["She laughs into a kiss then, leans over and laughs and presses her mouth full against yours, and it's the youngest you've felt in years."
quinn & katniss meet in district 4 & begin to heal. post-mockingjay drabble. mild spoilers in that katniss doesn't die, i suppose.]
[this warrants an a/n because i don't really know why this pairing occurred to me but it did & here you have it.]
our wounds close up & we pass again
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such rising and falling is endless and without explaining. i live and you live in that, and in that doubled flowering the departed and the living are blessed as one. please write when you can,
—Ariaki Yasusada, "A letter to Fusei"
…
1
You both survived bombings. You won't find this out until later, but when you meet, you're in District 4 to see Annie, and you go to Finnick's memorial, and Peeta is not there because sometimes he still tastes like burnt lungs, and there's this wispy girl standing down the rocky coast, back turned from you so she's facing the ocean. She's thin and she's all by herself and you know she survived but you also can guess that everyone she's ever loved has been killed.
You nod when Annie asks if you want some time alone, and she leads her child away by the hand when you just nod.
Maybe you're getting better but right now you walk toward the flash of blonde hair and when she hears you crunch your way against the coast, she turns toward you, scowling, and she has the prettiest face you've ever seen, perfect bone structure and a striking pink mouth and a sharp jawline. One single scar runs from the tip of her left eyebrow, dragging all the way down her cheek, stopping just short of her neck. Your breath catches because you've always thought your eyes were the most haunted, all the ash there, but when you catch her staring back at you, you've been wrong, because there's nothing more empty than a hollowed green-gold ocean.
She doesn't tell you to stop, or to go away, and you walk toward her. She's wispier than you are, like maybe she has no one back at home forcing her to eat, and you stand about four feet away from her for a long time, the sun sinking. Things don't turn Peeta's orange; instead they skirt around, purples and blues and yellows, and when the horizon line disappears, she turns to you and says, You didn't win anything, did you?
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2
Her name is Quinn Fabray, she tells you, and she's eighteen, and she's from District 4, and her father used to make lanterns.
He's dead now, she says, and for some reason you're back at what used to be her family's house. She started walking home once it got dark and you followed; she let you without a word. She says, my sister and my mother are dead too. I watched them die.
This isn't surprising, and that's what makes you start to cry.
She seems a little taken aback, but then she shrugs and brings you to her chest. She's soft and smells like salt and honeysuckle. None of this was ever your fault, she says.
You've never really been attracted to girls before, and you know nothing about Quinn other than that she's lost everything and she has the prettiest dead eyes, and so you lift your head.
Her breath seems to catch, and you wonder if she's done this before, and you have Peeta but he is hard and he is scars around his wrists from handcuffs when he wants to kill you, and Quinn bites her bottom lip. And then she takes her warm, soft-rough hand and puts it against your cheek, rubs her thumb smoothly against your skin, and leans forward.
The way she kisses you is so gentle you cry again, because it aches like nothing else does. She kisses you slowly and deeply and thoroughly, none of Gale's anger or Peeta's desperation.
She kisses you like salt, like waves, and she lets you kiss her back for as long as you want.
You kiss for what seems like hours, and it shatters something else inside you that you thought had disappeared long ago.
You leave eventually, and Quinn walks you to the door as you promise to visit tomorrow morning, and she smiles for the first time, lifting her perfect cheekbones and curving her pink mouth in something that remarkably resembles real happiness for a few fleeting seconds.
It's an honor, Katniss Everdeen, she says, and there's some life in her yet.
You bow with a small laugh and she kisses you once more before you take off down the sandy dune path toward Annie's house, and you turn back once and see her leaning against her doorframe, moon-pale under the crash of sea and tremble of stars.
.
3
Annie doesn't ask. You like Annie for lots of reasons but this is one of them. Things all over your body are slowly healing, and you do care, for as much as you like to tell yourself it doesn't matter. You care a lot, suddenly, because you're a charred ghost and Quinn is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.
At breakfast you ask Annie, Do you know Quinn Fabray?
Annie pauses. I knew her sister, Frannie, she says, better than Quinn. Frannie and I were the same year in school. Quinn's close to your age, isn't she?
You nod.
People always talked, you know, that Quinn and Finnick's little brother were the perfect couple, but I don't think Quinn—she stops herself—It doesn't matter anymore, does it?
They're all dead, you think. No, you say.
Annie tilts her head. Quinn's beautiful, isn't she?
It feels strange to smile.
But Annie smiles back, straightens your dress, brushes your bangs, and sends you off with some carnations.
.
4
Quinn is quiet. Not quiet like you, although that's part of it. But you think Quinn was probably quiet before the war in a way that wasn't socially awkward.
She's brought a blanket and some bread and cheese and a small bottle of dandelion wine to the beach behind her house. I wanted to be a writer, she says. It's self-effacing, the way she grits it out. Isn't that absurd?
You were never best in school, and you imagine Quinn probably was. You take a deep breath and then take her hand, and you say, No, we probably need good history books now anyway.
Quinn's mouth lilts up in a smile. Has anyone ever told you that you should work on your sense of humor?
You shrug. No one's ever told me I ever had a sense of humor to begin with.
She laughs into a kiss then, leans over and laughs and presses her mouth full against yours, and it's the youngest you've felt in years.
.
5
You go back inside her house when it starts to rain. You've made it through one and a half bottles of wine at this point, so it takes some effort on both of your parts to collect yourselves quickly. Quinn strips off her thick, long-sleeved sweater and there are scars all over her body, slashes like the one on her cheek but deeper. She dries off her hair with a towel and then hands it to you, traipses up the stairs and comes back down with two more sweaters. She catches you staring at her scars, and she stares back at the ones on your neck, and she says, I figured you wouldn't care.
But I do care, you say. You haven't felt so much at once in a long time.
Her brows knit together and she blushes profusely. Oh, she says.
No, you say. I—words aren't my thing but—you watch her steel herself with a breath and then look at you directly—I just wish you hadn't have had to get hurt.
Something in her shifts then, something in the lay of her spine or her posture, and she slips a sweater over her head. Yeah, she says.
.
6
It's cold, and you can tell she's getting sleepy in the early evening. You help her with dinner—and this is by far the most functional you've been since before your first Games—and then she starts a fire, which is small enough to be comforting rather than terrifying, and sits down on a pile of blankets by it. It reminds you of one of your hiding places in 13, so you sit down next to her.
Things got so fucked up, she says.
I know, you say.
She's quiet for a while, and then she lies back. You follow her, and for some reason you allow your hands to move on their own accord and tug her to you. She shifts gracefully and puts her head against the soft sweater over your chest, plays with your fingers.
They caught me, she says, and at this point you know it's irrelevant if she's talking about the Capitol or the rebels. They killed my family in front of me on my father's boat, and then they took me and tortured me for days.
The way she says it makes you lose your breath, and you wonder if this is how you make everyone else feel around you: Terrified and remorseful and lifeless and guilty.
You take your burnt, scarred fingertips and trace the scar over the prettiest face you've ever seen. Her chin quivers but she doesn't cry. They used fishing hooks, the big ones from the boats, she says. Isn't that clever?
You kiss her because you can't say anything.
I don't know why they tortured me, and I don't know why they let me go, she whispers, but they did.
.
7
It's the middle of the night when one of you wakes from a nightmare, the fireplace all embers now.
Quinn smiles sleepily next to you, and she looks so young, and you're sure you do as well, and she stands stiffly and takes your hand.
Katniss Everdeen, would you do me the honor of coming to my bed?
You roll your eyes with a smirk, and you nod and let her help you up.
You know things are going to happen when Quinn smiles and kisses you deeply. Your body, for the first time in so long, is hungry.
I had a girlfriend, she says, if you're wondering why I'm so good at this.
You laugh and neither of you mention what happened to Quinn's girlfriend. She sits back and lifts her sweater from the bottom hem over her head, and she leans back down to kiss you. You have no idea what you're doing but Quinn is sure and gentle and purposed, and Peeta barely crosses your mind because you are young and this is undeniably healing and you're not married to anyone yet.
She quirks an eyebrow at you seriously, and sexy is the word that runs through your head; you nod, and she pulls the sweater from your body.
She takes a few seconds to let her eyes roam over your skin—all of the burns there—and you're profoundly almost ashamed before she leans down and kisses you so gently and then you feel her smile. This is going to sound wrong, she says into your mouth, but I had a crush on you since the day I saw you volunteer.
You tuck a short strand of hair back behind her ear. You're sort of lovely, Quinn Fabray. You've never used that word before, you don't think, but she is.
She kisses you again, and she still doesn't cry, although her eyes are so far from dead. Like she's not reliving horrors anymore. Like she's just seeing things now, all scars, all pleasure. Rebuilt. Healed. Healing.
You're all of this too, and she smirks and reassures you to just let your body go, and then says, You're prettier now, Katniss.
.
8
When you wake up the next morning—and you'd both slept the rest of the night—she's messily curled up in this little ball in front of you, and your arms are around her, your face pressed into the back of her neck. There are scars webbing there too, smaller but just as deep, into her short, soft hair. You kiss these fissures too.
She's breathing evenly, so you stay still and watch the sun rise, gentle over the water, even and bright.
.
9
You keep in touch as friends. Quinn ends up marrying a beautiful girl from District 3, a scientist, and Quinn ends up making films. Writes films, directs them. They're usually quiet and they're usually by the sea, full of ghosts, wispy girls who learn to take up their space in the world. There are still lanterns sometimes, even, but you notice that most of the films end in the nighttime, in the moon, and you smile when you know the secrets in all of this. Her characters have scars and her films are more about breathing and stitches and small young healing than they are war. Sometimes the way she writes their gentle intelligence reminds you of Prim. Prim would've loved her films, and for that reason above all you know they are important: You both survived bombings.