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What a marvelous feeling it would be, if we could say exactly how we felt. What a monumental victory. What a terrifying thought.
Her hair was still drying from her shower when Finnick came to see her.
He stood idly by the door until Cassia was seated on the edge of her bed. She wondered when the next time she would feel such luxury again; if there would be a next time. No, she promised herself she wouldn't think like that anymore. But she couldn't help it as every minute brought her closer to tomorrow, when she would be thrown into the arena with twenty-three other tributes.
"You can sit, you know," she said.
"I'll be brief." He looked like he was conflicted over something, but took up the space beside her anyways. He sighed, "It's normal to be afraid."
She stared at the blank space on the wall. There was no reason to decorate a room for someone who wouldn't be staying. "I know," she swallowed thickly, "I just wish I had more time."
"You did the best you could with the Careers, I think they have accepted you as one of their own enough to have some trust—"
"No," she cut him off, and like night meeting day, her dark blue eyes met his soft sea-green ones, "I mean with my family, with discovering who I want to be as a person, with my life."
The space between his brows creased as he stared at her. "I thought the same thing." He looked distant, like the ghost of the past still haunted him. "I was terrified. I couldn't keep anything down the entire night before. And until the moment I stepped onto that plate and was lifted up into that arena, I had let my mind race with every possibility of what could be waiting for me on the other side." He shook his head. "I was never prepared for what I would do in there. In there, it's different. The line between right and wrong is blurred when all you can think about is surviving. All those kids who died in the bloodbath and after that were the result of that primal instinct to survive."
Cassia's blood ran cold at the truth in his words. She could almost see the slaughter shining in his eyes. "Do you think," she shoved her hands under her thighs to hide their tremble, "do you think I can do it? Kill someone?"
"I think that when the time comes, you will."
"You were only fourteen," she said.
"I was," he nodded. "I didn't think when I did it, I didn't have time to think about who they were or if they had a family watching me, because when you kill in there you are not a person with morals, you become what they want you to be; an animal. You don't want to become one, but you don't have a choice when it's either you or them or both of you."
