Chapter Text
Making knots. Keeping my hands and mind occupied. If they’re busy, maybe the rest of me won’t sink into the abyss of a world without Katniss. I braid the cord like dough on bakery mornings—pull, fold, tuck. I could do this half-asleep, covered in flour, heat of the ovens on my face. Braids like Katniss’s hair. Long, dark, steady against her cheek even when she looked like she might break on the screen.
Don't. Don’t trace that thought. If I tug on it, the whole thing will come undone.
Finnick and I don’t want dinner. I almost ask him if food doesn’t taste like anything without Annie sitting across from him. If that’s one more moment with Katniss—something stitched from whatever sacred, dear thing was between us—that I let slip for months. Fully aware of its worth. Still too tangled in my own plans, my own doubts, to reach for it. To hold it. My mother was right. I am stupid.
Our fingers are raw and bleeding. The motions are clumsy now, stiff from overuse, but I keep going. Better pain in my hands than the fear in my mind. I try not to think about how Katniss would fuss if she saw—her brows drawn tight, that sharp worry she tries to hide. Worse is the thought that maybe she isn't even in a state to do that.
Finnick finally gives up and assumes the hunched position he took when the jabberjays attacked him and Katniss in the arena. My stomach curdles, knowing that wasn’t the last time she’s been in pain since then.
I finish the miniature braid and run my thumb along it, slow and careful, like I did with her hair those sweet nights on the train and before the Quell. I trace every loop and twist and let the memories of her spool out in my mind—her teasing voice, soft and bright, the brush of her shoulder, her arms always ready to hug me back, the quiet strength as she protected everyone. For a moment, the braid under my thumb feels like her head resting on my chest—warm, steady, the thing that keeps me sane.
"Do you ever feel you've wasted time, Finnick?" I ask.
A long pause follows. Finnick looks at me clearly understanding what I'm asking about. "Yes," he finally admits, voice low. "Especially at the beginning. She crept up on me."
I sit there, fingers tracing the braid. The memory of her skin against mine, her body shielding mine without hesitation, flickers behind my eyes. Romantic or not, she loved me better than anyone ever has. I’m just the only fool in Panem who recognizes love and pushes it away.
It's around midnight when Haymitch finally appears through the door. "They're back. We're wanted in the hospital." I open my mouth read to ask him everything about Katniss's condition when he cuts me off with "That's all I know".
I get right to trying to hurry to Katniss. Grabbing Finnick's shoulder and tugging him along with me as I'm sure he feels the same about Annie. Through the maze of Special Defense, into the jerking, unpredictable elevator, and out into the hospital wing. The place is alive with chaos: doctors shouting sharp, clipped orders, the wounded sliding past on beds like pale figures in a nightmarish parade, and the scent of antiseptic sharp in my nose.
We’re sideswiped by a gurney bearing an unconscious, emaciated young woman with a shaved head. Her flesh peppered with colorful bruises and oozing scabs. Johanna Mason. Who actually knew rebel secrets and didn't go off telling us we were going to be bombed.
Through a doorway, I see Gale shirtless and shimmering with sweat while a doctor carefully pulls something from beneath his shoulder blade with a long pair of tweezers. Wounded, but alive. I make a mental note to thank him for all of this later. Plutarch had laid out every reason for me not to go: my leg, my importance, the fact that I’d needed sedation at least once since Katniss was gone. Not that that mattered to Gale when he volunteered. He and Katniss probably had their spoken vows of care and love, made because they wanted to, not because they had to—far beyond the quiet, unspoken promises that had tied Katniss and me together, feelings and promises born of necessity on her part.
“Finnick!” Something between a shriek and a cry of joy. A bedraggled, young woman—dark tangled hair, sea-green eyes—rushes toward us in nothing but a sheet. “Finnick!” And suddenly, it’s as if the world has disappeared, leaving only them. Two paints, chosen and willing, tumbling toward each other, their colors spilling and merging until there’s no edge between them—crashing, enfolding, and finally pressed against the wall, indistinguishable, one living, breathing stroke.
It’s an image that pulls me straight back to Katniss. To the fleeting moments of closeness I stole, when we tangled together and, for a heartbeat, it felt like we were part of one another. Moments I can almost let myself believe made her just as happy as they made me.
Boggs, looking a little worse for wear but uninjured, finds Haymitch and me.“We got them all out. Except Enobaria. But since she’s from Two, we doubt she’s being held anyway. Katniss’s at the end of the hall. The effects of the gas are just wearing off. You should be there when she wakes.”
Just knowing she’s close feels like the dreary cloud that’s hung over me for the past six weeks is finally lifting, a ray of sunlight and blue sky breaking through. Soon she’ll be in my arms, her head resting on my chest, warm and strong, with a scowl I’d gladly spend the rest of my life turning into a laugh.
Haymitch’s grinning at me, and for the first time in four weeks, I look at him with warmth, grinning back. “Come on, then,” he says.
I’m swept up in giddiness and plans as we move forward. First, I’ll make sure she’s okay. Maybe I can sweet-talk my way into the kitchen and turn the bread rolls into something like cheese buns. But first I need to hold her. I know that will make her happy. From the Games to the three months I spent being a jerk, she’s always treated my hugs like gifts, folding herself into me with a trust and eagerness that makes my chest ache. Maybe we’ll even kiss like the beach, be close like the days before the Quell—memories I’ve carried like fragile treasures, held tight as I walk through District Thirteen, haunted and broken and scheming.
I owe Katniss an apology for saying she was the one most like Haymitch.
Katniss sits on the side of the bed, eyebrows furrowed, a scowl tugging at her lips as a trio of doctors flits around her, flashing lights in her eyes, checking her pulseShe’s lost too much weight; her face is exhausted, her braid a tangle. I’m already thinking about food, about getting Prim to fix her hair, when her gray eyes find mine. Her face softens a bit. I'm disappointed to see she doesn't jump up and run into my arms like she always does.
I run to her, my arms open engulfing her to my chest. I immediately know something is wrong when she stiffens against my touch. Nothing like the way she usually melts into me, her head tucked to find its spot against my heartbeat, fingers curling into me, holding on like she belongs there.
I let go and meet Katniss’s bewildered eyes, staring at me nothing like she has for the past year.