𝐀 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐈𝐃𝐄
The television had packed the evening air with Capitol news right until its last breeze. With a great puff of air swiftly dancing over from the sea, news of a person's sudden collapse in a Capitol party brought the beginning of a silent night.
Dove sat by her room's windowsill, listening in to the quietness of her home while her thoughts ran on a rampage. Hours of thinking, of wondering, of worrying, and she had come up to just one conclusion—the same as ever. It hadn't been simple to assimilate it. Somehow, in the time she had been worrying about her brother's death, she had failed to keep her mind under control, particularly her hopes. With her brother back and the talk she had overheard about deals and death, she had found herself back where she had started two years ago, when she was a mere eleven-year-old with no prospects for either life or death, just the foolish hope to keep her sister alive.
The marks on her windowsill increased by the hour, her nails breaking apart with each movement. A soft red mass trailed down from under her hand, but it was too dark to know whether it was blood or part of her hair. It didn't bother her, though. She could hardly feel anything beyond her grief. The thought that she had to give up once more—put down her hopes for her sister's well-being, no matter what foolish prospects she could have come up with in a week—numbed her body from everything, be it cold, tears, or pain.
Without any prior guess or thought, questions thundered in her mind late at night. Who could be behind the deal? Who had enough power to threaten a victor's family? And why had her mother explained it as if she had one herself? Although she hadn't done as much as to wonder about any of it before, Dove was positive the Capitol had a great deal of importance in her mother's and brother's situation. However, why would the Capitol involve themselves in a victor's life in such a way? They already got to know every little detail there was to know about them. Without mentioning the mandatory visits each winter, which rarely more than two or three victors from the same district attended together. Despite her rage, the Capitol, while being the most influential and powerful of people, could not hold the power to do as much as change the Reaping bowls, let alone threaten a victor's family.
The question, 'Who could it be, then?' got answered in the beat of her eyelids—President Snow. Nobody in all Panem held as much power as he did, much less would anybody dare to question his orders. If he commanded for an entire family, victors or not, to be eradicated, so would be done. It just so happened that the family he was threatening was her own. To him, that meant nothing, surely. Another name in the list of people who were a push away from death. However, his ways were flawed. Had he let the course of fate taken its rightful turn and let Angel be picked, she would have volunteered, dying inevitably in the Arena, and leaving Angel and Melo devastated for the next Reaping to come, when he could have then crowned Angel victor and bargained Melo's life at his last Reaping for who knew what.
At present, he had nothing, though he surely thought he had quite the trick prepared. With the eldest sister in her last year and the youngest well away from desperation, Melo wouldn't doubt to give in to whatever he was asked to do to keep them from being picked. If only she could ask him to drop it, if she could simply direct herself to her brother, look him in the eyes, and ask him to let her die, perhaps her death could truly benefit someone other than herself. But of course, she couldn't. Even if she managed to gain the strength to explain such crude thoughts to her brother, there was no guarantee they couldn't be overheard. Perhaps her death would come early, even before the Arena. If President Snow were to know of her little scheme, he could kill her, and then her death would amount to nothing. Just another corpse; another name to forget.
Death, death, and death. In Dove's brief life, there hadn't been a moment when her fate wasn't more clear in her eyes. Such clarity, somehow, helped her to be at ease. There was no other way, she told herself time and time again, no other way. The words were entrancing, much like the glistering sea at the opposite side of her room's window.
Slippers were in no way a good match for sand, and her poor excuse for a nightgown was not thick enough to protect her frail body from the night breeze, but she could only think of going there. She had to go to the sea. That was her place, where everything would fit together, even her most intrusive thoughts.
On her quiet yet rapid way out, Dove hardly spared the thought of yanking a jacket off her chair by the sea-shell-decorated desk and switching her slippers for boots. The combination was odd, the outfit horrendous, but there was no Capitol to impress, nobody to keep appearances for. It was only her and the sea, glittering far at the distance as if in a weak but entrancing call.
The shore was no more than a minute's walk away when something moved near the right side, just about a few metres away from the rocky part of the beach. Though she recalled having met people around there before, it was never at such late hours, much less at that specific spot. With hardly any lights nearby, she couldn't quite see the perpetrator of her 'special place', though they had finally seemed to notice her.
The person turned around swiftly, their bright eyes shining under the moonlight widely. "Dove, is that you?"
She would recognise that voice anywhere. The person at the beach, whom she had been staring at quite harshly for a while, was no other than Finnick Odair. "Finnick? Oh, yeah, it's me. Is everything OK? Why are you here so late?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he replied, a mask of playfulness falling onto nothingness as his genuine concern shined through during the dead of night. "Rough night?"
"I asked you first," she replied, meaning only to joke while she took a seat beside him on the cold and damp sand.
He laughed and shrugged it off. "And I asked you second."
Dove would have loved to entertain herself with a pointless fight over who got to answer the other's questions first. However, her mind soon discarded that idea—it would be a childish thing to do for someone her age. "Sure. Well, it's... yeah, I guess you could say it's been a bit of a rough night." Her arms shivered over her legs, gripping them tightly as if that would bring her the warmth that the jacket had failed to deliver. "What about you? Why are you here?"
"I had a few things to think about." Finnick chuckled to himself, though his sight was glued to the sand. "Your turn," he said, slightly more cheery, "Why is it being 'a bit of a rough night' for you?"
While she wasn't the best at lying, Dove managed to act out a pretty convincing snigger that nobody could ever tell it was ripping her insides with every breath. She wanted to ask Finnick, her brother's fellow victor and another potential holder of a deal, a million questions; each more likely to get her killed than the last. Of course, even without the overhearing fact involved, she couldn't quite decide if she trusted the boy enough to tell him a single thing she had overheard, nor if he would even be willing to correspond to her trust and answer truthfully.
"If I go to sleep, I might wake up in the middle of Melo's Games again." It was the first thing that came to her mind, but not a lie. The possibility of it all being a dream, a rather cruel one, was still that; a possibility. "Your turn," she said playfully. "May I know what those things you had to think about were?"
He fiddled with a rope, a bad sign. However, before she could give up and await the expected denial, Finnick raised his eyes and stared at her, a soft smile spreading across his face. "Just Victor's stuff."
"Victor's stuff?" That had taken her aback for a moment.
Of course, Finnick would have never thought that those words would be of any significance to her. In all honesty, they hadn't until merely a few hours ago. Yet, at that moment, there was nothing else that she could think of. What did those deals meant? What could be so important that President Snow would gamble people's lives to get? Even Finnick, who had only turned fifteen that year, how likely was it that, despite having lived alone for his entire year as victor, his decisions were determined by the people he had to protect?
"You'll understand when you're older," he nudged her side with a grin, "or not. I hope not."
"That's not fair," she said, lifting her head so her poor insulted act would not be seen through too soon. "I'm only two years younger than you."
"You mean I'm a whole two years older than you," he insisted, forgetting the rope he had carefully kept between his hands not long ago on his lap.
Dove covered her lips with her hand to stifle a laugh. Then, as soon as it had come to her, it fled, leaving her body devoid of its warm cheeriness. "Um, I haven't thanked you yet for bringing Melo back..."
"You don't have to," Finnick assured. "I made a promise, and I had to keep it... Besides, it was my duty as a mentor." It took her a minute to accept defeat and nod, which he took as an opportunity to divert the conversation to anything non-Capitol related. "I'm curious. Why did you come here?"
"I already told you," she said, not thinking much of it.
"No, I mean, here as in this exact place," he replied, motioning to their surroundings as if she had failed to notice how vast their district's beach actually was. "You could have gone anywhere else along the beach when you saw me, but you were so close when I turned around... I'm surprised you didn't notice who I was first."
Dove frowned at that. "I thought Melo would have told you about that already."
"About what?" He leaned over his knees, his eyes stuck on her like they had been on the sand not long ago. "If you don't mind me asking, of course."
"This spot." She smiled and grabbed a handful of sand. "This is the place where Melo found me ten years ago."
"Oh... oh," he mumbled, his eyes widened, but hardly glowing as brightly as they once had. "No, he's never told me about any of that. I mean, he hasn't told me about his own story and... Well, he hasn't told me yours. He shouldn't either."
"I don't mind it that much." She was quick to shrug it off. "But, honestly, I thought he would have at least told you the brilliant story of how he ended up naming me Dove."
"He hasn't," assured Finnick, "but if you'd like to, I'm all ears."
"Well," she paused, meeting Finnick's eyes to amuse herself with his undying expectation, "I don't know much, mostly what I've been told, but Melo found me here. He used to say I appeared out of nowhere, like the waves had brought me to the rocks, knowing he would protect me. Angel had a hard time that day. Apparently, she saw so much red that she thought I was dead." Finnick couldn't help but chuckle, which she joined in. "Well, the rest is what you would expect—I had no name, not one person would claim me as their family, and all I spoke were songs. Melo reckons I learned how to sing before I knew how to speak..."
Dove was tempted to smack her face for her unnecessarily extended explanation. She could have finished explaining her name's story a while ago, and as things were, she had yet to mention anything about her name or how it was related to Melo. It wasn't as if any of what she was telling Finnick was vital for him to understand. She was just too engrossed in her past. Not once had she told anybody of it, though mostly it was due to her general lack of friends and the sheer stupidity of telling those in Victor's Village, since they had most likely been there when the event happened or had heard of it not long after.
Finnick kept his glistering interest, nonetheless. "And then what happened?"
"My mother kept on looking for my parents around the village. You can guess how badly that went," she replied, well aware that more than one person had outright refused to answer when spoken to. "All the while Melo was, of course, itching to be an older brother. He and Angel were coming up with names, and during the whole running around, helping Mags and trying to sneak glances at me, he tripped over his stack of shells. Obviously, he tripped over a Dove shell, and thought it would be funny—red hair and freckles, red shell and brown dots."
Though he had kept up with the story, a question wouldn't leave Finnick's mind. "Have you ever tried..." he trailed off, unsure, but Dove quickly placed a hand over his shoulder, telling him he could continue. "Have you ever tried to look for your parents?"
Dove nodded right away. "I did... When I understood what the label I carried—'adopted'—meant, I ran away from home for an entire evening... I don't think I knew where I wanted to go or what I wanted to find, you know? Even back then, I knew it was obvious that my parents had abandoned me. I just wanted to be alone... and before I knew it, I was here." She glanced over at Finnick, whose eyes glowed faintly under the distant light of dawn. "I sat right on this spot and sang as loud as I could until the tide turned and gobbled me up. If only—If I hadn't known how to swim, everything would have ended then and there. But I knew. Angel had taught me. I stayed underwater for so long I thought I would surely drown, but when I was about to let out my last breath, they all came to my mind—Angel, Melo, my mother, Mags...—How cruel would it be for them if I died like that? So I swam right back out and never told a soul of what happened that day."
Before she could notice, Finnick had already taken her hand with his own, squeezing it softly as the dim rays enlightened his smile. "It's alright. I won't tell... you were really strong, you know that?"
"It was a tough day for everyone, honestly... It was the year of Muscida's son's Games." Somehow, his smile was soon to be found on her face, glowing brighter than any star in the sky. "Well, I'd say it's my turn to ask personal questions."
"Fine by me," Finnick replied. "What do you want to know?"
She had to think it over for a bit. Of course, she couldn't simply ask about the deals and what they meant, much less who he had to protect. It was no longer a matter of lack of trust, but respect. She wouldn't put Finnick in a tough spot by asking such things in a public space, where there was no telling if their every word could be overheard.
"How did you know it was me?" The question left her lips before she figured out how to phrase it correctly. "I heard your voice, so I knew it was you, but I didn't talk before you called my name."
"Oh, that's really personal," he mocked, receiving an attempt at a playful nudge, which turned out rather awkwardly, as their hands were still intertwined. "Alright, don't get mad, but you have to admit that your hair is not something one sees every day. There aren't many redheads in Four, and none have a hair like yours. It was either you or a gigantic red-furred dog."
"Fine, and what would you have done if it had been a gigantic red-furred dog?" she asked, copying his mocking tone.
"Oh, I don't know, maybe run into the water and swim far enough for it not to catch me?"
"And what if it could swim?"
"Have you ever seen me swimming? I'm faster than a dog. Also, with that much fur, it would never catch up to me."
"Oh, really!" She exclaimed, a flame she didn't know existed in her burning brighter at the challenge. "Alright, let's compete! You against me."
Finnick doubted, wondering whether to give in and have an innocent competition, but ultimately, he had to decline. "It's sunrise, and if I walk you home all drenched, Melo will kill me."
Had it not been for her family's disposition to be on edge, which Melo's victory hadn't been able to appease, Dove would have pushed a little to have the competition, but, much like Finnick, she feared the response her siblings would have to her walking home drenched for no good reason. "Yeah, better if we postpone it then."
Somehow, despite how high and mighty Victor's Village appeared to be, the distance seemed too short for a lively walk back. After their promised competition, there had been no shutting them up. Their conversations wouldn't make much sense to an outsider, as they jumped from subject to subject in seconds. It wasn't until much later when they had left behind the town and were on the empty road to Victor's Village that a question itched at the back of Dove's mind until she felt forced to say it out loud.
"Finnick, if you're alright with me asking, what about your family? I mean, I've never seen you with anyone in your house, so I was just wondering..." Regret swung like a bat to her lungs the moment she encountered Finnick's wavering smile, only to be replaced by his usual Capitol one.
"Part of them died last year; they drowned in the sea," he replied. "My mother's still alive, but we don't have the best of relationships, so I live alone."
"I'm sorry." While Dove was just about to utter the unnecessary question 'Are you OK?', something at the back of her ticked her off. A thought or an image, whichever it had been, popped out of nowhere, pulling her lips together and furrowing her brow—Finnick's story was all too similar to her mother's.