The hospital bed was small, cramped, but she knew she wouldn't change this for anything, not as she listened to Annie talk Johanna's ear off behind the thin curtain, blabbering about how the walls outside were so dreary and depressing. Disgustingly plain and bland just as the food, the redhead wished for nothing more that to see the sun, feel the ocean's breeze of her home. Terra believed they all felt the same, longing for their homes, their districts and people they recognized.

She swallowed a laugh as Annie blatantly ignores Johanna's cursing and continues to talk, commenting about the clothes now.

"Is it all really that bad?" Terra asks, peekingly up at Finnick through her lashes as she traced the schedule printed on the inside of his arm, frowning at the specific, controlling lifestyle that he's been living.

He squeezed the shoulder where his hand rested, leabing over on the bed to rest his chin on the top of her head. "It's not so terrible once you get used to it," he shrugs.

She wonders if the bed would be more comfortable if there was more room, but she decided it wasn't worth it with how comfortable she was with him. The schedule on his arm made her worry about the amount of time she would be allowed to spend with him.

Humming, she rolls over as much as she could trying to get closer.

"Do you like it here?"

"I didn't have much time to get comfortable here. I spent all my time worrying about you," he confesses and her heart flutters.

"I thought about you a lot when I was there. Sometimes Snow would show me things of use together, little bits that didn't seem like much to him, but meant the world to me," she tells him and his arm tightens around her.

Her finger hovers over his schedule, underlining the slot that said he was meant to be at the comand center soon and she frowned at it, not wanting him to leabe, but she had the feeling someone would come to get him if he didn't show up and as he started to pull himself up, inching out of the bed as slowly as he possibly could, Terra made a show of stretching as standing on the opposite side.

"What are you doing?" He asks, not able to help his amusement.

"Going with you."

"No. Land Pearl, you gotta stay here," he insists and she pouts, tilting her head so her hair fell around her face.

Being without him now made her feel so very alone. The others, she wasn't sure how exactly they wers feeling, how they were dealing, but she knew they were all different. Peeta, no one was allowed to see him on account to them deeming him crazy, and Johanna took to drugs that she stole as Annie couldn't stand the silence, scared of the screams echoing in her ears in the quiet.

Terra never heard the screams, never heard their pain as it happened, and she was thankful for thst, even if it was at her own cost.

"You can't leave me here. It's one of those things I can't explain, that make no sense," she starts, biting her lips as she rubs her arm nervously. "Like, if you leave my sight, you'll disappear and I'll never see you again."

He sighs, but relents anyway, offering his arm and she takes it happily now that she's going to be leaving the room, allowed to stay with him in this strange place.

It would do her well to stretch her legs, to see what he had been living with this entire time.

The halls were a terrible concrete grey and as she places a hand to brush along the side she's startled at how warm it actually is when everything looks so cold. He helps her along and as the halls begin to fill with more people he tugs her closer, making sure her gown was covering her properly. Heads turned to watch her, whispering under their breath, and she turned her head into him, holding tighter as he lead her into a stairwell with so many people watching.

She holds on to the railing tightly, knuckes white with how tightly she grips it and hopes it's not very far up because already her legs hurt from the few steps that she has done. It's a little more than humiliating, the way she can no longer physically do much, limited in her actions when she had previously been capable of so much more.

"Here, let me," Finnick murmured, pulling her up around to carry in his arms, holding easily as he took the stairs, not under amy stress from her weight.

It made her wonder how much she weighed now, if it felt like anything to him at all.

Things were never easy for them, and it was terrible to say that you got use to it but Terra wanted nothing more than normalcy for them, for them all where they werent constantly burdened by the war. She had woefully at war since she was 16, fearing for her life since she was 12, and she had more than enough of it now, had earned more than her share of heartache and wished it upon someone else for a change.

She didn't really mean to snap at the guard that tried to stop them, literally snap teeth and all as he reached out to grab her with covered fingers, but she didn't think she could stand having someone like hin touch her - a soldier, a warrior, a man that worked for these people she never met and couldn't trust even if they had rescued her, a term that she used litghtly because her stay was shaping up to be eerily similar to how things begun in the Capitol.

"Hey, Land Pearl, it's alright. He won't touch you. He's just going to let us in and not make a big deal out of it," Finnick reassures her, letting her down gently and holding an arm around her waist to keep her still.

"She's not allowed in there," the guard snaps and she clings to his shirt as tightly as she could.

"Well, then I guess you'll just have to explain why I'm not there," Finnick counters, smiling pleasantly.

The door slid open, revealing a wall of monitors and rows of screens, and buttons, and controls, and plenty of other things she didn't know how to describe. It was entirely too technological and advanced for her.

"Terra? Aren't you supposed to be half dead?"

A sharp sting of anger works it's way down her spine and she has to take a deep breath before she turns to Wilber, the old man slouched low in a wheelchair and she nearly sneers at him.

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" She grounds out, working her jaw.

"I'm happy to see you alive and well, T. You've been missed around here," Haymitch comments.

She looks away from the pair, unable to find it in herself to say anything to them, but her gaze lands on Katniss instead, staring at her with a bruised throat and mouth slightly parted.

She waits for something, some sort of emotion to bubble in her chest or foul words to grace her tongue, but all she can think of is Peeta and how much he loves this girl, enough to withstand torture and abuse, enough to risk his life for her. He would have been willing to do anything for Katniss, would have given up anything to protect her - and now, as Terra looks to this heartbroken girl, she wishes only to tell her about him, about how much he cared, cares, will always care.

Instead she says, "It's nice to see you're not dead yet, Katniss."

"The feeling's mutual," the girl croaks and she can't stop her grin at how similar they sounded. "And Terra? Thank you for keeping Peeta alive."

She shrugs. "He's a lot more capable than you think. Very brave. He had faith in you guys when I didn't."

"You've never had faith in anyone other than lover boy, sweetie," Wilber snarks and her lips pull back in response, a growl slipping from her as she turns to him.

"Do you blame me? I have a little faith in people and they leave me for dead," Terra snaps and Finnick places a hand on her shoulder, calming her enough to whisper reassuring words and guiding her to a chair and sitting next to her.

"What's on the agenda for today?" Finnick asks, crossing his arms on the table.

"She wasn't invited to join our company today," some silver haired, pinched-mouth woman says and Terra looks to her closely, taking in the light grey of her suit style blouse top and the commanding, demanding aura she emits.

It reminded her of Snow, her domineering attitude as though she expected everyone to fall in line at a word. She held her tongue on all comparing, damning points she wanted to make, refusing ro bring herself to a situation like the one she had before, but turned to her regardless, forming some intricate web of careful halftruths from pretty words that she had at one point used sway a crowd.

"She deserves to be here as much as anyone else, if not more," the boy next to Katniss states. "You didn't see what it was like for them in there."

"Gale's right. All the Victors are here. The rescued one's deserve to have the option," Katniss urges and she has to avert her gaze from them, swallowing thickly.

The room is silent for a moment, air stiff and lingering, and as people look to her, appraising, she lifts her chin up holding her head high with and the woman sighs, nodding once before gesturing briefly at the man at her side.

"I am President Alma Coin, this is my right-hand Boggs," the President lady greets and she does her best to not be rude, smiling kindly, pressing a hand against Finnick's knee to balance herself. "You should know Plutarch Heavensbee. He was the Gamemaker before he fleed the Capitol."

"We've never met," Terra comments dryly, and turns her attention to the woman neck to him, the Capitol glitter having never left her veins, she almost had a vacant, dull look in her eyes.

It made her miss Azolla, whatever had happened to the woman.

"This is Effie Trinket. She's taken up the role of Katniss' manager so to speak," Plutarch says and his voice grates against her ears.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, dear Terra. I am immensely thankful for everything you have done to protect Katniss and Peeta," Effie sniffled, wiping daintily at her tears

"I didn't do much," Terra says uncomfortably.

"You've done more than most."

"Yes, such a service will be noted," Coin says, drawing all the attention back to her.

"And as Gale has brought to our attention, we don't know what it was that the captured Victors have gone through inside of the Capitol, what sort of tortures and neither does the Districts or the Capitol itself," Plutarch illustrates with a wave of his hand in a way that just screams Gamemaker sending a shiver down her spine at how it felt close to him playing with their lives again. "Which is why we should show them what happened. The extraction team managed to recieve files on all of the Victors, including footage covering every moment they spent locked up. I propose we use some of the clips as propos."

Her chest ached and her head was becoming fuzzy, pounding heavily with a scream that echoed in her mind.

"What? You can't be serious?" Finnick drops his palm on the surface of the table, looking around wildly as an argument ensued, voices ringing, but all she could hear was this ringing in her ears and a scream in her head.

"My heart, my Terra, look at me, are you alright?"

His voice made everything snap into focus and her head whipped in his direction.

"I- I would, I think you should have their, our, concent first, I think," she stumbled over her words, unable to look away from him as she addressed the others.

"You don't have to do anything unless you're comfortable," Finnick whispers, brushing her cheek gently.

"I want to see it first. The records," Terra whispered, then louder, "I want to see it all first."

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2019-03-04