The waiting area was a bustle of white clad peacekeepers and cruel anticipation. Coral caught her reflection in one of the silver light fittings, normally tan skin almost translucent in the half light. There was a shell-shocked look to her face. One which she could see on repeat outside the window, recaps already being looped for the Capitol viewers. A new district would appear, already chosen tributes cut between dull minutes, and then there would be Aveline and Coral, hands clasped and bearing mutual expressions of horror. The seconds that had felt so much longer would pass, where she'd been frozen. Unmoving.
There was a disconnect between what she was feeling and what was on the screen. To see herself alone as the other girls had parted and Aveline retreated. Picking out a singular emotion on the video of her face was nigh impossible. She'd been a tempest. Horror. Pain. Disbelief. Resignation.
Watching it happen was as foreign as it had been in real time.
The version of her on film as she turned. As she saw Aveline's raised hand and the stark red outline of her lips.
Coral had driven an elbow into the face of the girl who'd tried to hold her back while Aveline moved around her. It had been a faceless peacekeeper who had held her tight at the boundary between girls and stage, who had clamped a hand over her mouth so that her screaming wouldn't detract from Aveline's moment. Not that anything had come. Every nerve had been paralysed with fear. With rage. She'd been utterly impotent in the face of everything.
A door slammed further down the corridor and Finnick appeared, watching her. For once his smirk was absent and before she'd had time to even think, Coral had the boy by his collar. He was taller than her. Stronger too, if the sharp sinew of his limbs was anything to go by. She'd lost the seconds it must have taken her to close the distance between them and it only served to piss her off more.
Coral couldn't hear anything above her heartbeat. She had one friend in this world. One. That girl was now sitting in a room about to be led off to slaughter. In her place.
"Hey!" A shout rose at the far end of the hall and Finnick raised a hand to stall the peacekeeper who'd spotted them. There were white spots in her vision but words wouldn't come. Her nails were going to draw blood where she'd speared his shoulder.
"I'll do everything I can Coral." Finnick's voice, low and urgent and pitying, was enough to shock air back to her lungs.
"If – if you let her die in there -," She hissed it with malice, eyes narrowed, "If you don't do everything - don't step foot back in this fucking district because I'll finish the job the others didn't."
Finnick's face didn't look alarmed. Rather, it was sympathetic. Sympathy. What the fuck could he know about sympathy?! Living in the Victor's Village in a cosy home. Knowing he'd never have to face the games again. Knowing he had no siblings to lose and watch die. No true friends to mourn. Coral hated him with every fibre of her being right then but hating him wasn't going to keep Aveline alive. It was almost hilarious that only a few days back, Aveline had suggested people thought she was in love with this boy. There was no love in her expression now. Only contempt.
"Miss Swan; if you don't wish to be thrown from the building, I suggest you let go of Mr Odair." Coral loosened her grip, hands raised in a sign of compliance. She vaguely recognised the peacekeeper in front of her, a man named Linden who had always been kind. His face now was frosty. Coral met it with equal temperature.
"Leave her be. Let her see the Wyndham girl." Coral shot Finnick a mutinous glare but didn't resist when Linden took her by the arm and led her back to where she'd been before. Finnick called after them, voice steady. She planted her feet solidly enough to delay her escort.
"Coral, i- when she comes back, she's not going to be who she was. It's going to be on you to help her deal with that." Linden looked coolly between them both, then rapped sharply on the door and announced that they had three minutes. She wasted no more time on Finnick Odair.
Aveline's arms were hooked around her neck before she had even made it the whole way in and in an instant, all of Coral's rage sagged away. What replaced it was immense sorrow.
"Come back to me okay?" The red lipstick was smeared, eyes watery and swollen. All of Coral's admonishments and questions died at the back of her throat, flooding her mouth with bile. "You come back alright?"
"I'll try. Cor, I'm going to try but -"
"No. No. None of that. You're going to win. You're going to come home and you and I are getting that place we talked about on the beach. With seashells in the window frames and I'll cook for you. Every night."
She wanted to say more. To tell Aveline that it wasn't just a fantasy to her. It was an opportunity to be more than what their parents would make them. A means to reclaim all the little things they'd lost from their childhoods.
Coral wanted to say everything. That she loved Aveline's black market make-up and how each pearl found and shared was a memory all its own. That without the girl in her arms in her world, Coral's life would've been utterly small and empty after Ford died. She'd rejected friendship and Aveline had rejected that rejection. Had pointedly told her as much on countless occasions. She wanted to say that what Aveline had given her was a gift she didn't want to keep.
She wished to tell her how to wield a trident and weave a net. Where to aim to kill. Aveline was a diver. A collector. She dabbled too often in pretty things to know how to survive. Except that she had to. She had to.
Coral needed to ask why. To understand what possible motivation could've inspired the girl in her arms to throw her life away for her. Aveline was sobbing too hard for her to even fathom how to pose the question.
"I want fresh fish every day." Coral agreed. "And you'll do the laundry but I'll always clean up after meals." Another agreement. "We'll visit old Flanagan on Sunday's and I'll show you how to dive for the best pearls. I'll buy a string of them just for you."
Coral and Aveline both swelled the space with fantasy.
Three minutes felt like nothing. Three minutes felt like forever. When Linden returned to pull her from the room, Coral resisted.
"I had to do it Coral, I had to do it for you, you're too good to be twisted by them."
Aveline wailed it, the sound piercing and heart breaking.
"I'll take care of your family until you come home. Come home to me. Come home. I lo-"
The doors shut and with it went any opportunity to tell Aveline Wyndham that she had loved her as best as could. That she'd love her even when the blood flowed and stained her fingertips. She'd love her for surviving. Just as she would've loved Ford.
Shepherded from the building, Coral found herself staring into a now empty square. The spectacle was over. The tributes would leave soon. Coral tilted her head up to the sky and wondered when the horizon had split into fractals.
In the small kitchen, the Swan family occupied their shared table in strained silence.
"I'll send food down to the Wyndham's tomorrow. As much as I can spare."
Coral nodded; eyes unfocused. She couldn't remember the walk home. Was this her life now? Gaps in her memory. Emptiness. Her mother had been talking in short desperate bursts, of all the kindnesses she could offer in repayment for her daughter's life. Coral knew, knew, her life wasn't worth Aveline's. That she was too bitter. Too angry. Too much to be worth the life she'd just been offered. Mag's key twisted within her hands, around and around and around. Teeth embossed into her skin when another spasm hit her. Shock, her father had said it was.
Her father had attempted to draw her out of her stupor by speaking of work. Of tasks that could ground her to a halt against the spinning orbit of her thoughts. When she'd had to ask him to repeat the same thing four times, he'd given up.
Mind whirring with ideas, means, to keep Aveline alive – all she could think of was the sleek train as it left the station. Of her best friend sitting on it, wined and dined for the next couple days. The training and judgements. Finally, the arena itself. What would it contain this time around? If there was water, Aveline would be able to swim. She was good with paints; she might be able to camouflage herself. Hide away from the other tributes.
Such things twisted themselves through her consciousness again and again, as if she had any means of getting word to Finnick to help him coach Aveline. She was bright, but modest. There were a million and one skills that might keep her alive in that place and yet the most obvious solution would've been to never speak up at all.
An ever-tightening knot had worked its way around Coral's heart and lungs, coarse rope tearing its way over soft tissue and fragile vessels until all she could feel was persistent pain. With Ford, there had been enough hope to act as a buffer. She'd had enough money and influence and wealth to imagine he'd be perfectly safe. Coral left the table to rifle through her own measly savings from the fish stall. From her boat trips. There was hardly enough there to even make a dent in a fraction of a sponsorship gift.
Late in the evening, the sun illuminating her room with a soft golden glow, Delmar entered her room to leave a small scrap of paper on the small beside table. There was a hesitation, as though he might say something. As though he might press the calloused palm of his hand to her bared shoulder and offer some kind of platitude. Except he knew it well enough that there were no platitudes to be offered.
Coral could see it in his face. The relief that warred with pity. That it wasn't her on route to the Capitol. Twisting away so she wouldn't have to look at him, her knees curled themselves to her chest.
She wanted to weep. To move. To scream and rebel against everything that had conspired to put her in this position. Impotent rage solidified her muscles. Made her even more useless than she already felt. Someday, she would bring the whole thing down. Someday.
Sleep claimed her at some unknown point and when she woke, her mother had left an oil lamp on her bedside table. Coral picked at the paper her father had left, examining the words it held with bleary eyes. From the bed, she could pretend it was just another day. From here, she had the brief luxury of ignorance and isolation. By the next morning all the screens would be erected and blaring the pre-Game preparations. The small window slotted between three and six would be her only solace.
Blinking away sleep, her eyes finally focused on the words before her. It was a confirmation of permit receipt. Instantly more awake, she felt a wave of relief wash over her. Just prior to the games, the fishing permits were always assigned. In her youth, her father's vessels had always received a distance permit to go tackle the larger swells of fish off the coast. While day to day supplies could be found by early risers, the real money was in the permits. Snapping up things like different tuna, herring and more meant food on the table for months instead of days.
It was genius really, to release the permits the way they did. Most of the games extended out to three weeks of airtime. More than enough for a vessel to set about gathering a crew, supplies and haggling the length of time they'd get off the coast. With only two vessels in his possession now, her father rarely was granted any permit at all. Not when the likes of Pine fisheries existed, their fleet containing sixteen vessels (most of which had once belonged to the Swan's).
She wouldn't know until later how long their permits granted them, but it was a window of escape. Especially when Coral herself was listed as co-captain. It meant that whether Aveline came back or not, she might get a few precious days to bury herself in a life without sympathy or horror. Tomorrow, she'd talk to her father about leaving an open spot on the second boat so that Aveline wouldn't miss out when she came home. Granted, she was about as useful as a guppy for the tasks on board a long-haul vessel but none of it mattered in the wake of the small flickering band of hope now swelling in her chest.
Aveline would come home.
There was simply no other option.