Calm Before The Storm {Finnick Odair}

Forget

In Hebe's dream, all she could see was black. For the last month, everytime she dreamed about the games it was mostly all black. But she could feel it. She could feel the bug's legs crawling all over her body, biting and sucking on her skin. She could feel the dirt under her cheek and the concrete under her feet as she moved. But she still couldn't see.

Until the very end. Then she could see. And she was faced with the image of her dead allies. Still images of bodies skewered and eaten and beheaded and mauled playing over and over in her mind. She would open her mouth, and it felt like she was stretching it so wide that her jaw would snap and unhinge. And then she woke up.

She would wake up screaming, her mouth gaping just like in the dream. She would wake up sweating like she had been running through those tunnels again. Every night this happened her mother would rush in, pull her close and hold her, stroke her hair and comfort her, holding back tears as her daughter hyperventilated.

Each and every night she would whisper the same words but in different arrangements. "I love you." "You're safe." "I'm here." "You're at home." "It's not real."

That last one was a lie.

It was real. It was too real, and that's why Hebe couldn't bear it. Because she knew that every single one of those things had happened in exactly that way, and there was nothing she could have done to change it. There was nothing she could do to escape it either.

Every waking moment she felt like there was something looming. Something watching her. Even when she was at her happiest. Walking through the market with Annie, having tea with Mags, eating dinner with her mother, sitting at the beach with Finnick. Even then, she could feel that something was wrong, something was screaming out to her to listen. And then she would remember.

And so she would sleep. And every night when she was about to fall into a deep slumber she prayed that there was a god out there to free her. She prayed that one day she would be able to forget long enough to really smile, and really laugh. She prayed that tonight her mother wouldn't have to lie and comfort her when she woke up.

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"How do you do it?" Hebe said, throwing a stone into the water.

"Do what?" Finnick replied, not taking his eyes off the patterns he was tracing in the damp sand.

"I don't know. Move on? Forget? However you want to describe it, how do I do it?"

Finnick didn't look up.

"I don't know. I'm still trying to work it out myself. I think it's different for everyone. But it does get easier. To forget."

They both fell silent for a moment.

"Sometimes I wish I didn't volunteer. I wish I could just let that little girl go off to the games." Hebe said, leaning back so she was lying down, staring up at the sky, a bitter expression on her face.

"Me too." Finnick whispered, "I wish neither of us had done it."

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Annie still came round to the Cross house a lot. It was one of the few things that remained the same from before the games. Almost every morning Hebe would hear the familiar creak of the downstairs door swinging open, and Annie's voice would float through the house as she greeted Juno. Then Hebe would open her own door, and walk downstairs, hugging her sister tightly.