CHAPTER sixty-nine| MONTHS GONE BY

Conan Grey~ The Story
❝And I'm afraid that's just the way the world works, it ain't funny, it ain't pretty, it ain't sweet.❞

THE FIRE CRACKLED with an intensity that made each pop sound like a gun shot.

In a room that was supposed to be comfortable for Finnick Odair, it was hard for him to notice all the things that would remind him of good times when the sounds brought him right back to the fight. The room had been chosen because of it's colourful walls painted in a deep rich blue that should've reminded Finnick of the bottom of the ocean once the sun had been replaced by the glistening moon. It was littered with small silver flakes like stars- or the remaining foam that floated on top of the water after a particularly bad storm- that made the room lighter in the midday sun that streamed through the curtains. With cushions that wore the same colour, the blue hues reflected off of Finnick's pale face as he stared toward the reds and oranges that reminded him of something other than the sea.

The sun was rather rare now that the weather had become cold; autumn had come early for the whole of Panem after what they'd fought for- what so many of the country had died for six months earlier when a room with cushions and a real fireplace seemed out of the question. When being back home in District Four seemed like an impossibility. When Dr. Granger was painted suspiciously by his wife, instead of being the only woman that could coax the real truth out of him without making him feel like he should throw himself into a void without any way back.

He finally understood exactly how the Titan's had felt for all those years- if he could go back, Finnick wouldn't have ever said the things he did all that time ago.

Still, that was beside the point. As he tried his hardest not to spiral past topics a mile a minute he let his mind wander towards a past he had been afraid of for weeks. The fire popped once more, and he once again heard the similarity between that and the barrell of his gun. It was the aftermath of war; he glanced away from the fire that seemed to dance around the coal shipped directly from what was left of District 12 while he realised that be was the only one that heard guns in crackling wood. The Doctor wouldn't be able to make the same comparison that he had.

"Finnick." She called him back. Her style hadn't changed post war, Finnick realised as he glanced at her, then down towards the book in his hands. Her hair was still impossibly curly- despite the shine to it her locks still overwhelmed her round face that now had been brushed over with colour.

"Sorry." He mumbled after another short glance towards the fire, which had been littered by the embers that made the floor of the fireplace look brown.

"It's Ok. I know this must be impossibly hard for you, but this is a day of celebration." The woman only slightly older than him reminded the boy. "When I first suggested that you write your whole story down, I never expected you to go into so much detail- or for you to write it from her perspective. It shows a lot of strength."

As Finnick finally brought his attention back towards the elegant scribbles he had been writing for months on end, the sudden crackle seemed to become transparent in comparison. The pages he'd brought with him that day was thick enough to stack into two seperate piles on the coffee table in front of him- enough to fit into three seperate books that were separated into chapters of around 1,500 words each on average. He knew he had made some accounts a lot longer than that- up to 3,500 words in a few cases- but he also knew some parts were too hard to bare.

"I know this last entry must've been the hardest to write for you Finnick. But without it, the books would have such a sudden ending"

Dr. Granger had told him how well he could manipulate words on a page. How detailed he remembered the little things- or the things he couldn't have seen but got from his friends, or the memories that people had shared in the past. It was finally a good thing that he couldn't get the trauma he'd suffered out of his mind; in front of him was the entire timeline from the beginning of the seventy-fifth Hunger Games until the very moment when the war ended- at least when the war ended for him.

One month ago when the Doctor first suggested turning his therapy into some kind of tribute to the Hunger Games and the terrible things him and his wife had seen, Finnick never would've imaged himself being able to finish it. Not when he had been asked to write everything through the eyes of his greatest love instead of his own.

All he could think about as he wrote was the war, and how quickly every happy thing had been stripped away from him. Near the end it was less about the time he wasted (a part of him wanted to change the arguments he had been so stubborn about so they were grand romantic gestures instead) and how swiftly the people he once cared for had left him. Katniss had been exiled after her final act of rebellion when she killed President Coin, Peeta had joined her and Johanna was sent back home to District Seven where she could recover. Beetee was in the Capitol- it seemed that the War had been the only thing that brough the Victor's together.

Maybe she was the only one that kept us together- Finnick thought as he rearranged the pages in his hand so the last chapter was in the correct order.

"I couldn't do it all." Finnick admitted. His eyes that had been described throughout his chapters as both blue and green (depending on how he felt) seemed more glassy than they had been in the last couple of sessions to Dr. Granger, but that was understandable. She knew what she asked Finnick Odair to do was enough to open every wound that he had, but she also saw just how much it helped him understand his wife's thought process.

She had seen him shrink and then grow again; the Doctor recognised that growth so much more when she could see how far he'd come.

It was important that Finnick no longer blamed himself for all the things Lorna had done. It was even more important for him to realise just how inevitable it all was.

"I tried so hard. After all this time I thought I'd be able to make it through and come to some kind of peaceful ending, but I can't. I can't even say it out loud."

Or think it- Finnick admitted to himself, and himself alone.

"Would it be too much to ask you to read me what you have so far?" The Doctor asked without a hint of expectancy.

Finnick glanced at his work again. His mouth was dry, he noticed how scratchy the back of his throat was now that he tried to push out words that he'd said in his head with complete clarity: a part of him was afriad that his voice would betray how calm it felt to finally have her side of the story right infront of him.

He took a sip of water before unfurling the first couple of sentences.

"Weightlessness was by far the most harrowing sensation that I'd ever felt.

It was the kind of feeling that flew over every inch of my skin at once when my last finger slipped from the railing- a sharp smack in the face every time I reached out for something comforting as the pit of my stomach flipped over until it seemed to be performing cartwheels in my mouth. The feeling of pure unfiltered wind against my back as my hair parted to snap beside my rosy cheeks; a curtain of platinum that shielded my senses from the real unapologetic truth that seemed to crash from one of my friends to the next."

In his next breath, Finnick stumbled over the words as he tried to compose the right amount of expression on his face. It was no secret that his beauty had turned tragic since the war- every part of him turned grey and limp in comparison to the happiness and beauty he had oozed on his wedding day.

"When they figured it out- when each of the people I was willing to sacrifice my life for understood that I was too far gone- a tether seemed to connect them in a way I'd never seen. They clutched each other to stop another person from jumping out of their skin; Finnick's horrific wail came out so mangled that it almost sounded like the mutts had managed to rip apart his soul with their sharp teeth. It was like he was beside me when their claws first wripped into my muscles (that had been plagued by spasms since Peeta had screamed fire the second before), like he could feel each wrip and tug that forced a pain so violent I skipped tears and went straight to the breathlessness of constant torment.

I didn't quite feel it when one took a bite from my neck and pulled open a stream of crimson blood, but I could see a similar pain reflected in the blacks of Finnick's eyes."

He didn't ever look away.

Finnick couldn't quite manage the next line- the memory of Lorna's cheeks losing all colour as she was wripped apart was enough to bring tears to his eyes even after all this time. But it was important that he tried- it was so important that the whole of Panem knew what the Spark From the Districts had done to protect the people that brought everyone a fragile peace.

"Is that all you have?" Dr. Granger asked timidly.

"I know what I want to say." That much was true. In his head, Finnick had the ending already written with the most beautiful tribute that he could imagine. However, each time he went to write it, his hand faultered, and his breath became short.

"I will finish it, and then all I need are the book titles before I send it to the Capitol to be produced. I want my wife to get everything she deserves- I don't want anyone to ever forget the name Lorna Titan."

"They won't Finnick, you are trying your very hardest to ensure she lives on in people's memories forever." The Doctor commented as she picked up the entries Finnick wanted to put in book one.

When Dr. Granger read through the book once more, and was reminded of the first metaphor that she's asked Finnick to make, she had an idea. To begin with she wanted Finnick to slowly get re-acquainted with the thing that he had come to hate the most; now it seemed that Finnick's slow but stable appreciation of fire was important for an entirely different reason.

"Sparks." Dr. Granger finally said, after she had taken a moment for Finnick to gather himself.

"What?"

"Sparks. That should be the name of the first book." The woman explained with her hands moving in extravagant but controlled circles. "I wanted you to make positive connections with fire to try and balance the negative experience you've had with it- what better way to do that then to make your wife's legacy directly linked to flames?"

She was standing in front of Finnick in his armchair now- her curly hair tickled her shoulders as the doctor continued to unravel her final addition to Finnick's masterpiece.

"Flames- that could be the name of the second book. To most people it'll look like you're just keeping to a theme, but we'll know. We'll know it's a way of showing your mental growth, or a documentation of you coming to terms with your trauma, and once again accepting the word. Like a celebration of how far you've come until you overlooked the hatrid, and could call your final book-

"-Fires."

It no longer made Finnick sick to say it. When he thought of it now, in bright letters on the cover of Lorna's life, he couldn't help but love it.

••••••••••••
2318 words.

So... I don't know if I meed to explain that this entire book series is the content of Finnick's books, but this has been my idea since I started this series all those years ago. Each small chapter or part was an extract that Finnick wrote from Lorna's perspective to try and understand her point of view, and recover from her death after the Hunger Games, which was why she is the main character and a lot of things are missing in the story.

The idea was when I wrote a chapter in the third person, it was a chapter that Finnick couldn't quite see from Lorna's perspective (hense why it happened when Lorna lost herself in book two) or when he was trying to come to terms with what happened to Lillian and Lorna wasn't around.

I really hope this makes sense, and provides you with an insight that might make a second read seem a little different than the first, but other than that, all I can really say is thank you to everyone that's supported this book in all of it's many stages. There will be an epilogue with Finnick's final chapter to explain exactly what Lorna was thinking and what happened ( I cried while writing it oop-) but I guess this is pretty much it....