From the moment the trawler docked back at Four, Coral wanted nothing more to do with Finnick Odair. She didn't even want to hate him anymore. She wanted his existence to cease.

It was a task that was easier said than done.

Everywhere she turned, there he was.

Taking her job up with Mags again altered her days from her old routine. Another balm to the absence of Aveline. In the morning she saw to the fishing off the coast, drawing in the catch for her father and ensuring that Tully kept everything going smoothly. Delmar had another week on his route before he'd return with the other boat, not that it made all that much of a difference at home. When he was there, he was hardly more than some kind of automated being. He had been since Ford had gone.

After the trawlers came school. By evening, she headed straight to Mag's to organise the cooking, cleaning and prep work for the next day until she could make it back home, fall into bed and start all over.

Her first day went off without a hitch, on the second Finnick had inserted himself into Mag's house as if he owned the place.

"Hope you don't mind an extra mouth for dinner, Mags says what you made yesterday was great." Finnick's smile was too polite. Guarded. Coral, unable to actually throw him out on his arse when the house wasn't her own, simply grunted.

He managed to get under her feet at each task. Offering to fetch items. Asking what he could do to help. The enthusiasm was disturbing. No one wanted to spend their days gutting fish, cleaning out bathrooms or changing bed linens. At least, no one Coral knew. Except, apparently, for Finnick. He was there and chatting at every corner.

Aware that she was at Mag's beck and call, Coral bite hard enough on her tongue that it finally began to bleed. Surviving the four hours in the place had taken every ounce of strength, a feeling only compounded when he announced Mags had instructed him to see her home.

Coral endured it. Somehow.

The walk home was smattered with Finnick's absentminded chatter. He flooded her with useless information. How to spot the best food in the Capitol. How to sharpen a trident without damaging it. The best way to craft a fishhook so Mags wouldn't judge you with despair. By the time they reached her house, he had launched into a long recounting of one of the bedtime stories his mother had read to him as a child. Fingers clasping and releasing in a steady beat, Coral didn't even bid him farewell as she closed the door on his face.

Furious, she also felt a flicker of pride that she hadn't resorted to violence. She could just ignore him.

She could do this.

The following day, he wasn't at there when she arrived and she breathed a sigh of relief. It was short-lived. When he burst through the door, Coral's eyes found the old grandfather clock at the end of the upstairs hallway. Thirty minutes of peace. That was all she'd gotten. Resigned, she gathered her supplies and moved back to the lower floor.

"I picked up some fresh stuff from the market for you Mags," He bounded into the kitchen ahead of her, smile wide and almost childlike. Coral wanted to run him through with the mop in her hand. "They had shellfish down there today, said I'd spare you the walk. Plus, I can't wait to see what you do with all the herbs Mags brought back."

She didn't understand it.

On the boat, she'd demanded he leave her alone. She'd yelled and wept and finally, he had avoided her as effectively as she'd wanted him to. Now, he was looking at her with earnest smiles. Carrying heavy items up the stairs before she could get to them. It had been a single day and she already felt smothered.

Looking past the boy to Mags, she saw the older woman watching them intently before looking away. As though waiting for a pin to drop. Gritting her teeth, Coral refused to give either of them the satisfaction of blowing up.

"Hand them over."

It was the first civil thing she'd managed to get through her teeth since the trawler and it still took most of her self-control to land it. Finnick, grinning wider, did as he was told.

He offloaded the fresh items into her arms and Coral tried not to shudder. She'd spent so long hating him that she'd almost convinced herself that his skin would be scaled or something. Instead, it was impossibly smooth. Inconceivably smooth. Fingers moving before she could stop herself, the girl found herself staring at the arm she'd grabbed.

There was a tan. Clearly defined muscle. He bore the recent marks of the trawler work, fingertips raw in places but beyond that – his skin was smooth as an infant. No callouses. No scars. For someone who had been raised in a fishing district, who had partaken in the games – it made no sense whatsoever.

Under her touch he was as unblemished as a new-born dolphin hide. Her touch lasted all of a couple seconds before he firmly pulled back from her.

Coral's eyes widened but by the time she'd looked up to press the matter, Finnick's face had shuttered down. Typical. The first thing she found interesting about him and he closed her out. Mags was watching them both avidly again and the girl gave an aggravated sigh. Coral, despite her misgivings, found herself offering the boy a reprieve. "I have some dinner to prep and its fiddly. I could use extra vegetables to be prepped and served with the fish but we're out of potatoes and samphire."

He left the house faster than one of the Capitol's tribute trains and Coral looked back to Mags.

"What the hell was that about?"

Mags, infuriatingly cryptic, shrugged her shoulders. Not sure why it irked her when she wanted to forget the boy existed at all, Coral swallowed down the accusation that it was a lie. If she started gaining interest in him, then she was no better than the foolish twits following him about on the streets vying for attention.

When Finnick got back, the smile had returned and he sat down at the table to listen as Mags read from one of her many books. Loathe to admit it, Coral found herself realising that standing at the stove and finishing the dinner preparations to the sound of Mags broken reading and Finnick's occasional interjections – it might have been the most normal homelife experience she'd had in years.

Mags had insisted she stay to share the dinner against Coral's protests. Stuffed, confused and tired, she felt her old frustrations rising as Finnick fell into step beside her for the walk home once again.

Determined to ignore him, she studied the cobbles underfoot. Counted the windows on the homes they passed. Every so often her gaze moved back to him and his now sleeve covered arms. Whatever was hidden beneath the fabric, he was conscious of it. Biting down on the inside of her cheek to try and realign her thoughts the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.

Worst of all, the longer the silence ran, the more aggravated Coral grew. Eventually she burst out.

"What on earth do you want?"

"Just to walk you home. Like I said."

"That's horse shit and you know it." Coral whirled on him, ignoring the bemused looks from passers-by. At this hour of the evening there were few people, but she knew that by tomorrow morning it would be prime gossip across Subdivision A. Finnick Odair and his latest girl. It wasn't helped by the fact that Finnick was smiling that stupid smile of his, wide and uncompromising. Coral detested it. She hated more that it was actually beginning to have an effect on her. Subtle. A flicker of something in her chest. Awareness. The smile was a mask.

He opened his hands wide, an invitation for her to continue.

"Ever since you came back, you've been hounding me. I'm not some wilting flower that needs your protection, and I keep telling you to get lost but somehow you keep showing up. You're the equivalent of a bad smell. You're two-week-old fish that can't be lifted out of the drapes." Not that fish ever lasted that long in any home here, but she was seeking a nerve. A means to shake off the puppy dog look he was throwing her way now. "Every damn corner I turn you're there. I'm sick of it. I told you to leave me alone."

Finnick buried his hands into the pockets of his trousers. In the evening light, there were flecks of hazel in his eyes. Coral wasn't sure when he'd gotten so close to her. When she'd let him. From here she could see the freckles smattered across his nose. Sun bleached strands that curled atop his head. There was a grim edge to his smile and Coral felt almost wretched for being the cause of that after what had happened earlier. Just as quickly she recalled that she was meant to hate this boy. The embodiment of all that was wrong in her world.

Even so, she preferred having justification to act terribly. Attacking him to protect Aveline, to protect her own fragile psyche – that was one thing. Chipping away at his smile for her own vindication was another.

"You're the only person in this place that treats me like I'm still an annoyance."

Coral's jaw dropped; eyes narrowed. There was a pause for breath and then -

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!"

"Is it?" He kept his voice low and sauntered closer. To anyone else, their situation would've looked altogether intimate. This close to him, Coral had to tilt her head upwards to see fully into his face. "Do you remember after my victory tour? I sauntered up to your stall and you buried a knife into the counter beside my hand. Told me I was a murdering little pissant and just because everyone else was going to fall over themselves to pretend I was some innocent prince, you knew I was little more than a wretched excuse for a human being who used to puke every time he had to gut a fish."

Coral didn't remember a word of what he was saying. The knife might have been true, but everything else? She cringed at the clarity with which he'd spoken, knowing she'd been propelled through life by fear and loathing alone for years. It was well within her wheelhouse to have said such things to him. Of course, she felt much the same these days but found herself channelling violence or quiet fury over direct attacks. Unwilling to compromise on the idea, she scoffed.

"You're talking shit again."

"You don't remember because for you it was some regular workday. For me it was a person besides Mags who didn't burst into tears or applause when I walked in the room." She started to shake her head, to deny that she could've had anyprofound effect on this boy. From the minute he'd been crowned victor for Four, Coral had seen nothing but the evil inside him. Had funnelled every trace of her rage against Four and their abandonment of her brother, the loss of her home and wealth, into him. He was meant to be an easy target. Something tangible to actively hate. She wasn't meant to be a moment of enlightenment. "So, tell me, is it ridiculous to want one person my age who remembers me before? Who isn't falling over themselves with relief that I'm alive? Who isn't determined to be me, or pity me, or fuck me?"

She hated him. She did. Right to the core of his being. Every cell that composed him. She hated it. He had been afforded boundless privileges that others had not and he had the cheek to bemoan it? So what if it was a little uncomfortable at times. Fingers curling to fists Coral broke eye contact with him.

"I can't be that for you. I'm not some tool for you to cling to because the world sucks. You being here, always here – it makes me hurt." It reminded her that Aveline was gone. That Ford had been abandoned. That she was left with nothing but her anger and her grief. That all that waited her in the future was either the games or a life of embittered agony like her father lived. Days of working to survive rounded out by a bottle of spirits. She might even take after her mother, weeping into the pillow when she thought no one else could hear. It might have worked in their old home, but the place they were now had walls too thin. Curtains too threadbare. Every part of her life was hanging on by a fucking thread and Finnick had the cheek to actually pretend like he didn't hold the entire of Four in his palm.

"Then aren't you tired of fighting all the time?" Her breath hitched in her throat, Finnick reaching forward to press a hand to her shoulder. Holding her from running away. She thought of the boat. Of Aveline. "Of being so angry? Wouldn't it be nice to have someone who sees the real you again?"

"You don't know me."

Each step that humanised him was a step in the wrong direction. Coral had nurtured and clung to her anger for so long now that to simply let go was impossible. It felt like the only thing keeping her going some days. The only thing propelling what little was left in her life.

"I know that Aveline loved you," It knocked the breath from her lungs and she staggered backwards, "I know that she told me to keep pushing you until you accepted that you needed a friend as much as I did. I'm not stopping Coral. You can fight me all you want, but I'll be here. Every day. I promised Aveline to watch out for you and I don't break my promises."

"Oh really?" Finnick recoiled from the bladed sarcasm as Coral's focus snapped back with all the force of an elastic to bared skin. "You keep your promises, do you? Then why the fuck is she dead Finnick? Where were her allies in there? Where were you?"

The tide turned and Coral jabbed a finger into his chest.

"I'm alone because of you. I fight all the time because of you. I'm angry because of you. So please, stop using Aveline as your motivation because all I have to do is look at you and feel like I am dying inside again. You're a leech. You take good things and ruin them. Why would I give you the last shards inside me for you to destroy them too?"

Finnick had gone pale as Coral gestured and spat her words at him. It didn't matter that there was something beneath his mask. It didn't matter that Aveline may or may not have asked him to be there for her. What mattered was his embodiment of everything that was wrong in her world, and that he finally – finally – left her alone to suffer in silence.

Stealing the last word, Coral had almost escaped before Finnick found his voice. Almost.

"Because you're so angry no one else will take them from you for fear of cutting themselves raw. I'm not afraid of you Coral. You don't have to be afraid of me."

Lungs scrabbling for air, she could feel moisture starting to burn behind her eyes.

How – how dare he?

Turning her nose up, she shot one parting statement before running.

"Go fuck yourself."