unforgivable ➸ finnick odair

T W E N T Y F I V E

The first thing she does is run to the Victor's Village, to her new house.

She refuses to call it her home. Her real home is with her mother and sister, laughing and sipping herbal tea by the roaring fireplace, not some extravagant, white-painted house with too many rooms and too many empty spaces. Her real home is the house in the main area of District Five, where she can look outside her window and see the people walking past on the footpath, smiling and exchanging mindless chatter as they strode by. 

Her real home, she realizes as she turns the key that Desiree had slipped into her hand before exiting the train in the lock, is gone.

When the door finally swings open, she is met with an empty hallway and walls painted a cold, sterile white. Her footsteps echo loudly as she shuts the door and takes tentative steps into this strange, unfamiliar house. Everything is so pristine and untouched, void of dust and grime but also lacking the homely qualities that Electra misses so much: the faded photographs encased in dusty wooden frames (depicting two young girls, one with brown hair and another with blonde), the textbooks and pens that litter the tabletops (because Breeze could never confine herself to one place when doing homework, and their mother would always have to pick up little tidbits that she had left behind with a fond sigh), the flowery fragrance that floats through the house (Alison Reine had always loved flowers, so every scented item that she ever bought from the District Five markets would smell like nature at it's finest, all gardenias and roses and lily perfumes that made the two girls want to either breathe in or throw up), the...

The second thing she does is barge, uninvited, into Desiree's house, which is opposite her own.

Because the dam has finally burst, and she can't handle it on her own. The tears come on their own accord and suddenly her vision is blurry and her face is streaked with salty water that drips onto her dress and her hands. All the pent-up emotion spills out from her eyes and the grief crashes down, because she is the Victor of the 68th Hunger Games, she killed and she survived and she played their damn game 

and she went home to a dead mother and a house damaged beyond repair and a clean white letter from someone who so calmly controlled her entire life and being unwillingly forced into selling her body for the grubby men in the Capitol and this threat that if she didn't comply then everyone she loved would pay for her mistakes and -

- Desiree understands. She understands and holds her as she cries and rubs comforting circles on her back as Electra's tears drench her jacket. She has done this before, with the only other female victor that District Five has ever produced. She has experienced this emotional breakdown herself as well, only back then she had no one to turn to but herself. With Electra, it's different, and Desiree, despite her sharp honesty and frequent use of sarcasm, refuses to let her suffer alone.

They sit there on the plush crimson couch for a very, very long time. Two broken souls searching for comfort. Two girls whom the games turned into women with steel in their eyes and fear gripping maniacally at their hearts. Two killers, wielding blood-coated blades as they landed the final blows. Two winners, but all they had won was a lifetime of regret, a lifetime of trauma, a lifetime of out of 23 people, why did I make it out?

Two victors.

Two survivors.

Two unlucky playthings of fate.

The third thing she does is call Finnick Odair and apologize for ever thinking him as a Capitol whore.

Clutching the piece of paper that Desiree had forcefully shoved into her hands, Electra's hands trembled and shook as she hesitantly punched the messily scrawled numbers on the note into her brand new telephone. Gripping the phone in her right hand so tightly that her knuckles turned white, she listened to the ringing noises as her call processed, but when a faint click that signified that the other person had picked up sounded, Electra's throat caught.

"Hello?" A smooth voice asked from the other side of the line, still managing to sound charming without even meaning to. There was a faint undertone of wariness in his voice as well, as though he was being cautious not to speak out of hand to some powerful Capitol person who had managed to get their hands on his number.

"H-Hi," she stuttered out, mentally cursing as her voice stuttered and shook without meaning to. What on earth was she meant to say? Oh, sorry for thinking that you slept around with Capitol women just for fun? 

"Sorry, who is this?" he questioned. Gulping, Electra steadied her nerves and plowed on.

"It's-it's Electra, from Five. Erm... Desiree gave me your number," she quickly added so to not sound like a Finnick Odair-obsessed stalker.

"Ah, Ellie! Have you finally fallen for my irresistible charms?" As soon as her identity had been confirmed, her voice immediately slid from walking the line between flirtatious and cautious to full-on seductive and charming. It didn't give her the anger and irritation that it had before, though. Now, she just felt sympathetic - because the Capitol had made him like this.

"In your dreams, Odair," she retorted, though without the fiery hatred that she might've added in a month or two ago. "But seriously, I... um... wanted to say something."

"Go onnnn," he urged, dragging out the last letter of 'on' in a slightly childish but strangely endearing way. After frantically searching her mind for an adequate response, Electra took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and -

"Sorry for thinking that you slept around with Capitol women just for fun!"

.....

"FUCK!"

The fourth thing she does is die of embarrassment and await Finnick Odair's response as she prepares the eulogy for her dignity. Seriously, she's so damn stupid it's hilarious. Ahem...

Electra, in the simplest of terms, wants to die. Not that that's anything new, but still - the one thing she told herself not to say, and she had to go and say it.

"Is he making you do it as well?" Finnick Odair's voice is not teasing or full of mirth. Instead, he sounds worried and concerned. The humour drains out of the situation immediately as she comes to terms with what exactly Snow is making her do.

"He is. Holy shit, he is. Finnick what am I supposed to do, I'm only 17, I have to go meet him on the 7th, that's in 3 days, I can't do this, holy SHIT-"

"Electra, calm down," his soothing, steady voice cuts in, ending her hysterical rant as tears begin spilling anew from her grey eyes. "Calm. Down. Think happy thoughts."

"Happy thoughts, happy thoughts," Electra whispers frantically to herself as her heart thumps angrily against her chest and her hands involuntarily clench into fists. "Breeze. Breeze, Breeze, Breeze." She repeats this like a mantra, the name of her dead baby sister, over and over again. 

Across the phone line in District Four, Finnick Odair's heart clenches as he listens to the broken victor's unsteady, panicked voice resound in his ear, gasping out the same word as she wards off the panic attack.

"Think of Breeze. What colour hair did she have?" he asks even though he already knows the answer, keeping his voice warm and calming for Electra's sake. 

"Blonde," the brunette replies, an image of her sister appearing in her mind's eye. "Blonde, like the sun, and soft too. Like... like silk. And it was naturally wavy and she liked it like that or in a braid and she loved smiling and she - she"

The fifth thing they do is stay like this, on the phone, a girl falling apart and a boy desperately trying to rebuild her broken pieces, for a very long time.