Coral had seethed the whole walk back to the Victors' Village. Mags, pointedly oblivious, had chattered about the latest catch. About the herbs she'd brought back from the Capitol that she was most excited to try, and the garden she wanted them to plant. Holding a genuine conversation with the woman took time and a lot of energy to pay attention to without having signing to fall back on and so Coral's mind felt well and truly splintered by the time they broached the boundaries of the houses.

"Come in for tea." She didn't want to. Coral wanted to go home and be angry. To fill her father's graveyard silence with quiet rage, simmering and hostile. It was all Finnick's fault. It was all her fault. She'd trusted him. Briefly. In the midst of her fear over losing Aveline. Since then, he'd done nothing but implode her life with uncertainty. Even her position with Mags was now on rocky ground, though it would've been hard to tell that from how casually the woman spoke. Perhaps she was just better at playing the game than Coral was.

"I should -,"

"I insist."

Apparently, nothing was up for debate with old Flanagan. Coral exhaled sharply and gave a small nod. On the few times that Coral moved with deliberate slowness to the house, she did have to admit the Victors' Village was something to behold. Whitewashed buildings and endless flower gardens. Each house with its own window seat and a view of the sea from the upper floors that far outshone any other place in the entirety of Four. It was just a pity that such homes had to be paid for in blood.

Coral released Mags to move ahead and unlock the door, fair brows knitting together as the door swung open before she had time to even insert the key.

"Did you leave the place unlocked?" While break-ins were rare in Four, they did occasionally happen. Victors houses were deemed the most affluent. They also carried the highest risk. Mags, to Coral's knowledge, was quite well liked. With the notable exception of Delmar Swan.

When the woman shook her head, Coral's hackles rose. A sliver of fear trailed its way down her spine and when she looked down the hallway – she saw the stains.

"Mags…" The woman followed her gaze and the immediate change in demeanour near knocked Coral from her feet. Mags tore past her, barrelling through the house with a speed that was baffling.

"Finnick?" Blinking and without any chance to consider why the hell Finnick would be leaving a trail of blood along the white tiled hallway, Coral followed. Whatever she'd expected to find, it certainly wasn't a near naked Odair boy standing in the middle of the kitchen with a large blade to his skin. Mags's cohesive but slow chatter had devolved into little more than a frantic stream of incomprehensible words and none of it made sense.

The boy looked, well, like a boy. No, he looked young. Far younger than their shared seventeen years. A trickle of blood was spiling down his arm where he held the knife at a point. Digging in. Digging deep.

"I'm sorry Mags." There was something inhuman in Finnick's voice, something wildly out of place with the picture Coral had of him. Worse still, he reminded her of horses she'd once seen as a child. Frantic eyed, the whites showing too much. Tear tracks lined his cheeks and Coral's eyes flickered once to the blood. Twice. It was dry. Whatever he was trying to do, he'd been here long enough for the first cut to begin to set. "I'm trying but I'm sorry."

Instinct made Coral want to turn tail and run. To throw dust in her wake and take the consequences of it later. She didn't have a horse in this race. Not really. Finnick was just some annoying, terrible boy. A murderer. He was just a monster.

Then why, a niggling and unwelcome part of her brain questioned, does he look so afraid?

"I can't – I need to feel human again Mags. I can't wait. I can't."

Green eyes darting between the older woman and the teen, Coral was at a loss.

Inserting herself between the two seemed to happen without her own say so, arms and legs moving with unfamiliar steadiness. More surprising was the way her hand reached out to grip his chin. To hold him in place.

"What did they do to you?"

The question seemed to catch him off guard and Finnick swung his gaze from Mags to her, the intensity of the look sending a throb through her chest. Her grip tightened, a far cry from the soft edge she'd asked her question with. Anger was still there. Just beneath the surface. Anger at Finnick. At Mags non-negotiable demands. At her father's silence. At Aveline and Ford and Four and the Capitol.

She fucking hated the Capitol.

It was their fault. They were making her let down her guard. Making her into some soft pliable slip of a girl who dropped her defences at the sight of a crying boy. A crying boy who had the knife she'd spent the day before sharpening pressed to the crook of his arm.

"Finnick," It fell from her lips too easily, too urgent and soft and desperate, "Why are you doing this?"

His chest rose and fell. The knife slipped along his arm, flat of the blade dragging some of the still moist blood after it. "I just want to feel normal again." He sounded broken as pulled back from her and the demands of her grip, the tanned glow of his skin fading down to a pale imitation of itself. "I can't go back – I won't be this thing anymore! I can't – Ican'tIcan'tIcan't."

"Hey, hey," Mags' panicked garble had only increased in volume and Coral tried to wave the older woman back. Playing the role of appointed de-escalation expert was about as far from her wheelhouse as being named head peacekeeper. What was even less appealing about it was the prospect of having to deescalate Finnick. Worst of all, was the way Mags had run into the house. She'd known. She'd known immediately that blood meant Finnick. Meant this. How often had they both lived this crooked cycle? For the first time, Coral found herself asking – where is his mother?! "Hey c'mon, you're here in Four. You're safe."

Arms outstretched, Finnick held the blade over his own wrist. Pressed it to the unmarked skin. Unmarked. More of the puzzle slipped into place. The smoothness of his arm under her touch. Images and sensations clattered together quick enough to form a rudimentary understanding of what was going on. The Capitol had done something to him. Made him unblemished. Even a week back at sea had only restored a fraction of the scars and wear that others claimed in their district. Coral's hands were so much coarser. More damaged.

"Look, give me the knife Finnick. If anyone is going to slit you open let it be me. At least then you know the person holding the weapon will find relief."

His eyes were wild. Unhinged. This was a version of the boy that was kept hidden away. A version that made him more human again.

How the fuck could she call him a monster after this? It only made Coral hate him more. Something in her expression must have shown because she felt the press of the handle to her outstretched palm before she realised what it was.

"Please." His voice broke painfully in the middle of the word and Coral's expression wavered. "Please do it." He had gone to his knees before her, arms spread wide to reveal his unprotected chest.

She saw the reflection of the knife in his eyes and contained within it, she relived his games. Of how he'd come out swinging, knives and spears and anything he could wield. Coral relived them all. The girl who'd died with a spear in her throat before she could finish her battle cry. The boy from twelve whom Finnick had split ear to ear with his knife. She didn't know why she'd retained so much of it. Why it had stuck so solidly in her mind. Maybe because it was the ferocity she'd expected of her brother. Or perhaps -

All of the techniques Finnick had used in the games were movements that were as familiar to Coral as being on the water. Snaring the fish. Butchering it. She'd condemned him for so long that she'd never stopped to think of how easy it would be to become just as monstrous as him if it was her survival on the line. Her judgement of the games was clouded by fear but underneath it, hidden deep, was a vow that she'd use the skills she'd been taught to come home. That she wouldn't be another Ford. Another Aveline.

Her fingertips pressed against his forearm where a blade from the male tribute from district one had passed. Instead of the white and puckered scar, Finnick's skin was immaculate. He didn't even have a single acne pimple.

This was what the Capitol did. They took innocent children and turned them into beasts. After it was over, they washed away the evidence. Burnished it golden and beautiful so people didn't have to look too hard at it. So they could pretend.

Mags had faded into the background noise and all Coral could see was the endless smooth lines of Finnick's body on display. The Capitol squealed their delight at the view but as Coral looked, really looked, she felt disgusted. His body hair was hardly longer than a pale peach fuzz, like what she'd find on an infant. He bore little by way of the usual seafaring rites of passage. No burns from hasty meals on the beach front. No tears in his palms from trying to fit a spearhead. They'd stripped him of all the pieces that made him one of Four. That solidified him as a being that was part of a whole rather than lost at sea. Coral thought of Mags and the crepe paper feel of her skin. Of Cove and the trailing birthmark across her jaw. Things that couldn't be edited out. Air brushed away. Was Finnick the only one who was taken apart and remade each time around? Did he have to do this each time because the alternative was to stare at the reminders of his emptiness? The perfection that marked him out as other.

His eyes were damp. Glittering. Pained.

Coral hated that it elicited anything other than hatred within her. Hated that this terrible boy was maybe not as terrible as she'd painted him to be. That under the masks and the flirting and the endless fucking optimism, he was just as damaged and broken as she was.

She knelt.

Without any fanfare, Coral dragged the blade across his forearm and watched the blood well in the wound. She repeated the action on his chest beneath his ribs. Across his left bicep. Down the side of his thigh.

Each wound was shallow and likely to heal without more than a small bandage, but the blade was sharp enough that when the skin knitted it would mark him with white. New skin. New wounds. Old pains.

Finnick gave a sigh. Tension flowed outward from him. The tears began to flow more freely and he morphed before her eyes again. Wild animal to wailing child.

Was this what it would have come to if Ford had survived? If Aveline had? Cutting them apart just to help them feel whole.

"Now you look like a person again." She bowed his weeping head into her lap so she didn't need to look at his face, but he clutched at her shirt. Soaked her shorts. Crying like this, it was hard to hear it. To face it. It was the sobbing that widows did at funerals. That mothers did for their too soon deceased sons. Finnick wept as though he'd lost parts of himself that he'd never get back and for the first time in four years, Coral didn't hate Finnick Odair. She didn't hate him at all.

"Thank you." He whispered it repeatedly as Mags reappeared with a soft blanket to prop over his bared body. The old woman dropped a soft hand on Coral's head, a mirror to the tentative palm she held against Finnick's hair. Coral tried to say something more. To tell the boy in her lap to pull himself together so she could go home. The words refused to come. They didn't come when Finnick's breathing levelled out and his body went limp. They didn't come when Mags made signs to say that she'd take over, carry the burden. Coral fell asleep with her back to a kitchen chair and Finnick Odair curled tight against her legs.

A frightened boy and a cautious girl.