☆ CHAPTER EIGHTEEN! ☆
018. the last word
|| DANGEROUS NIGHT||
❝we burned and we
bled, we tried to forget
but the memories left
are still haunting.❞
➳➳
THE HELICOPTER'S LOUD blades flew impossibly fast as it came into sight.
The white sand on the beach was blown in my face as I didn't just watch it pick up the Morphling that had saved Peeta's life, but as I watched Finnick wade just slightly too far to the left to get hit by flying water. The dead was picked up by a claw that seemed as stiff as the body had become even after the short time it had been the property of death; just like that another wasted life was deposed of in front of our eyes.
In particular, in front of the eyes of a man that had seen the closest thing he had to family die just hours before.
Finnick was too busy staring at the salt water to watch it go. It was clear that he wasn't hunting because he wanted to get us food, like he explained to us all as soon as the sun rose above the trees and we were content that we could be safe, but instead it was obvious to me that he was trying to keep his hands working. It was one of his favourite ways of ignoring grief and the sickening feeling that came with losing a mentor- with the damning loss of his friend.
I knew the feeling all too well, so well that it looked like I was staring into an imagined version of myself when I glanced at him.
"I'm not going to say I'm sorry for your loss, I know better than anyone that it won't help." I told the boy once I had waded over to him in the water.
My voice was as timid as it normally was, so timid that I feared that the next loud splash that came from his trident hitting the water would scare it away. Those were the only words that I thought would make him stop, or at least would make him look up from the whirlpool that was sucking in all of his attention. Maybe, he only looked up because it was the first time I had started a conversation with him since our last fight.
"She was one of the kindest women I will ever meet; she saved us."
The water was comfortably up to my low thigh as I took the next uneven step towards him. Even if Finnick glanced right back down when I started to speak again, there was a slither of hope that resided between the small wrinkles by the very corners of his eyes. When I spotted it, the clear water seemed to sparkle slightly as he raised his trident to try and not only kill another fish, but to kill the part of him that was intently waiting for an apology.
It was traumatic to watch him like this, but nothing had changed.
Even if he was taking the death harder than anyone, I couldn't tell him such a lie to make it a little bit easier for him. She was more that a mentor to him, she was the only person in the world that could of replaced the parents he missed so violently. Now he was being abandoned on an island with nothing but the clothes on his back to keep him alive.
He didn't acknowledge what I had said for the first few minutes that I stood beside him, but when he let his trident go into the water for the hundredth time, he also turned to me sharply.
"That's exactly it, isn't it? You don't understand Lorna." Finnick shot bullet after bullet as he sharply pulled the handle of his weapon so that it came out of the sand.
Bodies would of been left as ash after touching the fire that spat from inside his heart- I felt as if I was burnt all over when he accused me of so much, so much that couldn't be true in any form of my lifetime. I had gotten over the wave of sadness rather quickly, but only because I realise that his sadness well outweighed mine as ghosts darted from one iris to the other at the same speed they filled up my own.
He looked up suddenly, as if realising what he had said. He looked inexcusably guilty as he glanced at the blood on my suits, and then at the usual half-insane look in my eyes that I could never recognise in anybody else. I believed I was crazy for still having such a tremour from something that every other Victor seemed to be able to move on from, but I had always been emotional to those that I loved, and those that I thought loved me in return.
"No of course not, that's never happened to me has it Odair." I hissed sharply. I imagined the knives in my voice puncturing his hands as he dropped the weapon into the sea again, only this time he didn't pick it up.
"Lorna-"
"No." I said as I took a visible step back. My voice didn't raise above a whisper, but it was powerful enough to make me feel like I was pushing it out with every muscle I had. "I've never had to deal with someone I loved- maybe even loved like a *family member*- in the Hunger Games. It's not like I know that feeling better than the feeling of my mother tucking me in at night, or better than my father telling me a story."
"This isn't about that." Finnick denied. "You don't have to make everything about him, or about everyone else apart from yourself."
He made me falter, purely because I felt as if he had pulled his cards away from his toned chest just in time for them to hurt the most, right as he got a glance into my own lunacy.
"Wha-what is that supposed to mean?" I stuttered, my eyes wider then they were before.
Once again, Finnick's face contorted into a mixture of pain and frustration as he finally took a step towards the shore so that he could really look into my eyes. He was increadibly close when he did- his eyes looked greener then they had ever been before as he tried to transfer all of his thoughts to me without saying a word. Although, everything was muddled together so intently that I couldn't see anything but the one time he glanced at my lips.
He sighed, and then looked away.
"You think that I hate you because I've kept my distance like Remy did in the first games; you think that the only reason you fight so hard is because of your memories; hell you even think that you don't have a choice in your own death because he didn't. Lorna, every single thought process you have comes back to your brother in some way. You can't see what's really in front of you."
"Open your eyes Lorna. Look at what I've been trying to say for a year- I'm not Remy! Maybe I've kept my distance so that it'll be easier for you when everything goes to shit."
He looked at me again, only this time his chest almost touched mine when he breathed out. He glanced at my lips again as I tried my best to understand everything he was telling me at once,
but once I did be seemed to snap himself out of whatever grief induced passion he had come across. I was sure that was it- everyone said things they didn't mean when they were upset.
"Maybe I do think too much; there's nobody else that loves me like Remy loved me Finnick. I can't let him die twice by forgetting everything he's done for me."
Finnick took a moment to take a breath, only to take a step away from me so that I could no longer smell the ocean. He looked defeated instead of angry,- he looked like I had rejected every part of him.
"If you think he's the only one that cares about you that much, then you really have missed everything."
➳➳
Fish weren't the only things that got stabbed so thoroughly through the chest with sharpened spikes, but it seemed that they were the ones that really had the audacity to show it. I couldn't understand why we had fought so much, but I had focused on it for more than I thought I should have after I walked away, or after he stopped speaking to me all together. I feared that I had gone too far this time, that I had put the final nail in the death of our friendship with such harmful things like words.
District 12 didn't seem to notice the difference, or maybe they just tried not to look like they figured it out as we ate.
Or, perhaps the sudden scream that cut through the bubble we had somehow found ourselves in was so sharp that it cut away all of the ties we had to the problem. It caused all our heads to turn to another line of foliage near the other side of the beach, even if some of us didn't really feel like looking.
I was so concentrated as I willed for another beast to come sprinting out of the jungle to bring us back together, but nothing happened.
Not until a large wave that grew higher than the trees came tumbling onto the sand and then the lake. It made a horrible crashing sound that could of been mistaken for the shattering of the metal arena, which seemed to grow when the rest of the lake's water came up to just below our feet. The sea foam was close enough for me to hear the individual bubbles pop; I watched it sizzle for a moment as I stood up and made sure that the water wouldn't hurt us like the fog had.
Then someone distracted me.
"Someone's here." Katniss realised before the rest of us.
It was true, emerging almost in the same section of beach as the wave was a trio of silhouettes with dark features and a blur of sweat that I couldn't quite here. One had been running out as if she had been blinded by the sun that shone down on her; the female's body was covered in blood as she tried to claw at the other two that came stumbling just behind her.
The two seemed to fall onto the pale sand while the woman stayed upright and alert, and then she pulled out a tell that only me and Finnick would really understand. She had two small axes dangling in her thin but powerful arms, something that only one tribute would use in the entirety of the Hunger Games.
"Johanna." I realised just before the boy from Four, right as I stumbled away from the green wall between us.
I ran from my group like we were being chased, bounding across the sand until she seemed to notice me sprinting her way. She set her axes aside and took off in a sprint of her own until we crashed into each other just meters away from where the other two had seemed to stop; in the time it took for us to make contact I had already prepared myself for the impact of her taller body, and she had done the same. We met at the perfect height to rest my head on her shoulder, as she dropped her two weapons at my feet and made sure that her long arms draped over the entirety of my body.
We hadn't ever hugged for so long before, but a lot had changed.
"You're ok." I marvelled into her bloodied ear. "You're alive. I'm so happy you're still alive."
I pushed as many words out as I could in the short time I was with her, slightly afraid that she would drop at any moment if I let her go or if anybody else touched her. She was the one that unfurled her arms to let me go, although her didn't step backwards right away like I had thought she would- she pushed my still untied hair out of my face with one of her long fingers first. Her auburn hair was still perfectly moulded to her head as she swept it away from her eyes to really look at me.
She didn't hug, but she knew it was the only way I could finally accept that she was really in front of me instead of in my memories.
"Yeah I'm here." She confirmed gently. "I'm also covered in fucking blood."
Once I let go Finnick replaced me as if the space I left was made for him.
"I got them out, went right into the jungle where I thought it would be safe. That's when the rain started." Johanna continued her monologue to the group as the slowly arrived to her drenched spot on the beach. "I thought it was water. It turned out to be blood. Hot, thick blood; it was coming down and choking me."
At that moment, the other two finally began to look up from their position on the sand. They were the couple from District Three that I had only seen in one of the three training session we were offered, and yet I knew everything I needed to know about them from those short few hours.
"Tick tock." The woman with salt and pepper hair muttered as she hugged her own waist. She was gentle, I knew that much as I watched them do nothing but learn in the training room just a few days ago. I didn't think I'd see them again, let alone as Johanna's allies.
"- we were standing around gagging on it blind. That's when Blight hit the force field-" Johanna continued as I examined just how thoroughly Wiress had been covered in the red tar that apparently fell from the sky.
Tick tock, the older woman continued as Katniss came up beside me to examine exactly what had happened to the pair. She watched Wiress worriedly as the older woman continued to chant
"What's wrong with her?" Katniss asked.
What hadn't occured to anyone, not even me for most of the minutes that followed, was that there really was nothing in particular that was wrong with Wiress and Beetee who sat on the ground just a few inches of a head turn away. They were both fine- their brains had just spent the time to really think about where they were, and why we hadn't been soaked in the same blood they seemed to be covered in.
While it was improbable that we had all been safe, the older woman seemed to know better.
In her shock, her tongue looked like it had swelled so much that it was a challenge to say even the simplest of words. To her, the warning she made the simple- precise enough not to draw any attention to her from the Gamemakers while still getting it across. But to who?
As they fought, or as I tried my best to ignore the aching that came from my ribs it seemed like it was nobody.
••••••••••••
2603 words.
So you know how
every album has that
one song that isn't
that great... yeah
well this is my version
of that in a chapter.
I am so sorry you had
to be put through that
<3333