VENUS《 FINNICK ODAIR

Chapter 47. MINE.

EDITH FOUND IT IRONIC THAT ONCE SHE HAD BEGAN ATTEMPTING TO LOVE HER SCARS, SHE RECIEVED A BRAND NEW SET TO RECOVER FROM.

When she asked Finnick to push her into the champagne tower at the auction, glass shards had splintered across her forearms, leaving her with small cuts dotted against the upper parts of her vine scars like little comets. But it was a price she was fine paying to save her life - that of which she kept tucked neatly in the back of her mind, unable to really understand the fact that she had nearly been killed.

She forgot what kind of world she was living in, she forgot that focusing all your energy into protecting those you love leaves you in the open.

Inspecting her arms, there was some bruising; tender red, blushing blue and brown in a cherished, cosmic array. Freckles dusted along her skin from her time in 4, and her vines graced her skin like the inner lines of a galaxy.

But it didn't take her long to abandon romanticising her scars. No, soon the bitter realisation dawned upon her like the haze of a winter sun on a porcelain black sky.

She now had stripes not only on her legs, but on her arms too.

Stripes and vines. Not only had the poison from that long claw scar across her calf claimed her skin with ivy, but maybe the burden of the beast stayed with her.

All she was learning was from the safety of its jaws.

All she was understanding; how to survive, how to normalise, how to piece yourself back together - it was all taught from the best.

For a beast must rip any remorse from oneself, piecing together a mutt from the leftover scraps.

Maybe Edith spent so much time with the burdens of a beast that she learnt how to become one.

But she wasn't a monster. She was just a broken girl, only a month from twenty. She absent mindedly scratched the side of her thumb with a scarred finger, dampening it's edges with ruby.

Edith almost didn't realise she had been sitting up in her bed for almost an hour, waiting for the sun to rise and her heartbeat to fall after a recurring nightmare that ended her dreadful attempt at sleep prematurely.

The scruffy brunette blinked away the sleep dusting the corners of her eyes, wiping away any drool with the back of her hand.

And there it was again.

Those hands, garnet ivy and vermilion cometed stripes. Her spear scar sat in the middle like a dull moon, blinking in a hazy cosmic slur.

She tried to wipe the drool off her hand and was only met with the notion of wiping her hands off of blood.

A futile notion, but not one she hadn't experienced with those weathered palms.

Edith found it slightly ridiculous how torn up she was - pieced together with paste and stitched with red thread. But it was better than dead - that certainly wasn't the beast talking, no, that was whatever else she was becoming.

She turned sour at that thought; those she killed, those she misdirected, those she couldn't save. Those were the people whose blood laid on her hands in the form of red little scars.

And that blood would claim her hands for all eternity. Her name would be written in history books as the Victor of the 70th Hunger Games.

Pushed two into the abyss.

Saw two meet their ends right in front of her; one by her own hands, the other aiming for her own heart.

Led two to their deaths as revenge for trying to lead her to her own.