Labyrinthine: Used to be "For Eternity" and "Haunted"
Author: Safarilover1
Pairing: Finnick X OC
Rating: T for violence, language, dark themes, and slightly graphic scenes. Rating may change due to very graphic violent scenes and strong language.
Genres: Angst & Romance
Setting: Set from the 74th Hunger Games to the 75th
Full Summary: Her eyes were the sparkling, crashing waves of his home, her skin as soft as rose petals and her hair pure gold. Her lips were a drug, his poison, as sweet as his sugar cubes. She is a labyrinth, his labyrinth, and he could never seem to find the way out. She was dangerous, lethal, bloodthirsty, yet so irresistible. He's addicted, but to her he's just another obstacle in her way. They are from two different worlds. He was a simple boy turned Capitol pet, she the insane, and yet insanely beautiful Mayor's daughter. Everything in his life used to be so simple, the same routine, but once he met her, that all changed. Everything began to come back, the fear of everything began to return, each cannon boom, every piercing scream, every mutilated corpse. Except this time this fear wasn't of dying. It was his fear of her dying. She is his life, the only thing that he believes is worth living for. He's just one of her many admirers, yet she's the only one that seems uninterested in him. Even in the midst of every death, every tear, every kiss, he will forever be hers. She keeps trying to convince him otherwise. He simply won't listen. In his mind, they were meant to be. After all, he's just as broken as she is. And on the brink of death, she will finally be his. For eternity.
Prologue: This is Me
Safarilover1 here... This is technically my first fanfic ever, so please feel free to leave suggestions, comments and ideas for the story in the reviews! Please review, favorite, and follow!
To my previous readers, this is simply a re-write of my old fanfiction "For Eternity"... which has been deleted. The plot will differ, but some of the couple pairings and incidents listed somewhere in the first 11 chapters of "For Eternity" may still happen. May. Review on what you guys want me to keep the same, even though I will probably change everything entirely.
Cover Image made by the amazing Maddie Rose! Please check her out too!
I am dedicating this chapter to my amazing and wonderful friend water6631 who will beta or simply edit a few of the chapters in this story. Please note that this chapter is not beta'ed so please be nice!
Also, please check out my other story "Blackout: The 1st Hunger Games (SYOT)" as well if you enjoy this story! I do not want to keep this introduction too long, so this sums it up! Even though the first few chapters probably will not be very good, please keep on reading, it gets better, I promise! I hope you enjoy! Love,- Safarilover1
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games, just my OC's. (Which I have too many of to be able to list them all right here)
Vanessa's POV
The first thing I remember... Is blood. Oozing, red liquid, trickling down the stained wreckage and covering my body. Screaming. My piercing screams are eerily harmonized in the crackling of the burning trees. Fire. Blazing, thrashing fire, leaping and dancing, shadows flickering in the distance. Last of all, is the sirens. Loud blaring sirens, blasting at a deafening volume in my ear, reverberating through my body. The indescribable pain, the suffering. It rockets through my body, but I didn't seem to care at that moment. I was focused on something, perhaps someone else. At first, when I tried to remember, I didn't know why or who. I still don't understand, not after three years of suffering, of training, of therapy.
The therapy. It was the worst part of my week. The damp, dark corridors, the pestering, invading bugs that they call therapists. Worst of all are the questioning, discriminating stares. They all were probably wondering why the beautiful, perfect Mayor's daughter was at a run-down therapy center in the outskirts of the District. Why would their children's role model and their son's biggest crush be in need of therapy? 'She is probably just here to do some charity work. What a sweet, darling girl.' they think, trying to convince themselves about this more than the person they were actually speaking to. But no, I am not here because I want to be, I am here because I have to.
Nightmares flood my dreams, whirlpooling inside my mind like a plague. I cannot sleep, but I cannot bear to stay awake. My soul is haunted by my past. People are everywhere, ready to tell me exactly what I was like before my accident, but I know they are lying. I can sense their dishonesty, their hidden fear that some dark secret may soon be revealed. I was always supposed to be perfect, the flawless role model, the best at everything. Deep inside, even fools know that no one can be so faultless, but their minds have been convinced otherwise. My parents always wanted everyone to believe that I don't have any problems. No, they never intended for anyone else to find out. Why? Why don't they want people to like me for who I really am?
I cannot remember anything before I turned 15, before "it" happened. Mother and father do not let me refer to my accident as anything other than "it", especially in front of other people. My father may be the mayor, but he is not kind. A fake smile and a cheery attitude can do wonders, however, and so far no one has seen through his façade. He is a great leader, but he fails as a father. I can see through people like they are transparent, and my father's heart is nothing but a block of ice.
Mother is kind in her own way. She does not communicate with me often, and she didn't talk much to Axel at all. Although she may not be cruel, she is like a petrified statue, unmoving, and of no need or importance. We have everything we will ever need, so why would we every need to do anything ourselves? But I have cared for others and lost them, over and over again and I understand the importance of the thing we are all lacking, love.
Axel. My handsome, strong, funny, and kind older brother. Sideswept blond hair, striking blue eyes, and a goofy smile, he was the example of a stereotypical "perfect" dude. He was the perfect brother, always helpful and kind. He never had to play any girls, they admired him just the way he was. Jealousy and hatred were common in our school, and he and I received the most. Axel was fair, trustworthy, and was always there for me and his friends no matter the situation. He was the kind of guy you could never stay mad at, the one that all the girls wanted and all the guys hated.
The best of the best in our Career training programs, he was elected unanimously to volunteer for the next Hunger Games. The 72nd Hunger Games was the cause of his death. A pack of twenty carnivorous, mutant horses attacked him once he reached the top 3 and he didn't stand a chance. It was almost as if the Gamemakers purposely tried to kill him off. If I ever met the Gamemakers in person who designed Axel's games, I bet I could easily see straight through their act.
Then came Ryder. Chocolate brown hair, muscular build, popular, charming, and every girl's crush. Ryder, my previous fiancé of two weeks and my boyfriend of two years. I still remember the day I first met him.
The sky was dark and dreary, and dark rainclouds shrouded the school. Rain pelting down from the heavens, splattering against the windows and pooling in puddles on the damp soil. It was quiet, not quite eerie but a peaceful silence. My dress clung to my body, the wet fabric uncomfortable against my tanned skin. Sneakers hitting the hard pavement were the only sounds beside the soft plopping of raindrops, and I realized they were coming towards me a second too late. A hard surface slams into my back and I fall forward, bracing myself for the impact. It never came. Peering up through my long hair, my eyes connect with a gorgeous pair of green ones.
"I'm so sorry!" he apologizes profusely, but I wriggle out of his grip and stand up, almost as if nothing ever happened.
"It's fine." I continue walking, still shocked by his sheer gorgeousness. Almost luckily for me, he began to follow me until we struck up a conversation. He asked me out the last day of school that year in front of the whole school, and I said yes. We dated for two years as the "perfect couple" until it was the day of the 73rd Annual Hunger Games Reaping.
Just before he went to join his friends in the middle of the district center, he held out a breathtakingly beautiful ring and asked me to marry him. I became his fiancée that morning, but ten minutes later he was reaped. When I visited him, he promised he would win for me, for us, so we could get married and live happily ever after. He never came back.
My parents informed me that he died two weeks later, reaching the top 3 like Axel, but I could never bear to watch his death myself. The engagement ring he gave me is locked somewhere, buried deep in my closet and the memory stored in the bottom of my heart.
Last of all, is me. My name is Vanessa Adonia Black, supposed daughter of the mayor. The District children's idol, the star of every teenage boy's fantasies. Well, I was. People do not know how I changed, how everything they saw was all a façade. Only my psychiatrists dare to refer to me as crazy. On the inside, I am a wreck. Only on the outside am I perfect. It's funny how a pretty face can blind others from seeing the obvious.
Long, honey-blonde hair, innocent aquaramine-blue eyes, full blood-red lips. At only 5'6", boys used to admire my height, referring to me as petite. That's only because they never saw me fight. They soon will. They will be awed, disgusted, shocked. Me, the helpless, innocent, perfect-in-every-way Mayor's daughter? Hah, no one would've guessed. I wouldn't blame them. I almost didn't recognize myself anymore either.
People now call me "unreachable." Ever since Axel and Ryder's death, I never spoke to anyone and distanced myself from the world. I skipped school every day for a month in order to convince my parents to get me a tutor instead. Basically mute, I spend all my time in the Career training center, slaughtering dummy after dummy until they are shreds on the ground. I will not return to being the sweet, innocent, forgiving girl I was before. If the Capitol wants me to suffer, for whatever reason, so be it. But since I suffer, if my brother and my fiancé had to suffer, then I will make others feel the same. I will make them beg on their knees for mercy, make them cry more than I had to, make them experience the pain. There is no more me. I disappeared a while ago.
Now, in the place of me, is a monster.
I have no friends. I don't have anyone, and it's better that way. I learned that everyone I care about will be ripped away from me. I know the Capitol hates me. I know my parents hate me but still keep me around. I know that the only people who ever cared for me are dead. I know all this, but none of these reasons are why I am mentally deranged, why I am crazy. The reason is a miniscule fragment, a tiny shard of memory.
It is a voice. The voice of someone I loved, someone I know can help me figure out what I have been wanting to know all along. But the problem is, this voice is from my past. From before the accident. I keep hearing the voice echoing, reverberating, pulsing through my head. I hear it everywhere. I don't understand. Why have I not met this person? Where is he? In my heart, I know that this person is not dead. It could not be Ryder or Axel and guilt prickles beneath my skin with the sudden realization that I used to love someone more than my own brother, my fiancé. I know that I do not belong in District 4, and that the person I am looking for is not in my silly little district, near the crashing waves and the salty sea I have known my whole life. But where? Where am I supposed to be, why am I here? Where is he?
This is what drives me to the brink of insanity. I am not stupid, not illogical. Dreaming and fantasies are for the weak, but logic is for the powerful. I know I am powerful. To others, they will soon see me as a killing machine, a beast, a psycho. But if they ever learn my real story, then they would understand I was not any of these things. I am not any of these things.
I am simply haunted.
MEOW. That was a better first chapter, in my opinion. What do you guys think? Polls are now closed due to the change in Vanessa's character for some of you who know her better than others, and pairings from the last write will be eliminated. Know any nice couple names for Finnick X Vanessa? Or would you like me to stick with just Finnessa? Blair, maybe? Like Black and Odair? I don't know, none of the ones I've tried really sound right. Maybe you guys can come up with one? You guys mean the world to me and I'll try to get the next chapter up as soon as possible! Please review, follow and possibly even favorite for the next chapter! Is that too much to ask?! :( I'll see you guys super soon! Love,- Safarilover1