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“Finnick.”
Your throat burned when the words spilled from your tongue. Here, at the precipice of death, you stare into the black depths of the cliff. You can't see the bottom. You can't see an escape. A fog looms behind you. It'll solidify and push you over the edge. Death awaits you.
But when your hand shoots out from beneath you, rather than tipping off the edge of the cliff, your palms meet damp, wet grass. The smell of the jungle comes back to you. Your hand is supported by nothing.
Your husband screams your name. Solid ground finds its way beneath your body, replacing the cliff you were crawling over. When you come to, your face is stiff. Your eyes won't open, sealed shut and swollen. Your foot catches on a tree-root and you dislodge it, stepping forward. Forward. Forward. You're running now. Balls of your feet slam into the ground first. Thin pine needles pierce the raw, untethered skin. You scramble past vines, now past a river bank. Pine trees loom over you, now there's sand. A barren and empty landscape all around you. The sun beats down hot enough to turn sand to glass.
The shards poke your feet, drawing blood. The blood is venom. You're poisoning yourself. Thirst creeps up your throat like a snake, choking your voice. You double over and retch. You're back at the cliff. Your bile and vomit recedes into the depths. This time, when your hand drops over the edge, gross, balding muttations latch onto your arm. Pain pierces through every orifice of your skin and muscles, pus and blood and venom oozes from the bites. They have the eyes of the people you know. One latches onto your shoulder. You scream and when you flip yourself over to crawl away, the muttation looms over your throat. Your blood stains its perfect white teeth. Sea-foam eyes bore into yours. The eyes of your beloved. If your beloved is a mutt, doesn't that mean he's dead? And you killed him. The way it looks at you, guilt and pity mingled in one. It howls as if it were asking for permission before ripping out your larynx while your eyes stay peeled open.
After 15 minutes spent watching it chew on your organs, it screams. Yowls in pain.
Your eyes shoot open. Everything is okay. No it's not. You're in the arena. You shouldn't be here. Finnick's screaming somewhere. You can't seem to find him. Your mace drops on the grass as you look around the clearing. The screams get louder, reaching new volumes. They curse you for leaving them, for letting Finnick die.
When you spin around to look behind you, Finnick is banging his fists on a barrier. No, he's another one of your hallucinations. His figure dissipates into the fog. The heat beats down on your weary body. Your jumpsuit is torn, the sleeves hang on by a thread. A gash in your left leg sends you to the ground. It oozes blood in a puddle as a Jabberjay swipes its talons at your calf, screaming your name in Finnick's voice. You lunge out and grab the bird by its neck, squeezing it tight till its mutated voice recedes and you feel it go limp in your grasp.
Fifty more replace its voice. The gash sends lightning bolts of pain through your body and you scream, hands incapable of deciding whether to block the noise from reaching your ear or if they should apply pressure on your wound.
“Finnick—”
“Finnick…” your voice sounds so meek. Is this where the Hunger Games finally catch up to you? Is a gash all it takes? No, clearly not. Five more Jabberjays sweep down to take turns swiping at your skin. A cut spills blood from your arm, another swipes past the bridge of your noise till the base of your left ear. The one that swipes past your hand makes it all the more agonizing for you to raise your hands and reach for your weapon.
You roll over on your stomach, heaving. You need to fight. For Finnick. For Mags. Annie. The names tumble around your mind, banging around the inside of your skull to produce a sharp headache. Your arm shoots out to grab your mace.
A foot kicks it meters away.
“Finally caught you. It was hard to hear you over the Jabberjays, wasn't it? But I caught you.” A hand latches onto your throat, silencing your screams. You thrash uselessly against its herculean grip, staring directly into the blue eyes of Brutus.
The Jabberjays have receded, going back to whatever Capitol hell they came from.
“The barrier’ll lift in a minute. I'll kill you before that. Finnick won't save you.”
You never needed saving.
But you wanted it so badly it hurt.
“I'm sorry.” You breathed out.
You killed his brother, of course that wasn't redeemable. Of course he deserved revenge. You did it to survive, at the cost of another's life. Who gave you the right to value your survival over another's? It should've been you who drank that poisoned stew. It should've been Brutus’ brother that mixed the Nightlock into your bowl that night. You should've died. Not him. Not him. Not him. You loved him. Even if for a little while. You killed him. You killed the boy named Noah.
You'll die now. So it will all be even, won't it? No harm, no foul. Brutus smiles. His fingers press into your throat, and you've long since stopped fighting against your well-deserved death.
An arrow embeds itself into his skull. It goes through his left eye, the pointed end points right at you. The life leaves from his right eye, and he keels over. You shove him off of you with the remainder of your strength as Katniss pulls you up to standing. She lost sight of you after you bolted into the woods, trying to follow the sound of Finnick's screams. Before you can process anything happening, the girl is helplessly pulling you along, trying to put as much distance between you and Brutus’ dead body.
The cannon fires, making you flinch. Katniss glances back at you. “You alright?” She asks tentatively.
“My mace.” you respond.
“It's fine. I got it.” She raises her left hand, the hilt of her bow was nestled in her armpit and your mace was in her hand.
“Won't kill me with it, would you?”
“No.” She answers after a beat. “Letting you live is the least I can do after you saved Peeta.”
“Oh, yeah. I'm surprised you never taught him how to swim.”
“I don't think he thought it would ever be important. Or that we would be back in the arena.”
You let go of her right hand, being able to carry your own weight now. You grasp the handle of your mace. Katniss seemed uncomfortable wielding it, anyhow. All it would take was pulling your arm back and releasing it to kill her. It would be so easy. A step closer to winning.
When you got back to the others, Peeta immediately embraced Katniss. You watched the two of them for a moment. You only stopped because you saw Finnick standing behind them, staring at you.
Those weren't the eyes of the mutt, filled with rotting hatred and visceral disgust.
These were softer. Love filled the pupils. And you saw Crows Feet form around the corners as he smiled. You ran as fast as you could and tumbled headfirst into his arms, letting him crush you in his embrace. And for a second, the arena faded away, and you were back home. The waves would crash around you, and Finnick would hug you till you snapped out of your hallucinations, till the walls stopped spinning and he turned from enemy to companion once more.
But you weren't home. You were in the arena. And rather than letting that break you further, it fueled you. You'd get out of the arena alive, you'd live to see the sun set over the district 4 horizon one more. And Finnick would be with you.
Happy, healthy and alive.