❝𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐎𝐒❞ | k. everdeen

chapter 9: tick, tock.

Nola had seen death many times. The first time she had an experience with it, she was only nine years old. The orphanage was full of young and not so young children, who had spent years of their lives wandering the streets, looking for shelter or something to put in their mouths, and in the end the District mayor's office sent them there, wanting to clean the alleys of scum so that it wouldn't give District 2 a bad image.

Well, not everyone was adjusting to the new situation as well as Nola. It was a cold morning when she found the body of one of the children pinned to one of the metal fences, his skin purple from the cold and the spikes piercing his chest. Nola dared to venture, despite his young age, that it wasn't even that what had killed him, but that he had probably been inadvertently electrocuted: the fences were always activated to prevent them from escaping until they came of age, and there were some who still didn't seem to understand that.

Hell, Nola had even caused death. Four tributes she could count right now from her first Hunger Games came to her mind, and the man from District 5 as soon as these Games started. She could say she was even used to it, because for a nineteen-year-old, Nola handled her interactions with death all too well. As long as it didn't affect her, of course. And since the miserable death of the addict from District 6 had nothing to do with her, she walked away, leaving behind the two from District 12, who were accompanying her as she died.

It didn't take long for the cannon to go off, and Nola, far from feeling bad about her death, thought of her loss as another step towards getting home; towards reaching glory again. She looked at Finnick, who was covering the backs of the two younger ones, trident in hand and gaze fixed everywhere, but his thoughts far away. She thought he hadn't even had time to mourn the loss of Mags, what little family he had left, or anything resembling it, and suddenly the sense of glory was far enough away for Nola. She hadn't mourned the loss of anyone, but the idea sounded rather unpleasant.

So Nola set to work, pulling the arrows out of the inert bodies of the monkeys, or whatever those monstrosities were, while giving Finnick time to recover momentarily —or, at least, pick up some of the remaining scattered pieces of himself. Finnick just looked at her, said nothing more, and for both of them it was for the best. Finnick was afraid he'd burst into tears if he said a word, and Nola would find it rather awkward if Finnick knew that he was the thing that most resembled a weak spot for her.

She cleaned up as best she could the remaining flesh on the arrows and the fluids those creatures had left on Katniss's arrows.

—I think you'll want them back —Nola offered them to Katniss, who accepted them, hesitantly, still not believing that Nola was there, in front of the three of them, after everything that had happened. Her pale skin was still covered in that greenish crust, her hair had dried incredibly quickly and looked almost white in the moonlight.

She was charming, of course. But she didn't mean her good humor or her smile, she had a way of captivating people, whether with her words, her gestures, Katniss didn't know that. And though she didn't want to find out either, she was afraid to forget at times that Nola Bernacci was an assassin, nothing more.

—Don't scratch them —Katniss said, watching Peeta and Finnick hold their hands to their faces—. You'll get them infected.

The two boys stopped instantly, feeling scolded, and Nola gave them an amused look. The wounds on her cheeks and other parts of her body stung like hell, but she wasn't about to give the watchers the luxury of knowing they were still making her suffer. More than once she had to stop her hands from scratching her face and keep them busy with the spit. It turned out she wasn't too bad at it, though she was guilty of using force, like Peeta, rather than finding the right place to put it. They all drank a little, even Nola, who could sense that Finnick and Peeta were opening up a little more to her presence and it was Katniss who still couldn't quite tolerate her.