𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘'𝐋𝐋 𝐉𝐔𝐌𝐏 𝐎𝐅𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐃𝐆𝐄 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑.
What District 2 victor, Saffron Creek, and prodigy, Finnick Odair, share is the very antithesis of what has been stolen from them. They test the edges of the rules that construct t...
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intuition versus instinct . . . . .
She wonders if she should tell Finnick or Haymitch about her conversation with President Snow, but the chance never arises. Everywhere she goes, she is never alone. Each time she walks past Finnick's door, she happens to encounter an avox. Her and Haymitch's schedules always seem to directly conflict.
This is where her mind is, lost in hypotheticals, as she is interviewed by Caesar Flickerman.
"I understand that you have kept a low profile since we've last seen you in the arena." Then, he leans closer, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Except your reported outings with a certain boy, someone who's here tonight."
She sits, one leg crossed over the other, and leans forward too.
"Oh, Caesar, that was meant to be a secret." She grins.
He laughs.
His hair is blue now, she notes. Saffron can see each minute pore under the blinding stage lights. A thousand faces are watching her live, their features eclipsed in shadow.
Saffron's hair is loosely combed back and a gilded circlet sits amongst the stray strands atop her head. Her dress descends into pronounced angles around her collarbone that resemble something like the cool shards of the faces of mountains. Chains, again, dive over the cavern created by her shoulder blades.
The gold cuffs are secured around her ear and dark kohls are washed over her eyelids and down the curve of her waterlines.
She is devastating.
"What are your plans for these Games?" Caesar asks her.
"I will do everything I can to succeed. I will not disappoint," she says as if speaking directly to Snow.
"I don't doubt it!" he exclaims.
There is applause and then she claims her pedestal next to Brutus. From such position she sees the ironic smirk that Johanna flashes her from behind the curtain. Finnick gazes at her when he travels the stage and it already feels like a betrayal.
It is necessary, she reconciles. He will understand or he won't, but she desperately hopes that she will not so easily lose his trust. She feels like she is free falling, trying to prevent what is inevitable.
Finally, Katniss steps onto her pedestal and faces the cameras and the shadowed faces. Twenty-four victors bask in a small act of rebellion for less than a minute before they are plunged into darkness.
Then, it is past midnight and her hair drips. The kohls have been scrubbed off her eyes. She bastes in a city of light and wills her thoughts to quiet, but the mind submits to no one.
"There is always a choice," she had once assured Finnick when he was resigned and hopeless. Yet, now, too many choices lie before her. All ruinous. Like seeds in lemonade: bitter upon bitter.
"But what if there are no good choices?" Finnick had asked.
She hadn't known the answer then, and she still doesn't now. She waited too long to answer. She sighed.
"Then pick the lesser of the two evils."
She was too tired to be witty.
Eventually, Finnick finds her and they walk circuits around the training center. He clutches her hand like he, too, has sensed it is futile to pretend they are something less anymore. Around his wrist, Saffron notices, is a bracelet that is made of gold and hope.
"Where are you?" he whispers.
To say that she has not gone anywhere would be a lie; to say that she is right in front of him would be untruthful.
His eyes contain the sea and unfold the layers of her heart. He dips closer and they breathe recycled air, but if that is the cost, then they would happily asphyxiate together.
