𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | 𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝑶𝒅𝒂𝒊𝒓

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐎𝐍𝐄.

From Home

The haircut was bad, but Finnick didn't have the heart to tell her.

When she declared it finished and handed the mirror to him, he had to tamper his horror at the massacre and tell her it was a good haircut. She looked pleased, and told him she was nervous and got side-tracked so there was a little bald spot at the back, but no one would notice.

It was the first thing Mags noticed. But she smiled when Finnick explained where the poor haircut came from. The old woman was just thrilled to see him acting his age, being a teenager and not a forced adult.

Finnick spent as much time as he reasonably could with Rosemary, he still had responsibilities with his Tributes—Enoch and Fawn—and he wouldn't forget them, he advised and explained everything, he just ditched the second the obligations ran out. He mostly spent time in the District 9 accommodation, Rosie didn't want to leave Elio too much, and Greta became slightly obsessed with Finnick, something Rosie found endlessly amusing.

Time was ticking by, days passed one by one, and it crawled closer to the day Rosie pretended wasn't coming.

Elio was a Tribute. This wasn't a Capitol getaway.

"What is your plan?" Rosie questioned Elio, sitting by him where she and Toby once sat, overlooking the seemingly endless twinkle of lights. In theory, Rosie was supposed to lay out a game plan for Elio, but she just couldn't, there wasn't much point, he was far too resigned to his fate—not only that, she hardly had a game plan. Or, she didn't listen to the game plan.

He smirked eating some more bread, Elio never liked acorn bread. "Is that not your job, Rosie Posie?" He teased.

"Okay. Here's Rosemary Blue Aldine's master plan. The time ticks down, you sprint to hide–"

"Because that went so well for you." Kit had told Elio and Greta that Rosie seldom listened to any advice. Elio had yet to let it go, he was having too much fun teasing the girl he would forever miss. Rosie couldn't see it, but she was a good person. She had written herself off after the Games, branded herself as a selfish murderer, when—in a messed up way—she did it for the most selfless reason. She wanted to do what Elio and Toby did, accept that they were going to die, and let it happen; but she wasn't afforded that opportunity, so she ruined herself for her family.

Rosie scoffed, "I'm gonna kill Kit one of these days, the fucker is annoying." She shook her head. In reality, Kit saved her ass more than once, and she would always be thankful for him. "Well, my master plan is better than his. Once you hide, wait for people to die, just find clean water and something to eat. Try to scavenge weapons people have dropped, or get a branch or rock or something heavy. Then kill them. Then come home. Back to 9, where you freeze your tits off and your mother still makes you eat all of your vegetables."

"Brillant. Foolproof."

"You're so mean to me. I have won, you know? Sure, I almost got poisoned, pretty much drowned, then strangled, but I still won," her tone turned serious. A mix of memories of those events unfolded in her brain, and then the need for Elio to survive washed over her. "And, let's be real, no one thought I had a real shot."

Elio shook his head. "You knew what to eat, and what not to eat–"

"In the real world, the Games aren't real. Nothing in there is as it appears, I was lucky those were real," she defended, wanting to convince Elio to not go into the Games acting as though he'd already lost. Because that was what the consensus was; the public wrote him off in a split second, his interview with Caesar was reliving his trauma from the mill accident so the Capitol could get a kick, and his score was a shitty four. If he went in thinking he'd already lost, he would lose. "You gotta believe in yourself."