Sorry for not updating sooner, but things have been difficult lately. I'm currently in treatment for anorexia, and am in the process of transferring hospitals. It's a poor excuse, but the only one I have at the moment.

So I've written a big ole' chapter, so I hope you enjoy it. Dramatic things be a'happening! Thank you for all your reviews and the constructive help too, I've tried to improve upon your comments, so please keep them coming, they really do help me and mean so, so, very much to me.

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XII. Keep your Distance, Lest I Fall in Love.

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The air felt dusty, as though the world outside had been still for a very long time. Every time I took a breath I waited for the weight to fall back on me.

He was safe, but not yet home. And I felt something.

But that was better than nothing, surely.

The Games had ended two days ago, and I was still storing air in my lungs, baited breath waiting for a shattered exhalation. One that might break the world around me; that suddenly some other boy might have surfaced from the arena's bloodied waves.

My arms were bruised from regular reality checks, the skin pinched purple from my necessary reminders, goosebumps from the cold sea air around me. I stood upon a high sand bank, looking out expectantly to sea, as though Finnick might rise from the waves at any moment. He had not yet returned, and I did not know when to expect him.

I made my way along the little cove, one further out along the shore from my home. It was delicate in size, soft sand dunes like lips, whispering out the cool bubble of undulating waves. Tall grass swayed in the light breeze, moving softly without resistance into a coerced dance.

A figure sat amongst those stalks, and I carefully padded over to meet them.

Thorin's legs were quite possibly longer than I was. They lay stretched out over the lip of the dunes, smoke rings pluming from his full lips as he dragged on the small wrap of burnt grass.

He paid me no attention as I sat down next to him, settling myself an uncomfortable foot away, not wanting to fully intrude. Though no matter what distance I strayed at, I could still see I had entered his quiet world of furrowed brows and unwavering gaze, fixed out upon the horizon.

I'd known his presence all my life. He'd been there first in the streets and then on the screens. He'd won his games at the tender age of thirteen, in a bloody tirade that had seen him slaughter his adversaries in age order. There had always been a brutality to him, but an intelligence that came with it; a cunning hidden beneath his perfected Capitol veneer. He looked ragged though in the morning air. His chin was speckled with unkempt stubble and his hair bedraggled, as though he had pulled and yanked at it.

The man I'd seen so often swollen with conceit looked lost. He had been a man who had commanded a room, held onto legions of adoring fans; the toy of many and the master of none.

"Dammit I loved that girl," he finally spoke. I examined the look upon his face, and that scowl between his eyes had been replaced by genuine remorse.

Lieve.

It suddenly blossomed within my mind.

A secret kept in hushed touches; now scattered out like dust. Like tiny fireflies they'd danced about each other under pretences that we'd all been too disinterested to see; blinded by the leap in age and the gleam of the games to believe true human emotion could exist. How could something so pure stay resilient in the centre of such barbaric happenings? The feelings had weathered the storm whilst she had not.

He was the glance she had been searching for in the crowd, the name she had called as she had slept. The parachutes. Gods all those parachutes, all sent from him. He had been her one and only hope.

And he had watched her die like a slaughtered lamb.

"I refused and he put fucking sharks in the water," his voice cracked with the weight of his words.

"Refused?" I asked softly.

"The Capitol and their sluts," he chuckled manically, spitting out the word sluts.

"You don't have a clue," he shook his head at my shocked face. I couldn't restrain the concern playing about in my eyes.

"Would it be better if I did?" I questioned. I gathered from the intonation of his voice what he was talking about; whispers bourn out for years in the salt stained air had detailed my young mind of the liberal lives of the Capitol. Though there was a darkness in his voice to concern me that it had touched him too.

"She didn't either," he murmured, more smoke erupting from his plump mouth.

"She died saying you name," it suddenly occurred to me. The word that had bubbled upon her blood stained lips had been his name. She'd called out to him with her last gasps of air, and it constricted in my lungs the anguish he must have felt watching her die.

"She died in pain," he spat, pounding the sand with his fist.

"She died quickly," it was all I could say, for I was drained of all other reasons. Her death had been a brutality.

"She had Finnick," I tried to reason feebly.

"You're right, I owe Odair that much. Nothing more," and with a dry chuckle, "He'll soon take my place."

"What do you mean?"

He pressed a smoky finger to my lips.

"Shh, I wouldn't want to spoil the fun." But there were still tears in his eyes.

"What's your name?" he looked me in the eye for the first time.

"Annie Cresta," I replied rather curtly.

"Well Annie Cresta, you hold onto that boy. He'll need someone to live for," he smiled weakly.

"He has to live for her. For -" he struggled to produce her name; those syllables weighted with barbs that threatened to cut up the lips she had once touched.

"But won't you?"

Clarity flashed in those once dull eyes.

"Not any more."

On that he rose; his once limber body seeming heavy with built up smoke. It poured from his nostrils, as though he was some sort of dragon, his face matching the hurt broiling within. I watched him as those long legs carried him away without a word, without a whisper.

He disappeared between the tall swathes of grass, not even the lingering smell of smoke to mark his presence. It had already been borne out to sea; to where some secret place held his lost reason and resonance.

I suppose I should have followed him, should have talked to him, given him some comfort, but our hearts led the way. None of those mattered to him, or me anymore.

Thorin's body washed up on shore two bloated days later.

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I was relieved for his life, for his safety. But as selfish as it was, I was happy for myself too; that I might be able to look upon Finnick's face once again. The new feelings that had grown in his absence quarrelled within me, but for the first time both my heart and head agreed with each other.

Finnick was coming home; my life would again be complete.

The seaport was ablaze with his arrival. The night was alight with song and praise, the sky strung up with all the lanterns we could muster, people out upon the streets to welcome him home. The night was warm with the undulating flutter of people's throats, as a world of words were passed about in place of food. Bodies pressed together in the forum, a circle of dancers had languidly taken up keep in the centre of the large cobbled floor.

And the boy I wished to see most was readily gobbled up by the crowd as soon as he disembarked from the train; the calls of the district exploding like a gaggle of gulls.

I hardly saw him that night. The glitter of the Capitol seemed to have soaked into his skin, for he radiated a charm, a delight that I'd never seen before. He seemed so polished, so steady and calm, yet behind the eyes monumentally different. The few glances I did grasp of his face, as his was passed about the party like a newborn meeting the town, I saw no physical differences, apart from the new strength in his jaw and the lightness of his hair.

I felt quite apart from the heat of the celebrations. I wandered in and about the crowds, weaving between bodies, reserving myself to the fact I might not see him tonight; but the repeated utterance of his name was enough to counter any want for tangible touch.

I was quite ready to slip away, when a hand silently slipped into mine, lacing our fingers together and drawing me through the crowd, its owner unseen.

I could feel their warmth, the roughness of their firm touch, safe and determined. We slipped between bodies, following the flow of the crowd like two light fish, allowing the current to carry us forth. The slam of shoulders sent me crashing forwards, knocking suddenly into my guide.

Finnick's face finally found mine as he looked down upon me; our hands still entwined, our bodies pressed so much so that I could feel the race of his breathing as our gaze reunited.

"Finnick," I whispered hurriedly, pushing him back into a darkened alley, scared the crowd might swallow him up again and I'd lose him forever.

I couldn't help myself; I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him fiercely. It felt so good to hold him again, that well-worn warmth, the breadth of his shoulders that I'd missed so much. I was wrong; he had changed physically. He was no longer the body of a boy. The games had transformed him, made his skin hard and his hands rough, though not unfamiliar; only more mature.

His hands enveloped mine and slowly we were drawn in by the rich waverings that filtered in from the party. We revolved together, a smooth rock that resembled I suppose a dance.

I could feel his heart beat in his chest, and in his neck too as I rested my head beside it. We were there in the still, together at last.

"Does this make us even?" He murmured into my hair.

"Not even close," I whispered back.

We stayed there swaying in the alley for what felt like an age, the feeling of his warm breath against my neck, his hand at the small of my back. It was rather an embrace than a dance, our arms about each other, holding so tightly, as though the world might rip us apart again.

"I missed you." I felt it rather than heard, sensing the vibrations of his throat.

"I missed you too." There was no need to hold to truth back from him. It felt so surreal. For one that I had ever even known this boy, the boy who championed the Games and the boy who held me now. It felt like a bittersweet dream that against all of the odds he was here. I knew he was broken, there was something profoundly cracked within him; I felt it echo within me too. But the rich warmth of his hold filled me up, threatening to make me burst and let loose the true extent of what I felt.

"I missed you the most," his honesty was startling, and I felt a warmth like pooling honey inside me as he said that.

"You don't have to anymore." He'd opened up my little heart, but I couldn't resent him for that. Finnick was the first person to elicit such feelings in me, feelings I was finding harder and harder to repress and ignore.

He held onto my hand almost possessively and I could feel almost all of his weight upon me, as though at last he was slumping. The Captiol's golden boy was crumpling in my arms; all that play for the cameras dissolved in the dark.

Here was his chance. To tell me what I wanted. His chance to tell me what he wanted too. That perhaps our hearts might hold the same intent.

"Your hair's gotten darker," he whispered, his breath playing across my face as he drew closer and closer.

I felt the air catch in my throat; I stood so irresolute, my eyes wavering as they latched onto his own. He'd never been so close, and I'd never been so frightened. Not of him, but of the world around us that threatened that tiny thing we had between us. The brush of his lips against my cheek was enough to finally cement his definite presence and the failing of my heart.

And then, suddenly he was gone, snatched back by the hungry crowds, only the light tremble in my now empty hand to remind me he had ever been near.

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I traipsed back to the house by myself, taking in the quiet of the night as a cool relief. I could still hear the cries of the parade as it played out to the ink black sky. The seaport look as though it was ablaze, the thousands of lanterns strung up in celebration. Celebration of not just the survival of one, but the promise of a years worth of food, to feed our children's bellies full.

There was actual adulation, for out from under the oppression tolled upon our people, for one short evening we had definition, a role, and a champion for all of us to embalm our pride on. We had beat the Captiol's games; he had come out alive; though I feared still broken.

I had stayed in that dark alley for quite some time; lost not in thought, not in some constant internal replay or need to catch my breath. I just felt so empty, and yet so full. As though I'd been erased and redrawn, a light switched on to finally ignite my existence.

The waves still steadily crashed across the beach as my bare feet met its wet sand. That had remained a constant. Neither the Hunger Games nor the Capitol could restrain the tides. It never stopped, never ceased. It was there before my birth and would be there long after my death. However close that might be. I felt a shudder pass down my spine. How many times had I seen Finnick narrowly escape death? I might have been sitting here in mourning, and that thought disturbed me deeply. Yet still the waves would carry on, not noticing a death, the steady heart beat of the sea; when I remembered, the hearts of 23 children now longer moved.

I felt a curiosity about me. This was the view I'd looked out to so forlornly for the past couple of months that it felt so strange to look at it in any different way.

I was trying to find an emotion that I could no longer deny. I was holding onto a secret, one that had swelled in my chest, but had not yet been fully realized.

It blossomed upon my lips, the winds breathing it in.

"I'm in love with you Finnick Odair," I whispered out to the empty ears of the sea.

And for the first time I believed it to be true.

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Waking was far easier now, knowing he was safe. An even greater gift as the mornings past until the one that marked another year chalked up upon my age.

Fourteen, a number my life had yet to envelop in its discourse. But here I was, a year older than last, but in no way remarkably different. Fourteen years upon this earth, two renewals of my soul, two revolutions of those barbaric games. Would I chance a third?

My hair was longer than last year; it's length now snaking past my shoulder blades. Not that I had noticed its growth, only was it when the winds began to pick up, did I find it a nuisance. But it made me feel older, slightly gentler than the gawky image of an elongated child I had in mind. It had grown darker too; I only recognized this from the difference between the lightly blonde tips and the burnt gold roots. It was a subtle change, but one of the few I possessed.

Stretching my legs beneath the sheets in an attempt to shake the grip of sleep, I could feel how sinewy they still were. My thighs were insubstantial as always, but my days spent swimming gave them slight strength.

I'd been swimming by myself a lot lately. With Finnick's return I had once again taken to the water; but I had expected to see him too, surfacing, slick with salt. He was still on the Victory tour on his duties as a champion and I was still alone.

I knew I shouldn't expect it, but I was still surprised to find no boy outside my front door. A small box gave an ill reply. District 8's stamp, tiny and smudged was printed in blue ink on the edge of the box. Finnick had been in that district weeks ago; had he the fore planning to send it so early on? It carried the bruises of the postal system; the sight of which was strange to my eyes. Parcels were a rarity in the districts, though not unheard of. Rather they were large delivery of bait from the lower districts, or perhaps pieces for those wealthy enough to possess machinery.

I felt almost wrong opening up the box, to rip into its paper flesh, but I did so out of curiosity and was gifted with a cascade of ribbons. I had not expected such velocity as they tumbled out; a multitude of colour that not only belonged to the sea, but of regions further still. They fell out upon my lap and finally I made sense of all their swirling hues.

Finnick had tried to capture our island in its simplest form. These long strips; threads and the off cuts of disused fabric made up a matted weave much like the forest floor. The white bone of the trees, the slick red of the sun touches caverns; even the speckled dance of his token. Without further decision I set out in search for my sender, or at least another who owned that name, leaving my little box of ribbons carefully on the windowsill.

The Victor's Village was a ring of boxy white houses. They were all identical in structure, making it almost impossible for me to tell which one might be the Odairs. The compound was silent, a morning hush falling upon the residents, as the light filtered in through the cloud cover; dappled reflections playing about the roofs. A small fountain gurgled on the mound of grass that lay at the circle's centre. The imposing figure of a large salmon fish arched out, it's stern eyes almost defensively glaring at me, the poor, impoverished intruder; I had not paid my toll of blood to enter such a neighbourhood and probably never would. Its eyes were frighteningly human; but what was even more curious was the salmon's breed. Salmon was not known in our region; it was found far further north; in the mountains surrounding the Captiol. Perhaps it had been a mistake, but I though it might rather be a tangible reminder of the Capitol's constant presence; the Village, a gift to our most gracious sacrifices.

"Oi Cresta!" I heard called above me.

Squinting my eyes against the glare of the early sun I saw a shadow upon a roof, and for a second my chest tightened, hoping it might be Finnick. The two eldest Odair boys were sitting above, blotting out the sun's rays with their bulks as they beckoned me upwards.

Finnick and I had been climbing before; much like swimming it required the combination of all four limbs. Unlike diving though, climbing filled your limbs with weight; your mass dependant on the strength of your wrists, your arms and shoulders.

The Odair's new house was smart; large by our district's standards with painted white slat walls. The four tall wooden pillars supporting the roof's front gave the impression the house was leaning forwards, as though leering for approval, or perhaps smugness; the blood of too many children behind that lacquer.

I scaled it tentatively, not wanting to make an impression upon the freshly painted walls. I spied the other boy's previous ascent; their muddy handprints and the scrapes of their knees and feet, and so followed their path upwards.

The view was impressive as I settled myself next to Thul, watching Kel try and chuck shards of shingle into the fountain. The morning sun was beginning to breach over the distant hills and the sight was breathtaking. With dewy fingers the early child caught our eyes and held them still with her soft glow. Like angel hairs, tiny filaments of light, the smattering of hexagonal shapes refracted out across the glare of the rising sun.

"It's lovely up here," I commented.

"Yeah the house is nice," Kel remarked, a fierce grin across his face that betrayed his true liking of it.

"How do you like it Thul?" I asked, turning to the older boy, who had been weaving a short plait of sea twine between his fingers.

"Mother likes it," he smiled "She's planning a garden. You could help her," his gaze returned to the weave.

"The house must feel so much larger." I inhaled, taking in the full freshness of the new air and the expanding view.

"It actually feels fuller now that-" Thul replied softly.

"- Finnick's home," Kel finished his sentence for him, a warmth filling his face.

"We don't need it, but it's nice." Kel reasoned with a shrug, letting loose another shard, watching it arch across the compound, to miss the fountain and glance off the salmon head.

"We have family. And that really is enough."

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He didn't appear for another month, the Victory Tour keeping him far from sight.

His 15th birthdate approached and I readily anticipated a disappointment concerning his appearance. I was becoming more and more greedy for his presence, wanting him home and not so far away.

The day drew to a close and we celebrated without him at the Odairs' house; a meal heavy with his favourite dishes, their simplicity seeming strange in the new grandeur of their dining room. We bid them farewell and travelled back home, my tired body carried in shifts between my brothers. The lull of their step beckoned on sleep and by the time we made it home, and I was lain, fully clothed, in bed, I was fully ready to fall asleep.

But something kept me still within the fragile confines of consciousness.

That damn boy was plaguing my mind again. I resented him almost, for making me feel that way. So weak and powerless under his gaze. I'd once been so self sufficient, but now he was the once in control of my feelings. I could never hate him for too long, only once apart, that small window of time where I learnt to breathe once more.

I felt as though I was drowning, drowning in disbelief. Disbelief at how I felt for a boy I had once disliked for his arrogance and self-importance, but those qualities that I had once written him off for had transformed. I saw intelligence in his eyes as that handsome jaw of his would speak in rapt concentration, fixing me and only me in his gaze. But how could I be so stupid, so foolish to think that he would like me, the scabby kneed wisp who looked more like a drown cat than a growing girl.

I was still a child to him, the girl he'd grasped onto in that cold waiting room, the girl with algae in her hair, the girl he'd laugh at but never love.

I was selfish, wasn't I? For thinking of him in such an objective way, but I couldn't help it. I should be glad I had him alive and home, not a slaughtered mess upon that arena floor. Loving him was hard. The word was like a pearl, held as a secret to my heart.

And then there he was, at my window, grinning like some fool. Like some apparition of a night devil that my invading thoughts had summoned.

"Fancy seeing you here" he greeted.

"I was about to go to sleep. I have a good mind to push you out," I pouted.

"No you weren't. Come on let me in before I fall," he grinned, to which I just shrugged.

"When did you get back?"

"Just now," he sounded out of breath, as though he had just run from some great distance.

I sat back down upon my bed and crawled under the covers, wanting to fall back into that lull, fall back and take Finnick with me.

I felt the sheet shift beside me as Finnick wormed his way next to me.

I scrunched up my face at him, feeling his smile radiate in the dark.

"It's been too long," he murmured "You and me."

"I don't like that," I agreed with a small, shared smile.

"Me neither."

"Well then stay, here, in my bed," I proposed. He chuckled and shifted beside me, looping his arm above my head, so that I might rest against it, drawing him closer.

"Sea otters again?"

"Bed otters more like," I giggled and he joined in, the two of us living in each other's reverberations.

"You know I dreamt about you," his laughter fell silent, and he spoke softly, as though his words were some precious secret only I could hear.

"The whole time," he breathed, his chest filling with tense air against my own. We seemed to lay there for an age, our eyes relearning the nuances of the others face.

"I dream about you too," I finally whispered, only to realize that Finnick's eyelids had fluttered shut and the boy before me was asleep.

I felt my own eyes grow heavy with their fill of his sleeping face, but it felt too much like some surreal dream to have him next to me to allow myself to fully drift off.

He owed me. This slumbering boy.

I decided that such a debt would keep him close, bind him to me in contract.

He was in my debt and firmly in my heart, and I fully intended to keep him there.

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How was that? Finally the feelings are getting some momentum!

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