𝙰𝚜𝚜𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚗 ✪ 𝙵𝚒𝚗𝚗𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝙾𝚍𝚊𝚒𝚛

- ȶɦɨʀȶʏ ȶաօ

short chapter but a lot happens. oopsies!

Hearing women screaming in the distance brought Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick to their feet. The sand moved beneath their feet as they looked dead aheasd, over the cornucopia. A waver emerged from nothing and took down the trees in its way. Once it reached the lake that held the cornucopia, two cannons went off.

"That's one way to take care of it," Peeta muttered.

↣ ↢

"Where's Willa?" Brutus asked, regrouping with the other two. Being near the wave, they had scattered as to escape getting caught in the midst of it.

"Still trying to find her," Cashmere said. Gloss did a quick scan of the area before turning to the others.

"She couldn't have gone far," he said. Gloss moved ahead of them, cutting through the hanging vines with his blade, urgency tightening his movements. Brutus kept scanning the treeline, his posture rigid, jaw clenched tight. Cashmere said nothing—just kept moving. None of them voiced what they were all thinking. Willa should've met them by now.

"She was behind me," Cashmere said, her voice brittle. "I looked back right after we split. I swear I saw her dive right."

Brutus stopped walking and turned around.

"Did you see her come back up?" he asked, voice steady. Cashmere didn't answer. They reached the edge of the clearing the wave had torn through. The jungle was destroyed—trees cracked and flattened, mud churned into thick, soupy trenches. In the middle of it all, the lake that held the Cornucopia was a roiling mess of debris and foam. And then, the smell hit them—mud and bark and something metallic. Two cannons had gone off minutes ago. But only now did the silence that followed feel real. Cashmere's breath hitched.

"She's not here. Maybe she got swept further down—maybe—" she cut herself off. Brutus walked forward, scanning the wreckage. His eyes landed on something caught in the branches of a half-uprooted tree. Fabric. Black. The strap of a blade sheath. He moved closer. Reached for it. His fingers curled around the cloth.

Willa's.

He didn't say a word. Didn't need to.

Cashmere turned away sharply, a hand over her mouth. Gloss stood still, fists clenched. Brutus just knelt there in the mud, holding the strap of her sheath. No body. Nothing else. Just that one piece.

"She didn't scream," he muttered. It sounded more like a question than a statement.

"She never did," Cashmere said hoarsely.

"She didn't even get a proper fight." Gloss closed his eyes.

"No," Brutus said, standing slowly, mud dripping from his hands. "But she got to choose how she went. That matters."

They didn't linger. The arena didn't care who it had just taken. But as they turned to leave, Brutus tucked the torn strap into his belt. They wouldn't forget her. Not her silence. Not her strength. Not her soft defiance in a place built on cruelty. And far away, in a small, quiet home, two children would cry into their mother's arms, not knowing exactly why—but feeling that something in the world had shifted. Something had gone missing. And Katia would hold them tighter. Because she knew.

⊱ ۫ ׅ ✧

"Willa. I didn't see Willa," Finnick whispered to Johanna. They had come across the careers earlier in the day but only three of them there. Willa was no where to be seen. Finnick doubted she would be dead but didn;t know where else she would be.

"She's probably just hurt. Didn't want her to fight," Johanna said.

"They don't care about that," Finnick murmured, shiting sand through his hand. The anthem drew the alliance's attention to the sky. Gloss and Cashmere were dead, they knew that. They had killed them. But reasonably, they thought Willa was alive alongside Brutus.

District 1, Gloss.

District 1, Cashmere.

District 2, Willa.

Willa.

Willa's face was the third to appear, her smile gleaming down on the alliance.

Her image lingered on the screen for just a moment longer than the others. The Capitol camera zoomed in, capturing every detail of her sharp features, the proud set of her jaw, and her sun-kissed skin—an unmistakable emblem of District 2's combat training. Her expression was calm, almost serene, as if she was ready to die even before getting sent into the arena. But she was terrified of dying. Finnick knew that. She wouldn't go out without a fight. If threatened, she would take out as many people as she could with her. Willa would go out with a bang.

Scattered across the beach, the alliance shifted uncomfortably. None of them had anticipated her face flashing on the sky tonight. Willa had been a silent but lethal presence in the arena, one who lurked in the shadows, waiting for her moment to strike. Yet there she was, her portrait etched into the dark sky, announcing to all of Panem that she had fallen.

"Willa," Finnick whispered. He thought she looked so pretty in the picture. Her name on his lips felt heavier than it should, weighed down by the implications. Willa was supposed to be a final contender. Strong, precise, and relentless—a career tribute trained for this from birth. The alliance had expected her to be around much longer, even making it to the end. But now she was just another face in the sky, another casualty of the Hunger Games. But there was nobody strong enough to kill her. The only people who could possibly kill her were her allies.

"She barely knew how to swim. The wave must've taken her out," Johanna said, looking back at Finnick. She was trying to give him reassurance, trying to tell him that she wouldn't have lost a fight. But accidents happen, and Willa's death was that. An accident.

"No," Finnick choked out, trying to not show weakness when he knew the Capitol was watching. Willa was dead, and she'd never get to know how Finnick truly cared about her. She died thinking he didn't trust her. She died being mad at him.