Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Hunger Games were over. The Capitol was destroyed. The Mockingjay had won. 

Everything was supposed to be better now, but is it? Perhaps it is for the lucky ones, the ones that stood side by side with the people they loved.

But not for the ones who lost everything in the process. 

Sometimes everything doesn’t have to be everything. Sometimes everything is just one person, and that makes it all the more fragile.

Finnick Odair was that person for me, my everything, but now he was no longer there.

Would I be considered lucky? Here I was, standing beside my loving family. All perfectly alive, injured but alive. Yet the one person who I needed most was no longer. 

He died, no he was killed. Killed because he helped the others to escape before him. Killed because that was the kind of person he was, the kind of person that put others before himself. 

That moment, as I saw the horrifying images flash before me of Finnick being attacked by the mutts underground, I made a promise to myself. Finnick’s death would not be left unavenged. 

He died not because of one person, Snow, or one place, the Capitol. No, he died because of the corrupt government that we were born into. This totalitarian, tyrannical government that symbolizes oppresses and control. One that we were forced to accept, but we no longer will.

Am I still lucky? I’m not sure. Would I have preferred to have died with Finnick? Maybe. But that’s not an option now is it?

“You said it yourself.” Katniss said to me that day. “ This killed Finnick, it killed countless other people. Are you going to stand up to it or not?”

I will. We will stand up to this.. For Finnick, for Rue, for Prim. For ourselves and for our children.

Chapter Text

I tried to put my feelings into words that moment Finnick grabbed my hand and led me to the back gardens, the ones that were rarely tended to, the ones where anyone barely went. 

That was our place. 

Back when I’d here crying over yet again another quarrel with my father, he would take me here. It was our own special place, just ours.

It wasn’t too late in the afternoon, yet I could see Finnick's eyes shining as if they were under the moonlight. And suddenly we were 15 again, running away from responsibility hand in hand. 

The moment was...ethereal. So delicate that I prayed it wasn’t my imagination, so nostalgic I wondered if I was back in time. 

His hand didn’t leave mine, and I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to. I held on to it tight, his hand, this feeling, this moment.

What was it going to lead to? Would I ever feel the same way again?

I tried not to think too much into the future, I was in this moment now, with him, and nothing was going to take that away. 

Nothing except the Capitol.