▎𝗪𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗡 ▎ ━━ 𝙖𝙘𝙩 𝙞𝙫 𝙞𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙣 038. | A LOAD OF WHAT IF'S AND ALMOST'S
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𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒 𝐒𝐇𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐏 𝐀 𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 where cool gusts of summer wind dry the tears off her cheeks. Where she can hear pigeons cooing and the hum of a crowd below.
She did try to sleep the entire night but her drams are feverish, sometimes so intense she wakes with bile rising up her throat. The nightmares aren't worth closing her eyes.
So, to pass the time and distract herself from the ever-present fucking itching beneath her skin, she walks herself through any good memory her brain can scrape up. Picking out silvers of joy from the carnage of her life.
She thinks of Jade and Will, their son, Chris.
Most of her happy memories are lined with grief, she finds. Any description of Jade's smile is eclipsed by Jade's fear now. A moment of peace sitting beside her mother on the couch, tainted by the cruelty of her sickness and consequent death. Anfisa's laughter in the sun-scorched desert and her irreproachable optimism, Chiara's determination to hold onto a thin shred of hope—all images have tears burning in her eyes, knowing how things are now.
Dead, disjointed, destroyed.
"What are you thinking of?" Finnick peals his eyelids open underneath the piercing sunlight landing directly on him, painting him as some sort of art glided in gold and luxury.
She images holding each of these bitter memories in her hands with the gentleness of a friend, "we were happy once, not fully but at peace besides our family," she tells him, "it feels odd because people were dying every year, and we were living in an age of ruthlessness."
"That doesn't discount all the softness and the gentleness," he agrees with her, there was nothing wrong with finding rays of silver in a bloodied cluster of memories, "how can there only be misery when there was laughter and shared solace?"
Slowly, the bitterness raging within ebbs. it does not disappear—no, not while the true killers are alive. But the hatred towards herself fades, just slightly. President Snow, the Capitol, is the one she should blame for all the needless death behind her, for tarnishing her good memories. None of that was her choice, Chris was not her mistake. Somehow, this realisation soothes her.
"You haven't slept properly, darling," he points out, a slight scolding tone, "not impressed."
"Nightmares," she explains hesitantly, still, "too much." Nobody else was getting nightmares, she felt a little out of place. Scarlet looks at the angle of blue sky visible through the window as Finnick stares at her. this thought burns in her mind, the sickness makes her reckless. "When will it stop?"
