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Finnick

17.

The Games are over and I am alive. This is how I wake up every morning for days, then weeks. It’s never not the first thing on my mind. The Games are over. I am alive.
We have crested the peak of summer and are now rolling gently into autumn. Life in District 4 has picked right back up around me because why wouldn’t it? Nothing has changed. This is our world as we’ve always known it.
My world has changed quite a bit, however. I live in the Victor’s village now, in a beautiful house up on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. My family now has a level of comfort we’ve never had before and it’s still a little overwhelming. For the first week we felt like we had moved into a museum full of exhibits we didn’t understand. Why would a family of four need five bedrooms? When do we use the dining room with the glittery chandelier? Who in their right mind puts this many pillows on a couch? What in the name of eternity is lemon verbena and why do all our candles need to smell like it?
We were never dirt poor, not by district 4 standards, but now we have more than we’ll ever need. Not that anyone would begrudge us our new lives, knowing what was paid for it, but there was still a sense of embarrassment to it. That entire first week we sat on the very edge of our shiny chairs, always snuck around over the waxed floors on socked feet, tried to slide into our beds without rumpling the diamond-white sheets. It wasn’t until I started to gently revel in the luxuries the Capitol now owes me for as long as I live, that my family finally relaxed and settled into this new reality.
For the first time since Stella was born I’m not sharing a bedroom with my little sister. I don’t wake up hungry because I never go to bed with an empty stomach. I don’t need to go fishing before school every morning to make sure my family doesn’t starve, but most days I still go anyway. I leave my catch with Alden’s family and wash up at their water tank out back. Alden’s mom is always grateful for the extra food, even though the whole district now gets Capitol rations for an entire year. I go to school in brand new, soft shirts and pants that haven’t been stitched up twelve times over and bleached by seawater and sunlight. After school I do whatever the hell I want. I can join dad on the Evangeline, I can take Stella swimming, I can help mom cook dinner, I can hang out with Alden while he fixes nets and cleans fish, I can roam around endlessly and not be bothered by anyone. I eat dinner with my family, I read books, I take hot showers, I curl up in a featherbed. These are all the luxuries I need. My name is Finnick Odair and I am the victor of the 65th Hunger Games.
We share the Victor’s village with four sets of neighbours. Mags lives next door, on her own apart from the flock of chickens in her backyard. Her house feels much more like a home, probably because she’s lived there for over fifty years. Her kitchen always smells like hot tea and fresh bread and there’s always flowers on the table.
Next to Mags is Edith’s house, Loryn’s mentor. Edith won the 51st Games and is now in her thirties. She lives with her father, who is around Mags’ age and almost completely blind. Edith spends a lot of her time reading to him from her massive library. She lets me borrow all the books I want.
Florizel won four years after Edith and she now lives in the house that stands highest on the cliff, almost teetering on the edge. Florizel is quiet and has only mentored once, the year after she won. She keeps to herself and goes sailing a lot.
Our last neighbours are Fabian and Joy Gatlin. They live in the house across the square from ours, with a backyard that flows into the treeline of the rolling woods where I sometimes go on hikes. Fabian won the 31st Games and shares the house with only his wife. As the story goes, sixteen-year-old Fabian and Joy got married the day before he volunteered at the Reaping. He may have lost an arm, but he did come back to her as he promised.
And then there’s me. I’m one of them now. My name is Finnick Odair and I am the victor of the 65th Hunger Games, and I am alive.

The ocean is unchanged. For all the parts of my world that were flipped and switched and shaken up, the ebb and flow of the water is as eternal and soothing as the breathing of a loved one. She is still my refuge, and if I don’t submerge myself in her silence at least once a day I wouldn’t survive. I am safe here. I could take my heart out of my chest and let it float away without ever worrying I’d lose it.
I haven’t brought fishing gear. I am dressed in my old canvas shorts and sunlight. All I need to do here is nothing. I dive into her blue embrace and slide through it like a dolphin. The water has always worked with me, pushing and pulling to get me where I want to go. Which is down, down and forward. I skim the sand with my fingers, stir up little clouds. My ears pop but my lungs are good. I could probably live down here if they’d let me.
After too many minutes I let the last remnants of burning air carry my body back to the surface. I tilt my head up and watch the bubbles escape from me, skitter up like tiny jellyfish that break into nothing. My head breaks through the waves and my lungs expand on instinct. I wait, impatiently, for the throbbing in my chest and the static in my ears to go away, so I can take another mouthful of air to the bottom of the ocean.
It takes hours until I’m spread out on the waterline, too exhausted to even move. Let the waves push me to where they want me to be, they are usually right.
The gentle September sun caresses my face as I stare right back at her. Seafoam collects in the divots under my heels. My fingers dig around in the sand for shells. This is good. This is home. This is my prize. My name is Finnick Odair and I am the victor of the 65th Hunger Games, and I will live a happy life.

Except no. Not really. My name is Finnick Odair and I am a liar.
I still see it every time I close my eyes. The golden sunlight reflecting off the Cornucopia. The massive walls of green looming all around me. I feel the swamp water pool around my ankles, I smell the stifling heat. My hands still carry the imprint of the silver trident as if the memory of the metal is singed into my skin. I am coated in the blood of 23 dead children and there isn’t an ocean big enough to wash me clean. And just below my surface a fire still rages. Inside the flames something keeps screaming, a sound like a hurricane with teeth, and every night I wake from my nightmares with the echo ringing in my ears, only to realise it’s my own voice and I’ve woken up the entire house again.
I know Stella must be scared witless by the scenes I cause every night, but that doesn’t stop her from sneaking into my room and holding my hand while mom or dad strokes the wet hair back from my forehead and tries to talk me down with a gentle voice. No matter what she hears, no matter how many times they carry her back to her own room, she will be right back the next night when I’m trying to claw my way out of yet another blood-soaked dream. She will sit next to me and wrap her small hands around my balled-up fist and quietly try to understand.
Stella, my little Stella who cried with joy that day when I stepped off the train alive and breathing, is beginning to realise that the Games took something from her as well. She hoped and wished and waited for the return of the Finnick who took her swimming, who always let her win when they played games, who carried her around on his back, who never looked at her without a smile. Instead she now has this stranger who looks oh so much like her brother but it’s not really him. Every time she looks at me I see the question in her eyes of when I’m going to come out, come out, wherever I am and be her Finnick again.
At night, when I’m still half-asleep and half-mad with terror, she will sometimes try to grab my hands while I’m swinging at nothing, as if she understands and will lead me to safety if I let her. So small and brave and stubborn. In those moments she’s a beacon, my north star, pure and unwavering and everything I don’t deserve. I can’t stand to have her with me in those moments. I can’t return her hugs, I can’t even look into her eyes, sea-green and mirror images of mine.
I can tell it hurts her every time my hands become lifeless rocks in hers, and I pray she’ll never understand why. I don’t want her with me in the dark.
I’ve tried to keep it contained but it’s too late, I’ve brought a darkness into our family. It spills over my edges, it leaks through my cracks, it poisons everything around me. I thought victors were protectors, living shields to stand between the children of the district and the Games. I know now we’re nothing but shards and bones, leftovers the arena spat back out after she got bored with us. We’re not survivors, we’re a warning: this is what we can do to even the best of you. I’ve won nothing. I was left alive so the ghosts have someone to haunt.
And every time I touch my sister I mark her with dripping red handprints and they turn their eyes to her. Hungry. Waiting.

I can’t breathe. I’m too scared to sleep. I try to scream but no sound comes out. I want to speak but the words I need don’t exist. I’m on fire and it will never rain again.

I want to d i s a p p e a r .
I want to sink to the bottom or fly straight into the dark between the s t a r s .
I want to rip the sun out of the sky and curl up inside her heart.

I Want To Be Ash And Dust.

Oh hi hello don't mind me im just out here doing my very best to make @Kayley cry so she'll write sad gay things for me as her revenge. Fight me u apricot. <3

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