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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
sand in the hourglass . . . . .
"You smell," Finnick tells her.
"Then let go."
"Not yet."
He doesn't ask any questions.
She looks at their group over his shoulder.
Katniss. Peeta. Beetee. Wiress. Johanna.
"Mags?" she asks.
Like an electric shock, a tremor is sent through Finnick from his toes and ultimately to his face where he looks as though he just swallowed a lemon. And she knows. She squeezes him just a little bit tighter.
"How are you?" Saffron whispers.
His eyes flutter closed and he inhales and for ten seconds, fifteen, twenty, he doesn't move. Saffron is minutely reduced to a series of smells and sensations against his eyelids. Salt, iron, fish.
"I'm so tired."
"I know."
When she brushes his hair behind his ear, she smears blood across his cheekbone.
She continues. "But when this is over, we can sleep all day."
"Tick tock," Wiress in mumbling to Katniss.
They separate and Saffron submerges herself up to the ears, sitting in a hazy red cloud. Beetee washes himself of blood while Finnick goes to dunk a raging Johanna. The water grabs at the grime that has seeped into her skin and carries it away bit by bit until it has all diffused into nothing. She buries the past in a shallow grave. Memories are a weapon and a tool. Never to be kept too far out of reach.
"Tick tock."
She is losing time. How will she do what Snow has commanded of her? She is outnumbered and practically clueless. With her eyes pressed together so tightly colors swim in the darkness, she pictures herself on a ball of yarn, instructed to trace her way from one end to the other.
Bubbles spiral from her nose and she lets the pressure build in her chest. In her head.
How to do this without bloodshed?
She feels premature guilt. She feels unyielding frustration. Her head feels both weightless and heavy. Her pulse accelerates.
