Love at Sea (Finnick Odair)

Chapter 5

She felt like a little girl again. Lying on her bed staring at the ceiling, her lips quivering as silent tears ran down her cheeks.

Johanna and Peeta had given up on calling out to her an hour ago. She hadn't answered. But she knew they were both sitting against their respective walls that adjoined her cell.

She couldn't help but flinch as some of the words ran through her mind.

Useless daughter

Biggest regret

She let out a loud sob as she clasped her hands over her ears, trying to stop the words she'd been subjected to hearing from rattling around her head.

"Taiya?" Peeta tried again when he heard her cry.

"Peeta," Taiya croaked back quietly.

"Are you ok?"

Taiya rolled off her bed and crawled over to the wall she knew he was sitting against.

"Not really," she answered honestly.

"Did they hurt you?"

"Not really."

"What'd they do?"

Peeta, Johanna and she had all made a commitment to each other to not hold back. They would tell each other the truth of what they had been subjected to in their tortures, no matter how gruesome it was.

Taiya had never had much to add to that conversation, she'd never been dragged out to be tortured. But Snow knew how to play her. Torturing her mentally over physically would be more effective. Despite the facade she tried to play off, he knew how vulnerable she was mentally. How her stability relied on her connection to her home and her friends.

Romulus buying her helped save her from torture as well. He expected her to arrive at his apartment looking in top condition, bruises and broken bones wouldn't exactly fit that bill.

"Sort of like the jabber jays in the arena," Taiya sniffled. "But more targeted. The things they said... I want my mom and dad," Taiya cried as tears fell. "I just want my mom and dad. He played their voices. They've been dead for 8 years. But he still had their voices and they said things. I just miss my mom and dad," she allowed tears to drop down her cheeks. She hadn't cried over her parents in years, and all it took was some words out of a speaker in a dark, small room for her to crumble and return to her vulnerable 16-year-old emotions.

"What happened to your parents?" Peeta asked.

"Snow killed them," Taiya stuttered. "Finnick didn't want to do what he was told, so Snow killed our parents. I never got to say goodbye, my mom died thinking I hated her. She died and I thought she hated me. And the voices... I know it's not real, but it seemed real. My dad would never say those things to me. But it was his voice," Taiya cried as she clasped her hands over her ears again.

"You just... you have to hold onto the knowledge that they wouldn't say that," Peeta tried to reassure her. "You knew them better than Snow. Deep down you know what's real."

"Yeah," Taiya nodded as she leaned her head against the wall. "I think I do. It wasn't just my parent's voices though."

"Who else's?"

"Just dead people," she sucked in a breath. "My best friend."

"Theo Cresta," Peeta realised. Haymitch had run through Taiya's games with him and Katniss. The parallels between their relationship and his and Katniss's weren't lost on him. He'd always figured that's why she was so standoffish towards him and Katniss at the start. They'd both got to go home together whereas she had to hold her friend in her arms as he died.