The conversation drifts off as the moon drifts up. Finnick moves out to stand watching the sky, waiting. Mags goes out to sit against his legs soon after, a reassuring pressure. Katniss, holding Peeta's hand, comes to Finnick's other side. They are all silent, having done this before.
As the anthem starts, Mags rises, and they form a line. A frayed, dangling line of four considering the darkness.
Eight. Eight in the sky. Finnick is glad to be on the ground.
The man from Five. Dimly, vaguely, Finnick recalls his name, Rendy. Half of Six, Ten, and Eleven. Then all of Eight and Nine. A third of the arena is dead.
Finnick closes his eyes as the seal comes back briefly, then vanishes and lets the sky go back to normal. He thought about the tributes earlier as numbers, but now he lets their names wash over him. Like water they weigh him down until they dry. The drops fall off him and soak into the floor of the forest.
Rendy, Kasper, Woof, Cecilia, Joss, Natalia, Leanna, and Seeder.
Some he's known ever since he won, others he has met since the years passed. Joss, especially, along with Woof, Natalia, and Leanna, he'd grown closer too. They had made the watching of the Games in the Capital somewhat bearable. Kasper had been the closest to his age, only five years older at 29, but now Finnick would catch him.
Or not. Because look where he was again.
He had known all their names before the Quell, but that made it harder, Katniss and Peeta only had to deal with a sliver of the feelings. After his Reaping, he had asked to see every other one. Each name struck him until he was crying when Haymitch got drawn. Then he watched them all again, trying to unknow them all. It hadn't worked. He had still known Joss' hidden talent and Rendy's favorite color and Johanna's middle name. The tears had dried by the time he had gone through them three times. They'd left his face feeling stiff.
He watched Rendy die again as his head bent to the sky. When he pulled the trident out of his chest this time, he apologized silently. Every time he saw green he would remember the man who had died staring at the sun.
Finnick hadn't wondered what Rendy had been thinking, he had known what you thought in death, as he had been friends with death for at least ten years now. Maybe friend wasn't the right word. Ally was closer. Or colleague. They had an agreement, a buisness agreement, and through that a relationship.
He'd been around death his whole life. His father had forced him to kill his first catch with a knife. That was when death became more a stranger. The blood that stained had been the symbol of death then, but as he had gotten older, he got neater. He didn't have red on his fingers anymore. Death was no longer colored red. It wasn't any color. Was it the lack of one? It just was. It only was.
Fishing had hardened him, and it hadn't been difficult to make the jump from fish to humans. With the killing part at least. But fish didn't have names and they weren't in his nightmares. He knew the wheat colored eyes of Natalia and the dark ones of Joss would watch him at night.
Perhaps numbers were easier than letters that made up names that brought to mind faces.
Then again, numbers weren't any better. Once, when he was eleven, he'd figured out how many tributes had died in the Games. But that number had changed, increased. He calculated it now, multiplying 23 dead children against 69 Games. The number was barely visible in the sand he had written so lightly. 1,587. Plus eight. He drew a new number below. 1,595.
1,595.
One thousand five hundred ninety-five Rendy's. Cecelia's. Natalia's. Joss'.
1,595 families. Mothers. Fathers. Sisters. Brothers.
Two children from every district. At least not this year. He had saved a boy from almost certain slaughter. What an ugly word, slaughter. So was murder. Death. It all led to the same thing. No existence. Extinction.
He has to stop.
Finnick sweeps away the number. An obvious scuff now takes its place.
Wiping the palm covered with dirt against his thigh, he pauses his thoughts. Mags had taught him how, and he had taught Annie. Once upon a time.
Then the parachute floats down.
It triggers something.
Finnick's thoughts begin to play, then rewind. To almost exactly ten years ago. Into another arena.
TBC