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Finnick

16.

The glass window in the door of the train feels cool against my forehead. The closer we get to the district 4 station, the more my heartbeat rolls through me like thunder. Later today, the entire district will be packed together on the square in front of the Justice Building and the surrounding streets for the official ceremony, but a hand-picked delegation will be waiting on the platform to welcome the victor home. My family and friends will be front and center, surrounded by neighbours and randomly chosen people to fill out the shot for the cameras. Out of the arena, but not out of the Games yet.
Ten years ago dad and I were selected to be in the crowd when Florizel Ridge came back as the victor of the 55th games. I remember dad lifting me on his shoulders and reminding me under his breath to wave and cheer as loud as I could. I remember thinking it was a strange thing to say: why wouldn't I cheer? All I understood about the Games back then was that there were winners and losers, and Florizel was a winner. Now it makes me shiver to think that even a four-year-old needed to be warned to play along, just to be safe.
I know that plenty of people will be so full of relief and happiness for my return that they would be out there screaming regardless of cameras, but having it be mandatory turns everything bitter. They are stealing my family's joy and twisting it to make it look like we're applauding their blood-soaked circus.
On top of that I will also have to face Loryn's family today. I doubt I'll be able to look her parents in the eyes without my soul evacuating my body out of shame and grief.
Perhaps Mags should have sent her coffin ahead after all. There is no chance I'll make it through her funeral anyway.
'There we go! Big smiles!" Illythia quacks in my ear when the train glides to a smooth stop. I glance sideways at Mags, who rolls her eyes and I finally manage a tiny smirk. I can hear the muffled screams of the crowd straight through the door. I have time for one last deep breath before the door slides open and the full force of the applause hits me like a tidal wave.
The platform is packed to bursting. People are kept at a distance by metal fences and a handful of uniformed peacekeepers. They are armed, as always, but the weapons stay holstered and their stance is relaxed. Nobody expects trouble here. For one mad second I wonder how they would react if the crowd were to stop applauding. What would be the consequences if a district would refuse the order to clap for dead children? Would all of Panem see us on their screens with our silent rage? More likely is that the feed would cut to black and we'd all get blown away to be replaced by more obedient slaves. An army too scared to go to war...
‘Finnick!’ A single shriek finally reaches me, a familiar voice that sets off the shivers and draws my eyes to the source like gravity. A tiny figure wrestles free from the hands that try to hold her back and she tumbles over the fence in a jumble of copper curls and skinny limbs. If the fall hurts her at all she couldn’t care less because she’s immediately back on her feet and comes running at me, tears streaming down her face. The nearest peacekeeper starts to make a move as if to intercept her, but then his hand comes up to his earphone and he stands down.
‘Finnick!’ she tries to yell again but her voice cracks under the weight of her tears so she just runs. And what can I do but drop to my knees in front of all of Panem and open my arms as wide as the sky to wrap them around my sister.
She slams into me like she’s trying to dive right through me and find a place to hide, pushes her wet face against my neck, digs ten fingers through my shirt into my still shivering skin. The crowd becomes a distant roar. There’s only us, two rocks in the surf, unmoving, with salt dripping down our faces.
‘I’m home, Stell,’ I breathe against the top of her head with a voice as brittle as glass. She lets out a choked up squeak and tries to dig even deeper into me, like she’s scared I’ll get back on that train if she lets go.
Footsteps approach. I lift my head and I see dad overtake mom to reach us first, he pulls me up with Stella still clinging to my neck and crushes us close to him and then mom is with us and I lose it. I dive into the embrace and cry into my dad’s chest until I’m gasping for air. There are words, from dad, from mom, Stella just keeps saying my name, but it all gets lost in a swirl of tears and arms and family. All I can do is cry, and shake, and try to hold them and be held by them and think thank you, thank you that I can still feel. That I am alive.

I sit through the closing ceremony like a ghost. Stella refuses to sit anywhere else than on my lap so I gladly wrap my arms around her skinny frame and use my five year old sister as a shield from the cameras. I block out the sound of the speeches by staring at her hair and let my thoughts get lost in the ever-changing shapes and colours of her curls.
I also keep her head pressed against my left cheek so I can’t see Loryn’s family out of the corner of my eye. I’ve seen them, caught glimpses of a woman with the same sand-yellow hair, felt the sting of her husband’s grey eyes on the back of my neck when I kept dodging them. I can’t avoid them forever but that doesn’t stop me from trying.
An eternity later we are excused, we leave the stage and the crowds disperse. The mics and cameras get turned off and loaded onto hovercrafts. Illythia and the teams prattle their goodbyes before the train at last drags the last pieces of the 65th Hunger Games back towards the Capitol. All they leave behind is me.
I manage to slip away as everyone gathers their things and make my way back from the platform to the massive, and now very empty, Justice square. I take a seat on the bottom step and close my eyes. An exhausted silence settles over the district. The wind sweeps through my hair and fills my lungs with salt and smoke. My bones feel heavy. It’s finally quiet enough to hear the ocean.
They wait as long as they can, I know, but it’s still too soon when they come get me.
‘Finnick? It’s time.’ And as much as I want to run and hide, I let Mags take me by the arm and guide me down to the beach, my family falling quietly into step behind us. The edge of the sun has just started to graze the horizon by the time we arrive. Nobody rushes us, no one would dare disturb the gentle grief of a child’s funeral.
Dozens of small rowboats lay waiting at the waterline, many more are already making their way out to open water. Mags brings me to where a small crowd has gathered around three boats. The middle one is tiny, barely a raft, but it is decorated from bow to stern with writing and flowers. Next to it, the ugly Capitol coffin lies with the lid open and empty like a gaping maw. My heels dig into the sand and Mags has to tug me along. I can’t, I try to signal her. I know, her fingers gently squeeze into my arm.
Loryn looks just like she did the last time I saw her, like it hasn’t been days upon days since she bled out in my arms. She’s pale and her clothes have been changed, but apart from that she looks like her body might still be warm to the touch. I know the Capitol doctors must have monkeyed with her corpse to keep her all nice and pretty for the funeral but it still throws me. For a moment it almost pulls me over the edge and I’m back in that field, listening to her ragged breaths, holding her close, keeping my promise...
Mags feels me start to shake and gives my arm another squeeze, harder this time. I raise my head to see her mother looking at me from across the little boat and somehow that’s even worse, so I take my gaze back down to Loryn on her bed of dry straw and kindling. Her hands are arranged on her stomach, the shell necklace rests on her chest. Her braids lie across her shoulders like twin pillars of spun gold and she’s dressed completely in white, which makes her even paler. I start flipping through other faces, all the dead tributes, the ones I’ve killed, kids who were sent home to their families in crates just like this, soft and quiet and dressed in white to cover up all the places where the life had leaked out of them. Then my cracked mind starts adding in other faces and I see Alden, Huck, Porter, Maya, myself, Stella-
Mags spins me around and pulls my face down by my chin so that I’m forced to meet her eyes. I’m shivering so hard my teeth are shattering and there’s tears stinging in my eyes, I realise now. Without words, Mags places her free hand on her chest and takes a deep breath, indicating me to follow her rhythm. I close my eyes and concentrate on feeling nothing but the in and out of my lungs.
It takes fifteen breaths for the shivers to stop and for me to open my eyes again. The first person I see, over Mags’ head, is Alden. He had been at the station before but I had been so wrapped up in my family, literally, that I hadn’t even gotten close to him before everyone got dragged down to the closing ceremony. He’s here now, wide-eyed and worried and hovering at a distance like he’s wondering if I recognize him. I slip out of Mags’ fingers on my arm and step past her, take two steps and crash into him. It should be awkward because as two fourteen year old boys we haven’t spent a lot of time hugging, but as soon as we clap our arms around each other’s shoulders I feel grounded.
‘You’re such a fucking asshole, Odair,’ he whispers shakily and I know he’s crying. ‘I’m gonna kick your ass for every time you almost died.’
A laugh bubbles up through my tear-clogged throat. ‘Yeah, I probably deserve that,’ I mumble back.
When we let go, I feel their presence behind me and there is nothing left to do for me except turn around and face Loryn’s parents. They stand next to the raft, quiet as statues, eyes locked on me. I open my mouth, no clue what I want to say, when her mother takes a tentative step towards me. She’s already crying before she carefully wraps me in a hug and starts to sob on my shoulder.
It shatters me. There is no blame in her embrace, no bitterness, nothing but grief for the little girl we both loved and lost. We will both carry her death with us for the rest of our lives, but the guilt that we feel for very different reasons is not ours to bear. I am not her daughter’s killer.
I am a wreck by the time Loryn’s mother untangles herself from me and I still have to face her dad. The tall, broad-shouldered man, a fisherman with a short beard and calloused hands and heartbreakingly familiar grey eyes, takes me by the shoulders and croaks out,
‘Thank you for being with her at the end. You... took care of her. And she didn’t die alone.’ His embrace is short and strong, but what sends me reeling is that after he releases me, Loryn’s father steps past me and hugs my dad. They whisper to each other under their breath, both in tears now. I turn around and see mom comforting Loryn’s mother, who is crying soundlessly into her hands. The realization smashes me over the head that our families went through this nightmare together, just as Loryn and I did. Knitted together by fear and heartbreak. It’s too much. My head is going to explode.
‘Almost there,’ Mags whispers as she leads me to one of the rowboats that will pull Loryn’s raft out to sea. All the other boats have gone, it’s just us now.
We push our boats out into the surf, the raft pulled along by its lines. I sit at the back of ours next to Alden with Stella in my lap. Mom holds the hands of Loryn’s mother, while her father and my dad row us out to sea. The other boat holds Mags, Edith, and who I assume are relatives and friends. The sea is calm but every time a wave nudges at the raft I feel a slight tug at the back of our boat and it echoes in my stomach.
We row through the crowd of rowboats, they leave a path for us and then quietly close in behind us. When we have made it far enough into open water the rowboats start to drop anchor. Some start tying their boats together, making clusters of families and neighbours, quietly handing around bottles of booze. Loryn’s funeral raft is released from ours, I look away and dig my nails into Alden’s shoulder when her parents say their final goodbyes. He lets me, only giving me a quick tap when it’s over.
I’m already stripping off my shirt and boots when they call for two swimmers to push the raft out and light the fire, and of course Alden follows suit. I’ve never been a funeral swimmer before, but getting in the water is honestly all that makes sense right now. Nobody fights me on this, her father looks honestly relieved when he hands me the lighter for the pyre.
Sliding into the cool embrace of the ocean I almost start sobbing again. Everything is suddenly so real, so alive, but in a good way. I need a few seconds to catch my breath, floating next to the raft and staring up at the darkening sky trying to remember what I am supposed to do again. Then Alden nudges me softly and together we push the raft another hundred meters out.
Alden has to light the pyre because my hands shake too much, so I just give her raft one last push before the waves start rolling her away and the flames catch. We swim back in silence and by the time we’re pulled back on board and look back, she’s a tiny speck of fire dancing across the waves. The sun paints a final streak of gold and red and purple across the sky before she dips completely behind the horizon. All around us the sound of lighters is heard and slowly, quietly, hundreds of paper lanterns take to the skies. Mom hands me one and I carefully stand up, let the breeze pluck the lantern from my fingertips. Goodbye, Loryn. Night falls over an ocean dotted with flickering lights, and all around us voices rise up with the verses of the Last Journey.
Later, much later, after Mags guides our entire family like a herd of nervous deer up the steps of our new house in the Victor’s village, after I numbly register that, right, we live here now, and after I’ve been tucked into a soft bed in my new bedroom, I still hear the voices in my head.

Mother Ocean, Father Sky,
Send this child of yours to rest
She was one amongst your best
Set her spirit free to fly

Spring tide, neap tide, morning, night,
All you things that frame our days
Carve her out a resting place
Where ever will her cares be light

Creek and harbour, gulf and reef
Waters shallow, waters deep
Grant her now eternal sleep
And anchor us who reel with grief


It's been 4 years and this fandom is dead anyway, so I'm picking this story back up and also changing to English because reasons.
Executive producer: Kayley

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