The first time she had seen him, truly seen him, he was sitting silently at her side as she struggled to breathe, staring up blankly at the screen that showed her first tribute, Bulla, being beat down in the Cornucopia bloodbath. Terra could remember telling the girl how dangerous it was, how it wasn't worth it as her district wasn't meant for the straight up fighting, that they didn't train or always have the right skills for such a fight. Terra had been raised to be strong and work as a ranch hand her whole life, she had rustled the horses when they got spoked and tamed the bulls when they were antsy for breeding. She had learnt to cut like a butcher when she was young, never had the proclivity for the milking and tenderness that her mother and sisters showed with their preference for rearing the young. But Bulla was a sheppard's daughter and she was being taught to shear the sheep. The Cornucopia fight wasn't for her.

She had told her to run, that her best chance was catching someone alone, by surprise. Still, watching the way the blood spurt from her throat as the District 2 female cut her throat, hardly taking the time to let Bulla fall before she was darting off to meet with her male counterpart, striking down the boy from 12, Terra could taste the bile that turned her stomach on her tongue, could almost taste the way the terrible iron tang would taste on her lips as it splattered towards her.

It was like she coud feel it on her hands, sticky and warm, and she nearly gagged, but his hand was suddenly there, the sharp scent of alcohol striking her nose and her sense cleared away in a snap, lifting away the horrible memories that threatened to break through.

"I don't believe alcohol is the right way to fight back the nightmares, but you look like you could really use a drink," Finnick tells her softly, sympathetically, and she realises that he must understand how it feels to lose your first and then everyone aftet that.

She accepts it with a timid smile that she thinks must be more of a grimace. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. We've all been there," he tells her, smiling almost pleasantly, but when she turns to him he looks so sad and dead inside, rotting away, and Terra finds herself smiling at him for real, shyly looking up at the dimpled grin.

"Does it get any easier? Dealing with all this?" She gestures vaguely to the rich citizens and the mentors that are sucking up to them, hoping to get sponsors. Terra could see Lux off to the side advocating foe his boy, someone young that listened when smhe had said to run as fast as he could from the Cornucopia.

She wished him luck, even as she could see him stumbling and tripping over himself when he came near the water.

"In a sense," he tells her and she believes him, understanding that she would need to figure it out herself at her own pace because she would need yo learn to navigate it all herself.

Turning to the screens, she watches as a redhead darts in the same direction as the boy from her district, panting with blood splattered across her face, green eyes wild and distressed. Finnick tensed at her side, jaw clicking as he watched her go.

"Is she yours?"

Finnick glanced to her. "Annie Cresta. She's a sweet girl, took to me and Mags like a fish to water."

Terra nods, looking at the girl that darted along the side of a river, not scared to jump in to cross as the boy from 10 was. She was getting distance, moving away swiftly from the fight, from the Career pack. The boy from 10 was confined to the immediate area, afriad of the moving water. Any person from 10 would be as they never had a place to learn for to swim.

"I wish her luck," Terra tells him, patting his knee with her free hand. "I know I shouldn't say this, but I hope she wins."

"The boy from your district?"

"He's too young, I think, too scared of the water to cross the rivers," Terra bites her lip and watches as the boy darts away from the water, taking him back around towards the Cornucopia. "I have a feeling I'll be going home again soon."

"Not everyone is made to be a Victor," Finnick acknowledges.

Looking at Annie and the way she dove fearlessly into thicker river, one with rapids near the middle and a harsher flow, Terra nodded and downed the beverage in one long gulp, wincing at the way it burned on the way down. "Sometimes a Victor surprises you."

He chuckles. "Oh yes, the most certainly do."

Terra faces him, finding him already looking, and couldn't help the blush that spreads across her cheeks.

"I could tell from the moment I met you, ya know," Finnick confessed. "It was the first year I had ever known who the Victor would be with 100% certainty."

Her throat burned when she came to, still laying inside the chamber in a shallow pool of blood around her, and she jerked into awareness, a hand wiping down her face desperately to remove the liquid, amd when she looked down the linr Peeta was huddled in his glass containment, rocking.

She tried to speak up but her throat constricted painfully against the movement preventing her from saying more than a whimper and Terra realised how tight the collar around her neck truly was, bruising her vocal cords from the weight alone.

Across from her, annie and Johanna were at the entrance bars of the cells, the redhead reaching her arm through, body extended the best she could manage as Johanna was more controlled, seated with her hands free and unrestrained as though she was expecting a fight. It was typical behaviour of what she expected from them both, and as Terra reached a hand out the best she could, tapping on the glass, she nearly smiled at how Johanna jerked awake immediately, fist rising defensively. It took a bit longer for Annie to come around but when she did it was like watching the girl get pulled from the arena all over again. Her eyes watered, tears pouring over and she was screaming, sobbing meaningless words in a blubbering mess.

Terra raised a shaky finger to her lips, sushing her the best she could manage as Johanna snapped something about keeping quiet and not wanting to bring the peacekeepers back. "Are you okay?" She calls softly, worry etched into deep lines on her face.

She raises a hand, making it waver in the air as a demonstration. She was really terrible actually but with Annie watching her so closely she didn't want to say. Johanna must understand because her lips purse hard.

Terra taps her wrist, drawing a question mark in the air and Johanna grimaces.

"Three days, maybe. They brought as water at least three times, but they've had you both in a near constant loop," her friend explains. "Peeta's screaming got really bad but his voice broke after a while. You stopped fighting to breathe a few times and they had to stop and shoot you up with a few drugs at times."

Her blood turns cold and she holds up three fingers, watching as they shake uncontrollably.

"Yeah, I've been dragged in next to you intermittently b but nothing nearly as bad. They must be really mad at you guys," Johanna remarks, almost sarcastically, and Terra rolls her eyes.

Trying to get across what happenex as best she couldb Terra holds up a 1 and 3 on each hand.

"13? District 13?" Annie is the first to get it, squinting at her in confusion. "The rebels?"

Terra nods and tries to mime an explosion the best she can by shooting her hands apart and mouthing the sound.

"Bombs?" Johanna guesses. "They bombed 13?"

She nods once and points to Peeta, moving her hand to imitate talking.

"Peeta warned them," Johanna concludes. Annie frowns and looks more closely at Terra, saying, "And you tried to protect him."

Looking away from their knowing gazes, Terra looks down and frowns at the outfit she was still wearing, the white now stain beyond recognition and hard from the dried blood on one side.

"You did well, T," Johanna tells her. "You're going to be deemed a hero."

Her head jerks up, her teeth baring in a soundless snarl at the idea, even if she knoes her friend is only teasing. She doesn't feel like a hero, doesn't want to be one if this is what it means, if this is what it takes.

She swallows thickly and it hurts to move her throat against the metal. "Sometimes I wish I had died in the arena," she croaks, forcing the words out, and Terra isn't sure if the blood she tastes on her tongue is her own.

"I think we all do. It would havr been easier at least," Johanna admit, and it feels like a weight is being lifted from Terra's shoulders.

The lights go out around them with a wooshing sound all at once, plunging them into darkness.

In the pitch black Terra felt her heart in her throat, a strangled noise coming from trembling lips as she felt around her, breathing deeply, panicked. The only time she had been in the dark was when she was being drowned but there was none of that now. It was the real dark and it brought a hushed silence through the room, not even Annie's whimpering was louder than a field mouse.

"What the hell is this?" Johanna hisses and the sound of her moving around in her cell is very faint.

She wants to answer but her throat is already pulsing with the rapid beat of her heart and filling her with a blinding pain at each movement that she can't bring her voice free. It was terrifying to be so alone in the room with no way to move or speak or see.

"Sunflower, are you alright?"

She can't answer and it scares her a little more. She can hear Johanna cursing and Annies soft crying.

"Clap once for yes, two for now," Johanna instructs. "Are you alright?"

She claps once.

"Should we try to wake uo Peeta?"

Hesitating, she thinks of the teacker jackers that they used to torture him, how if they weren't carefully it could have killed him, and of how much pain he must have been in. She hadn't gotten a good loom at him but his face was almost hollow, bruises lining the side of his taunt jaw, surrounding his eyes.

She claps twice.

Johanna sighs and Terra could imagine rubbing her eyes. "Okay, Annie move back towards the wall. Nothing could reach you back there if they tried and since we don't know what's going on we'll just have to prepare ourselves the best we can and wait."

Annie mumbles a softly and she could hear the swish of fabric as the redhead moves. It was good that Johanna could be so firm and commanding when it suited her. Annie would do well with a firm hand.

"T? Just, clap if you need us, okay?"

She claps once and they wait in silence. Every once in a while a noise sounds from somewhere in the building, like a clatter or a shuffle and heavy sigh from one of the people locked insde. Peeta started to stir at one point, whimpering in his sleep, but that was as far as it went, always falling back asleep just as quickly.

Each time her heart would burn in her chest, aching as it stuttered to a stop just to start up with a heavy hammering.

Bright lights cut through the room and Terra flinched away from it in the dark, squinting at the sharpness of it, and bringing her hands to the glass as best she could, and she could see red hand prints left with each touch of her hand.

Johanna was back at the bars, scabbed fingers wrapping around the metal as she began to slowly pull herself up.

The looked to each other and back to Annie that stayed huddled in the corner, hands pressed to her ears and teeth biting into her lips to keep quiet.

Men in black suits came rushing in, the light being quickly replaced by a red dot that roved over the room, enough to tell where they were and how many but it made them invisible to her eyes. A looming red light approached her glass prison, pointing in at her and Terra tugged harshly at the chains as she tried to move away from the it, refusing to let these people make her a target, but she saw them moving near Annie, could hear the metal clinking as the cell doors were opened and she rushed forward, the collar tugging her back and Terra landed on her back with a choked cry, a whimper of pain sounding as she reached up automatically to tug at it.

"Terra! Johanna! Terra!" Annie wailed, and she pushed herself up shakily, banging the glass as best she could.

"Leave her alone, don't you touch her! Annie! It's okay!" Johanna screamed, radio chatter sounded and she peaked over to where Peeta was, hoping he had woken up but she couldn't see anything.

Loud shrieks sounded and Terra banged some more, the blood splashing around her with the chains as she moved, and her hand fell through, the glass no longer there and she was hitting something a lot softer.

The red spot gave them away and she shuffled back, soaking herself more. Hands grabbed her arms, fiddling around the shakles and a deep, voice spoke something too low for her to here.

Light came from a viser, green and blues with whatever technology they were using, and she hit him in the head with an open fist, kicking him away the best she could.

His mask became lighter, shining over his features and she stilled, blinking up at his face in confusion. His cheeks still had sun-kissed freckles and a slight peeling across his nose from a deep sunburn. Some people from 4 never had any luck when it came to the sun regardless and Salton just happened to be one of them. How he was here, suited up for war, made no sense to her.

"Terra, just relax, we're going to get you out of here," Salton tells her, trying to soothe her, and she could see him pulling out a needle in the faint light.

She squeaks, backing away and shaking her head vehemently, pushing him away the best she could, but the chain attached to her neck pulled her back, jerking her to the ground.

Terra sobbed. "No, no, please don't," she gasped painfully, voice hoarse and desperate.

The needle puncture the skin on her arm. She could feel the ooze of the liquid being pressed into her and she whimpered sadly, scared.

Arms came around her middle, holding her up and she felt someone moving around her, a buzzing and a spark catching her attention. Terra felt her head dip and land against something hard, padding.

They tugged harshly at the cuffs, moving them the wrong way against her skin amd she cried out.

"Kill me," Terra forced out. "Kill me, kill me, kill me. Please."

There was pressure pressed at her arm and her eyes fluttered, her head lolling back with a groan. It was like sinking in slow motion, falling under a moonless sky into deep waters. Terra felt like she was back in the arena, sinking under the waves, but she could hold her breath this time, could out last the current.

"Just sleep for a bit. You'll be safe when you wake up me," Salton reassures her.

As she falls under the influence of the drugs Terra can't help but want to call bullshit on that statement.

°°°

Unedited

2019-02-26