𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘'𝐋𝐋 𝐉𝐔𝐌𝐏 𝐎𝐅𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐃𝐆𝐄 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑.
What District 2 victor, Saffron Creek, and prodigy, Finnick Odair, share is the very antithesis of what has been stolen from them. They test the edges of the rules that construct t...
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moves and countermoves . . . . .
Cicero smiles widely. His ease is unsettling. A wolf like him does not belong in a jungle. And yet? Saffron's injuries still burn, dully, diluted by adrenaline.
Johanna observes her as someone would when trust has been betrayed. She knows what Peeta has told her.
There is a greater enemy before them though. This, they decide and with Johanna's nod—it is more of a slight jerk of the chin—they rush towards Cicero and Cashmere. Saffron has no blade anymore, only her chain. It will be enough, she hopes.
Her fear is shoved into her toes and tucked behind her ribcage like it waits for the opportune moment to serve a fatal wound.
Saffron kicks Cashmere between his legs and he howls. She fights messy, but so does life.
When he bows towards the ground, she loops her chain over his head. She yanks it, wedging her foot on his back for leverage. She pulls and her arms burn. They begin to shake from the exertion, and she thanks Johanna for at least keeping Cicero distracted.
He stutters beneath her. And then he falls limp, but she still doesn't release the pressure. Not until she hears the cannon. That is when Cicero's head whips over and on his face is something like pity as he regards Cashmere's prone body.
"Katniss?" It is Peeta, yelling.
And Saffron's anxiety boils.
Cicero, before racing into the foliage, glares at them both. They hear Peeta approaching, his footsteps now louder. His voice, clearer.
"Where have you been?" Johanna demands. She is about to speak again, but then Saffron has her locked in a chokehold. "Saff—"
"Forgive me."
Johanna claws at her arms and targets her eyes. She glares so fiercely that Saffron shrinks.
"I'm sorry," she sputters again and again until she's babbling.
Alliances, so quickly, have shifted and it feels so sudden, like the world has reversed its rotation. Johanna, unconscious, slumps to the ground.
There are furious red streaks on Saffron's forearms and a certain burn builds in the scarlet canyons they create like her pulse is getting closer. As if her heart is coming to confront her.
Then she is running again. From Peeta and a limp Johanna as if in a perpetual game of cat and mouse. Running, most of all, from the impossible decisions she must make.
And when she reaches the tree, she almost forgets what all of this was for.
Was it worth it?
Was anything?
Beetee is on the ground, twitching from electrical shock, and Katniss is pointing an arrow at Finnick's chest. And Finnick is standing there like the personification of glory—golden, righteous, and true. Saffron, too far away, feels like crying. Her stress builds behind her throat. The humidity condenses on her nape.
Above her head, the clouds rumble like threats, or at least, telltales of what's to come.
"Remember who the real enemy is," Finnick says, focused not on the arrow poised at his heart, but at the eyes of the girl who wields the bow.
Saffron's injuries are beginning to catch up with her. And she falls, skinning her palms.
Katniss's eyes shift from him to Beetee's wire on the ground and then to the writhing sky. She kneels and the ground trembles.
Saffron remembers what Beetee had said to them when this started: "We don't want to be anywhere in the vicinity when the lightning hits."
She pulls herself up anyway and hurls herself forward to where copper has been wound around Katniss's arrow, to where the point has been aimed at the sky.
She careens into the girl who is a rebellion.
But she is too late.
Everything explodes when the arrow catches charge and collides with the arena's ceiling. They—Katniss, Saffron, Beetee, Finnick—are thrown backwards. Her stomach dances before she hits the ground, hard.
And when she tackled Katniss she saw her boy, beautiful, stare at her, and she knew she had betrayed him.
. . . . .
Saffron does not remember anything after that initial impact, but her neck and jaw are locked, and she cannot see anything when she wakes.
