{ just a quick a/n: the timeline of this story will focus on the present,  ie. everything that is happening AFTER the first chapter (the train ride) until mockingjay essentially, but there will be flashbacks to moments during reverie's games and time in the capitol that will provide more context to the relationships she has with other characters.} 

        Twenty-three. My head snaps around, trying to catch a glimpse of my district partner across the distance. Twenty-two. I press two fingers to my throat, feeling for a pulse that would tell me if this was all real and not just another night terror. It's there, thudding insistently against my fingertips, but the pulsations quickly gets swallowed up by the thundering vibration of the countdown. I squeeze my eyes shut, sucking in a deep breath. I can't remember my mentor's advice. What had Finnick told us? What was I supposed to do when that countdown ends and the real one, the one representing my life, counts down instead to its final seconds, minutes, hours, days?

        Get something small and get out. It'll be too dangerous for you.

        The bloodbath isn't worth the risk. I'd likely not be able to hold my own in close combat, not when I scored a 6 in training. I force my eyes open again and try to steady my breathing, staring straight for the Cornucopia in the center of the twenty-four podiums. Would I risk it anyways?

        Eight. The girl on my right, standing a few feet away from me, makes a noise, and I turn my head to see her fumbling to catch something from falling—her token? My lips part and I watch in horror as the small wooden ball drops the short distance from her fingertips to the ground. It happens so fast, my brain barely gets the opportunity to process it. The ground surrounding her podium seems to break apart and launch up as the planted landmines detonate without a moment's hesitation. She is immediately consumed by the blast, and I scream as chunks of Earth and her remains come hurling my way.

         Three. I brace my arm over my face and struggle to maintain my balance, gasping and spitting up dirt. My ears are ringing painfully, unable to handle all of the screaming. Is it me? Is it everyone else? I stumble off of my platform as my legs give out, heart in my throat as the unnerving horn sounds and the Hunger Games officially begins. I hit the grass with a thud, heaving as I puke up everything our mentors had made me and my partner Xander eat that morning. I feel the cold grass against my cheek, my eyes blurring with tears. I'm barely getting to my feet, dizzy and disoriented and horrified, when Xander is suddenly there. He shoves a serrated dagger into my left hand and a bag against my chest.

         "We need to move!" He's screaming in my face, and then realizing that it's futile, he pulls me along with him down the field, away from the massacring happening behind us at the Cornucopia. I blink back my tears and choke back my vomit, willing myself to keep up with him.

*

       Home is different.

        Moving our things out of a house we'd once adored and deciding what to throw and what to keep felt like a cruel punishment for my mother and I, who were forced to sift through the belongings of a ten year-old boy that didn't live to see his big sister return home.

        Aiden had been sick. It was pneumonia, and despite it being an illness that was treatable, we couldn't afford to help him enough before things progressed from bad to worse. He was horribly sick on Reaping day, but coughing like a drum he'd still managed to threaten me in the Justice Building with a teary smile. You better come back. If you don't, I'm never talking to you again. It was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard, but it was so him that I could only wipe my tears and nod, a laugh hesitating on my lips. Of course, I said. Wouldn't dream of it.

        And while I hadn't intended to actually keep my promise, knowing I was headed to my death, I somehow managed to make good on it. When the hovercraft came to get me, covered in blood and drenched to the bone with cold, I could only think about Aiden. How proud he must have been of me. I'd done it for him, hadn't I? Was he the source of my resilience? My strength?

        I'd done the interviews. I played dress-up one more time for the Capitol and only thought of making it back for him. He needed his big sister home, and what kind of person would I be to deprive him of that support when I'd already survived one of the worst games to play? I could beat my sick mind. I could stay alive for him. It wasn't until I'd gotten off the train with Finnick and seen my mother, all alone on the platform with red-rimmed eyes, that I knew something was horribly wrong.

        I was tied up in guilt; guilt for wishing I'd gone ahead and ended it in the Capitol, and guilt for so deeply considering abandoning my grieving mother.

        We had a beautiful memorial. His friends from school came, and the neighbours sent food over for days as we combed through the innards of our old house and prepared to move to the new. I couldn't eat or sleep properly, and it seems my mother was so preoccupied in making sure that I did that we lost ourselves along the way of trying to remain normal.

        It was a special kind of torture. The Games continue to torment even after they're long over.

        "I've already sent one to Mags," my mother says loudly from the kitchen. There's a loud bang as the oven door slams shut, and she comes around the corner drying her hands with a dish towel. "This one's for Finnick. A little thank you."

        I stare at the cake on the table, extremely underwhelming in its presentation but still edible. There isn't any added decoration, and for a brief second, I wonder if he'd even accept it. Capitol Darling, Finnick Odair. I would have thought he was too good for basic human processes, like eating and sleeping, had I not seen him do it first hand just a month ago. "A thank you for what?"

        "For mentoring you," she says calmly, but there's a look in her eyes that feels eerily similar to taking an arrow through the heart. What she really means to say is that she's grateful that she didn't have to lose both of her children that week, and the only extenuating factor that might've kept me alive was him working the sidelines and getting me sponsors.

        "It wasn't really his choice, y'know," I tell her smartly, and she huffs in annoyance as she places a lid on top of the plastic dish, securing it into place.

        "Just take the cake and go, Reverie." She says firmly, picking it up and handing it to me. She smiles then, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it type of event, so I decide to not argue.

        Walking up the pathway to Finnick's house, it occurs to me then how little I'd kept in contact with him since our return to District 4. He'd seemed mentally exhausted having to relive the Games through the lives of two more unwitting teenagers, so I'd understandably kept my distance. Staring up at his big and lonely house now though, one of the many occupied in Victor's Village, I wonder if that was the best choice. He seemed kind of lonely these days. I press the doorbell and knock on the wooden door sharply.

        Finnick opens the door on my third knock, raising his eyebrows curiously as he leans against the frame. "Cake," he says observably, staring down at the Tupperware container. I shrug my shoulders.

        "My mom made it." I tell him. "So please take it, or else you'll break her heart."

        Finnick cracks a smile at that— a normal one, not his flirtatious smirk— and I have to mask my surprise at the genuity of it. "I'd break her heart if I refused?"

        I nod my head adamantly, speaking in a deadpanned tone. "You'd absolutely ruin her. She's been channeling all of her nervous energy into baking. Cakes, cupcakes, muffins, brownies, cookies... The house is overflowing. We're drowning in pastries. Save us, Finnick."

        Finnick laughs then, propping the door open wider before he takes the dish from my outstretched hands. He cracks the lid open and stares at it, easily catching a whiff. "Lemon?" He questions.

        "The best," I answer. He looks back at me, a crease forming just above his brows, and only a few seconds pass before he steps back and tugs the door with him.

        "I'll take it— if you share it with me." He's bargaining, an easy smile curling his lips upwards. I stare at him, waiting for him to retract the offer immediately— it's charming Finnick Odair, always teasing, always joking. He couldn't be serious. "I'm serious," he insists with another laugh, and that's how I end up spending the afternoon on the floor of Finnick Odair's lavish living room. We talk around mouthfuls of lemon cake, picking around the carcass of the elephant in the room that the Games had left behind.

        "I can't believe I undersold my mom's baking so badly," I groan, and Finnick rolls his eyes as he jams his fork into his slice.

        "You're a horrible daughter," he responds in that same deadpan tone I'd used earlier. "Like, the worst. In fact, I think we should bake your mom a cake to apologize." I laugh then, a little strained but amused nonetheless, and set down my plate on the floor by my leg.

        Laughing with Finnick feels strange. Not wrong, exactly, but strange in the sense that once upon a time, we were from two different worlds that could never intertwine. Finnick is a celebrity around here, the Capitol's poster child for District 4 excellence and beauty. Prior to being reaped in the Games, my family and I lived meagrely and quietly. I remember hearing and seeing him everywhere, the Capitol having quickly fallen in love with him and forcing that appreciation down the throat of the rest of the nation. Finnick Odair was something else, something entirely different, and our worlds were once so far apart that we must be disobeying the laws of the universe right now by sitting together in the same room. I swallow thickly.

        "What are you thinking about?" He asks casually, picking at his cake. He sounds disinterested, but only as a front. Finnick is the endlessly curious type.

        "Nothing," comes my immediate reply, and then a little slower, I seem to reconsider: "I don't know."

        Finnick nods his head, accepting the answer for what it is much better than my mom and her overly concerned friends ever could. "I'm gonna take a wild guess here and assume that I remind you of it."

         If I said yes, how would he react? It wasn't his choice to be my mentor in the Games, just a matter of circumstance. The connection still remains however, and it seems almost impossible to completely ignore it. He was the one that trained me for a deadly game and perhaps secured my survival. I chew on my lip, tugging my knees up to my chest. "Would you be mad if I said yes?" I say after a moment, anxious about his reply.

        Finnick shakes his head softly. "I wouldn't."

        "Then ... Yeah. It feels really strange." I confirm, not meeting his eyes. "That I'm here, you know... here, and Xander isn't." I'm not sure what I mean exactly by here— whether it's the immediate present of Finnick's house in District 4, or among the living in general. Finnick doesn't ask me to clarify, a small mercy, and I'm all too relieved that he doesn't.

        Finnick instead focuses his gaze down at his hands, twisting a ring around his pointer finger almost absentmindedly. I watch the motion from my peripherals for a couple rotations, sinking further into the silence. "You think you could've saved him?" He finally asks, and it's like the wind is kicked straight out of my lungs and I'm forced to catch my breath again.

        "No," I answer, but maybe that's a lie. I realize that I can't tell. "I don't know. Maybe. I know that he saved me though, and maybe if he hadn't had to..." If he hadn't, I wouldn't have been the one to lead him to his death.

         "When that girl from 8 got blown up?" Finnick searches hesitantly, and I nod my head in confirmation.

         "I could've easily died." I say. "Just like everyone expected. I was an easy target. I can barely even remember it that well because I was so out of it. Xander didn't have to come back for me." It's not a casual conversation, but Finnick has been through so many Games at this point, mentoring for the better part of five years, that mine can't be all that traumatizing for him. Realistically, he'd probably watched humans do much worse with their time inside. He'd done much worse.

        "You weren't an easy target," says Finnick. I roll my eyes.

        "I had a 6 in training and everyone called me non-lethal, for the time at least." I say quickly, the heartbreaking reality of my actions weighing on my chest. "I don't think I could have saved anyone, to be honest. But Xander... if he hadn't had to help me for as long as he did, he could have survived." I look to Finnick, tan skin pulled smoothly over an angular skeleton; flashy eyes that hide horrors I can't quite comprehend. "How do you do it?"

        His lips part, a breath escaping as he shifts to get more comfortable. He still twists the ring, a plain but dark band on his finger, eyes focused on the hardwood floor as he considers his response. "Be more specific."

        "Keep going, I guess. How do you stop thinking about it?" I ask. He has to have some sort of answer for that. Five years have passed since he'd been reaped and later pronounced Victor, so there has to be some way that Finnick has held onto his sanity so well. I can't accept a reality where I can always see blood, so much of it, on my hands.

        His eyes flicker, seeming to darken under the low light. "I never stop thinking about it." His voice is low, careful in his admission as he meets my gaze heavily. I don't have it in me to turn away, so I hold his stare instead. "Even if I tried, no one ever really lets you forget."

        My chest feels constricted, like a python has wrapped itself around my torso and is slowly crushing my ribcage as the seconds progress. "So it never gets better."

        "I never said that."

        "But you mean it, no? If it doesn't get better... " I shake my head, hoping the thought would vanish with the gesture, but it seems to hold tightly to the crevices and grooves of my brain. "You ever think about... how the other twenty-three could be the real winners? That the ones who live are probably... cursed, or something?"

        Finnick sighs, loud and resigned, and continues playing with his ring. I'm relieved for the moment that he doesn't recoil at my words. Had it been anyone else, I'm sure they'd check me into a psychiatric facility for suicidal ideation immediately. But he understands. Finally, someone gets me. "It's better not to give into it, you know. Takes ten times as long to put yourself together than it does to fall apart. That's what my mom used to say."

        I consider his words, feeling myself crumbling as the seconds pass but trying desperately to stop it— to force the abdicating pieces of me back into the single unit, just so I wouldn't have to bear the grit of doing it with particles of stardust later. "And you really believe that?"

         Finnick nods, swallowing thickly. "I do."

         "So do you just... live... to keep living, then?" I ask, and Finnick nods again. "Isn't that miserable? To only exist."

        Finnick laughs then, dry and humourless. No light shines in his eyes. I decide that I dislike the sound. "It's definitely miserable. But sometimes, there are things that are significantly less miserable. Like this cake." He holds up the tupperware container for show, and I smile slightly. He wipes his hand over his mouth, fingers rubbing against his chin as he thinks. "But it's also out of spite."

         "Spite?" I repeat, and Finnick smiles— much realer, now.

         "You think killing yourself would be the biggest 'fuck you' that you can say, yeah?" Finnick poses the question, and I nod my head in reply. "Well, I think that living beats it." Something in my expression must come across as unconvinced, because Finnick rushes to further explain his view. "Think about it. They know that trauma is eating away at us every minute we keep living, and eventually it's only a matter of time before we lose it. But living... it's something powerful, Reverie. I live out of spite, because if I live... I can do something with that life, anything. But if you end it now, you're still ending it because of them— ending it to prove a point to them. They still have power over you."

        I don't respond for a moment, fingers light on my lips as I think about it. "Isn't living out of spite also still because of them though? Proving a point that you can stick it out."

        Finnick pauses. He nods then, a sad smile tugging at his lips. "Everything really is. We're never our own, not entirely."

        My heart feels like a cinder block then, and I blink rapidly to fend off the pressure building behind my eyes. "Giving into it, the pain, sounds really easy right now."

        "It always does," Finnick responds. "Constantly tempting. But if you think about it long enough, dealing with the aftermath is never worth it." I exhale loudly, and he watches me for a moment as I carefully hold all the broken pieces of my psyche together with glue and a little duct tape. "I'm sorry that I remind you of it." He offers, but I wave him off quickly. He shouldn't have to feel sorry for existing in a space before me.

         "It's not your fault, you were just there to help us." I lean my head against the couch behind me, blinking up at the high ceiling. "I do have a question though."

         "Shoot," Finnick responds, slowly shoving another piece of the cake into his mouth. It's refreshing in a terrifying sort of way that we don't dance around the topic of the Games anymore the way everyone else does. My mother likes to act as if she hadn't watched me do everything necessary to survive inside, opting to pretend that I was the same seventeen year old girl coming out that I'd been walking in.

        I turn my head to look at him properly, and Finnick meets my eyes for a brief second. "On a scale of 1-10, how likely did you think it was that I'd survive?"

        Finnick blinks— blinks again— and thinks hard about it. "I don't know. At first? A two, maybe. I'm sorry."

        "Don't be." I shake my head. "And Xander?"

        "Six," he answers right away. "Maybe seven. He was good with the spear."

        "That makes sense." I shift again, and Finnick tosses me a couch pillow from beside him. I catch it easily, clutching it to my chest. We don't talk about the use of past-tense when referring to Xander and how painful it is.

        "Any other questions?" He asks, and I decide to seize the opportunity.

        "What do you end up doing with all of your time? All that time living out of spite?" I ask him, and then, because he seems unsure of what I mean, I rush to elaborate. "I mean— I've just been having trouble filling time these days. Making money isn't really a concern, and..." I don't know how to say there's no little brother to care for either without it sounding pathetic, so I omit it from my rambling and settle on an exhausted sigh.

         Finnick seems at a loss for words, and it's a strange look for someone who normally has answers for everything; rhetorical or not. I almost want to retract my question, if only in the hope that it would get rid of the lost look settling on his face. "I went in when I was a kid, you know, so the first two years out was just me trying to stay a kid. It was impossible. Now though... I don't really know what to do." Hearing him admit that is satisfying in a sick way. Finnick Odair is truly not as perfect as he leads the world to believe. "Mentoring every year is a given. Annual Capitol visits..." Finnick sighs, obviously bothered by his lack of a concrete answer. The satisfaction is then replaced with a feeling of grief. If Finnick doesn't know what he was doing, I don't either.

         I frown, finding no hope hidden in his words. "Most Victors resort to self-medication to deal with pain, don't they?... The emotional."

         Finnick nods, accepting the information without blinking. "Sounds about right. Half the people I know are hooked on booze and morphling."

         "You think that'll be us in five, ten years?" I ask, and for a second time that afternoon, Finnick seems to not have all the answers.

          Once upon a time, I remember sitting across the table from him with a sixteen year old boy on my left. Every question he was met with, he had at least three potential answers available in response. I realize then that, despite being forced to mature in the public eye far too quickly, Finnick is still a nineteen year old boy with a million questions of his own. It humanizes him in a way, to see that he's just like me.

         "I hope not," he responds, but the look in his eyes doesn't seem very hopeful.