Our Love Could Be Lethal Act I Re-Write

Act I: Champagne Problems

This chapter is a bit more abstract due to the material covered and the usage of first-person POV, so grab your reading glasses!

TW: For PTSD and flashbacks

We make our way up to the top floor of the hotel attached to the casino and enter the ginormous suite that takes up almost the entirety of the floor of the hotel. We of course told the other victors before we left where we were going, which naturally resulted in them giving us some strange looks and chuckles. But I ignore their snickers and chuckles, as does Finnick, because we both know that this will probably be our best and possibly last chance of being able to hang out until the next Games uninterrupted.

Finnick opens the door with the key card and I see the massive open-concept room with a huge open fireplace in the middle. The décor has a sleek black motif, the only thing ruining it is something white on the comforter of the bed in the corner of the room. I ignore that, instead heading towards the window. The room has a perfect view of the largest building in the city, the Tribute Tower. The casino's hotel is still quite tall, but even from the top floor of this building, you can tell that it's still a ways off from the feat of height achieved by the Tribute Tower.

"Even from here it still looks terrifying," says Finnick from over my shoulder.

I fold my arms over my chest and nod as I stare out to it. "Thing of nightmares."

"When did they start for you?" he asks.

"As soon as I was out. I got back to the Tower I started having these..." I pause, not knowing how to describe it, "flashbacks. To how I felt when I woke up in the middle of the night and Ruby was on top of me, squeezing my throat, the, the um, panic. The feeling like I was about to die. In the moment part of me knows I'm not actually there, but it's always like I'm right back there. I'd zone out randomly in the middle of the day for who knows how long. Still do."

"Is there anything you can do that helps?" he asks.

I shake my head. "I don't really notice when I do it. Sometimes I even zone out during conversations, but I keep nodding and humming along as if I was listening, which of course, I only realize later I wasn't paying attention and didn't get anything."

"With my nightmares," says Finnick so casually, as if he were talking about recommending a restaurant in the Tower to eat at, "I find it helpful when I can hear Mags in the other room. When I was a kid and I first got out though, she'd stay over at my house and I'd fall asleep on the couch while she'd just sit in this rocking chair I made for her. I'd wake up and she'd tell me to touch five things around me, then find four things to look at, three things to hear, two smells, and finally she'd give me a sugar cube to taste. By the time I got to the last one I always felt...more grounded in where I was. Felt safe again. And then she wouldn't say anything else and she'd go back to knitting this huge blue blanket. Now I sleep with it on my bed back home every night and it's always the first thing I reach for to touch when I wake up from a nightmare. It sounds silly, but the little things help."

I shake my head. "It doesn't sound silly at all." It suddenly occurs to me how much longer Finnick has been at this than I have. For me, I technically haven't even made it over the one-year mark yet because my Games lasted one entire week longer—they went from the final 8 to the victor in less than 24 hours this year. But Finnick? He's had four years of this. Four years of having to come back here. "How do you do it? How do you come back here every time?"

"It's not like there's a choice," he chuckles. "I'd much rather stay on the beach." He catches the unimpressed look on my face before he answers seriously, "Humour. That's how I deal with it. Always have. If you can make a joke about it, suddenly you have a way of letting it all out that's not sitting and crying or bottling it up. Not everyone gets it, but that is not my problem."