Author's Note: Long wait . Many, many apologies guys! My computer is full of Trojans so I had to buy a new one to keep up with online classes and my writing was a little blocked. Should be set though, just have to post stuff! A mini chapter of sorts...more soon(and this time, I mean soon).
"The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled." ~ William Blake
"Halcy. Oh God, I'm so sorry…I couldn't save you. You wouldn't let me save you… then you were gone." Finnick makes terrible choking sounds that come from somewhere deep in his throat. I am trying to remember, but I get images and scarce facts. All that I can comprehend is filled with a terrible, heavy feeling that makes me wish I had died with the other's. That to be consumed in a glorious burst of flame is better than to feel this…longing.
"But you remember me, how much do you remember?" As I look at him, an image flashes across my mind. Every muscle tenses as I spring back from him, so violently that I crash into the other side of the tiny room.
It is a memory of Finnick, slathered in blood and holding a trident high above his head and poised to strike. But it is the after image I am left with, of a man in surgical scrubs and splattered, covered in my blood. Suddenly, I remember it all. My name is Halcyone Undine, from District 4. I lived in a small house in the poorer fishing neighborhood with my mother and stepfather and their three daughters. My father was lost at sea on the day I was born, the day of the reaping. On my fifteenth birthday, my step sister-
" 'Ags!" The syllables of a name that I cannot reconcile with a memory feel like razorblades in my throat. I do remember razorblades-no, scalpels-! Finnick is on his knees, reaching out to me with a look of desperation.
"No! Shush, shush…Hal, calm down. It's alright, it's okay. Stop trying to remember, just let me tell you! I'll tell you everything, alright?" I flinch back from his hand, reign in the urge to snap at it and cower instead. It is then that I feel it, the warmth of his hand and the smoothness of his skin. His thumb as it brushes beneath one reptilian eye. The gesture is meant for a human face and a new feeling, one of revulsion rises within me. Body and mind I have been warped, twisted and violated. I may have the vague recollection of who I was, but I am not Finnick's Halcyone anymore.
" Hal, just listen. It'll be like when Mags told us stories, when we were little. Do you remember-" And as he tells me, I do remember pieces of what my life was. They are vivid fragments, pieces of memory that turn to the full, lovely dreams my broken mind had been searching for and lacked…
In District 4, being born on the day of the reaping is an ill omen. And Four, being a district comprised primarily of sailor's and fishwives, is a district that takes it's superstitions very seriously. Finnick and I never thought of it that way, though. We felt like we were defying the reaping by daring to both be born on the day that the Capitol sentences two of our number to die.
The District had names for us, they thought we were ocean changelings. That one day we would sprout tails and plunge back into the sea from whence we came. How we earned our reputation as otherworldly denizens is a mystery. I speculated that it had something to do with the fact that, though we came from two completely different sets of parents, we were born within hours of one another and during the fiercest storm that District 4 had seen since the dark days. Finnick to bloody dawn and I to the blue velvet of night. It was the same storm that killed my father and was nearly the death of Finnick's, too. Other's as well, in fact, but to mention that takes away from the sea tale glory of the fact that we came to being amid death and strife to young mothers.
We'd been friends since we learned to swim, after nearly drowning each other. I can no longer remember who challenged who to a match of who can hold their breath the longest, but I remember the grin on his round, childish face as the salt-water stung my eyes and how neither of us would yield to the other, even when my lungs burned with an exhilarating pain. We never did find out, because the frantic harbor master dragged us out by our hair and dropped us on the docks, bellowing for our parents and biffing us around like bait fish. Perhaps that's where the myth about us being mer-children came from.
We only ever spoke of the Games once, when we were thirteen:
"Dad wants me to be a Career, you know." Finnick broached the topic one day when we were out checking nets. It shocked me to hear him talk about it, but not to hear that his father had encouraged it. Finnick's father wasn't an unpleasant man by any means and was something of a surrogate father to me, but he dreamed of fame…and he dreamed of revenge. Revenge for Finnick's mother, who'd been killed in the games at the age of eighteen, not nine months after Finnick had been born. Carefully, I reached into a knotted bit of net and extracted a still flipping fish from the tangle. Gently, I lowered the fist with the tiny fish into the water, cupping it in my palm until it had regained enough of it's faculties to swim away.
"Yeah?"
"Well, yeah. Being a Career…it might not be so bad. If I win, all the advantages of instant celebrity status and wealth for the District. Besides, we haven't had a winner in years. Think of the prestige-"
"If you lose, Finnick? What happens then?" I clasp a fish the length of my forearm, swaddled in net and bury my knife in it's pale belly, shiny gut's spilling out around the edges. There is a moment of uncomfortable silence, punctuated by the slap of fish guts hitting the inside of the pail.
"You're making holes in the net." He mumbled quietly, taking it from me and patching it.
"Net's can be fixed. This-" I hefted the fish, now flipping convulsively as I dropped it to the bottom of the boat. "-cannot be fixed. Are you asking me to watch you gutted on national television?"
"No, I…of course not! I'd win, Halcyone. I'd come back a victor…then we could live in one of those big mansions together. The one on Cormorant's Bluff. You could come over whenever your mother kicks you out." I knew the house he meant: it was a glorious thing, perching on the edge of the ocean cliff's and lavished with nearly all the furnishings of a capitol house. How did I know this? Finnick and I had snuck in once, despite the danger we'd have been in if we were caught. The difference between he and I was that I kept sneaking in every time I needed a place away from the rest of my family. Reckless, but that is how I was.
"The Games is not about a house, Finnick. It's not about getting a better life for yourself. It's about keeping the districts divided and entertaining a bunch of bloodthirsty twits who've never wanted for anything in their lives." I snarled, with an unusual amount of force.
"You think the only reason I want to be a career is for the house? For Capitol? I want to compete for my mother-" On the defensive now, he drops the net and glares at me.
"What? Where the hell did that come from? You're thirteen, Finnick! Why don't you have one of your brother's do it? The older and more experienced step-brothers who couldn't catch a fish to save their lives but chase after women all day long-"
"Because she wasn't their mother! She was mine!"
"Oh, so that'll fix their wagon will it? I'm sure the Capitol will feel so guilty watching an insignificant little thirteen year old from Four die on their television screens. And I'm sure your mother would be overjoyed that your willing to die in the same fruitless competition she did." Finnick leapt to his feet and the small boat rocked precariously in the water. I flung out my hands and gripped the worn edge like a seagull chick trying to recover her balance.
"That's right, I forget that you don't get any more motherly love than I do, do you? Only the sad thing is, your mother's not dead, she just hates you." The comment was alarmingly cruel, even for him. Even he looks surprised by what he had said, his expression suddenly incredibly pitying and apologetic.
But I don't care, the fury at his comment…at the mere suggestion that he would leave me to the mercy of the rest of the district and forgot me to watch his death…I leap up from where I am sitting across from him. In my blind anger, I forget that I had a fish net across my lap, that I am overbalancing the boat. The pail of gut's flies out of the boat and into the ocean as Finnick grabs my arms, perhaps trying to stop me from attacking him or grab me before-the net tangles in my ankles and I hear the splash as the sinker falls over the side and have one glimpse of sparkling green blue water before I am pulled beneath the surface.
A fully grown man, or maybe even Finnick, possesses the physical strength to fight against a fifty pound sinker. If they were expecting it and had taken a good breath. I have none of these advantages and in my panic I kick desperately until the net bites into my skin and I am ensnared beyond a hope of freeing myself. It takes fifteen seconds for me to sink to the seabed and I have already used up half of my precious breath. My eyes burn as I stare at the bleary vision of my entrapped legs and try to rip at the rough netting with my fingers. At least there is sunlight and I can see…a torpedo like shadow cruises across my patch of sunlight and I nearly let all my breath escape in fear. Everyone in the District knows what that shape means. I remember the fish guts that spilled over the side of the boat. I am as good as dead now and over such a silly little thing, a stupid comment that he didn't even mean. I hope Finnick will forgive me, will understand that I was angry because I was afraid. Rebelling against my burning lungs and instincts, I stop thrashing; the erratic movement will only attract the sharks that are drawn in by the scent of the chum.
Something skims across my shoulder and I nearly scream until I feel fingers grip my ankle. It is Finnick, grabbing my chin with his other hand and looking into my eyes to make sure I am still conscious. The assessment lasts less then a second and he pulls my fishing knife from his belt and saws at the net. He is almost halfway through when my vision starts to go black around the edges, my heart pounding in my ears and I take a breath as he cuts my ankles free. There is unbearable pain, unbearable panic and then a kind of blackness and I feel that I am rising…
My back is against something hard and uneven, the air is cold against my wet skin. There something pounding on my chest-This is all the information about my whereabouts I am able to gather before I flail and hit Finnick in the jaw with my arm as I cough up a belly full of seawater all over the rocks.
"HALCYONE! Are you breathing? Look at me! Halcyone." I roll onto my back and the sunlight half-blinds me as I look up into Finnick's frantic expression. It strikes me then, that though I am not really interested in boys yet, Finnick is indeed a very handsome boy. My waterlogged brain decides of it's own accord that this is exactly what I should tell him:
"You're very pretty, Finnick Odair." My lungs feel raw but I smile past the pain. For a moment, he just stares at me in shock, a water droplet quivering on the tip of his nose. Then, he bursts out laughing and collapses to the rock beside me, grabbing my hand and squeezing it fiercely.
"Maybe you wouldn't do so badly in the Hunger Games after all." I murmur after I sit up and realize how far from the boat he was able to swim in such a short time. He glances over at me, his chest heaving as he props himself up on an elbow and squints at where the small boat is anchored, rocking as if on high seas and with sharp, gray fins occasionally breaking through the surface. "Not only are we alive, but we didn't get eaten by sharks."
"Ha. I'm too pretty to die, what's your excuse?" You, you saved me. I think, but instead, I force myself to say something equally as snarky.
"All that arrogance, sharks probably cant stomach it." Groaning, I sit up and survey the damage. We have lost our catch and destroyed the net, the sharks will lurk in the area for at least another week or two, anticipating the arrival of more mystery bait. It is not safe to swim back to the boat today. We sit and banter back and forth for a few hours, careful not to talk about any dangerous subject too seriously, until the marginally larger fishing vessels start to come in and one of them finds our little boat. I let Finnick stand up and wave and shout for them. The boat pulls up as close as it can without beaching herself and the captain comes to the side, his District four accent extremely thick.
"Giv me on reesan why I shouldn't leave you little bilge rats here for the gulls to pick at?" Finnick and I answer in unison:
"Because we're pretty?"
I dont feel like it's quite up to snuff, and shorter than I would have liked but ah well. Review! :D