~F

I wake up in an unfamiliar medical facility, all clean and clinical lights and smooth concrete walls with nothing of the home I knew or the Capitol I was forced to love. I remember bits and pieces of many things, but the moments that stand out the most are the ones I've been dreaming of for a while now. Every moment that stands out in my mind is another moment that Snow has taken something from me, or corrupted something I held dear, all to get at the little pieces that I never gave him. I would never tell him anything about the rebellion, because if I did, Katniss and Johanna would be the worst part of the coming nightmare. Not because they would hurt me, or because they would be angry, but because they would be hurt and betrayed, and there would be nothing I could do to make that better, to make that go away. But now, in this moment, I feel hope springing forth from my chest, bright and new and full of a life I wish I still possessed, drugged into motionlessness as I am. I hope beyond all hope that I am in District Thirteen, that the rebellion has come for me, saved me and brought with me the only hope for happiness I still have.

Katniss and I stumble to a stop, the wire leading back behind us taut and vibrating. I look at her in horror, that same expression and fear echoing back to me in her eyes. Her stormy gaze flicks to the ground when the wire snaps, and now I have a decision to make and only a few heartbeats in which to do it. I know how betrayed she's about to feel, but I know that it's the only sure option I have to ensure that she gets a chance to live, so I sweep the end of my trident into her temple, knocking her down to her back. I see the hurt in her eyes, the disbelief even as I stab one of the tines of my weapon into her arm and dig for that tracker. I don't have the time to explain why I did it, or what I'm doing, so I just lean forward and whisper that she has to be the Mockingjay, that she has to live for us all. I take some of the blood pouring out of her and push down my worry that I cut too deep and too hard so I can wipe it across her throat, then I'm on my feet and running. I force myself on, I force myself to hope that the Careers will follow me and leave her on the ground, and I force myself to be obvious and lead them away.

I get my reward when Enobaria crashes into my legs from behind, her growls loud and wild as she tries to crawl up my body to use those razors she calls teeth to rip out my throat. I roll and punch her as hard as I can while laying on my back, only to realize that I have no time to waste on fighting her. My trident plants in the earth beside me and I twist as much as I can to avoid the spear that Brutus is jabbing at me, opening a line of fire on my back when I can't move far enough to avoid the attack. His weight drives the haft of the trident into the ground, but he doesn't fall. He's lodged it far enough in that it will hold him up even as he loses the strength to stand, the points projecting from his back and blood spewing from his lips as he chokes and drowns on it. I have no weapon now except the spear he tried to kill me with, so I grab it and turn just in time to avoid a knife in the back. Enobaria drives the point into my shoulder and I bull her to the ground again, standing with the spear in one hand and preparing to impale her as well. Then the world shatters and the shockwave knocks me to the ground, my knee crushing her nose as I am blasted over her. We are both unconscious after that.

The man in black enters the room I'm in again, the straps on my wrists and ankles keeping me from attacking him like I did yesterday. He tugs on his leather gloves and asks me a question that I answer by spitting in his face. He punches me and I drift away until the icy chill of water drenches me and clears my head. He asks me again and I say nothing, so he flips the table I'm strapped to so that it's upright and I might as well be standing, then punches my gut. I cannot breathe, but I still refuse to answer. He asks again, and I say nothing. This has been going on for days now, and he still doesn't seem to get the message: I will not falter and I will not betray. He sighs and tells me that he is disappointed in me, that he had hoped I wouldn't force him to do this but now he has no choice. The door opens again and a girl is brought in with a bag on her head. When he takes it off, I scream and bellow and tell him that if he hurts her I will kill him. It's my Annie.

He asks me again, but I cannot answer him, I WILL not answer him, not even for her, and she knows that. The look she gives me says that she already forgives me, that she knows this is not my fault, that she knows I am not the one hurting her, and it gives me the strength to stay silent even as the man slaps her and leaves a bruise on her cheek. She will not speak because she knows nothing, and I will not speak because I know too much. The man takes a knife and lays it against her throat, threatening that if I do not tell him what he wants to know, he will kill her. I speak and tell him that I already know he won't do that, because then he will have nothing to use against me. He growls in anger, but he knows I'm right. Instead, he carves her cheek open and she and I weep to see the blood, but still I stay silent.

Caesar greets me back to his show and I can see the surprise in his posture. I am healed enough to be seen by the Capitol, and Snow is banking on the rebels watching as well, because he has Caesar asking questions about the Games. I answer truthfully, and though it pains me to do so, I tell him about what life is like in the arena, what it's like to be a tribute. He looks ill as I speak, but he soldiers on and shows me exactly how much orchestrating Snow is doing. He asks questions designed to cast doubt on Katniss, to make it seem like she is a dangerous radical, to make it seem that she is something that she is not, and I answer the same way. I speak words that Snow can interpret however he wants, but that Katniss and Johanna will understand if they truly are watching. I tell them to fight, to never let anyone control them, to be happy, and to remember the fallen. I include myself and Annie among that number, sure that we will never be free and that we will be dead soon because of my stubborn refusal to play the game by the rules that our illustrious president has set out. After I am escorted back to my cell that night, the real torture begins.

It's only a few days since the interview, but already things are happening that Snow has no control over. They are in the middle of torturing me as usual when the order comes over the line to tune in for the propaganda spot that always comes, except today something goes wrong. Snow is speaking, then the screen flickers and I see Katniss and Johanna among a crowd of wounded civilians, smiling and comforting them. I am so proud of them right then, and when the broadcast returns, I am grinning. I gladly take the punch that my mirth has earned me, only to see another moment flash on screen. Katniss and Johanna diving out harm's way at the last second, armored cowls covering their faces and flashes of white just under their arms as rubble crashes to the earth where they were a moment before. When Snow is seen again, his jaw twitches but he continues to speak as though there was no interruption, only for another to come. Katniss stands on a rooftop, a black longbow in her hands and one arm raised as though she just fired a shot, followed by a fireball consuming the wing of a plane flying overhead and sending it into a spin. Snow is starting to look a little red in the face now, but it still isn't over.

The next interruption is Katniss' voice speaking over a panned shot of the wreckage of the district she is in, and I recognize it before she says that it's District Eight. She talks about the attack, how it was targeting a field hospital, and unreasoning anger rises up in my chest. When the next punch comes in response to my expression, I fight to keep my head still and just spit the blood in my mouth into the face of the man in black. Snow is starting to look a little angry, but still he tries to maintain his facade. Katniss' face fills up the screen and she is shouting directly into the camera now, the words "fire is catching, and if we burn you will burn with us" directed at the source of all of our pain. The man in black is too stunned to hit me anymore, and Snow looks as though he is going to have a coronary. Then the rebels have one last strike, the screen blacking out and the words "fire is catching" burning their way onto the darkness, staying there for a few seconds before burning it all away. The Capitol cuts off the broadcast then, and I know that someone is going to die tonight for this failure of security. I laugh and do not stop until they drench me again and bring a battery into the room, connecting wires to it and dropping them into the puddle I sit in. The pain erases everything else and all I can do is scream.

I have lost track of how long this has gone on, but every day it is the man in black asking me questions, and when I do not answer, I am drenched again and the battery is set to the water. The pain blocks out all thought and I can do nothing but writhe in agony, sometimes unable to even scream through the convulsions. It has gone on long enough that the anticipation of the water is almost worse than the water itself. I'm not even sure if they use the battery every time now or not, all I know is the water hits me and the agony starts, so they must use it. The shock of the electricity is the only way to explain the torturous ripping sensation that eats at my nerves and fills my spine and my brain with a fire that never dies. Today is no different, the man is asking questions and when I do not answer, I am drenched and the shocks start, but then he doesn't ask again and I am left in the unending hell that my life has become until strong hands lift me off the floor and the water that was around me is no longer touching me. I am still dripping, but there is no pain now, only relief, and I pass into oblivion.

I wake to doctors I do not know telling me that I am safe, that Annie is safe and healthy and that she is here as well. I do not know that things will be better now, but I hope. They ask me questions, simple things like what my name is, where I'm from, where I was, what happened to me. I tell them the answers to those questions carefully, just in case they are leading into questions about the rebellion, but they don't. They have stripped me, and though the female nurses are blushing and smiling, they ask nothing about the rebellion. They have sponges in their hands, damp but safe, and are scrubbing and wiping at my skin. They clean the wounds I have, take care of me and tend to me, but then one of them makes a mistake. Her sponge is too wet, water runs down my back, and I feel the agony of the electricity again. They have tricked me into feeling safe so that they could torture me some more and make it bad again, and I fight back. This time I am not tied down, I am not restrained, and I fight back. I hurt them, but they wrestle me down, restrain me, stick a needle in my arm, and I see that I am in a hospital again, not a torture chamber. There is no battery, only three injured nurses and a doctor nursing three broken fingers. I mumble an apology as the drugs take me to sleep, and they look at me with pity in their eyes.

~K

When they finally let us in to see Finnick, we expect to see a wreck, a shell of the man we knew. Instead, we find that he looks much like he always did, just paler and covered in bruises and fresh, shiny scars on his arms and legs. He's everything that we lost, everything that we want to fight for, but he is so broken and yet so normal that we do not know how to handle it. Johanna looks at me, a deer in the spotlight, and I push her forward to sit on his bed. I slip around to the other side of him and sit, leaning back and resting on Johanna so that we bridge his legs. We each take a hand and we sit with him in silence, not saying a word and not needing to as we watch him sleep. I think we both feel a need to watch over him now that we have him back. I look at him as the friend that sacrificed himself and his safety to give me a chance with the woman I love, but I know from the look on her face that Johanna sees him as the brother she no longer has, the only family she has left. The hours pass, and eventually I leave her to sit with him and I go to get us some food. She eats mechanically, though I doubt she tastes it or notices it at all, and I fall asleep in a chair while she watches over him.

I dream of the Games again, fearing what happened and knowing what will happen. I see in clear detail every moment where something went wrong, where plans that were made fell apart. The Feast in my first Games, the moment when Clove sat on me and gloated, when I was sure I was going to die and Peeta would die soon after because I had failed him. The moment when Tresh beat her skull in with a rock. The moment when I believed that I had still failed Peeta after we won, throwing myself at the dividing wall between us. The moment when Snow visited me in my home in Twelve and I realized that though we won and escaped, the Games would never be over for us. Worse yet, I dreamed of Peeta hitting that forcefield, of his body flying back and crashing to the ground, of Finnick trying so desperately to save him and bring him back from the edge of death, of his ribs collapsing and sounding the note of his death. And I dream of cannons, loud and thunderous, as they bark out the death of someone else important. BOOM. Rue dying on the point of Marvel's spear, the choking sobs as I try to sing her to her death. I see the flowers that I laid out around her, showing that even in the arena, someone cared about her, someone loved her. BOOM. Cinna being beaten and dragged from me even as I rose up the tube, the crimson splash of his blood burned into my retinas and my memories. I still weep for the man who cared so quietly and always captured everything exactly as it should be. BOOM. Peeta dying because I wasn't fast enough. BOOM. Mags running into the mist to give Finnick and I a chance to make it out alive. BOOM. Wiress dying at the Cornucopia because we were trying to figure out our plan. BOOM. Madge dying in the bombing of Twelve. BOOM. The baker dying as the flames burned my home to ashes. BOOM. The injured children dying in the bombing of Eight. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

I wake with a scream, the faces of the dead haunting me even now and hanging in front of my eyes. Johanna's arms are around me, their embrace shrinking all the world until only the room we are in remains. I see Finnick's green eyes staring at me through the haze of the morphling and he smiles. He speaks softly and I feel Johanna go stiff in my lap, so I guess that these are the first words he has said since our vigil began. "Hey Katniss... you treating... my sister... okay?" I hear the breath catch in my lumberjack's throat and I rub soothing circles on her back. I nod to him and smile, unable to speak, and then Johanna is gone and sitting on his bed again, his hand crushed in her grip as she hisses at him through her tears, "Don't you ever do that again, you fucking dummy. Don't you ever fucking abandon me like that again, you hear me?" She relents almost immediately, loosening her grip and bursting into tears. She tugs him up off the bed and holds him, crying into his shoulder when he asks what's wrong, and I know the answer before she says it. The torture he had to endure took from him the greatest joy he had, and now we all feel the loss because the water that was such a big part of who Finnick was is now something that terrifies him and causes him pain. He isn't the man we knew anymore, and it hurts our hearts to know that. I wrap them both in my arms and stay there for a while, finally murmuring, "Welcome back, Triton."

At breakfast I get my first glimpse of Annie since the Reaping of the Quell. She is just as beautiful in a way, though she seems too gentle, too meek to be a Victor. We all know the story of how it happened, of the deal that Snow made with Finnick to save her life and ensure that she would be the winner of her Games, but I hadn't really been prepared to see the truth of it standing right in front of me. She has a twitchy way about her, like every noise is too loud and too immediate and she doesn't know whether to trust it or not, and she has a few new scars herself. The worst is the pale line down her cheek, a long and wide scar that breaks the perfect tan of her skin. Even as I make these observations, I notice several other things. She is sitting with man who has sandy hair and green eyes, and it takes me a moment to realize that it's Finnick before I remember that Plutarch had told us he was being released for meals. We had woken up to an empty medical bay and panicked, flying out the door and down the corridors until we found someone important who could tell us what was going on. Johanna leans against me as we watch Annie feed him, using that action to focus and ignore everything around her as she takes care of the man she so obviously loves. My lover whispers in my ear, asking, "Would you do that for me, Kat? Would you feed me if I had been tortured into crazy?" I turn to her and kiss her, then reply, "Of course, you know I would Jojo. I will always take care of you, as long as you do the same for me."

I look to the other tables, looking for Cressida and Cashmere, hoping to see them too. Instead, I only see Cressida, and she looks like she's been in tears pretty much since we returned from Twelve. With a glance and a touch on Johanna's wrist, I grab my tray and cross the room to sit with her. "Hey Cress, you okay?" She jumps a little, obviously not having heard me arrive, but she doesn't tell me to go away and she doesn't cry more.

For a couple minutes, the only sound she makes is little sniffles, but eventually she answers me in a voice smaller than I ever thought I'd hear from her. "Yeah I'm okay I guess. S'just hard to see Cash like that. She's so... so weak right now and I don't know how to handle it." When she looks up, she gives me a watery smile and whispers, "She remembers me though. She told me when she woke up. Actually what she said was "Did you wait for me?" What the fuck else could I say to that, of course I waited for her. She still loves me Kitty Kat, and she'll be safe. Because of you. Thank you."

When the meal is over and we are leaving to go train, I feel a soft hand land on my shoulder and turn me around. I expect to see Annie, to have her thank me for protecting him in the arena or for being there for him last night, but instead I find myself pulled into Finnick's arms. He apologizes profusely for what he did in the arena, for worrying Johanna so much, for not being there when we got out, for everything that wasn't in his control in the first place, and I just hug him back. I try to tell him it isn't his fault, that he did everything we could have asked for and stayed strong until we could rescue him, but I can't speak. I'm still no good with words, and I don't know how to fix this for him anyway. I don't know how to make it better, so I just hold him and look to my lover, silently begging for her help. She hunts down Plutarch at my glance and tells him that there is a change of plans for today, that we need to take care of Finnick, and she leaves no room for discussion or argument before she turns away and walks us both back to the hospital. We sit Finnick on his bed and stay with him in silence until he begins to speak.

"I know that what I did was necessary, but I still feel guilty about it. I know that I caused you both so much pain, both directly and indirectly, and for that I am unendingly sorry. Katniss, I'm sorry I couldn't save Peeta. He may not have really been what everyone believed he was to you, but I'm still sorry that I couldn't save him. I'm also sorry for hitting you so hard, for cutting your arm, for abandoning you in the arena, and though I had to do it to give you a chance, it still haunts me when I sleep. Johanna, I'm sorry for not making it out. I'm sorry I worried you, and I'm sorry I hurt Katniss as badly as I did. I hope you can both forgive me for that." We wrap him in our arms as he continues, "I fought to keep you guys safe. They asked so many questions, but I never told them anything. I kept my mouth shut, no matter how many times they hit me. When that wasn't working, they started to torture me with wires. They said that they wanted to know if our plan in the arena would have worked. If I didn't answer them, they would pour cold saltwater over me and drop wires attached to a battery into the puddle. The pain... you can't imagine how horrible it felt to go through that. Every muscle locking up until I couldn't move, my nerves on fire... I felt like I was being bathed in broken glass. The only thing that kept me going, that kept me strong, was the thought that you were safe, that you were alive and fighting back. When you rebellious rebels messed with the Capitol broadcast that one time, you showed me I was right, and I fought harder. I never gave up. You two are so amazing, I... I don't think I really even deserve to know you. It's such a privilege to know you both..." Finnick begins to cry, and we don't know what to do. I start to try and console him, rubbing his back and playing with his hair, and Johanna begins babbling endlessly about all the things he's ever done for her.

She talks about how he helped her pick herself up after her own Games, how he helped her deal with the deaths of her family. She tells a story of one year when they both knew their tributes were going to die, and so they swapped duties and he took care of Seven while she took care of Four. I remember that year, though only because of the events she talks about, and I realize that the tributes that year had been so confused when their gifts came in from the sponsors because they had been sent by a mentor they didn't have. District Four had been given a set of pads that were used in Seven while working in the trees just in case you made the wrong move, and District Seven had been sent a net with hooks embedded in it that was used in Four when fishing in shallow water. Surprisingly, the District Seven boy almost won because of that net, and the girl from Four survived more than once because of those pads. In the end though, things didn't work out for them. Johanna keeps talking, the words tumbling out of her mouth painting a picture of the hell we all just went through, and specifically how he made sure that I was still alive when she needed me to be every single time. By the time she runs out of things to say, Finnick has stopped trembling in my arms and he seems calm again. When he looks up, there is even a hint of the man we know peeking out of his sea green eyes, that quirk at the corner of his mouth showing just a little of how his face can light up and make hearts skip. For the first time since the rescue a week ago, Finnick has finally returned to us. This time, we really have saved him, and we have our friend back though he has a long way to go before he is the Triton we knew. Our family is whole again.

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A/N: So, here we are again. I keep having the temptation to say "Here we are on the last page," but that's not true, not yet anyway, and it hurts. Anyway, here we are at the end of another chapter, and I just want to say thank you for your faith and your readership. I know that this isn't the easiest story to read sometimes because I have inconsistent timing on the updates, but I do try and make it come quickly.

This chapter had to be about Finnick, without question, because I did make kind of a big deal about him being the one left behind. I told you guys that I had something planned, and I dropped it on you at the end of last chapter though I'm sure some of you had already guessed what was coming. This chapter had to explain it, because I ended up just saying that Finnick was afraid of water without giving any reason for it. I mean, yes, if you know the story of the Hunger Games, then you know why Finnick would fear the water if he took Johanna's place. Still, I wanted to explore that a little bit and show the side of the story that you didn't get to see when Suzanne wrote the story, and I needed to have something to build on when I had him talk to Kat and Jojo at the end. I wanted them to be a family, and since he is all Johanna has left except for Katniss, I needed to have something for him to show how much he cares about them with, and to make your heart go out to him. He is easily a favorite of pretty much anyone who reads these books, and with the story changing like it has I needed to have a good reason for him to need that rope in the new version I'm creating and I wanted to create sympathy for this now tragic man. Everybody give Finnick a great big hug, he needs it!