He gave me a pearl necklace after the first attempt.  A diamond bracelet after the second.  An engagement ring after the third.  When he finally wins the battle, I’ll wear them all to his funeral.

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He likes her back. 

She’s annoying and loud.  She sees everything in black and white, and is just generally obnoxiously heroic.  But her back tells a different story.

For some reason it is a map of scars.  He wondered once if perhaps that meant the White Lotus abused her, but dismissed the thought as quickly as it had appeared.  She would never stand for that, for one.  For two, he didn’t know much about the White Lotus, but he thought even they wouldn’t hurt the Avatar like that.

But still.  When she sleeps, he likes to trace them.  He’d never do it in the light of day, as she’d do that nervous laugh and skitter away.  Like scars are something to be ashamed of.  He might not have many physical scars, but he has internal ones.  Those are the scars to hide. 

There’s a long one that runs in a jagged, broken line from the top of her left shoulder, curving around the shoulder blade and disappearing quickly just under her breast.  There’s one that looks like a burn at the middle of her back, and it makes him suck in a breath.  She probably got that from a firebender.  He avoids looking at that one.  If he stares at it too long, she becomes his mother.  Those are some thoughts he doesn’t want to think.

A bunch of little ones litter her back in packs, like they’re animals.  Maybe they were made by some.  He’s not quite sure what animals they have at the south pole, other than Naga, but she seems like a good representation of the wildness to be found down there. 

So he stops thinking and just keeps tracing, tracing.  This one meets the other here, and this one curves in a bit of an S-shape, and this one, oh this one is his favorite.  Just a little hooked, little faded scar, but it stands out because it’s different than all the straight ones.  It’s all alone in a large expanse of brown skin.  He always kisses that one before he goes to sleep. 

He feels the warm skin beneath his lips and smiles. 

(written for missmakorra)

He’d never had a home.  He never had a family, never had something to call his own, somewhere to stake his claim.  All he had was the sea.

And she, she had had everything.  She had a family, money, home.  She’d never had to work for anything in her life. 

They met when he was bare-footed and dressed only in a pair of ratty shorts.  She was in a brand-new dress.  He’d never seen anything prettier.  She didn’t even know he existed.

To her, he was nothing.  Less than nothing.  He was just this little vagabond, one who wasn’t serious about anything.  Making jokes like that would give him something in the world to call his own.  It was something much darker that did that.

Yeah, he won his Games.  How could he not?  He knew how to tough it, how to live without shelter.  That wasn’t a problem.  The real problem was killing people.  It turned out not to be a problem at all.

He thought she’d notice him.  Finally.  After all, because of the Capitol, he had everything she had now.  But it didn’t seem to matter.  Because the first time he saw her, she looked right through him as if he didn’t exist.

And then, in a twist that only fate could devise, she was reaped.  Finnick thought his heart stopped when he heard “Annie Cresta” called, and then it did stop when she got the pitiful score of 2. 

“How in the world do you live by the ocean and not know how to kill something?” he asked in amazement.  She just glared and walked away.  His Annie had always been a spitfire. 

She mostly hid during the games, which was rather effective for her.  Not the way he would have done it, but then, he’d already proven that, hadn’t he?  And then the little boy that was with her got his head chopped off and though Finn winced in sympathy, Annie took it harder than most.  With his new skills that he learned in the Capitol, he saved her life with a flood, where she treaded water for two days to stay alive.  But he couldn’t save her mind.

Annie came home, and, though she lived right next door, she still looked right though him.  As if he was still next to nothing.  But he wasn’t.

 When he was home and not at the Capitol, doing his “duty”, he would go over and talk to her.  He’d talk for hours, until he lost his voice, but she never said a word.  He didn’t know when she’d speak, if she would, but he wouldn’t abandon her.  He couldn’t.

After the next year’s Games, in which she didn’t come along as mentor, he came home, weary and upset.  Both his tributes had lost.  He let himself into the house that had never really felt like a home and sat down on the couch, rubbing his hands over his face.  A knock came at his door and he almost didn’t answer.  Thank God he did.

It was Annie, looking ragged and not at all what most would call beautiful but she was, she was because her eyes were clear and bright and looking at him.  “Finnick,” she breathed, and launched herself into his arms.  She clung to him like she’d never let him go.  He would be perfectly happy with that. 

They saw each other every day.  Finn would talk and Annie would stare blankly, but now, sometimes, her eyes would be clear and bright.  She’d smile at him and finally, finally, she saw him.  Out of all the things the Capitol gave him, Finnick thought this was the best gift he could ever have received.                                 

for whitetrashballin 

In the dark he holds me, a strong pair of arms around my waist.  An anchor I never knew I needed but would surely float away without.  I’d always been a bit lost.

He presses a kiss to my temple, short and dry but it lingers all the same.  My fingers rub a pattern onto the skin of his arms, a meaningless tattoo but they aren’t really meaningless, are they?  The swirls mean nothing, but there are words behind them, words that whisper into the dark the way my mouth doesn’t have the courage to. 

In sleep his breathing evens out, but he’s not silent.  During the day we hardly speak, but at night he makes up for that.  The most common noises are snuffles and grunts, sighs and murmurs, but sometimes he hums and those are the sounds I like best.  It’s almost like he’s singing to me, a little lullaby of my own.  I never have nightmares when he’s humming.

In the light of day he bakes.  Sometimes cakes, sometimes tarts, sometimes he makes row upon row of carefully frosted cupcakes.  He hands these out to the children who run through the streets, wild vagabonds that have vague memories of what was.  And I envy them this.  They don’t know that they get cupcakes on his bad days.  They don’t know that the days he frosts those cakes he is really try so, so very hard not to let bad memories swamp him.  Some days I think he wants to die.  Some days, so do I.

In the waning light of the sun, we wash the dishes.  Our lives are made up of a set of routines.  He washes, I dry.  We put them away together, moving around each other in a dance that is not beautiful but is comforting.  And then, when all is said and done, we look at each other for a moment, before a silly, twisted smile crosses his face.  He holds out his hand and I take it, unable to believe now that I would have ever denied this action before.  But we don’t think of the past.

In the dark, Peeta falls asleep beside me.  We may not be married, it may be unacceptable, but a lot of things are facts.  And one of these facts is that Peeta is the only thing that grounds me.  Maybe he was the only thing that ever had.

In her more lucid moments after learning Peeta was taken, Katniss wondered if he still loved her.  Yes, it was an incredibly selfish thing to wonder, but she couldn’t help herself.  She wondered, as she lay in her bed at night with Johannah beside her, if he thought of her still.  What he thought of her if he did.  Did he hate her for causing him whatever pain he was going through, pain she couldn’t even begin to fathom and if she tried, would make her more useless to the revolution than she already was?  For it was the hope of finding him that kept her going.  She didn’t care what condition he came back to her in, so long as he did and was alive.  Peeta, alive.  When she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend it was him who was breathing just a little bit away.  It was this trick that made sleep come easy. 

When they would inject the morphling into her veins, it running through her body with little streaks of fire, everyone would turn into Peeta.  Finnick was Peeta, Johannah was Peeta, Gale and Prim and her mother and everyone from District 12 and Coin and everyone, except Haymitch.  Haymitch was the only one who stayed the same.  She wished he turned into Peeta too.  She’d rather be surrounded by a thousand fake Peeta’s than one real Haymitch.

Of course, when they got him back, she almost wished the Capitol still had him.  Almost.  Then, at least, she could have a reason to fight.  Then, Katniss could hold on to her imaginary Peeta, no matter how much it hurt to wake up and realize he wasn’t there.  But at least her imaginary Peeta didn’t want to kill her, didn’t hate it.  It was the latter, she thought, that made her return to the morphling.  Because one Peeta who hated her was worse than a million fake ones that didn’t. 

Being around him was torture.  She was constantly reminded, with that stupid game of “Real or Not Real” of what was and what would never be again.  At times she would play the game with herself.  Peeta used to love me, real or not real?  Real was the obvious answer.  But then she’d argue with herself, saying that whatever had happened to him at the Capitol could not have taken away so deep a love as he could, should, had felt.  So he must have felt nothing for her, nothing at all.  That destroyed her more than the revolution.

At the end of everything, the revolution, the death of Coin, everything; they would spend long hours away from the rest of the world.  She no longer questioned whether he loved her or not, she no longer questioned anything.  She would simply place her hand over his heart and feel the steady thump, thump, thump beneath her palm.  Because in this, she knew, he was real.  Always real.

“Hate me,” she ordered as she broke my favorite toy.  Even at two, I didn’t cry.  I just played with the pieces.  It was almost as good.

“Hate me,” she whispered in my ear as she pushed me down.  The asphalt of the playground scraped my palms, but I got up and wiped my stinging hands on my dress.  Silently I followed her to the swings.

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Cato thinks he likes her because she’s dangerous, but he’s not sure.  He thinks he likes her because she presents a challenge, but not enough of one that he couldn’t kill her.  She’s like a little bee, a bit worrying but not something to be overly concerned with.  He’s not worried about her, but for her.  Because hell, she’s just so small.  

Sure, she’s deadly with a knife.  A bit scary with her accuracy but… but she’s not a threat.  She never had been.  He’d known her since she was little and whenever he looks at her, all he sees is that little girl whose face lights up when she sees flowers.  Oh yeah, he’d known her weaknesses, even back then.  He was the one to toughen her up after all.  

He was only 6, and she was only 4, but even then he watched her.  He liked her freckles, he thought they looked like spots of blood but lighter, better.  They made her look strong, despite the fact that, if asked to describe her, he’d say that she was like a fey child, all weak.  

So he gave her a bunch of flowers, already a bit trampled from where he’d stepped on them while picking them.  After seeing her eyes light up like that, he almost hated to do it, but he’d always been a bit sadistic.  So he crushed the flowers below his feet, stomping them into the ground, and laughed as she began to cry.  He hopes that’s why she hated him.  But he didn’t hate her.  Even when she broke his arm that one time, well, even then he laughed at her. 

“Is that the best you’ve got?” he spat in her face, even as his arm was screaming in agony.  Then he pushed her down and broke her fingers under the heel of his shoe.  Just to remind her.  Just to remind her that he liked her.  

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“You’re one of the worst firebenders I’ve ever seen,” said an annoying voice from behind her.  

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[Possible trigger warning for self-harm.]

Here’s a secret about the king of hearts: he doesn’t need anyone.

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