The love story of Aurora Nightingale and Finnick Odair.
Nothing can rip the two apart not even death.
- Life sometimes has a way of working with a perfect amount of cruelty. Not enough to kill you but enough to make you wish it did.
- they are two...
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"We have to go" Katniss shouts with her voice breaking. I know her and Finnick were close. Were. Were close. I never thought I would have to speak about Finnick in past tense.
I wipe away my tears pushing all feelings aside. Finnick was never here, he stayed at 13 with the kids. That's what I'm believing, I can't let his death cloud my judgement. I have to stay focused, I have to stay alive. For Caspian and Hope, I will make it out of here alive. My kids will not become orphans.
"We can't stop here." I say as I bandage part of my jumper around Gale's neck, helping him to his feet. Only one figure stays huddled against the wall.
"Peeta," Katniss says. There's no response. Has he blacked out? Katniss crouches in front of him, pulling his cuffed hands from his face. "Peeta?" His eyes are like black pools, the pupils dilated so that the blue irises have all but vanished.
"Leave me," he whispers. "I can't hang on."
"Yes. You can!" Katniss tells him.
Peeta shakes his head. "I'm losing it. I'll go mad. Like them."
"Peeta, I just lost my husband I won't loose you too!" I tell him loosing my sanity. "We are both going crazy but we have to get out of here. Please" I beg him with a pleading look in my eyes filled with tears.
Katniss leans in and kisses Peeta full on the mouth. "Don't let him take you from me." Peeta's panting hard as he fights the nightmares raging in his head. "Stay with me."
"Always," he murmurs.
The scene in front of me makes me feel less distraught in the moment as I remember what this is all for. To free Panem. I won't let Finnick die for nothing.
"How far to the street?" Katniss asks Pollux, He indicates it's just above us.
Katniss climbs up the ladder sliding the lid off and climbing out. It appears we are in an abandoned house. Never mind. I look down to see a woman with an arrow in the middle of her eyes. Katniss really has become a murderer through all this, no judgement though. Pain changes people.
"I know a place near here" Cressida says looking out the window. We all look at Cressida as she leads the way out of this house we go as quickly as possible making sure we are seen by no one. We stop at a place that doesn't even look open, but Cressida pushes through the front door, setting off a dissonant chiming. Inside the dim, narrow shop lined with racks of merchandise, the smell of pelts fills my nose. Behind a counter sits the strangest person I've ever seen. She's an extreme example of surgical enhancement gone wrong, for surely not even in the Capitol could find this face attractive. The skin has been pulled back tightly and tattooed with black and gold stripes. The nose has been flattened until it barely exists. I've seen cat whiskers on people in the Capitol before but nothing like this.
"Tigris," Cressida says. "We need help. Plutarch said you could be trusted," she adds.
Great, she's one of Plutarch's people. So if her first move isn't to turn us in to the Capitol, it will be to notify Plutarch, and by extension Coin, of our whereabouts. Coin. I do not want to deal with her after the events of today. With a slight growl and a slight nod of the head she signals for us to follow her. I push around the furs and find Tigris has slid back a panel at the base of the wall. Behind it seems to be the top of a steep stone stairway. She gestures for us to enter.
"Did Snow ban you from the Games?" Katniss asks Tigris clearly recognising her. Tigris just stares back at Katniss. Somewhere her tiger tail flicks with displeasure. "Because I'm going to kill him, you know." Her mouth spreads into what I take for a smile.
The panel slides back in place. I hear the clothes rack being adjusted on squeaky wheels. Tigris padding back to her stool. We have been swallowed up by her store. Just in time, too, because Gale looks on the verge of collapse. We make a bed of clothes and gently place him down.
I turn the tap on and, after much sputtering and a lot of rust, clear water begins to flow. I clean Gale's neck wound and I realize bandages won't be enough. He's going to need a few stitches, luckily there's a needle and sterile thread in the first-aid supplies.
"This is going to hurt, I'm sorry" I shove a cloth into his mouth to muffle his creams as I thread the needle in and out of his neck creating the perfect stitching. The pain become unbearable for him and within seconds he is out like a light. I smear the wound with medicine, wrap it up and give him some painkillers. While Cressida and Pollux make fur nests for each of us, I attend to Peeta's wrists next. Gently rinsing away the blood, putting on an antiseptic, and bandaging them beneath the cuffs.
"You've got to keep them clean, otherwise the infection could spread"
"Katniss said the same thing to me in the hunger games. Real or not real"
"Real" I hear Katniss say over my shoulder.
"And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?"
"Real." She shrugs. "You were the reason I was alive to do it."
"Was I?" He questions not believing that was his own actions.
"Go to sleep, you need rest" I tell him as I'm done cleaning his wrists. Cressida and Pollux are already fast asleep on their bed of fur.
Eventually, everyone around me is asleep and I'm left awake, alone with my thoughts. The only time I've ever slept alone in years was when I was captured by the Capitol. All the other times I've slept in Finnicks arms. Since we were 15 we had always slept in the company of each others arms and now without him I doubt I will ever sleep again.
Moving death by death. Counting them up on my fingers. One, two-Mitchell and Boggs lost on the block. Three-Messalla melted by the pod. Four, five-Leeg 1 and Jackson sacrificing themselves at the Meat Grinder. Six, seven, eight-Castor, Homes, and Finnick. Eight dead in twenty-four hours. I know it happened, and yet it doesn't seem real.
Finnick will come bounding down the steps in a minute with rope in his hand tying nots. He has too. He can't really be gone. It's my fault. If I had just made him go up the ladder it would of been the other way round. He would be sitting here and I would be lying dead in the sewers. I wish it was the other way round. He's always been so much stronger than me.
