𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 | Hunger Games

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WHATEVER FINNICK THOUGHT about Aella's metal status when he'd seen her after her rescue was all one big lie.

The first hours after they'd been reunited she had wept and wept in his arms. She had sat still patiently for the doctors and nurses to assess her and dress all her wounds before she had passed out in his arms and slept for three solid days. They had taken that opportunity to re-hydrate her with IVs and load her full of whatever vitamins and nutrients they could.

She second she had woken up—with an almighty fright—and no idea where she was everything had gone to hell. Finnick had only been just outside her doors, talking with Gale about Katniss when they both heard her wild and fearful screaming. It had been nothing but pure chaos from there on.

Aella had come to hate every person who walked into her room wearing a white lab coat or a nurses uniform. It didn't matter if the hospital wing in District Thirteen was more comfortable and warmer than the hole she was locked up in, in the Capitol. Fear was her worst enemy. The way her mind stilled whenever she saw a nurse or a doctor left her sick to her stomach every single time.

She had become a shell of the woman she was—of the woman who had held on to her last thread of sanity and fought for her life. Now she was nothing more than the same frightened girl she had been the day she was reaped. A girl who attacked out of fear each and every time someone triggered her. The woman Finnick had reunited with that night had long since disappeared. The relief he'd felt knowing she was okay and still sane had slipped and had not returned. It had all been too good to be true.

Everyone who came near her walked on egg shells. Day by day the list of things that set her off, the list of her triggers grew longer and longer. Even simple things like water running from the tap in her hospital room made her flinch. The unannounced touch of her loved ones on her skin sent her flying into fight or flight mode. On three separate occasions she'd moved to attack Finnick simply because he'd touched her hand or her arm without warning her.

The night she woke up, pulling every IV out of her arms, pulling all the monitoring from her body had been difficult for them all—Aella included. It had taken hours to get her to settle, to somehow drill into her brain that she was okay and she was safe while she curled herself up into a ball in the far corner of her room and didn't move. She didn't speak, didn't say anything except stare at the ground underneath her as if imagining it was different. They didn't know how to help her and when she had fallen asleep on the floor Finnick had picked her up and put her back to bed.

Mercifully, he hadn't been holding her when she awoke that next morning. Sitting beside her, he had tried to talk to her but she had merely stared at him—through him—as if she couldn't even see him and didn't utter a single word. That had been two days ago and she still hadn't said anything. Only once in those days had she truly lost herself and it had frightened Finnick to see her eyes go so cold and distant. The male nurse who had tried to take her blood pressure stood no chance. She had jumped from her bed faster than he had ever seen her move and tackled the man to the ground in a choke hold.

Finnick had dived on her, using all his strength to pull her frail body from him but by that point the flurry of doctors and guards had already restrained her on the cold ground and sedated her.

It was all too much for her to deal with mentally. That was what Johanna had said to him when Finnick visited her. Aella had too many triggers, had suffered too greatly for them to truly understand what she was going through.

But they hadn't been able to get anywhere near her physical wounds in days. No one could do anything to help her. She'd shut down and it was evident in the way she sat up in her bed, legs curled to her chest with her chin resting atop her knees staring into space. She hadn't moved from that position in hours. She hadn't slept in days. It was like being back in the Capitol all over again except this time every time she closed her eyes she was forced to re-live everything that happened to her through nightmares.