Tears

A/N: Ok, so when I was re-reading Catching Fire, this idea popped into my head. So I just wrote this… At first I think it was meant to be a pure Finnick/Mags mother-son relationship, but then it turned out to have an element of Finnick/Katniss purely platonic friendship. Yeah…. XD

Anyway, enjoy! (Hints of Everlark and Odesta)

Finnick clambers through the jungle, pulling arrows from the speared orange carcasses of the mutts, admiring Katniss’s aim. Every arrow that he frees is embedded in vital parts of the muttations’ bodies.

It is obvious that the Girl on Fire meant for each and every arrow to count, and that every arrow shot meant one mutt down.

He turns, about to return to his allies, when he realizes that the morphling is still laid out in front of the pair, her hand gripping Katniss’s in a vice grip.

At her side, Peeta whispers in a soft, hushed voice, and with each word spoken the morphling’s face relaxes a little more.

On the other side of the dying tribute, Katniss kneels, her expression pensive and a little wonderstruck.

She -subconsciously, Finnick is sure- gazes up at Peeta with a dazed look on her face, her usually sharp features soft and loving.

The morphling casts Peeta a look that can only be described as worshipful, her fingers tracing a swirling pattern on Peeta’s cheek, drawing what Finnick assumes to be a flower.

Peeta smiles, whispering what can only be a compliment.

The wasted Victor grins blissfully, and she lets out a soft squeak that Finnick wouldn’t have been able to hear if his ears weren’t so sharp. As it was, it was barely audible.

Her hand, speckled in scarlet, falls back to rest, and her chest rises and falls with startling finality.

The cannon fires, and Finnick shuts his eyes against it. He has heard too many cannon booms to ever, ever feel alright about the sound ever again.

When his eyes reopen, Peeta is kneeling by the seaside, the morphling floating on the receding waves.

The blonde boy casts a long look at the morphling before heading back to Katniss’s side.

A hovercraft appears, and the familiar four-pronged claw drops, encasing the passed tribute.

Her death, so similar to Mags’s, yet so vastly different.

Finnick clenches the red-saturated arrows in his fist, his mind clouded with memories of District Four, of Annie and Mags, the only two women that had ever liked him not for his looks, the only two that had ever understood him.

The only two who had ever cared about him.

He heads back to the waterside, dropping Katniss’s arrows in sand beside her.

“Thought you might want these,” he says without registering the redundancy of his statement.

Katniss, to her credit, ignores his unnecessary words and grabs them, giving him a simple thanks, wading into the shallows without any of the grace that Finnick was used to seeing in his district people, in the fishermen and women.

He turns back to the jungle, wanting to find a vine that could be used as a rope. He had been tying knots as a sort of stress relief for a long time.

Ever since Annie had taught him some of the more decorative knots, the ones that he had never thought to learn, the ones that he had always assumed to be of no use.

But now all they do is remind him of her, and of Mags, who had always been there for him, since his Hunger Games, and now he would never be able to repay that debt to her, would never be able to tell her how important she was to him.