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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six hours for the damned . . . . .
Disorientation meets her as she is divorced from sleep and thrusted into reality. Her comprehension of her dreams is fleeting. She remembers only the urgency and the appearance of Finnick and of Johanna and of water.
Too much sleep condenses upon her eyes and makes her head feel dense and foggy. In the moments before clarity, she thinks it is a weekend at home and the clamoring she hears outside the door is her parents starting a late breakfast.
It is Johanna.
"Wake up," she commands once she has thrown open the door and the blackout curtains.
Saffron is cocooned beneath a swath of gray comforter. She tugs it farther over her head.
"It's too early."
"We are sent into hell in six hours."
"I could have spent those asleep."
"But you're going to spend them with us. We can do whatever we want."
"You're exaggerating."
"Maybe. But I don't care. Now up." Everything about her is harsh: the crude perimeter of her bangs and her wit.
Saffron flings the covers off her and onto Johanna's head.
"Only if you ask nicely."
They both grin at each other like clowns.
In the closet she dresses with three mirrored images of herself. To the left, her eyes stare back at her. An indistinct barrier between dark irises and even darker pupils. To her right, her arms tangle in a shirt waiting to be pulled over her head. Fingers, multiplied, descend upon her.
They meet Finnick on the fourth floor and for breakfast they have grapefruit and thin waffles and iced tea with small lemon slices.
Four hours are devoured in an instant. Time has slithered quietly past unseeing eyes and now it is gone. Johanna has stalked elsewhere, perhaps tipping paintings crooked on their nails or rotating statues off-center. Finnick and Saffron sit cross-legged on the carpet playing a game of solitaire.
Surely, the other tributes are making more use of this time.
"Where is Mags?" she asks.
"Reading."
They are on the seventh floor now, waiting for Johanna. They don't know where Blight is. Saffron wonders if they have gathered in the shadows again, planning for the revolution, and if Finnick has been sent to distract her because she has been discovered.
Bust.
Saffron collects the cards. But then she looks at Finnick and he looks back. Suddenly he slots his palm into the intersection of her jaw and neck. In this kiss, urgency conspires with a fervent sense of expiration. Finnick, who has always been so steadfast in the Games, the plans, and the revolution, is kissing her as though they are hourglasses and when they get on the plane, all their sand will have drained.
"I'm scared," he whispers between burdened exhales.
"Me too."
She vows to herself that this will be the last time she indulges, and, in the arena, she will try her best to see him only as another tribute. That she will carry out what has been commanded of her, and in the end, that it will be easier for both of them.
Two hours later, their hearts drown out the screaming of the plane's engine. Like a train, roaring in their ears. They are led to their seats by Peacekeepers. One by one they hold out their arms and twenty-four trackers are injected. They are reduced to markers on the Gamemakers' tables.
