Never Ending | Hunger Games

Chapter 6

"Why is the water so cold?" I screech after resurfacing. All I can hear is Finnick's manic laughter a few feet away, and the water moving around us. 

We'd been sent to check the crab traps on the farthest doc, the one where not many people favor going since it shares a fence with the outlands, the places where no one is allowed to go. Though not too common, there have been spottings of the wild animals outside of the fence coming in. Just last year there was a mountain lion and her two cubs that often frequented this very doc, though a few of the men in town were able to 'take care of her', and now her pelt hangs in the butchers home.

I manage to get back to the doc, lifting myself out of the water and sitting on the edge. I ring my hair out a bit before flinging it behind me, hearing it flop against my sopping wet shirt. 

"You said you weren't going to push me in this time." I say, wiping my face off while Finnick is still laughing to himself in the water.

"And I thought you'd know by now that I never stick to my word." He says still chuckling as he swims towards me. I kick my leg in the water splashing it towards him. 

"You're the worst." I say as he jumps out to sit next to me. 

"Yeah, I know, it keeps me up at night." He says with an obvious underline of sarcasm which makes me roll my eyes a bit. 

We settle into a silence and sit there in the sun, the water just brushing our ankles. 

"The reaping is next week." I say.

"Yeah." Is all he responds with. "And your birthday is in a few days."

I nod a bit. "Fourteen." 

"Do you think it'll always be like this?" He says, which confuses me a bit.

"Like, this?" I say, waving a hand between the two of us. "Or, the reaping, the games, all of that."

He thinks for a moment. "Both, I guess." 

I stare at the water brushing my legs. "I'd like this to stay the same for as long as we can have it." I say finally. "That's something we can control. Nothing about this has to change. Whatever happens out there, we don't really have a say in that. But we have a say in sticking together."

Knocking on the door. It makes me jump violently, putting me on my feet in an instance as my skin is glazed in a layer of sweat. 

It takes me a moment to realize where I am, in the tribute center. This is my room. I was reaped for the Hunger Games. I had to leave my father behind, but someone got to come with me, someone's still here-

"Maren?" Finnick's voice comes through the door. I don't know if his voice soothes my anxiety or fuels it. I quickly move to open the door, facing him.

"Sorry I, I must of fallen asleep." I say, looking at him but not quiet in the eyes. They aren't the same eyes that I had just seen in a memory, in my head. The calmness and the charm they use to hold isnt there anymore, and I can't truly get myself to look at them.

"It's fine, you're fine." He says, seeming to notice how uneasy I appear. I always forget how easily this boy can read me. "They're serving dinner shortly, and I want to talk strategy a bit before you guys can go to bed." 

I wipe my forehead and nod a bit. 

Dinner is awkward. Doran stuffed his face with the different meats, sauces, soups, appetizers, even desert. I managed to eat half of my plate, even with the encouragement of Arden and the others, I can't seem to finish it. I still feel sick from the dream I had earlier. I wouldn't classify it as a nightmare, because it is a happy memory. But with how everything has changed since then, the once happy memory now brings me nothing but a hollow feeling in my gut.