"Tell me again about that old sea legend," Terra whispers into the dark, tracing swirling shapes across smooth skin with the tip of her finger.

"The one about the girl climbing out of sea foam?" Finnick asks and he brushes a thumb across the small of her back, tingles shooting up her spine and she breathes deeply.

"Yeah, the one from before there were districts."

"It's said that the rolling waves sliding together, moving so intimately spread the sea foam across the sand. A carefree love child of land and water, and from that sea foam birthed what is said to be the most beautiful woman to ever walk the land," he told, gripping her hip and pulling her up and closer, her leg draping over, her foot curling around his thigh. "She brought the knowledge of fishing and sailing, of how to weave nets and swim through the riptides and waves. She gave them all this. One day, when a storm came stiring the sea to anger, children playing on the coast got caught in the downpour, getting washed away too far out to swim. She went in after them, disappearing into the foam. The children turned up the next day and it's said that she stays out there, guarding the sea waiting for her children to return to her."

Terra hummed, splaying a hand across his chest as she pushed herself up to look down at him, hair tumbling around her in a curtain.

"You going to return to the sea one day just like her, Ocean boy?" Terra teased, drumming her fingers gently.

Finnick laughs, flipping over and hovering above her, squeezing her waist and she giggles, bucking her hips. "Only if you promise to come with me."

Terra grins. "Good thing you're teaching me to swim."

There was fiddling with controls and the monitors flickered with static as they worked to get it running and she sits frozen still as she waits. Finnick flusters over her, torn between shouting his disapproval and whispering his concerns, but she can't bring herself to chance her mind, not when she could see clearly, fill the gaps in her memory.

"You aren't going to be able to forget what you see," Finnick tells her, pleading. "It won't go away if you can't handle it."

"I won't know if I'll be able to handle it unless I see it," is her firm reply. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

"I'm staying. I need to know what happened. What I couldn't prevent from happening," he confessed, brushing a hand over her leg and she covers it with her own.

"It's not your fault, Fin. You shouldn't stay just so you have a reason to blame yourself for something."

"It's not about blame," he disagrees and she gives him a hard look.

"Self-loathing then."

Finnick sighs. "You're so stubborn."

She turns to him, moving so she faced him fully, prepared to make some quip about him knowing she was only trying to distract herself from her building fear and panic, but there was a voice sounding loud throughout the room, terror filled and angry as she was force to the ground, red hot iron burned from behind her.

It was strange to see herself in such a horrible position, held down and in pain, knowing what was going to happen but not being able to stop it.

The scenes flickered by, time spent locked up in chains blurred through as though they were the boring parts, the stuff that wasn't important like she hadn't been living like this for insufferable periods uncertain of how much time had even passed.

They stopped, letting it play as peacekeepers dragged her asleep from her cell, leaving her in the glass coffin and chaining her up. Terra was happy enough to know that they hadn't shown the first time she was placed inside because Finnick was already terribly tense at her side.

She pulled hopelessly at the chains, tugging pointlessly when she knew well enough that they wouldn't budge.

Terra could barely remember that day in question but it didn't matter. They were all so similar, all so the same that it didn't matter which time it was that she was seeing.

It mattered to Finnick though, and Katniss, and all the other Victors because they could hear her screams, shrill and pleading, see the footage that they played for her over and over again, hypnotizing as she clawed desperately at the glass.

He sat forward, reaching out as though she was there, and Terra placed a hand on his shoulder.

The first spot of red seeping in through the floor caught her attention and her breath caught in her throat, a whimper pacing her lips and she sunk into her chair, shaking her head.

The blood bubbled upwards, rising past her feet and Terra gasped along with herself, trembling in her seat and she pinched her thighs tight, sharp enough to remind her she wasn't there anymore. She drummed her fingers over her wrists, the tap tap against her skin helping to keep her centered and focused against her own screams and a phantom pain flared in her throat.

"Is that blood?" Someone asks in a shaky voice.

It rose higher, covering her knees and -

Terra couldn't breathe, she couldn't breath as the blood drew higher and higher, rising up and up past her waist, sticking to her like a digusting glue, and she pulled away as tightly as the chains would allow, smaking her head purposely against the glass as hard as she could.

The pain did nothing to help but she did it ahain anyway, hoping it would stop, that she could stop it before she swallowed another mouthful.

"Finnick! Finnick!" She wailed, begging, pleading, praying, and some rational part of her mind spat that it wouldn't matter, that he wouldn't come because he left her behind on purpose.

She hated that rationality.

"Help! Please, somebody help," she whimpered. "Finnick! Not again, please, not again."

She staggered in the blood, high around her now and she lifted herself up on to her toes.

It came so much more quickly near the end, rushing her to think of some half-brained solution that wouldn't be able to do anything to help regardless.

"Let me die, just let me die, please. Please!"

She was soon kicking at the top head tilted back so she could draw breath from the last pocket of air.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she pants, clinging the best she could. "I don't know what I did wrong."

It blinks over and she's drowning, swallowing blood. It's warm, and horribly dark. Horribly warm.

Why was it like this, what did she do to deserve this, she Terra couldn't remember. No one deserved to be treated lile this, not for anything, and she let her breath go, filling her lungs with blood, thrashing and gasping for air, but it was reflex. Her bodies insistence to stay alive. The Capitol wouldn't let her die, they needed her, and if they didn't, then oh well.

"Turn it off! Shut it off! Terra? Terra, can you hear me?"

She felt slow, blinking to clear away the images in her mind as though it took every passing thought to get her body to function and she turned to face Finnick.

It was hard to tell how she must have looked to him then and now when she couldn't even tell what expression she was making but his was heartbreaking, shattering everything in her at once.

Terra sobbed, hard and ugly and she reached for him, clinging like a scared child and held in miserably.

"I've got you. I've got you now, my heart," he soothed, holding her in his lap. "You're safe now. You're safe. I won't let anyone touch you ever again."

There's a sound of draining and she peeks back at the screen, watching as the blood level lowers, and she doesn't appear until it's near the bottom, showing her splayed on her back, chest still with a trickle slowly leaving her mouth and Terra squints, confused at when she'll start to breath. There's a loud zap and her backs arches, shooting up before falling down hard.

Terra flinches into Finnick, placing a hand to her heart as she feels for the beat to reassure herself. She's not sure how she's so calm, relatively calm, at least. She hopes it stays like this, cool and collected instead of turning into a full blown terror that she knew would hit her once her mind caught up to her.

She watches as her other self coughed up mouthfuls before collapsing back to the tiles, twitching every once in a while, and they sped through her lying there, catching glimpses of Johanna and Peeta in the background, listening to their screams, and when the chaims started to rattle as she had started to stir to consciousness a video began to play again, the tank filling slowly.

"I think that's enough," Haymitch finally says, rubbing a hand over his face and Terra closed her eyes, leaning into Finnick's neck counting each breath and heartbeat. "I get the sense that it just continues like this for the most part."

"You can't let anyone see this. It's terrible," Katniss decided, speaking as though her tone was final.

"Use mine," she whispers. "Use whatever you want, but don't ask the other's. They don't need the reminders when they were conscious for most of it."

"Terra, you can't seriously be considering this," Finnick worries and the strength of his arms around her is comforting.

"I don't care. I just never want to see it again," she whimpers.

"You don't have to," he reassures her and he heaves her up, holding her tightly against him as he leaves. "Katniss, don't do anything I wouldn't do."

The door shuts hard behind them and it lasts for a few moments, but she can feel him quivering as he holds her and she taps him, moving around urging to be let down. Once her feet touch the ground she immediately reaches up and cups his cheeks, brushing her fingers gently over his closed eyelids wiping away tears as she went.

"I'm sorry. I should have gone back for you. I- I should have," he stammers, cutting off abruptly with a sob.

"Don't do this, Fin. Please, don't fall apart because I don't think I'm strong enough to breathe for the two of us," Terra begs softly, pressing her head to his.

He drew a shuddery breath, gasping through his tears. "I almost lost you, Terra. I would've died if I lost you," Finnick tells her and she doesn't doubt it, not with the way he holds her reverently.

"You won't lose me. I'll always come back to you, Finnick," she promises.

"The things they did, my heart, I'll never be able to forget," he cried, blinking tears from his eyes. "How did you keep your mind? Oxygen deprivation is . . . "

"That was Annie's main concern, if I'm honest," she admits, laughing wetly. "But it's not so different from being constantly electrocuted or poisoned everyday. Look at what they did to Peeta, Fin. I was with him everyday. He helped take care of me, and now he's just . . . "

She weeps, covering her face, retreating within herself as she pictures him that last day, before the lights went out. They had fought not too long before, things were tense before they were saved and now she wasn't sure if she could ever get him back, ever get the chance to apologize to him.

And things were so heavy if her mind, her hands so wet, and slippery against her skin and she let out a strangled scream, pushing away from herself to stare at her hands. She couldn't tell what was real, if the blood she was was actually there, but it didn't make sense.

Terra wasn't there anymore because Finnick was with her. They had rescued her. She knew they had. But Snow had always been so good at making her believe what he wants. Hallucinations were common. She gasped, clawing at her throat. Was she breathing? Was this drowning?

How do you tell?

Pain bloomed where jer fingers touched, free to reach and she froze, gasping as her vision started to clear.

"It's all in your head. It's all in your head," she tells herself, rocking forward so her head pressed into the floor. "It's all in your head. Annie would tell you if it wasn't. Annie doesn't lie."

"Terra, my heart, are you with me?" She groans as she hears him speak, pushing her forehead down painfully.

"Your name is Finnick Odair and you love me and we're in District 13 and I love you. Finnick Odair that was rescued but didn't want to leave me behind, right?" She rushes out, jumbling the words until she's out of breath and tongue tied. "You rescued me. You're really here and not in the Capitol."

"We're really here. Look at your hands, T. Clean, remember? Clean means it's real," Finnick soothes and she wants to tell him he's wrong, that real and not real aren't so easy, that here and there aren't so easy, but she looks to her hands anyway, forcing her gaze down to her wrist to see the scars that stand out, that there are no metal cuffs sitting there and forces herself to relax.

"Okay. Okay. Sorry."

"Don't apologize," Finnick says. "Let's get you back downstairs."

"No, not there," Terra whines, pushing away. "I don't want to go back there."

"Aright, we'll go somewhere else. We'll go to my room," he tells her and she nods, standing and using him as support.

"We stay together."

Finnick nods. "We don't separate again. I promise."

°°°

Vote,

I have two new Hunger Games ff posted. One for Gale Hawthorne called Help I'm Alive, and the other is a new Finnick Odair (!) fic called Midnight Train.

Both are going to be great and original (I hope) so I would appreciate if you would check them out, thanks :))

Unedited

2019-03-05