A L T H E A

Tall grass caressed her skin in a sharp, soothing sort of way. She sat in it and watched the sun fall in the sky, surrounded by music and laughter. A child's giggle tickled her ears, bringing a smile to her face. The woman drew her gaze from the horizon to find her sister strumming a guitar, with a dark-haired man beside her. He tossed a little girl into the air -- the source of the giggles. The elder woman felt a pang of hurt in her chest at the sight of them. But what could be hurting? They were all there, together, in a beautiful meadow painted in the oranges and pinks of a sun sinking.

To her right, a large man with wavy black hair sat with his pregnant wife. Her copper hair danced in the wind and she smiled brightly. Just behind them, a young man with flowing dark hair to his back smiled just as much.

The wind was fresh and clean. Spring. It was cool, but not cool enough to require jackets. A soft breeze carried dandelion seeds past her vision. Birds and crickets chirped in time with the young woman's guitar.

Someone sat next to her. He smelled of salt and pressed a kiss to her temple. His hand found its way to her waist and stayed there. She leaned into his side.

Althea jolted awake. Finnick was no longer next to her like he'd been when she fell asleep and in her dream. She rubbed her eyes harshly with the heels of her palms. Even if she and Finnick somehow both survived, her dream would never become a reality. Thatcher was dead. And if they pulled this off, if they kept Katniss alive, the rest of her family was likely to follow.

Finnick materialized at her side with a leaf of water. As the liquid quenched the dryness in her throat, he ran a hand down her braid. Being the rope master that he was, he'd managed a seven-strand braid that was incredibly tight. She hoped it would hold longer than Paprika's braid had.

"You're babying me, Finn," she said quietly. She could feel the way his nurturing side had dialed up several notches. He'd even been helping her lift the leaf to her mouth.

"Bad dream?" He asked, brushing sand from her face. There was a gentleness in the action that had no place in the games. But still, Althea leaned into his calloused hand and sighed.

"Dream of a dream," she answered. "You avoided the accusation."

Finnick chuckled wryly. "A silly accusation." He cupped her face. His hands were warm against her clammy skin and he swiped his thumbs gently against her cheeks. Althea closed her eyes as he pressed his forehead to hers. "I lost you yesterday, angelfish. I think I have a right to baby you." He leaned to the side to press his forehead to her collarbone. One of her hands found its way to his hair and she pressed a kiss to his temple.

"It'll take more than a tidal wave to take me from you," she whispered. Finnick wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to his chest. Althea took a moment to just hold him. To breathe. Who knew when she would get another time to do either of those things?

Katniss woke Peeta and seemed relieved to find Finnick and Althea already awake. "Get up. We have to get moving."

"What?" Althea asked. "What's happening? Did you see someone?"

"Tick-tock," Wiress said, almost happy.

Katniss explained her theory with wild grey eyes. The arena was a clock. Each stroke of the invisible hand brought on deadly challenges that they had all faced. Althea thought back to the beast, to the wave that had nearly... no, not nearly. That wave had killed her. And it was all part of the games. It was a puzzle that Katniss and Wiress had solved.

Johanna pressed in with questions that were almost impossible to answer. She reminded Althea of an eight-year-old Willow whose favorite question was why? Althea rubbed the bridge of her nose with a trembling hand. Everything felt wrong. Her tremor was up her arms in its severity, which was frustrating enough. She was sorer than she'd ever been in her life and Johanna was grating on her eardrums with incessant questions that were sending Althea's patience to the very end of its life.

"But--" Johanna went to start again, stubborn as ever.

"Jo," Althea said sharply. "Unless you have some genius idea to pull out of your ass other than to argue with Katniss for argument's sake, shut up."  Johanna looked away, obviously fuming, but Althea couldn't be brought to care. Finnick pressed his knee against her thigh. After the night before, he'd always be touching her somehow. Fingers, foot, knee, an arm around her, leaning on her, literally anything to be in contact. She wasn't complaining.

"Tick, tock!" Wiress exclaimed.

"You're right," Katniss soothed. "It's a clock. The arena's a clock."

Wiress beamed. "Midnight."

"Does it start at midnight?" Althea asked. Katniss nodded.

"One-thirty." Wiress pointed at the section where she had come from. The blood rain.

"And at two, the poisonous fog," Katniss concurred. Finnick's knee pressed harder into her leg and she placed a hand on his thigh. "It starts there." The teen pointed at the nearby jungle. "So we need to go somewhere safe."

Althea's ears perked at the sound of pinging from above. A parachute trapped itself in a tree just at the edge of the beach. Katniss, their best climber, fetched it quickly. She dropped to the sandy ground with nimble feet.

"What is it, Katniss?" Peeta asked. Althea noted that there was always a tenderness in his tone when he said her name. It was sweet.

"It's for Althea. For her hands," she explains, handing the canister to the older woman. Althea took it carefully and read the note.

   Rub in at the base of the skull and pulse points. It will help the shaking. Love you - D

Her father had sent her this. One of the sponsors had thought to do this for her. It had been getting worse, borderline frustrating, with the trauma to her body and lack of proper nutrition. Tears pricked at Althea's eyes, she fought them back and started rubbing the lotion-like substance into her skin. It smelled herbal. Finnick offered to rub it on the back of her neck for her, but she declined.

"That's nice," Peeta said after glancing at the note. "Has it been bothering you?" His sweet face was full of concern. Sometimes he reminded Althea of a traumatized but adorable dog that you wanted to pepper its face with kisses.

"Like you wouldn't believe, sweet boy." She let her affection show a little, earning reddening ears from the teenage boy and a soft smile.

Althea leaned further into Finnick. Behind her eyelids, they were in a meadow surrounded by her family. In front of them, she was shoved into a living nightmare. He kissed her brow.  Thousands of those tiny little kisses were all she needed, and would never be enough. He rose to his feet and pulled her with him. Katniss was packing, speaking with Johanna and Peeta about Beetee's wire coil, which Althea could see was coated in a thick layer of congealed blood. The woman knew that the Capitol would have no issue producing such large amounts of the red liquid if it were cosmetic, but something turned in Althea's gut as she reminded herself that the Capitol would have no issue acquiring mass amounts of the real thing.

She's brought back to the conversation when Katniss' hand tightens on her knife in her peripheral.

"Go ahead. Try it," Johanna snarled. "I don't care if you're knocked up, I'll rip your throat out."

Finnick and Althea moved as a unit. The woman placed herself in front of Katniss, facing Johanna. She didn't doubt Katniss' ability to defend herself, but Johanna's fuse was likely to burn out much quicker. Finnick stepped between the three women, taking the coil of Beetee's wire from Johanna and placing it on the man's chest. It was wise, seeing as Jo would likely use it to garrote Katniss at first chance.

"Maybe we should all be careful of where we step," Finnick said pointedly, shooting a look at Katniss. "Volts, watch where you plug that thing," he said to Beetee.

Peeta picked up Beetee with unexpected strength. "Where to?" He pointed the question at Althea. She stilled at being put on the spot for such a question. Her eyes found her Finnick, who took her thoughts straight from her head and acted.

"I'd like to go to the Cornucopia and watch. Just to make sure we're right about the clock," he stated. Althea's heart thudded fearfully at the concept of getting into the water again. A faint wave of dizziness crossed her vision. Her weight rolled to her back foot before she caught herself. She didn't bother to look to see if Katniss saw. If the seventeen-year-old was clueless about her situation, she was likely planning how to kill the rest of them off. Althea didn't need to confirm that Katniss knew she was struggling to stand up straight.

She wasn't sure how she'd missed the sand strips that wedge out from the beach to the Cornucopia, but it settled her heart a little. The horn was picked near clean, but Althea walked into it anyway. The metallic walls were smooth apart from the dried blood. It was partially washed away from the wave, but the aftermath of the bloodshed of the first gong wasn't easily erased. Finnick came in behind her, trident in hand. Her heart pounded in her head.

"I'm glad you avoided this," he said quietly with a small wave of his hand. "But it scared the shit out of me not seeing you."

She smiled wryly at him. "I wasn't on the holograms, Finn."

His sea-green eyes looked black in the poor light of the interior. "And yet your canon had gone off when I found you," he murmured. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed with as much strength as she could muster. His arms went around her shoulders. His nose buried itself in her hair and he inhaled deeply. He still smelled of salt. Althea's lungs felt unsteady, and she still hurt from being thrown by a ravaging wave and from Finnick nearly breaking her ribs when bringing her back to life.

Althea pulled back to look at him but kept her arms around him. "Let's just do what we came here for, hmm?" Let's not think about how neither of us is leaving this arena alive.

He pressed his lips to her in a firm kiss. Could something be so gentle and loving but also hard enough that their teeth clinked together? Her brain short-circuited and she forgot to breathe. How was she ever supposed to stop kissing Finnick?

Luckily for her, he solved the internal dilemma by pulling back and kissing her forehead. "Come on," he whispered. He kissed her lips once more before pulling away fully. "Let's join the others."

She tilted her head up. "One more for the road." A soft smile graced her lips before Finnick placed one of the most gentle and loving kisses she'd ever known to her mouth. She blinked slowly, all squinty like a happy cat in the sun. They exit the Cornucopia to find Wiress dunking Beetee's coil in the water, presumably to clean it. She sang a little tune about a mouse and a clock, cleaning happily.

"Oh, she's more than smart," Beetee said in response to something someone else said. "She's intuitive. She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines," he said to Katniss.

"What's that?" Finnick asked her.

Althea found another batch of small knives that matched the one that she'd buried in Chaff's skull. A blade shivered in her shaking hands. The lotion hadn't kicked in yet, she noted with a curl of her lip.

Katniss answered Finnick while picking her nails with an arrowhead. "It's a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there's bad air."

"What's it do, die?" Johanna asked. Althea fought off a snicker. It was obvious that the bird would die at some point. Its lungs were much weaker than the miners', not to mention much smaller.

"It stops singing at first. That's when you should get out. But if the air's too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you." Katniss stops talking rather sharply. The teen was done with the topic.

As the group dispersed among the tiny island, Althea sat on a particularly flat rock. Her lungs felt weaker than usual. It wasn't incredibly surprising as she had drowned but something felt off. Warnings ticked off in her brain and another wave of dizziness almost caused her to lie down. With Wiress' singing, Althea realized they had their own canary.

Peeta sat behind her, pressing their backs together. "You can lean on me," he said quietly. "I'm going to try and draw a map."

Althea sighed with a fondness that still surprised her. "Thanks, Peeta."

"Us second-chancers gotta stick together," he said with a dry tone. "Whatever Finnick did to revive me still has me sore, so I can imagine you're tired."

Althea laughed airily. "Something like that." She leaned against his back, angling her face towards the warm sun. After a few moments and nearly falling asleep against Peeta's strong back, one of her eyes peeled open to find Katniss walking towards them and squatting beside her love.

"Look at how the Cornucopia is positioned," he said to her.

In her peripheral, Althea saw Katniss look around. The girl's black hair shone in the sunlight, her skin still peeling a bit, but overall healthier than when the older victor had seen her first the day before. Wiress' was still humming in the background of Althea's hearing.

"The tail-end is pointing to twelve," Katniss observed.

"So that's the top of our clock." He scratched something. "Twelve to one is the lightning zone." The blond boy scratched more, his back muscles moving beneath Althea's.

"Ten to eleven is the wave," Katniss added. Althea shivered at the thought.

"There's a beast in that sector," she said, pointing to where she and Thatcher had run in the beginning.

"Did you notice anything else, Althea?" Peeta asked gently.

"Fortunately, no," she answered with a yawn. Her body seemed to be powering down for a nap. She nestled down further so their backs pressed together more comfortably. He bumped his head against hers softly but said nothing.

"What about you guys?" Katniss asked the others. Nothing. Fortunately for them, all they'd encountered was the blood rain and a forcefield. "I guess they could hold anything," she said with an exasperated sigh.

"I'm going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers' weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we'll stay clear of those," Peeta said, scratching more. He leaned back against Althea, making her sit up and wake a bit. She noticed something was off, then. Something was wrong. She looked around, searching. "Well, it's more than we knew this morning, anyway."

Their canary had stopped singing, and Gloss was smiling at her while dripping wet as Wiress fell to the ground with a slit throat.

a/n: hello my loves <3 forgive my absence and time away. i hope this makes up for it. i adore you all and i hope you love it. make sure to comment with your thoughts and reactions! take care of yourselves. drink water, eat well, and take yourself on a little walk.

all my love,

hadley