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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angel . . . . .
In Saffron's world, fear supersedes the whims of the heart. This is the principle that allowed her to become President Snow's puppet.
Johanna Mason is yelling in her ear, her mouth so close that it transcends the ringing. Johanna tugs blindly at her shoulder.
"Get up! Get up!"
She is dizzy and disoriented as she is hauled to her feet.
"But Blight—" Saffron yells at nothing.
"Leave him. Please, just help me," Johanna says, nearly pleading. But pleading is not in her nature. Her voice feels as though it is being filtered through a concrete wall, moving farther away. "I need to get Nuts and Volts out, Saffron, but I can't see anything and it's blood. It's blood."
"I know. I know." Panic sits at the edge of her voice. "Get Beetee and I'll find Wiress."
She moves two feet forward and finds nothing. Blindly, she stumbles to the right and meets air. To the left she suddenly collides with Wiress's bony shoulders.
"I found her!" she shouts.
"I've got Volts," Johanna replies.
Her hand finds Saffron's in the downpour.
"Blight hit the forcefield behind us," she says and leads them in a line through the jungle at a crawl. They are stumbling and slow. An elbow juts against someone else's side and a shin materializes against a surprised foot. Wiress lags. Faint words tumble out of her mouth like a whisper, but Saffron can't make out their meaning.
A single cannon detonates somewhere, far away. They barely hear it.
They walk and walk and the forest transmutes into a single corridor of darkness that, with every step, grows longer. But then the beach peaks shyly through the foliage and its brightness is such a contrast that it feels scalding against their eyes.
Salty water and freshly wet sand. It is unblemished by the red that made up their world for the past hour. They race towards it, and as they do, Saffron palms her dagger and readies her chain. Before her, the glint of Johanna's ax pendulums.
When they burst from the tree line, the hell drips away.
Her knees feel weak.
She tugs Wiress by the wrist as Johanna yells at them to move faster. While Beetee wades into the water, Wiress is trembling and gnawing on her nails, and still, she mutters.
"Tick tock," she says.
It is a mantra.
"Johanna?"
Saffron has learned to conceal her sudden emotions inwardly. Or else, what good was all of that pretending in front of modern couriers? So, when she is startled by his voice it does not show on her face. Instead, it rolls down her spine in an invisible convulsion.
"Johanna!" Finnick Odair yells.
"Finnick?" Johanna sounds annoyed, but underneath there is relief.
She turns and there he is, jogging towards them. She expects him to demand answers. Where had she been? What is she hiding?
Johanna is shouting—complaining.
Saffron is sticky with blood and sweat and her throat is started to bruise, but Finnick crashes into her anyway. His arms interlock around her back and his nose is buried in her neck like she could still possibly smell like the Capitol shampoo. For a minute they do nothing but exist in the same space.
He whispers what sounds like thanks into her braids.
His voice, like Saffron's plaits, are coming apart at the seams.
She cannot deny the bliss that the simplicity of this action gives her. He is like a stone striking her heart, but Snow's bargain sits on her wrists as shackles.
