The Heiress {Finnick Odair}

Capitol Spies

Katniss didn't like it  here in District Thirteen. It didn't seem to matter how many times she was  promised they were safe, it always ended in healers drugging her. She  was alone in empty rooms day after day.

The  few times she did manage to escape, they always found her and brought  her right back. All she could think about was how much it reminded her  of the Capitol.

Finnick  wasn't overly fond of it either, and neither was Adrien. At least in  the Capitol, they pretended to respect the victors, but all District  Thirteen saw when they looked at them were murderers.

Finnick  always knew he was a killer, but he hated that people looked at him  like he was. They were isolated, and their children protected. They had  no idea what it was really like out there while they've been hiding away  for the last 75 years.

Finnick  had taken to obsessively tying knots. He and Adrien would sit in  Finnick's hospital room for hours and tie knot after knot.

This  is what he was doing when Katniss saw him for the first time. He looked  manic as his fingers toyed with the rope. He was barely sleeping these  days, but the knots calmed him down. They helped a little bit.

So,  when the nightmares woke him up like they always did, he sat up and  started tying the rope. He was gasping for breath as he did it, trying  desperately not to think about the dream. Her corpse in the center of  the Capitol as the mockingjays swarmed her body and pecked out her eyes.

Amara  was dead. Amara was always dead in his dreams. Annie was lying next to  her as worms slithered out of her eye sockets, and Adrien was sobbing  over both their dead bodies, but he stopped just long enough to look up  at Finnick and scream that it was all his fault.

Finnick typically woke up in a panic, with tears streaming down his face.

"Finnick,"  Katniss said, her voice harsh as she stared at the victor breaking down  before her. He hadn't heard her voice in nearly two weeks. He didn't  know what was going to say with her. He'd run through it a million times  in his head, but it never ended well.

He didn't even look at her when she stared at him. He continued to tie the knot over and over again as he spoke.

"I  wanted to go back for Peeta, Johanna, and Ezra, but I...I couldn't  move..." he barely managed to get the sentence out. When he finally  looked up at her, he could see the pain and anger in her eyes. She was  looking at him the way she looked at Haymitch right before trying to  stab him with that needle. "They have Annie too. They took her. She's in  the Capitol." He could barely breathe as he told her. He couldn't  imagine the horrors they had in store for his best friend. "Amara too...  she stayed behind so the others could escape."

He  glanced over at Katniss to see that her anger had turned to anguish.  There was someone in District Thirteen that understood what she was  going through. They both knew she loved Peeta. They might not truly  understand the way she loved him, but they both knew it wasn't a game  anymore.