a stab of pain pierced her chest when her eyes came across with Peeta's. Observing his dark ones instead of the cerulean she had almost been imploring to see. Sawyer's image had banished from her eyes like an early morning mist, leaving raw grief which Elowen wondered if she would ever stop feeling. Her chest and the organ under it tightened while the burden on her throat and sour tears pushed their way through, but Elowen made sure to press her eyes closed before one of them could roll down her cheek, managing to hold them in as she opened them back. What someone else would have confused as relieved, even joyful tears for Peeta, being a silent lament for the friend she had lost and hadn't been able to help.

"Be careful, there's a forcefield out there," Peeta's thin, sore voice announced, earning a weak chuckle from Katniss, and even one from Finnick, before the brunette silenced him with a kiss. A ghost smile wanted to make it to Elowen's lips, but these ones stayed in the thin line the red-haired had pressed them into.