The Assassin (Finnick Odair X OC)

Chapter Eighteen: The Return

Chapter Eighteen: The Return

I'm sitting on the porch of an unfamiliar house, my feet ankle deep in water. I look down at them, barely making out my toes in the murky water, before looking out on the morning sun. There's a large house in the distance, across the water.

"You're not done yet, Kai." My head snaps to my right immediately. I make eye contact with James. He looks exactly like he did the first time we met, innocent yet calculated.

"I'm sorry." I speak softly.

He sits down next to me, sliding his feet down into the water next to me. "Why? You made a choice and I was the consequence."

"I - just - I shouldn't have made that decision. I shouldn't have let Snow use me like that-"

"Stop." His voice is firm. Our eyes meet. "Kai, you can't blame yourself. I wasn't going to survive."

I shake my head. "I could have saved you, James. You know that I could have - if that was my goal, you would have won the Hunger Games-"

"But it wasn't." James' face crinkles up into a comforting smile. "Your goal was to win-"

"It shouldn't have been that." I repeat again. I should be the one that he's dreaming about, not the other way around. I - I can't live with him in my mind like this. "I can't do this."

"You have to. My death should not be in vain-"

"No." I break from his gaze and look back out onto the water. "I can deal with being haunted by my parents, even my brother. Not you. You're - you're a kid."

The quiet that follows my statement is not a friendly one. My point is crystal clear.

I've always been a victim to my own mind. Sure, I can push down grief and ignore what I've done when I'm awake. It's at night that all of my problems come to light. First, it was my parents, killed in a house fire caused by my brother. Then, four years later, my brother came to me in a barren marketplace speaking of his jealousy and lack of remorse for their death, his skull still cracked in half - my first kill. Soon after, only three days apart, one of my closest friends came to me in another quiet location in a dream, telling me exactly what I didn't want to hear; she was ignorant, I was wrong in killing her.

After them, I became Viper. It was easy to separate my kills into another persona and, if I killed for my job, then I didn't care about the victim. They deserved it; they would have been killed another way by someone else - I'm not doing anything new.

James is the first person since them who I feel like Kai murdered and that, that - that fact will haunt me for, probably, years.

The said boy shifts his body so that he's facing me, drawing my eyes back to his figure. "Kai, you need to stay strong. Snow's not done yet."

"He better be." The threat leaves my mouth instantly.

"That's the right attitude." A smile flickers briefly across James' face, although he soon grows serious. "He'll grow confident in his hold on you - think that you'll follow him now. You can't show any regret - any doubt in what you did to all of us. To me. Do you understand that, Kai?"

I dip my head. He's right, well, my subconscious is right. Snow will not go away.

Other than my dreams, I can't show any weakness - especially not now. The Hunger Games are just that - a game. This, this is real life.

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I wake up in a comfortable bed with white sheets. Actually, fuck that; I wake up in a white room. The walls are white. The floor are white. The bed is white. My clothes are white.