BLOOD ON MY HANDS || Finnick Odair

fourteen; a necessary evil.

A/N: non-description mentions of throwing up near the end!!!

Almost immediately, they had moved on from their cave. After scavenging from the bodies, and the two of them waiting patiently for Eden to say his proper goodbyes to Flora, Beau had taken Lara on his back and had showed him the proper way to hold a baby, and then they were off into the forest.

They made sure to cover their tracks since then, which send a flood of rage through him each time he tried to think about how they careers had been able to track them even with the rain, but he continuously tried to distract himself. He couldn't afford to go hunt for revenge when he had Cissy to take care of.

Beau had given her the nickname in the second day of walking, stating her parents had given the poor girl a mouthful of a name though he knew the reasoning behind it, and had asked Lara what she'd thought of it. All their counterpart could to do was groan in pain. At some point, more than likely due to the constant cold damp air plus the injury in her leg, she had gotten sick.

Their best guess was pneumonia — an infection of the lungs — though they couldn't be sure as neither was properly trained in medicine, but Beau had made his best guess with the knowledge he had.

They set up camp the first night at the edge of the forest, just a few minutes away from the cliff face that dropped off over the ocean. Lara had softly been groaning in discomfort, her body shifting to try and find a way to lay down that didn't cause any pain, though she never seemed to rest longer than a few minutes.

Up in the sky that night, there had been three names; Flora, Rin, and Sloane.

He'd only coddled Cissy tighter to him after seeing her mother's face up in the sky, wearing that soft smile with her curly hair tangled up into a half ponytail behind her head.

It had been hard to sleep that night, with Cissy's sniffles and Lara's whimpers, but the two of them had done what they could. Beau allowed Lara to use his bunched up jacket as a pillow for her head and Sloane's as an extra blanket, but even that couldn't keep her warm.

Eden knew that Cissy was hungry, which he found frustrating, because they had no milk to give to her. They had done the best they could with what they had around them, like mashing up some plant roots in a corner of the plastic tarp they had, and then mixing it with water so it was a paste, but that wasn't what she needed.

For his baby to survive, they needed milk.

And there was no way to get it.

The second day they continued moving, trying to stay as mobile and hard to find as was possible for them. But with Lara's groans and Cissy's whimpering and sobbing, they both knew that it wouldn't be all that difficult to find them.

They'd been resting when the cannon had gone off for the first time since their fight with the careers, and without a word, Beau was cleaning up the temporary camp and he was already getting Cissy nestled into the backpack strapped to his front so they could get away from the careers as soon as was possible.

As much as he hated how much the games were changing him, the entire hike through the damp terrain Eden couldn't help but hope that the cannon was for Amethyst. He was startled when he realized that, when he thought about just how badly he wanted her and Darius dead. It had been so easy to imagine the boy from 2 as a bug, something small and otherly he could crush and move on.

But he couldn't bring himself to regret it.

If not for them, Narcissa would still have her mother, Flora would still be alive, and he wouldn't be racked with the guilt that came with taking responsibility for a loved ones death. He could feel the toll it had taken on him already, but he knew that since Cissy had been saved, that exhaustion wouldn't go away for a long, long time.