AN - Obviously I don't own the Hunger Games. Equally as obviously, I would love it if you would leave a review. Thanks for reading!
Katniss snaps upright with Peeta's screams ringing through her head and she tries to gasp quieter so that she won't wake Prim but breathing is hard hard hard so she slides open the door and slips away like a shadow through the darkness. She walks the pathways like they are imprinted in her brain, the part that is still working. She can still do directions, and hunting and shooting - her mind is fractured but at least these things still come easily. She closes her eyes and follows her instinct through the dark to her usual spot, secluded and dark and blissfully silent. The screaming in her head never stops, but here alone in the darkness it is quieter.
She pads into the room like it is the forest and she has to be careful of scaring her prey, though there is no prey here except her and the children she hunts in her dreams. Except there is someone here, someone who makes her freeze in her tracks like she is the startled deer faced with a hunter and a bow.
"Finnick" she strangles out. He looks up, and she can see the knot in his hands and the despair in his eyes. He has been crying.
"I'm, I'm, sorry...I, I didn't know... usually... no one here" she stutters and backs up awkwardly while trying to regain her own composure. Finnick doesn't even flinch, doesn't bother to put his flirting mask back on. She locks eyes with him for one moment and is overwhelmed by the pain, pain that is too much like her own and it is suffocating, suffocating... she breathes heavy and turns to leave but Finnick finally says something.
"Don't go," he says, and his voice is raw and hollow and full of need, so before she can think about it too long she turns back and slides down next to him. He fiddles with the rope in his hands and she watches blankly for maybe ten minutes, breath hitching in the darkness, and then the tears start. They are not silent tears, not sad release or acceptance - no, these are gasps of anger and hopelessness intertwined among the bodies and the blood and the memories. She loses her breath at the force of the pain and everything hazes out until she blinks and realizes that Finnick's rope is in her hands and she is doing something with it.
"Over, under" he tells her and it sounds like Haymitch teaching her how to survive so she swallows some of the memories and ties the knot Finnick is teaching. It is only when she finishes and looks up at him with half-pride that she realizes he is crying too. She knows that this should be awkward because she has never been good with people or emotions or any of this stuff that Peet... But she is too tired to feel anything more so she slides over and presses her shoulder against Finnick's and ties the knot over and over again while he falls apart next to her, crying brokenly into the emptiness.
She doesn't remember falling asleep, but she wakes up in the morning with her head resting on his shoulder and his rope in her fingers and she can't find enough energy to care. The tears threaten again, but instead she extracts herself gingerly from beside him and drifts slowly through the hallways, back to Prim and responsibility and the world of the only partly broken. Gale is waiting for her there, and she looks at him and sees Peeta's eyes and Finnick's strength and Prim's understanding, but it still feels like a weight - so she takes the bow he hands her and remembers Haymitch's words and she puts away Katniss for another day in exchange for the Mockingjay. They all need the Mockingjay. Nobody needs Katniss.
Finnick wakes alone in a quiet room with Annie's screams ringing through his head and thinks differently.
