Love at Sea (Finnick Odair)

Chapter 22

Wounds hurt, but they heal. Broken spirits are a different matter, and are more complex to fix. Taiya sat behind a boulder, protecting her from the wind with her head in her hands for the next day. She couldn't sleep. Every time she closed her eye she saw his eyes go blank. His life slipping away from him. His future leaving him.

She'd spent her time sitting there, plotting how to finish these games. The gifts were piling up beside her, but she only picked at the food that arrived. She couldn't bring herself to look at any more of the supportive notes Tyler and Finnick had been sending her with the gifts. They made her feel ill, so she'd taken to ripping them up upon arrival.

It was midday on the tenth day when a cough and a stumble woke her from her numb stupor. As soon as the sound met her ears, her brain switched to rage. Taiya leapt up from her hiding spot and lunged out, tackling the girl from District 7 to the ground. Ivy didn't put up much of a struggle, she was ill. Taiya pinned her arms and legs and arms to the ground and looked the girl over. Her bones were jutting out from malnutrition, the other tributes hadn't had the same access to resources as she had.

"Please," Ivy begged. "Please just end it."

"As you wish," Taiya whispered in her ear before she pulled out Theo's sword and ran it through the girl's chest.

A cannon rang out. Only 3 left.

Taiya stood up and took a step back from the girl before screaming as she watched blood pool on the ground, frantically running backwards, tripping over her feet in the process. It looked just as the snow had around Theo when he died.

"It's not Theo, it's not Theo," Taiya muttered with her eyes closed. Taking a deep breath, Taiya reassembled her steely resolve before getting back up on her feet. She still had two more tributes to take out.

There were three of them left in the arena. She knew how this time of the Games usually went. The final showdown. The Gamemakers would encourage them to head back to the Cornucopia for the end. So that's where she would go. She'd get there first and make a plan to go home. She'd be going home today.

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As she made her way through the arena, she found herself back in the clearing where Theo had died. The gift she'd receive lay there untouched, the snow surrounding it was back to a pure white colour, leaving no reminder of the deaths that had occurred there only a mere 2 days ago.

Taiya lowered herself shakily to the ground as she picked up the gift capsule and opened it.

'You can beat this. I believe in you – Finnick'

Inside the capsule was a small length of rope. Looking at it, she wasn't sure whether to smile or ground it into the dirt. Sighing she tied it around the necklace Annie had given her. She'd already threaded Theo's ring through it. Her one token had now become three.

She looked down at the rope hanging around her neck before she undid it with a smirk. She held it in front of her and tugged the two ends. It was sturdy. She tied it back onto the necklace, she could use that as a weapon if need be.

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Making her way to the Cornucopia she surveyed the area. The table of weapons had been cleared away, leaving just an empty horn in a field of snow. Taiya looked around the area cautiously, making sure no one was hiding in the tree line before sprinting her way across to the horn.

Hiding just inside the horn, she looked to the back, where a camera would obviously be positioned. "Whenever you're ready," she smirked, challenging the Gamemakers. It was obvious they wanted this done today, it should be nighttime by now, but the sun still shone in the middle of the sky.