𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 [𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤 - 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬]

11 | 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝

Content warning at the end notes: please skip down and check if you feel like you should!

N E O

— THE MOMENT THE CAMERAS COME OFF ME is like a real, tangible weight leaving my shoulders. But it's not like I can breathe again, not like I'd hoped. The crowds roar above and around me, the Victor's crown sits in my hair — heavy is the head that wears the crown, is what Kav says to me as I pass him by, cutting a path to the nearest exit with my feeble leg in an abortive attempt to escape the stifling scent of fresh paint and dusty air. Beneath the stage is the messiest place I've seen in the Capitol, and even then it is pristine, only marred with powdery crates and deconstructed scaffolding.

My chest feels cramped and tender, my throat as though it's constricting around a rock, my skin, contaminated, filthy. I scratch at my arms and it's haunting to know theres nothing there but skin. My knuckles are smooth and empty. The birthmark on my knee — maybe the last sign that my mother ever existed — is gone. It's as though everything that shaped me was just skin-deep.

Not 'as though'. Is. Everything I am was on the vulnerable surface. With that removed, am I even a person?

For a moment I am furious again; and then I'm not. Exhaustion overwhelms me, sickens me.

I think Kav tries to call me back, tries to stop me, but instead I find myself in a cool-toned bar buried in the side of the venue's foyer. It's concrete, lowered into the ground, with big screens hosting my vacant face, and the back wall is all hard stuff. I sit myself on a velvet barstool and groan into my hands — Gus says my leg will never stop hurting, not without a proper prosthetic or unobtainable drugs. I refused medication. I can't fall into that, not now, not when I'm alive for good this time.

Teeth grinding, I wait for the bartender to pour me something. Not sure what, but I knock it back.

"Thas'a sipping drink." A man slumped at the other side of the curved bar grumbles, blinking slowly with the washed-out eyes of a steady drunk.

"Another," I rest my head on the chrome counter. Cold sweat makes it stick a little, like I'm fighting a fever. I never drink. You can't really, when you're in the Career program. They do blood tests when you go in for weekly checkups — we were all a bit too afraid of what might happen if we were caught.

"Leave him be, Haymitch." Another voice says, and it's less grating, maybe soothing, but still young in a way that ignites a little irritated fire in me anyway.

I watch as a pair of legs — flimsy shoes, too-short trousers, a slice of pale ankle dusted with fine golden hair — fill the seat beside me. Not quite next to me; the boy leaves a space between us.