Impavid

Stronger. Faster. Smoother. Harder. I became each, pressing further and further in training. Cain was young, but pushed us hard. Finnick and I would beat each other to bruises and cuts, lashing at each other and fighting to the point where Cain wasn’t sure if we were training or taking our anger out on one another.

A grunt left my mouth between clenched teeth as Finnick brought a plastic pipe across my shoulder. We had traded in sticks for pipes that Cain had gathered, light and plastic, but much sturdier than branches. They also left a lot less splinters and more bruises.

Finnick hesitated straightening his posture slightly. “Are you al-"

Swinging hard I swept his pipe under his feet. Finnick was caught off guard, feet going from underneath him. He hit the sand hard and I winched, feeling a twinge of guilt. He didn’t get back up. Instead, he rolled over on his back, looking up at the sky. His eyes were very blue, chest rising and falling.

Tossing my pipe to the ground, I knelt down next to him. “Sorry.”

“Sorry about the shoulder shot.”

“Nothing an ice bath and some few capitol pills wont fix.”

Finnick sat up, brushing sand off his arms. “I think we’ve reached a plateau, Lana. Beating each other with pipes isn’t going to make us any more ready.”

“Well we aren’t training with tridents. Those break bones.”

“Awe, nothing w can’t handle.”

I laughed, sitting down next to him. I bumped him with my shoulder. “Nothing we can’t handle, of course.” Silence fell between us. We looked out at the water. It was particularly rough, the waves coming in quick and hard to the beach. “We have a week, you know?”

Finnick dropped his head, picking a shell up in the sand. He turned it over in his fingers. “Yeah. I know.”

“Come on,” I said after a while, standing up and extending my hand to him. He took it and I helped pull him up. “How about dinner at my place tonight?”

“Thought you would never ask.”

After cleaning ourselves up, Finnick and I took over his kitchen, making seared scallops, fried fish, grilled lobster and oysters. The kitchen filled with the smell of our cooking and periodic laughter, shoving one another out of the way and flinging light insults.

It was what I had grown used to, after a time. Nightmares had washed away more and more as Finnick and I had moments like cooking in the kitchen, or sitting on the beach. It took time and patience, but they finally stopped coming, replaced by moments of sitting and eating, talking together.

And yet now they were going to come back, the nightmares. They were following me like a show cast by a setting sun.

“Can we talk about something?” I glanced up at Finnick’s question, forking a scallop in my mouth. It was soft, breaking up instantly in my mouth, the taste of lemon on my pallet. “Don’t look at me like that, Lana.”

“Whenever someone says they want to talk, it’s never a good one.”

“Well good things are in short supply.”

“Good point. Go ahead.”

He set his fork down. “I think we should talk about what happens if we both go in. I know we practice and we fight, but we’ve never discussed what happens if we go in there.”

“I think we both know that we are unwilling to let the other die.”

“There can only be one winner.”

I was silent. His eyes were blazing with something, an idea hidden in the folds of his mine, not yet obvious to me. I chewed my lip, trying to unwrap whatever it was. “So maybe we should find a common person to save,” I murmured. He leaned back in his chair a dimple popping up in his cheek. I was right. “Like someone who the districts already stand behind. Someone like Katniss Everdeen.”

“I think it’s something we should think about.”

“Katniss Everdeen fights for herself. She fights for no one else, and it’ll be the same in there. She’s going to feel like a caged animal.”

“She’ll feel exactly like the rest of us.”

“It’s something to think about.”

I remained still. Finnick leaned forward, continuing to eat his meal. “Who’s idea is this?” He looked up at me. “And how long have you been considering it? Since your return from the capitol?”
He nodded once. “It’s a collection of ideas, no single person’s.”

“Someone awfully brave is planning it.”

Finnick ran his hand over his face. He had bags under his eyes, closing his eyes briefly, resting his head in his hand, leaning heavily on it. I was no longer hungry, though the food was amazing. Instead, I got up and walked around the table, wrapping my arms around Finnick’s shoulders. He hesitated a moment and then leaned into me.

We remained like that for a long moment. My hand combed through his hair, soft and slipping between my fingers. He smelled like salt and cologne, making my head swim, my heart jump.

“You can stay here,” I said slowly, my voice catching a the end. Cursing myself, I took a breath, swallowing my nervousness. “If you want, I mean. You’re having trouble sleeping again.”

“Are you going to read me a bed time story?”

“Hmm, only if you do your chores first.”

Letting go, I stepped away from him. He looked up at me. His eyes were drawing me in, glowing in the light. His face was smooth, a very faint, very small scar on the left corner of his mouth from being hit in the face in his games. I had a similar scar on my jaw line from where my counterpart from district 4 had cut me in my own games.

We cleaned the dishes, leaving them out to dry. We retired to the beach, sitting on the water-hardened sand. Our feet touched the water, cool on our toes. The moon was low, just beginning to peek above the horizon. It reflected on the black water, the silver image blurred by waves.

We didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. Small talk was pointless when you had a friendship beyond that. I strongly believed true friendship was when you could be silent with someone next to you, listening to the sound of their beating heart speak as opposed to their mouth.

“I think I’m going to stay tonight, if you don’t mind.”

I glanced at Finnick out of the corner of my eye. “I never mind.”

“I don’t mind you either. Never.”

I grinned. “Never.”