Days passed uneventfully until her father's return the next Sunday, Coral equal parts dreading and looking forward to seeing him in the house again. It wasn't that she had a bad relationship with him but rather, she didn't have much of one outside of a professional setting. His paranoia and hatred for the others of Four had been born in the wake of Ford's death, and to many it might have been the birth of an impossibly close relationship with his last living child. Instead, he relegated Coral to trusted acquaintance. When they spoke, it was for relaying information about the catch or the trawlers. About the money they needed to earn to retain their home.
Coral would've been insulted by it if she didn't watch her mother deal with the very same thing. There were conversations she was seldom privy to, things whispered in the dead of night. Occasional raised voices and Gillian's subsequent tears. Beyond those, little by way of affection was shared in the Swan household. Coral wasn't sure if it was her own instinct to pull back from her mother, or her mother trying to protect herself from the potential pain of losing another child. It didn't necessarily matter.
The end result was the same.
Coral lived in her loneliness. It was a feeling she'd almost forgotten the past couple years, but these days it rushed forward to make itself known.
It had taken Aveline months to win Coral over. Longer still to win Gillian. Delmar had only ever tolerated the girl. To him, anyone who wasn't a Swan, was a traitor. He didn't say it. There was nothing revolutionary or enflamed within his actions, but it was a kind of silence that he held. Coral had learned to recognise it when she walked through the door. On a day when he was on the water and her mother at the stall, Coral would sometimes head home to a quiet house before needing to work. The house itself welcomed her in its emptiness. The occasional creak of timber swallowing up her footsteps. A rustle of wind through a window. A crackle and groan of the bread oven cooling down from her mother's morning baking. The silence was built around both the present lack of other people and the multitude of signs that at other times, this place was a home.
Her mother's silence was warm. It was the hum and rattle of the cooler. The occasional sigh. The break of the zing of blade over whetstone to sharpen it for tomorrows work. Coral liked it. In those moments, she could pretend that it was a home that anyone might have lived in.
With Delmar, the silence was more absolute. It sucked the life out of things. Aveline had said it was the silence of a graveyard or the immediate aftermath of a funeral. When the people have gone but have flooded the grasses and the sea and the sky with their grief. Coral called it the aftermath of Ford. Her brother had been life. Bright and vibrant, quick with a smile or a joke. He had been cheeky. It had earned him more than his share of clatters across the back of his head. After Ford, it felt like her father had taken a deep breath and held it tight. Gathering the oxygen of a room all to himself out of spite. He spoke when only necessary. To his family and other denizens of Four alike. There was no playful chatter. No cheekiness.
It was this silence she walked into on the day he returned, permeating down to the bones of the house. Coral had gone out that morning to try to catch any of the Wyndham's. To express her sorrow and regret. Eos, always the kindest and softest soul, had asked her not to come back anymore. With a bowed head, he'd told her they needed to move on, and she did too. Aveline wasn't coming back and trying to force herself into their lives only made the pain raw.
It had been the gentlest admonishment she'd ever received in her life and yet it still cut her to the quick.
Sighing as she closed the front door shut behind her, Coral could hear her father's presence in the house. Gone was the casual hum while her mother baked bread. The air circulator was off. It made sweat start to bead on her skin almost instantly. Cool air was a luxury that was only afforded as and when her father would spare the funds.
"I'm home." Coral's mother appeared around the doorway, mouth pulling in a half smile.
"Hi darling. Your fathers back. Did you get to speak to the Wyndhams?" Coral chose to shake her head rather than confess the truth. After Aveline had gone and until the games had ended, Gillian had brought down what excesses they had, which weren't many, on Coral's behalf. She'd told Coral during breakfast one day that she'd seen a tesserae box in their disposal while dropping off the last batch. Had heard through gossip in town that Ari was joining the camps shortly.
Coral hated having that knowledge. It deepened her guilt, burying it to the darkest places of her being. Places that couldn't be ignored or compartmentalised. Her mother's face fell. "Oh well, perhaps tomorrow."
"Perhaps."
Moving into the kitchen, her mother pressed over a small piece of paper into her hand and spoke with a low voice. Not that her father had looked up from his immersion in the ledgers he read at the table.
"Someone left that for you."
Confusion tugged at her features before a glimpse of the handwriting within revealed the sender. Mags. It suddenly made sense for the covertness of the action. Delmar had no love for any victors who returned to Four, not least Finnick. It had been what made the boys appearance on her trawler all that more jarring. Coral agreed for the most part with his hatred, but Mags felt like the exception to many rules. She'd funnelled money into Gillian's business for years. Kept Coral busy. Sure, it was demeaning to be cleaning out the old woman's bedsheets and such, but no less so than having to debase themselves at the hands of the Capitol every year for the right to remain in their home. Coral had already carried the brunt of one loss already. Another would be too much, too soon.
"How was your trip?" Coral asked, stuffing the note into her pocket before she turned to give her father her attention. He gave a small grunt, handing her a collection of papers rather than answer. The quotas were met and they'd even managed to add another fifteen percent. By all accounts, that was a fucking triumph of a haul. Leaving them back down once she'd finished, Coral asked if he'd spoken to Tully and got a nod. With little else to discuss, and the silence already pulling at her composure, Coral retreated to her room.
The week on the trawler in communication with her father's boat had been the most she'd heard his voice in almost a year, and even that was only for a daily rundown of how things had been progressing. There were times Coral forgot that Delmar Swan had been a man to laugh with abandon. To crack filthy jokes that made her mother blush and Coral feel like she'd been included in some adult secret.
In her room, Coral flipped open Mags note to find a request to meet the older woman at four that afternoon on the beach. Frowning, half wondering why she had to give up yet another day to that house, Coral opted to close her eyes for a while. Either way, it would be preferable to sitting in the house that overflowed with her father's silence.
For once, the evening was cool instead of cloying. Coral had a fresh trace of sunburn edging where her shirt sleeves ended from her walk that morning but it would fade quickly enough. Her mother had spread a balm onto her skin before allowed her to slip out of the house again. There were times that her parents confused her. They were hardly more than walking shades of the people they'd once been, lacking in the joy and carefree natures that had existed before Ford's games. Yet somehow, they slipped in moments of what might have been.
She'd hidden away such nuggets for years.
The small baked loaf that her mother pressed into her hands as she left for school, enough for a small meal between classes. The shift in her father's silence at the end of their communications on the trawler before he hung up. As if he wanted to say more. It had been Aveline who had pointed out that such things shouldn't have to be desired. They should've just been freely given.
Thinking of her best friend didn't come easier, but a few weeks had gifted her enough clarity to think of the few lessons the other girl had imparted on her. How to act like the children they were. Which way to mix dyes to get the perfect shades of lip stain for her skin tone. How to kiss without smudging said lip stain. That thought was more bladed, robbing Coral of her breath. It had been once. She'd wanted it many times more.
She'd wanted the house on the beach, and a place where Aveline's laughter swelled the place with love and joy and impossibility.
To Coral, there was nothing worse than looking down into the abyss without that lifeline.
Pulling herself together, the girl got back on track to the beach and the specific spot she knew where she'd find Mags. Swimming was seldom a real treat for those of Four, the waters siphoned off for the fishing boats or the lessons given to the fishermen and free divers. One patch of land had been given up for free swimming, to be used only by kids after school, or adults on Sundays.
The beach was devoid of people in the late afternoon heat which made Mags easy to spot. A few days of brightness and escape from the Capitol had turned her hair whiter than ever but if anyone looked hard enough, they'd be able to spot the last few straggling dark hairs. Even then, she still looked like she possessed a bright wild halo atop her head.
Mags stood as she saw Coral, and the girl twitched a tight smile.
"Thanks for coming."
"Sure."
The older woman patted the sand beside her and Coral lowered herself, still curious why Mags would wish to meet her here of all places. At the house they could speak more freely. Without Peacekeepers making patrols along the roads, watching out for any signs. For Mags to speak to her like this would be slower, more difficult for the woman herself. On the list of things to make life easier, this ranked pretty low. Crossing her legs, Coral waited until Mags gathered her thoughts. A small spasm of her hand showed the woman desperately would've preferred to sign.
"Coral," A breath, one which had the girl leaning closer so she could hear properly, "I've really appreciated your working at my house. I know it cannot be easy."
That was the understatement of the century. Not that Coral ever said it to Mags herself. She was too reliant on the business to dare. Too careful of biting the hand that kept food on her table. The topic was a minefield. Coral blamed Finnick, but Mags had always helped. Her father blamed them both. Back teeth grinding together, the girl tried to pick a middle ground.
"It's easier than the camps." Or the games themselves. Sort of. With the games would come a freedom of her own. Either from the messy entanglements of life itself, or the constant fear of never having enough money to get by.
Mags gave a small chuckle of laughter at the diplomacy.
"I know as much as anyone – that it's very hard to look the people who have hurt you in the eye. Harder still to do so while the wounds are fresh." Coral's arms found her abdomen, wrapped around tight. "If you want to speak about her, I am always here."
Tears sprang to the surface and she looked away. Her grief felt too tangible to be held safely yet. It was a nerve brushed raw, pulsing and constant. Within the memory of Aveline was Ford. The betrayal. The fears. Each component all tangled up together in a melting pot of anguish.
"But you cannot punish Finnick for this one." It was the sharp slap of a switch on her skin, Coral looking up to meet Mags's gaze. What on earth had Finnick to do with this? Even as she thought it, the girl knew that the right answer was everything. Tightening her jaw so she wouldn't speak out of turn, Coral instead raised an inquisitive eyebrow. If she was to start throwing accusations, Mags might turn her out.
Forcing herself to try connecting the dots, they lined themselves up rather quickly. Her expression darkened.
Finnick had tattled on her. That stupid entitled bastard had gone home crying to Mags, but for the life of her, Coral couldn't think why. He had his own damn house. It wasn't her job to soften the blows of his failures, especially when those failures had led to the death of her best friend.
As if sensing the direction her thoughts had gone, Mags reached out and placed a liver spotted hand over Coral's knee. Squeezed harder than she could've imagined that frail looking hand could. Mags's skin was battered with age. Wrinkled, paper thin skin hid the grip of an eagle. "He tried to help her Coral."
"Not enough."
"You don't know what it's like in the Capitol. There's games within games." Fits and starts filled the gaps between the woman's words and still Coral found it impossible to believe. The Captiol was full of buffoons and monsters. To imagine it all as some big game – well – well – it wasn't entirely farfetched. Except Coral couldn't give an inch right now. She couldn't allow for the possibility that Finnick Odair was anything less the wretched boy than she had built him up to being.
"The things we have to do to get sponsor gifts for our kids," Mags sounded wistful, eyes turning themselves out towards the sea, "Finnick wasn't due to train this year but he knew if he took point, Aveline would stand her best chance. She learned to trust him. Someday, you will have to too."
A scoff ripped itself free of her but Mags's hand tightened again. In warning.
"Until you do, I do not give you leave to drive him from my home. His home."
"He has a home." Coral protested, ferocity dying in the wake of the look she was given. "He's got a house on the other side of the village. Why can't he be there more while I'm around?!"
Maybe then, she wouldn't have to replay what Mags had just said. That Finnick had stepped up to honour the promise she'd claimed from him. A promise that hadn't even been verbalised. Writhing snakes flung themselves at the barrier of her skin, trying to bite their way out. Burning her with venom. Coral Swan wanted to owe that boy nothing, and yet somehow, she seemed to owe him a lot. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. Opening her mouth to argue further, Mags was ahead of her and patted her chin shut. Firmly.
"This isn't negotiable."
It wasn't negotiable.
"Would you be so kind as to walk me home?"